Page 58 of Heat Wave (The Extraordinaries 3)

Seth shrugged, setting his sandwich back down, half-unwrapped. “Maybe. But that probably won’t do much to change their minds. They’re all just…”

“Scared,” Gibby said quietly. “Even though they shouldn’t be. They’re using you as an excuse.”

“I know,” Seth said. “But I don’t know if I blame them for that.” He looked off across the park. “I wonder, sometimes, what it’d be like if I didn’t—ifwedidn’t have all of this going on. If I wasn’t who I was. Nick, too. If we were just kids who didn’t have to worry about fighting to help others.”

A low level of alarm pulsed in Nick’s head, but he ignored it. This wasn’t about him, and he refused to make it that way. Seth had always,alwaysbeen supportive of Nick. It was only right that Nick should try to do the same with him. “It’d probably be a lot easier,” he said.

Seth looked back at him with a half smile. “Yeah, it would be. But then nothing worth having is ever easy. It doesn’t matter, though. We are who we are and we’ll do what we have to.”

“What do you want to do?” Nick asked him, thinking hard. “Not about the Extraordinary stuff. What do you want to go to school for?”

“I don’t know yet.” He cocked his head. “I haven’t really thought that far ahead.”

“We should,” Jazz said, feeding Gibby another grape. “Let’s pretend no one here can make fire or move things with their minds. The future is going to happen sooner rather than later. We’re good at planning things, so we can do this.”

“It’s weird,” Gibby said.

Jazz looked down at her. “What is?”

“You and me. Nick and Seth. Us. Making plans like this, like we think we’ll always be together.”

“Because we will be,” Nick said firmly, not liking the implication.

“How many people can say that, though?” Gibby asked, almost sounding apologetic. “How many people can say they met the person or people they’re going to spend the rest of their lives with in high school?”

“What if things change?” Nick whispered, suddenly no longer hungry. He set his own half-eaten sandwich back in the basket. “Paths diverge.”

“Right,” Gibby said. “I think about that a lot. I don’t like it, but it feels important.”

“It is,” Seth said. “I think about that stuff, too. And not just—” He waved his hand, a little puff of smoke rising from his fingers. “We don’t know who we’ll be years from now.”

Nick said, “Maybe we won’t be together at some point. Maybe we’ll want different things down the road. And like Jazz told me once, it won’t make what we have now matter any less. I wouldn’t be who I am without any of you.”

Gibby snorted. “Oh, so you’re blaming us for you? Not cool, Nicky.”

He tapped his shoe against her ankle. “You know what I mean. We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Or the next day, or the day after that. We don’t know where we’ll be in a year, five years, ten years, but you know what? I love Seth. I love the both of you. And I will fight for each of you with everything I have. Butifwe end up going a different direction, I’llknow it’s not because you don’t love me.” He blinked against the burn in his eyes.

He was surprised when he was tackled, but it wasn’t Seth. It wasn’t Jazz. No, it was Gibby, launching herself at him and knocking him flat. She set her hands on either side of his head, looking down at him. “Nick,” she said. “Remember when you wanted to put a cricket in the microwave because you thought it’d give you powers?”

“You mean last year?”

“I love that guy. And I love the guy he’s turned into.” She leaned down and kissed him, a peck on his lips. She tasted like the grapes Jazz had fed her, sticky, sweet. She squawked out a laugh when Nick reached up and tugged her down, hugging her tightly.

“I love us,” Jazz said with a sniffle. “Nick’s right. Maybe something will happen, but it won’t be because we stopped caring about each other. Maybe people don’t always meet the loves of their lives in high school, but we’ve always been the exception to everything we do. Why should this be any different?”

Gibby pushed herself off of Nick, settling on her knees. “Hands in the middle.”

Jazz put her hand on top of Gibby’s. Seth did the same on top of Jazz’s. They looked at Nick, Seth arching his eyebrow, and Nick loved them. He loved them more than he could say. He put his hand on top of Seth’s, and they looked at Gibby.

“Team Lighthouse,” she said. “The four of us. No matter what happens, we’ll always have today.”

“Ditto,” Jazz said.

“Ditto twice,” Seth said.

“Ditto three times,” Nick agreed, and for a minute, they just sat there, hands together, watching each other. Then the moment broke, and they ate, Nick trying to have Seth catch grapes in his mouth, Jazz finding another dandelion for Gibby’s other ear. They laughed. They made fun of each other. Nick challenged Jazz to a wrestling match and lost almost immediatelywhen Jazz knocked him flat on his back, Gibby and Seth cheering them on.

Later, as the sun crossed the sky, they ran through the fountains, clothes soaked, Seth shouting when they ganged up on him, dragging him toward one of the jets of water, watching him sputter his laughter as it sprayed him in the face.

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