I didn't wait to see what the glowing screen would do next. My brain simply couldn't process one more impossible thing. I panicked.
I took a huge, clumsy step backward. My shoes squeaked loudly against the shiny glass floor, and I nearly lost my balance. I expected the janitor to spin around or yell at me, but he didn't even spare me a glance. He was too busy with his magical chores.
I scrambled back to the shiny locker, grabbed my heavy backpack with trembling fingers, and yanked it out. Then, I ran.
I ran all the way home. I didn't stop at the crosswalks. I didn't slow down when the heavy textbook in my bag slammed against my back. My lungs burned, and my throat tasted like copper. I didn't care. I just wanted the safety of my own front porch. I wanted the familiar, chipping paint of my front door. Most of all, I wanted my normal, boring parents.
My parents are researchers who work in a high rise building as researchers. They wear beige pants, they talk about the weather at dinner, and they are constantly losing their car keys. They hire teenagers to cut the grass because my dad is terrified of the lawnmower. They are the definition of ordinary. I desperately needed their predictable reality to wash away whatever breakdown I had just experienced in the school hallway.
I threw my body against the front door, pushing it open with my shoulder.
The house smelled exactly as it always did: like a fresh pot of dark roast coffee and slightly burnt toast. It was the most comforting smell in the world. I let out a massive breath, the tension finally starting to drain from my tight shoulders. I walked down the hall and stepped into the kitchen, ready to collapse into a chair.
And then, my brain stopped working again.
My dad was standing near the gas stove. He was wearing his usual wrinkled plaid shirt. But he wasn't touching the stove. He wasn't touching anything at all.
Three heavy, cast-iron pots were hovering a full foot above the blue flames. They bobbed gently in the air, perfectly suspended. But that wasn't even the craziest part. A wooden spoon was stirring the thick spaghetti sauce in the center pot, rotating in rhythmic circles entirely by itself.
I couldn't breathe. I slowly turned my head, my neck clicking stiffly, to look at my mom.
She was sitting at the oak dining table, reviewing a stack of paperwork. A steaming mug of tea sat to her right. Without looking up from her papers, she casually reached out and tapped the rim of the hot mug with her finger.
A sharp flash of blue light sparked from her nail. Instantly, a layer of thick white frost spread down the sides of the cup. The steam rising from the liquid froze in mid-air, turning into tiny ice crystals that drifted down onto the table. The boiling tea had turned into a solid block of ice in less than a second.
I went numb. My fingers uncurled.
*Thud.*
My heavy backpack slipped from my grip and crashed onto the hardwood floor.
Both of my parents snapped their heads up at the noise. They saw me standing in the doorway, my chest heaving, my eyes wide, and my jaw resting on the floor. I waited for them to panic. I waited for them to scramble to hide the floating pots or throw a towel over the frozen tea. I waited for excuses.
Instead, their faces melted into identical expressions of profound pity.
"Oh, sweetie," my mom sighed softly. She stood up, the chair scraping against the floor, and rushed over to me. She wrapped her arms around my stiff shoulders, pulling me into a sad hug. She smelled like her usual lavender lotion, mixed with the sharp scent of activated saltpetre. "Was it a bad day? Did the kids at school tease you again?"
At the stove, my dad waved his hand. The three floating pots gently lowered themselves until they clanged against the burners. The wooden spoon dropped into the sauce with a wet plop. He walked over and patted my shoulder, his brow furrowed in sympathy.
"I... what?" I squeaked. My voice sounded incredibly small. I pulled away from my mom and pointed a shaking finger toward the kitchen island. "The pots! The ice! The spoon! You... you have magic!"
My dad gave me a deeply sad smile. He looked at me the way you look at a confused wet puppy.
"We know it is hard to watch us use our gifts, honey," he said gently. "We really do try to hide them around the house so you don't feel left out. It is very unfair that you were born normal when your mother and I are amongst
the most powerful humans in the city. We know it stings."
My head spun so fast I thought I might throw up. The edges of my vision blurred, and the bright kitchen felt like it was tilting on its axis.
"Powerful humans? Gifts? What are you talking about?!" I yelled, my voice cracking an octave higher. I stepped back, putting distance between us. "You fix broken toasters in the garage with duct tape! You're afraid of the lawnmower! You don't have magic! Since when do you have magic?!"
My mom reached out and rubbed my arm gently, her eyes brimming with patient sorrow.
"Denial is a perfectly normal stage of sadness, honey," she cooed, exchanging a tragic look with my dad. "We know we've talked about this a million times. We know it hurts that you don't have powers like us or the other kids. But acting like we don't have them won't make you feel any better. You have to accept reality."
I wanted to scream until my lungs gave out.
*Denial? Talked about this a million times?*
They were talking to me like I already knew this absolute insanity! Like this was a weekly conversation we had over Sunday pancakes. Did I hit my head on the inside of that blue locker? Why were my notoriously boring parents acting like controlling gravity and freezing water was just old news? I felt like my own memories were being rewritten in real-time.
I opened my mouth to shout that I wasn't crazy, that this was the first time I had ever seen a floating pot in my life—
*Ding!*
That sharp video game bell rang right inside my head again.
The bright blue window popped into the air, hovering mere inches from my nose. My parents kept looking at me with those sad, pitying eyes, blind to the glowing screen lighting up the space between us.
Sharp white letters typed themselves quickly across the interface:
**[Condition Met: Magic Logic Observed]**
**[Target 1: Floating Objects]**
**[Target 2: Flash Freezing]**
**[Analyzing Target Skills...]**
**[Current Understanding: 2%]**
**[Status: Locked]**
**[System Hint: Watch them closely to figure out the rules!]**
I slowly closed my mouth. My breathing hitched, and then steadied.
I looked at the overwhelming pity swimming in my parents' eyes. Then, I looked back at the glowing blue screen.
Just a few hours ago, I was a social moth hiding in a dusty locker. Now, my entire life was upside down. My parents were elite magical beings, and they firmly believed I was just a sad, powerless girl struggling to cope.
But they didn't know about my new system. They couldn't hear the chimes. They couldn't see the text promising me that I could unlock their powers just by watching them.
I was still confused. I had no idea what was happening to the world around me. But as I read it's words a very small, sharp smile pulled at the corner of my lips.
They thought I would be powerless forever. They were wrong.