YES!
You should have saved me!
"No, Dad," I lie. "I just have… problems. Different ones."
"What problems? Can I help you? Is this about…" He hesitates. "About the itching? The doctor told us you had irritation from scratching. He even ran a full panel to figure out what’s going on, but nothing came up."
A full panel? I feel a strange sense of relief. If I’d caught something from those bastards, it would show up in the test results. It’s reassuring to know my health is still okay.
"No, it’s not that, but yeah, my skin itches."
"Maybe it’s the same thing Snow has," Dad says hesitantly. "Natural tattoos."
I tense up.
"You know, Snow also has these… natural tattoos. They started appearing a few years ago. It isn’t impossible that you have something similar."
I glance at my forearm, but there is nothing there.
"I once found something about this on some niche forum online. Apparently it’s a sign of having a high amount of alien blood. But there’s more. The so-calleddeva soulcan only live in a powerful body with that kind of high percentage of alien DNA. Snow’s one of them, a sorcerer. You could be like that too."
"Dad, that sounds like a fairy tale," I mutter. "Urban legends. Devas? Is that like angels?"
"Different cultures call them different things, depending on their wings’ looks. They usually have unusual abilities, so regular people started calling them sorcerers, but their power is… immense. They’re like seeds of gods."
Sighing, I grimace. "That sounds… ridiculous."
"You can’t deny Snow can do… a lot. He has incredible intuition, and he can—"
I let out an irritated sound.
"I’m nothing like him! I don’t have powers! If someone wants to hurt me, they will!" I snap, and then the silence drops.
I desperately want him to leave the room, because I know that the longer he stays the harder it will be to keep lying. The urge to throw the truth in his face is almost overwhelming, and it is growing, right along with the anger simmering under my skin.
"Dad, I’m tired. I worked with Alex, and I have a concussion. It's too much, don’t you think?"
"Bay, you know you don’t have to catch up with school right now. When you recover…"
"I don’t want to fall behind!" I snap, even though the truth is I don’t care, but this way… Alex will be coming over every day.
A moment of silence.
"That Alex…" Dad presses his lips together. "Do you get along with him?"
"Yes, really well."
"Do you like him?"
I narrow my eyes, trying to figure out where he is going with this. His face looks doubtful, uneasy, almost confused.
"Is that a problem?" I ask.
"No, no…! But I’d like to get to know him better."
I have no idea why he says that or why he looks so uncertain, but I shrug. "I don’t think Alex would mind. He’s great. He’s really good at math and an amazing chess player."
"And besides that… is there anything about him that is, let’s say, strange or unusual or concerning?"
