The next week at school, everyone’s heads turned towards me the minute I walked into the building. It was weird having so many people focused on me. I leaned over to Becky. "Why is everyone staring at me?"

"How much did you sleep this weekend?" Becky asked cautiously.

"Well, let’s see..." I said, tapping my finger on my chin as we started walking to the library. "Friday night is when I got shot, so I was out for maybe three and a half hours, Dad and I had a nice conversation after we got home from the hospital, so I went to bed at like, two in the morning, and then I slept until two in the afternoon and when I woke up, Dad and I decided to have a Star Wars marathon, so I didn’t get to bed until midnightish, then on Sunday I woke up at ten to a note that Dad was meeting up with Mom to talk about divorce things, then because I didn’t get my homework, I did that before bed and got to bed before eleven. Why?"

"Because you and Erika were all over the news." Becky said casually.

"What?"

"Erika’s parents had to go on the news to talk about the noises of music and gunshots at the church where the party was, and they mentioned you, by name, stating that you saved their daughter. Everyone on Instagram is calling you an everyday hero."

"Yes, because jumping in front of a flying bullet is an everyday occurance." I said, rolling my eyes.

"Well, you know people." Becky said, shrugging. As we walked, I moved my left arm slightly, feeling some pain. Becky smiled uncertainly. "Your arm still hurt?"

"Well, yeah. It did kinda get a bullet shot through it." I said, rolling my eyes as I smirked at Becky.

"Okay, Miss Human Shield."

"You know what Becky-"

"Hey!" Erika said happily as she ran up to us. "You guys doing okay?"

"We’re fine." Becky said happily.

"How about you Anna?"

"Great. In pain and tired, but great!"

"Your arm?"

"Yeah. My arm still feels kinda shot."

"Well, you did get shot."

I rolled my eyes. "Hardy har."

"Well, you gotta try and make some jokes about this kinda thing." Erika said, shrugging as she nervously laughed. "You… You are okay with my parents mentioning you-"

"Of course I’m cool with that."

"I just wanted to make sure that that was okay since we didn’t exactly ask before we did it."

"No, it’s fine." I said, glancing at the people nervously watching me. "I could deal without all the people watching me though."

"Morning." Keisha said, glancing over at us. Her eyes widened when she saw Becky. She sighed heavily. "Becky."

"Keisha."

Erika and I gave each other an exhausted look as Trayvon walked up to us, waving as he held a giant box in his hands. "Morning guys."

"Morning Trayvon." Becky said cheerfully.

Trayvon held out the giant box to me. "My mom made these for you."

"More food?" I asked, laughing a bit. The woman hasn't even met me and she already feeds me like one of her children.

"Yeah. She… Felt kinda bad that you got shot trying to protect Erika, so she made you a bunch of chocolate chip cookies."

"She really didn’t have to do that, Trayvon."

"Okay, but try telling my mother that. She won’t listen."

"Well, tell her thank you for me." I said, opening the box, growing confused as I saw brown cookies.

Becky looked inside, tilting her head. "Hey Trayvon?"

"Yeah?"

"Why are the cookies brown?"

"She decided to mix chocolate sauce into the mix to make sure that there was chocolate in there despite the fact that she added twice the recommended amount of chocolate chips since she didn’t think there would be enough."

"I was scared that they were burned for a second." I said, laughing a bit as I held out a cookie to Keisha. "Does Keisha want a cookie?"

Keisha took one look at the cookie, then grabbed the cookie. "Yes, Keisha does want a cookie."

"There’s that smile!" I said happily as we walked into the library, signing in at the computers as I walked over to the table that Keisha and Erika liked. As soon as the three of us were there, Becky and Trayvon sat down too.

"You guys are also sitting with us? What about your ot-"

"Keisha want another cookie?" I asked, holding out another.

Keisha took one look at the cookie, then snatched it and started nibbling. "They’re really good."

"You were right Saturday morning, Anna." Becky admitted. "We do need to act like friends if this team is gonna work. We talked and we decided that we needed to try and put forth an effort."

"And this is you guys putting forth an effort?" Erika asked.

"We’re trying our best, okay?" Trayvon said as that red haired girl that was making fun of Erika when I first met her, Gretchen, I think, walked over to our group.

"What are you two doing here? Let’s go to our regular table to avoid these weirdos."

"First off," Becky said, standing up and crossing her arms as Gretchen looked her up and down. "They’re not weird. They’re actually some of the coolest people I know. Second, I heard that you had been bullying Erika here. Is that correct, Gretchen?"

"Well, everybody-"

"I don’t care if everybody is doing it, okay? If I hear that you’re bullying my friend again, I won’t hesitate to go to Coach and get you thrown off the squad, okay?"

"You can’t do that. My dad-"

"I don’t care who your dad is, Gretchen. I’m tired of just dealing with your shit. You have two options. Either you stop bullying my friends and everyone else in this school, or you get kicked off the squad. Your choice." Becky said bluntly. "Now run along, okay? I am trying to talk to my friends."

Gretchen walked away angrily as Trayvon started laughing for a second. "I was so sure Gretchen was gonna kill you."

"What’s the big deal with Gretchen anyway?" I asked, shrugging.

"Her dad donates a bunch of money to the school. One of the stipulations is that she has to be my co-captain for the cheer team, which Coach hates with a burning passion because she is a horrible person." Becky said, shrugging. "Trust me, Gretchen has been pulling that shit with me way longer than she’s been pulling it with you two."

"Was that Gretchen Griffin I saw walking away from here? She looked pissed off." Callum asked, happily walking up to the table. He looked inside the box, his already wide smile widening even more. "Can I have cookie?"

"Yes, you can have cookie." I answered, grabbing a cookie for myself.

"Yeah, it was." Trayvon said as Callum took a bite of the cookie, eyes closed with delight. "Becky just told her off."

Callum nodded, pointing one of his fingers at Trayvon. "Your mom made these, right?"

"Yeah. She hasn’t even met Anna and she already loves her to pieces."

"These are really good."

"How’d you even find us? I don’t remember getting a text message from you." Keisha said, pulling out her phone and unlocking it to see if she missed anything.

"To paraphrase the queen villain known as Mother Gothel," Callum said, clearing his throat. "I just saw the looks of complete and utter bewilderment and followed that."

Trayvon looked around and saw that the entire library was looking at us. "Have they been staring at us the entire time?"

"They’ve been staring at me since I entered the school." I said shrugging.

"Same here. It’s honestly kinda creepy." Erika admitted.

Trayvon stood up, looking at the crowd of students. "Everybody, listen up, cause I have something to say!"

"Trayvon, what are you doing?" Becky whispered.

"I want all of y’all to stop staring at my friends, okay?" Trayvon said, spreading his arms out as he motioned to me and Erika. "What happened on Friday night was bad, I’ll admit that, but my friends here are just trying to live their lives and all of y’all are making that extremely hard because you’re all being stalkers and are watching their every move. Stop it. They think it’s creepy. Just go back to how things were before that news report, please and thank you."

As soon as Trayvon was done, everyone snapped back to their regular conversations and did their best to ignore us. Erika sighed heavily. "Thanks Trayvon. Seriously."

"No big. Just looking out for some of my girls." Trayvon said as the bell rang. We all got up and waved goodbye to each other, walking to our various classes.

To say that our classes didn’t do much was an understatement. It seemed that every single teacher I had either had a talk with us about gun safety or had all turned into history, meaning that we were watching some video because our teachers needed time to figure out what to teach us since this weekend had thrown a curveball at everyone. And it wasn’t like we were watching educational videos either. To list my whole day:

In Physics, we watched The Phantom Menace because our teacher said that we could learn something about our surroundings from the Force’s relationship with Midichlorians.

In English, we watched Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarves because we were going to be doing a writing activity that subverted traditional expectations in fairytales.

In History, we watched Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse because the main character is historically one of the most controversial Spidermen of all time and we needed to learn about and respect Miles Morales.

In Math, we had a gun safety talk and then started watching Hidden Figures because it was about mathematicians in the now prospering NASA program.

In Art, we watched Captain Marvel after an extremely brief gun talk ("Guns are bad, don’t use them!") because our teacher, Mrs. Lane, is a raging feminist who made my art class full of boys who have openly voiced their attraction to the late Brie Larson made us vote on whether to watch Captain Marvel or Wonder Woman.

And finally, in Band, we watched How To Train Your Dragon again since that was the one DVD that Mr. Graves forgot to bring home and didn’t feel like making the band take out their instruments.

It was like the entire school was holding their breath, trying to figure out the best way to gently talk about it.

By the time the school day ended, I was done with sitting down and watching movies. I was ancy. I wanted to do something.

Edward approached me at my band locker after school, casually leaning against the walls of lockers. "Have your teachers been weird today too?"

"If by weird, you mean forced us to watch movies all day, then yes. They were weird." I said, shrugging as I felt my phone vibrate, seeing a text from Becky that said that she had to go talk to her cheer coach about something and was going to be a little late.

"Look, do you have time right now? I want to talk to you about something."

I nodded. "Yeah. What do you want to talk about?"

"Not here. Follow me." Edward said. Growing confused, I grabbed my bag and followed Edward out to the back of the building where the student parking lot was. He leaned against a wall as I set down my bag. After a minute of silence, Edward looked over at me cautiously, as if knowing he was about to step onto a minefield. "On Friday, you mentioned that you might be the cause of your father’s death. What did you mean by that?"

I sighed heavily, not meeting Edward’s eyes. "Why are you asking?"

"I don't want to make you upset. I just... I want to understand your desperation over the whole thing. Obviously, something tragic happens, but I want to know what happens to make you have that extreme of a reaction to wanting to save Erika by jumping in front of a bullet and possibly getting yourself killed."

"I honestly think that everyone would be better off if I did die instead of having me live."

"Why do you think that?" Edward asked, turning towards me, a look of extreme concern on his face. "Anneliese, please tell me. I promise I won't tell anyone else. It'll just be between you and me."

"I can't believe I'm doing this." I said as I sighed exhaustedly. "Around the time I first got my powers, things were okay. The premonitions were a little weird, but they were manageable until a couple weeks after they started. I was kissing my mother good night, and I saw her, well into her seventies or eighties, carrying some groceries across the street as a car drives right into her, then backs up and drives away."

"Your mother dies in a hit and run?"

"Yeah."

"And what about your father?"

I slid down the wall, curling up my legs. "That was the day of my fight with Zelena, the last time I saw her. I honestly don’t even remember why we were fighting, just that we did and I exploded our kitchen, wrecked our toaster and my mom’s Kitchen Aid mixer. Dad came home first, saw the wreckage, asked me what happened. After I explained it, Dad just walked over and hugged me tightly. That’s when I saw it."

"How does he die?" Edward asked gently.

I already felt the tears welling up behind my eyes. "He’s being cornered in a warehouse by someone, I don’t know who. This person raises up their hands and red lightning goes straight to my dad’s heart, stopping it immediately. I cried right after I came out of it, but Dad thought that it was still because of Zelena."

"That’s why-"

"Yeah. After Zelena left and things calmed down, I got those glasses, added the special parts myself, and I’ve been wearing them until you forced me to get used to my power again. The fact that they blocked my main powers was just a happy accident."

"You endangered yourself because you didn’t want to hurt your father." Edward vocalized. "You just didn’t want to hurt him and that was the easiest solution you could think of."

"Of course I didn’t want to hurt him. He’s my father." I said, burying my head into my knees. "Why was I the one who even got this power in the first place? I make things explode, I can’t save my parent’s marriage-"

"But you did save Erika. Maybe the person with the lightning isn’t even you. Maybe it’s-" Edward said, sliding down to sit next to me.

"Just face it, Edward. My powers are a curse. I’m cursed." I said, my body starting to shake. "I’m destined to kill my father. I’m destined to-"

Edward quickly leaned over and kissed me on the lips, causing me to freeze, my mind drawing a blank. Sparks quite literally flew between us out of surprise. He pulled back as quickly as he leaned over, putting a finger to his lips, looking over at me nervously. "How in the world did you get static electricity on your lips?"

"I think that the better question here is what the hell was that for!" I asked, feeling my brain come back on, understanding what had just happened.

"That was the only thing I could think of to get you to shut up and listen to me." Edward said, staring blankly at the ground. "Sometimes, we don't get to control what happens to us. This... Power of your’s, it isn't a curse. It's a gift."

"Of course you said that to me." I said angrily, my head hitting the brick wall behind me.

"What?"

"When we first started talking and you touched my hand without my glasses on and I had that premonition? It was of you saying that exact thing to someone, except now, I realize that I was the one you were talking to."

Edward laughed for a second. "I mean what I just said though. Obviously, there’s a reason you got that power. You just need to figure it out."

"Trust me, as soon as I do, you’ll be the first to know."

"Why, thank you."

I smiled sheepishly. "You sound like you speak from experience though."

"That’s because I am."

"What aren’t you telling me?"

"I can’t go into it here. Too many people around. I’ll tell you after the meeting tomorrow, I promise."

"Anna, come on!" Becky yelled by the door.

"I gotta go." I said, getting up and grabbing my bag.

"Anneliese, wait." Edward said, quickly getting off of the ground. "I’m sorry I kissed you. That was highly disrespectful and the fact that I panicked shouldn’t mean anything. I’m sorry."

"It’s fine. I’m sorry I shocked you. I… Do that when I panic." Edward and I awkwardly laughed for a second.

"ANNELIESE, COME ON!"

I shot one more cautious look at Edward. "You know, that wasn’t really horrible for my first kiss."

Edward’s eyes widened as I ran away. "What do you-"

"Becky, run to your car." I said, running past her as I tried to push thoughts of Edward out of my mind.