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“Nash! Nash!” yelled his mother from the front door of their base housing. It was nothing special. Just a cinderblock building like all the rest, but it was their home. At least until his father was deployed somewhere else.

“Yeah, Mom?”

“Nash, you and the other boys get out of all that pink dust. I hate that stuff. It gets everywhere, and you track it all through the house. I’m sure their mothers feel the same way. Go find some dirt or something to play in. Climb a tree or maybe run through the hose and wash off.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he nodded.

Nash’s father, like the other boys’ fathers, was in the military stationed at a place called The Depot. This was the third base that Nash remembered living on, but his mom said they’d been on seven altogether. That seemed like a lot to him, but then again, everything seemed like a lot to him.

He liked this one because there were boys that were close to his age, and they liked doing the same things he did.

They ran together, played ball together, and went to school together.

They were great! Every once in a while, there would be a girl that lived on base with them, but it seemed like there were more boys for whatever weird reason.

Then, one day, he started feeling funny. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he knew something was changing in his body. He thought it might be that he was growing up, as his mother liked to say. She’d tell him it was growing pains or just his body stretching.

But in fact, it had nothing to do with growing up. People growing up weren’t able to do what he could do.

“Hey, do you guys wanna see something cool,” said Griffin. He and his brothers, Garrett and Gable, all smiled at him.

“Sure,” said Nash.

“We have to go into the woods,” said Gable. “Trust us.”

Nash did trust the brothers. They were all good boys and good friends, something he treasured as a military child.

Getting into trouble as a kid was never a good idea but getting into trouble as a military child was a horrible idea.

The punishment was much worse, the consequences far more severe.

You knew when kids were good and when they weren’t. You could tell right away, and Nash had a lot of experience with the not-good kids.

The boys laughed as they walked toward the woods.

They knew they were supposed to get permission from the base command, just in case the men were training in the woods.

But there hadn’t been any new training groups in weeks, and all the boys would have known because their fathers would have told them.

Still, they knew they should have waited, but this seemed too exciting to wait for all of that.

“What do you want to show me?” asked Nash. “If this is a trick and you’re gonna leave me out here or something, I’m gonna punch you in the nose.”

“It’s not a trick,” said Griffin, laughing at him. “Watch.”

Griffin stood beside Nash, placing one hand on the ground and bending his knee.

His brother counted down from three, and Griffin took off.

Nash could barely see him as he maneuvered through the trees and then returned to them in a matter of seconds.

A whoosh of wind blew their clothing, leaves scattering behind him, and Griffin smiled at them.

“Cool, right?” he laughed.

“H-how did you do that?” asked Nash.

“We’re not sure,” said Griffin. “Gable can get animals to do what he wants. He told that big German Shepherd to sniff out Dad’s chocolate bars in his desk.” Griffin smiled, pulling the chocolate from his backpack.

“It worked, too. I also told that squirrel to stop scratching at the window at night. He said he did it because he was scared like me,” said Gable.

“Any animal?” asked Nash. Gable nodded at him.

“I got that big hawk to poop on the commander’s car, too,” laughed Gable.

“What about you?” asked Nash, looking at Garrett.

Garrett smiled at their friend, lifting his hands in the air and waving his arms. The massive trees swayed back and forth, blowing in the ever-increasing winds. He moved faster and faster, and the winds continued to pick up.

“That’s enough,” said Griffin. Garrett stopped and Nash smiled.

“Well, what do you think?” asked Gable.

“I’m so glad you showed me,” whispered Nash. The boys were all between the ages of eight and eleven, Nash being the oldest. “I didn’t want to tell anyone because they might think I’m weird or a witch or warlock or something. Watch.”

With the winds still dying down, Nash focused on the sky, watching as the dark clouds rolled in quickly, dumping a torrential rain on the forest. Without even thinking, he wished it away, and it was gone.

“So cool!” said Garrett. “Water, wind, animals, and speed. We’re superheroes!”

“But,” hesitated Nash, “superheroes aren’t real. Something is wrong with us. Should we tell our folks?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Gage. “It’s probably nothing, and it will go away soon. Besides, our mom hasn’t been feeling so good lately, and I don’t want to make her worse. She gets real upset easy.”

“Yeah. Yeah, maybe, but if it doesn’t go away soon, we have to make sure we have a pact.

No one tells anyone what’s happening with us.

No one. If they find out, we could all be in trouble,” said Nash.

The other boys all nodded, linking pinky fingers and swearing their secrecy to one another.

“We’d better get back before someone realizes we’re gone. ”

Only someone did realize they were gone because the boys were being watched at all times and didn’t know it. Cameras hidden in the forest and anywhere that the boys might travel had been placed all over the base. They had no idea that every move was being observed.

It was only three weeks later that Garrett, Griffin, and Gable left. Worse, they hadn’t even said goodbye.

“Why are they gone?” asked Nash, trying to hold back tears.

“Son, their father was needed somewhere else. The base packed them up and moved them to another location with very little notice. It must have been very, very important for them to do it so quickly,” said his father.

“It’s not fair!”

“I know,” said his dad. “Being a military child is hard. I promise we’re going to be here for a while. I’ve been told that I’m needed here a while longer.”

They did stay at The Depot a while longer. Almost four years before his father was transferred to Arizona. By then, Nash knew that something was terribly wrong. His mother was sick and not getting better. His father was losing weight. And Nash was more powerful than ever.

Something deep inside was telling him that he couldn’t trust anyone. Not even his parents.

About once a month, two soldiers would come to the house to have dinner. He watched as his parents appeared to be uncomfortable with their presence. They rarely spoke to them, and the soldiers didn’t bother to speak either.

Usually, he was given a pass on dinner if there were adults in the house. But these men wanted him at the table, and his father agreed. Nash didn’t like it. They seemed to watch everything he did.

By the time he was a senior in high school, he knew he was being observed both near and far. His mother had died of an unknown cancer, and his father was planning to retire as soon as Nash graduated.

Nash was ready to strike out on his own and join the Marines. Much to his father’s disappointment, he didn’t want anything to do with the Army.

For their final senior outing, their entire class went on a camping trip to Fossil Creek Waterfall. The girls were on one side of the camp, the boys on the other. But that didn’t stop Nash from speaking to the only girl he’d ever had a crush on.

Jenna Brooks was tall, pretty, sweet, and considered one of the ‘good girls.’ She didn’t cuss.

She didn’t drink. And she didn’t seem to date at all.

One of the things that appealed to Nash was that Jenna rarely wore makeup.

She dressed conservatively and just seemed to be an all-around good person.

They spent two days laughing, joking, and hiking. When one of their fellow hikers came up missing, the group spread out to try and find her.

Josie Stevens couldn’t swim, and for some reason, Nash just knew that’s where she would be. He could feel it in his bones that water was the place he would find Josie.

He ran toward the reservoir and could see her arms flailing beneath the surface. Checking his surroundings, he felt that he had to do this. The risks were huge, but he couldn’t let the girl drown.

With a sweep of his arm, he parted the water, pushing it to the side like the parting of the Red Sea.

Poor Josie coughed and sputtered, gasping for air.

“Josie! Here, hurry!” he said, waving at her.

She crawled through the muddy floor of the reservoir and made her way up the bank to dry land. Releasing the water, Josie didn’t even seem to notice that it had been dry for a moment, then filled once again.

“Oh my gosh! What happened?” she said, still coughing.

“I don’t know. You must have fallen into the reservoir. It wasn’t very deep where you were. You struggled a bit, but you were able to walk out by yourself. You were very brave.”

“I-I walked out?” she frowned. “No. No, I don’t think…”

“It’s okay. Everyone is looking for you. Let’s go.” As they made their way around the bend, Jenna Brooks was standing there smiling at the two of them.

“You found her!”

“Yes. I slipped and fell into the reservoir, but it wasn’t deep where I was. I guess,” said Josie with a confused expression.

No one could seem to explain what happened that day. But then again, no one seemed to care. Josie was alive. As the year began to come to a close, Jenna and Nash talked for hours on end after school about their future plans.

“I bet you’re going to college, aren’t you?” he asked.

“That’s the plan,” she said, smiling. She knew it was a lie. She wasn’t going to be able to afford to go to college. Her parents had already told her that it wasn’t a possibility. “What will you do?”

“I’ve joined the Marines,” he said. “I leave for boot camp the week after graduation.”

“I always knew you were someone special, Nash. The Marines seem like a good place for you,” smiled Jenna.

They’d made promises to stay in touch, and for the most part, they’d tried for a while.

He wrote twice while in boot camp, and she wrote back.

When he returned after boot camp, her parents told him that she’d already left Arizona.

As hard as he tried, he couldn’t seem to get a response from Jenna.

He’d made all these plans in his head about what their lives might look like. But things never quite worked out the way they were supposed to.

The Marines turned out to be a great place for him. For the most part, he could hide his gifts and use them only when necessary. None of his teammates knew about it, and he planned to keep it that way.

As a natural warrior, Nash’s gifts became harder to hide.

When he helped to save an Afghan village filled with women and children from a fire, the entire unit was suspicious of him.

The insurgents had set fire to the entire village, with the women and children locked inside their huts.

He couldn’t just stand there and not do something.

But the questions began to swirl almost immediately. How could a rainstorm suddenly appear in a desert? A desert that saw less than two inches of rain a year.

“What happened out there, Nash?” asked one of the men staring at him. He’d watched him open his palms and raise them to the sky.

“What do you mean? It rained. You saw it.” He just shrugged, trying to blow it off, but he knew it wasn’t going to satisfy the men.

“I saw it, but I don’t believe it was just rain. The sky was perfectly clear, Nash. There wasn’t a cloud to be found for a thousand miles. Then you raised a hand to the sky, and it rained.”

“I was praying. That’s all,” he lied. “All those women and kids were going to die. All I did was pray that something would save them. Maybe there was a plane that dropped water.”

But his unit didn’t believe him, and the bonds that typically were forged between Marines were now strained. Nash was watched closely by the men, rarely able to have a moment alone. It felt like old times with his parents.

It would be five years before he reconnected with his childhood friends and realized that the superheroes all still possessed their superhero powers. Only now, they were adults who understood that something had happened to them.

By the time they figured out what happened, they were being chased by the very people that made them this way. Along the way, they lost Gable and then Griffin. It was devastating, especially for Garrett.

Faced with no choice but to find a new home, their wayward band of misfits traveled hundreds of miles on foot to find a place where they might be accepted by others.

Just when they’d found their new life, a new family, Nash was slammed in the face with the memory of the only woman he’d ever loved. Only now, she was untouchable.