"What did happen, miss?" Interviewer Karl asked, pleasantly enough.

I leaned against the cold window, rain pattering down in a soothing lullaby. So much had happened. I didn't know where to start, but taking a deep breath, I decided to pick a place and hope it went well from there.

"I can't do it," Viette mumbled. Her clammy hands held onto the bars above her, lax, muscles relaxed.

"To attention, that's all. To attention." the instructor's voice said loudly. She was large, stoic. A surviving Prometheus.

Her pupil elicited a gasp from all around her when she rolled her hands in front of her, causing a rainbow to be created from her fingertips. The sight dissipated as quickly as it had been created, and many weren't quite sure if that was real.

Miss Yone crossed her arms in a smug gesture and nodded for Viette to move away to the end of the long, long line.

A boy, as old as Viette, looked to the instructor, almost pleadingly. She watched him as easily as a rock could have won a staring contest.
He released a short sigh, the sigh itself forming a fog, which enveloped only his head before returning to nothing. He looked around with wide eyes.
Miss Yone nodded. Next up.

Me. I had figured it out, as we all had, a week earlier. The only thing was that we didn't need to show it in front of everyone before. I walked slowly to the blue platform, my eyes stuck to the floor. I bit my lip gently, and raised my hands. With a sudden clang in my ears, I saw everyone scrambling to the exits. My brows furrowed, somewhat confused at what was happening before Miss Yone shoved me roughly out a door.

Someone had pulled the fire alarm.

We stood in a perfectly straight line outside. The skies were cloudy and fluffy and gray, like a heavy cotton blanket. I relished the sight, but not the feeling. It felt cold, and not as warm as I wanted it to be.

Miss Yone barked out orders to us that we will wait for her to give us permission before we were allowed to break line and go inside, before she ran off after the other teachers to see what had happened.

Seeing as we were eighteen years old, we smirked and whispered amongst each other. Many other lines spoke quietly to their neighbors as well, all of us discussing the same topic: who had pulled the fire alarm, and why?
We were bored with the normal world, so of course we had to invent a story or two to keep us preoccupied.

I watched a couple teenagers grow bright lilacs in the dead of autumn or bring a tattoo to life on the skin, writhing on it's own accord. Some of us could barely get our gifts to work, let alone cause a plant to grow just by imagining it. I envied them. Their gifts being so easily accessible caused them to be favorites in the classes.

Using one's gift outside class was distinctly against the law, and we would be whisked away to a cellar to be tortured so that we would never do it again. Or so said my peers.

We stood there for an hour. By that time, we had broken into groups. I found myself inching towards Viette and two boys.
"Oh, Alys! We were just talking about you," Viette smiled. She had a really nice smile. Not too toothy, not too lipless.

I flashed a grin. "About what? Nothing on my ass, is there?"

They chuckled softly. One boy, whom I recognized as Norman, spoke. "Nah, it was actually about your gift. I heard a rumor or two "
The other boy, one I didn't remember seeing before, interrupted. "Yeah! Like, can you actually make your fingers drop off and make them turn into huge venomous dragons?"

Viette retorted and shoved him playfully. "That's Phil for you. An idiot around all corners"
Phil stuck out his lower lip and rubbed his arm, acting as if her shove had left a bruise. "Well then, I suppose that would make me a circle. A GENIUS." He said loudly, and I shushed him, looking around me in worry.

He shrugged, raising an eyebrow. "No one cares, Lys."

Norman nudged me with his arm. I held my breath and thanked the gods that no one could see me blush with my skin tone. "So? What can you do, mystery girl?"

I stuck out my tongue. "You guys have to tell me before I tell you"
Grade school flirting, that was automatic with me. Pathetic, but entirely true.

Viette grinned, and held out her palm. From the center swirled a translucent blob, which suddenly formed a screw. "I can create inanimate objects from oxygen. Right now I can only create really small things, and that means less mass and volume for me to concentrate on"
I slowly tilted my head to the side. "And if you can't concentrate on it all"
She shrugged, and the screw turned invisible. "It goes right back to being air."

Phil puffed his chest proudly, shaking his blond mane. "I can erase things from existance"
I stared at him, not quite grasping his sentence. The others laughed, and Phil plucked a dandelion from the field.
"Wha - "
He murmured, "Watch." to quiet me.
His broad hand swept slowly across the dandelion on his spread palm, barely above it, touching. It was gone. It was erased.
"Just like that . . . it doesn't exist anymore?" I asked, awe-struck.
Phil smirked, winking broadly. I averted my gaze, as Viette giggled and hugged him to her.

Norman nudged me again, but I'm sure he didn't mean to. An accidental brush against me was all it was.
"I can create." Without waiting for my questioning squeak, he formed his hands into a small ball. "Look inside."

I bent over to get a view, and was surprised beyond belief. You won't believe it even if I tell you, but you asked for the truth, and I'm going to give it to you. Inside his hands was a miniature solar system, planets orbiting, the sun almost blinding me. It would have too, if it were any bigger than it already was. Which is to say, the planets in his hands were as big as pen pricks. He smashed his hands together, uncreating his own solar system.
"Well? How about you?"

I straightened myself, catching all three of them watching me with an intense gaze. I opened my mouth, and before a sound peeped from my throat, Miss Yone's shadow appeared beside us.

"Let's go. Someone pulled the fire alarm when there wasn't a fire." She sounded as if she had run a triatholon, but I had no idea why. At the time, my heart was pounding into my ears, and I could have sworn she heard my racing pulse.
I was afraid that we had gotten caught, but no one was escorted into The Silent Room.

We followed, once more in a straight line towards our pedestal that we were previously attending to.
"Whose turn was it?"

I sneaked to the end of the line. My acquaintances, including half the line, ogled me for my audacity. Quite a few of them found my act humorous. It tickled them.

More students went up, showed their gifts, and went to the end of the line. One failed to show his gift in front of everyone, and was escorted to The Silent Room.
Now, Karl, I know you're wondering: What the fuck is The Silent Room?
Though I'm sure you have deduced that the room is silent, of course. No sound reaches in or out of the room. The walls are padded and everything, every damn thing, is pitch black. Eventually, if you're in it long enough, you can't tell if your eyes are open or closed, or whether you can even hear, as if you've been blind or deaf all your life.
The Room's creator had the gift to control sound waves. She was obsessive - she'd demand students to be thrown in, so she could drive them into insanity, by cancelling all sound waves.
If you couldn't tell, she's long gone by now, but back then . . . she was made Headmistress, which was why the school's rules were so restricting, so easy to break. She wanted students to break them, you see. But she had to create the rules in such a coniving way that no school board would question her.

Oh yes, back to the boy. His name was Vincent. He had natural black-brown hair, you know the kind, so brown it could be considered black. Yet his eyes were a clear, ice blue. They seemed as if you could try to step in to view his mind, but as soon as you would feel contact, you'd fall into freezing waters.
Yes, Vincent captured many hearts. I'd be lying if I didn't include myself. He wasn't too tall, not extremely skinny. He had a confident grace, but considering he was still a teenager, his gait reminded me a bit of a grown giraffe.
No girl was ever considered for romantics to him, though. No girl was ever pretty enough, or smart or ditzy enough. What Vincent was interested in was different from what I had ever heard in my life. He was gay.
I know, at this day and age, every other boy could be considered homosexual. Back then people would avoid anyone who seemed homosexual like the bubonic plague. It took him quite a while to come to terms with his sexuality, and even more to tell me one night.
That night was very chilly, I remember. It was in mid-November, and nature was showing this by changing all her colors to a crispyness only she could achieve.
Vincent had asked me to accompany him to a movie with his friends. We ended up being alone only an hour after the movie. I was laying beside him under a heavy blanket on his duvet, in his yard. I was quite infatuated with him at the time, and being one of his really close friends was near blissful to me. Obviously I wanted more, but knew - perhaps subconsciously - that a romantic relationship with him was out of the question.

And then he said it. He confessed, "Lys, I'm homosexual."

I had handled it horribly. I asked him over and over, "Are you sure? How? Are you absolutely sure"
He handled my inability to handle his situation with a stringed response of gibberish. That was the only time I had ever seen him so upset in all my natural born life.

He left in a rush, slamming his door. Seeing as he was the one who drove me here, I couldn't very well try to walk around twenty miles back home. I had a cell phone, but I couldn't possibly bother my parents to pick me up at three in the morning. Thus I waited, shivering in the blanket.
We each gave ourselves time to cool off and recollect our thoughts. By the time he came back outside, it was around five in the morning, and he gave me a hot cup of sugared coffee. I held the mug in my hands, a grateful smile on my face.
We sat in silence for a while, the occasional sound of a bird or us sipping our coffee filling the air.

"You know, now that I thought about it, I can't believe I didn't figure it out sooner," I said.

Vincent gasped loudly. "What do you mean? Do I emanate gay?"

It was one of the most memorable nights. We laughed and cried a lot as we explained to each other our views - how the world will see him, how people would feel if they knew. The one thing we didn't discuss was the topic of his parents discovering his sexuality. We didn't need to. We knew how they would react to the news, and would take to it as kindly as a beehive to a stranger stealing its honey.

No one found out he was homosexual until the reunion, almost ten years after graduation.

"Yes, that's all well and good. Please do not leave out anything." Karl suggested, scribbling on his little notebook and watching me at the same time.

I tucked a lock of black hair behind my ear. "I don't intend to." I said, and continued.

Miss Yone never realized I didn't show her my gift. The same went for the crowd, but they seemed like they would survive. My gift was nowhere near as amazing as Norman's or Viette's or Phil's.
In fact, those three were some of the top students I envied. I was quite low on the list.

One day, not too long after that false fire alarm, they cornered me at lunch.
"Go on, just show us," Phil whined.

I rolled my eyes and grit my teeth. "What's the big deal? Maybe I don't want you guys to know, alright?" I rushed into the girls' bathroom.

"Lys, seriously. Stop it." Viette walked in, hands on her curvy hips.

My lips pursed. I had forgotten one of them was female.
"Look, why can't you all just forget it?"

Her face distorted into something quite different. Compassion?
"What's the matter?"

"My gift doesn't seem like such a gift."

"Show me," she whispered.

The only difference was that this time, I let it all out. I breathed life. The air I breathed became some writhing creature, as soon as I held it in my hands and left my mouth. Sometimes I could concentrate on what I wanted to make, but when I was pushed, it came out strange and awkward. A shark mixed with a squid? An abomination, they would say.

"That's amazing, Lys," Viette's voice was choking. I glanced up at her face, a frown on mine. But she wasn't choking from the horrifying sight in front of her - she was trying to stop from laughing. "It's so adorable! Look, tentalce-fins!" She wriggled a finger in front of my creature, and it squealed.

"What's taking so long, Vi?" Phil asked loudly, his voice bouncing off the tile walls.

"You're gonna LOVE this, Phil. She's got an amazing gift. You won't believe your eyes." Viette pat my back.

I inhaled the creature. I held my hands to my mouth, the creature turning into air for my lungs as soon as it left my hands.
My gift was much more complex than Viette's - she created inanimate objects from oxygen, while I created life from a mere breath. She can't make hers go back the way they were without a great deal of concentration, but I could uncreate my children by inhaling them again.
Blasphemy. The Headmistress would view me as Satan's consort, and God's true daughter. While I create, I can also destroy what I make.
Though in that sense, I'm more of "God's true daughter" than anything else.

We stepped out of the bathroom. I repeated what I had done. Exhale, inhale. This time I concentrated on something small, an inchworm.
They grinned in my favor. I met Norman's eyes, seeing something there, but I glanced away. I wasn't comfortable enough to stare back. Not yet.

The next day, someone pulled the fire alarm again.
This time we were in Practition Class, which wasn't really a class at all. One teacher would go to each of us for about five minutes to give us a technique to try until next week.

Outside was cloudy, but it was raining. Not like today for your interview, Karl, but a light drizzle. Drizzles feel quite refreshing, if you've ever noticed. It makes everyone feel good.
By the time we managed to get outside from the third floor of the building, a ring was around a fallen body.
The ring of students taunted the body, and it didn't move. Mister Bygun shoved us aside as he broke the circle and kneeled by the body.
I peeked from the ring's outside - the body was Miss Yone. She had had a heart attack and couldn't move. Someone from the circle was keeping her paralyzed, but I didn't recall anyone who had that sort of dangerous gift.

We were ushered into the building after an ambulance came to collect Miss Yone's body. She was only able to move after the ambulance reached the hospital, nearly fifteen hundred miles away from our school.

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