The Powered People

Chapter 7

The next morning at breakfast, Nolan found a kid of about five sitting on Imani's lap. Even worse than that: the child was wearing Nolan's blue-stained lab coat. Nolan glared over at Evian, who had been smiling at him since he climbed down as if she were waiting for him to come down and see.

"Why is he touching my stuff?" he asked her, hands in his pockets. "You know that's all I have left."

"Well, all thirty or so of us thought it would be funny," Evian answered with a grin and a shrug.

"Well it's not," Nolan snapped back.

"Is someone still angry about yesterday?" She said, sarcastically babying him.

"That was the worst experience of my life." He'd completely avoided Taiga for the past hours after the argument. And it seemed that she was doing the same (thank God).

"Taiga does that to everyone," Evian excused, pressing her hands against the wall and rocking back and forth on her heels. Nolan stood up straight.

"What's on the agenda today?" Nolan asked. Back at the lab, that would be said every day. Two scientists who were often be walking by would the laugh among themselves and whisper, "The gay agenda."

"Nope," Evian answered, plainly. "Demetri will try to teach the younger ones. Keyword: try."

"Are we having another nature walk, or-"

"Do you even want one?"

"Guys, wait!" Meg called out, pointing at Nolan. "He actually wants to do something fun with his sister!"

"What, no! She's not my-"

"She is, get over it!"

"And you all still are crazy!"

He heard the loudest and sharpest inhale he'd ever encountered. He turned his head to see Taiga standing across the room.

"I mean, you still don't know how to swim," Evian pointed out. Half the room gasped.

"I never had to," Nolan mumbled.

"Welp, I'm teaching you tomorrow. We'll make a whole day out of it!"

"Do you even have bathing suits?" Nolan crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. Evian scoffed.

"You don't need one," Evian answered vaguely. Meg read both sibling's dirty mind and broke out laughing until she keeled over.

"No!" Nolan wrapped himself in a hug. "You are not seeing me-"

"I'm kidding! Just wear your clothes, that's what I do."

"And get them wet?"

"You don't get wet." Meg read both minds and immediately fell out of her chair, hysterical laughing while rolling in between the table and the wall.

"The clothes, maybe," Evian corrected herself. "But you'll be fine. Imani made the coats waterproof."

Imani winked at him, and his stomach didn't fill with just as many butterflies as other times.

"I mean, we take turns bathing there every once in a while," Evian said. "That's the only time we're ever...you know."

Meg let out a snicker. She snickered even louder when Nolan glared directly at her.

"Everyone shut up!" Demetri yelled. Clearly, the best way to announce your presence. "It's time for together time! Someone drag Macabre down here."

"Hey, maybe Desmond should do it!" Evian suggested.

"No!" that familiar whiny voice-without-a-body replied.