Ok, so this chapter sort of gets things moving, and it acknowledges Volcana because I figured since they're both pyrokinetics she should at least get a mention. For those of you who don't know, Claire Selton was Volcana's name before the government took away her past. Ok, enjoy the chapter and please review
"Mallory! Are you almost ready? You don't want to be late for your own party!" Elaine called up the stairs. She smiled as she turned and checked the party details. The first cars were coming up the driveway.
She couldn't believe that it had been two years since Mallory had legally become their daughter. It had taken almost a year to complete the adoption, but it had been worth it. Now, they were celebrating her fifth birthday.
Mallory ran down the stairs and into the kitchen, beaming from ear to ear. She hadn't quite tamed her hair, but Elaine didn't mention it. "How are you feeling?" she asked, concern edging her tone. Mallory's attacks had been coming more frequently and with more pain. "I feel great!" Mallory replied with a grin.
The guests started to come in and put presents on the dining room table. They all straggled outside where Darrin was barbecuing in the backyard. The children started playing and the parents talked on the other side of the yard. The sounds of the children laughing and squealing in delight sang through the air.
Suddenly, a squeal turned into a scream and all the parents collectively jumped to their feet and looked for the source of the sound. Darrin looked at Mallory just in time to see her face scrunch in pain and stumble and fall. When her palms hit the ground, the grass caught fire and started burning around her. The children ran to their parents. Elaine and Darrin ran to Mallory to get her away from the fire, not knowing how it had started. Mallory was sitting in the middle of a ring of fire, staring at her hands.
It wasn't until her parents got closer that they saw that the fire was coming from them. The look that the family shared was one of complete terror. "Mom, Dad, what's going on?" Mallory asked, and the fear in her red eyes tore a ragged hole through her parents hearts.
Elaine walked downstairs quietly. The party stuff was still out, but it had lost it's cheer. Darrin looked up from the couch. "She asleep?" he asked tiredly. He had dealt with the friends, the police, and paramedics, and the firemen while Elaine had tried to calm Mallory. He'd been the one to face all of the questions that he couldn't answer.
"Yes. She was so scared, Darrin, and I didn't know what to tell her." She sat down next to her husband, fighting tears. They sat in silence, neither knowing what to say. A knock at the door made them jump. Darrin got up, Elaine right behind him, to go to the door. Two men in black ‒suits were on the other side.
"Good evening," one of the men said, "Are you Mr. and Mrs. Johnson?"
"Yes," Darrin replied warily. "We understand that you had an‒incident‒today at your daughter's birthday party."
Darrin eyed the men. "Who are you?" he asked. "We are representatives of a school for children with unusual gifts. We would like to talk to you about your daughter's apparent pyrokinetic abilities."
"Well, would you like to come in?" Elaine asked. Darrin glanced back at his wife. He wasn't going to ask them in. He didn't like the look of the men, nor the fact that they seemed to know so much about his daughter. The men had already walked past him.
Elaine led them into the living room and the four of them sat down. "Now, what we'd like to know is if this is the first time Mallory has shown pyrokinetic tendencies."
"I'm not sure I know what that means," Elaine admitted. "It means the ability to create and control fires. Is this the first time?" Darrin nodded and Elaine rushed to tell the men about Mallory. She told them what they knew about her birth mother and what the adoption agency had said about her medical condition. "She has fits of pain that she can't describe, and when the pain comes, she runs high fevers, her highest was 110, but she's not sick, and the doctors couldn't tell us what was going on."
The men took notes during the story, and they set the notebooks aside and one of them pulled out a folder from his briefcase and put it on the coffee table in front of the Johnsons. "This school helps children learn to control and develop their‒gifts. We think it would benefit Mallory to go. With her abilities, if she were allowed to go on without training she could destroy cities, kill people." He slid a business card across the table. "You look over the file and call us when you make a decision. Just keep in mind the severity of the situation."
With that, the men left the Johnsons sitting in silence, staring at the folder. Finally, Darrin picked up the folder and started flipping through it. It held lists of people that the school had helped and the abilities they had trained in the past, as well as pictures of the building and short biographies of the staff. There was only one person listed as having pyrokinetic abilities, but at least Mallory wouldn't be the first one. If they decided to send her. The man's warning about what would happen if she wasn't trained came back to him. She could kill someone, destroy cities, be arrested and locked away for the rest of her life, or worse. He turned to Elaine.
"We have to send her," he said quietly. Elaine's eyes widened slightly. "Well, look at this. We don't have any idea how to help her, but these people do . Look, right here. They've had a girl with her abilities before." Elaine looked and the section Darrin was pointing to.
"Claire Selton," she read aloud. There wasn't anything on her except her name and her ability, not even a picture.
"It's so sudden. I mean, this morning she was so happy and she was just a normal little girl. Now she can control fire, is a potential threat, and some strange men want her to go to some strange school," Elaine said, staring out the window. The sun was coming up at this point, and she stood to get breakfast.
"Elaine, what do you think?" Darrin asked, catching her hand. Mallory's soft footsteps sounded on the stairs. "Oh, dear, you're awake," Elaine said, walking over to meet her daughter. She knelt in front of the girl and said, "We were just talking about you. What do you think about boarding school?"