It wasn't much, but the carefully-folded paper in my hands made me want to skip the whole way home from school. I was so excited to show my parents, I rushed through my afternoon chores, carrying the small bale of hay for the goats and sack of chicken feed all in one trip, struggling the whole way.

I exploded into the house, throwing off my school shoes at the door. "I'm home!" I called out.

"I'm in the study," Dad's voice answered with amusement. "Your mother's stuck late, grading and office hours again."

He'd barely finished yelling at me across the relatively small house before I burst into the room on him, folded paper in hand.

"What's this?" he said, spinning in his desk chair away from the holo and afternoon coffee he was working on.

"Grades!" I said.

He laughed. "Good ones, I take it? You seem pretty excited about them. Should I wait for your mother, or should I read them now?"

"Now, please," I said, beaming at him. My homeroom teacher had given our report cards out all the way back in second period, and the little piece of paper had been burning a hole in my pocket ever since she handed it to me with a smile and a 'nice work, Davis.'

With dignified pomp, Dad unfolded his reading glasses from his desk and placed them on his nose, the large plastic frames making him look like a cartoonish bookworm. He flicked the paper with his wrist to unfurl it and began reading in a dramatic tone.

"Student name. Davis Morgan Blackett." He glanced at me significantly. "You should be proud, that's a pretty outstanding name."

"Dad," I complained.

"Grade. Nine. Also very impressive."

"Daaaad."

"Oh all right," he laughed. "It's just difficult to read with all of these 'A+'s everywhere! Literature, geometry, world history...Is there anything my boy can't ace?"

I felt embarrassed and stupid at his praise even though it's exactly what I'd wanted in the first place.

"Do you think...we could go out and celebrate, maybe?" I asked.

Dad's smile froze. "You know we aren't made of money, Davis."

"Yeah, I know," I apologized. "Sorry...I thought...never mind."

He looked guilty like he'd just ruined my grades and I felt like I had to say something to make up for saying something so careless.

"How about, when I get my part-time job, I'll take us all out," I said, forcing a grin.

"I'm not sure your paycheck will be as big as you'd think, but I don't think your mom or I would ever complain about being taken out," he laughed. "Tell you what, let me talk to Mom and we'll see how busy she is tonight. Did you do your chores?"

"Yessir," I said, grinning at having already won.

"Good kid. Give me a few," he said turning around and picking up his mobile.

After a few minutes, Dad tackled me on the couch and put me into a loose headlock. "What are you laying around reading for? Aren't your grades good enough already?"

I laughed and extracted myself, threatening him with exaggerated karate chops through the air.

"Get your clothes on, we're picking up Mom," he said, standing and grabbing a jacket from the back of a chair. "Seems she's got a soft spot for you and we're going out after all. Can't imagine why, though. Such a pesky brat of a kid."

He beamed at me and I grinned right back, racing to grab my things before he could change his mind.

We spent the half-hour car ride talking about my job coming up. Nothing really exciting, just a column in the local news...I was supposed to provide a middle-schooler's perspective on events and politics, represent the youth and mostly just write a lot of opinion pieces. The pay was bad, and it wouldn't go anywhere, but it was fun. I liked writing, and as Mom and Dad both told me, for a first job, it wasn't really about what you did, but just learning to put the hours in and do it.

I was commenting that if they wanted an average youth's perspective on things, they might not want to pick an honors student who was gunning for valedictorian, and while Dad probably knew I was just fishing for more compliments, he gave them to me anyway.

"Problem is, an average student wouldn't do the job, probably," he said. "Adding to your own workload voluntarily like that, choosing a job that puts you out there where people can see and read what you're making, you can't just hide in a back room or laze around on your mobile or phone it in if you're feeling lazy. It's a big responsibility, and I don't think there's too many kids who'd take it."

A broad smile put itself on his face. "Only the really special ones."

My giddy embarrassment was such that I had to change the topic shortly after, and we talked about his first job for a while until we arrived.

Mom's office was small, smelled like old paper, and had disorganized stacks of books and paper stacked up everywhere. I had a lot of fond memories of the place, curled up in one of her high-backed chairs studying or reading while it was Mom's turn to take care of me. Sometimes I even attended her lectures or office hours when I was smaller, feeling like I was a real college kid, and super smart just because my mom happened to be a professor, as though that genius was automatically hereditary.

With similar excitement to before, I burst in through the closed office door and announced my presence, realizing only too late that there was already someone in the office with her.

"Davis...uh...please wait outside," she said, looking uncomfortable and sweaty as the other woman sitting opposite her shrunk sulking into her chair.

"Oh. Sorry," I said and backed right back out. Dad clicked his tongue at me and shook his head mockingly, and I told him to shut it, which made him laugh.

It wasn't more than minute before the girl left. She stormed out like she couldn't stand being in there for another second, and seemed stressed and angry, even for a college student taking office hours. She was wearing a skirt and striped leggings, with long light-brown hair which trailed behind her like it was also put off by her annoyance.

She might have been cute if not so angry.

"Fail another one of your students?" Dad asked as he flopped into one of the high-backed chairs.

"Yes," she said, unexpectedly quiet.

"Well, she'll just have to do better next quarter, right?"

"I...I suppose."

Dad glanced at me with worry on his face that matched my own. Mom normally wasn't what you'd call 'reserved'.

"Hey, show her what you've got there, Davis," Dad said, and I presented Mom with my grades.

"Oh! Oh, I'm so proud, Davis," she said, and stopped again.

Silence fell over the three of us and I didn't know why. I thought we were happy here.

Dad, always blunt, just asked the question. "Is something wrong, honey?"

"That girl," Mom said, almost automatically. "She threatened me if I don't change her grades." She shook her head. "It's outrageous, how entitled some people are."

Dad looked pissed instantly, and Mom saw and apologized. "Well, are you going to report her?" he asked with cold fury. "She should be expelled! Who the hell does she think she's talking to?"

Mom's face softened. "Relax, honey. She's just a student who's a little lost. My job is to help people be more prepared for the world, not to punish every student who throws me a little shade."

"Throws shade? Mom, are you from the eighties?"

She sighed heavily. "Maybe as a literature professor, I should just stick to slang from Shakespeare, is that what you'd prefer, thou lily-livered hobble horse?"

"Ouch. Cut me deep there, Mom. Words can hurt."

She laughed, all signs of her previous anxiety seemingly gone. "Okay, let me finish grading this stack and then we go, okay?"

We agreed and Dad helped her with the multiple choice part, and the room fell into comfortable silence, the only sound being the rustling of pages as I closed my eyes and fell into an almost-meditative wait.

The silence painfully ended with alarm bells ringing right above my head.

"Oh for the love of--we just had a drill last week," Mom complained. "How am I supposed to get any work done at all if I spend all day evacuating?"

"Let's take the rest home," Dad said with an apologetic smile. "We can finish after dinner."

Mom agreed and I helped carry an armful of papers bound up with binder clips and rubber bands, but when we got outside of the office, outside of the building, to where alarms were going off in every building in the campus, we realized this wasn't a drill.

There was a fire, a big one, with flames licking at the sky and a pillar of black smoke so big it looked like a skyscraper.

"Oh...oh my God," Mom said. "The whole...the whole art department."

"Let's get out of here," Dad said, grabbing us both firmly by the shoulders. He began running, pulling us along but stopped dead suddenly.

"I warned you!" a woman screamed at us. I looked away from the fire and found the blonde angry girl standing there in the dark, right in our path. "You do what I say or next time, it's the English department which burns. You understand me!"

She looked unhinged. Her eyes were popping out, white circles in the dark. She was a crazy arson lunatic. Mom fell to her knees and shook like she was having a seizure or something.

"Leave my wife alone, you maniac! I'm calling the police, right now!" Dad yelled, whipping out his mobile. "You fail a class so you burn down the school? What is wrong with--"

He stopped and screamed, a noise which I'd never heard before in my life, which echoed in my brain like the noise was trapped in there forever. A moment later, he was smoking and rolling on the ground, but rather than putting them out, the flames suddenly burst from his body.

Mom screamed like a banshee, grabbing at him even as his body burned her arms. I stood there, unable to do anything, not understanding anything, my mind uncomprehending what I saw.

And through it all, the blonde girl stood and laughed, insanely, unhinged. Watching my father burn to death like it was the funniest thing she'd ever seen.

"You can't stop me! You think you can fail me? You think you can do anything to me? Go ahead, call the police, they can't do anything either. I'm so sick of everyone...telling me what to do...telling me what I'm supposed to do with my life...telling me I'm not good enough."

She was just screaming at Mom. Dad's wailing had suddenly stopped and he wasn't moving anymore, just...just sizzling like bacon. I felt dizzy. I wanted to wake up, wanted to go back to five minutes ago. If there were a God, just stop all this, please.

The blonde yelped and fell to the ground, dragged downward. In the dark I could see something wrapped around her like a snake and pulling her down.

"Angela, you stupid, blonde, son of a bitch!" a guy's voice shouted at her. "Setting a building on fire? Is this your idea of laying low?"

"Alex let me go! Let me go right this instant!" she screamed back. "I'm sick of hiding, and sick of pretending--"

"Are you sick of living, Angela? Do you have any idea what they do to Exhumans?"

"You call this living? I work my ass off and she flunks me anyway, because my 'premise is uninspired and diction limited'? When I could just incinerate her with a thought? It's a fucking joke! She should be begging me to give me an A."

"Damn it Angela," he said, walking into the light where I could make him out as a tall dark-haired student. "How long do you think that works? How long before they wonder why all these teachers are catching fire? You think everyone here isn't already on-edge about Exhumans? You think this--" he swept his arm out in the darkness towards the raging, distant fire "--is helping anything?"

"What do you want me to do, Alex. The building's already on fire. Now let me go."

They stared at each other for a minute. The wailing of the fire alarms continued, and under it, Mom's sobbing.

"We have to move these bodies into the fire," Alex said taking a step towards me. "Otherwise it'd be suspicious that she died out here."

"No!" I screamed at him, stumbling over and hugging my shuddering mother protectively. "Go away! Leave us alone!"

"Sorry kid," he said, and half-looked it. "But I can't let you rat on us. You know our names, you've seen our faces…"

"We won't tell anyone! We promise! Just leave us alone!"

He shook his head. "If they find out, we're dead. I can't take that risk."

Roots erupted from the ground nearby, throwing a mess of bricks to the walk and coiled around Mom. She didn't struggle as they pinned her down near the glowing embers still burning in Dad.

"The fuck?" Alex said.

"Can I...I mean...should I burn them now?" she asked.

"Yeah," Alex replied with some confusion.

"No!" I screamed at him, but my voice was washed out by Mom's who seemed to vibrate and writhe in her prison as smoke poured from her skin. "MOM! NO! STOP IT!"

I tore at the roots and found them to give way easily, but even after that, she burned and there wasn't anything I could do.

"Why? Why? Why?" I screamed at the two of them. They both seemed a little confused but didn't answer. It was only when Mom's screams stopped and she laid there, as black and inhuman a thing as Dad that I could tear my eyes from her and look at the two.

They just...stood there, like it was some spectacle and they weren't even involved, like they'd just seen a horrible accident and didn't want to help. So detached, so...so uncaring. Like they weren't even the same species as me, as Mom and Dad.

I'd never hated anyone before, but seeing them standing there, how they could look at Mom and Dad with those damn eyes, caring only about themselves, about their grades, about if they'd get caught, not caring at all about those two beautiful, amazing human beings who had just died so painfully and so pointlessly.

I screamed as I ran at the closer guy, a brick in my hands from the exploded walkway. He held up a hand towards me like it would stop me, but I wouldn't stop for anything, and I brought the brick down on head with both hands.

I didn't slow down. I screamed again, aware that there was blood all over me now, and ran right through the fires the girl put between us. When they did nothing to me, I saw panic in her eyes, the same fear and incomprehension that I saw on both of my parents' faces just moments ago. She raised her arms like she was begging me to stop.

I didn't. I brought the brick down and smashed right through her arm into her stupid evil face. We both wound up on the pavement and she groaned and curled up and tried to crawl away, fire spilling everywhere from her like blood.

I chased her down and I put the brick into the back of her head over and over and over and over and over until there wasn't anything left of her. I screamed and cried as I hit her and asked her again and again why she did it, why she had to hurt people, why she had to take my parents.

She never answered me.

The police found us that night. Four dead bodies and a kid. It took hours of interrogation, as it felt like a hundred different officers came and went and asked me the same questions over and over again, and I couldn't answer.

I was just horrified by what I'd done. What they'd done. I wanted to know where my parents were, I wanted to know if they were okay.

Eventually, a man came in who wasn't a police officer, he was wearing black instead of navy, with silver trim. He was respectful, and told me what I wanted to know, asking few questions but listening patiently.

He told me, yes, my parents were dead. They died as heroes, victims of just more Exhuman violence. He was very sorry, and wished he could have met these people who would stand up to Exhumans in life. He said as a representative of he XPCA, he would handle funeral arrangements, or said that if I wanted, I could.

And finally, he talked about me. He told me that I was the most heroic person he'd ever met, even if I was still just a middle-schooler. The courage and bravery I had shown by ambushing and killing two Exhumans, all on my own, after what had happened to my parents...he said it was the most courageous and amazing thing he'd ever seen, and as deputy director of the XPCA, he had seen quite a lot.

He told me statistics, how many lives I had probably saved, how much damage went undone, how many other children, just like me went unorphaned because of my actions on that day, and said that he knew it hurt, what I'd just been through, but that he hoped I could take some solace in the fact that I'd spared that hurt from others, a huge number of others, and that I should be proud.

He offered me a part-time job, at the XPCA. A junior staff position, something administrative internship in a branch not far from school. He said it would pay well, would take good care of me, and when I grew up and became a fine man, I would be ready to move up in the XPCA and effect real change in the world, save more lives, protect more sons and daughters and parents.

I heard his words, understood them. I recognized that he was heaping praise on me, praise I even maybe deserved. He was offering more money than I'd ever seen, money like my parents never had. The only praise I wanted was from my parents. The only money I wanted was to save them from working as hard.

I told him...I couldn't think about the future right now. I appreciated the offer, but I had to bury my parents first. He smiled and said he understood, gave me a card and said that if I needed anything at all, the XPCA was at my service. He stood, saluted me like a hero, and headed out the door.

"Wait," I said, before his broad back exited the room. He backpedaled and looked at me, expectantly.

"Yes Mr. Blackett?" he asked.

"If...if I join you...if I take this job and work for the XPCA…"

I swallowed hard and looked up at him. Looking down on me, the whites of his eyes reminded me of hers, the monster who'd taken the world from me, who'd killed just because she could.

"If I join, would I get to kill more Exhumans?" I asked.

He gave me a smile that said he knew what was in my mind and in my heart and sat back down in front of me, looking at me with level eyes.

"Son, if you join the XPCA, killing Exhumans is all we do," he said.

I nodded. "Then sign me up."