"I, er, I just, uh..." I stammered oddly. The one person I didn't want to run into, the one person! And now, here he is, asking me to come to his office?! I'm dead!
Bones laughed loudly, startling me. "No need to be nervous! Let's go!" He strode down the hallway, gesturing for me to follow. My legs complied, although my mind and heart fought against me, making my thoughts turn wildly and my pulse skyrocket. I followed him down a hallway that I had only been down once, when I first enrolled. This was the front office and the headmaster's office.
Bones unlocked the door and stepped inside. So did I, and i was shocked to find that the room...
Was completely normal. Sure, the room was pretty big, the sheer size of the desk was pretty imposing, and there was a small door on the far wall that appeared to lead to nowhere. I sighed. Maybe there was nothing to fear after all. Maybe Truman's just crazy. I then remembered my first impression of our illustrious headmaster. I saw him as frightening, a man who looked normal, but could never be trusted. And my first impressions are rarely ever wrong. Perhaps the normality of the room was just as fake as the normality of the headmaster who owned it.
Bones pulled up a small, rickety chair that was sitting, neglected in one of the office corners. "Please," he said, vaguely sweeping his hand toward the chair's general area as he sauntered to his overly large desk. I sat, gently, out of fear of Bones and the instability of the chair.
"So..." I said, quietly. "Am I, like, in trouble... or something?" Oh, great, way to go, Sean! Way to make him think there's a reason you should be in trouble! Scratch any thought you had of survival, cos Sean Roscoe, you are history!
Bones smiled, chuckling. "Now, why does everyone always think that when the headmaster talks to them? No, you're not in trouble! Quite the opposite, actually. I brought you here to talk about your potential."
Great. Was that sarcasm? I don't know! I mean, at least I'm not about to be murdered. ...Well, not right now, anyway. But the "great potential" speech? How cliche can you get?
"Potential, sir?" I asked skeptically.
"Yup! You have an extraordinary gift! And I've seen many, in my day! People with all sorts of exceptions come here to SEG, we've become famous! So famous, even some people without exceptions have tried to sneak in! But we soon find them out." His tone changed for that last sentence. Anyone who wasn't as perceptive as me wouldn't have noticed, but what can I say? I notice weird things.
Bones continued talking, with no regard to my racing thoughts. Who do I trust? I wondered. Kira's psycho brother, with a story too weird to be untrue? Or the guy in front of me, who's given me no reason to distrust him, but who my intuition tells me not to trust?
A sudden silence broke my screaming thoughts. Bones was staring at me, smiling, although he didn't seem particularly happy.
"Go on then," he said, nodding.
"...Sir?" I asked, confused.
"Show me your power!"
It couldn't hurt, I guessed. And I did love showing off. Time to practise one of my new moves! I arched my back, and felt the tingling feeling spread through my skin, that I now recognised as my fire. Giant wings of flames tore open the back of my shirt. Reaching for the wings, I grabbed some of the fire with both hands, moulding it into a sword that I held in my left hand, and letting the leftovers smoulder in my right, creating a fireball of my favourite colour, purple. I looked at the room, but all the colours of the room were now red, since both of my eyes had turned scarlet all over.
I turned toward a stunned, red-tinted, Bones. He stuttered a bit, obviously at a loss for words. "Th-the fire... It doesn't hurt you at all?"
I shook my head no. "Fire can't hurt me anymore. It only hurt the first time it touched me, since I probably gained all this when that fire killed my family and gave me this." I gestured at the scar on my face, illuminated by my fire.
"Fascinating. And to make it go away, you just..."
I closed my eyes, and focused on the feel of the fire on my back. I imagined it getting smaller, and smaller, and soon not existing at all. I opened my eyes to a properly coloured room.
"I just concentrate." I said.
Bones clapped his hands together once, saying how talented I was, and how this was one of his favourite exceptions he'd ever seen. He kept gushing, and I kept thanking him, up until I left just a few minutes later.
I walked down the hall that led to my room, when my right shirt sleeve just fell off. Oh, that's right. I needed a new shirt.
I changed my course, now headed for the closet near the teacher workroom. The workroom is big and obvious, with a large window through which you can see the almost the whole room. I fished through the closet that was positioned almost directly next to the window, looking for a men's medium. When I closed the door, I noticed that almost all the teachers were gathered at the table, even ones who didn't teach me. Bones was in there too, at the head of a big, oval-shaped table. He was saying something, and everyone's gaze was fixed, unwaveringly, upon him.
I knelt down, trying to listen through the wall to hear what they were saying. Now, before you get all judgemental on me, ask yourself what you would've done in my situation. You head innocently over to the closet and you just happen upon an uber-secret meeting which involves all of the teachers in the school. Of course you're going to listen!
The walls were paper-thin, so I could hear almost everything Bones said. He apologized for being late, and said that they had better just start, since Jonason was sick. I wondered if Truman had had another attack from whatever thing he had wrong with him. You know what I mean.
I kept listening, though. Really, I was just killing time. I didn't have any homework to speak of, except to write in my journal every day for creative writing, but Rivers never even checks, so I should be fine.
Bones sits down, but I only hear most of what he just said. But what I heard was enough to freeze me in terror. What I heard cleared up every suspicion I had about who to trust. What I heard made me want to run away and never come back, but what I heard also made me want to listen for an explanation.
What I heard was, "Now then. Shall we discuss the experiments?"
YOU ARE READING
Exceptional
УжасыThe earth was shattered during the War, which resulted in normal people developing angelic abilities. When Sean Roscoe, a teenager scarred from a fire which consumed his family, is accepted to a school made especially for people with these exception...
