• CHAPTER 4
    I layed in bed, thinking about the quick kiss, and it took awhile. It was like fire against ice, Hot and Cold. His lips had burned mine, but my cold lips had been enough to but out the fire. I just couldn’t understand the weirdest part.

    The moment our lips had touched, I’d instantly wanted more, wanted to kiss him longer, deeper. All I had wanted in that moment, was to keep his lips moving against mine, although id kept it to a peck. That’s why I had practically run away, I was scared of that feeling, the absolute NEED. That hadn’t been my first kiss, and he wasn’t my first boyfriend, but kissing Ian was different than any of the other guys that I had kissed.

    I decided that I shouldn’t worry for the time being. As soon as I decided that, I fell asleep quickly.

    In the morning I got up, threw on an outfit and stumbled down the stairs. My mom looked at me, and didn’t look happy. Hmmm… no that wasn’t it, she looked like she didn’t want to tell me something. That was just fine. Besides, I was keeping things from her.

    When I walked out of my door, Ian was there, and I sighed in relief. He took my hand and we walked to school in silence. As soon as we were out of sight from my mothers house, Ian stopped walking. So I did too, naturally, because he was still grasping my hand. He spun me toward him and his lips crashed down on mine.

    This time I didn’t try and skip away, I wasn’t in control of myself anymore. I kissed him until I was gasping for air, and even then Ian didn’t remove his lips fully from mine, he just let them hover enough so that I could breath correctly. He’d Caught me up in his arms, so he let me down, and I noticed that he was gasping too.

    “We better get to school” I said, still breathless. He kissed me one more time, and then we raced to school. He beat me, of course. We walked into school and to class.

    My friends noticed the brand new close-ness between us and looked confused and a little rueful. They didn’t understand until after school when Ian took me around the corner, pushed me up against the wall and kissed me for a long time. I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him enthusiastically. Then I jumped up and hitched my legs around his waist so I didn’t have to reach so far. We kissed for a long time. Long enough for my friends to come around the corner and check what was up.

    “OH MY GOD!” Amanda screamed. Ian broke off the kiss and dropped me to the floor. I hunched over to get air better into my lungs. When I finally got my breath back, I looked up at Amanda’s shocked face.

    “What?” I asked innocently. Kissing was not a surprising thing at my school, so why was she all bent out of shape? She walked over and grabbed me by the arm and towed me around the corner to the nearly empty school lawn. That’s where she answered my question.

    “What do you mean WHAT?” she asked, still shocked. And I was still confused. “First of all, you were kissing Ian! Second, did you SEE the look of you two?” she screamed in a whisper.

    “Huh?” I said, deeply confused, “What are you talking about” I demanded,

    She grunted in irritation. “You guys had this thing around you guys, like an aura, I don’t know but it was red and blue, like the colors were battling with each other” she started explaining, “Then when you guys ended he kiss, the blue color went into you and the red into Ian…” she trailed off.

    I raised my eyebrow up at her. I was trying to make her think that she was going crazy, but underneath the surface, I was panicking. An AURA? That couldn’t be good. “Are you sure you weren’t just seeing things ‘Manda?” I questioned.

    She looked at me like id just asked her if she was sane. I guess I kind of did, in a way. “YAH I’m sure! You think I am crazy or something?!” and she stalked away from me. I sighed in relief; I needed to talk to Ian alone. He came strolling around the corner with a troubled look. Either He’d been listening, or he had come up with another problem.

    “You heard?” I asked at normal tone, no one could here. He nodded, then said “I think it’s time we did a little experiment” and walked toward the lake, expecting me to follow I guessed. So I caught up to him and walked with him until we got to the lake, and he paused.

    “Pick up some water in your hands” he instructed. I bent down, scooped up some water, and held out my hands to him. He stuck his finger in the water, it started to simmer, then It disappeared, evaporated I guess. I didn’t feel the heat though, and that was weird.

    “If we both have the same eyes, kind of, and I can do that…” he trailed off, still thinking deeply. He looked at me suddenly. “Then shouldn’t you be able to do something?” he asked me.

    I was shocked, rooted where I stood. I’d actually never thought of it. But as soon as the shock wore off, I was infuriated. Oh so I wasn’t good enough for him? I had to do something weird and abnormal like him to be COOL? At least, that’s what my teenager feelings told me. I had no idea whether to listen to them or not, but there wasn’t a choice.

    Then something happened. As the anger grew and flared, I got colder. Without a conscious command, my hand reached out, and I bent down. He bent down with me, watching my eyes, and then his eyes were locked on my hand, as it lowered and made contact with the water.

    As soon as my hand touched the moving, clear liquid, the lake froze in a matter of seconds. It started where my hand was lightly skiming the water, and went out from there, like a sonic boom of ice. The whole thing was iced over, and it was spring for crying out loud! I knocked my hand on the ice, nice and solid. Then straightened out of my squat.

    It took Ian a few seconds to recover, but soon he stood up to, he looked at me, and was shocked, as I was. Though I was not showing that emotion on my face. “You were saying” I said emotionlessly. He moved his lips, and then there came sound.

    He cleared his throat, “Well, you didn’t tell me that you could do that” he stated. I smiled grimly as he bent down and melted the water again. “But…” he didn’t finish his sentence.

    “Yes, Ian?” I asked rudely, “Am I cool enough for you now?” I said through my teeth. He whipped his head up to stare at me with enraged eyes.

    “Having these powers is not cool Molly!” he shouted, “Do you NOT know what we ARE?” he shouted into my face. I backed up, my face crumpling into that a kid wears when he is being scolded for something that he didn’t do, or someone whose pet had just died.

    “No I don’t Ian” I murmured, “Do you?”. He looked at the ground, and kicked a rock into the water. Before it could reach the water, some 25 feet out, I froze the lake again. He laughed, but then was serious again.

    “Yes, I do” and then he proceeded to tell me the story of what we were.

    First, he asked me if my mom ever told me that I was adopted, and I said no, she’s my mom. He said that I WAS, and that I wasn’t really even a girl. I just stared at him after that one.

    “I don’t mean that literally” he stumbled over the words, and he blushed. “I just meant that you and me aren’t really… like our friends” then he continued.

    Apparently, the government had experiment on our real mothers and fathers. We were born much longer after the tests had ended, but we were transformed. When we were born, the government had taken us away from our biological families, and put us with trusted adults, that would hand us over when we turned 18. I had gasped for that one, because I thought he was talking about my mother now but he wasn’t. Both of our government parents had been friends with each other, and didn’t want us to have to go threw what they knew our parents had.

    So, they passed us off to parents that knew nothing of our parents past, or what we were, offspring’s on human guinea pigs. When he stopped to catch his breath, and begin the next part of the story, I asked him something.

    “How do you know all this?” I asked anxiously. If he was like me, then he shouldn’t know a thing.

    “There are others like us, others that escaped from their government parents, that found me and warned me” he explained. “They are all under 18, so they are good for a while, then the government will come looking for them, just like they will do to you and me” he murmured. I looked at him with shock.

    My mind was frozen solid, but my mouth wasn’t.

    “But I will be 18 next month” I shrieked. WHAT? I had one more month before I was most likely going to half to be on the run?

    “And I turn 18 three weeks later” he murmured. “We will have to be very careful, and lay low” he said. “They will check on our assigned parents, and they can only cover for us for so long” he said to me. “We might have to leave this town, because there are some people that would do anything for money, and the government are just that low” he reached over to me, and took my hand.

    I thought this all through. I was in shock, but on the other hand I was completely calm. That was probably because I didn’t want to believe what was happening, what was going to happen, and soon.

    “Should I tell my mom all this?” I asked quietly. He thought about it for a moment. Then came to a decision.

    “Yes you should” he finally said. “We may have to leave, and she is going to need advanced warning”. I nodded, and got up, “Where are you going?” he asked.

    “Where do you think?” I laughed, “The sooner I tell my mom, the better” and I walked toward my house.

    CHAPTER 5

    I walked in the door, and yelled “MOM?” and I heard the flop of bare feet heading my way.

    “Hey sweetie! How was your day?” she asked, then saw my expression and asked, “What’s wrong?” I motioned for her to sit down, and I started in.

    “You never told me that I was adopted, mom, and I understand that” I began.

    “How did you find out!?” she asked, startled. Then she looked at Ian, then back at me.

    “Yes Ian told me, and there is a lot more…” and I began in the story, with Ian filling in what I missed.

    As Ian and I talked, I listened to myself, I sounded the same, but I didn’t feel the same. I felt that I needed to grow up a heck of a lot in a month. Having the story told the second time, it really hit me this time. Chills ran up and down my back, as I realized that this was no joke. I was going to spend most of the rest of my life running.

    I couldn’t be “carefree Molly” anymore. I had to be responsible, and careful. As soon as I turned 18, I would become an adult.

    She sat back under the onslaught of information when we were done, and said, “You guys… can do stuff?”. Ian opened his hand, and a flame irrupted hovering above his palm. I reached over, touched the flame, and it turned to ice. Ian caught it and gave it to Shelly. Who stared at it like it was foreign.

    “Ok” she said after a few minutes, “I guess we need to get you a pass port, and a lot of other things” she looked up at me.

    “Your gonna get me a pass port? What for?” I asked.

    “Well, you can’t run from the government of the USA in the USA!” she said, like I was very dumb. And then I realized, that she was willing to do anything to save me and protect me. I smiled wide and ran to her and hugged her tight. She embraced me back fiercely. “No school tomorrow, we are going to get you whatever you need, so that you are ready” she said, and I could here tears in her yes.

    Then she glanced at Ian, and asked “Do your parents know?” and he looked at her with an amused expression.

    “I haven’t seen my adoptive parent since he found out what I was” he said, with a hurt but amused look on his face, “But my older brother knows, my adopted one anyway, and he checks in on me every once and a while” he said.

    “What?” she said, shocked, as was I. “Well that’s unacceptable, u will stay with us until it is time that you too must leave. We have a guest room,” my mom said sternly.

    “That’s not really necessary Shelly” he said quickly. Humph. I kinda wanted him to live with us. It would be kind of fun…

    “Yes it is” she said, “And I won’t take no for an answer”. YAY! I thought. I looked at Ian and saw him shake his head and nodded an “Ok” and then left to pack up his stuff.

    Now that I was alone in my room, I thought freely. What would this mean? Where would we go? Was I running with Ian, or alone? Was I leaving my mom home, or was she coming with us? What would we have to do to stay alive, away from those who hunted us? And the people who were like us, would I live long enough to meet them?

    The answers to most of these questions didn’t come easy. First, this all meant that I was on a list that I didn’t want to be on. We would probably leave the country, which would definitely be the safest route to survival. And the easiest. Yes, I would run with Ian, what other choice did I have? I didn’t know how to hide my traces; I didn’t know anything that would help us on this journey. Plus, I don’t think that I could be away from him now, I was too
    attached.

    My mom would stay here. It was safest, because no one knew that I was handed off to her. If she came along, then she would be in constant danger, just like we would soon be, and I couldn’t handle that. I still loved her as much as I did yesterday, nothing about that had changed. I loved her with all my heart because she was my mom. I would NOT have her be in the danger I was stepping into.

    I didn’t know the answer to the rest of my questions, and while I thought of answers, a new question popped into my head.

    If the government was after us, they had quite a few recourses, and had the will to get the ones they didn’t. What if some one at my school told them that I was here, some one who had something against me? If someone were to ask them if they had ever seen me, known me, would someone tell on me, so to speak? That was scary to think about, so I shoved the thought away.