The Gifted

Chapter Five

"James," my mother said while shaking me awake.  I opened my eyes, but they were blinded by the morning light, so I shut them closed quickly after.  "James," my mother repeated.

"What?" I groaned, even though I knew the answer.

"You have to get out of bed," she retorted, crossing her arms.  "If you don't soon, you're going to be late and today's training is one of my personal favorites."

"Then why don't you go to school instead of me?" I asked, snuggling my head into the blanket.

"James."

"Fine."  I opened my eyes and sat up in my bed.

"Good, now hurry so you're not late," Mother commanded.

I huffed and got off the bed.  "How do you know what today's training is going to be anyway?" I asked.

"Well, they have to notify the guest helper," my mother replied.

I groaned.  She walked away leaving me to get ready.  I pulled on my uniform and went to the Freshening Room and carried out my morning routine.  I then went downstairs and saw the Morning Meal had already been set up.  I joined my family at the table and quickly scarfed down my food.  Then I ran out the door and to the spot where I usually meet my friends who weren't there yet.

I sat on the ground and waited.  After what seemed like hours, I saw my friends appearing over the small hill they had to go over in order to meet at our spot.  I waved to them and they waved back, their walking gradually getting to a run to join me.  I stood up as the arrived at our spot.

"Hey," I greeted.

"Hey!" they both replied in unison.

"Should we start walking?" I asked as I gestured my head in the direction of School House.  Karly and Charlie nodded in agreement, and we started walking along the twisting brick path.

"I wonder what's in store for us in training today?" Karly questioned.

"Oh, I know," I grumbled, remembering what my mom said this morning.

"Really?  What?" interrogated Karly.

"Baking, cooking...something along the lines of that..." I explained, realizing that I didn't totally know what we were doing.

"How do you know?" Charlie asked.

"Well my mother is the guest helper so since she's Head Chef in Kitchen it's probably having to do with that..."

"Makes sense," Charlie commented.

"Well, I think it sounds like fun!" Karly said.

"It should be interesting," Charlie replied, and I nodded in agreement.

Karly turned to face us.  "Ooo!  Do you think we'll bake something or cook something like one of our meals and we can see how it's made?"

"Maybe."  I shrugged.  We walked the rest of the way in silence, Karly probably fantasizing about what we're going to make, Charlie probably just thinking about how hard it's going to be, and me just dreading this class.

Soon we were at the doors of School House and looked at each other before we walked in.  "Here goes another day of training," I said under my breath.

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"...wanted to talk to you about something called dreams.  Now, I want all of you to stop taking all your other pills and just take your orange one from now on.  However, when you do so, you will start to get something called dreams.  It's like an image or play in your head while you're aslee-" Rodger explained but was cut off by me gasping.

Everyone turned to look at me.  "Yes, James?" Rodger asked.

I could tell my face turned red.  "Oh, nothing, just...I think I've actually had a dream once before," I explained.

"Really?  Did you take your pills that night?" Rodger asked, suspicion laced thickly in his voice.

"No," I confessed.

"Well, that would explain it."  Rodger turned his attention back to the class.  "Now, as I was sa-"

I interrupted Rodger once again, "But it wasn't like a play.  No, it was like the most bizarre situation was taking place in real life, and I was in the middle of it, but also watching it."  Karly and Charlie looked at me like I was crazy for never having told them this before.  The rest of the class looked at me with either amazement or fascination.

"If you are done, James..." Rodger said, notifying I had gone a little too far.  I nodded.  Rodger continued, "Well, enough of that for today, let's get started on training for today!"  Rodger explained to the class what we were going today, and my mother walked in right on cue.  We all followed her to the designated room for cooking in School House.  There were so many rooms in School House that we didn't know about because they were made specifically for training each year.

My mother explained exactly what we were going to do.  She handed out of copies of the same recipe to everyone and showed us where all the ingredients were and explained different measurement tactics and tools.  When everyone felt ready, my mother exclaimed, "Let's get cooking!"

I looked at the recipe.  We were making a banana bread with cranberries in it.  I looked at Charlie who was my "baking buddy" as my mom put it.  Charlie looked back at me, just as confused as I am.  We decided to get all our ingredients first.  The ingredients were all labled so we wouldn't have confusion with what was what.

Charlie and I split the list in half and each gathered our ingredients.  Then we looked at the directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

"Okay."  We looked at the rest of the directions and followed each one.  Soon we were ready to put the batter in the oven.  Once we slid it in the heated oven, all we had to do was wait.  We walked over to Karly and her buddy, Valerie, who were also waiting for their bread to finish cooking.

"So how did all of you like baking?" Charlie asked the four of us.

"It was so much work," Karly responded.

I nodded in agreement.  "I thought it was very confusing."

We all turned to Valerie to see what she had to say about today's training.  "I thought it was really fun," she confessed in her small voice.  Just then we heard the timer for their oven beeping.  My mom walked over to the station and examined the bread as Karly extracted it the oven.

"Very, very nice," my mother commented.  She was telling the girls to let it cool for a while when our timer beeped.  She followed us to our oven to see how we did on our bread.  As Charlie took it put of the oven, I noticed most people already had their bread out of the oven and were just sitting and talking.

As soon as I looked at our bread, I knew I should steer away from cooking; it was a disfigured, black blob that smelled horrendous.  The bell for Noon Meal rung, and I looked at my mother.  "Better luck next time?" she said with sympathy and amusement all at once.

I looked at Charlie who huffed a sigh.  Nothing in training was really sticking out to us so far.  Neither of us were becoming skilled in any category.  It seemed like the same thing was being said every time:

Better luck next time.

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A/N: I am so sorry I am completely awful at updating!  I'll work on it I promise!  I hope everyone is enjoying the book and had a good first month to 2015!  Comment/Vote/Follow! Xx

~gleek_geek