Martin Granite

“Congratulations! It’s a boy! He looks very healthy; let me go clean him up.” The father watched his wife take some deep breaths, then smiled as he kissed her on the forehead. She looked up at him and smiled between breaths. The doctor came back in the room quickly and gave the boy to the mother. The boy had already stopped crying, but it still had that scrunched up baby face. Both the parents wanted to say something to the other, but neither could think of anything worth being said. Silence was the suiting sound for the situation.

________

Sometime after the child had passed a year’s age, something unusual happened during one of his temper tantrums. When the mother came to the sobbing child to comfort him, she could not pick him out of the crib. Every time she touched him, she was burned. She was nearly about to panic, but the child stopped crying soon enough now that she was in the room.

She sat there with him for a little while, not touching him, watching him lie in the crib. After a couple minutes passed, she tried to pick him up again. This time the child was a cool, normal temperature. She walked him around for a while, but also decided to call her local doctor.

“I have a question.”

“Absolutely.”

“About half an hour ago my baby was very hot.”

“Um. Well, babies can get warm sometimes I gue-”

“No,” she pushed, “Really hot. Like, burned-my-fingers-hot.”

The doctor took a moment, and then said, “Well, how is he now?”

“He’s alright now, but-”

“And your fingers are alright?”

“What? Yeah, it’s just a burn, but-”

“Well I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”

The mother scrunched her face and paused for a moment, as if the doctor could see the expression on her face. “You’re not listening, I burnt my fingers on my baby’s skin.”

“I’m listening perfectly fine Mrs…. Um…”

“Granite,” she managed to say without moving her lips.

“Ms. Granite, it sounds like neither of you are harmed or ill. I understand your concern, but it sounds like everything is fine.”

The doctor begins to sound as if he’s reading from a pamphlet. “Thank you for calling Vernicle Hospital, if you have any other concerns, please call us anytime.”

________

These situations pop up every now and again for the child, always tying in with his emotions: Heat for anger and frustration, cold for sadness and loss. The mother started to become familiar with the incidents, and only twice got the doctor to look at the child; neither time was the child exhibiting the same abnormal tendencies by the time he was in the doctor’s office.

As the child aged, his abilities began to develop and become stronger; so strong, that entire rooms would heat up dramatically, and on occasion something extremely flammable would alight. There was also the opposite, where a chill would cover a room, and the once charred curtains would stiffen in the cold. The incidents also started to come more and more frequently.

Over time, the child started adapting to his ‘power,’ and learned to control himself. At that point, the incidents dipped back down to a minimum. Once the boy passed age eleven, though, he began to play with his powers intentionally. The ties with his emotional being seemed to slip away for the most part, but the boy learned how to heat up or cool down his body at will. It didn’t take a whole lot longer for him to realize how to isolate the temperature differences to his hands, feet, head, and, well… puberty was also starting to kick in, so naturally, he did some experimenting.

________

For the longest time, the boy stayed amused with his powers and felt no need to ask questions. But as he entered his teen years, he began to wonder about the bigger things in life, like: Why am I here? What’s the point of life? Why aren’t I like any one else? All these questions are common amongst anyone who has freshly dropped from childhood into reality. Although for this boy, “Why aren’t I like any one else?” packs a little more oomph than it does for the rest of us.

At least he managed to keep his powers a secret from any classmates he had. He repelled any one who might’ve become close to him to be sure no one discovered his secret. It wasn’t easy though: When his teacher would call on him for an answer, not only did the boy feel a nervous warmth, the other students felt heated. It was the same with tests: All his classmates always thought they were nervous test takers because they would sweat during. The boy had to control himself all the time so that nothing was too radical, too dangerous, too noticeable.

He never could figure out why he was different. In biology class, he was taught that living things evolve and adapt to their environment for better survival. The boy thought that it was an odd adaptation to be able to withstand extreme temperatures, as well as consciously shift the temperatures of his own body; helpful to survival, maybe, but hardly necessary.

Once after watching a movie about a superhero, he asked his mother if she drank some nuclear waste while she was pregnant with him.

“No,” she laughed, “You’re just unique hunny, everybody’s unique.”

“No,” the boy insisted, “Personalities are unique. When most boys get mad, they don’t set the drapes on fire.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Mom. I’m serious. I’m not asking why I’m an outcast at school or any crap like that. …I already know the answer to that,” he said plainly. “I want to know why I can do this weird shit!”

“Don’t swear.”

“Mom!”

“I don’t know hunny, ever since you were little, you would heat up and cool down inexplicably, I just don’t know.”

________

The boy remained frustrated and confused for a long while, until another interest outweighed the origin of his abilities: Girls. Even supernatural powers can’t compete with the supernatural testosterone levels of adolescence.

Although it took the boy quite a while to recover from the outcast status, he eventually got a date, which lead to another, and to another, but then stopped there. Then he tried another girl, and that relationship lasted much longer. The two got very close, which made the boy happy and nervous at the same time.

“I love how warm you always are,” she said to him once. The boy didn’t respond, he laid still, staring into space as he held her. He wondered if he should say something, but as the moment passed he felt more and more that it was alright to ignore it.

But then she returned to it: “How do you do it?” She said, turning over to look at him. She was smiling, and not actually looking for an answer. She was simply admiring him. “Why are you always perfectly warm?” She asked, snuggling closer to him.

“I dunno,” he said, rather warily. “I could cool down if I’m too hot,” he suggested.

“No, no,” She giggled at what she thought was a joke. “Don’t. You’re perfect right now.” She then kissed him and laid her head down close to his face. Her eyes were closed when she set down her head, but then she opened them and stared at the boy.

The boy wasn’t sure what to do, but then he kissed her back. Then he kissed her again and again, repeatedly kissing until you need another verb besides “kissing.” After a moment they started to feel each other, and the boy began to heat up.

________

The girl stopped and took a breath of air, “Okay, now you are getting really hot.”

“Sorry,” the boy said, and then instantly chilled his entire body. As soon as the girl felt the boy’s icy hand on her, she pushed him away and stood up.

“Oh my God!” she exclaimed as she felt the cold spot on her body with her own hand. “How?... What did you do?”

“Huh?” The boy was at a loss. It took him a moment to realize that he’d cooled himself far too drastically, which was the gunshot that made his mind begin to race for a solution to the situation.

“Why did your hand turn so cold?”

Still no finish line, he only said, “I dunno.”

The girl’s shock was only momentary, though, and it quickly transformed into concern. “Let me see your hand.” She held it and it was only slightly cool now. “Do you, like, have some medical condition or something?”

The boy looked the girl in the eye for a second, then said, “Yes. I do. I have a medical condition.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Uhh,” The boy stalled. “Never really came up?” It wasn’t really a question, but it came out as one anyway, as if he was asking if it would fly. It didn’t though. The girl’s returning stare shot it right out of the sky. “I was… embarrassed.” He told her.

“Oh, you shouldn’t be embarrassed about something you can’t help though.”

“I know,” his lie confessed, “but I thought you wouldn’t like me if I was some weirdo.”

She awed, and then assured him, “I’ll always love you no matter what!” This was the first time either of them said anything of loving the other. The boy told himself that because she didn’t say the exact phrase: “I love you,” he didn’t have to respond, but there was quite a bit of awkward tension in the air.

The boy did like her, and care for her to some extent. He just wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted to commit to a statement like “I love you” yet. The tension thickened, and the boy started to boil. The more he thought about it, the hotter he got. He wanted to let it simply pass, but he kept thinking about it.

“Do you love me back?” The girl eventually asked.

The boy’s mouth opened, but then he managed to stall for a second more by inhaling deeply. He wanted to say it back for her, but he wanted to be more sure for himself. Fortunately, the whole situation was overturned. The girl put her hand on the boy’s hand once more, and then screamed and recoiled.

“Now your hand’s on fire?!” Although it is entirely possible for the boy’s hands to alight, the girl was exaggerating in this instance.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” the boy said, “It’s my, um, my…” He was too nervous, too pressured, and too scared. “My condition-“ A tiny sound could be heard as the boy’s shirt burst into flame.
The girl screamed through her fingers and backed against a wall. “What the hell is wrong with you?” She shouted.

“I don’t know,” the boy told her sourly. She only stayed to stare for a minute as the boy tried to extinguish his shirt. She left him to his task by running out of the room and out of the house.

When the boy had finished beating the flames from his shirt, he went outside to look for the girl, but of course, she wasn’t there. The boy’s relationship was over, and somebody discovered his secret.

________

Within a few days time, people gave the boy funny looks at school. He was back to outcast status, but it felt different now that it wasn’t by choice. He felt feared, hated, suspicious, and watched. It was considerably different than simply ignored.

The boy tried to talk to his former girlfriend, but she wouldn’t acknowledge his presence in any way; other than talk to everyone else about his freaky fire fiasco.

As alone and bizarre as the boy was now viewed, it also made him very popular amongst the lower groups. Multiple people approached him asking for a display of “fire powers.” The boy never directly showed anyone a display of his abilities, but since everyone sort of knew about it anyway, he actually became more comfortable with his powers. He figured: “What’s the worst thing that could happen if I play around a bit? Someone might discover me?”

The boy started playing little pranks here and there around the school. He made sure that any paper he passed to his neighbor was fresh with an icy chill. Test tubes would scorch students’ fingers and end up shattering on the floor. Oil pastels would melt and paints would freeze. A million stupid little things continued to go wrong in the school, and anyone who was anyone knew why.

________

One night at the boy’s home, he was sitting in his room playing with his hands. He set them alight and extinguished them repeatedly. Burns marks were left on his hands and, although they didn’t hurt, he decided to start wearing gloves. The boy remembered something he learned in school: Heat is the speed and friction of a billion little particles. What the boy was doing was exciting the molecules in his hands so much that they burst into flame, and then calming them back down at will. Although this was amazing, the boy wondered if he could somehow cast that excitement beyond his own body, because, he realized, it would be awesome to throw a fireball.

The boy pointed at a tennis ball on the floor of his room, and started to warm up his hand. His hand caught on fire, but the ball remained the same. He stopped and noticed the entire room was significantly hotter, so he sort of succeeded in projecting heat, but wasn’t really what he had in mind. The boy also noticed he had become very tired: He put out a lot of energy.

“Drapes… How did they ever catch on fire?” The boy wondered. “I must be able to direct it somehow.” The boy stood and picked up the ball. Through his hands, he transferred enough heat to alight the ball. He looked around the room and noticed an old poster on the wall, a poster of no value to the boy. He threw the ball at it, and the ball was half melted and sticky when it hit, so it stuck to the poster and let the flames burn waves into the paper.

The boy smiled and said, “That’ll do for now,” and grabbed his extinguisher.

________

That night, the boy awoke to a loud knocking on the front door. He checked his clock and wondered who it could’ve been in the middle of the night. He thought about investigating, but he was very tired. “I’ll ask my parents in the morning,” he thought to himself. “Probably someone’s car broke down or something.”

The boy was wrong. As the boy was about to drift back to sleep, there was a knock on his door. He woke up as his mother walked in.

“Sweetie, you need to wake up. There’s some men here who want to talk to you, have you been doing anything illegal?”

The boy squinted and blinked, allowing his mother’s words to configure themselves in his ears.

“You’re not doing drugs are you?” His mother asked.

“No, mom-“

“Have you been using your abilities inappropriately? These men seem very professional, they want to talk to you.”

That lit up the boys mind for two reasons: There were people at his house regarding his powers, and the fact that he actually had been using his powers inappropriately.

The boy’s tired state made it easy for him to act calm, though. He grumbled, “I dunno,” and then shifted to get up. “Alright, I’ll be out in a sec, lemme get dressed though,” he said as he held his blanket under his chin.

As the boy stepped off the last stair, one of the men asked, “Are you Martin Granite?”

“Yeah,” said the boy, rubbing his eyes and finding a seat.

The men thanked Mrs. Granite and asked her to leave. “Martin, the United States government is under the impression that you possess some… Interesting qualities.”

Martin blatantly yawned and then asked, “Like what?”

There were two men, and they looked at each other before one spoke. "Regardless whether you have these abilities or not, we are authorized to escort you to a private location.”

“I don’t…” Martin started, but wasn’t sure where to take his argument. “Abilities? Pfff…”

“Sir, you are not going to convince us that you do not possess abnormal capabilities,” One of the men said.

“Even if you don’t,” the other added, “We are still ordered to transport you to the destination.”

“But,” Martin scrunched his brow and shook his head. “I don’t want to.”

“That isn’t up to you. Your only decision is cooperation, or struggle.”

Martin looked down to the table. After a bit of hesitation, he began a slow, loose, bobble nod. “Cool,” he said dully. He looked up at the men calmly. “Awesome.”