Free Awash in Talent by Jessica Knauss Page B

when I wasn’t in class, and would not be permitted to go on the field trips until all this could be sorted out. I had swallowed the bread roll, and I could feel it in my stomach, a strangely cold mass, sucking the warmth out of me.
    That first night, they had a guard at each of the dorm room doors, armed with a fire extinguisher. My door boasted double duty, the two who’d locked me in here. They needn’t have worried about me. I was far too wound up to make a fire. But it seems the other kids can make a fire when they’re stressed out, so I wasn’t about to tell anyone something else weird about me.
    I’ve been using this time in solitary confinement to write all this, so at least these pages will know why everyone laughs at me on sight. My tears fall to the table hissing and boil themselves away.

September 24
     
     
    So this Jill girl, with the phosphorus weakness, isn’t too bad.
    Who am I kidding? She saved my life.
    After spending a couple of weeks in the forced triple with Melinda and her clone, what’s-her-name, Jill sat across from me at lunch and gave me the hardest stare. I was kind of tired because our first fire drill had taken place the night before, and at 3:00 a.m. I ran out solo to the agreed-upon meeting place on the docks, after the guard fumbled with the controls on the ankle bracelet. Everyone else came out neatly paired off, most holding hands. I waved at people and smiled and laughed silently as if I were included in their early morning jollity. I don’t know who I was performing for, other than the guard, who held my wrist even as I fake waved, but the effort was exhausting.
    So I had been looking out the floor-to-ceiling window, as I had every time I’d had to come to the dining hall as a pariah. You could see the tops of the little houses on Rhodes Street and just beyond, the docks and the harbor. I couldn’t take my eyes off the sparks the summer sun made on the water’s surface. But Jill’s stare snapped me right out of it.
    “You want a roommate?” she asked. Her head tilted to the left, as if she’d slept in the wrong position.
    I finished chewing a lettuce leaf and duly swallowed. I couldn’t keep the tears out of my eyes. “Yes,” I whispered.
    There was a lot of phlegm in my throat because the only person I’d spoken to since the incident was my dad, on the phone. Going to class those days was the loneliest time of my life so far. I coughed discreetly into the napkin, hoping I wasn’t being so gross she would change her mind at the last minute.
    “I’ve been watching you,” Jill said.
    Her attention must have blended in with the constant scrutiny I felt from absolutely everyone else in the entire world, so I hadn’t noticed.
    “And?”
    “And I think I can help us both out. If I become your buddy, you won’t be such an outcast, and I won’t have to share a triple.”
    I wanted to jump for joy and maybe hug her, but I couldn’t let her in so easy. “So you decided living in a sulfurous smog all the time was better than hanging around with Melinda?”
    “Yeah. It can’t be that bad.” She gave a wry smile that made me want to cry even more.
    “Thank you,” I said, reaching for her hand, but then thinking better of it.
    “Cool,” she replied. “I told the principal we might do this, and I think we have enough time to sort it out with the admin office and move me in after lunch if we eat fast. Is that your safety sack?”
    “Huh?” It turns out that’s what they call the clump of extra kryptonite they tied up in a little pouch and made me wear on my wrist, visible at all times. I hadn’t realized everyone had one.
    “I can take it from you now, and Willa will give you mine at some point.”
    “Huh?”
    “It’s part of the buddy system,” Jill explained with admirable patience. “In a pair, the partner takes his or her buddy’s safety sack and keeps it available in case the patch fails or there’s a problem in the night. In our group of three,