Claimed by the Pack

Forever.

From what I was told, I lost my balance and fell backward. I sure as shit don’t remember. The fall must’ve made some impression, because even years later they still talked about it, every one of my classmates — the hollow sound of my skull cracking against the floor.

I hit so hard I went into convulsions, and ended up in a full-blown seizure. Mr. Reilly aged a whole decade that day, or so he told me later, long years after I went back to visit him before he passed away.

In any case I woke up in the hospital some forty hours later, dizzy and disorientated, but no less worse for wear. Other than having the worst headache in the history of headaches, I felt totally fine. In fact, I actually felt clearer than normal. Much clearer, as if some kind of a film had been lifted from my cognitive perception and I could see everything with a stark new clarity.

It was weird, because I got better grades after that too. My parents joked that the fall must’ve jarred something loose, or maybe knocked something back into place that suddenly made me smart. I saw it differently thought. To me, it always felt like something inside my head had been… realigned. Put somewhere it had originally meant to be, but for some reason, never was.

Other than that, there was no way to know what I could really do. Not until I actually did it. That part happened a few months later, and again at school. A kid named Scotty Howe thought it would be funny to unhook my legs while I was hanging upside-down on the monkey bars. I fell to the sand and hurt my shoulder a little, but the real damage was from the other kids’ laughter, which hurt my pride.

I saw him later in the week, on the swing, pumping as high as he could. Trying to do that thing kids do, where they actually believe if they swing fast enough they’ll pull off that magical ‘full loop’.

Watching him there, smiling and laughing, made me intensely angry. I wanted him to fall, wanted him to eat the dirt face-first, just like I had. I began imagining it in my mind’s eye. Saw it actually happen, and the visual made me smile. I even pointed my arm at him, swinging it back and forth like a pendulum, as if I could somehow make the disaster unfold.

At the very apex of his next swing I flicked my fingers outward, as hard as I could.

And then I pushed.

Scotty didn’t just slip off the swing, he went flying. I watched in abstract disbelief as he sailed through the air and slammed into the back fence, which had to be a good twenty yards away from the swingset. He tried to scream, but all the air had been knocked from his lungs.

A whistle blew. The teacher’s aids came running. And a whole crowd of kids swarmed quickly around him.

The grim satisfaction I thought I’d enjoy was spoiled by worry. Not worry for Scotty — he could fuck off, really. Worry that someone would know it was me.

Scotty broke his collarbone in three places, and became playground legend from that moment onward. On my end, it took another day or two for the whole thing to really sink in.

Scotty hadn’t done this, I had. I’d been the one responsible for what happened.

I couldn’t believe it myself, until I went outside and tried it again. First on an empty bottle, then on a pile of bricks my father had intended on laying a path with.

Then on a car.

That part scared the shit out of me. It scared the hell out of the guy driving past my house, too. I didn’t flip the car over or anything, but I pushed it hard enough to kick the rear end outward and make him fishtail as he turned the corner.

I also pushed it hard enough to make my nose bleed.

Over time, I found out there were limitations as to what I could do. But not many, though. I considered lots of options as I grew older, one that included driving down to Atlantic City the moment I turned twenty-one and pushing the roulette ball around until I got rich.

That never happened. On the summer after my eighteenth birthday the old lady showed up, and over the course of some very expletive-riddled conversations, convinced me to ride with her to Blackstone Manor.

Fuck you Xiomara.

In the end though, it had been good for me. Joining the Hallowed Order gave me structure. Purpose. It opened doors to a world I’d never known about; a world I developed a love for, and wanted to study.

And it was a world I was a part of, too. In that sense, I myself was a case analysis. I learned I was telekinetic, and powerfully so. There were books in the archives that spoke of other people who could move objects — coins, pencils, even stones. But no one in the Order — previously or now — had seen abilities anywhere near the extent of mine.

The Order gave me everything I needed — at least for a while. I read voraciously. Learned everything I could, went on every assignment I was given and then tagged along on others. I wanted to see everything. Every shining pinnacle and darkest corner of the paranormal world.

Even what happened in Savannah.

It was Xiomara who brought me in though. Xiomara’s people who taught me how to control and focus my abilities. Blackstone Manor became a second home for me, and its members my family. And then the Order gave me something more, too.

It gave me Alex.

I told all of this to Broderick, as we lay basking warmly in that peaceful orange glow. Everything about my life, my abilities, my origins. All of these things I’d never told anyone else, not completely anyway, not even within the Hallowed Order.

Everything but Alex. That part I kept just for me.