Free Emotionally Charged by Selina Fenech Page A

that bench. Neither did Jake. He just destroyed it to make a point.
    I strained to straighten the pole back up, which proved harder than bending it in the first place.
    A red flash in the corner of my eye made me look down the long laneway through the trailer park toward the road that passed the other end. Jake’s Maserati cruised by at a speed designed for scoping.
    I dashed back to Dean as fast as I could until my powers waned in his presence again. I still had just enough momentum left when I reached him to drag him out of the middle of the lane and into the cover of the nearest trailer.
    “Okay, I believe you!”
    “No, it’s them, the car down there.”
    The Maserati continued on, and we snuck back to the sanctuary of Dean’s room.
    The minor effort of our excursion left Dean looking paler than normal. Some blood showed through his bandage, and I worried if it was healing.
    He took a seat on his bed and I paced while I presented my plan to block Jake and the team’s powers for good. As I thought, Dean had no idea how to even begin.
    ‘That’s why I want you to practice on me. You can learn how to do it by locking away my powers.”
    He didn’t respond. He just stared with an expression I couldn’t read.
    “Look, I know it’s a lot to ask making you learn how to do this and take those guys on, but you saw how dead set Jake was to get rid of you. It’s the only thing I can think of to keep you safe. Without, you know, turning to assassination or something. We can’t even call the cops on them, not while they still have their powers.”
    Dean nodded. “I understand. I can try, but it still feels kind of crazy. I don’t even know where to start.”
    “Me neither. We just experiment I guess.” I slumped down onto the beanbag. “I only really found out about my own powers last week. I know less about yours. When I use my powers, it feels like sun warming my skin, spreading heat through me. When you’re around I just feel cold.”
    Dean made a face. Normally I would know exactly what that meant, but without my powers as far as I knew the emotion could be anything from anger to just-passed-gas.
    “I just mean, if energy is warm, it’s like a cold lack of energy. Can you, I don’t know, try and project more coldness?”
    It felt stupid even as the words came out of my mouth, but Dean tried anyway. I could see him concentrating, but nothing changed. We gave up and had toast for lunch.
    Dean’s dad wasn’t around and we sat in the lounge room. It smelled of stale alcohol.
    “Why are we even like this? How do these powers work? If I understand them more we might get further,” Dean said with his mouth full.
    “Well, for Empaths, we just sort of absorb excess emotion from people and it makes us stronger.”
    “So you’re kind of like vampires, feeding on other people’s life force.”
    “That’s silly.”
    “Fine, leeches then, or parasites. I mean, excess? You really think that people don’t need every bit of the emotions they are feeling? That anything you can tap into is just spare?”
    “I…” I hadn’t thought of it like that. “I just thought the powers were part of being a hero.”
    “Pretty people, hot cars, wads of spending money, bank jobs- do you think that’s what it means to be a hero? You have no idea.”
    “And what do you think a hero is?”
    “Someone who doesn’t think about themselves, that puts others before them always, even their life. Someone like my…”
    Dean stood up without warning and dumped his empty plate into the sink. He paused there for a moment then came back to sit next to me on the lounge. I chewed my toast slowly and stared at my plate.
    “I wish I knew how you were feeling.” Why did I say that out loud? I blushed and rambled on. “I just mean, you block all our feelings away for whatever reason, so much that it extends out and blocks Empath powers too. If I knew more about how, or why, it might help.”
    Dean made eye contact for a moment before