I didn’t have the money to get my car out of impound, so I told Shawn to take me back to my apartment. I wasn’t going to tell him that the old grandma mobile had been towed or that I didn’t have the money to get it back. If he pressed, my tardiness was a result of my car breaking down and having to take it to “the shop”.

It appeared the fabrication was unnecessary because Shawn was in a daze. He slouched in the driver’s seat with his half-lidded eyes hypnotized by the road like a pocket watch in the hands of a magician. Shawn loved his convertible, but I wasn’t really a car guy, so I had no idea what model it was or how many cylinders it had. It hummed down the freeway. The volume and pitch of the engine rising and falling like mountains of sound. He was usually anal about keeping the interior clean, but the leather seats, the steering wheel, and the floormats all had blood on them. He must have been trying to process everything that happened at the Hasbrook’s, so I decided to go easy on him.

“You almost got everyone killed back there.” I stated, lacking any compassion for his internal struggle. Going easy wasn’t in my repertoire at that juncture. I didn’t see a point in coddling him after his massive failure. It was important that he knew how badly he’d screwed up. That’s the only way he’d remember not to do it again.

He stirred from his stupor to glance at me and then, more attentively, back at the road. The corner of his mouth rose in a smirk before he spoke, “I thought you said she had an affliction… of the soul!” There was a long pause. “C’mon, I’m not stupid. None of that would have happened if you showed up on time.” I had reservations about his intelligence, so I remained silent. He was still shifting the blame.

When I entered people’s minds, I was interacting with their inner selves, their subconscious. His conscious and subconscious minds hadn’t convened within his dreams yet. He had absolutely no idea, and may never know, what happened inside his head. Regardless, he probably wasn’t ready to come to terms with what he had felt when I was mucking about in there.

That was further evident by the excuses that gushed from his mouth, “I couldn’t wait in my car forever and wouldn’t have been able to stall them that long. I watched you plenty of times and it looked easy, so I just did it the same way.” By plenty of times, he meant thrice; two of which he hadn’t even successfully moved any energy yet. This is the problem with spoiled kids. They’re always in a rush, not caring about consequences, and never knew how to accept responsibility for their mistakes.

His eyes darted between me and the pavement a couple times. “What the heck happened back there anyway; why did she turn into that?” He asked.

“As I tried to explain before I charged in there. Bringing people back to life is a bit more complicated than a frat party. It’s more like baking a cake. There are several ingredients that you need to prepare in a certain way. You can’t just measure out the amount of flour you used last time and expect it to turn out the same.” I explained, using, what I thought, a perfectly crafted analogy.

“I wasn’t thinking it was, and yes, you can. That’s literally how baking works.” He said with his typical attitude.

To be frank, I had no idea how to bake a cake. It sounded good in my head which was a bit concerning because something didn’t feel right in there. The conversation seemed more difficult than usual. I had received a lot of damage during the fight and was using the energy I still held to dull the pain that radiated from everywhere. Burning my reserves to pretend I was fine in front of Shawn was paramount for the sake of my pride. That explained it, I was just tired. Also, the Cara bites on my arm and shoulder were itchy so I scratched them. I wondered if anti-itch cream for bug bites would help with that. It felt like my mind was all over the place, but I jumped back into the conversation to cover up my lack of baking experience and to save my analogy.

“Wrong, that’s how you’d think baking works. You have to consider the time of day, what breed of chicken the eggs come from, whether to use a plastic or glass measuring cup for the flour…” His expression told me that I wasn’t making it any better, “The point is, you weren’t ready, and you never should have tried without me.”

“Well, maybe if you were a better teacher, and baker, I would have been ready.” Deep breaths. I saw his feelings earlier; he couldn’t help it. I reminded myself that his upbringing made him a pain in the death – and if I was nice to him, my rent might get paid.

I began to lecture him: “Fine, here’s your lesson for the day. Everyone has a system within their body which converts nutrients into the energy that gets used when we think, talk, move – pretty much everything. That factory generates it constantly and when more needs to be created, we feel hungry. That fuel is stored in the soul. As people age, the process becomes less efficient and over time, the body uses more energy to do the same things as before. When people get sick or overexert themselves, the system is taxed. During each of those circumstances, the body’s conversion of nutrients is reduced and/or the use of energy increases. That’s why the soul maintains a reserve, a buffer; the life force that keeps us going. Eventually, the person’s stored energy becomes too low to sustain critical functions and the result is death.” To explain all of that required a lot of focus, but it was much more concise than my previous statements. I was fine, everything was fine.

“You taught me that on day one. Her reserves reached zero, I get it. I’m asking you why she turned into a crazed monster.” Hmm... I didn’t realize I already taught him that, and I realized I had forgotten what I was talking about.

I stalled, “Ahh, great question, my precious student. Let me break it down in a way you can understand.” He rolled his eyes at me. I remembered he liked cars; I could just use that to explain how everything works. “You see, our body is a vehicle for our soul. Energy is the fuel that runs it. There’s a lot of moving parts that do stuff, and if you don’t maintain the car, it breaks down, just like mine did today. That’s why it’s in the shop.”

“Uhh… that still doesn’t answer my question.” Shawn said impatiently. I told him how the whole system functioned, made a car analogy for his benefit, and even explained where my car was, which definitely hadn’t been towed. For some reason I was confused; that wasn’t like me. My mind caught up a couple seconds after he started speaking again, “I get how energy works and what it does, but when I put it inside the hot dead chick, she turned into a monster, but when I saw you do the same thing with other people, they came back to life.”

“Ahh, I see. Clearly, you weren’t paying attention.” I was stalling, and insulting him gave me time to conjure coherent thoughts, which I suppose I would have done anyway. Also, I had to connect the next thought with my vehicular analogy. I didn’t want to repeat the baking fiasco. “Well…you filled up Cara’s car, but you did it by putting a hole in the gas tank. I don’t do that when I use my powers.”

“Wait, did you just string me along so you could make a play on words with her name?” He asked, but I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic. “Jesus! Can you be serious and explain it plainly instead of being condescending?” I just stared at him with consternation

Our conversation was distressing me. I thought there wasn’t any way to make things clearer than I already had. Was there something wrong with him? …or was I the problem? Either way, the tone he spoke with flared the contempt I still felt from the fight.

My restraint suggested that the hate-filled power I absorbed had almost fully been converted. Over time, I automatically and unconsciously filtered any energy that was tainted by other’s emotions. My body ran on pure, clean fuel. It needed to be that way to fully integrate and sustain me. It meant losing the ability to use elemental magic, but the purification had the benefit of keeping me alive. If it still hadn’t been cleaned by that point, regardless of the intention behind his words, “it would be so easy to turn the wheel into oncoming traffic, do a backflip, land on the wrecked remains of the car like Spiderman, then do some healing, but just enough for me to gloat over the misery I’d caused.” Thankfully, I didn’t do any of that and I didn’t say it out loud.

“Dude, that’s dark,” he commented. I guess I did say it out loud.

“Yeah, well, that’s your fault. Your inability to clean up the mess you made meant I had to handle it, and you didn’t even bother to help. Also, I needed power to do that so, I took it from you. And it was dark. Real dark.” Hate fell from my face like sweat during a marathon. Shawn’s expression was downcast, and he didn’t say anything for a while, but directing the conversation in a different direction, his face rose with a furrowed brow.

“That’s how you had superpowers! You stole them from me!” He misconstrued my scolding, and it wasn’t clear whether he was excited or accusatory; it could have been some of both. As usual, everything revolved around him.

He was reaching. He wanted to be special; he wanted to be better than everyone else; he wanted power. He clung to the idea that strength would give him all of those things. Having an ability would give him value. That misconception was part of his problem. Now, he was operating under the fallacy that having magical powers would increase his worth. If he continued to think that way, he would never be secure with himself. He’d be driven by the desire for strength at the expense of others. I knew that I had to respond in a way that deterred him from that dark path. I also realized that my mind had suddenly cleared up and it was no longer a challenge for me to think and understand that, but I felt a strain.

I decided to look inside myself to see what was going on in my head. Energy was drawn there by damage, acting on my intentions. It wasn’t being used to heal my brain though; it was making it work harder. I was wasting energy subconsciously to make myself smarter. I had to stop before I made things worse, but I also had to say something to prevent the birth of a villain. I chose to lie.

“Your ability doesn’t work like that, but mine does. You have the power to hold energy and move it around. I can use it differently. The lightning was one of my abilities; you were just fuel for me to end the conflict as quickly as possible.” Mollification was my only objective. I didn’t want him to think that he had magic. He needed to be taught the consequences of power before being given a proper explanation and demonstration of what was possible. I couldn’t do that in my condition. The rush of warmth in my head diminished. For some reason the words ‘deactivate thrusters’ popped into my head and I almost giggled as a result.

“But you hit her with lightning. I’ve never seen you do anything like that before and it happened using energy from me. Doesn’t that mean I have that ability?” Shawn inquired, still clinging to hope. I couldn’t follow, so I tried to re-engage my spaceship brain. There was some pain, but I persevered.

His question caused me to reflect. Control over electricity was cool and all, but once again it wouldn’t add any value to his life. The ability to use magic was incredibly rare and for some reason death had been a catalyst for him, kind of like it had for me. Over the years, none of my second chancers had the same thing happen until him, so I wasn’t about to go raising the dead like some evil necromancer to make a mage army. Dying changed you. There are many differences between life and life after death. Everything becomes dull; colors aren’t as vivid, food don’t have as much flavor, and your body feels strange and foreign. We’d gotten lucky and reaped a benefit from the experience. Using magic was a significant boon, but it could also come with a cost.

I was feeling that cost, and it was getting worse. My head throbbed, so I hastily constructed a response, “You were afraid. That fear – mixed with everything else you felt – made a dark energy. It caused you to freeze. I took it away from you and – used it to fix everything. That’s why being mindful of your emotions and understanding yourself is crucial – to the manipulation of energy.” Even with the boost, I struggled to construct sentences and had to keep reminding myself of what I was saying. I wasn’t even sure of whether I had answered his question. Rather than try to think harder and before he could come up with something else to ask, I changed the subject masking my difficulty, “I’m starving, let’s stop and grab something to eat. Turn into that drive-through.” It was a good segue since Shawn’s stomach rumbled at the mention of food.

“Fine.” he said grudgingly, obviously still thinking about the conversation. The car’s tires rolled onto the burger joint’s pavement, but I wasn’t just hungry; I was feeling incredibly nauseous. I pushed myself way too far, exceeding my limits, and I was still wounded. He must have noticed something was wrong because he was staring at me. “Are you alright? You look pale.”

A quick self-inspection caused blaring alarms in my head. My addled brain produced more spaceship warnings: ‘Energy levels dangerously low! Forcefield powered down. Self-regeneration functions offline. Life support failing.’ It almost made me chuckle.

Then I remembered that I was just asked a question, “Y-yeah, I’m just hungry.” Hopefully that curbed his suspicion. I turned to look away so he couldn’t see my face when got out of the car just as we stopped behind a line of other vehicles. Walking around the back of Shawn’s sports car, an involuntary grimace gave me a moment of relief before I re-donned the stoic mask; I still needed to tell him to get me food, “Get me ten sandwiches from the value menu.”

“Ten?!” Shawn exclaimed. “Wait, Jesse, you shouldn’t go in there, you’re covered in-”

“Yeah, you’re right, make it fifteen.” I slurred without looking back. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have ordered from the regular menu; it wasn’t my money.

Shawn may have said something else, but the glass door closed behind me, drowning him out. Focusing on going into the building was the only thing that kept me upright. Thankfully, the bathrooms were near the entrance because I stumbled my way into the first door I saw. There were urinals affixed to the wall, so I must have picked correctly. The room looked clean, so the employees must have actually taken pride in their work. I didn’t see a paper towel dispenser, just the stupid blower that didn’t even dry your hands. No one else was in there so I dropped the façade.

I braced myself over a sink and threw up. My vision faded but came back into focus. “The energy I got from Kevin isn’t helping anymore. Wait – who’s Kevin? No, I meant Shawn.” I mumbled aloud, probably sounding like a junkie. My brain definitely wasn’t working right, and I hurt everywhere, but I didn’t have a way to fix it. I had almost nothing left. I returned my attention to puking down the drain. It wasn’t vomit-flavored though, and it wasn’t the right color. I squinted at it and smacked my lips like I was judging wine on a panel of experts. It was a deep red with thick legs trailing down the sides of the porcelain. There was a full-bodied mouth feel carrying notes of iron. Oh – it’s blood.

One of the stalls opened at the far end of the restroom. I forgot to check them for people, although I doubt that would have been possible in my condition. An alarmed older man tried to help me, “Whoa, are you alright? Hey, you’re bleeding!”

I replied blearily, “No, I’m fine, but I don’t recommend ordering the fish sandwich.” Then I threw up again. My legs wouldn’t support me anymore. I heard a crack when my knee hit the floor and my head drooped forward against the front of the sink. Darkness enveloped me.