There are probably thirty people around us now. I have no doubt that the entire school will know what has happened within ten minutes of the start of first period.
“You’ve been warned,” I say. “You have till the end of the day.”
I turn and leave.
“Or what?” he yells behind me. I don’t acknowledge it. Let him dwell on the answer. My fists have been clenched and I realize I had mistaken adrenaline for nerves. Why was I so nervous? The unpredictability? The fact that this is the first time I’ve confronted somebody? The possibility of my hands glowing? Probably all three.
I go to the bathroom, enter an empty stall, and latch the door behind me. I open my hands. A slight glow in the right one. I close my eyes and sigh, focus on breathing slowly. A minute later the glow is still there. I shake my head. I didn’t think the Legacy would be that sensitive. I stay in the stall. A thin layer of sweat covers my forehead; both of my hands are warm, but thankfully the left is still normal. People filter in and out of the bathroom and I stay in the stall, waiting. The light stays on. Finally the first-period bell rings and the bathroom is empty.
I shake my head in disgust and accept the inevitable. I don’t have my phone and Henri is on his way to the bank. I’m alone with my own stupidity and I have no one to blame but myself. I pull the gloves from my back pocket and slip them on. Leather gardening gloves. I couldn’t look more foolish if I were wearing clown shoes with yellow pants. So much for blending in. I realize I have to stop with Mark. He wins. He can keep my phone; Henri and I will get a new one tonight.
I leave the bathroom and walk the empty hallway to my classroom. Everybody stares at me when I enter, then at the gloves. There is no point trying to hide them. I look like a fool. I am an alien, I have extraordinary powers, with more to come, and I can do things that no human would dream of, but I still look like a fool.
I sit in the center of the room. Nobody says anything to me and I’m too flustered to hear what the teacher says. When the bell rings I gather my things, drop them into my bag, and pull the straps over my shoulder. I’m still wearing the gloves. When I exit the room I lift the cuff of the right one and peek at my palm. It’s still glowing.
I walk the hall at a steady pace. Slow breathing. I try to clear my mind but it isn’t working. When I enter the classroom Mark is sitting in the same spot as the day before, Sarah beside him. He sneers at me. Trying to act cool, he doesn’t notice the gloves.
“What’s up, runner? I heard the cross-country team is looking for new members.”
“Don’t be such a dick,” Sarah says to him. I look at her as I pass, into her blue eyes that make me feel shy and self-conscious, that make my cheeks warm. The seat I sat in the day before is occupied, so I head to the very back. The class fills and the kid from yesterday, the one who warned me about Mark, sits next to me. He’s wearing another black T-shirt with a NASA logo in the center, army pants, and a pair of Nike tennis shoes. He has disheveled, sandy blond hair, and his hazel eyes are magnified by his glasses. He pulls out a notepad filled with diagrams of constellations and planets. He looks at me and doesn’t try to hide the fact that he is staring.
“How goes it?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Why are you wearing gloves?”
I open my mouth to answer, but Mrs. Burton starts the class. During most of it the guy beside me draws pictures that seem to be his interpretation of what Martians look like. Small bodies; big heads, hands, and eyes. The same stereotypical representations that are usually shown in movies. At the bottom of every drawing he writes his name in small letters: SAM GOODE. He notices me watching, and I look away.
As Mrs. Burton lectures on Saturn’s sixty-one moons, I look at the back of Mark’s head. He’s hunched over his desk, writing. Then he sits up and passes a note to Sarah. She flicks it back at him without reading it. It makes me smile. Mrs. Burton turns off the lights and starts a video. The rotating planets being projected on the screen at the front of the class make me think of Lorien. It is one of the eighteen life-sustaining planets in the universe. Earth is another. Mogadore, unfortunately, is another.
Lorien. I close my eyes and allow myself to remember. An old planet, a hundred times older than Earth. Every problem that Earth now has—pollution, overpopulation, global warming, food shortages—Lorien also had. At one point, twenty-five thousand years ago, the planet began to die. This was long before the ability to travel through the universe, and the people of Lorien had to do something in order to survive. Slowly but surely they made a commitment to ensure that the planet would forever remain self-sustaining by changing their way of life, doing away with everything harmful—guns and bombs, poisonous chemicals, pollutants—and over time the damage began to reverse itself. With the benefit of evolution, over thousands of years, certain citizens—the Garde—developed powers in order to protect the planet, and to help it. It was as though Lorien rewarded my ancestors for their foresight, for their respect.
Mrs. Burton flicks the lights on. I open my eyes and look at the clock. Class is almost over. I feel calm again, and had completely forgotten about my hands. I take a deep breath and flip open the cuff of the right glove. The light is off! I smile and remove both gloves. Back to normal. I have six periods left in the day. I have to remain at peace through all of them.
The first half of the day passes without incident. I remain calm, and likewise have no further encounters with Mark. At lunch I fill my tray with the basics, then find an empty table at the back of the room. When I’m halfway through a slice of pizza, Sam Goode, the kid from astronomy class, sits across from me.
“Are you really fighting Mark after school?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No.”
“That’s what people are saying.”
“They’re wrong.”
He shrugs, keeps eating. A minute later he asks, “Where’d your gloves go?”
“I took them off. My hands aren’t cold anymore.”
He opens his mouth to respond but a giant meatball that I’m sure is aimed for me comes out of nowhere and hits him in the back of the head. His hair and shoulders are covered with bits of meat and spaghetti sauce. Some of it has splattered onto me. While I start cleaning myself off a second meatball flies through the air and hits me square on the cheek.
I stand and wipe the side of my face with a napkin, anger coursing through me. In that instant I don’t care about my hands. They can shine as brightly as the sun, and Henri and I can leave this afternoon if that’s what it comes to. But there isn’t a chance in hell I’m letting this slide. It was over after this morning…but not now.
“Don’t,” Sam says. “If you fight then they’ll never leave you alone.”
I start walking. A hush falls over the cafeteria. A hundred sets of eyes focus on me. My face twists into a scowl. Seven people are sitting at Mark James’s table, all guys. All seven of them stand as I approach.
“You got a problem?” one of them asks me. He is big, built like an offensive lineman. Patches of reddish hair grow on his cheeks and chin as though he’s trying to grow a beard. It makes his face look dirty. Like the rest of them he’s wearing a letterman jacket. He crosses his arms and stands in my way.
“This doesn’t concern you,” I say.
“You’ll have to go through me to get to him.”
“I will if you don’t get out of my way.”
“I don’t think you can,” he says.
I bring my knee straight up into his crotch. His breath catches in his throat, and he doubles over. The whole lunchroom gasps.
“I warned you,” I say, and I step over him and walk straight for Mark. Just as I reach him I’m grabbed from behind. I turn with my hands clenched into fists, ready to swing, but at the last second I realize it’s the lunchroom attendant.
“That’ll be enough, boys.”
“Look what he just did to Kevin, Mr. Johnson,” Mark says. Kevin is still on the ground holding himself. His face is beet red. “Send him to the principal!”
“Shut up, James. All four of you are going. Don’t think I didn’t see you throw those meatballs,” he says, and looks at Kevin still on the floor. “Get up.”
Sam appears from nowhere. He has tried to wipe the mess from his hair and shoulders. The big pieces are gone, but the sauce has only smeared. I’m not sure why he’s here. I look down at my hands, ready to flee at the first hint of light, but to my surprise they’re off. Was it because of the urgency of the situation, allowing me to approach without preemptive nerves? I don’t know.
