The Misfits

Elias

Elias finished dinner and was waiting for Peg to get his tray. He laid down and started reading.

The door opened and he didn’t bother to look up. He heard thumps on the floor, and something landed on him.

Elias was glad the bed was soft because he just had seventy-five pounds flop on to him. The wiggling mass laughed and hugged him.

“Elias!” Halley said.

“Hello Halley,” he managed to get out. He managed to shift her around she he could sit up, and then looked askance at Peg.

“Movie night,” she said, holding up two bags.

“Yay,” Halley said, singsong.

“Are you okay with it?” Peg asked.

“You wanna do it, right?” Halley asked, starting to frown.

“Yes, I want to do it,” he said, putting an arm around the girl.

“Go grab your stuff and take a shower. I want to talk to Elias real quick,” Peg told her.

“Okay,” Halley said, going over to the bag, grabbing the bundle of clothes in it, then headed for the shower.

Once the water was on, Peg said, “In the second bag are your snack for the movie and a surprise. But I’ll tell you. Just keep it from Halley until tomorrow.

“After breakfast, we will be taking some of the children to the new room. You and Halley will be a part of it, along with several others. The participants will all be learning that we’ve included a small pool as well, so everyone will be given swimsuits.

“Yours are in the bag but wait until after breakfast to tell Halley. It’s your responsibility to make sure there are no… mishaps. Also, everyone is to display their abilities, and you are to test your ability to negate them.

“With the exception of Halley that is. Everything will be monitored and recorded, so there will be no doctors, but please do not try to fool us. The continuation of this program depends on your success to show this works out for everyone. Providing this works, others will be included and rotated in to participate, depending on abilities, behavior, and perceived need. There will be some who won’t participate due to various reason and those who will be evaluated in an ongoing fashion to see if they meet the needs and expectations.

“Do you have any questions?”

“How long will we get?” Elias asked.

“Lunch will be provided there, along with snacks and drinks. You will have until an hour before dinner, so everyone can clean up before they eat. Anything else?”

“No,” Elias said.

“Okay. One last thing. Halley’s medicine is in her things in a cooled pouch. Tonight, and tomorrow morning you need to make sure she gets it.”

“Wait, I – I don’t know anything about that,” Elias protested.

“Halley knows. She just doesn’t want to do it herself. If you refuse, she might or might not do it herself. If she doesn’t, the consequences can be dire. Also, tomorrow it is your responsibility to keep an eye on her. If she gets too much sugar, or takes too much insulin, it can also be harmful or deadly, so watch for signs of confusion, excessive thirst, nausea, dizziness, etc. Pretty much anything out of the ordinary.

“It is your responsibility now.”

“Why me? I’m fourteen.”

“Because you’ve taken it upon yourself to speak up. You made yourself a leader, so now you get the responsibility. That and I know you will do what needs to be done to take care of her… And possibly everyone else. Or we can call it all off right now and I can take Halley when she’s done in the shower. Your call.” Peg looked at him, waiting for an answer.

Elias wasn’t sure he was ready for all this responsibility. He wanted to escape this place, and take everyone else, but to actually be responsible for another kid’s well-being wasn’t what he was shooting for.

Getting the others to display their abilities as well as him cancelling them shouldn’t be too hard. Having them all get along also shouldn’t be too hard, since it sounded like Peg or someone else was screening the others for conflicts or personality issues.

On top of that, being responsible for Halley’s medical condition scared him. He had no training and didn’t want anything and happening to her. But he also knew that the other kids probably needed this room and the companionship.

Finally, he said, “Nothing bad will happen to Halley?”

“Provided she gets her medicine, and you keep an eye on her behavior for anything out of the ordinary, then she’ll be fine.

“Elias, I know you think you can’t do it, but I wouldn’t allow this if I didn’t have faith in you. I don’t want her hurt any more than you do. That should be obvious by my actions after what you revealed. Is that not so?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Then I agree to it. I just hope it all goes well.”

“Okay then. I’ll see you two for breakfast, and then shortly after again. Get changed after breakfast and grab towels. I’ll see you then,” she said and then left.

Elias took the swimsuits out of the bag and put them in his clothes drawer, then unpacked the bag on the table and got the computer ready for Halley to pick a movie.

He turned around and realized there was no couch-bed.

“Hello? Hey, monitor person, you listening?” he said looking at a camera.

“Yes. What do you need?” came the reply.

“Um, the couch-bed thing. I don’t know how to raise it. Can you do it?”

The floor slid open and the couch-bed raised up.

“Anything else?” the voice asked.

“Uh, no,” Elias said. Then, “Thank you,” he added.

The shower turned off and the door opened far enough for Halley to get her clothes and towel.

“Elias?” she called.

“What did you forget this time?” he asked.

“Nothing. Just making sure you weren’t peeking.”

He laughed and gathered some snacks and brought them to the bed and sat down.

Halley came out, ran over, and jumped onto the couch-bed. “Will you brush my hair?” she asked.

“Yeah. Get your brush, bands, and your medicine,” he told her.

She stood up and he finally got a look at her. “What are you wearing?” he asked.

“Shorts,” she replied. She walked off and said, “Peg wanted a way to keep a closer eye on me and pulling my pants down was embarrassing. I can pull my top up enough without, um, showing anything. So, I get to wear them when I want.”

She returned and sat everything down on the bed, then sat down.

Elias began brushing her hair. “Tell me more about yourself,” he said.

“Like what?” she asked.

“About you. Your family. Your story.”

He continued brushing and she said, “I’m nine. I’ll be ten in November, whenever that is. My mom and dad are dead. They died in a car crash. The same one that I got hurt in. That’s when my powers started too. Well, after the crash. I don’t have any brothers or sisters, and after the crash, I went to live with relatives in Colorado. After my rehabilitation, I found I could heal people, and my family took me to a place that was going to study me. I was taken from there and brought here.

“They kidnapped me and won’t let me leave.”

Elias finished brushing her hair. “Okay, now for the change. What should we do?”

“Whatever you want,” she said.

“You might be sorry you said that,” he said, causing her to giggle. He began braiding a portion on the front left side. Then he gathered up all of the hair in the back, leaving some loose on the sides and putting it into a ponytail.

Then, leaving the band there, he braided the ponytail into three separate braids.

“There,” he said. “You look… interesting. Now for your medicine.”

She didn’t move. Elias put a hand on her shoulder. “You need it or else bad things could happen,” he told her.

Her head dropped. “Why can’t I heal myself?” she asked.

Elias moved closer and hugged her from behind. Putting his chin on her shoulder he said, “We have these gifts for a reason. But everyone needs limits or restrictions. If you could heal yourself, maybe you could make yourself live forever. Maybe God wants you to be able to heal but doesn’t want you tempted to not use it only when necessary. That’s why you get hurt when you use it.

“There’s a trade-off. Another girl in here who you healed is able to absorb damage that would kill us, but if she holds it in, she gets hot. If she doesn’t let it out, well, I dunno, she might burn up or something. So don’t be sad. I don’t know why all I can do is stop everyone else from using their abilities. That doesn’t seem very useful to me.”

She leaned her head on his and said, “Maybe you’ll learn how to do something else with it. Some of… the others can do other things.”

“Oh? Like what?”

Halley shrugged her shoulders and reached for the cooler bag, sighing.

He let go of her and moved around to sit next to her.

She held the bag out to him.

Elias put up his hands. “I don’t know a thing about this. You’re gonna have to do it.”

She looked up at him, her face serious. “I can do it all but inject myself. I… I just can’t.”

“If you do all the rest, I’ll do that, provided you tell me how. I don’t want to do it wrong and hurt you.”

She agreed and showed him how to clean the vial, draw up the insulin, and get the air out.

Halley handed him the syringe.

“Now what?”

“Now you have to poke me. It’s better to change sites, so we use an arm, stomach, and thighs. That’s another reason for the shorts,” she told him. “Right now is thigh.”

Elias moved around in front of her and squatted down between her legs.

She pulled up one of her short legs to the top of her skinny thigh. Using an alcohol pad, she wiped an area and then told him, “Pinch up the skin and then stick the needle in. It’s short, so you don’t go far, but I’m skinny, so no more than three quarters. Then just push the top. Slow, but not too slow. Oh, and when you poke, not too slow, but don’t pause. It’ll just hurt more if you do.”

Elias felt himself start to sweat. “No pressure huh?”

“You’ll do fine.”

He gently pinched up past the part of her thigh she had cleaned, and she turned her head. Elias prayed he didn’t do anything wrong or hurt her.

He stuck the needle in and she flinched but didn’t move, and he injected the insulin, then pulled the needle out. “All done,” he said, releasing the breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

He was going to pull her shorts back down but saw a bead of blood well up wrong where he put the needle in.

“Hang on, don’t want your shorts red,” he said getting up and getting a napkin. He dabbed at the spot until the bleeding stopped, then rubbed her thigh.

“Did I do it okay?” he asked.

“You did great for your first time,” Halley said.

“Thank you.” He pulled the leg of her shorts down, which was nothing more than their scrubs cut off and hemmed mid-thigh.

“Okay, movie time. Go pick a movie.”

She picked a movie about a magical yeti, and they sat back and watched it.

With all that was going on the next day, it was late enough that he decided one movie was enough for the night.

He picked up and went back over to the bed.

“I’m not tired yet,” Halley complained.

He sat back and said, “We’ll talk more until you get tired.”

“Talk about what?”

He motioned for her to scoot back and after she did, said, “You said you were in an accident. Tell me what happened to give you that scar.”

Without thinking she pulled up her top, exposing the long scar. “It’s so ugly,” she said.

“It’s not that bad,” Elias said running a finger over it.

She giggled. “When the car crashed, a piece of metal went all the way through me. It tore out most of my pancreas, which is why I have to take insulin. It barely missed my stomach, heart, and spine,” she said.

Bending forward, she held on to the front of her top and said, “Pull up the back.”

Elias did, revealing a roundish scar the size of a quarter near her spine. He touched the spot and she shivered.

“Sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay, she said, pulling her top back down. “It just kinda tickled. So I got to the hospital and went into surgery where they pulled out the metal and fixed me up the best they could.”

“Well, I for one am glad you are okay.”

“Mostly.”

“Yeah, mostly.”

“What about you?” she asked.

Elias dimmed the lights, then told her about himself. By the time he finished, she was nearly asleep.

“Elias don’t leave tonight. I don’t like bad dreams.”

“Okay, scoot down and cover up.”

She did and he scooted down as well. She rolled away from him, hugging the pillow, and asked, “Will you rub my back again? It feels good.”

He warmed his hands up and then rolled on his side, putting his hand inside her top and began rubbing her back.

Now conscious of her scar, he felt it under his fingers as he rubbed around in random directions.

He had planned to get up and try to access more of the network when Halley fell asleep, but he soon fell asleep rubbing her back.