Gifted

Chapter Eight

|Thursday|

Mina

My eyes shoot open as the alarm goes off, blaring loudly in my ears, and I nearly fall out of bed. Cursing as I try to find the snooze button, I look over and see Liza hovering about a foot above her bed, still asleep, the lifted blankets tenting around her limp form.

It’s nothing unusual, at least not here; usually it happens when she’s dreaming about flying, which she dreams of a lot: it lasts for a few minutes, and then she just sort of floats back onto her bed or sometimes even ends up on the floor (but if she's woken suddenly or unexpectedly, she'll just drop--which really pisses her off).

I go back to my search for the alarm clock, which I must have knocked off the bedside table again. That girl could sleep through a hurricane right outside our window, I swear. It’s always me who has to get her out of bed.

Finally, my hand finds the little black box and slaps the big button on top, mercifully silencing the annoying screech.

Much better. I slide out of bed and go to wake Liza, guiding her back firmly onto her bed and holding her there so she doesn’t drift off again. It takes a few shakes before her eyes blink open and she yawns.

“Morning, Liza, dear,” I say sardonically and she smiles at me.

“Morn’n, sweetie-pie,” she greets me with a big smile, perky as a chipmunk. At this hour of the morning, I don’t how she does it... I scowl at her and she laughs.

Once our morning routines are done, we head downstairs into the kitchen together, finding Jake and Lauren already there having breakfast, Lauren almost off to start his shift at the police department.

“Hey, Lauren, Jake,” I say and they smile up from their bowls of cereal.

“Hey, sweeties,” Lauren replies, watching me go to the cupboard for some oatmeal, and Liza to the fridge for waffles. “That track coach must be some kind of Nazi, huh? Getting you all up at the crack of dawn, yeah?” he says teasingly.

“Yeah, bet it makes you wish you were on track team again, huh, dad?” Liza says with a smile. “You could be the star every time!”

“Now, Liza, you know you shouldn’t flaunt your abilities,” Lauren chastises her gently. “Simply because you can do something doesn’t mean you should, necessarily, or at least, for simply any occasion. It has taken me over a century to fully understand the scope of my abilities, to learn to use them to their full potential. I found that calling as a police officer, where, happily, I can use my talents freely.”

He allows a modest smile.

“I did have a very close call, back in 1922—have I ever told you three this story?—when I was still fairly “new” to my powers, and my immortality, for that matter...” Lauren looks down at the table for a moment.

He doesn’t like the fact that he doesn’t age. He thinks it makes him inhuman.

“Anyway, I was in college...again...and had thought it fun to ‘try out’ for track team. So I showed up on the day of the tryouts at the coach’s office and he agreed to allow me a chance. There were approximately one hundred of us that day, and I beat them all in the end.” He grins in a bout of pardonable pride. “In fairness, I did allow quite a few of them to beat me at first, then once I had gauged the competition, I turned up the heat. Within limits, of course; no one ever suspected then that I was anything but an exceptionally-gifted athlete...one who easily beat all others without the slightest sign of exertion, and with no recorded prior training on my part...”