The Results of Power

The frame of the camera shook and spun around on the tripod as Charlotte spun it around to screw it in. Her dad would get extremely angry if he found out that she was playing around with his things; he had even gotten mad at her mother when she had taken it along for a trip and had accidentally dropped it in the sand of the beach. So Charlotte had to be really careful to make sure nothing went wrong.

Besides, this was way too cool to not have some sort of video made.

The dinner table chair she stood on to make sure that everything was steady. She didn’t know how to make the legs smaller so that her eight-year-old body could handle it by herself, but the contraption was just too confusing. Having to hunch over while standing on a chair would have to do.

As soon as she was absolutely sure that the camera was recording, she stood in front of it, nervously straightening her hair and placing the can of soup on the table next to her. “Ok. Ok. Uhm, this, I’m Charlotte. I’m….I’m eight years old. It’s…uh, hold on.” She scurried over to the refrigerator to check to calendar and came back into frame just as quickly. “It’s June 24th. And I wanted to, to record this because it’s, it’s….well, it’s cool!” Yeah, that’s good. That’s real good, Charlotte thought to herself, smiling at how smooth she was in front of the camera. She had been worried that she would be too nervous.

She scurried back behind the camera, tilting it down to focus on the soup can so that it was just about in the center. It wasn’t the biggest object that would work for what she wanted, but she didn’t want to break anything while she was inside. It was just large enough to work banging up things.

Once Charlotte had focused, closing her eyes and breathing in and out a few times, she focused on the can and lifted up both her hands slowly.

The can shook mildly a few times, hesitating due to the force that Charlotte was using, until it began to inch slowly off the table. It rose up, eventually stopping just before it would have moved beyond the camera frame. It took Charlotte a few minutes to readjust the camera, making sure that it remained at a good height. The can faltered a few times as Charlotte had to work to maintain the can’s height in the air and have the camera properly record everything. As soon as she had a clear picture and focus, she got down from the chair and decided to show off a little. She turned her finger around in a circle and had the can perform flips. A quick movement back and forth with her hand had the soup move around in a square shape.

She laughed. Everything was going great. The first time Charlotte had done something like this, all of six months ago, she had had headaches for days, and that was with a loose sheet of paper. She had slowly practiced, and now she could move around cans of soup like they were nothing.

She was going to be the world’s best grocery bagger if she wanted to.

“Ok. Now, I’m going to have it come back down to me now.” Charlotte stepped in front of the camera, pointing the index and middle fingers of her right hand out away from her, and flicking them down quickly.

But instead of simply dropping down into her other, open hand, the can of soup dropped down at an angle, crashing into the camera and tripod and knocking them over with such a great force that Charlotte jumped back a bit in fear.

She looked down at the fallen recording equipment, both her hands clasped over her wide-open mouth, standing completely still by worry and fear.




Her parents grounded her, of course. Charlotte had known that much would happen if they found out, she just wasn’t prepared for what that really meant. Dad got angry and lectured loudly at her for not respecting other people’s property and ruining the floor with the soup that had leaked out, causing a stain on a carpet. Mom was just as bad, with stern gazes and silence towards her. Charlotte stayed quiet as well, although crying from everything that was going on.

“And what even made you THINK that this was a good idea? Charlotte, for God’s sake, I expected BETTER of you! What in the world were you trying to do?!” Her father screamed.

“I j-ju-just wanted to-to-to sh-show what…..what I could do,” she replied quietly between sobs. “I did-didn’t thi-think you’d let me use it.”

Her father and mother looked at each other for a second, concerned. “What do you mean, “what you could do”?” her mother said.

Charlotte sniffled and looked up. “It was, was on the camera. I filmed it,” she said. “Does it…?”

“Yes, it still works,” her father said, dismissing the question. “But whether or not it works isn’t important, what IS important is that you—”

“Then you can see. I filmed it. Please?” Charlotte looked up at her father, remnants of tears on her face. “Please watch it?”

Her father sighed and went over to her mother. “Vince, we might as well,” she whispered to her husband, barely loud enough for. “She knows she’s in trouble, it
couldn’t hurt to at least see what she was so willing to get in trouble over.”

“Laura...” He paused for a few more seconds, then walked over to Charlotte. “You stay here. And do not move. Understand?” When Charlotte nodded in agreement, he went over to his wife and shut the door behind them.

About an hour later they came back, finding Charlotte lying on her bed, head on a pillow and knees pulled up into a half-formed fetal position. Her father sat down next to her. “Charlotte,” he began, “I watched the…the thing you filmed.”

Charlotte kept her eyes closed, unsure of what to say. Even though she wanted people to see it, she hadn’t thought of what might happen once people actually DID.

“All of those things you did, with the can…how did you do them? Did you use wires? String?”

“No,” she replied softly. “I just…I don’t know. I just did it. I didn’t mean for it to hit the camera, it was an accident, I—”

“Sweetie, we’re not talking about the camera, we’re talking about you,” her father interjected in a firm tone. “Now, I want this made clear, and don’t you even think of lying to me. Are you saying you did everything you did in that recording, making the soup can fly around in the air, entirely on your own?”

Charlotte nodded.

“Then…can you prove it? Do it again?”

Charlotte slowly sat up and looked at her parents. “Am I still in trouble?” she asked in a cautious tone.

“Yes, sweetie, you are, but that’s not what’s important right now. I’m asking you if you can do what you did again.”

Charlotte didn’t answer her father. Instead, she turned her head away to her desk, where there was a cup that had several sharpened pencils. She moved her hand, barely, not even taking it off of the bed, and a pencil began to fly up, staying a steady two feet above the desk.

Her father jumped up and let loose several words that Charlotte had never heard before, but she assumed that they were possibly bad ones. Her mother, on the other hand, screamed wordlessly and ran out of the room, hiding behind the wall. Charlotte brought the pencil back down immediately.

It took her parents a while to calm down from that. The spent even longer talking together, though what they were saying exactly Charlotte couldn’t hear. When her father finally approached her, he had a look on his face that Charlotte couldn’t name properly. “Charlotte. How long have you been able to do this?”

“About six months,” she replied. “It was really hard at first. All I could do was push around a sheet of paper, and it hurt. A lot.”

“That’s why you were sick so often,” her mother muttered allowed. “Charlotte, why didn’t you tell us? Why wait for so long?”

Charlotte thought about that question. She finally gave a small shrug. “I don’t know, Mom,” she said softly. “I just thought it would be cool if it was bigger.”

Her parents looked at one another. “Honey,” her mother said, “what you said in your video…are you sure you want to let people know you can do this?”

Charlotte gave a confused look to her parents. “Why?”

“Honey, people can get…scared, sometimes, when they see things they don’t understand. When they see things that are strange, that are…not normal.” She sat down on the bed with her husband and Charlotte and looked her daughter in the eyes. “We just want to make sure that you don’t make a mistake.”

Charlotte remained confused. “So…you want me to lie?”

“No! No, sweetie, of course not,” her father answered, hugging her close to him. “We just don’t want to see you make a mistake. What you can do…I’ve never seen anything like it. You need to be careful with it.”

“I know, Dad.”

“And that’s why we just want to be absolutely sure, that we need to decide as a family before anything happens with you.” He turned her body and head around gently so that Charlotte was focused entirely on her parents. “Now. Do you really, honestly want people to know that you have this…telekinetic power?”

“Tele-what?”

“That you can move things. Like the can or the pencil.”

Charlotte thought for a few seconds. “Am I still grounded?”

Her mother answered that. “Whether you say yes or no, you’re still grounded. But for a month instead of the rest of the summer.”

Charlotte frowned and looked down. She remained silent for about half a minute before giving an answer.

“Yes. I want to show people. I think it’s really cool.”




“Happy Birthday, Charlotte!”

Charlotte stopped in surprise as several of her friends popped out from behind the furniture as she turned on the lights. She turned to Tommy, who had a more confused look on his face. “So, THIS is what you were begging to talk about over the phone?”

“Absolutely not.” He turned and walked up to his sister, who was busy carrying a sheeted chocolate cake over to the table. “Sammie, what the hell is all this?”

“Surprise birthday party, obviously,” Sammie replied.

“You see, Tommy, every 365 days,” Valerie, Charlotte’s best friend and Tommy’s ex-girlfriend, slowly began, as though she were talking to a young child, “people celebrate when they’re born.”

“And we’re going to ignore the fact that my birthday was LAST week?” Charlotte interjected.

“That’s part of the “surprise” part, silly!” Valerie giggled. She gave Charlotte a quick congratulatory hug. “Besides, no way I’m just going to let you have some tiny event for your big 18th!”

Sammie set down the cake, with two lit candles right in the center, a “1” and an “8”. Charlotte immediately blew them out. She didn’t need to think of a wish. The past ten years of her life had been awesome. Ever since the videos of her telekinesis had gone viral, and even the skeptics were forced to concede that yes, she could do everything with her mind, her life had been amazing. Sure, there had been a few bullies when she was younger, but she had amazingly supportive parents, an awesome group of friends, and was dating the hottest guy at school. Her life was essentially perfect.

“Now, we just need to cut it,” Sammie said, making her way back to the kitchen proper.

“No, no, let me get it,” Charlotte said, holding out her right hand. A knife zoomed past everyone, hilt first, and rested firmly in her grasp. A few party guests let out token “Woah!” and “Nice!” comments, but Charlotte noticed Tommy had slowly been inching away from her and had a worried look on his face.

“Hey, Charlotte, watch where you’re throwing that thing!” Sammie said, a chuckle escaping her mouth.

“Oh come on, Sammie, I knew what I was doing. I wouldn’t do anything stupid, you know me better than that.”

“Stupid like when you tried to lift that cement mixer truck on a dare when you were twelve?”

“When I succeeded in lifting that cement mixer truck, thank you,” Charlotte said, correcting her. Granted, she had nosebleeds for a week and projectile vomited for an hour, but she had been able to do it. And six years later, that sort of effort was child’s play.

She cut the cake, placing a corner piece for herself, and the next piece she gave on a plate to Tommy. “Come on, cheer up!” she said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“I just wanted to talk to you in some privacy, ok? And I THOUGHT I could get at least that much in my own house,” he replied, giving his sister an evil glare.

“Hey, it’s my job as your younger sibling to be an annoying nuisance,” Sammie replied.

“Come on, Tommy, just eat some cake and enjoy yourself,” Valerie said, eagerly eating her piece.

Charlotte examined Tommy as she ate her slice of cake. He wasn’t normally this…agitated might not be the right word, but there was something off, something he really wanted to talk about. If it’s as important as he’s making it seem, I guess we should get some privacy, she thought. “V, Sammie, the two of us are going to be upstairs for a while, we’ll be back in a second.”

“Whatever you say,” Valerie said, complete with a wink. “Just keep it above the belt, you know?”

Charlotte blushed lightly as Tommy headed upstairs to his bedroom. Several posters lined the wall, all of them replicas or photos of famous paintings and artworks. “What’s up, Tommy?”

Tommy sat on his bad, back to a wall, remaining silent for a bit. “I really just wanted to talk to you away from everyone else. I don’t think that now is the—”

“Tommy, we’ve been together for six months. I’m sure whatever it is, I can take it,” Charlotte interjected, a smile naturally appearing on her face.

Tommy looked at her, a completely serious look covering his face, and said, “I think we should stop seeing each other.”

Charlotte discovered that apparently she could not take whatever it was.

“Wha? What? But…but WHY? Was it…was it something I did? Why? What…how long…” She continued to sputter like this for a minute, blindsided by his request.

“I just can’t do this anymore, Charlotte. I’m in love with Valerie. Always have been.”

“And the two of you BROKE UP! That train’s kind of left the station!”

“We only “broke up” because she wanted the two of us to date so that you’d be happy!”

Charlotte stood entirely still at that, arms at her side. “No. No way, you’re lying.”

“Remember when we first met? When she introduced us? She said I was her boyfriend and you said you were extremely jealous that she got me before you did? Not two weeks later, she comes up to me and says we can’t be together, that I need to date you now.”

“Shut up.”

“And when I asked her why, you know what she said? Because she didn’t want you to be angry. She didn’t want to see you, what’d she say, “go Carrie” on everyone. That she felt that, as long as you were happy, everything would be fine.”

“I am not some psycho to be afraid of! I’m a perfectly normal person!”

“A perfectly normal person doesn’t just cause knives to go flying though rooms! A normal person doesn’t juggle around cars using only their mind for fun!”

“Hey, that only happened ONCE and they agreed to it beforehand!”

“BECAUSE THEY’RE ALL SCARED OF YOU!” Tommy bellowed at her. “Everyone knows that you’ve got all this power, that you could hurt anyone you wanted just like that!” He snapped his fingers in emphasis. “So they make you happy, do what you want, and I’m tired of it! Your so-called friends might be fine with this, but I’m through lying and—”

Before he could finish that sentence, a force yanked him up and slammed him against the wall, right up against the poster of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s painting, causing him to cry out in surprise and pain. Charlotte looked at him with a mixture of fury and hate. “Don’t. Don’t talk about my friends like that. They would NEVER do something like that. If you want to break up, fine, but don’t you DARE think that I’d believe that they would lie to me like that.”

The sound of footsteps running up the stairs was followed by Tommy’s bedroom door being opened. Everyone from downstairs had come up, it seemed. Once they saw what was happening, only Valerie and Sammie stepped forward.

“Charlotte, come on, please, let him down!” Sammie pleaded.

“Please, we can go someplace else, come on, please Charlotte,” Valerie begged.

Charlotte dropped Tommy down onto his bed, and everyone rushed over to see if he was alright. “Oh my God, what the hell happened?” Sammie asked.

“V,” Charlotte said in a controlled voice. “I can see why you broke up with him. He’s a horrible liar. He said you left him and had him go out with me just so I would be happy, wouldn’t be angry and hurt someone.”

Valerie and everyone else remained completely silent. “He was lying, right?” Charlotte asked, begging for confirmation. “Right?”

Valerie seemed to struggle to find the right words. “He’s…well…it’s not like how you’re making it sound. See, we all….you can sometimes…”

Charlotte didn’t focus on the words she was saying. Only what they meant.

Her closest friends were afraid of her. Like she was some kind of monster that had to be amused or else it would destroy them.

She ran out of the house. She ran back into her car, and drove back home as fast as she could, the tears not coming to her face properly until she arrived inside.

She cried for what seemed like hours in the living room, unable and yet able to believe what had just occurred. When she had regained some semblance of composure, she went back to the kitchen, eyeing the bowl of leftover Halloween candy that her parents had put just out of reach on the refrigerator.

Charlotte got a chair from the dinner table and pulled it over to the refrigerator, stepping onto it so she could grab the individual, bite-size pieces with her two hands.