Chapter 3:

A sharp rapping at the door snapped me from my reverie. 

“You okay in there?”

A bubbling of my voice rose to answer, but the sight in the mirror caught it in my throat a moment too late. A soft, light voice like a songbird escaped. Just a chirp. 

There was quiet for a moment. A drumming pulse beat in my ears, and the water that soaked my hair mixed with a sheen of cold sweat, icy as the pit that formed in my stomach. Had he heard?

There was a laugh, strained and embarrassed. “Oh, shit, sorry man—don’t take too long, I need to pee.”

When the footsteps quieted, I wilted with a sigh of relief. I couldn’t go out like this—could I?

A grim certainty filled my mind: He would hate me as the others had. I looked at the Me as I should have always been. I traced my fingers over my cheek, the softness a distant reality I’d yet to accept. 

I must have died. 

There should be no reprieve to that ever-pulling-choking of drowning, the endless dark and crushing and pressure; no salve for the wounds I’d suffered in my deficiency. I couldn’t reach for what I longed for, endured so much hateful sorrow. And now? Now that I had accepted the life that was given to me, so freely saved, such a toilsome thing held from death by a coat sleeve, now I was complete. 

My knuckles turned white from gripping the sink. I cried. A roiling wave of sorrow and gladness washed over me, tipping my mind like a roaring storm throws a ship against water. 

I put a hand to my mouth, quieting the high-pitched sob. 

Breathe. 

The indignation cooled; the sorrow left; the joy roared.

Breathe.

Silence. 

The water cooled my skin. I pulled the ill-fitting clothes over my form, holding them tight at the waist where they threatened to drop. I looked at myself in the mirror. 

She was cold and gentle, soft and stern. The woman fit poorly into her clothes, like a child in a circus tent. Her hair hung in sopping strands, droplets rolling down her cheeks. The cloth wet where the water clung tightest. 

A chill ran over me, and she shivered as I did, and it was then that the certainty of my body became clear. 

The heat in my heart danced, begging to set itself free. Energy that wrought me into this shape surged beneath its surface. I let it loose. 

Static like lilac fields rolled over me, blooming across my skin, and again I felt a fascination as the wetness lifted from my body. The droplets hovered over my skin, one by one as they pulled from me, repulsed by the crackling beneath. 

There was an awareness I had not had before. Like the force was not done, it longed to be directed. It was like a muscle that needed flexing. I willed it upward at a whim.

It started with the water; the hovering beads fell back into shape, teardrops falling in faux rain, but the direction was wrong; in a shower, the water fell to the roof. It splashed there and pooled, as if held by a gravity that affected only it. 

The oddity crossed my mind but for a moment, until I felt a shift in my body, and the sense of free-fall. 

I fell up.

With a gasp, I was standing, then I hit the roof like I’d fallen from a ledge. My shoulder took the brunt, and the rough paint scratched my skin. I blinked, rubbed my shoulder with a grimace, and sat up. 

The world was flipped upside down. The shower and the toilet and the sink were up, and the roof was down; my hair hung over my shoulders like always. Fascinated, I raised a hand and let it drop. The limp limb fell to my thigh. Up. Or down, as it was now.

The static tickled across my body, the energy dancing in glee within my heart. 

There was another knock on the door. I panicked, cut the energy, and fell once more. 

Prepared, I pressed my arms against the wall and caught the other with my foot, barely sliding down into a thudding crack of my tailbone. My head was spared the pain. 

I climbed to my feet, and froze at the image in the mirror. 

A feeling rose. The energy. If I chose, I could reel it back, pull it into the box of my heart and seal it. Would that undo the changes in my body? Did I want to? Could I make myself?

I did. The energy cried out as I shepherded it back into the corral of my heart, taking with it my joy. 

I put death to the woman.

The body warped and bent, the face stretched, the hair shrank, and all that was good and well and bright returned to a monochrome apathy. He was there.

The man who’s face seemed already unfamiliar opened the door. 

Chris looked relieved when he saw the man. He sighed, shook his head, and clicked his tongue. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack? What was all that banging?”

A smile stretched across the stranger’s face, and he moved past Chris, and he entered my room. The door locked.

Lilac crossed over me before I realized I’d called it. My body returned, the stranger gone, and I fell to my bed. I looked at my hands and recognized their rightness, and laid, arms wrapped around myself, and simply was. 

Like a key fitting a lock or a puzzle returned to its full, my being felt right. 

I laid there for a while and schooled my emotions. 

Sufficiently numb, I sat up. I smiled when I realized I’d been so focused on my body I’d forgotten I had powers. I was Radiant. What did that mean?

For Chris, it meant fighting villains during the day and laughing with friends at night. For Hannah, it was a chained gift. 

What was it for me? Should it be anything at all? I had no real reason to fight. There were other heroes. I wasn’t the person to dive headfirst into danger.

Then, in a flash, I remembered the stranger I’d pushed away from the golden man. Why had I saved her?

Was it because I had some innate desire to do right? No. If that were true, I’d have screamed when the robber pressed a gun against me the day I met Chris. I wouldn’t have looked back out of the window.

I’d seen Dale Ward in the villain. The shadow of my childhood suffering had pushed me to it. 

I needed time to breathe, time to think. And time to test my new powers. 

Should I turn back? How else could I pass Chris? A revulsion rose in me. No. Anything but that. But what else?

It was the second floor—it wasn’t like I could slip out of the window. 

I slapped my forehead. Hadn’t my power enabled that very thing, if it worked as I thought it did? There was fear in trying it, but a stronger curiosity. 

I pulled my phone from my pocket and texted Chris that I’d be sleeping early, and not to disturb me. 

I walked to the windowed wall and brushed my finger against it. The energy rushed forth.

With a thought, sideways was down. I caught myself with an awkward shuffle as my room turned. I looked around, marveling at the bed that sat planted on the wall, and the window beneath my feet that dropped sheer. 

It was dizzying, though I felt no different than usual. It was if all the world’s gravity had forgotten me, and I had made my own. I recalled the droplets. Had I given them my gravity too? Could I do that to anything? 

I returned the world to right and grew used to the dismount. On my desk sat a notebook. I walked to it and tore a sheet from the back. I held it in my hand and let the lilac static rush over it.

It stayed in place when I let go. I could feel the muscle ache. I moved it left.

The paper fell to my left as if the world fell that way. I moved it right, and up, and down, and the paper drifted to each direction, floating in the air each which way. 

It was a nudge; I wondered how hard I could push it. I directed my full strength to the paper. 

It snapped in the air, pushed in the direction I willed it with a force. The middle punctured as if a weight had been shot in it. 

I blinked.

Could it really be that strong? Could I do it at any length?

I stood at one wall and let a new paper float in front of me. I pushed it, giving it tiny nudges as it fell to the other wall. It was about five feet away that the paper no longer accepted my direction. It fell in the way last designated to it, fluttering down to the wall and sat still. 

After a few seconds, the world’s gravity claimed it again and the paper drifted to my bed. 

I looked at my trembling hand. It was fair, and beautiful, and a smile fell across my face. 

I opened my window, and a crisp, cool scent met my nose. It had begun raining. I pulled a hoodie from my closet, ill fitted as it was, and threw it on. I poked my head from my window.

The side of the apartment the window faced met another building across, not far off—maybe ten feet. The narrow gap between was a popular spot for dog-walkers, though none braved the rain tonight. 

The darkness of the night was my cover. I turned gravity to the wall, and looked down my window. The building across was a bit of a drop, but not so as to be hurtful. 

I bit my lip. Could I do this? Would my power fail? It would be rather sad to gain powers and die the same night. I pushed aside my worries.

Checking no one was watching, I pulled my hood over my head, then sat down, legs dangling over the window, and dropped. Maybe there was a hesitation in the fall, an unconscious flex of power, because the drop was not near as heavy as it should have been.

It felt like my weight had been cut in half, only restored when my feet touched the wall. A jarring impact was instead an easy landing. 

I was crouching when I looked up from my feet. My head dizzied at the sight of the world turned sideways. 

The streets were vertical, the stars horizontal, and the view above me was my own room, and the view to my side was the alley floor. Rain splattered against the side of my face. I blinked, a subtle irritation, and the static crackled over my skin. The rain then fell short of touching me, slid to the side some ways, and fell as it was meant to. 

It was uncanny to be dry in a storm. 

I stood, and my feet were sturdy. The wall was my floor, and though the view was strange, it felt no different than normal. I looked toward the top of the building and began walking.

Ahead of me, the sky opened up into a clouded darkness and spattering pinpoints of light. 

I stopped at the edge of the building and smiled.