Phoenix

4. Look What I can do.

"Good morning sunshine." My brother shakes me to wake me up.

"The hell do you want?"

"I want you to wake up."

"Why? It's..." I pause and look over at the alarm clock. "Fucking, 7 o'clock."

"I know. I woke up an hour ago."

"What's wrong with you today, Jake."

"I really want to see if you can shoot some fireballs."

"Whatever. I'll get up. Just let me get dressed."

He smells the air for a second. "Goddamn. Take a shower while you're at it. You smell like an ass."

"I tried. It felt like I was gonna die."

"Well. Try again."

"Whatever dude. Go make me some breakfast."

He goes upstairs. I grab my new clothes and go to the bathroom.

I run the tap on purely cold. I put my bare hand under. It stings. Not too badly though. I try again with put my hot water. It doesn't hurt nearly as bad.

I then try combining them. It doesn't hurt at all anymore.

I get into the shower with the same water temperature as I ran the tapas. It stung to get in but after a minute the pain stopped.

I guess it was just one-time effects.

After my showers, I get dressed making sure to have my hat and gloves.

Jake makes me a bacon and egg breakfast sandwich. Only because he wants me to eat it on the way.

Jake seems more impulsive today.

We arrive at the shooting range and there is nobody around. I get out of the car, as does Jake. We go over to the empty shooting targets that look to be made of really think materials and must have been used only a few times.

The deserted shooting range was a dog park before it became a shooting range. The dog park deserted itself so it got bought out to be a shooting range. There is nobody very close to it so they thought it would fix the problem of noise complaints. But since nobody's around. Nobody found out about it, and nobody came. It was deserted within a few months.

I take off my gloves and look up at Jake who is standing beside me.

I put one hand out hovering beside the other hand. My fingers are loose. My hands are about half a foot apart.

I focus my energy into a ball inside my hands. I close my eyes. When I open them I see a fireball.

I move my hands towards the back of my magical flame ball, inching closer to one another.

I point my hands towards a target and
Close my hands together which make the fireball smaller. I then tried making it bigger. I looked at Jake who was filming this whole thing on a digital camera standing on a small tripod. I smile at him.

I jerk my hands forward shooting the fireball towards a target. It hit dead center burning a hole through the middle circle that was painted on the target.

I stare in amazement. Jake does the same.

I make a fist and focus my energy into the fist. It lights on fire. Opening my hand, it's still on fire.

I stare at my hand. I stop focusing and the flame goes away.

I close my eyes and focus energy into my head I exhale through a wide mouth.

I feel fire coming out of my mouth. Opening my eyes during my slow exhale I see the flame us going about a meter away from my body.

After I stopped, "Hey Seth. I'm reading this thing online about what a person might be able to do if that person has fire powers. It's suggesting you might be able to make a fire shield." I see him reading something on his phone behind me.

"I'll try," I announce.

I focus and imagine a shield. I see one from before my eyes. It's a circle shield like I imagined it. I imagine it changing shapes and it does. It follows my mind from circle to triangle, to square, to rectangle then a dome around my entire body.

"Oh. Try fireworks."

I nod. I get rid of the dome. I then focus power into my hands. I make a fist with my thumb on top facing the sky. I put my thumb between my index and middle fingers hold the fist tighter. Finally flicking my thumb up as if I were giving someone a thumbs-up. A few sets of fireworks set off from my thumbnail.

After a while of trying the same things multiple times. We decided to go home.

When we went home I couldn't help but think about tomorrow. Monday. School.

I hate Mondays. This could be the best or worst day of my life. There is probably no in between.