Ollie drops his hand from my face. “You must have a ton of questions, I know I want to ask you a bunch of stuff.”
“I do have questions, like how is it possible that superheroes are walking around, and nobody knows? How many of you are there? Does everyone in your family have abilities? Did it hurt when your hands went all… fiery?” I rush out, my cheeks flushed.
Ollie’s eyes squint and his lips turn up in a smirk as he holds up his hands ticking off his fingers while he answers me. “You’d be surprised what people will ignore just so they can go on believing what they’ve always been told is true.” Next finger. “More than a few, less than a lot.” Third finger. “For the most part, yes everyone in our families has abilities.” Fourth. “What was the last question? Oh yeah. Did it hurt?” He leans in a little closer and whispers, “Not even a little. It felt amazing actually, like taking a deep breath after being underwater.” His eyes are shiny with excitement.
A slow smile pulls at my lips, his exuberance contagious. Reality crashes into me seconds later. No matter how much I would like to be what they’ve been waiting for, I’m not. My grin slips. “It’s not me. I’m not what you think. I’m just a girl, a normal girl. I don’t have super powers.”
“You will,” Dante supplies from the couch. I turn to face him, noting the he and Milo have given up the illusion of not listening to our conversation.
“When and how will I get these powers?” I’m incredulous. It’s one thing to make me believe that they have abilities when I can see them with my own eyes, but to convince me I possess them too?
“The when, is a difficult question to answer,” Milo intones. “There hasn’t been an Infinity with five, in a very long time, maybe ever. Plus, we need to know why, or how it is you aren’t registered in our community.”
“You’ve said your mom is sick, right? What about your dad?” Dante leans forward, his elbows braced on his knees.
“My dad died when I was little, two or three. I don’t really remember him, and my mom doesn’t really like talking about him.” Ignoring the TV, I turn to face Dante and Milo.
“I don’t have a mark, a what did you guys call it… indent?”
“Identifier,” Milo corrects me.
“Well I don’t have an identifier.”
“Are you sure? You might not even know, it could look like a birth mark.” Dante grabs the thick leather band on his wrist, spinning it.
I wrinkle my nose, thinking of anything that could be what they’re referring to. “I don’t think so. I don’t even have a birthmark.” I tell them finally.
“This would have showed up around the time you turned sixteen.” Ollie’s eyebrow rises in question. I shake my head in refusal. “You have to have the mark Laura, we can feel you’re connected to us.”
“What if you’re wrong? I’m trying to tell you guys. I’m not some super-secret squirrel. You said that this runs in families, right? So, wouldn’t my mom know something like this about me?” My response is clipped. I’m tired of trying to convince them that I’m not in their Infinity group or whatever.
“Do you remember the first time you touched one of us?” Ollie questions as he pushes one fist into the other, cracking his knuckles. “It felt strange, kinda like an electric charge?”
That I can agree with, touching them is a completely different experience. I look down at my hands, rubbing my thumb over my fingernails. “That’s what you’re basing all this on, that I get a tingle when you guys touch me? That probably has more to do with how sheltered I’ve been than me having abilities. It’s called biology, hormones and pheromones. Attraction,” I add, heat rising in my cheeks.
Dante chuckles and lets his back hit the couch. “While I can admit there’s definitely some major attraction going on,” his eyes track over me lazily, “the tingles, as you call them, are part of the Infinity. It’s part of the process, a hundred years ago they didn’t have a computer database with all the markers cataloged so you can find your grouping. You had to have a way to know if you met your matches. It wasn’t considered polite to strip naked every time you met someone new to compare identifiers.”
“We can try that route though, I’m more than willing to forgo the niceties.