Two

"These pancakes are super good," I say, my mouth full of the stuff.

"It is?" Xander raises his eyebrows "People usually hate my cooking."

"Well, I haven't had real food in a year."

Xander laughs. "That's true."

We eat in silence for a few minutes. 

"A-are you gay?" I quickly slap my hand over my mouth. The room suddenly felt like a melting pot.

Xander pauses for a second.

"No, I'm actually Bi." He stares at his plate. "Did you find my flag?"

"Yeah...I did."

"Well, you were gonna find out eventually, so." He looks into my eyes and grins.

"Are you gay?"

I freeze at the question. My brain drags me back to the day when I came out to my parents.

I was standing in front of my parents and my older sister, Ava, who had come to visit for the weekend. I took in a deep breath and just said.

"So...I'm gay,"

My parent's faces turn white as snow at the word "gay". They were open homophobes, and now their only son told them that he was gay.

Ava stands up and walks over to me.

"I knew it," She says.

I let out a small laugh and pulled her into a hug. I look past her long, flowing brown hair into the eyes of my father. They are full of hatred, and they are pointed directly at me.

"Ava, let go of that...thing, " He says. 

His emphasis-and his use of "thing"- burns into my gut like a red-hot knife. Anger immediately follows. 

"I am not a thing," I say as calmly as I can. 

"Then what are you?" Dad looks down at me with disgust. 

"I'm your son!" My voice begins to rise into a yell.

"You are most certainly not." He says. "If God really gave me a son, he would be heterosexual," 

"And there you go again about god, and how the homosexuals are souls that escaped hell and came to Earth!" 

We stood there for a few seconds before my life turned upside down.

 "You can't live here," Dad said.

"Dad!" Ava walks over to him. "He's your son!"

"I have to agree with Ava," My mom looks at me, "Maybe it's just a phase?"

"A phase!?" I yell. "I was born like this, and it will not be changing anytime soon."

"That's why you can't stay here!" Dad yells.

"Fine!" I scream. "I don't want to live with parents who would just throw their own son without any thought!"

I run upstairs and dump out my old high school backpack and load my stuff into it. I hear Ava screaming at dad. 

"I'm OUT!" She screams. "I can't STAND to even LOOK at you right now!" 

Before I have the strength to go downstairs, Ava emerges from the guest bedroom with a blue suitcase in hand and storms out without saying a word. 

I quickly run to the front door and slip outside before they notice me. 

Ava was loading her suitcase into the back of her small car when she noticed me standing on the porch. She runs to me and hugs me. 

"I'm so sorry," She was crying now. "You can come live with me."

-

I did live with her for a month before she had to go to college. She begged me to come with her, that she'd find the money to buy an apartment instead of a dorm another day, but I refused. I left her a note the night I snuck out. 

"Thank you so much, but I am not going to be the reason that you go bankrupt. 

Don't try and find me. 

I love you,

Dexter"

-

"You don't have to answer if you don't want to," Xander says, pulling me back into reality.

"No, sorry, I was lost in thought," I thought.

"So you're not gay?" He asks a little bit of disappointment in his tone. 

"No, I am," I say.

"Oh, okay. Cool," Xander tries to hide a grin but doesn't really work. 

After a moment of silence, Xander looks down at my forearm.

"Your arm must be feeling better," He says, changing the subject.

I almost choke on the piece of pancake in my mouth. I had completely forgotten about my arm. I looked down at the bandaging that was still covering my entire forearm. I slowly take off the bandaging, revealing a nasy scar running halfway up my forearm.

"Huh," Xander leans in to get a closer look, "There's not even a scab,"

I was too intrigued by the fact that I healed overnight to talk. That whole bus event was and still isa so confusing. 

We eat in silence. Once I finish scraping the crumbs off of my plate into the trash, I stand up and place it in the sink. Xander tightly follows. 

"So, what is this Crystalis?" I ask once he places his plate in the sink. 

"Okay, I'll tell you. But it's a long story, so let's sit." He points to the couches in the living room. 

I quickly go and sit on the couch facing the TV, and Xander sits on the couch on the right. 

-

Xander takes maybe thirty minutes explaining things about Sadeer that I was never taught.

After the first initial cores were found and WWIII was over, scientists did experiments on them. They chipped off a small portion of each core to see if there was anything under the surface. After realizing that there was nothing special, they just left the chipped pieces in a container to rot and fade away. But the chip from the fire core grew unstable and exploded the entire lab. 

Nothing was recovered except three stones that had absorbed some of the energy of the explosion, completely changing the elemental substances inside of them. One of them resembled Ice, another resembled Electricity, and the third resembled Light.

Some people thought that these stones were even more special than the initial cores, so they took the stones and left for the only uninhabited place in the world, North America.

They then created three separate communities that would later turn into countries, Sadeer, Zarea, and Liis. 

The Crystalis is the stone that took upon the power of Ice in the explosion. And it has since been harnessed and controlled. 

Some people think that our community is the result of a science experiment and that we are not worthy of a life worth living. That we are "Sub-humans' ' since we live in the Sub-Sectors. Acts of genocide have corrupted the world, continuing throughout our daily lives today. 

-

"Wow," I say after he is done. "I didn't know any of that,"

"That's weird. Usually, they teach you that in school" Xander says.

"I was homeschooled, I guess so my parents could leave this kind of stuff."

"Why would they do that? It's Sadeerian history."

"I don't know, they're super religious. Maybe that's why."

"Maybe."

-

The obnoxious screech of the alarm clock Xander lent me sounds at 5:30 A.M. I get up and put on the same T-shirt and jeans as yesterday and head outside. Xander is already in the kitchen, shoving cereal in his mouth. He sees me and waves me over.

"Eat quickly, training starts at ten," He says with his mouth full of cereal.

 "I'm not hungry," I say. 

"Fine," He says. "But at least have a granola bar,"

He points to an open door that leads into the pantry. I walk in and grab a granola bar. By the time I was out, Xander was at the sink, rinsing out his bowl. 

"Eat on the way down, we have to go," He says. 

He grabs his jacket and walks out. I place the granola bar on the counter and follow him

We go down the elevator in silence. 

The bottom floor was flooded with people. Most of which were heading outside. 

"Follow the crowd outside," Xander says. 

Before I can respond, he is gone. I walk with the crowd outside. The air was cold and dry, just as it is every morning. I take a deep breath, Images of Xander fill my head. Some kind of invisible force seems to be drawing me closer and closer to him.

"Hey!" Donna runs up to me. Her bandages were gone, leaving a huge scab on her temple. "I'm super stoked for the first day!"

"Yeah, same," I say.

"You don't look excited,"

"I'm just tired," I lie. I usually get up well before this, so this is sleeping in for me.

We are stopped in front of a wooden podium. A woman in a long, flowing dress steps up.   

"Good morning trainees." She says. "As you probably know, I am Queen Eros, leader of Sadeer and the acting General of the Sadeerian army."

She stands without any bodyguard's insight. I was taught that she has full control of the Crystalis and doesn't need protection. 

"All of you will be given a card with a number on it." She says. "There's signs with those same numbers on them, you will go to the number on your card where you will start your training."

A short man in uniform comes around and gives me a card with the number 3 on it. 

"Sweet!" Donna says. "I have three too."

We make our way to the sign that displays a large 3. A blonde woman stands under it. She has the same uniform as the other soldiers, but there is a big black "S" on her right shoulder. Once everyone gets to their stations, she raises both her hands into the air, shushing the crowd in front of her.

"My name is Angelica Frost," She says. The name rings a bell, but I don't recall much about her. 

"For the rest of your training, you will be entitled to me as your trainer,"

We spend the rest of the morning doing pushups and running laps around the MTC. Once we had done 30 laps and 50 pushups, we broke for lunch.

Angelica leads us into a large cafeteria in the back of the MTC. Each seat has a plate full of pasta and a small cup of water on the table in front of it. Donna sits towards the back, and I follow. 

I barely touched my pasta, but I chugged the water in the first five seconds of sitting down. I was exhausted from the workout.

"You're gonna be in horrible shape if you don't eat," Donna says.

"I'm not hungry," I say. 

"How are you not hungry!?" She raised her eyebrows at me.

"I had a big breakfast," I lied. 

"Oh sure, at least eat half of it. I promise that you'll thank me later,"

"Fine,"

I take another bite of the pasta and another. After every bite, I told myself just one more bite, and eventually, I had scraped my plate clean.  

After lunch was done, we were herded back outside. There were lines of uniformed personnel with blocking gloves you wear when training someone to box. 

Angelica raises both her hands in the air to shush us, but no one pays attention to her.

After a minute with her hands in the air, she brings them down to her mouth.

"SHUT UP!" She screams.

The noise immediately silences. 

"That got your attention," She rolls her eyes, "For the rest of the day, you will be practicing your hand to hand combat. By boxing. Find someone to practice with, and put on the gloves in front of them. They will be your partner for the rest of your training, so choose wisely." 

I begin to walk towards a man at the end of the first line when a hand lands on my shoulder.

"I've been watching you," Angelica says. "You show promise."

"That's a bit creepy, don't you think?" I say.

She rolls her eyes.

"I always choose someone to personally train, and this year, I choose you." She says.

She then turns and walks away. 

 I just stand there, watching her white-blonde hair flow in the wind. She tilts her head a little, then stops.

"You're supposed to follow me," She calls out. 

"Oh, right," I jog to catch up to her.

She grabs a pair of boxing gloves and hands them to me. I take them and put them on. By the time I looked up from my hands, she had put on her own pair of blocking gloves.

"Okay," She says. "Hit me."

She puts her hands up into position. I punch her hand and feel the familiar jolt in my wrist as I make contact.

While I was homeless, I would sneak into the local boxing dojo. I was caught and the coach offered to give me free lessons since my arguments turned into fistfights more times than not.

I hit her again, this time harder.

"You can do better," She says, "hit me!"

I grunt and punch her hand again. And again. Each time hitting her harder.

"I know you can do better. Maybe consider actually hitting me,"

I let out a small yell and punched her again. Something surges inside of me, something cold and sleek. It runs up my spine and into my hands.

The feeling blasts into my punch, powering it stronger than ever. It then returns from my spine for the next punch.

"Good," Angelica says, "Now harder."

I grunt again and punch her. The feeling grows stronger each time I make contact. 

Sweat beads on my face, slowly trickling down onto my neck. 

"C'mon! Harder!" She was now yelling.

I let out a yell and punched her again. And again. 

Mist begins to swirl around me, growing thicker every time I make contact with her glove.

All at once, the mist flows into my hand. The feeling chills it more powerfully than ever. 

I decide to ignore it and punch Angelica again. Light blue flashes across my vision, temporarily blinding me. Something blasts my fist back so hard I lose balance and fall to the ground.