Forever Freaky by Tom Upton

Friday
evening—literally.
    The Aardvarks held a one-run lead in the
fourth inning, when a routine fly ball turned out to be anything
but routine. As Aardvark center-fielder, senior Jeremy Bliss, ran
to catch the ball, over two hundred horrified spectators watched as
Bliss apparently burst into flames. Quick-acting teammates helped
to put out the fire, but not before Bliss sustained second- and
third-degree burns over forty percent of his body.
    Bliss is currently in a hospital burn unit,
where his condition is listed as serious.
    Fire investigators are baffled as to the
cause of this bizarre incident, which is strikingly similar to two
occurrences last fall involving members of the Mount Olive football
team.
    “Athletes don’t suddenly burst into flames
for no reason,” said Martin Durant, a fire department spokesman.
“At this point, we are closely examining the uniform this young man
was wearing.”
    The Aardvarks’ uniforms were manufactured by
the same Chinese company that produced the Mount Olive football
team’s jerseys.
    “This is the only commonality found between
these three unusual events,” Durant went on. “We are awaiting test
results on the chemical analysis of the uniforms, but that will
take some time.”
    Meanwhile, we at the Adler Eagle wish Jeremy
the speediest of recoveries.
     
    ***********
     
    I didn’t like baseball, or any sport for that
matter. Sports, unlike me, belong to the normal world. Only normal
people can gather enjoyment out of watching one guy trying to throw
a ball past another guy who is trying to hit the ball with a piece
of wood while all the other players wait around to see if the guy
with the piece of wood actually hits the ball. That seemed to make
sense to people, while I believed that baseball was the dumbest of
activities.
    I was never frustrated that I didn’t
understand normal things. I was not obsessed with trying to become
normal. I knew that would never be possible. I would always be a
vision-seeing, future-predicting, mind-reading freak. About the
best I could hope for was to learn how to live with myself.
    A few months ago, I discovered that there was
a new addition to my paranormal abilities: telekinesis. I could
turn light switches on and off with my mind. I could move around
small objects. At first I was despondent that there was yet another
weird thing for me to endure. I tried to ignore this latest
ability, but during bored moments—and I had quite a few of those in
the course of a day—I would amuse myself by twirling a pencil or
levitating an eraser. I soon discovered that moving objects around
with my mind required a great deal of focus, and while I focused
on, say, arranging kitchen utensils neatly on a tabletop, my other
freaky abilities became inert. I could not see random visions, most
of which were dark and gory. I could not read minds and the sick
thoughts people keep to themselves. It was a good trade-off,
really; if I began to see or hear something disturbing, I just
concentrated on moving something and all the bad things in my head
went away—at least for a while. It was a great way to deal with
stress.
    One Saturday afternoon in early May, I found
myself sitting at the kitchen table at home. I was balancing a
pencil on the tip of my finger. I made the pencil slowly turn,
which made a tickling feeling on my skin.
    My mom sat across from me. She was still
alarmed at my latest “gift.” She was aware of my other abilities,
of course, but really those she couldn’t actually see. This was
much more visual, and therefore much more disturbing.
    “Do you have to do that?” she asked.
    “It’s very relaxing.”
    “I’m trying to talk to you.”
    “I’m listening,” I said. “Just because I’m
not looking at you, don’t think I’m not hearing you.”
    Mom was trying to have one of her heart to
heart talks with me. Every now and then she felt compelled to sit
me down and encourage me to try to blend in better with my peers.
It was her