I nodded slowly at my parents. I forced a fake, painfully tight smile onto my face, using every ounce of willpower I had to keep my lip from trembling.
"Yep. Just a bad day," I lied, my voice sounding hollow to my own ears. "I am going to go do my homework now."
Without waiting for them to offer another wave of pity, I grabbed my backpack from the floor and ran up the wooden stairs as fast as I could. I burst into my bedroom, shut the heavy door, and locked it. I dropped my bag, letting it hit the carpet with a dull thud.
My room looked exactly the same as it did this morning. It was a perfect sanctuary of normalcy. My twin bed had my favorite fluffy pink blanket. My bookshelves were packed tightly with hundreds of fantasy novels.
Everything in this room was normal.
Except me. And my parents. And the glowing blue window that was currently hovering in the air, slowly fading away in front of my face.
I took a deep breath, jumped onto my desk chair, and yanked my laptop open. The bright screen instantly woke up, lighting my dark room. My hands were shaking so badly my fingers kept slipping off the keys. I opened an internet browser and just stared at the blank search bar.
I didn't even know what to look for. If I really lived in an alternate universe where magic was real—where my dad could float heavy pots—was it a secret? My parents had just said they were powerful humans in the city. That meant everyone else had superpowers, too. But how did everyone use them? Why hadn't I ever noticed it before today?
I squeezed my eyes shut, steadied my racing heart, and typed two simple words into the search engine:
Local Superpowers.
I hit the enter key. I kept my eyes screwed shut for five long seconds, terrified of what I might see. When I finally forced my eyes open, my jaw dropped.
There were millions of results. But they were not comic book wikis or silly movie reviews. They were real, boring news articles from normal news websites.
"Traffic Delayed on Main Street Due to Flying Race." "City Council Bans Fire Breath at Public Parks." "Top Ten Ways to Keep Your Invisibility Power Under Control."
I was paralyzed. I numbly clicked on a video news report from a local station.
A woman holding a microphone was standing in front of a burning apartment building. Next to her, looking bored and chewing a piece of pink bubblegum, was a teenager in a yellow hoodie. The news ticker at the bottom of the screen read: LOCAL TEEN ASSISTS WITH FIRE.
The teenager cracked his knuckles, took a massive deep breath, and blew out a concentrated gust of icy wind. The sheer force of the blizzard erupted from his mouth, engulfing the building in seconds. The roaring flames didn't just go out; they were instantly encased in thick sheets of ice.
The fire was completely dead. The teenager popped his bubblegum and shrugged. The news reporter didn't faint or act surprised. She just politely clapped her hands and cheerfully asked him about his weekend plans.
Magic wasn't a secret here. It was incredibly normal. Everyone knew about it. It was treated with the exact same level of annoyance as a delayed train or bad weather.
I started scrolling. My fingers moved over the trackpad with frantic energy. I scrolled past blogs complaining about fire-proof clothing, news sites detailing laws for teleporters, and social media pages filled with teenagers showing off levitation tricks. I was doom scrolling, falling headfirst down a digital rabbit hole of impossible things.
I watched a shaky phone video of a girl waiting at a bus stop who casually stretched her arm completely across a four-lane street to grab a dropped twenty-dollar bill, her bones pulling like taffy. I saw a live stream of a construction worker who turned his skin into solid rock to carry heavy steel beams on his shoulders. I saw a viral clip of a golden retriever that could teleport short distances to catch a frisbee before it hit the grass.
My parents were right. I was the freak.
I grabbed my favorite yellow notebook and a black pen from my messy desk. If my new video game system needed me to deeply understand how these powers worked in order to steal them, I mean use them, I needed to get organized. I had to make a list. I had to know exactly what was out there waiting for me.
I started writing frantically. I didn't just list the powers; I tried to break down the body movements behind them, just like I had done with the janitor.
1. Flying (It never looks like they are just floating. The ones I've seen always bend their knees. Are they pushing wind down with their feet? Need to watch their legs.)
2. Laser Eyes (The skin around their eyes always gets red first. Heat builds up inside and then shoots out in a straight line. Do they hold their breath?)
3. Rock Skin (The construction worker's boots were buried in the dirt. Is he pulling minerals directly from the earth?)
4. Invisibility (They don't just disappear; the background behind them always looks wavy, like a hot road. Are they bending light around their body?)
I filled page after page. I paused the videos, rewound them, and scribbled down every muscle twitch and change in breathing. The sun went down outside my window, and my room grew darker, lit only by the harsh glow of my laptop screen. My eyes burned and my fingers cramped painfully, but I couldn't stop. I felt like a sponge, soaking up every detail of this bizarre reality.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
The sharp bell rang three times in a row, echoing loudly in my head.
Three separate, bright blue windows popped into the air, floating right next to my laptop screen. The white letters typed out across the panels so fast I could barely read them.
[Multiple Conditions Met: Magic Logic Observed via Video]
[Target Found: Ice Breath] [Target Found: Body Stretching] [Target Found: Short Teleportation]
[System Warning: Too Many Targets Added!] [Current Understanding of All Targets: 1%] [Status: Locked] [System Error / Hint: Watching videos on a screen is not enough. You must see the magic happen right in front of you in the real world to figure out the rules!]
I slowly dropped my pen. It hit the desk with a clatter. I took off my glasses and aggressively rubbed my tired eyes.
The system was right. Doom scrolling on the internet was only giving me the bare basics. I couldn't learn the deep secrets of a superpower just by watching a blurry phone video. I couldn't see the tiny muscle twitches or feel the shifts in the air. I needed to see these people use their magic in person. I needed to watch them breathe and reverse-engineer their tricks with my own two eyes.
I put my glasses back on and looked down at my yellow notebook. I had filled twenty pages with different powers and theories.
My parents thought I was helpless. The rest of this crazy society probably thought they were untouchable because they were born with these impossible gifts.
But they didn't have a system. They couldn't level up. And I had a list now.
I looked out my dark window. Tomorrow, I wasn't going to hide in the back of the bleachers anymore. Tomorrow, I was going back to school, and I was going to start crossing things off my list.