It was a nice park, if you could call it that. Michelle had driven them back into the unpaved forest, sticking to the paths as much as possible. Very little sunlight penetrated the dark green foilage above.

As soon as he was out, Sam ran. He scooped up handfuls of fallen leaves and threw them into the air.

"You'd think the paths would be clearer." Patrick knelt down to pick up a couple of leaves himself.

Elena took a leaf from him. "What do you mean?"

"It's summer."

"So?"

He shrugged. "I'm from the east coast. They actually have seasons. The leaves fall in . . . you know. Fall."

Elena tried to remember whether he'd ever mentioned where he was from. She wasn't sure whether she had ever asked.

Michelle leaned against the side of the camper, watching Sam run around in the leaves. Elena went to stand beside her while Patrick ran to join Sam. "So where are we going next?"

Michelle turned to face her. "Sorry, didn't catch that."

"You keep talking about how we need to have an end goal in mind, how we can't just be running forever. So where are we going?"

Michelle nodded slowly. "Right now, I'm just putting as much distance between ourselves and that facility as I possibly can. When he calms down a little, I'm going to talk to him about his past homes."

Elena sucked in her breath through her teeth. "That's not going to be a fun conversation."

"Neither will yours."

"Mine?"

Michelle raised her eyebrows. "You need to get him to continue his efforts to control his powers, Elena."

Elena winced. "Patrick said—"

"And he's right, about everything. But so are you." She shover her hands into her pockets. "There's no other way. We're only going to his past homes to try to get clues about what's going on with him."

"I thought I had it for a minute there."

"Oh?"

Elena traced the dirt with her toe. "As far as I could tell, Sam was putting out infrared. So I measured the frequency of the electromagnetic radiation coming from the bulb, and it was visible."

"Wait, there was visible light coming from the bulb?"

"Yes!" Elena threw her hands up. "I have no idea how. According to the detector, the bulb was working perfectly. We just couldn't see the light."

Michelle blinked a few times. "Okay. What made the light bulb shatter?"

"I'm not completely sure about that part. I'm guessing the anomalies generate a certain amount of energy. But he is starting to learn to control the powers."

"Not very well, I take it."

"No, I mean . . ." Elena bit her lip. How could she describe what she didn't understand well herself? "I think he can sort of 'push out,' and there will be anomalies over a wide space. Or he can 'pull in,' and the anomalies are just in a tiny area, but they're really intense."

Michelle turned her eyes back toward Sam, squinting a little. "I would think there should be anomalies all of the time, not just when he's trying to light a light bulb."

Elena's eyes widened. She had never seen it before, but she'd never been checking for differences in the absolutely ordinary.

"What do you think? Anything weird?"

She watched for the patterns in the way the leaves fell, but remembered that she couldn't be just looking for differences in any aspect of science. "Hard to say what to look for, exactly."

"Things turning invisible."

Elena shook her head. "No, I haven't seen anything like that at all."

"Differences in light frequencies?"

"Maybe. But the scope didn't seem to think so."

Michelle squinted at Sam as well. "His anomalies had to do with light and color, right?"

Elena leaned against the trailer and watched Sam for awhile. It was hard to tell, because he was playing tag with Patrick and running fast, but if she was really looking for it—at some distance away from Sam, things looked like maybe, maybe they were slightly off.

Patrick caught up to Sam and picked him up, and his shirt turned a slightly brighter color.

Slightly.

Gasping, Elena stood up straight. "Did you see that?"

"See what?" Michelle asked.

Elena cleared her throat. "Hey, Sam!"

He came running over to her. "You should come play with us!"

She took a step back as he came near. She couldn't help it. "Hey, can you do that thing with your powers where you push out?"

Sam's nose wrinkled. "I don't know. It was bad last time."

"Maybe it's only bad if you have a piece of glass in your hands. I don't know. Can you just try for me?"

He shook his head. "I don't want to use my powers anymore. Because I don't know how to use them for good, and I might use them for evil."

Elena took a breath and glanced at Michelle, who smiled at Sam. "But Sam," Michelle said, "you can't just completely give up. Superheroes don't do that, either."

"Some do," he mumbled.

"But not you."

"Yes me. I already did." He fidgeted with the bandaids on his fingers.

Patrick came over to stand beside Michelle. "Sam, it's your choice. But you can do amazing things. Don't you want to do amazing things?"

"No."

Patrick blinked and nodded. "Okay—um, well—"

"Sam." Elena knelt down in front of him. "You know how sometimes, there are just things you need to do?"

"Like what?"

"Like leaving camp. Like jumping out of a high window when someone's trying to hurt you. Like . . . like going back to your old foster home."

"I hate those things."

"Exactly. But we had to do them."

Sam pursed his lips and crossed his arms.

Elena bit her lip. She wasn't sure how honest to be with him, but nothing else they were saying was doing any good. "Sam, I'm not brave. I couldn't have jumped out of that window, and I couldn't have—" her voice broke— "I couldn't have gone home and faced my old parents. But you're brave. And there are people who need you to use your powers."

"Who?"

"Us."

His arms remained crossed, but his eyes widened a little.

She swallowed and stood. "Sam, we've never seen powers like yours. We don't know what they are, and we don't know what's happening with them. But you know what we just saw? We saw Patrick's shirt change color when you got close."

Sam lowered his arms, his brow furrowed. He stared off into space.

"Sam, do you understand?"

Finally, he let out a laugh. "You're joking me."

"No. We really did see Patrick's shirt change color."

"That's not a power! Everyone can do that!"

"Everyone—" Elena's voice caught in her throat. He was young enough, and he had been passed from home to home enough. Maybe it had just never occurred to him that the ability he'd always had could be unique. "Sam, have you ever seen anyone else change colors of objects around them?"

He nodded. "My science teacher in first grade did this trick with these cups of water, where she poured water together and it turned red."

Elena's eyes fell closed. She'd done the same demonstration herself. It involved using acids and a color-changing indicator. "Okay, anyone else?"

"My friend in kindergarten made his toys glow in the dark."

"Yeah, but—" She laughed without smiling. "How about this week?"

"Yes. Miss Michelle made those beads change colors."

Elena buried her face in her hands. He had every reason to believe his powers were commonplace. "Well, when you change the colors of things, do you do it on purpose? Or does it just happen?"

He shrugged. "Both. It's like breathing. I can breathe on purpose, but if I don't think about it, I still do it anyway on accident."

"So, when you do think about it . . ." Elena glanced around the forest. "Can you make that tree turn a different color?"

He turned to point at a tree about ten feet away from himself. "That one?"

She nodded.

He squinted. The leaves turned a bit yellower, the trunk turned a little darker, but so did everything within a ten foot radius.

"Oh." He giggled. "I guess that is kind of the same feeling as pulling in my powers a little. But you didn't say I was supposed to be doing color changes!"

Elena's knees felt very weak. "Sam . . . no one else can do that. You have a very special gift."

She couldn't bring herself to say any more. These weren't just anomalies. This was so much more than that.

On the surface, there was nothing dangerous about being able to change the color of an object. And most of what she had seen recently appeared to be lowering the frequency of the the light, not raising it. Then again, the monochromatic room had been the opposite. And if he could raise the frequency . . .

After visible light came ultraviolet, which was bad for skin but not terribly dangerous. After ultraviolet came X-rays, which were a little more dangerous. After X-rays came gamma rays. Those were what most people thought of as nuclear radiation. In low doses, they rose a person's chances of getting cancer. In high doses, they could kill.

"Well, okay!" Sam grinned. "Don't worry, Miss Elena. I won't ever use my powers for evil. Only for good." He reached for her hand, but a small shock made him pull his hand back.

Elena couldn't smile back.