“Aaron… Adam… Ali… Ali?”

The stool next to me was still empty.

“Oh, Ali’s not here today,” said Mr Oswald, looking up at us from behind his computer screen. “Gonzalo, you’ll need to pair up with someone else. Nick, it looks like Peter’s not here today either—go and sit next to Gonzalo, would you?”

What? No! Nick Filigree picked up his things and slinked morosely towards me while Mr Oswald finished taking the register. No Ali, then. So my first day back after my suspension was going to be one of those kinds of days.

“Sorry I’m late, Mr Oswald,” said a voice at the back of the room.

I sat up straight on my stool.

“Ah, there you are, Ali,” said Mr Oswald, peering over his glasses at her. “That’s a tardy mark, I’m afraid. Come and take your seat.”

Nick harumphed and went back to his original place as Ali came and sat down next to me, then got her things out from her satchel. An unusual red colour bloomed in her cheeks. Ali Carter had tan skin, like me. I was pretty certain she was mixed race, also like me, though I wasn’t entirely sure which races—I still needed to find that out, but that would involve saying more than a few words to her.

“Hi, Gonzalo,” she whispered, and shot me a quick look. I hope she hadn’t noticed I was staring at her.

Her voice lilted very slightly over her ‘a’s and ‘l’s and she pronounced her vowel sounds in the back of her throat, which made me think that at least one of her parents might not have been American-born. Her eyes were brown—I had even looked in them once.

She looked away and I continued to study her. Her expression was an odd mix of refined and anxious, her big eyes often stretching wide above her little, slightly up-turned nose, betraying a mixture of pride and apprehension about the world. A wave of dark hair fell to her shoulders, often over one eye so that she had to shake her head or blow to get it out of her vision. Her mouth was a velvet line that was usually pulled tight in concentration, but very rarely would break out into a smile, just for a moment. Below that, her body curved in all the right ways to get a teenage boy like me very, very excited. Though I had to infer this from incidental observation—Ali always wore baggy clothes, and never showed any skin. In any case I wasn’t the sort to stare openly at a girl...

In short, she was beautiful. When Ali was in the room, it was like I was seeing everything through her eyes, hopelessly attuned to whatever I thought she might be experiencing at that moment. I sat stiff as a steel bar, hyper-alert to every tiny movement I made and every part of my body.

We listened to Mr Oswald explain what experiments we were going to be doing that lesson, or in my case I tried to listen. I couldn’t stop thinking about Ali. Why had she been late? Was she freaked out about what had happened to me, and so now she didn’t want to sit next to me in class? Had she even seen the whole of what had happened with Bill Jackson, or had she left before it was over? Had she heard from one of her friends what had happened, or what they were saying had happened?

Who were Ali’s friends, anyway? Since she was still new, I guessed she might not have many yet. I realised I didn’t really know much about her at all, except for her name, that she was pretty, that she was good at Physics, and that she sometimes spoke to me kindly.

Stools started scraping across the floor and people started moving around the room, fetching pieces of equipment. Mr Oswald must have finished his explanation. I followed Ali, her long black skirt billowing around her, and without saying anything we retrieved what we needed from the trays at the back of the room: a wooden stand, an iron vice-grip, and a steel pendulum ball.

My movements were over-thought and awkward and I saw them all through Ali’s eyes. On the way back to our work surface I dropped the vice-grip on the floor and bent down to pick it up when it clattered, mumbling “Oops,” under my breath as everyone turned their heads to look at me for a moment.

We got to work setting up the first experiment of the day in silence, the only pair of lab partners in the room not talking to each other. I had kept half an ear on Mr Oswald, and this was a very straightforward experiment anyway, so I didn’t need to ask Ali anything. All we had to do was rig up a pendulum using the stand and vice-grip, and then measure how many times it swung from side to side in a given amount of time in order to investigate certain aspects of ‘simple harmonic motion’. Easy—I was well beyond this in my textbook reading.

With the pendulum set up, I gave Ali a sideways look. She swept her dark hair out of her eyes and pinned it behind an ear. God, she was attractive.

Come on Gonzalo, if you can punch a hole in the wall with super strength then you can open your mouth to talk to a pretty girl.

I opened my mouth to talk to a pretty girl and a weird noise came out.

“Sayaaaa…”

I had meant to say ‘So, how about you get the pendulum moving and I’ll take the measurements?’ But all that came out was a soft ‘Sayaaaa…’ at a high pitch.

Ali pulled in her lips and cocked her head to one side. “Look, are you going to start the experiment or what?”

I blinked. She sounded irritated. I hadn’t been expecting that. I had been expecting indifference, or at most pity, not mild irritation.

“Oh. Right. Er. Yeah. Sure…” I mumbled in monosyllables like a moron. I took hold of the pendulum and pulled it back till the wire it hung from was taut. I picked up a stopwatch with my other hand and it beeped as I pressed the start button and let go of the pendulum. The pendulum began to swing back and forth and I counted the swings as I watched the timer. “Er,” I said, “if I call out the times do you want to write them down?”

“Whatever,” said Ali, pulling her lab book to her and drawing a quick table.

My brow creased. I wasn’t used to this. Had I done something to upset her? I must have done something wrong. I needed to fix it, but I didn’t know what it was.

So we just got on with the experiment in silence, except for when I had to say a number after taking a measurement and then Ali would write it down. We carried on like that for a good ten minutes, me hyper-aware of my robotic body movements and Ali’s presence, occasionally saying a number, and Ali just sitting there and once in a while scribbling down the number on a page next to me.

Mr Oswald circulated the lab, checking the work of the students and chatting to them. When he got to us he didn’t say anything about our experiment, but just looked at the numbers Ali was writing down, looked at Ali, looked at me, looked back at Ali, scratched his chin for a moment, and then walked off again.

I risked a glance at Ali. She was sat with her head in one hand, sighing intermittently. She must be bored. This was not going well. I had to break the silence somehow. But I couldn’t. My last attempt had failed. I wasn’t good at talking to anyone, least of all girls.

Come on, you’ve got powers now! Stop being such a stupid weakling, you weakling!

“S-so…” I said. I was going for casual but I was painfully aware that my tone sounded anything but casual. At least it was better than ‘Sayaaaa’ though. Now let’s try for words of more than one syllable. “So……where were you at school before you came here?” I didn’t even know that about her.

Ali regarded me for a moment, clearly surprised that I had broken the silence with some actual conversation. After a while she said quietly, so that only I could hear, “Thanks for asking. If you really want to know…actually, before I came here I was in Syria. But don’t spread that around. We’re not the most popular country with your government right now.”

“Syria…” I tried to keep my voice quiet too. “Your English is so good. I never would have guessed.”

“Thanks.” Ali smiled. “I went to a very good school. And I watched a lot of American TV online.”

A thought occurred to me. “‘Ali Carter’, then…”

“It’s a westernisation of my Syrian name—Alianna Kahn. My Mom didn’t want me to stand out too much…”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” I said, rubbing my jaw.

A pause. We were both thinking about the incident in the Science corridor, and I knew it.

I took my chance. “…what do you think about what happened between me and Bill the other week?”

Ali’s hand slipped and she made a long mark on the page where her pen streaked across it before it clattered onto the floor. Mr Oswald looked up from where he was helping another pair of students, but only for a moment. Ali coughed a couple of times and picked up the pen. Mr Oswald and the other students returned to their work.

“Just get on with the experiment, will you, Gonzalo?” said Ali quietly.

I looked back at the pendulum. I didn’t say anything in reply, but carried on calling out the numbers so she could log them. She had shut down the conversation. But at the same time, probably without realising it, Ali had given me a ray of hope: she had allowed me to start a conversation with her. An actual conversation!

I continued to read out the numbers from the stopwatch, but this time I only waited a little while before I spoke again.

“I know you were there,” I said in hushed tones. “I saw you watching at the start with the others.” When she didn’t tell me to stop talking, I grew bolder. I had been dying to talk about this with someone—someone who might believe me, that is. Someone who had actually been there. It was a risk, talking to Ali, but she had already seen what had happened. “Don’t you think it’s strange what happened to Bill when he hit me?”

Ali stopped writing down the numbers altogether and went very still, staring down at the desk in front of her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, almost in a whisper. “I left before the fight started properly.”

Another reply—this was turning into a full-blown dialogue! Intoxicated, I continued: “I saw you, though. You had disappeared by the end, but you must have been there long enough to see Bill throw his first punch. He punched me but instead he got hurt.”

She was quiet another moment. “Really? Lucky accident. He must have hit you in a weird way.”

The strange thing was, she sounded like she was trying to convince herself of this as well.

“I’ve wondered that too, but… but…” I thought about telling her about the full extent of my powers, about the experiments I had done on myself, but no; not yet, it was too soon. I didn’t know her well enough—yet. What if I scared her off? The powers were scary enough to me. “...but it wasn’t just that one time. He hit me a bunch more times after that, and none of his punches hurt me.”

Ali shrugged. “Well, maybe Bill’s not as strong as he looks. Maybe you’re just tougher than him.”

Heh. I liked her sentiment, but I didn’t want to be patronised. “Come on Ali,” I said, addressing her by her name for the first time, “we both know that’s not true.”

“Well, I did hear the rumour going around school is that you played some sort of Science trick on him...” She smiled a little at that.

I smiled back. “We both know that’s ridiculous. I wouldn’t lie to you about this, Ali.”

She turned her head to look up at me and our eyes met. I could see now that her irises were indeed brown, but they also had a hint of silver in them: a subtle shimmer in the warm chestnut that was easy to miss.

She looked away again. God, she was really making this difficult for me.

“Come on, admit it,” I said, just about managing to keep my voice hushed. “You were there at the start, you saw what happened. There’s no denying that something strange happened.”

“Alright, okay,” she said, still refusing to resume eye contact. We had stopped logging the numbers for the experiment altogether now, but she kept her eyes down on her logbook again and held her pen, moving it occasionally so that we at least looked like we were doing what we were meant to be doing. “Something strange did happen, I’ll admit that. But there must be an explanation for what happened to you.” She took the pendulum in front of us in her hand, pulled it back, and released it again, making it swing through the air. “I mean, we’re in Physics, aren’t we? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”

The relief was like a weight was being lifted off my back. Someone else had admitted what had happened to me that day! Now maybe I could stop questioning whether I was going mad. “Thanks for admitting it,” I said, still keeping my eyes on the pendulum. Mr Oswald had begun to circulate the room again. “Nobody else talks to me in this stupid school, and the only people I’ve had to talk to about it haven’t believed me.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Ali, “maybe they’re scared?” She pretended to write down another number. “What happened to you was really messed up, Gonzalo. And Bill’s not even back in school yet.”

I was having my longest conversation with a girl ever. Maybe my only conversation with a girl ever. The world had taken on a glowing, golden hue. It was like I was in a movie. I could do anything.

This was my chance.

“Say…Ali, I’ve been wondering...what would you say to, after school, you know, going to grab a coffee with m—”

“How are we getting on over here, then?” said Mr Oswald. Lost in my reverie, I hadn’t noticed him sneaking up on us from behind.

“Oh! Um, yeah, we’re doing good thank you…” I said unconvincingly. Had I just asked out a girl for the first time ever in front of a teacher? Crap!

“Yes, well, weekend plans aside,” said Mr Oswald, “let’s see what we’ve got here.” He reached over to Ali’s logbook and pulled it across the table to himself, stroking the space between his nose and mouth with a finger as he studied our results. He pushed the book away. “Your experiment started well, but you’ve fallen behind, Ali and Gonzalo. This is nowhere near enough work. Focus properly, get on with what you are meant to be doing and you’ll soon catch up.”

He stood a little closer to us and dropped his voice, so that only I and Ali could hear him. “Whatever the two of you are talking about, cut it out. You’re on thin ice as it is, Gonzalo, what with that incident with Bill Jackson the other week. It was very disappointing. Very disappointing. I don’t want to see you getting Miss Carter into trouble too just because she’s new. Now come on, get on with your work please, both of you, or it’ll be done in detention. I don’t want to see a couple of smart kids like you throwing your potential away.”

He walked away from us before we had a chance to respond, a classic teacher move, leaving us with our heads hung in shame. We got on with the rest of the experiment in silence, except for me saying the numbers, giving the impression that we were totally engrossed in what we were doing.

Once we and everyone else had finished, Mr Oswald explained the next experiment from the front, and we packed up the pendulum and set the new experiment up. We were to measure the downward force exerted by different iron weights by suspending them from a newtonmeter.

After we had got it going, it was only a little while before I couldn’t resist trying again with Ali, still drunk on my own new good fortune and powers. This time she was manning the experiment, changing the weights, and it was my turn to record the results in my logbook.

“So, Ali,” I whispered, amazed at my own newfound boldness, my eyes on Mr Oswald helping another pair of students on the other side of the room, “would you like to go for coffee with me after school today?”

Ali fumbled what she was doing, nearly dropping a five-kilogram weight onto the table. She steadied herself and took a breath.

“What for?” she said, eyes fixed on the weight.

That stung a bit, even through my newfound self-confidence. But I had started this now, I might as well finish it.

“Because nobody else will talk to me about this. You were there, Ali, I know you know that something weird happened to me, and I thought I could talk to you about it… You know, somewhere we don’t have to worry about Mr Oswald.”

Ali took a moment to respond. “…I’m sorry, Gonzalo. We’re lab partners, that’s all. I wouldn’t want to give you the wrong impression about us.”

That stung even more, right in my chest. The warm golden hue was rapidly receding. But all the same, she had hesitated just the littlest bit before she had spoken. She still sounded ever so slightly like she was trying to convince herself of what she was saying. I was all-in now; what was the use of turning back?

I thought a moment, then decided to play my wild card. “But, to tell you the truth, the weird things haven’t stopped. There have been more. I need to talk to somebody about it. I feel like I’m going crazy. Nobody else will believe me.”

This time Ali did drop the weight by accident. I saw the circular iron weight slip off the hook of the newtonmeter and fall on the fingers of my right hand, but I only felt the lightest of sensations, as if a feather had just landed on them. It still made a clinking thud though.

I looked at the weight. I looked at Ali. She was staring at me, those big eyes stretched wide, her mouth slightly open. A moment of silence passed between us. I looked up. Everyone else was staring at us too, including Mr Oswald.

I realised what they were waiting for. “Oh,” I said. “Owww!” I pulled my hand out from under the weight and shook it, blew on it, then shoved it under my armpit, grimacing, making “Ouch” noises and trying to remember what it looked like for someone to experience pain.

People got back to their work, but a murmur of chatter started to ripple out across the classroom, our desk at its silent epicentre.

“A freak as well as a weakling” I thought I heard Jimmy Hudson, one of the more athletic members of our Physics class, say.

“Probably gone schiz after all those years of beatings from Bill,” said Justin White.

Mr Oswald strode over us as Ali hurriedly re-attached the weight to the newtonmeter and we tried to look like we were still doing what we were meant to be doing. He stopped in front of our worktop, put his hands on the plastic lip of it, leaned in close and said to us quietly “Both of you. Friday after school. Detention.”

We carried on with the experiment, but Ali’s cheeks were completely red now, and I’m sure mine were too. I had never received a detention before in my life. And now a suspension and a detention, in the same month? Mom was going to kill me.

Ali said nothing more to me until just before the end of the class when we were packing up the second experiment.

Amidst the noise and clanging of the rigs being disassembled and the weights being returned to their boxes, when Mr Oswald’s back was turned, she whispered to me “Alright.”

“Alright what?” I whispered back.

“I’ll meet up with you.”

The light turned back on inside my head. “Where?” I said.

“Find a coffee shop.”

“When?”

“Friday. After our detention,” she said.

And then she was gone.