We all flinched at the gunshot and looked around. Everyone shared the same terrified look on their face. Paige had her hand over the center of her chest and was breathing super heavy. I reached my hand out to her and moved her hand to see if she was shot. There was no bullet hole, her heart was just beating really hard. I looked around at everyone again, this time walking around to check everyone. Carter was shaken but okay at this point, Liam was bent over with his hands on his knees and breathing really heavy, Kathy had sat down to calm down, and Nathan was leaning head first on the mast of the ship. I turned and walked downstairs to see where the gunshot came from. I turned the corner to the big room everyone usually sits in and almost everyone was awake. Madelyn was still going around and treating the rest of everyone. My brother, Cornelius, was sitting with a tourniquet on his leg and a towel wrapped around his calf.
"Don't you dare laugh," Cornelius said as he adjusted his leg.
"What did you do," I asked while trying to hold back from laughing.
"My gun went off," Cornelius admitted.
"You know," I said while half laughing, "I told you not to put it in your waistband."
"Yeah yeah, I know," Cornelius said as he threw a nearby empty water bottle at me, "Stop laughing!"
"Sorry," I giggled, "You're never going to live down the fact the only time you've been shot is by yourself."
"Yeah yeah whatever Carla don't you have boat stuff to do," Cornelius argued.
"Nope, we're almost to shore so I have nothing to do but tease you," I laughed.
"How did you manage to never shoot anything while hunting but you manage to shoot yourself," Gordon laughed from a few feet away. He stumbled over and leaned against the wall near us, he must've just woken up. Cornelius looked up to Gordon as a friend so he wasnt to bothered by his teasing.
"Haha very funny. I can't shoot a cow from 20 meters away but I can manage to shoot myself in the leg," Cornelius laughed.
I nodded and walked away to talk to Madelyn. Cornelius shouted for me seconds after I had left. I walked back over to my brother and crossed my arms, "What do you want?"
"Could you do your crazy new power thing and fix my leg like you fixed Liam's shoulder?" Cornelius asked.
"Its not a new thing," I softly explained as I squatted down next to his leg and put my hand on it, "But I guess I'll have to fix you."
Cornelius winced in pain for a few seconds but then seemed relieved. I took my hand off of it and grabbed a cloth to wipe his blood off my hand. Cornelius grabbed his leg and started to bend his knee to check if it hurt. After, he put his leg back down and started thanking me, "Thank you, I know I'm a pain in the butt sometimes, but thank you."
"You're welcome butt nugget," I laughed as I walked away to go upstairs. I stopped on the steps because I heard my friends talking.
"Should we have let her go down there alone, last time she did that she beat up Paige,"
"I deserved it, I'm not sure what I was thinking,"
"Well if theres someone down there trying to kill everyone then her going down there alone is a bad idea. Who knows what they could've done that could set her off on a killing spree."
"Liam you know Carla could never kill someone,"
"Carter is right, Carla wouldn't kill someone."
I rubbed my face on my hands and walked up the stairs the rest if the way and through the doors. Everyone stopped talking and looked at me. It wasnt until now that I realized how bad I had beaten Paige. Her eye was swollen and there was blood running down from her eye and her nose. I looked down at my feet and then walked back downstairs. This time I took a left turn by where we kept all the farm animals for the new colony in Ecuador. I sat by the cows and started to pet one of the babies.
"I'm not bad am I?" I asked the calf who was now suckling on my finger. I smiled. "See I'm not bad," I kept talking, "But maybe that's because the hero in the story is based on who's telling it." I sighed and put my head in the hand the calf wasn't licking. "Ugh."
I heard a cough and looked up to see Paige standing by the doorway. She was looking at the calf. "She's such an innocent soul, never means any harm, always does what she thinks is right in the moment," Paige explained, "Even her enemies forgive her for her misjudgments."
I realized she wasn't talking about the calf. "Sometimes she thinks she's too soft to be considered a hero," I added.
"That's where shes wrong though, she doesnt have to kick butt to be a hero. She can easily be a hero just by taking the leader role," Paige explained.
"We dont have a leader though. We collectively share leadership and make decisions together," I answered.
"Well maybe that's why you cant control your own thoughts and rely on everyone else's powers to shape your thoughts on yourself," Paige pointed out.
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"Well," Paige explained, "Carter runs fast, so he can stop bullets, and save people quicker. Kathy uses her energy blasts to knock people out and it's pretty efficient. Liam can punch people out of existence, Madelyn can think of strategies and plans of how to fight. And Nathan can use his nano bots to steer boats, hack other tech, and make cool tech from his knowledge of technology. What I'm getting at I'd that you have a power that would easily overpower each of their powers, but you drive yourself crazy with the fact you dont have the same heart they do. You're jealous that they've mastered their powers and you've just scraped the surface of what you can do."
"What are you getting at," I asked, "I'm not trying to overpower them to become the leader."
"What I'm getting at is that you've created a barrier that keeps yelling at you and telling you you wont ever be as cool as them," Paige explained, "What you dont realize is how special your power can help everyone. But you look at how they help people and you make yourself feel like your power wont ever help anyone."
I looked down at my feet and back at Paige, "I dont know what you're talking about."
"Carla, you created a boat in 5 minutes. Why cant you see that you weren't meant to use your power to harm people. I mean seriously your blood can reverse the effects of cyanide. You weren't meant to use your power against people, you were meant to be different from everyone else."
"Where did you get cyanide?"
"That doesnt matter Carla, what matters is that you were meant to help people, that's why you feel extremely bad for everyone you hurt. You weren't ever meant to hurt people, no matter how angry you are," Paige explained, "I wish I wouldve realized sooner, my constant bullying didnt help your self esteem."
"It didnt, but its okay." I answered. I got up and walked past Paige. I laid my hand on her should and said "Its okay," before walking out of the cow pen and walking upstairs. I had given Paige her power back and fixed what I did to her face; it felt like it was the right time, and the right way to apologize. I walked up the stairs very slowly, I thought about how that might be the last time a walk up the boat's steps. I got to the door at the top of the stairs and pushed it open. My friends all looked at me with their eyes filled with bewilderment. They seemed confused for some reason.
"What's up?" I lightly asked as I walked towards them.
"Did you hear-" Kathy began to speak.
"Yeah, yeah I did," I interrupted.
"We're sorry," Liam apologized, "for talking about you."
"No, no, dont be," I answered, "You were right, I wouldn't kill anyone, and yeah I probably shouldn't have gone down there by myself. Did any of you volunteer to go down there though? Or even join me while I walked down there?"
"No," Nathan answered as he looked around at everyone else who were shaking their heads.
"Then dont act like I'm the big bad wolf if you wouldn't step up to do what I did," I calmly stated.
"None of us wouldve almost beaten Paige to death," Liam argued.
"Really? Because you didnt have that same attitude when Amelia shot Cleo," I argued back. Carter was staying suspiciously silent.
"Amelia didnt shoot Cleo, she shot you, and if you hadn't done your molecular thing then everyone would still be here, Cleo would still be here," Liam started to raise his voice.
"Dont you dare blame that on me, I wasnt the one who pulled the trigger Liam."
"Well I wasnt the one who brought it up Carla," Liam snapped back.
"Guys calm down," Carter softly and calmly said as he moved himself between us, "We're all friends here, we dont need to be hashing out all this anger at one another."
I nodded and took a step back; Liam did the same.
"Friends until the end, right?" Paige chimed in from behind me.
Everyone looked at her with the upmost hatred in their eyes.
"You're not allowed to say that," Nathan angrily snapped.
"Well," Paige said, "I'm sad to hear that, I always thought it was cool to have a saying like that with my friends."
"You're not my friend," Nathan argued.
"What a shame," Paige sarcastically said.
"Now guys, calm down," I butted in, "Just drop it."
We all sat down on the deck and started talking about the good times back at the island.
"Remember when Carter was really tired after training and fell into the wheelbarrow in the barn?" Kathy laughed.
"I wasnt tired I was dehydrated," Carter laughed.
"Either way, Carla took off running to grab your mom," Kathy pointed out.
"We weren't even friends then were we?" Carter smiled at the ground.
"Well nobody else was moving," I laughed, "they just crowded around you and watched you sit there motionless."
"Yeah, like what was going through you alls heads?" Carter jokingly asked everyone.
"Well I was crouched beside you," Nathan pointed out, "And I was making sure you were breathing."
"Well thanks," Carter laughed, "I've got a nice scar now."
"That's nowhere near as bad as when Paige decided she wanted to fly away and didnt know how to get down and put a big hole in the roof where she hit her head," Kathy laughed. Paige moved from the mast to right next to me, she walked on her feet instead of flying. She created a different feel when I was around her. Before I was offset and uncomfortable being around someone I knew hated me, all the sudden, I didnt feel that anymore, I didnt feel anything when she sat next to me. Her being there didnt make me angry, or untrusting; just nothing. I looked over at her to study her facial expressions as she spoke: for the first time in a while she seemed happy. That's when I realized everyone else was happy too. Everyone else seemed perfectly okay with her being there with us again, the feeling of overpowering joy had swept over me. All my friends were finally happy, and that made me overwhelmingly joyful. I smiled real big and spoke in the same happy manner I did before this whole escape plan started, "Yeah, that was pretty funny."
Carter smiled really big at me; I guess he noticed the difference. I looked around at our group. We had done it, we had successfully made it across the ocean to the mainland. We were so close, and almost all of us had made it. And then I remembered something. I squinted my eyes and looked at the Nanobots. I turned my attention to the shore and saw what looked like an old amusement park in the distance on the beach.
"Hey, Nathan," I softly interrupted their conversation without breaking concentration on the amusement park.
"Yeah Carla?" Nathan answered with slight confusion in the tone of his voice.
"Equador doesn't have amusement parks on the beach."