CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:
Amanda

It was a quiet Friday night in the Bonavich household. Mr. Bonavich was due home hours ago but had yet to show up, so Cole and Evette deduced their father must have stopped at the bar to celebrate another completed work week, as he often did. Evette thought not much of it and decided to cook an actual meal for dinner so that Mr. Bonavich could have leftovers whenever he showed up.

Cole was secretly hoping his sister would go to bed before the man came back. Mr. Bonavich was violent without the booze, but he was more reckless with a little bit of alcohol in his system. He didn't want his sister to have to find that out the same way he had.

Evette was stirring a pot of boiling noodles over the stovetop, chewing on a hot rigatoni noodle that was a little too chewy for her liking. She had a particular taste when it came to pasta—she preferred her noodles al dente with a slight softness to the texture.

Cole glanced up at his sister sparingly from his spot at the counter, where he was hunched over his phone with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his head. He wasn't cold per se, he just liked the comfort it gave him.

"So, what did they want?" Cole spoke up into the otherwise silent kitchen. His sister set the stirring spoon down as she peered into the pot.

"Hm?" Evette hummed, realizing he was talking to her. She glanced over her shoulder at him to see his slightly scowling face. "Who?"

"Those annoying boys and that one girl, the one with the braids and a nice ass." Cole watched Evette's face as she cringed at his words. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from breaking into a laugh.

"Lewis and Ross aren't annoying," Evette defended them, snatching a hand towel from the countertop. They were a little pushy when it came to superhero stuff, she thought, but not annoying. She rounded the table to reach her infuriating brother. "And the girl with braids is Camille, you douchebag." Evette snapped the hand towel against Cole's bicep. He lashed out and grabbed the towel before she could do it again, wadded it up, and tossed it to the other side of the kitchen. Evette glared at Cole.

The aroma of basil and tomato filled the air as Evette concocted the pasta dish. She finished it off with a layer of mozzarella cheese on top and then stuck it in the oven to finish baking. Somewhere along the way Cole got tired of waiting and wandered off to his room to grab his phone charger, but he ended up falling asleep on his bed instead, leaving Evette to him along to an old tune in the kitchen by herself. She danced across the kitchen with a content smile on her face. Knowing her brother was out cold after a grueling day at school and football practice, she freely used her powers to help her clean up her mess. With the flick of her wrist the pots were pushed into the sink, and the twirl of her finger turned the faucet on. She manipulated the running water out of the tap so that some of it would start soaking the dirty pot, but some of it would float across the room in a delicate spiral. The water danced with her in the small kitchen. Every so often it would catch the light just right and twinkle like glitter, reminding Evette of the magic she used to believe in as a child. Now, that "magic" was actually kind of her reality, albeit as a result of a weird circumstance.

The timer went off. Evette sent the water through the air back into the sink so she could focus on using the wind to open the oven for her and levitate the pasta bake out of the oven. She used the air to set it down on a pot holder on the counter. Evette frowned at the fish, noticing how the cheese on top wasn't fully melted.

She hovered her hand over the pasta and focused on pushing heat into her fingertips. In a split second little flames appeared on her hand. With a triumphant smirk, she torched the top of the pasta to finish melting the cheese.

She stepped back and glanced around the kitchen, noticing she still had a bit of a mess to clean up. Most of the clutter and dishes weren't even from her cooking dinner just now—it was an accumulation of what must have been a week's worth of stuff. While she had been busy spending her energy on organizing her thoughts and her powers, the entropy of her house seemed to have been increasing.

Long story short; if she wasn't going to clean the house, apparently nobody else was going to step up and do the job.

Just as Evette lifted her hand to start levitating things to place then back in order, the front door slammed open, making her jump in surprise. Immediately her mind went to those goons who were hunting the Elementum. There's no way they know my identity or where I live, I've been careful, she told herself, though that didn't stop the fear that gripped her chest as she heard a man's voice grumble under his breath.

"Hello?" she called, poking her head into the living room with her hands holding onto flames behind her back, just in case. Mr. Bonavich stood in the doorway, standing at a weird angle as he leaned one hand against the wall and used the other to tug his shoes off. She let out a breath of relief and let the flames die. "Oh, hey Dad."

He didn't look up or acknowledge his daughter. Once his shoes were off, he staggered past her into the kitchen, shoulder-checking her as he went. Evette stumbled back at the impact, stunned.

But she could smell the alcohol that clung to his presence like perfume, and just assumed he was too tipsy to realize what had just happened. 

"I made pasta, I assumed you'd be too tired to make something when you got back," she said to his back. She watched as he stepped up to her dish and observed it, swaying slightly on his feet. Her eyebrows drew close together at the sight. Normally she was asleep before he came back from a night out drinking, so she hadn't actually ever seen her father in such an intoxicated state. It worried her, honestly.

But as her father slowly started fixing his plate, Evette's shoulders relaxed and yet another breath of relief left her lungs. Satisfied, she turned and started scrubbing at some of the dishes at the sink. Just as she was scraping at a stubborn spot, Mr. Bonavich said something that made her movements stop.

"Thanks, Amanda."

Amanda. She hadn't heard that name spoken aloud in years, and especially not from her father's mouth.

Cautiously, her said, "Dad, it's Evette." She swallowed the pain in her throat. "Mom's gone." Evette watched Mr. Bonavich's back closely, carefully. His shoulders stilled and it seemed as though time stopped altogether. Evette wondered what was going on in his drunken mind. Was it just an innocent mix-up, or had he actually for a second thought that Amanda Bonavich, Cole and Evette's mother, was with them?

Evette crept closer to her father and stopped beside him. She glanced up at the side of his face that resembled her brother's. Their family wasn't big on emotions or comforting each other, but she knew how hard Mrs. Bonavich's death had been on him, so she was willing to try. Evette reached out her small hand to rest on Mr. Bonavich's shoulder, but as soon as her hand made contact with the cotton of his shirt, he whipped around and grabbed her wrist.

Evette stared wide-eyed up at her father. He stared right back, his eyes bloodshot and glazed over with anger. His grip on her wrist tightened, making Evette cry out.

"Dad, what are you doing?" she asked, voice coming out high and tinged with confusion.

All at once, he blinked and his eyes lost the faraway anger as he focused on his daughter in front of him. He pushed her away, sending her stumbling back, and turned back to scooping pasta onto his plate while Evette just stared at him.

After he finished making his plate, Mr. Bonavich walked past her into the dining room without making eye contact. Finally, once he had left the room, Evette looked down at her hands. Below her hands—the same ones that could manipulate air and control water, conduct fire and cause earthquakes—bruising had already started forming in the shapes of her father's fingers.

The dishes can wait until tomorrow, she thought, and ducked out of the kitchen and locked herself in her bedroom. She sat on her bed and hugged a pillow to her chest. Yeah, he was an intimidating-looking man, but her dad had never scared her like that. Looking up into his rage-filled eyes as he kept an iron-grip on her wrist filled her with a kind of fear she hadn't felt before, one that felt different than the fear she felt when fighting bad guys as The Flame.

Evette stood from her bed after a minute. Unable to be alone with her thoughts, she unlocked her door and walked a few steps down the hallway. She knocked softly on Cole's door, hoping he was awake.

Cole tore his eyes away from his illuminated phone screen to his bedroom door at the sound of gentle knocking. He blinked to make his eyes adjust to the darkness of his room before getting up from his bed and switching his lights on. He opened the door and squinted at his sister.

"I was sleeping," he deadpanned.

"Not anymore, obviously," Evette replied. "Can we hang out?"

Colt blinked at the blonde girl. "Why do you want to hang out with me?"

"I just do, okay?"

Cole narrowed his eyes at Evette. What was her deal? She's never been pushy like this before. But her impatience made him give in, and he opened his door wider for his sister. As she sat at his desk chair and pulled out her phone, he wondered what could've happened to make her want to hang out with him.

And then, as she scrolled on her phone, Cole noticed something that definitely hadn't been there before.

Yeah, Evette had a few healing injuries, but Cole knew the bruising on her wrist wasn't from a random mugging.

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