Gifted

Chapter Nineteen

Amelia

I’m lounging on the sofa reading Great Expectations for school (ok, that’s a lie I tell my friends; really, I just like it, but that's kind of a nerdy thing to say) when Daddy enters the room, a bottle already in his hand, though it’s only three-thirty. His eyes are bloodshot and he’s swaying a little.

“I’s thinkin’ bout goin’ out, so you know,” he says, slurring slightly.

I take a deep breath. “Daddy, you’ve been drinking again. You shouldn’t drive like that, you know?”

He takes a moment to focus on me. “Yeah...you’re right. Shouldn’t go like this.” He sways into the kitchen and I hear him open the fridge for a bottle of water. He comes back and sags heavily onto the sofa with a can of Bud Light.

I sigh and put my book down as I reach for the can. He watches me balefully as I carry it back to the fridge and put it away again. I come back with a can of Coke, which I hand to him with a smile that doesn’t feel real, no matter how hard I’m trying.

“Here, have this,” I say.

He takes it with trembling fingers and offers me a sloppy smile. “Thanks, sweetie. I’m gonna nap for a bit,” he says and stretches out on the couch, sipping his Coke. I watch him for a while and then head upstairs where I’m sure he’s asleep, and isn’t going to sneak back into the kitchen for another beer.

The phone in my room rings.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Amelia! You forget I was coming over?”

Oops. Yes, I did.

Andrea Porter is my best friend. A skinny, small girl with silky black hair, dark skin that’s almost glossy, and bright brown eyes, she’s fond of telling me of her Incan descent, and she’s quite proud of it too.

“Well, I’m at the door now,” Andrea says patiently. “Rode my bike over.”

I run downstairs and greet her with a hug. She laughs.

“Hello to you too,” she says. We walk inside and I find Daddy asleep on the sofa. “Let’s go out back,” I say quietly and Andrea nods; she knows about Daddy.

We sit on the wooden swing hanging from the big tree in the back corner of the yard, swinging slowly back and forth.

“You hear about those people in Syria early this morning?” Andrea says after a while. “Fifty-eight of them, and they all had the power—they were burned up, killed. The government did a ‘cleansing program,’ they called it, and made all these people go into this big building, and then bombed it until nothing was left.” She stops, looking sick. “There were kids in there,” she says softly, wiping at her eyes. “That’s what the news said: there were kids in that building.”

My stomach turns to ice. “How could they do that?” I say, looking at her.

Andrea laughs bitterly. “How can they do any of it? Not just the powered men and women and children, but the ordinary people too, they kill them too. Having powers is just an excuse. Genocide, is what it is, Mr. Erwin was talking about it in class today. He said, ‘If we don’t stop looking at the world and finding faults with each other, soon fault is all that’s going to be here.’ I think that’s pretty true: what I see in the world definitely makes that statement make a lot of sense.”

“I didn’t know people with powers could die,” I say quietly. Thinking of it now, it’s such an egotistical thought, but I somehow thought we were immune. Not so, I guess.

Andrea takes my hand and squeezes it. “Yeah, I guess with enough force, you can. Like an explosion or something, that makes it so you can’t be put back together.”