Page 29 of Day

Chapter Fifteen

Leon

“Three point two seconds.” Draco hit the button on the timer. I’d run the mile he asked me to do, and I hadn’t even broken a sweat. We’d been testing my powers all morning out in the woods by his still-destroyed home.

“You gonna rebuild it?” I asked, pointing to the ruins.

“Yep,” he answered with one short word.  Draco wasn’t a big talker, but I could imagine living all those years left him without a lot to say now. All been said.

“So you knew someone with my powers?”  I grabbed the metal bars that he’d left here for me to practice bending.

“A woman. Louisa. She was too cocky with her power. Tried to stop a building from falling but lost control and wound up buried beneath it.” He looked me dead in the eyes, and I knew the story was both true and a warning to me. Don’t be cocky. Got it.

I watched as the metal bent slowly as I pulled the two ends together, but then before I knew it the bar snapped.

“Shit.” This was harder than it looked. I could bend the bars with no issue. The problem was controlling myself enough to just give them a horseshoe curve and not snap them apart.

“Your power wants to work with you, not against you. Breathe in and out. A calm mind is key.”  He handed me another bar and I held both ends again in my hands. In and out I breathed, trying to remember to stay calm as I began to bend the metal.

Snap!

Instead of keeping the calm I was trying to maintaining, I chucked the metal piece that was in my right hand, cutting through a tree and causing it to fall on the fence to Draco’s cow pasture. Ah, shit.

My eyes went to his, to see if he was mad or not. He should be.

“Be glad my cows weren’t in there,” he murmured, but then bent down to grasp another bar and hand it over.

“You sure?” I honestly did not have the same belief in myself that he was clearly having.

“You’ve gotten it out of your system. You feel bad, so you won’t do it again. Bend the bar.” He took a step back and watched.

I broke fourteen more bars before I finally got one bent without breaking it. He was right about the outburst. I didn’t want to do something to break his property again, so I didn’t.

After that he made me run around the state forest, testing my stamina. Go for as long as I could, as fast as I could, and come back when I was tired.

I’d never let myself go like I was now, running through the woods.  My powers had been a curse, ones I wanted to forget I had. But now, I felt my blood pumping, echoing in my ears; my muscles were burning but it wasn’t stopping me. There was nothing but the wind touching me, and in the moment, I felt my mind clear. Freedom.

The past couldn’t touch me right now.

I passed raccoons, a bear family, and some hikers. None of them even knew I ran through. I was one with the wind.

I stopped running and started laughing. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. My body couldn’t even remember the last time it had a good laugh. My stomach was cramping from the feeling. Running hadn’t done me in, but laughing did.

All I could think about was Charles being there with me, teasing me about being one with the wind.  He’d totally call me Pocahontas, with how I was acting.  I missed this feeling—laughing, even if I was alone in the woods with no one making me laugh but the thought of my friend screwing with me.

I tried to call him earlier, but he told me he was busy, and he’d call me back.  I’d have to call him again later to tell him about this. He’d wanted me to live life again so much, never giving up on the hope that I would get over everything and move on.

As I looked around, my mind drifted toward visions of smiles, and forgiveness. Maybe that future Charles wished for me wasn’t that far off.

It only took death knocking on my door to make me realize it.

The sun was starting to set, and I knew I wasn’t going to be tired anytime soon; I took off, leaving nothing but a floating cloud of leaves in my wake.

Draco was standing there looking at his phone when I came to a stop just before him.

“Not going to tire soon, but thought we should probably head back.”