This is why we don’t read

Johnny seemed to be having the worse headache out of all of us. His eyes were clamped shut so hard I was afraid he would tear his eyelids. Some objects started to lift off of where they were, floating through the air with nothing touching them. They were suspended in midair, slowly rising upward. Johnny had his hands pushed against his ears like he was trying to block out some unheard noise.

Miles is where things started getting more concerning and dangerous. He covered his face with his hands and was curling up into the fetal position. It started as a spark. Just a small jump of electricity off his shirt. Then it kept increasing rapidly. There are large amounts of lightning gathering and bouncing off of him and on to other things. If this were a different situation we all would've most likely duck and cover. But, because of the blinding pain and confusion of what was happening, we all pretty much ignored it. We are all going through our own personal struggles right now. As much as I want to make sure everyone's okay, I don't know what okay is anymore.

Ellie wasn't affected by the bolts escaping from Miles's body. An energy of some sort started to form around her. It was moving and looked like a thick web of purple and black. It kept getting more and more solid as the seconds passed. The lightning bounced off of it. Then it got stranger because she disappeared. With a flash of light, she was gone. With another flash, she reappeared a few feet away, right in front of the closet. Again she was gone and came back to the bed. It went on and on all around the room. She even landed on top of Ray once.

Amy's outburst added more danger to the situation. What started as a small draft developed into a full-blown wind storm. Things were flying off of various surfaces and being flung around. The items that seemed to be in stasis because of Johnny spun through the air with the wind. I ducked down because I'm not sure about everyone else, but getting hit in the head with a high-speed "Mrs" mug is not how I wanna go out.

Ray's was scary but cool. A field of stars manifested and slowly spread across the ceiling. It was a breathtaking sight. That's not something that I think that anyone has ever seen. I cannot believe the things I have seen with my eyes in the past few minutes. This was the most spectacular though. I would stare at this forever if given the chance. Although it's so beautiful, I wonder about how safe it is. There are stars in my room. Am I gonna get radiation poisoning from this? Can this sea of stars kill us? All stars are suns so this could probably melt us or something. I'm not sure any of this is safe.

Now it leaves me. What's going on with me? I'm having the worst panic attack in existence most likely. I feel like I'm not only feeling my worries but the worries of everyone around me. And on top of that, it's like everything I'm feeling is amplified.

My back started to feel cold. An icy feeling spread from my lower back and up to my shoulders. I pulled myself off the wall I was sitting up and turned around. There was an outline of me formed in ice on the wall. This just keeps getting worse and worse. But there is logically, or rather illogically, one thing that could have caused this. The book. Something about this book made all of the powers we wrote down. Maybe reading those magic-sounding words wasn't the best idea. I tried to think of something to cease the pain. Something I could write down that would stop this. But the pain in my head, clutch on my heart, and curl in my stomach are making it hard to think. I figured that the best thing to do is write something that would take away the pain but keep the powers. Because that's what these are, superpowers. And why would I want to get rid of those? So I wrote down the only thing that I could think of at the moment. "And they could control it." Nothing happened though. The pain didn't go away. The icy feeling found its way back on my backside. Words that make little sense swirled through my head. Then I remembered the words. I read them aloud again and the tug of my heart and pain in my head ceased. The different flashes of power happening around me died down too. My chest still felt tight but that's literally because I just had a superpower scare. Once everyone was back to normal, no one spoke. Processing what the fuck just happened took a few minutes.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. It was barely audible but I know they all heard because of how quiet it is.

"Jay, this isn't your fau-" Johnny quickly tried to reassure. I wasn't gonna let him.

"Yes, it was. If I didn't pick up this stupid book we wouldn't be here. Some random fucking guy just had to drop it at my feet. And now, we have superpowers that almost killed us. I was the one that suggested we write all of it down and I was the one that read those stupid spell words. All of this falls on me." I blew up. I didn't wanna yell or try and make anyone feel bad. I'm just confused. Why would the book give me superpowers just for them to try and kill me? I may have fixed it but I also caused it.

"You can't take all the blame for yourself. If anything it was me asking that stupid question. But we're okay now. Nothing bad happened and we're okay." Ray was right. Logically I know that. But it doesn't keep me from freaking out because, holy shit, that really just happened.

"Yeah, the only side effect is I feel like I have some electricity in my body. It feels like I can grab it." Lightning shot from the palm of Miles's hand. A small scorch mark was left where it hit my dresser. "Holy shit!" He turned back to look at me with an amused look on his face. "I thought you took them away or something!" I shrugged my shoulders.

"I never said that. I just gave us control over them. So, now we have powers now, yay." I said in with enthusiasm. They were not amused.