I sit in my room the day before I'm supposed to be picked up by the professor. I'm still not quite sure that I believe I'm a mutant. Or, really, it was less that I don't believe, and more that I don't want to. But, I've always been one to prepare for social events.

In second grade I heard that the middle school I was supposed to go to held an annual eighth grade dance. To prepare, I taught myself how to dance all those years in advance. I got better of course, I almost had dancing skills to brag about, but of course puberty came along and made me clumsy all over again.

I was still pretty good at dancing.

The point is, I'll go to extreme measures to try and keep from looking foolish, and I know that if I can't control my... powers, I guess... it will be a social faux pas among the mutants.

I hold my breath. I clench my toes. I even take an ice cube out of my drink and put it in my shirt. I open up a window and take a deep and refreshing breath of the cool outside air.

"Mal, breakfast," I'm summoned. At the table, my parents look as nervous as I am about my imminent departure. They've made waffles, something they rarely do. Mt mother frequents health-food stores, and tries to keep us all from having sugary or wheaty snacks. But the waffles were a sacred sort of thing. The last time we had them was to celebrate my recently deceased grandmother's long life with us.

I drizzle melted chocolate on mine, looking at my worried parents.

And I wish the moment would freeze. Again, it's like a balloon pops in my chest. My parents are still. My father is lifting a bite to his mouth. Drops of syrup hang in the air underneath. I reach with a finger to catch one. It moves when I touch it, but continues to hold still in the air. I pluck the bite of waffle off dad's fork and leave it right in front. It should fall back onto the plate.

I turn to my mother. She's looking directly at me. It's kind of spooky. I pull the elastic out of her messy pony-tail. Then I concentrate. The strangest thing I remember from that first night is the time right after I unfroze the scene. The things I had imagined had come true. I wonder if I can take it to a sort of extreme. Can I change the physical presence of an item?

I imagine my parents simultaneously making the same sort of noise in their throat when the waffle falls and the hair is in her face. Then I imagine them looking at each other, looking at me, then my father clearing his throat. "Darling," he'll say, "We love you very much." Then my mother will pull a diamond ring out and put it on my hand.

The scene drags to a start. "Urg," they say, as the things I planned happened. Then I see them look at each other. "Darling, we love you very much."

There in my mother's hand is a ring box. I know for a fact they weren't planning on doing any such thing. But there the ring was. I created.

I'm proud of myself as I admire the sparkles. "Thank you," I say, more to the X gene than my parents.

The next morning a woman with caramel skin and white hair knocks at our front door. She apologizes, explaining that the professor was not able to make it.

After all of the to-be-expected identity checking, my parents decided they believed her and moved on to the goodbyes.

In the car, the woman introduced herself as Storm. I'd been thinking about a name change, but nothing so bizarre as an inanimate phenomenon.

I consider for only a few seconds what mine should be.

"Lapse," I tell her, "It's nice to meet you."

She smiles kindly at me, but she doesn't offer up any conversation.

We stop at another house in the town over. There's a girl sitting outside on the front porch of a small Victorian. She hides her hands in her pockets until she absolutely has to free one to clutch the handle of her suitcase. I can see why; they're bright green.

She sits beside me, looking out the opposite window. I can feel her stealing glances at me. I do the same to her. Her jeans have holes that aren't fashionable. Her shirt's stained by her left elbow. Her tattered canvas shoes are caked with the orange mud found everywhere in the area.

I'm wearing a pleated skirt and a pale blue button-down. My diamond ring sits proud on my finger. My shoes are leather loafers.

I can see that we're on opposite ends of the middle-class spectrum. I hold out my hand. "I'm Lapse," I say to her. She looks from my face to my hand. She takes her own slowly out of her pocket. "Um, I'm blossom," She squeaks. I grin. "Want to see what I can do?" I ask her. She nods a little, and I can suddenly see that she's much younger than I am. Maybe fourteen, or even thirteen.

I decide to test something that I'd been hoping would work. I grab her wrist and concentrate on the feeling, the sort of release. The background noises stop. The absence of feeling the car on the road is sudden. Blossom looks silently at me for a few seconds, and I fear it didn't work. Then her eyes flicker to look out the window behind me.

The storefronts of the town have stopped moving past. She looks at storm. Her hands on the wheel are still as death. I unbuckle myself and open the car door. Gravel behind the tires hangs in mid-air as though by transparent string. I take a piece and flick it into the car at blossom, who flinches. The gravel, though, hangs at the end of my finger. I leave the car and enter a nearby textiles store.

I lift the edges of some of the fabric, move a potted plant a few inches off the ground. There's a cat in the back of the store. I take it to Blossom, who's gotten out of the car and is looking at a fountain. We both laugh at how the cat's limbs lag behind it as I lift and move it. I leave it on it's back by the dumpster where it was.

We get Popsicles from a vendor (I leave two dollars in his pocket) and get back in the car.

Blossom will start laughing, Storm will stop at the same vendor we just got pops from and get one only for herself, claiming that she saw us eating ice cream just a few seconds earlier.

The car starts again, and Storm inexplicably turns down several side streets, Blossom laughing the entire time. She stops just short of the vendor, looking confused, and turns back to the street we were on.

"It has limits, then," I mumble to myself.

"That was awesome," Blossom tells me, seeming more comfortable already. She hold out one of her green hands. "My turn," she says.

I see now that her hands are covered with tiny feathers, almost like a butterfly's wings. Some of them in the center of her hand lift up and start to glow. They twist and form a stalk. The stalk wraps it's way up her arm and comes out through her brown hair above her forehead.

The vines wrap her face, crawl into her nostrils. They split into smaller and smaller strands, covering her. Her eyes are dark and glittering behind the shining curtain.

"Hit me," she says.

I raise my eyebrows. I don't think I've hit anyone in my life. Except in dodge-ball at primary school.

"I mean it, punch me."

I do. The vines grab me, holding me there against her forearm. I tug, but they twist around my arm and up, gripping. She pulls them all back into her hand with an audible snap, faster than I could see. I whistle.

"Impressive," I tell her. Her grin is bright. I can tell she's excited to have her gift appreciated.

"So, Blossom," I say, "I don't mean to pry, and you don't have to answer if you don't feel comfortable, but.., why wasn't there anyone there to see you off?"

Of course I was lying when I said I didn't mean to pry. I often found myself more curious than was good for me.

"Um," she mutters, "My parents found out about my power. They were fighting about whose fault it was last night. My mom kicked my dad out and got drunk. I didn't want to wake her up."

She turns away from me. Storm glances back at her. "It's not like she would care that I was leaving anyway," she says quietly.

The air in the car is stiff and thick. Blossom sniffles once.

"My parents don't know," I whisper, "They hate mutants."

She looks at me. Her nose is red like she was crying, but her face is dry.

"That sucks," she says, "My parents have never loved me, so I can't know what that kind of fear feels like. But I would think it would be worse than anything."

I lean against her. At first, she doesn't seem to know how to react. Then her shoulder relaxes under my head and she leans on me too.

The drive is long. Virginia all the way to New York. I fall asleep more than once. We stop in Northern Pennsylvania for the night.

The hotel room I have is much too empty. I wish we'd shared one. I've never had one to myself before. I find myself escaping to the indoor swimming pool around midnight. There's a man in it already, so I go to the lobby and keep an eye on the door to see him leave. When he exits I snap my fingers and time freezes.

I look at my fingers with surprise. I don't know why I snapped this time and it worked, because I'm sure I've tried that before, but it just seemed like a good idea. The man leaving the pool is frozen in a yawn and I pause for a giggle.

The room is hot and humid. There's a hot tub with a still mist above it. I touch the water. My fingertip leaves a mark in the water. I punch it, and, like putty, it molds to the shape of my fist, a hole in the surface.

I remove my clothes and dive in my underwear into the full-sized pool. The water is cool against my face. I find myself on the bottom, unable to float to the surface. I panic only briefly, then I walk along the bottom towards the shallow end. My head breaks the surface and I have to wipe away the water that's caught against my face.

As I sputter, I look back at my trail. There's a hole where I dived, and a tunnel of angular bubbles following my walk. I take a deep breath and duck under the water. As I blow into it, the water forms a mask, growing around my mouth and down my chin. I try to breathe inside the bubble, but the air quality's horrible and when if gets too small I breath in some of the water. I stand, coughing.

I unfreeze and my shapes collapse. I swim until I'm exhausted, then drip my way back to my room, where I shower and try to sleep again.

My dreams are full of mutants.

Hey! It's me. Glad you could join me. Any feedback is appreciated. Also, what do you want me to do next? I have ideas, of course, but I'm open to suggestion. 3