I froze, feeling my entire system shutting down. What? 

For the smallest of milliseconds, everyone turned to me and Mrs Saran, and I heard the gears in their brains turning as they tried effortlessly to remember the name.

Evelyn Arrow.

"Gypsica, answer me please," Mrs Saran said, the tone of authority in her voice as solid and tangible as a brick wall.

I glanced at everyone looking, then spoke. "The note was just a joke, I was mucking around. I'm sorry."

Mrs Saran didn't look away from me.

Everyone scrambled out of the room, and a few minutes later I was let off with a warning about paying attention.

I didn't know that English incident would have set off the things to flip my world upside down.

<⚙︎>

I found Lily, Case, Skye, Gracie, and Lyn waiting outside for me, ignoring all the other kids.

"You alright, bud?" Case asked. I nodded, tightening my grip on my bag straps.

"I'm so sorry, Gyps!" Gracie cried, hugging me. "I didn't know and I was just joking –"

"Gracie, it wasn't your fault," Lyn said sympathetically before I could say anything. That was one of the best things about her. She was always the first to jump in, the first to the rescue.

"Exactly. You didn't know what would happen," I tried to help. I felt like I was leaving everything to Lyn. "It's fine, I promise!"

There was a pause while me, Gracie, and Lyn did a three-way hug.

When we broke apart, we resumed walking. Case, Lily, Gracie, Skye and Lyn were all talking and laughing, but I didn't really hear it. I was thinking about other things. 

We made it to the infamous playground and sat at a table, and slowly began unpacking our provisions.

Case broke out spicy cheese Doritos, Lily was armed with Smiths originals, I had brought Tim Tams and Mint Slices (courtesy of my friends nagging me to let them try Australian desserts), Gracie and Skye had both conspired to bring double packets of M&Ms and Lyn had brought the Pringles and whipped cream. It was quite clear we would all feast well tonight.

Skye echoed this thought, declaring, "tonight, we dine like KINGS!"

We spread the goods across the table, each chattering care-freely. I stared off into the distance, cracking a Dorito between my teeth.

Lyn shook me by the arm. "Hello? Earth to Gyps!" She barked concernedly. I woke out of my stupor. "Oh? Sorry, I was daydreaming."

"MOOOD." Case chucked an M&M into her mouth.

Skye, ever the optimist, decided we needed a subject change.

"Who here wants to see me jump through my own leg?" She asked.

I looked at her worriedly. "...You loaded up on Pepsi, didn't you?" I asked, and Lyn laughed behind me. 

"She always does, Gyps," she grinned. Lyn unconsciously brushed her brown hair out of her eyes, and I was reminded of the note that had gotten me in trouble. 

I mean, it's funny and random and untrue, but it had caused me to get a strike on my first day. And yeah, I know that in the grand scheme of things or whatever, it's not really a big deal since my classmates would forget, but...

Ugh. Life was confusing. And overrated.

I noticed a hand was waving in front of my eyes.

"GYPS!" Lyn's voice made it into my ears, and I winced. 

"Why so loud?" I squeaked.

Lyn rolled her amber eyes. "There was no other way I could reach you. You're too up in the clouds today." She shoved a Smiths bag in my face. "Open it and smell the delicious perfection that is Smiths chips."

I rolled my eyes but happily obliged.

"What class did you have first, Lynnie?" Case asked, expertly talking while balancing an M&M and a Dorito on her tongue. Don't ask me how.

"Ugh. I had Food Tech this morning," Lyn rolled her eyes again and opened herself a bag of chilli Doritos. An empty Pringles can lay discarded next to her right arm, and she flicked it towards Gracie, who pushed it towards Skye, who batted it and sent it spinning towards Casey, who tossed it into the bin like she was shooting an easy layup.

"Food Tech?" Lily asked, and I noticed she was multitasking incredibly. She had her right hand in a second Pringles can, the left was hovering near the Tim Tams, and she was about to herd another Doritos packet towards her.

"Cooking. Home EC. It was a pain," Lyn answered as she cracked down on a chip ...and made a face of excruciating agony. 

"AAAAAAAHHHH THESE CHIPS ARE SO HOTT!" She screeched, closely resembling Skye's budgie.

We all laughed at her pain (like the good friends we are) and I chucked her my almost full water bottle. She struggled to get it open, making us laugh louder. Once she finally got it open, Lyn was in such a rush to cool her enflamed mouth that she spilt some of the precious liquid inside.

When she was finally finished her accidental performance, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve and handed the bottle back to me.

I laughed and screwed the cap back on. "Lyn! You drank the whole feathering thing!"

"It was for good cause!" She argued. "My mouth was on fire! You should praise your water bottle, it was practically a hero!"

We were still laughing even after the bell went.

<⚙︎>

"This term in Maths, we will be looking at finding the surface area of shapes," Mr Tari was saying as he slapped a book that looked something like seven hundred pages long in front of each student.

I internally groaned when he smacked a copy down in front of me. The title read "YEAR NINE MATHS" above a volcano with calculations next to it on the front cover. I flipped open the book and leafed through the pages. Behind me, Case and Lily were quietly giggling.

I smiled as I realised one good thing had come out of this lesson: we were all seated together. Skye and a random girl in front (who looked like she was getting very unamused with Skye's sense of humour), me and Gracie in the middle, with Lily and Case bringing up the rear. At least I was surrounded by friends North and South. 

Gracie flicked her white hair, making sure she playfully slapped me in the face with it.

And East.

I tapped my pencil against my textbook, staring out the window next to me.

Wish you were here.

Pretty obvious who you was.

I flipped the pages again, until something caught my eye.

I had stopped at page twelve. There was a scrap of paper in it.

Twelve had always been my lucky number... I don't think that's a coincidence.

I read the piece of parchment as discreetly as I could.

"How you doin' over there, Gyps?
– Lyn"

I let myself smile. Lyn knew twelve was my lucky number, so of course she had portalled a note on the twelfth page.

I wondered when my other friends would use their powers for good use as well. I mean, Case could easily (and 100% will) use her telepathy/mind-reading to see what the correct answers for the textbook questions are and then distribute them to all of us, which could count as "good use" as she's technically helping us with our Maths.

Lily could have used her "forget-me-knots" ability to make Mrs Saran forget about the note, but then again, it would've looked suspicious to everyone else. For Mrs Saran to be scolding me one moment and then carrying on with class as if nothing had happened the next was sure to raise suspicion. (I mean, technically she could've used one on everyone else in the room too, but that probably would've sapped her energy.)

Gracie and Skye, ever the pranksters, had telekinesis. They often used their power to freak out the people they didn't like too much. To get the idea, just imagine you're chilling in your room, reading and listening to music, and then BAM, your radio's floating and your book is smacking you in the face. It could easily scare the hell out of anyone.

In fact, I could see Gracie and Skye nodding at each other out of the corner of my eye, no doubt planning to mess with the girl next to Skye.

Lyn, of course, had the power of portals, and I had the most cliche ability ever, honestly: element control.

It sounds overpowered, but it's mainly just weird. When I turn the tap on, I can make the water float wherever I want it to. Whenever the wind blows, I can control it so it swirls around my friends and I instead of into us. Whenever we were out of everyone's sight, I could manipulate plants and minerals to do whatever I wanted. Got a ball caught on a branch and need to shrink the tree? Make vines grab someone's leg? Want an apple tree or other crops grown, fast? Want to hit someone with a rock, but you're inside? I'm ya gal.

But my most dominant of the four, it seemed, was fire.

Whenever I'm in a bad mood, I go into our backyard and set fire to one of the weeds. It always calms me down to see the flames. And if the fire spreads, bang: water.

However cool it may sound, it wasn't useful at all. At least, not with school.

I found myself reminiscing about when we found out about our powers, some odd couple of months ago... at least seven. It was at a three-day sleepover, the week before school started up again. 

Casey was turning fifteen, and to celebrate she invited all of us over to her house for a sleepover.

It was midnight when it happened.

I had gone to go get a drink and the water went insane. It started floating and swirled around my hands. I, trying my best to be quiet, started freaking the heck out. 

I accidentally kicked myself in the shin and fell into a stumble.

And when I was trying to find a grip, my hand landed on the indoor grill. But in my panic, I had somehow flicked the switch.

It had taken me several long seconds to realise I was standing with my left hand playing with levitating water, and my right hand resting in feathering fire, and being unscathed.

That night had been weird for everyone. After I got over my immense initial shock, I finally got smart and cut the gas, then dumped the water in the sink and went back to tell my friends.

I remembered the thought that we had all heard:

Hmm. I mean, I believe Gyps, but wow, she sounds insane sometimes.

Everyone had frozen at the exact same time. And since the thought had been thunk in Casey's voice, all eyes turned to her. She looked as if she had seen someone get smacked by a truck with a bullbar.

That's how we found out about my element control and her telepathy.

After we all stopped screaming in frightened whispers and quietly almost-losing-our-marbles, Gracie and Skye said they'd get more snacks to calm down. But they hadn't needed to, because the wanted food from the kitchen zoomed to rest in both of their laps.

They basically spilt the entirety of the new snacks on themselves in horror. By then we had made so much noise that Casey's parents came in (uninvited, might I add, which is a bad habit parents have, but putting myself in their positions, I can see they had a valid reason at the time, so I'll let them off on that one). As soon as they had seen the (probably impossible) amount of food and beverages we had gathered, they gathered their wits and inhaled to begin their lecture/screaming and never got the chance.

In present-time, I smiled. Whenever we retold the tale to one another, this part always made me chuckle.

Both their expressions went blank. And they turned around, exited the room, shut the door, and went back downstairs, bewildered.

We were all staring at each other with confused faces, wondering what the hell had just happened now, when Lily whimpered. We had turned to her, and she had explained in a shaky voice that for some reason (probably an instinct), she had thought oh dang, I wish they would just forget this ever happened!

That's how we realised Sky and Grace had telekinesis, and how Lily had forget-me-knots. At least, that's what we had nicknamed them, out of irony.

Then came Lyn's portals.

After we were all done laughing about how Lily had just made Casey's parents make fools out of themselves, we all turned to Lyn to see what kind of power she had.

She had shrugged. "Maybe I don't get a power," she had stated, a little sadly.

"Nah, come on, Lyn! An instinct presented itself to each of us! Just concentrate," I had reassured her.

She had uncertainly screwed her eyes shut. "What now?" She asks.

"I don't know," I had confessed, and she had opened her eyes again to glare at me.

"I have an idea!" Lily had declared. "Imagine something. Like, awh I don't know... what's something you really want?"

Lyn had looked confusedly at her before saying, "Um... probably that insane-sized Toblerone back at home. It would be perfect for this sleepover."

No sooner had the words left her mouth than did the Toblerone itself drop onto her lap, seeming to have appeared out of thin air. We ended up having enough to share and make it last the rest of the night. 

When we woke up at midday the next morning, chalked up what saw last night to being suuuuuuper sugared up. And possibly drunk from all the Coke and Pepsi we had.

That is, until almost all of us demonstrated our powers at mostly the same time.

Gracie unintentionally made the TV remote zoom to her hand and Skye simultaneously threw a paper airplane and realised it was being carried around the room with her powers.

Casey accidentally telepathically yelped "WHAT IN TARNATION?" when she saw that.

Lyn teleported all the garbage to the bin in the kitchen.

As I had been walking to pick up more rubbish and discarded wrappers, my sock had gotten really soggy, and I realised I had stepped in a giant puddle. So I gathered all the water from the carpet, made it swirl around my hand, turned it into the shape of a galloping horse, then walked to deposit it in the sink.

It had been a fun night for everyone.

I felt a sharp, quick nudge in my arm, and I once again rushed back to the present. Gracie had elbowed me.

"Gyps, we're doing work now," Gracie whisper-warned.

I pretended like I had been doing just that the entire time, miming working out questions from my book. Instead I turned over the parchment and wrote "Tell Lyn I wish she were here and that we all miss her". I held my hand out behind me, making sure my arm was underneath the tables.

Case took the note and read it, and in a second, she had sent a telepathic message.

I smiled. 

Our gifts were things of beauty and light. We must have been given them for a reason.

We were going to use them for good, like we always decided to.

...Although that train of thought was kind of discredited, when the girl who had been sitting next to Skye took out her water bottle and it miraculously unscrewed itself and somehow spilled all over her book.
And it was discredited a bit more when Skye and Grace high-fived under the table.

But apart from that, totally only good things.

Yet, some part of me couldn't help but wonder... along with the light and laughter, our magic – or whatever this was – could also be used to craft uncontrollable chaos, leaving destruction in its wake.

I shook my head slightly. Maybe I should go back to the beauty and light thing. It would be a better note to end my thoughts on before I delved into the boring reality that lay before me, shaped like a maths textbook.