Mania

Chapter 7

“No way!” Hunter said, lifting my shirt up and poking my stomach.

“That’s so weird!” Alex said. “Dude, are you punking us or something?”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Punking is like, ‘pranking,’” Julia said.

“No,” I said honestly. “I’ve never had a ‘bellybutton.’ I thought everyone didn’t.”

Hunter, Alex, Julia, and Ireland pulled up their shirts. They all had small circles right above their pelvises. I had nothing.

“Jesse...what are you?” Ireland asked. Her and the others looked scared.

“No!” I pleaded. “Don’t say it like that. I’m not an it, or a what. I’m a who.”

Now they all looked confused.

“Just let me explain,” I tried again.

“You better,” Julia said, coming closer, “or I’ll call the cops.”

The others gathered around me. I sighed. 

“Okay,” I said. “You know about the government putting things into the crops, right?”

Nods.

“It either turned people into vampires, zombies, or it didn’t do anything, right?”

More nods. 

“Well, it turned my parents into something...different. And then, my mom got pregnant. My parents were afraid, so they went to a longtime government scientist friend of theirs, Dr. Adams. He said he would protect them and their baby.”

“That’s nice of him,” Julia said.

“But when I was born, he kidnapped my parents and me, and locked us in the basement of his house, which he had converted into a secondary lab.”

“Oh,” Julia said. “Never mind.”

“He started homeschooling me when I was six in the basement. When I was seven he’d do experiments on me. Like blood samples and stuff. And that leads us to the present.”

“But I don’t get it,” Ireland said. “If your mom got pregnant with you, how do you not have a bellybutton?”

“Please explain to me what the hell that is,” I said in exasperation.

“A bellybutton is what you get after your umbilical cord falls off. The umbilical cord is what your mother fed you through when you were in her stomach,” Hunter explained patiently.

“Oh,” I said. “I was in my mom’s stomach, but I didn’t have an umbilical cord. He taught be about it when I was a kid-”

“That’s weird,” Ireland said.

“So what were you saying?” Alex asked me.

“When a baby like me happens, my mom eats whats she wants. I get fed some kind of energy that radiates through the womb thingy.”

“So that’s how you got your power?” Ireland asked.

“Yep,” I said. Alex got a devious look on his face.

“Can you show us?” he asked.

“Can I show you what?”

“Show us your power.”

“Yeah,” the others said.

I sighed. “Okay,” I said. I cleared my mind for the third time. I focused on Ireland’s bright eyes looking at me and felt comforted. I held up my hands for them to see the light purple energy rays flowing from my fingertips.