The Ables by Jeremy Scott Read Free Book Online Page A

hundred mind readers a day.
They’re bowled over by a blind kid’s telekinesis but apathetic about reading people’s minds? What’s wrong with the kids at this school?!
I was also struck by the notion that Henry’s disability didn’t really interfere with his powers at all, just his mobility. And yet the school had deemed him so disabled as to be “special.” Maybe I wasn’t the only kid who felt like he didn’t belong in this classroom.
    We continued around the room for several more minutes. Most of the stories were actually kind of heartbreaking. Like Delilah’s.
    Delilah Darlington sat directly in front of me. She had super hearing, but she was also deaf. I thought it was the saddest thing I’d ever heard. She hadn’t been deaf all her life, though. She had some kind of accident when she was younger that took away her hearing, which sounded worse than never having had it in the first place.
    Delilah was the only person in the classroom whose power was 100 percent useless to her because of her disability. I couldn’t use my power to the fullest extent, but I could still use it. Delilah was rendered totally normal by her disability … just a regular deaf girl in a high school full of superheroes. She had an interpreter with her, a pleasant enough woman named Mary, who translated Delilah’s sign language for the rest of the class.
    Behind Henry and directly to my left was Penelope Wilson. Penelope’s power was unique: she could control the weather. She could make it rainy or sunny just by concentrating on it. Which is a pretty cool ability, but maybe not that well-suited for crime-fighting. It’s not like you can foil all possible dastardly plans through the use of a strategic thunderstorm. You can really only turn that dastardly plan into one that’s a little bit drearier.
    But it was still a very cool power. Her voice was high-pitched and squeaky, but she seemed very genuine and sweet. She explained her disability as an aversion to sunlight. There was an official name for it, but it had over six syllables, and I honestly can’t remember four of them. But she said it made her skin pigmentation so unique that sunlight was very dangerous to her. She couldn’t go too close to the windows on a really bright day—that’s how bad it was. It was almost as though she had a super disability. So the girl who could control the weather had to spend as much time as possible indoors. She even traveled to and from school with the help of a transporter like my mom.
    Donnie Brooks sat behind Penelope and did not say a word. There was a teacher’s aide, named Rebecca, who worked specifically with Donnie, and she did the talking for him. “Donnie has Down syndrome,” she said, “which means that he kind of has the mind of a young child in the body of a grown man. He may look like a young man in his early twenties, but he’s just fifteen years old.” You could tell in her voice that Rebecca cared about Donnie very much. “Donnie is very friendly and lovable and is just a big teddy bear. Feel free to be friendly with him; he really enjoys company. He’s kind of quiet, but he is listening.”
    I’m not going to lie; I was a little bit scared of Donnie. I’m not sure why, but I was wary. I’d never met anyone with Down syndrome before, but I was pretty sure a fifteen-year-old in the body of a twenty-five-year-old was something worth being afraid of.
    “What’s Donnie’s power?” The question came from Penelope, and I remember thinking it was nice of her to make sure he didn’t get left out of that part of the discussion.
    “That’s a complicated answer, young lady.” The answer had come from old Mrs. Crouch. “Donnie’s DNA has some extra pieces in it. That’s what accounts for his Down syndrome. But those extra pieces also mutated the genes that relate to his powers. He might have super strength or the ability to fly. But the truth is that we really don’t know what his powers are. There’s too much