Free The Gifted by Aaron K. Redshaw Page A

breakfast.
    “What?” I said, snapping out of it. “You're
kidding.”
    “Yup, you're right, I am,” she said. “But I
did learn some things.”
    “Like what?” I said.
    “Some of the girls were talking about it last
night. It turns out these gifts, or powers, as they call them, can
do more than we ever believed.”
    “What do you mean?” Han asked quietly.
    “You know about magnetic resonance theory?”
said Tracy.
    “No,” I said. “What’s that?”
    “If you’d been paying attention to the
lecture yesterday instead of sleeping you would have known. The
idea is that these gifts work a lot like magnets and iron. When you
get two people working these gifts close to each other, they start
to swap abilities. If I stay in the same room trying to set things
on fire, while Guido is focusing on being unnoticed, I start to get
his gift and he gets some of mine. But we both have to be using
them at the same time. If only one of us uses our gift, it doesn’t
work. That’s the main idea behind Mixed Arts.”
    “Wow!” I said. “Maybe we should all be over
there.”
    “I don’t think so,” she said, “There’s a
downside.”
    “What is it?” I asked.”
    “They don’t just add on top of each other. In
order to make room for some of my gift, Guido has to lose some of
his. To gain one you have to lose the other.”
    “So what's the advantage?” I said. “If you
spread yourself thin enough you won't have much of anything.”
    “It seems people usually only pick up a few
gifts at most.”
    “What happens if you have similar gifts
already?” I asked.
    “Well, skin-to-skin contact magnifies it, but
even without that, yours would get even more powerful,” she
said.
    More power , I thought. More like
Abe.
***
    Once breakfast was over, Tracy and Guido left
together. I looked at Han and said, “Well, let’s see what’s
next.”
    “Okay,” said Han.
    We followed the other kids back into the main
lecture hall again. This time we both sat with Derek since his
trainer was a girl.
    I was able to find Derek near the middle of
the room so I sat next to him, while Han was next to me. Derek was
talking to someone. He introduced me, “Andy, hi. This is Mick.”
    “Hi, Mick,” I said. “This is Han.” Han shook
his hand.
    Mick’s eyes were so dark they looked black.
And they were sunk into his head with big dark bushy eyebrows. He
reminded me of a Neanderthal caveman, but when he shook my hand, he
smiled. I almost felt sorry for him, he probably didn’t even like
to smile, but people almost have no choice when they meet me.
    “So what’s your trick!” said Mick.
    “Oh, he makes people like him,” said Derek.
“It’s an influencing gift.”
    “A what?” I said.
    “One of the main categories,” he said as if I
should have known this already. “We’ll talk about it another
time.”
    “Okay,” I said. “What about you, Mick?”
    “Oh, just this,” he said. And then his skin
grew scaly and dark green, and gills grew out of the side of his
head. I almost jumped out of my seat.
    “How do you like it?” he said.
    “What are you?” He was creeping me
out!
    “Same guy,” said Mick. “I just make you see
what I want you to see. You like it?”
    “Sure, but you could give a guy nightmares,”
I said.
    He smiled, “Well, that’s the idea. For the
enemy.”
    Before I had a chance to ask any questions
about who the enemy was, Abe came out on stage. Derek and Mick
stopped talking and turned their full attention to Abe as if in a
trance.
    Abe lifted both hands in greeting as if
embracing us all, “My friends, today let’s talk about one of the
powers you may not see very often.” A young boy came out onto the
stage. He looked nervous.
    “I want Paul here to show you something,”
said Abe. Abe backed away as Paul reached to the ground and lifted
up a heavy looking barbell that I hadn’t noticed before. He raised
it above his head, which I could tell was a bit of an effort for
him. Then he