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“Wait…what do you mean, ‘our job’?” Cameron looked at Charlotte quizzically, without any of her former resentment. My eyebrows twitched slightly. That training session must have really changed her.

Charlotte beamed widely at us, though her lips remained pressed together. That’s when I realized: Even in the many times Charlotte had smiled, I had never seen her grin. Was that normal? I shrugged it off mentally. Not everyone smiled the same. “- that’s part of her training,” Charlotte was saying.

I started. “Wait. Who’s training? What?”

Cameron looked at me, exasperated, “weren’t you listening?”

I glanced at Andrew, who had just flicked his puzzled eyes over at me also. He had not been listening. Or he was an amazing actor.

Charlotte was unfazed. “Andrew and I decided, that perhaps the best way to teach you, Maggie, how to control your powers is to have you undo what you did.”

“So…” I felt slightly sick. “I’m going to have to fix the teacher’s lounge? And Mrs. Eacker’s classroom?”

Charlotte nodded solemnly. “We’ll actually start on the teacher’s lounge.”

“But why?” I realized with disgust that my voice had taken on a plaintive edge. “Mrs. Eacker’s classroom is right here….”

“But it’s easier, and safer, to work on turning off the lights first,” Andrew spoke for the first time. “Plus, if you break the bulbs or something, the lights will turn off anyways. No one will know the difference. If you break Mrs. Eacker’s lights, well…there’ll be significantly more trouble.”

“But the janitor’s working on Mrs. Eacker’s lights anyways,” I objected, pointing through the window, where Mr. Friesnor stood on a ladder, arms and head stuck through the ceiling.
Andrew shook his head. “He won’t be able to fix that. What you did, you basically vaporized a bunch of electricity, and dammed up the rest. He’ll give up in about twenty minutes – that’s when he gets off. That should be plenty of time.”

I sighed. I didn’t understand what Cameron found so “freeing” about this training experience. It was work.

“Let’s go,” announced Andrew, not hearing, or ignoring, my last thought.

I trudged after Andrew and Charlotte, next to Cameron. “So,” I called, “hoping to at least gain some knowledge for my efforts. “How did you two meet?”

Cameron’s eyes sharpened.

Andrew and Charlotte exchanged glances. “And how did you two discover your powers?” I added in a slightly softer voice. Still, Charlotte and Andrew stopped and scanned our surroundings for a few seconds before proceeding.

After more moments of silence, Charlotte ventured, in a quiet voice, “do not talk about these things so publicly, Maggie.”

“Relax, there was no one there.”

There was another pause. Charlotte’s voice went even quieter, so that I almost did not catch her response, “not everything is as it seems.”

I shivered, because Charlotte’s ominous tone dripped with paranoia. “What do you mean?” Cameron asked, hushed, and fully focused on the discussion.

Andrew and Charlotte once again exchanged glances. “This probably isn’t the best place to talk,” Charlotte told us, “but there is one thing that you two need to realize now. We cannot talk freely about…what we have…even when we think we’re fully alone. Because sometimes we are not. Sometimes there are people…things…watching us…listening to us.”