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  “It’s not what it looks like,” he pleaded.

  “Like hell it’s not. Nova, are you okay?” My attention turned to her when I realized she hadn’t moved.

  Her lips pulled tighter into a straight line, but she nodded her head. Water had pooled in her eyes, but she seemed to be keeping them in check and wasn’t letting them shed. This was my fault. I quickly realized that I’d grown to like this human. She was sweet and innocent and didn’t deserve to be picked on by anyone. My eyes assessed her and deciphered that she wasn’t physically hurt.

  “Kyler, I’d like to talk to you,” Remy stated. “In private.”

  My eyes landed on him and he looked solemn. Isabelle let out a protesting squeal that we both ignored.

  “Well, I don’t think you deserve that. Not right now at least.”

  I gently steered Nova out of the group and nobody tried to stop us. She didn’t fight me either as I led her outside. The bell sounded to tell us we would be late to our next class, but neither of us paid it any mind. We sat down at our usual picnic table and my mouth dropped open to apologize when Remy took a seat with us.

  “Where the heck did you come from?” I exclaimed.

  “I was following right behind you guys.” He grinned.

  How did I not hear him? I was losing my touch if he’d been able to follow that close behind. I should’ve heard him, felt him, something. He should be high-tailing it to class, but there he sat, smiling widely, and it irked me.

  “Shouldn’t you be in class?” I sneered.

  “Shouldn’t you?” he countered.

  “After what you did, you should be far away from me unless you want to feel what my fist feels like.”

  “You’re a very violent person.”

  My hands clenched, but Nova’s hand halted me from lurching at him. A small smile played on her lips and my eyes narrowed at her.

  “I have a confession,” she admitted. “Remy and I planned the bullying thing to get your attention.”

  Remy nodded his head to confirm it.

  “You mean to tell me you were pretending to be picked on?” I stared at them incredulously.

  “No,” they both yelled at the same time.

  Nova was the one to continue explaining after they shared a staring contest. “I was really being teased by them, like usual, except Remy had been the one to suggest it at my discretion. You weren’t talking to either of us and seemed to be stuck in your own head. I tried to apologize, but you wouldn’t hear it. I know you weren’t doing it on purpose, so Remy and I saw an opportunity and took it.”

  Remy shrugged his shoulders at that. “You weren’t really ignoring me, but I couldn’t miss out on the chance to see your feathers ruffled. It was Nova’s idea, but I thought it’d be funny to watch you react.”

  “It was your idea,” Nova mumbled.

  “Bullying is not funny. You two are insane.” My anger spiked and my clenched fists couldn’t keep the fire in.

  It all happened so quickly, but seemed to be in slow motion at the same time. Flames erupted. They moved up my arms and a dark cloud formed around us. Remy and Nova both jumped from the table. Remy fell to the ground after tripping over his own feet. Nova threw her bottle of water on me and it was my turn to jump up.

  “That’s freaking cold,” I cursed.

  They were both blinking at me stupidly and I realized the flames were still burning. The darkness had dissipated but the fire was still bright and unwavering.

  “Um,” I sputtered. “I can explain this.”

  “You’re on fire, dude,” Nova hollered while Remy was still on the ground. She kept opening and closing her mouth like a fish.

  I focused on the element and extinguished it. I opened my mouth to spill my secret about why I wasn’t burnt to a crisp, but was interrupted by the principal.

  “What on earth are you guys doing?” Mrs. Hildebrand screeched. “Miss Yates, I want you in my office right now. You two better get to class before I call your parents for starting fires on school grounds.”

  Nova and Remy rushed off with apologetic glances. The laugh took over before I could stop it and Mrs. Hildebrand dragged me roughly to her office. Oddly enough, the whole situation amused me.

  “You better explain to me how you managed to corrupt two of my best students and why you thought it would be a good idea to start a fire in the first place,” Mrs. Hildebrand ordered as soon as she sat me down in her office.

  At least she’d assumed the most logical explanation to the fire instead of me creating it.

  Well, human logic at least.

  “I just felt like it.” The words rolled right off my tongue without a second thought. I’d ruined our secret once today and didn’t want to do it a second time.

  Mrs. Hildebrand huffed. “Well, then, you can go home for the day and remain there until I decide what to do with you. Your acts call for expulsion.”

  Expulsion? Not really sure what that was but I was pretty excited it meant I had to go home. Hopefully, it meant I could go back to Westville. I stood to leave but she stopped me.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Home?” I blinked at her stupidly. Wasn’t that what she’d just said?

  “I don’t think so. You are going to wait here until I get in touch with one of your parents. I want them to know what you’ve done. One of them will have to come pick you up.”

  “Aren’t you going a little overboard? I didn’t actually cause any damage.”

  She bristled and her eyes narrowed. “Sit while I go call your mom.”

  My eyes returned the hardened glare and I didn’t move to sit as she stalked out of the office. Words were being spoken loudly to the receptionist but I tuned them out.

  After more angry, booming words were spoken, Mrs. Hildebrand stuck her head in the door and stated, “Your dad is on his way so stay put.”

  With that, she exited again and didn’t even wait for my response. She was more aggressive than Mr. Jay, and it surely didn’t make me want to listen. If I could contact my dad to stop him from coming, then I’d leave without a second thought. This school was depressing. If I had started a fire, that didn’t make be a bad student. It wasn’t like I was burning the school down. These humans overacted over the simplest things.

  It took a good hour before Dad showed up and boy was he angry. Well, to Mrs. Hildebrand he seemed mad, but I could tell it was a ruse. He had never been the fuming parent. That was reserved for mom.

  Mrs. Hildebrand followed Dad into the office and I was forced to listen to her go off on a tangent about my misconduct and Dad’s fake comments. He probably already suspected that I’d lost control of my fire. Mom should’ve accounted for this. I wasn’t perfect at controlling it, especially when there were two, now three, elements fighting to be released. Finally, Mrs. Hildebrand was finished spewing her complaints and Dad escorted me out of the building.

  As soon as we were safely in the car, he asked, “So, what triggered it?”

  “Well, about that, my friends did something that made me livid and I couldn’t hold it in. They saw it too so we actually need to hang around until school lets out so I can explain things to them.”

  “Wait a minute, you have friends?” he teased.

  “Was that really all you got from my explanation?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe. I’m not going to scold you because losing control comes with the territory. It was bound to happen. I’m shocked you lasted this long actually. Your mother believed it wouldn’t happen but I knew better.”

  “You have no faith in me.” I shook my head at him.

  “It’s not that. I know you’re a lot like me when it comes to controlling your anger so it was going to happen sooner or later.”

  “I know I don’t say it much, but I love you, Dad.”

  He shot me a bright smile. “I love you too, sweetie. Even though we’re having another child, you will always be my baby girl.”

  We shared a look of respect and
adoration that only a father and daughter could have and continued to talk about random things while we waited for school to finish. We sat in the car contraption until my stomach growled. Realizing we still had an hour, Dad and I went eat a quick lunch before returning with minutes to spare.

  Okay, so it wasn’t that quick of a lunch, but we lost track of time. It was so easy to do when it was just us two. Mom was usually the one to cause friction in the conversations and beg to leave to get home. It had only gotten worse since she became pregnant. Now, her emotions were a roller coaster and you never knew which side of her you were going to get.

  Chapter Seventeen: Remy

  On my way to the last class of the day, everyone was talking about Kyler. They were calling her a badass and kept stopping me to ask questions about her and the incident. I shrugged them all off until Ethan cut me off in the hall.

  “Dude, did she really try to burn down the school?”

  I laughed. “Is that really what people are saying?”

  “Yeah, and I heard she tried to set Mrs. Hildebrand on fire for stopping her.”

  I only chuckled harder at that. “She definitely didn’t do any of that. She only started a little fire by the picnic table. It wasn’t that big of a deal.”

  “Then why does Nova look so terrified every time I pass her in the halls?” Ethan retorted.

  “Because she’s weird. Everyone’s overreacting. Trust me. It was the tiniest little flame and Mrs. Hildebrand is freaking out for nothing like she usually does.”

  “I don’t know, man,” Ethan hesitated.

  He didn’t believe me, but how could he with those type of rumors going around? I wouldn’t believe me either if I hadn’t been there.

  I said bye to Ethan as I went into health class. It was boring without Kyler there and I got lost in my thoughts. So, Kyler could control fire and darkness. That had astounded me because I’d always been taught that elementals could only control one element, but I saw it with my own eyes that she was using two. It didn’t make sense and I wondered what else I didn’t know about the elemental society.

  Kyler had looked so beautiful with the fire and darkness swirling around her that it left me speechless. I wished I’d handled that situation better because it opened the door for me to tell her what I really was, but it was probably for the best that I hadn’t. I still wasn’t sure how she’d react to me being only half-elemental. Would she judge my human side? Would she shun me?

  I wondered what Nova was thinking. What was her mind creating to explain what had happened? She didn’t know about the existence of elementals so she was probably thinking it was magic or something. That was probably what I would think if I didn't know the truth. Probably that she was a witch like those back in the Salem time.

  “Remy?” The teacher’s voice broke through my thoughts. I looked up at her and she continued. “It’s good to see you can still hear because you haven’t been paying attention this whole class. Does this have something to do with the fire that Kyler Yates started? I heard you were there.”

  “I was,” I admitted and wondered where this was heading.

  “Well, then, I’ll let you off the hook if you share what really happened.”

  I stared at her, flabbergasted. She was a teacher, so I couldn’t believe she wanted to gossip. The class had fallen deadly silent as they waited to see if I would answer. They were just as curious.

  “Unless you want to have extra homework for tonight,” she added.

  And now she was threatening me… in that case…

  “It wasn’t that big of a fire. She started a small one by the lunch table and that was it. People are making everything else up,” I told her.

  The class remained quiet as they waited to see how Mrs. Ladner was going to react. She stared at me for a few more minutes before nodding her head with disappointment evident on her face.

  “That’s what I figured. Things are always exaggerated in this school, but she was new so I wasn’t one hundred percent certain. Alright, well, let’s pick back up where we left off and try to pay attention this time, Remy.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Ladner.”

  I pretended to listen, but couldn’t process the words. I kept replaying what Kyler had looked like. She was like a goddess and I was awed by her. I wondered if I was the weird elemental for only having one element and my father had only been trying to make me feel better. What if he could control two and only used one for my sake? I was only half-elemental after all so maybe that came with half the power. If that was the case, then that sucked and would give Kyler another reason to judge me.

  It still amazed me that she’d lost control. I’d never done that in all my years of life, so that proved she wasn’t as perfect as she claimed to be. Hopefully, Mrs. Hildebrand would go easy on her and not expel her. I wasn’t ready to give up on Kyler yet.

  The bell rang and Nova and I migrated towards each other in the hall. She looked at me with a million questions in her eyes, but I didn’t have the answers she was searching for. Only one person could provide those and I hoped we would see her sooner rather than later.

  We moved away from each other when Ethan clapped a hand on my back. He asked what the verdict was for Kyler, but I didn’t say anything since I didn’t know. He took my silence as it was and left me alone.

  It seemed my wish was granted when we exited the school to see Kyler making her way toward us. She looked flustered and ignored the gaping eyes that followed her moves. It was as if she didn’t even notice the extra attention.

  I broke off from Ethan and the others to meet her halfway. A grim smile was planted on my face as we neared each other. Nova was close by me too and was gravitating towards her.

  Chapter Eighteen: Kyler

  I said bye to Dad as soon as I saw Remy leaving with his friends. His expression was so neutral that I would’ve thought he wrote it off as a freak accident. That was until his eyes met mine and he froze. Nova wasn’t far behind him and they both approached me hesitantly. Remy’s friends were gaping at him as he moved away from them.

  “You have some serious explaining to do,” Nova stated firmly.

  “That’s why I’m here. Let’s go before Mrs. Hildebrand spots me though.” I beckoned them to follow me towards the woods and they glanced at each other before complying. Unfortunately, Remy’s friends didn’t lose interest and they watched us as we left. I felt their eyes linger until we were out of their line of vision.

  “Is this where you kill us for finding out you have superpowers?” Remy joked after we’d been walking for a while, but there was an edge to his tone. He was nervous.

  “Yep,” I said blandly as I turned to face them with fire in my palms.

  They both flinched and drew back. Remy pushed Nova behind him and closed his eyes, like he was waiting for the impact from the fire. Laughter spilled out at the sight of them. They really believed I would kill them when I couldn’t even hurt a fly. Okay, that was a bad analogy because I’d probably kill the fly if it kept buzzing in my ears, but that wasn’t the point.

  Why am I contemplating killing flies?

  “I’m only messing with you guys. I’d never hurt you, but we’re almost to my house. I don’t want to bring you guys there until I’ve explained everything.”

  Nova peeked from around Remy and I was glad to see that he had such strong protective instincts. We took a seat on the ground and they listened openly to what I had to say. Their expressions were permanently stuck in shock. Well, Nova’s was. I wasn’t sure how to describe Remy’s look.

  “As I’m sure you’ve already gathered, I’m not human,” I started.

  “I knew it,” Remy interrupted. “You’re an alien that was sent here to learn our ways, aren’t you?”

  I drew my eyebrows together. “Not exactly but good guess. I’m an elemental. We’ve always resided on this planet and are similar to humans in our looks, but we have the ability to control an element.”

  “Like any of the elements from the periodic table
in our science class?” Nova asked.

  “No, not those. We can usually control either fire, water, earth, air, darkness, or lightning,” I explained.

  “And you can control fire,” Remy stated.

  “Yeah,” I said, leaving out that I could actually control two others. That would probably be too much for them to process in one day.

  “So, is that why you think you’re better than us? Because you can control fire?” Remy inquired.

  “Yes,” I deadpanned. There was no reason to lie about that.

  “Why are you telling us all this if we aren't your friends and you don’t care about us?” Remy cocked his head to the side and was openly trying to read me again.

  “Well, I have to say something considering the fact that I exposed myself.”

  “Okay then, why are you even here in the first place since you think so little of humans?” His eyes were now set in a glare.

  “My mom wants to integrate elementals in with the humans. I’m just the guinea pig since I’m her daughter.”

  “Why would an elemental want to live with boring humans?”

  “Well, my mom was raised by humans and wants us to coexist as friends.”

  “That’s a weird thought. Alright then, how about you show us what you can do?” Remy challenged.

  I quirked an eyebrow before looking to Nova who’d been quiet. “Everything okay, Nova?”

  She cleared her throat before saying, “Yeah, just processing everything.”

  Remy still stared at me with daring eyes, so I gave him what he wanted. I showed him my fire and how it was harmless until I ordered otherwise. Both of their eyes were wide as they watched me and when I was finished, we made our way to my house.

  This went pretty well for my first confrontation with humans learning about my ability. A weight was lifted now that I didn’t have that secret looming between us, ready to suffocate me the first chance it got. Nova and Remy didn’t view me as a monster either. Remy kept making comments that I should become a superhero, but that wasn’t happening. I’d be the villain before the hero. These two were different from what I’d expected, but that didn’t mean I would become an advocate for human relations. I still preferred to remain among my own kind, but I had to admit that these two were growing on me. They were changing my outlook on humans bit by bit.