Chapter 17: Monday Afternoon, 3:32PM

“I think this might be the best meal I’ve had all year,” Laura said. She looked down carefully at the bowl in her lap, speared a single piece of lettuce, and chewed it. Her eyes closed, and she smiled a little.

Her eyes opened, and her smile changed to a worried expression as she looked across the coffee table at Alaina. “You don’t have to be so suspicious. It’s not just the food. I haven’t...” She looked down and poked her fork around her salad bowl aimlessly. “When I’d eat with my family before they... Before, when I’d eat with them, they always felt so anxious and afraid. When I eat with my friend I have to pretend.”

She tried poking her fork through a tomato, but it rolled away. “Even eating with Will, as great as I felt last week while I was having a full manic episode, I still knew it wasn’t real. I was just trying to live every second like it was my last. Eating was too slow to be able to enjoy it.” She gave up on the tomato and tried a bite of chicken.

Her eyebrows rose and her eyes widened. “You really made this?” She looked back and forth between the remaining chicken on her fork and the girl who had made it.

Alaina nodded silently. I’m in way over my head with her. I barely know anything about bipolar disorder! And she has a Quirk that fucks with her emotions on top of that? Mom, please get home soon. I need you!

“I’m so jealous,” Laura said, taking another bite. “I used to cook a lot,” she said after she’d swallowed, staring at her bowl. “I, um ... After I got my Class, I didn’t really understand how bad my Quirk was for a while. I talked about it with Mom and Dad, but nobody ever talks about this kind of stuff. There’s some vague internet articles, a couple books here and there, but nobody wants to talk about how Classes affect mental health. Or mental health in general.”

She swallowed again, despite not having eaten anything. “I’d already been seeing psychologists for a while. They were nice. Always gave me a lot to think about. Never really seemed like they was trying to help me make progress, though. Didn’t help stop any of my incidents.”

The last small bite of chicken on her fork disappeared, and she stared wistfully into the bowl again. “Anyway, I was making breakfast on a Sunday morning like I always used to. I made a really nice omelet, and suddenly my Quirk did something. I’d had manic episodes before, but this was different. It was so much stronger. And I started thinking I had to show Ceci the awesome omelet I made. She always slept way later than me, so she was still in bed. And why wouldn’t I just run into her room with a hot frying pan straight off the stove and hold it really close so she could see how cool my omelet was?”

Laura bounced the fork a little in her hand and pressed her lips together for a moment. “Mom and Dad raced upstairs when she started screaming. I, um...” She swallowed and glanced up at Alaina. “I accidentally touched her face with it. I didn’t mean to!” She dropped the fork and brought both hands up to cover her mouth, her eyes blinking rapidly. “I remember being so mad when she didn’t even comment on the omelet,” she said softly. “It was all I could think about. And then, when I finally came down a month later...”

Alaina stared for a moment, then shook herself out of her whirring thoughts. What do I even say to that?

“You don’t have to say anything,” Laura said with a sad smile. She balanced the tomato on her fork and brought it to her mouth, closing her eyes as she savored the taste. “I can tell you’re anxious. But you’re not afraid.” She opened her eyes. “It’s a good feeling, talking openly to someone who isn’t wishing they were somewhere else. Who isn’t getting paid to talk to me. Who’s doing it of her own free will.” She brought another piece of lettuce to her mouth and began to chew.

“You said you were having a manic episode last week,” Alaina said slowly. That’s the hyper one, isn’t it?

Laura took a sip from her glass of water before nodding. “This past month has been really bad for me. I’ve been cycling every week or two.”

“Does that mean you’re like, depressed now?” Alaina said, cringing immediately. That was stupid to ask.

Laura shook her head. “Actually, I think the past few days are the clearest I’ve felt in a long time. That’s why I wanted to...” The blonde girl paused and stared at her fork for a moment.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” she said, blinking slowly. “It’s like I’m trapped. Sometimes I can tell when it happens. Other times ... There was a night last week when I was suddenly terrified. It happened without any warning, and then, a couple hours later, it was gone. I couldn’t do anything.” She clenched her free hand on her jeans. “I can’t even realize what’s happening to talk myself out of it.”

“Does your Quirk ... Um, does fear happen a lot?” Alaina asked. That must have been last Thursday from Don’s story.

Laura frowned. “Not that much?” she said after a moment’s consideration. “It, um...” She looked up and blushed, then quickly looked away. “It did happen a little bit last night. I have nightmares every night now, but last night especially ... That’s why this morning ... I woke up, and I didn’t know where I was, and I just felt this warmth and contentment coming from your room without even realizing it was you. I’m really sorry.”

“So you used me as like, a security blanket?” Alaina said, wrinkling her nose.

Laura blushed even more deeply but still nodded. She tried a slice of green bell pepper from her salad, savoring it over a series of small bites.

That’s ... Ugh, I don’t want to admit it, but that’s really adorable. Maybe a little creepy, too, but after hearing Don’s description of how scared she was, I guess I can’t blame her. It sounds awful. “Alright, um, don’t worry about it, I guess.”

A tentative upwards curve of the other girl’s lips as she chewed was the only reply.

“We’ve kind of jumped around a lot,” Alaina said as she watched the other girl enjoy the hasty salad she’d thrown together as though it actually was the best meal she’d had all year. “Um ... Would you mind telling me everything? Like, all the things leading up to the part where you asked for my keys yesterday?”

Laura flinched backwards, withdrawing into herself and causing the bowl to tip precariously on her lap. “I’m sorry! I—”

“Laura, relax,” Alaina said in a gentle tone. “We’re just talking, alright? I’m not upset, am I?”

The other girl stared at her with suspicion in her eyes for a while. “Why aren’t you upset? You know what I wanted them for.”

“I’m just trying to figure out some way to help you,” Alaina said with as much sincerity as she could muster. I wish I had Will’s Skill right now. I never imagined things would turn out this way. “I need more details, Laura.”

The girl Alaina had spent most of the day hating with every fiber of her being sank deeper into the couch, as though trying to fade away into the oversized sweatshirt she wore. “Sorry, I’m just ... Nobody’s really tried to help me before. The doctors all just tried to make things go away with drugs, or meditation, or yoga, or whatever got them the most money. Usually just having me come see them over and over.”

“If anything, I just paid you with that salad,” Alaina said, grinning slightly.

“Can I keep eating while I tell you?” Laura asked with a small, hopeful smile.

“I’d be upset if you let it sit around much longer.”

Laura took another bite, her smile growing infinitesimally wider. She chewed and swallowed. Then her smile dissolved, and she began to speak.

I’m not from around here.

My family ... We lived on the other side of the country. It was always so sunny and warm. We knew everyone who lived around us. The neighborhood would have a big block party every year when schools let out for the summer. Anytime someone new moved in, we’d always make sure they felt welcome.

I used to feel welcome.

We lived close to the beach, and I’d go surfing in the summer. Not that I was very good. I wasn’t. But Ceci used to cheer me on when I took her to play, so I kept trying because she looked up to me.

She always used to look up to me.

I had a big extended family. My dad has two brothers and a sister, and my mom has four brothers. They mostly lived nearby, though one of my uncles on my mom’s side lived a lot farther north. Everyone’s really tall. Dad’s side is all blond and viking-like. Ceci got his hair. I’m just tall.

My grampy on my mom’s side was a pediatrician. Everyone loved Grampy. He was the heart of the family.

When I was really little, before Ceci was born, he used to watch me during the day at his practice while Mom was at work. I’d always run off with his stethoscope and he’d ... He’d pretend to get mad and chase me around, and I’d hide...

Sorry.

I miss him so much.

I was a normal girl. Maybe a little too shy to be normal, I guess. I’ve always been shy. I had a lot of friends, though. I had a boyfriend, too. He was a year older than me: a lanky surfer wannabe who always said he’d grow up and make movies in Hollywood. I was an ugly duckling until I got to high school, so I was just excited that someone had taken an interest in me at first.

Matt wasn’t a bad person. We went on dates and spent a lot of time together. Went to all the school dances. I lost my virginity to him. Stayed out late on the beach watching the stars after. It was nice. Everything was nice.

Dad works for the Navy. Well, not for the Navy. He’s a civilian working for a contractor, and they work on submarines. It’s a specialized field; there’s not a lot of places in the country that have the types of naval bases that he needs to work near.

You can probably see where I’m going with this.

When I was fifteen, Mom and Dad called a family meeting. Not much of a meeting, really; Ceci was ten, and I was just starting my second year in high school. We didn’t have any say in things.

Dad got a promotion. Only, it wasn’t really a promotion. It was a transfer. They sent him here. There’s a sub base on the other end of the state, only an hour away. He and Mom wanted to live here because it had the best schools.

I didn’t want to go.

I came up with a list of reasons why we shouldn’t move. I did research. I wrote a report, like it was a school assignment. Ceci agreed with me.

She always used to agree with me.

I was her idol.

None of it mattered. Even Grampy couldn’t convince them not to move, or even to let me stay with him and finish high school. Because of all the fighting, the move got delayed until just after my sixteenth birthday. That’s mid-December.

I hated it here as soon as the plane landed. It was so cold. There was snow on the ground! We only ever went on vacations to islands near Navy bases, and they were always warm and sunny like home. Here it was cold. Dark. Awful.

I transferred into school in the second semester of my sophomore year.

I was too late to be part of all the confused freshmen trying to fit in and make friends. I was just a shy girl out of place. People are nice and friendly where I used to live. Here, people are cold, just like the weather. I never met any of my neighbors.

I tried to make friends a couple times, but I had on two or three sweatshirts and thick sweat pants because I was freezing. Those girls laughed at me. Another time I was creepy because I was trying to be friendly to the wrong people. They didn’t laugh, but it hurt more.

I kept trying, though.

I don’t give up easily.

By the end of the school year, I hadn’t made any friends. I was mad. I yelled at Mom and Dad a lot. I slammed the door to my room so many times the doorframe cracked. We fought constantly.

Ceci was okay, at least. She made friends. But she always had time to spend with me, too.

I love my sister.

She loved me, too.

Sorry.

I was diagnosed with bipolar one at the start of my junior year. I spent the last month of that summer furious. I barely slept. It was like I couldn’t stop being angry at everything. Nothing held my attention, either. People were too slow, movies and TV were too slow, and books were out of the question.

My parents got fed up. Dad talked to somebody at work about it, and that gave him the idea to get me checked out. So they did. And bipolar one was the diagnosis. I started having to go to see a psychologist and a psychiatrist every week—one to talk about my feelings and one to talk about my drugs.

It helped. I came down eventually, and I started sleeping normally again. Mom and Dad were supportive.

They never apologized for making me move.

I still didn’t have any friends. Turns out, nobody wants to be friends with the girl at the top of all her classes who’s always pissed off and glaring at everyone.

Funny, isn’t it?

My junior year came and went so fast it feels like I blinked and it was gone. I spent most of the year just trying to figure out this new me. It was so scary! The medications evened me out—though it took a few tries to find one that didn’t have side effects—but I would still have peaks and dips. When ... Mom found me when I was down one time. I ... I wasn’t going to do anything. I wasn’t! But I was taking a bath while holding a carving knife. Just to see how it felt. I didn’t think anyone else was home. She had a lot of questions.

One of them was how I could think about doing something like that to them.

They took all the locks off all the doors inside the house after that.

Our house...

The house I used to...

Sorry.

The house has a big, steep driveway. Over the winter, I decided to sled down it on a snow day. Ceci wanted to come. I didn’t think about it. It was just the two of us sledding. Mom was inside. She’s a stay-at-home mom since the move.

The problem with the driveway is that it’s a blind driveway. That means cars can’t see the driveway until they’re on top of it. There’s signs up for it and everything.

And it was icy that day.

I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t feeling so invincible at the time. Cars? Who’d be driving around on a snowy day like that?

Snow plows would.

Nobody got hurt.

I pushed Ceci out of the sled so nothing would happen to her. Then I tried to get out. My foot got caught on one of the handles.

Mom came out to check on us just in time to hear the sound of the sled cracking under the tires of the plow and Ceci yelling. It was one of those big plows, not the little pickup trucks with the plow on the front. My foot came free just in time, too.

I ... I blamed the plow. It didn’t make sense. But I was so mad that the plow ruined my great idea.

I wasn’t allowed to play outside with Ceci anymore in the winter.

She still loved me, though.

Yeah, my junior year wasn’t the greatest. But when I was more level, I didn’t lose hope. I kept thinking things would get better.

I always used to be an optimist.

I got a part-time job over the summer. My parents value personal responsibility. They said they’d buy me a car if I got a job and paid for gas. And took care of it. They were hesitant because of my ... There were some other incidents, too. But I tried really hard. I had straight A’s, I helped Ceci with her homework, I did all my chores...

I worked at a grocery store. It wasn’t exciting. I was an almost-normal seventeen year old with a normal job.

When senior year started, I had a car. My car. I’d also made a ... Not a friend. An acquaintance, maybe. She was a college student who worked at the grocery store over the summer and had some shifts with me. We never spent time together outside of work or anything, but she gave me some tips on fitting in. On makeup. On boys. The last one turned out to not be necessary.

It’s amazing what the right clothes and attitude can do. When I walked into my first class, it was like people had never seen me before. All the boys were staring at me. All the girls were too, for varying reasons.

I’m not an idiot. I knew why everyone changed.

It ... A lot of people would say they didn’t care. That they were too happy to finally have people notice them.

I’d done that already. Back ... Back home.

But I wasn’t home. It still doesn’t really feel like home, even though I’ve been here for a while now. But I don’t have any other home anymore, so...

Sorry.

I had problems at the start of the year. A few girls got mad at me. Maybe more than a few...

I never flirted with any boys here. Well, maybe I tried a little when I first moved. Okay, I tried a lot, but it never really felt right, and I didn’t go on a single date.

I hate it when people call me a slut.

These other girls were all convinced that I was trying to steal their boyfriends. Not at the same time and not together. It was over the first few months of the year. I was feeling a little down the whole time, and it was humiliating having a girl call me a slut because I decided to try wearing a skirt that was a little shorter than usual—slightly above my knee. Hers was barely even a skirt it was so short!

Then I turned eighteen.

My parents sat me down the next day and I told them everything.

[Empath].

Class levels when I have strong emotions.

Can slightly amplify emotions three times a day.

Quirk that might randomly affect my mood sometimes.

I’ve wondered if it was a mistake. If I hadn’t told them about my Quirk, would they have thought I was more normal? I was way more naive back then.

I’m still naive, though.

The first time it happened was when we went back home for Christmas and New Year’s. I went to hang out with all my old friends like I always did. My new meds had been working really well for the past few months. I felt...

Not normal. Good enough.

New Year’s was a great night. A normal night. We watched the stupid countdown on TV. We caught up on all the stuff we’d been too embarrassed to say over the phone or on video calls.

It’s not like we talked a lot during the year. I was always a little too afraid to call. What if I decided to call, but I was having an episode and didn’t realize it? I ... I didn’t want to chance it.

I’d told them about being bipolar when we flew out the year before. Nobody laughed. Nobody was cold. I was still the same Laura they’d grown up with. I got a lot of hugs. It was the happiest moment of my junior year.

I tried telling them about my Quirk, but how do you explain something that you don’t really understand? They told me not to worry about it, that I was still Laura.

I wasn’t.

Didn’t even make it to midnight. It hit a little after eleven.

Rage.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been so angry. I screamed at them. I shouted. I cursed. I told them I hated them. That they were bad friends. That they were having a great time and I was miserable.

I didn’t do it to the group, either. I tore into each and every one of them, one at a time.

I ... I called them out. Every secret they told me over the years. Every time they had ever confided in me. I used it. I wanted them to suffer.

They did.

I left right after and went home to sleep.

I was normal again when I woke up, but I remembered. I always remember afterwards.

I tried calling. I tried messaging.

There’s limits to relationships. There’s a line that you can’t go past, a threshold when people decide no shared history can make up for what you’ve done.

I crossed it.

They’d all removed me on social media. I deleted mine the next day.

None of them returned my calls or messages. I begged Mom to change my number when I got back. I deleted theirs from my phone so I’d stop trying to call.

I didn’t blame them. Not after a couple days. It might be a Quirk, but it’s still me.

What I didn’t do was learn from it.

Grampy ... Grampy had a stroke a few months later. I didn’t find out until later, but he survived it. He just ... Well, they pulled the plug. No chance of recovery, the doctors had said.

When my friends ... Grampy was the one who was there when I woke up. Grampy was the one who cried when I told him, when I cried. Grampy was the one who said I needed to call him every Sunday morning to check in afterwards.

Grampy was the one who apologized for letting Mom and Dad take me with them when they moved.

And then he...

Grampy was gone.

Sorry.

Sorry, I...

I don’t remember flying back to that place for the funeral. I only remember crying. Every time I thought I was done, I wasn’t.

But I should never have gone.

Grampy would have understood if I hadn’t. He would have hugged me and told Mom and Dad to leave me be.

But Grampy was gone.

So I went to the funeral.

Sorry.

And when I woke up that day, it happened again.

Joy.

I smiled through the whole service.

I giggled when I read my eulogy.

I told tasteless jokes at the reception.

There’s limits.

The plane ride back is when it started. I didn’t think about it at the time because I was so horrified at what I’d done, but I’ve had more than enough time to think lately.

Mom moved Ceci’s seat.

Ceci always sat next to me. But Mom didn’t want her to on that flight. She sat next to me herself, instead.

She didn’t talk to me or try to comfort me even though I cried most of the way home.

Mom and Dad changed. I couldn’t sense emotions yet back then, but they stopped hugging me. They wouldn’t stop me from hugging them, but they stopped trying to hug me.

The frying pan incident happened later in the spring that year.

Ceci changed. I didn’t want to admit it, but she did. She stopped being around as much. We used to play a board game every night before bed, but she started having too much homework.

It wasn’t homework.

I was planning to work at the grocery store again that summer. A couple weeks in, it happened again.

Despair.

Mom found me in the kitchen in the morning before work one day.

It was always Mom.

She was always home.

I wasn’t doing anything.

I was just standing.

But I’d just finished taking out all the knives in the kitchen and putting them on the counter to think about which one might feel the least futile to be stabbed with.

I don’t know if I would’ve done anything.

I spent two weeks in a psychiatric hold at a mental hospital. Mom and Dad told them about my Quirk. It went into my medical history, which transferred up to my CEA listing.

That was the moment my life was ruined.

Did you know there’s a court ruling that allows for discrimination against people with potentially dangerous Quirks? USAir v Holmes. The airline refused to let Mr. Holmes fly: he had a Quirk on his medical history that his psychologist flagged, and they obtained the data from the public CEA database. According to the ruling, there’s no scientific proof that a Quirk is part of a person, so it’s not technically discriminating against a person to ban a Quirk.

It’s asinine.

I didn’t know about it when I came back from the hospital.

My parents never notified the grocery store, so I was terminated.

It wasn’t a big deal.

My parents still paid for my food and clothes, so the money I’d saved from the summer before was more than enough to cover my expenses.

It’s not like I went anywhere besides school and my doctor appointments. And the pharmacy.

I’d wanted to get a car to be able to drive Ceci around.

She...

I started reading and watching TV way more to pass the time over rest of the summer. Nonfiction only, though. I didn’t want to intentionally see anything that might set me off.

I was afraid of myself.

I ... I still am.

I learned how to do basic car repairs.

Practical.

Passed the time.

No people involved.

Relaxing.

Learned a lot about nature, too.

Nature documentaries are my favorite.

I like animals.

We had a cat when I was really little. Her name was Melon. We had a dog, too, for a little bit, but it didn’t really work out. Ceci’s allergic.

I didn’t mind.

I loved Ceci way more than some dog.

School started again. I was a super-senior. Did you know that’s what they used to call kids who got held back a year?

I started eating lunch in the library at the start of the year.

I ... I made a mistake.

I thought I’d try dressing up a bit for the first day of my last year, so I wore a dress.

Oh, you remember it.

Thank you.

I remember trying it on when I bought it, and I thought it looked amazing. I barely recognized myself. I didn’t think about it being school, though, when I decided to wear it.

That’s where Laura Jansson’s Assets came from.

It was less revealing than the slutty halter tops a lot of girls wear!

It was a little too short for my liking; still longer than a lot of skirts I’ve seen, though.

From that one day, things started to spiral out of control.

I had a long manic episode that lasted a little over two months. Long for me, anyway.

My meds weren’t as effective after I got my Class.

When I came down, I had friends. Of a sort. I shot down a couple boys hard while I was up. Usually I just lie and say I have a boyfriend already, but they were really persistent!

I’m not a pushover. I’ll never let someone touch me if I don’t want to be touched.

I’m really glad I don’t try to have sex all the time when I’m manic. They told us that was a possibility when I was diagnosed, so Mom got me an IUD just in case.

Yep, it’s all just rumors and lies.

Reena and Mandy wanted me to be their friend, and I was okay with it when I was up. It’s a weird symbiotic kind of thing: they want to have lots of sex and fun like that, and I ... I don’t. Any boys who start hitting on me—and I can tell when they’re just trying to get into my panties, because that’s all anyone at school thinks about with me now—I just send them to Reena and Mandy. They both have fun, they tell the boys they’re not quite good enough for me, and we’re all happy enough, even though we have nothing in common.

They’re not bad girls. They never made fun of me, so that puts them way ahead of most girls in my year.

I also sent out my early admission applications. Why wouldn’t I get in anywhere I applied? Other than having no extracurriculars or anything interesting about me besides good grades, that is.

November hit, and I came down. Going from needing almost no sleep to needing normal sleep is always disorienting. It feels like I’m wasting so much time, at least until I remember that I don’t have anything else I want to do.

Except that suddenly I did.

I started reading in the school library after classes ended to avoid going home. There were...

Yeah, okay. I had some other incidents. They weren’t bad, but...

They were bad. The attic and basement got locks put on them.

The shed, too, after Dad moved the big ladder he used to clean the gutters out of the garage.

I’d sit in the corner cubicle in the library every day. It’s the only one you can’t see into unless you walk around awkwardly close.

Boys still try sometimes.

One of them was really annoying, too. He’s come in and sit in the cubicle diagonally across from me every day for half an hour or so. I even tried skipping a day, but when I peeked in to check, somebody was still there in the same seat. He was leaning back in his chair with a book opened over his face.

He’d always talk, too. Just randomly thinking out loud and being annoying. But that was the thing ... He’d always be talking about what I’d read the previous day, somehow. And he never looked over at me, either. There were some other boys who would try and sit next to me, or across from me, and I’d be able to vaguely feel them lusting all afternoon.

Creepy.

He wasn’t, though. He was like air. He didn’t feel like much of anything. He was just there. And he was always there.

Until one week he wasn’t.

I kept waiting for him to show up and start annoying me again, but he didn’t.

It made me sad. I kept trying to get him to leave me alone, and he’d always come back with these clever responses and puns. I couldn’t figure out why he was doing it, and it was so frustrating! But ... I was having fun. He distracted me. It was nice.