Nothing was right in her life. As it grew lighter outside her alarm clock started to sound. Groaning and rolling over, Ronnie slammed her fist down on her alarm clock. She sprung up and walked towards her door to get ready for school. Today was her birthday, she finally turned 18. A month until she graduated and a month until her and Raiden could move out of this town and go to the West Coast. She grabs her straightener and starts getting ready. Once she’s done she starts her makeup. Running back to her room she puts on some clothes and throws on her shoes. Walking around for a moment she picks up a yellow pair of gloves and puts them on.

“Not today,” she whispers to herself. She’s alone in the house. No parents and her guardians left a few years ago. Shrugging, she puts on her backpack.

School has never been her favorite thing but at this point she’s in the final stretch; almost done and then she’s free to leave. Checking the time and it reads 7:00, she bolts out of the house and tries sending Raiden a message; she closes her eyes and thinks hard.

“You’re probably sleeping and dreaming and stuff but I’m coming over. See you soon.”

She runs to Raidens house and pounds on the door. “Raiden come outside!” With no answer, she took her hand out of the glove and held her hand away from the door. The door swings open and suddenly there’s a huge thud. “Oohg! Damnit Veronica!” Raiden moans from the floor.
“I thought you weren’t coming over until after school?” Raiden asks confused.

“Well, that was the plan I decided to come over. Check your calendar, loser.” Walking over to the counter, Ronnie jumps up to sit down, tossing her backpack near the door. Its silent as she smiles.

“Oh my god, Ronnie! It’s a month until graduation. A month until we can leave! May 13. Ronnie you’re 18!” Raiden shouts as he tackles her. He lands on top of her and they laugh.

“I felt like I needed to come over and talk to you since you fell asleep early last night. We need to practice. Not being able to control these powers is bugging me,” said Ronnie. Holding his hand over the bag, it hoovers and moves with him as he hands it to her.

“I have a weird feeling about today. I don’t like it.” her voice trails off.

“Every time something good happens in our lives you always get this feeling. Just relax, keep your gloves on. I’m just a thought away,” Raiden says as he points to his head. She smiles and hugs him tight. She flashes him a quick smile before taking off, making him smile too. He closes his front door and opens his fridge with the other hand.
“Today is the day.” he says to himself quietly, smiling.

The clock strikes 8:30 just as Ronnie walks into class. She shuffles fast and quiet to the back of the classroom and gets out her notebook. The teacher, Mr. Bugsworth, starts speaking.

“Welcome students! Today is usual schedule and the lunch item for today is tuna melts with apple juice. Please get out your notebooks and write down the equations on the board.” He smiles at the class.

“Clarissa and Eddy, please keep your hands off of each other for the duration of class. Sadie put your phone away; we still use pen and paper here. Ronnie, you’re still wearing those silly gloves?” He glares and goes to sit at his desk.

People around Ronnie are working but she’s doodling; drawing pictures of her and Raiden together, living somewhere else in the world. Her dream is to live in either Portland or somewhere in California, in a tiny neighborhood, on the outside of a major city. The more openness she can come across the better; her and Raiden need places to learn how to more control their powers and discover any new ones. So far the whole telepathy and mind communication thing are the only two they know of; and whoever thought bright yellow rubber gloves would be a good deflector of power, sucks.

“Ronnie, what did you get for the last equation?” He asks kindly.

“I uhm, uh, I didn’t understand it. Sorry.” Mr. Bugsworth glares but is quiet. Once he gets the answer he’s looking for he excuses himself to the teachers’ lounge. “I’ll be gone for 10 minutes. Please behave yourselves,” and slams the door. Ronnie hates when the teacher leaves. The popular kids turn and look at her and she avoids all contact with them. She closes her eyes and tries to send something across to Raiden but it’s too late. She opens her eyes and she’s surrounded by Clarissa, Eddy, Sadie, and Tommy.
Raiden gets a funny feeling but he doesn’t get anything from Ronnie. He dwells on it for a little while and reacts. Last time he felt like this he found her barely alive. Running down the hall and knocking things over he as runs out, grabbing his backpack and gloves. Raiden closes his eyes and tries sending a message;

“’I’ll be there soon. They won’t hurt you. I promise. Stay strong and please, don’t use your powers.”
“You and your stupid gloves. Such a freak.” Clarissa says.

“What you got here? A little journal? How cute,” Eddie exclaims as he snatches the notebook from her. “No! Give it back!” She pleaded. She gets up and tries to grab it from him.
“Writing! Let’s read this to the whole class, shall we?” Eddie smirks. The girls and Tommy hold her back.
“West Coast living with my best friend. A small little house. A huge back yard for adventuring and practicing how to control the powers. Maybe we’ll be able to figure out why we have these? What if I had never met Raiden? I’m 18 and I’ve been looking forward to this. I think now he’ll tell me the truth. He loves me! And when he says it I can finally say ‘I love you, too.’.” Eddie stops as the entire class laughs.

“Oh, sweetie, if only someone would love you for you. What ‘powers’ are you even talking about? For the love of God please take off those hideous gloves.” Sadie smirks at her.

Suddenly, only Tommy is holding her back while the girls attack her. Ronnie screams for help. They hold her head and force her to watch Eddie tear apart her notebook. Sadie rips off her yellow rubber gloves and all hell breaks loose. Ronnie clenches a fist and tries to control herself but she doesn’t have enough training with her powers. Things are flying around like a tornado. They point at her and scream, “Freak! Stop!” and beg her to stop but she doesn’t. She can’t. The girls go to attack her again and she throws her hands out, and as she does so, books from the shelf behind her fly towards Sadie and Clarissa and they’re buried under pounds of books. She looks at Eddie with tears in her eyes and mouths the words “look at what you’ve done.” She raises her hand and he flies off the chair, against the chalkboard.

She sits in the middle of the room screaming and crying, begging for this to stop. She looks frantically around the room for the yellow rubber gloves but she can’t find them anywhere. Everything suddenly stops and drops to the floor, hitting Eddie and Thomas. Mr. Bugsworth walks in and Ronnie looks at him trying to talk but can’t find the words.

“I’m sorry, they took the gloves and I tried and he took my book and they laughed and I…” she trails off as soon as she sees Raiden in the hallway. He looks at her like he’s just seen a ghost.

“Ronnie, I’m sorry to do this.” Mr. Bugsworth reaches under the desk and sounds an alarm for the police. She gets up and runs out the door, past Raiden and he follows. She gets to the entrance of the school and the sirens grow louder. “My gloves!” she screams but Raiden pushes her forward, “just keep going we can’t turn around now!” he screams.

Spotting an abandoned building they hide inside. With the snap of a finger he swings open the door and shoves Ronnie inside, checking one last time to make sure no one saw. He puts Ronnie on the counter, she starts crying again but hides it from Raiden. He crouches in front of her and with one hand he looks through his backpack for some tissues to clean her face up and with the other he moves things in front of the door, even though there is not much to move. Once things are moved full attention goes to Ronnie.

“Ronnie, what happened? Why did you take your gloves off? What did they do to you?” He asks and she looks up.

“I didn’t want to take them off, I really didn’t. Eddie took my notebook and read my writing out loud. Clarissa and Sadie beat me. They ripped the gloves off and the room was spinning. Next thing I know Tommy is hiding, the chicks are under books, and Eddie looked dead.”
Just as she begins to relax the sirens sound louder.

“Ronnie. This is going to sound stupid. You might not understand now but I need to tell you a few things. This isn’t the best situation to tell you but it’s going to save us. Your parents were some crazy scientists. We met at the institution when you were 13 and I was 15. We became best friends and did everything together. We have multiple powers that we know now and some that we’ll discover as we get older. I don’t know why but these stupid yellow rubber gloves stop the powers we know-” he’s cut off by loud noises.

“This is the police and we know you’re in there. Please come outside with hands up.” Ronnie starts panicking and Raiden can sense it.

“Listen. You’re 18 now and that means you get a new power.” He picks her up and turns her around. He rips two lines in her jacket and in her tank top.

“What are you-” she gets cut off by excruciating pain and two loud snapping noises. She turns around and faces Raiden. “Freaking wings. You’ve got to be kidding me?” Ronnie sighed.

“Veronica you have two minutes before we’re coming in by force.”

“I wish I was. They’re like more appendages. They did weird s*** to us at that place. They injected us with 99% human and 1% bird DNA and this was the outcome. About after a week that they injected their subjects, something went horribly wrong with one of them; I think his name was Adam. He had a reaction and went crazy. It ended up infecting everyone but us, thanks to your parents. They told me to take care of you and got us out of there-”

“30 seconds Veronica.”

“I don’t want to go-” her scared rant is met by his lips meeting hers.
“You trust me, right?”
“With my entire heart.” He moves the stuff out of the way of the door and they run upstairs to the attic. Quietly they sit there. “When I say go, go.” She nods.
Crashes and smoke bombs go off everywhere. The smoke settles and the police look around.

“Nothing but a backpack and some gloves. Search!” The cops quietly creep through the house.

Raiden nods and pounds on the floor.
“Upstairs!”

“GO!” he screams at her. Placing his hand on part of the roof, destroying it and making a hole for her to get out of. The cops outside fire with blanks. She crawls through and looks back at him. They’re coming up the stairs to the attic and he’s not moving.

“Raiden what are you-”
“Go god damnit Ronnie! Go!” She hesitates and then jumps off the house. Her wings sprawl out and she starts flying. She flaps her wings and heads west, alone. She tries to communicate with Raiden but she’s getting no response. Pulling off to a hill, she sits in silence.

Ready for anything, she sees a figure coming towards her. As the figure gets closer its Raiden. She screams and the second he lands she tackles him to the ground.

“Look-” he starts to speak as he gets to one knee, “I know we’re dumb kids, but I’ve been waiting for this day since you were 13. You’re my best friend. You’re my world. I never meant for any of this to happen but now we’ll be able to pursue your dreams. Living on the West Coast to practice. As the world matures so will we, and one day we can expose our powers. I promise you that. I love you. Forever?”

He pulls out a ring and places it on her finger. Again, tears flow. She screams and nods yes. He jumps up and hugs her tight. “I love you too, Raiden. We probably won't be able to return for awhile, if ever.” Ronnie smiles and kisses his cheek.

She rummages through his backpack and pulls out the yellow rubber gloves. She walks over to the edge of the cliff and throws them over.

“Honey, why did you throw them over? You need them.”

“Nope, I don’t. I will learn to control my powers. I refuse to be held back by these powers, and I refuse to be afraid to do anything without those stupid gloves. I want to cherish tonight and then start over tomorrow. Agreed?” He smiles.

“Agreed. We’ll leave tomorrow morning for Portland. Okay?”

“Okay.” She said as she curled up next to him for the night. She rested her head against her chest and for once, everything was right in her life. For that moment she was okay.