Smoke

32: Books

I sat in Skill Management class, staring down at the books. All I could see was the stories, the characters. Nothing I could use for myself.

I closed my eyes, taking a breath to lessen my frustration. Thinking about what Oliver had to say, what everyone had to say about this class, I knew I just didn't understand.

My thoughts dragged slowly through my head, friction caused by the smoke, but eventually reached a simple conclusion.

This story was one about reaching out to others with my problems. I rolled my eyes, sighing, looking up at the teacher. She was looking down at her own desk, thankfully.

She had a way of picking the worst, dumbest topics for me to study.
I closed my eyes again, looking down. She was right, though.
It had been days, weeks, since I first saw the fire. The next theater rehearsal was coming up. And I still had no clue how to handle my powers.

Maybe it was time for me to just go with it, to just do some reflection and get over it. But how, when I couldn't even let loose the smoke in public without being embarrassed, when I couldn't even show my own mom the fire.

Now, I just really wanted Oliver's help again. I had started pushing him away, thinking irrationally, when he came over. I shouldn't have done that, and he might not want to deal with me.

But he talked normally about his own power, even though sometimes he was embarrassed by it. And he knew what I was going through.

I remembered my old friends, how we used to talk about everything, before they abandoned me. It made my heart ache, knowing the only friend I have now probably doesn't want to talk to me.

But, hey, like this book said... I rolled my eyes, going back to reading through it.

I'll ask him to come over again, I decided. And that would count as reaching out to him with my problems. I was done with this book. I closed it and set it at the bottom of the stack, next to the fire-breathing book.
My hand hovered over the stack, my mind stuttering. She had probably picked up on it all along, probably knew my power somehow. My breath was catching as I slowly looked up and around, slowly grabbed it, slowly pulled it out of the stack and to the top.

My heart started to beat faster as I opened the cover. It was a thin booklet showing street performers and entertainers using kerosine and fire and making it look like they were actually breathing it.

Just seeing people doing this gave me a thrill. Maybe I could do this, if I wasn't a coward. If I just tried.

I felt inspired, felt like I could try whatever I wanted with my power. And like I needed to confide in someone that I could do this, that smoke wasn't all I could do. Right now, my power seemed exciting, seemed fun, but normally, all the time, it was scary to me. I could breathe fire and no one knew.

I didn't want anyone to know, to see me using my power. I had only one friend in the whole school, who I didn't even eat lunch with.

It felt exciting being able to learn about the smoke in me and fire and myself through this class and these books.
But really, even if it was totally different, I felt exactly like I did at my old school.