"Growing Pains" by Holly Nestlethwaite

Hello there, I'm Holly. I'm sure you've never heard of me but that's okay. I'm one of the ACES, just like all of those other superheroes that you see on TV, but my power isn't one that can help to fight supervillains.

Simply put, I take the pain away from people. I did think about calling myself "Painkiller" or something like that, but when you take some Tylenol it doesn't get hurt back. The pain can't just disappear, it has to go somewhere - into me. I'm like Paul from that film, the little alien voiced by Seth Rogen, the film's called "Paul" so just look it up or something.

Anyway, Jonathan's doing this thing where we have to write about when we discovered our powers and why we're at The Academy, addressed to the general public just in case he needs it. So I guess I have to do this, and then you and him can decide for yourselves what you think of me.

I grew up in the city of Baltimore, in the Southwest area. It was a place called Shipley Hill, not the nicest part of the city, a little run-down, but it was home for us. There was never, my parents and my older brother Ed, and I'm pretty sure we made up about 50% of the white population there.

I'm not being racist or anything, most of the people there were fine, but there was one group of guys that weren't particularly nice. They called themselves something like the "Crimsons", something silly like that, but laughing at them was a big mistake.

But they don't come in until later. I may have come to this place as a result of them, but they didn't give me my powers. Looking back I remember the exact moment when I first felt the powers come through.

My aunt in Boston had had a baby, not recently but my dad couldn't get time off work for a while so it was about seven months old by this time. I'd just turned thirteen a couple of days before, apparently that's a common time for powers to develop. All the teenage hormones and stuff trigger something and then the powers come just to make puberty even trickier.

We were all sat in my aunt's lounge, passing the baby around like some of the hobos at Shipley Hill with their fortified wine. Little Annie was crying and nobody could work out why, she wasn't hungry and she hadn't crapped.

But that changed when she got to me. Not straight away, but I decided she might like a kiss, so I gave her a little peck on the forehead. As soon I made contact I felt a scratching at my gums, just itchy at first but it soon began to hurt. I pulled away just to see a smile cross her face, but then the tears came back as my pain faded.

"I think she might be teething," I said as emotionless as I've ever said anything, stunned by what I had felt, just as I passed her over to my bother.

I just sat there, completely speechless with my eyes glazed over, for what seemed like one of the longest times in my life. It was the start of a long and painful journey to The Academy.

Along the road I had plenty of other experiences with my friends at school and my brother. Headaches, sprains, bruises, you name it. I found that sometimes, if I concentrated really hard, I could take an injury permanently away from someone.

For a while that's what I did. If someone was in pain I was the one they came to. I'd always been the person who'd lend someone their homework, but now I was taking things to help them as well.

But when I was fifteen and he was eighteen, my brother started hanging around with the Crimsons. There wasn't anyone else of his age in the neighborhood so they were his only choice. My parents weren't happy with it but he was having a rebellious phase and nothing they did could stop him.

It wasn't long afterwards that I had to start taking care of him. I healed faster than normal people and I hated to see him in pain, so I took it upon myself to take any of the cuts he came home with away from him. It was mostly slashes, the occasional stab-wound, but nothing too deep. They hurt like Hell but they would have hurt longer for him, and I might have hated what he was doing but I still loved my brother.

But it got worse. Before long the stab-wounds outnumbered the nicks and cuts and even though I could heal myself overnight I was having to put up with more and more pain. I tried to talk to him, told him that I wouldn't be able to do this forever, but he never listened.

Looking back, I see this with a mixture of gratitude and hatred. If he'd listened then what I'm about to tell you would never have happened, but because he didn't I've met some of the best friends a girl in my situation could ask for.

The last day of my old life started out like any other; aching from the stab wound in my side from Ed, getting ready for school. I still remember it in vivid detail, I don't need Will to help me write any of this, as horrific as it is I was forged from this turmoil and to repress it would be disrespectful to my brother.

I left the house to get the school bus, looking over to the alley where Ed and the rest of the Crimsons hung out. I saw pushing, overheard some shouting, knew I'd be late for the bus and in a lot more pain today.

The Crimsons only let Ed hang around with them because they thought it was him that could heal so quickly. Why else would they let a white guy, let alone a Jew, join their gang? That's why I had to heal him, they just wanted to test 'his power'.

I reluctantly walked towards this alley, waiting for Ed to yelp as a switchblade was once again plunged into his flesh, practically my flesh. But his cry of pain never came, or if it did I couldn't hear it. Gunshots tend to drown out these things.

I'd heard them on the street before, some punk trying out his new piece, getting gunned down by the police pretty soon afterwards. That's the way with armed black guys in America.

As soon as the sound stopped there seemed to be complete silence. The Crimsons seemed to be as stunned as me. They must have been. As they ran away they never even noticed me sprinting towards the alley.

When I turned the corner I saw him there, lying on the floor. The blood was seeping through his shirt. His chest was crimson and sodden and I knew that this was going to be my biggest challenge but I had to do it. I had to save him.

I pulled his shirt off so I could see the wound - a hole right of centre. It must have hit a lung, he could still be saved.

I put a hand either side of the wound, focusing harder than I ever had in my entire life. The pain started to come through slowly. I could feel a hole opening up in my chest. Breathing got harder and harder.

Then Ed grabbed one of my hands. He coughed up some blood onto the floor and then managed to say, "Holly... Stop it... I'm not worth saving..."

"Shut up you idiot!" I yelled at him, my teeth clenched from the pain.

"Don't... Don't waste your gift..." was his reply. That was the last thing he said to me before one last coughing fit and then... Nothing.

I was crying. The pain had become too much for me and I lost focus. I ran home, my lung still aching, I could taste blood and I felt the tears streaming down my face. Breathing was so painful but I had to get home, I had to tell my parents.

It wasn't technically a conversation that we had. As I went into the house they saw my tears. My heart was pounding in my ears when I told them that they needed to go to alley and call an ambulance. They knew it was Ed. It seemed like everything went in slow motion, all of the sounds were muffled.

The paramedics pronounced him dead on arrival, there was nothing they could do. We all cried and I couldn't help but feel like it was my fault.

The funeral was held as soon after the shooting as possible, on a miserable, rainy day, but we had to go through the ordeal of an autopsy first. In the end, all of the Crimsons helped to provide an alibi for the culprit so he wasn't arrested.

It wasn't long after the funeral that I got a letter. I don't know how, but whoever wrote it seemed to know everything about me. They said they were sorry about the loss of my brother, but they knew about my powers.

It was from some school, apparently, for people like me. They wanted me to enrol so I could work on my powers and help people in need. But that would mean being away from home for so long, and I didn't want my parents to lose another child.

But I couldn't stop thinking about the last thing Ed had said to me. The words "don't waste your gift" went round and round in my mind, tormenting me. I was torn between what I wanted to do and what I needed to do.

But it was time sensitive - a forewarning of a visit. I could hide the letter from my parents but the hulking German man who arrived at the door a few weeks after was harder to ignore.

He had come to escort me to The Academy. It felt like I had no choice in the matter but after my parents had had a conversation with the visitor, who explained everything about my power to all of us, we all knew that this was the best thing for me. I would have 13 weeks off between July and October to see my parents, which we were all okay with, despite there being no cell signal for them to call me on the island and letters could only be sent or received once a month.

So I said my goodbyes. They were long and painful, but they had to end. The German, Mr Helstrom, had two people just like me in the back of his car and, not wanting to sail too far inland, the boat we were going on was docked at Newport in Virginia, so we all had a long journey ahead of us.

As heartbreaking as it was to go I made good friends on the journey. Stuart and Ellen, the twins, had had to travel all the way from Westchester in New York, so were glad to have some new company.

So with some tearful waving as the car drove off, that was how I lost my brother and left Shipley Hill for s new life surrounded by things normal people could only dream of.

So there you have it. I may not be the most helpful hero in the field, but that doesn't stop me trying to help as many people as I can, in the memory of my brother.