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something to tell you.”
    I waited.
    “We all have a mark too.”
    Widening my eyes, I nodded. “I kinda figured that, Jake.”
    “Get on with it!” Reed slapped the edge of the chair, looking agitated and annoyed. “Just tell her.”
    Looking back to Jake, I braced myself…ready to see the powers I would be up against.
    Jake frowned. “We’re not after you, Lanie.”
    “Just tell her.” Reed raised his hands and walked in a circle.
    Rob put his hands on my shoulders and I glanced up at his smiling face.
    “Lanie…The Foundation hasn’t sent us to take you back,” said Jake. “The Foundation… kicked us out .”

Episode 6: The Foundation

    “Kicked out?” The Foundation never kicked out anybody. Well, not the gifted kids—in fact, they were the whole reason it existed. All the other rich kid classes were an elaborate front to hide us. But the school churned out only the brightest and the most connected kind of students.
    Flinging her arms out, Marsha gave me a ‘duh’ kind of look. “We lost our powers!”  She turned from the room and ran down the hall to her room. “Who cares about her ?”
    I watched Marsha run down the hall, the whole thing muddling around in my brain like colors blurred into a deep shade of brown on my painter’s easel. Lost their powers? Lost their powers? How? “What is she talking about?”
    Reed stepped forward. “They’re gone. My strength, Marsha’s healing, Karen’s smarts, Jake’s compassion. They’re just gone.”
    I was confused. “What?”
    Reed looked annoyed and pointed his index finger at me. “Just because we can’t make weapons doesn’t mean we didn’t have powers.”
    Hope suddenly sprang into my heart. You could lose your powers? This was what I’d been looking for. I tried not to look too interested, but glanced at Rob, trying to gauge if this was why he was acting so happy. “Really?”
    Rob winked at me, and a small seed of hope started to grow, blossoming into a white lily that I could see in my mind, with little flowers coming off of the vines. I looked around the room, feeling myself starting to relax. “Your powers are gone?”
    Looking back, I saw Reed’s arms were crossed, a grimace on his face, and worry creased the corners of Jake’s eyes.
    This was it. Liberation coursed through me. This was the answer to what Rob and I had been looking for.
    Karen walked across the room to stand next to me. She was hesitant. “Lanie.”
    “Uh huh.” I looked out the large window and focused on the little stream that followed a path down the rocks next to the side of the house. I finally relaxed. No one was taking me anywhere…and I could get rid of my power. I wanted to go out there and touch the water, feel the coolness of it on my face.
    Karen dropped her voice to a whisper, but put her hands on her hips. “Why are you so happy all of a sudden?”
    I turned to her. “Are you serious?”
    Karen tilted her head to the side, as if she’d just thought of something. “How come we never met you?”
    Taken aback, I crossed my arms. “What do you mean?”
    Pushing her glasses back onto her nose, she smiled at me. “We…we’ve all known each other for a few years. I mean…” She broke off and looked back to the others before continuing. “We’re the same age. How come we never met you there?”
    The pain was back in my head, and the memory of black, cold cement pressed against every part of me. Dr. Luth’s voice echoed in my mind. “Draw, Lanie. Draw it and you can come out.”
    Reaching out to steady myself on the window, I yanked myself back from the memory. I focused on Karen’s face. “I never went to The Foundation, not until…until I was fifteen. And…my experience was a little different from yours.”
    Looking troubled, Karen nodded her head. “When we saw your mark, after the accident, we thought you were like us—that you’d lost your powers too.” She looked sad. “Jake suspected that you were one of us, but the mark