Extraordinary

I don’t cry at my grandfather’s funeral.

Everyone else does. Even Mother and Father, who insist we always control our emotions. All of their rich friends shed tears while they tell us how wonderful Grandfather was.

We already know this, of course, but they say it anyway. Then they look at the cast on my hand and say what a brave little boy I must be.

Please. Tell me something I don’t know.

Perhaps I should cry. I used to conduct science experiments with Grandfather. I used to sit on his lap while he told me stories about the curses, the wraith-like creatures that ask humans to do violent things to become the curse’s host. The curse makes their host something more than human. Something powerful, with a supernatural gift.

Grandfather’s gift was gravity manipulation. He once created a micro black hole when we didn’t feel like cleaning up after an experiment.

I’ll never do such things with him again.

But I do not cry. I tilt my head and study his pale face in the open casket. He looks more peaceful in death than he ever did while alive. He always had storm clouds in his eyes and stiff shoulders and spoke loudly. Now his corpse is still and holds a bundle of white flowers.

The flowers are funny. He hated flowers.

I reach for his eyelids. I want to know if his eyes still—

Mother grabs my hand and pulls me away from the casket. She kneels so I’m face-to-face with her tear-stained makeup. “Judah, dear,” she murmurs, “you seem restless. Go freshen yourself up.”

What she really means is my lack of tears will reflect poorly on our family. I could argue back that she and Father made me this way. For my whole life, I’ve been forbidden from displaying emotions in public. Button your shirt before you leave the house, Father always says. Why unbutton it now?

But I’m bored of standing here listening to the line of people offer the same condolences.

My bodyguard follows me into a quiet hallway away from the crowd. Portraits of Grandfather smirk at me from the paneled walls.

I lift my left hand. The one wrapped in a cast. A group of rebels kidnapped me last week as part of their plan to assassinate Grandfather. Now I have a broken hand, a dead grandfather, and a curse.

That’s not all you have. My curse’s telepathic whispers stir in my mind like leaves in the breeze. You have strength. You have a gift now.

I flick my hand toward the nearest portrait. A rush of power tingles under my skin. The portrait floats off the wall and hovers midair. I wave my hand again and the portrait floats back into place.

I told my parents the rebels broke my hand. The truth is I broke it myself. I had only just become cursed, so I had no idea what my gift was or how to control it. Fortunately, Father taught me to withstand pain.

The first two fingers broke by accident.

The rest were practice.

Once I knew what I was doing, I turned my gift on the people who held me hostage.

Father says my curse might make me feel less human. Mother says I’ve always been special. Either way, I don’t think I’m ordinary.

What else am I capable of?

-----

9 Years Later

I lean against the hovercar parked in the sunny lot outside of Tobias Academy, named after Grandfather. My bodyguard lurks nearby, scanning the area through his shades. This is the first time I’ve been back here since I graduated.

The academy doors open and students pour out, laughing and chatting. A group of girls stare at me from the lawn and giggle when I wink. Most of the students are my age, sixteen, up to twenty-four for the seniors.

Except for my eight-year-old brother. He walks out with his bodyguard in tow and his head high like we were trained. He waves to the other students, but they fall silent and clear a wide space for him.

His round face brightens when he sees me, and he quickens his pace. “Judah! You said you had important meetings.”

I shrug. “They were boring. I’d rather know about your first day.”

Noah takes the bait. Something in his expression softens. His careful mask is crumbling, his eyes filling with emotions.

I push off the hovercar. “Keep your shirt buttoned until we’re in the car.”

My bodyguard opens the door. Noah and I sink into the dark leather seats in the back. Our bodyguards sit facing us, and the engines whir and the car lifts off.

“Nobody would talk to me,” Noah says. His shoulders slump in a way that would have Mother screeching. “The science professor told everyone to split into groups, and nobody wanted to be in mine.”

“That’s because they’re afraid of you,” I say.

“Why?”

“You’re smarter than them at half their age. Not to mention whose bloodline you’re part of.” Father inherited NovaCorp from Grandfather, and with it, control over the entire population of Earth. “If they said anything out of line to you, even by accident, Father would ruin them and their families.”

“But I don’t care what they say.” Noah rests his chin on the window ledge and pouts at the passing skyscrapers. He’s far too naive, far too human, and he needs more practice controlling his emotions. If he doesn’t learn soon, someone will take advantage of it and destroy him.

Aren’t you teaching him that lesson? my curse whispers.

“You’ll just have to accept that we’re not ordinary,” I say.

Noah sighs. “I’d rather be ordinary if I could have friends.”

Friends are impossible for us. At our status, anyone interested in our time is either hoping for our money and favor or seeking a way to destroy us. I gave up on friends long ago.

Behind Noah’s back, I lift my hand toward him. The familiar rush of power washes through my skin as strands of Noah’s brown hair begin to lift. I’ve been practicing precision. So much that I can make him look like he’s charged with static electricity without accidentally pulling his hair out.

He reaches up. “What—”

“Careful,” I say. “Your head is so lost in the clouds that your hair is flying away.”

He laughs and shoves me.

I seize his hand and twist. He’s so much smaller than me. I know the exact amount of pressure needed to break his bones until his hand is just as scarred as mi—

“Ow!” he says.

I release him. Now isn’t the time.

A red-violet specter glides alongside the hovercar. Its two white eyes peer into the window. It’s a curse, hunting for a human host.

I gesture to it. “If you’d get cursed, you’d be powerful like me.”

“I don’t want power,” Noah says.

My curse scoffs. What a fool.

-----

The hovercar drops us at our mansion and flies away with our bodyguards still inside. Father doesn’t allow anyone on the grounds.

I find him sitting at the head of the dining table, sipping wine. Except for the age difference and the scars on my left hand, I look exactly like him. Same dark hair and stunning good looks.

“Sit, Judah.” Father gestures to the table. “I have something to discuss.”

I sit to his right. Noah sits at my other side and starts his algebra homework. The table is so polished it reflects my face back at me. I’ve always wondered why it seats eight when guests are never allowed and our sole servant eats in her own room.

Father takes another sip. Based on the nearly empty bottle beside his glass, he’s had quite a bit already. “There are still too many naturals in the city. They’re stirring up trouble by questioning our stance on curses. The crime rate is going up again.”

Naturals, people who haven’t become cursed. Humans who are content to remain human.

“Are you going to issue another statement?” I say. Grandfather was the first person to discover curses, and since then, our family’s stance has been the same—curses are here to stay, and we’re better off with them. With their power. No matter the cost.

Noah looks up from his homework. “Crime rates rise five percent every time you encourage people to become cursed.”

“Not if I make assault against naturals legal,” Father says. “Crime rates would drop significantly.”

Noah’s jaw drops like the hypothetical crime rates. “Only erroneously. It would happen more frequently, even, since—”

“Mind your tone,” Father snaps, eyes narrowing. “It’s not your place to question me.”

Noah bows his head. “Apologies, Father.”

He should stop there. He knows he should. I watch the battle play out on his face, that tormented look that means he’s going to continue anyway.

“But naturals are people, too,” he says. “Why should they be treated differently?”

“Because I said so.”

Mother sweeps into the dining room smelling of nail polish. She must have been at the salon. Her cheeks are still swollen from her recent plastic surgery. She’s not cursed, but with that much silicone in her body, I wouldn’t call her natural.

“Judah, dear,” she says, and kisses my cheek. Her gaze passes over Noah as though he’s not there, before sharpening in Father’s direction. “Simon. Drinking at this hour?” She shakes her head at him and continues out of the room.

As soon as her skirt disappears down the hall, Father glowers at Noah again. “Come to my office, boy.”

Noah’s panicked gaze flies toward me, as though asking me to save him. He knows better. He got himself into this. He needs to be strong enough to get himself out.

-----

I wait for Noah on the bench beside the pond in our backyard. He always comes here to watch the butterflies after Father beats him.

Mother once found out what he does to us and threw a fit. Now he’s more careful about it.

Although it’s been several years since he’s touched me. I know what he wants me to say and only cross that line with great forethought. Something Noah hasn’t yet learned.

He’s the only ordinary person in this family, and even then, he’s a prodigy just like Grandfather, Father, and me.

Father is cursed and ninety percent alcohol. Mother is made of plastic. I’m cursed.

Would I be ordinary without my curse?

Noah’s soft footsteps approach through the grass. His eyes are already red with tears and he sniffles as he sits beside me. More of those emotions he’s terrible at controlling.

“Was it the whip this time?” I say.

He nods.

“Before you were born, he used cigars.” I roll my sleeve to my shoulder to display the scarred circles of flesh along my arm.

Noah sniffles again and touches one of my scars. “Why doesn’t he love us?”

“He only hurts us to make us strong,” I say. “If you don’t know the pain of a lash, you’ll collapse from a paper cut.”

He wrinkles his nose. “At least you love me, right?”

Love is for fools, my curse whispers.

“Catch a butterfly for me,” I say. “Then I’ll love you.”

He springs to his feet, gullible as ever, and stalks toward a bush with five butterflies swarming. He waits. Calculating. Analyzing behavior. He slowly moves his hand toward a perched butterfly. The insect crawls onto his finger.

Carefully, Noah moves toward me, a proud grin on his face. I lift my hand to accept the present. The butterfly’s slight weight rests in my palm.

I crush it in my fist.

Noah’s expression twists—first shock, then disgust. “Why—”

“Of course I don’t love you,” I say. “You’re weak. You waste your energy caring about what other people think of you. You waste your energy caring, at all. Aren’t you supposed to be a genius? Use your brain instead of your heart.”

His cheeks turn red. There’s pain in his eyes, but he narrows them to glare at me as though I’m something less than human. Something completely baffling and utterly horrifying.

A monster.

He's right, of course. I'm the kind of monster that likes to play with his prey, to trick them into setting their own trap.

Noah’s trap has just sprung.

I’m going to enjoy what comes next.