Ingenious

Chapter Nine

 It takes 5 weeks, 33 days, 792 hours, to prepare for what we are doing tonight. I have all the food everyone has willingly gave up over the past month or so stocked away that will either be enjoyed with success tonight, or used to feed ourselves over the next few days after being deprived of food. Either way, we are doing it. Tonight. In 11 hours. We usually send up our dinner plates to be taken by some mysterious person at 9-10 o'clock so we have to wait until then. I can wait. As I wake up and eat our normal breakfast I head immediately to the training room. I'm just going to train all day because it's a distraction. A good one that will potentially be useful in the future. I train and train for hours barely taking a break. I work on flickering the lights and turning them off completely before moving onto getting electricity from my hand. It's much easier to shoot it from my hand now and I do it with my eyes open and much quicker, but I can definitely get better. I concentrate and try to push my focus away from tonight. I focus on taking the lightning, bringing it into me and shooting at the wall. I smile with the success of the quick exercise, but I continue to do it. It still takes an average of 6 seconds to do it and that's too long. It needs to be a snap of a finger. So I keep working and working until about noon when I go to Ryan.

"I need a distraction, wanna practice on me?" I ask him with a sigh. He shrugs and we head to opposite corners where he attempts to alter my emotions. He's gotten much better at doing it without touching me, though he prefers eye contact cause apparently that's easier.

"Let go Rae," he says without even looking at me, "your tense and blocking everything else. Just calm down and don't think about it." I take a deep breath but then realize I can't calm down because if this doesn't work my plan is completely useless.

"I can't Ryan!" I exclaim. Everyone else is on a break so we have the room to ourselves. "It's just so soon yet so far. These next few hours are torturous!" Ryan grabs my hands and stares me in the eyes but he isn't using his powers. He's just there for me.

"Rae everything will be okay. Even if this plan doesn't work, we can figure out another, and another, and another until one works. We can do this. So don't worry about today failing or anything," he says. While his words are trying to be encouraging, my mind can't help but wander. I need a- "if you need a distraction... Well then I can help you with that too." He leans in, his lips locking with mine. His hands wrap around my waist, that is much tinier than it was when I came here a couple months ago, while my hands find his hair. His beautiful brown locks that are somehow so soft despite our lack of showering time. The kiss lasts for a couple minutes. A couple of joyful, perfect minutes I wish would last forever.

"Oh ummm, I'll ummm, I'm just going to check something..." Shawn says biting his lip and turning right back through the door as Ryan and I pull away. We both laugh and for once today, once this week actually I'm genuinely laughing. Even if it is over the most stupid thing. I'm laughing and I'm distracted... at least for now.

2 hours until we do it. Meals come in an hour which means technically only an hour until we can start. An hour of waiting. And waiting. And waiting. But I've made it through the past month so I'll make it through another hour. One more hour. I can do this. We can do this. We are all in this together. These people are my family and we are in it together. Nothing will go wrong.

"Hey Rae I know everything happening today is stressful and stuff but it's your turn to sweep," Shawn says. I know it's my turn, but I also know Shawn is telling me to do it for a distraction. I nod and grab the broom sweeping up all the dirt counting down the minutes in my head. By the time I finish sweeping it's 13 minutes until dinner comes. So I sit down on my bed next to Kacey who is squeezing my hands. Ryan looks at me from across the room as if he wants to come sit next me. There isn't much room at the edge of the bed as much as I want Ryan beside me too, I think Kacey is honestly who's most likely to calm me down right now... at least without powers.