ERIKA
I huffed and drummed my fingers against my keypad, annoyed at slow speed of my computer. Zach had already grabbed his food and ran up the stairs to his room, so I was alone. I twirled my long brown hair around my finger and glared at my screen. “Load, you dang computer!” I growled angrily.
“Erika, you need to stop yelling at technology.” A black haired boy stuck his head in the door.
“Hi, Luke,” I said with a roll of my eyes. He jogged in and sat down next to me. “My mom let you up?”
“Yep. You have a really awesome mom, by the way.”
“I get that a lot.” My mom looked a lot like me, except with blue eyes instead of my green ones. She was very popular with my friends, partly for her easy going personality and partly for her amazing cooking skills. Luke leaned back against the sofa.
“So what are your plans this summer?”
“Well, I’m volunteering at a few summer camps to start on my service hours-”
“Plans that are actually interesting,” he teased.
“Very funny. Before you ask, yes, I will be at the pool a lot. I may be a nerd, but I have somewhat of a social life.”
“You sure about that?” he asked. I laughed at his teasing joke. Luke sat up suddenly, wrapped his arms around his knees, and looked at me straight on.
“What?” I laughed slightly. His green eyes suddenly took on a deep, soul-searching look.
“It happened again, didn’t it?” he asked quietly. My stomach dropped, and I lowered my eyes to the computer screen.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “It did.” A silence followed.
“Well?” he asked. “What did you do?”
Erika sighed. “I have science before gym, and in science we are learning about the human body.”
“I know that.”
“Let me finish! So we watched an educational movie, and one of the examples of motion was a soccer player-Miguel Samson.”
“The prodigy? He’s legendary! He’s amazingly flexible and makes the most amazing shots-”
“Yeah, I know! That’s the point! They showed him make a shot. He did this weird backflip-spin- thing, and I guess it was pretty cool. But then when I got to gym…”
“Let me guess-you played soccer?
“Just my luck, right?”
“Wait, so you pulled off a signature Samson kick?!?”
“Pretty much.”
“Erika!! That! Is! Freaking! Awesome!”
“No it’s not! I had to play along like ‘Holy crap I can’t believe I just did that’ but everyone was looking at me like I had grown an extra head.”
“Of course they did! They were all jealous beyond belief. You should have strutted around that field and looked around like, ‘That’s right people; I am amazing.’”
“Luke!”
“Hey, at least your eyes didn’t change color like last time.”
“Come on; be serious! I can’t control it! What if I mimic something extremely dangerous?” I could see Luke wanted to crack another joke, but he didn’t. I guess my eyes showed my panic.
“Okay, okay. You’ll…you are just going to have to practice. We have all summer, right? So in the meantime, no extreme sports or fire-breathing circus performers.”
“Luke.”
“Sorry, couldn’t help it.” Despite my attempts to be serious, Luke had me laughing. He was great at pushing all of my worries from my mind. Especially this problem…
