Page 18 of Elemasters

He followed James into the house, and was immediately floored by the grandeur of it; the foyer had pristine white marble floors, a fancy spiral staircase leading to the second story, and a beautiful chandelier hovering over them. All the place was missing was a butler and a maid… which to be fair, Dustin couldn’t prove James didn’t have.

“We can get to the backyard through the kitchen,” James said, waving for Dustin and the others to keep following him, “Chloe’s already waiting for us,”

They continued through the house, and Dustin had to stop himself from drooling over every detail of the Food Network ass kitchen as they passed through. Soon enough, they were standing in the insanely spacious backyard that stretched all the way from the house at least half a mile to the tree line in the distance.

Chloe was over by the pool, clad in a hot pink velour tracksuit with her eyes squeezed shut. Her hands were cupped in front of her, with her sleeves riding up just enough for Dustin to see her veins glowing like starlit spiderwebs along her forearms. Her fingers twitched as her car keys hovered above them like they were on puppet strings; it looked badass, but it certainly wasn’t effortless.

“Ah damn, looks like the fun’s started without us,” Chris grumbled.

As soon as Chris spoke, Chloe’s concentration shattered, and the keys dropped like a stone, bouncing once before falling into the pool with a splash.

“God damn it, I was doing it!” Chloe groaned, shooting a glare at Chris, “someone’s gonna fish my keys out of the pool. I’m not about to get my hair wet because you made me fuck up,”

“No worries, I’ll get ‘em,” Chris quickly shrugged off his jean jacket and started pulling off his shirt, but James stopped him.

“Hang on, this is a perfect chance for Dustin to practice!” James took Dustin by the hand and pulled him closer to the pool’s edge, “do you think you can like, make a bubble or something and float the keys to the top?”

“I um, I mean I probably could,” Dustin replied, trying to fight the trembling in his voice that was summoned both from James’s touch and the sudden spotlight, “it’s worth a shot,”

“You’re cockblocking me bro,” Chris leaned in close and whispered in Dustin’s ear, though it sounded more like a growl. Dustin rolled his eyes so hard they almost pulled a Star Fox 64 and barrel rolled out of his skull.

“Well, your cock clearly can’t read the room. You’ve been throwing straight air balls. She’s not into you,”

“He’s right, I’m not,” Chloe said with a smirk as she crossed her arms, “I thought that was perfectly clear when we broke up,”

Chris’s face went ghostly pale before reddening into a tomato almost faster than Dustin could track. His mouth kept opening and closing like it was trying to form a coherent sentence, but nothing came out. As he slinked off to stand next to Bailey by the back door of the house, Dustin almost felt bad for him; it was like watching Icarus fly too close to the sun and plummet into the ocean. Though… he couldn’t deny that it felt kinda nice to see Chris get the wind knocked out of his sails for once. Only kinda though.

Now that the distractions had ceased, Dustin focused on the pool. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to extend his awareness out of his own body. The goal was to see if he could sense the water in the pool the way he could with the shower… and it was actually working. The pure volume of pool water was overwhelming; it felt like ice was being pumped through his veins as he tried to focus on the few parts of the pool that felt out of place; too solid, too rigid, too foreign. He felt like he was mentally diving into a trench, fumbling around in the dark trying to find a set of car keys in the ocean… but then something clicked.

Water wasn’t just water. It was an extension of him, right? Which meant, theoretically…

He concentrated harder, thinking of the pool less as an obstacle to overcome and more as a muscle he hadn’t flexed in a while. After a few moments, he could see through the water like he was swimming, though he knew that his physical body was still outside of the pool. It was as if his consciousness had been projected into the water. He could see the keys clearly at the bottom, and all it took was a thought to encase them in a small sphere of water and pull them to the surface like they were on a fishing line.

“Oh my god Dusty, you’re a natural at this!” Bailey gasped as the group watched the keys emerge.

“I… actually pulled it off,” he said, grabbing Chloe’s keys and tossing them to her.

“I knew you could do it!” James pulled Dustin into another hug, “that was so fucking sick man,”

“T-thanks,” Dustin replied sheepishly, “I’m glad you had faith in me, because I definitely didn’t have it in myself,”

“You used to,” James looked deeper into Dustin’s eyes, his expression somewhat somber, “when you used to be on stage, I mean. I’ve never seen someone walk into a room with the full knowledge that they were about to fucking own it before. It was electric,”

Dustin’s heart hiccupped; he had no idea how much he needed to hear that. How badly he needed someone to remember the version of himself that existed before he buried it under college aspirations and quick-dry swim gear. He wanted to say something, anything, to let James know how much it meant to him, but of course Chris interjected before he could think of the words.

“Alright, alright, we’re burning daylight,” he said, stretching his arms up over his head, “let’s see what the rest of us can do before…”

His sentence was abruptly cut off by a fat raindrop striking him right in the forehead. Another fell, and then another, until a fucking torrential downpour was coming down on them. Chloe and Bailey darted for the house without a second thought, with the twins hot on their heels. James took a beat longer; staring up at the sky in abject confusion for a few moments before jogging back inside, now thoroughly soaked from head to toe.

“What the fuck? It wasn’t supposed to rain today! My mom watches the weather channel so much I can recite the forecast from memory. We’re supposed to be clear all week,” Bailey said, furiously pulling paper towels off the rack and passing them to Chloe so they could blot themselves dry.

“You don’t think you caused it, do you Dustin?” Chloe asked, raising her eyebrow with a mixture of suspicion and concern, “we don’t really know what all we’re capable of just yet,”

“I don’t think so,” Dustin shook his head, “I can like, feel it in my bones when my powers activate and I had no clue the rain was coming,”

“Well, we’re stuck inside until it blows over regardless,” Chris huffed, “so what should we do?”

James’s face lit up, water still dripping from his chin.