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Know? (Death Note fans will get this)

I've lost all direction for the plot of my last story and I decided to write about the only thing I could think about for the last few weeks- this.

Any other tips on beating writer's block would be greatly appreciated.

At 14 I was more practical than most adults. At the time, I didn't know it yet. I just thought that since I was going to be an adult soon who'd need to provide for myself that I should look into my options.

As poor as I was I figured not looking into my options would be the worst thing I could possibly do. I read often enough to know that in my country being a poor person was like wearing a huge target on your back. Whose public services got cut first? Who was more likely to get harassed by local bullies or even law enforcement? The poor.

They as a group tended not to vote so they didn't matter to politicians. I didn't like the idea of begging my local leaders for basic services and relying on whether the voters liked the idea of supporting a program that made my life livable. The opinions of the masses swayed too much for my liking.

In my mother's house either "You work or you go to school". I excelled in public school but found that they couldn't teach me at my level. I did the work in seconds and when I inquired about programs for gifted students they said they couldn't help me.

At first, I thought they were lying. I saw the newspapers. There were stories of kids who took all AP courses would one be too much to ask for? Then I realized that my case was different they lived in safe middle class neighborhoods and I didn't.

I planned to stick it out. Go to my abysmal school, get straight A's, and get scholarships for 'excelling given your circumstances'. That phrase whenever I heard it irritated me. I really hated how certain people because of their social class were expected to fail. Besides the fact that I am in no way inferior to anyone else, social class at a such a young age is inherited.

It's something someone can't control. Giving up on someone, refusing to work at providing a descent education to all students and blaming things like genetics or the fact that a person has a single mother was just excuse making that allows failure to go unaddressed. If the poor aren't educated of course they don't get jobs that require an education.

I studied in detail the monster that was American poverty and found how people became and stayed poor. I knew every trap that would set me back and prepared myself to dodge minefields, one mistake or miscalculation and it could all be over.

In the end, I took the path of least resistance and took the GED test. If the state wouldn't provided me with a quality education I'd get one myself. I was appalled by the ease of the test and in the end it was a formality. Well, to me- a record number of people nationally failed that year.

Once I was done with the math section of the test, I felt a sudden awareness encase my body. I suddenly knew where the pencil tips, phone batteries, and zippers were without looking. I just knew.

This awareness expanded to every piece of metal within a 2 mile radius turning my private hell into an opera that was sung only for my ears. I didn't understand the words, but I could tell that it sounded lovely.

I was so entranced that I didn't bother summoning up the energy to glare at a neighbor who was copying my answers. I knew he was looking at at me (my school had at least taught me to be aware of my surroundings to avoid bullies and robbers), but I couldn't bring myself to care.

Luckily, these things had a tendency of working themselves out- karma my mother would say. The pencil the man held did a sudden arc on and through his answer document. The other test takers were too busy with their historically harder version of the the GED to care.

As satisfied as I was with this outcome, I knew I had to do something if my guess was right and I wanted to live to thirty.

This has to stop. How-

Just after I thought this, the pencil dropped out the air.

That was too strange for me to write the incident off as a coincidence. As I easily took the test, in my mind I worked out that I was obviously a mutant.

After the test, I walked out thinking of the consequences of this. My mother was too enamored with scriptures laced with hate to let me stay with her if she found out.

I'd read the stories 'Mutant Terrorizes Town!' Sensationalist titles grabbed headlines, but when you thought about it the stories were ridiculous. Yes, the teen decided to destroy the town he lived in his whole life. After all, terrorism was something people did willingly. It was totally their fault for not controlling the powers suddenly thrust upon them.

Yes, we totally needed to hunt down mutants brutally. Everyone knew the only way to solve our problems was with a bullet.

Regardless of the lack of logic, at least these articles gave me some insight into the consequences of failing to hide my abilities. They'd ship me away and say I was "being handled" as the paper called it.

Unfortunately, I was a special case. A mutant who called himself 'The Master Of Magnetism' shared my abilities so whatever happened to the teen would only be magnified in my case. I'd be interrogated for information I didn't know (if they were extraordinarily dull they'd think he was my father) until I figured out which vein to slice with my (plastic of course) knife.

"I'd kill myself to spite the FBI" That should be a t-shirt.

The obvious conclusion was that I need to learn to control my - gift? Burden? Not curse- my mother's cycle of depression, slavish following of scripture (thankfully, I'm not a girl) and more depression turned me off from that forever. William Stryker was not a man I'd want as my shepherd- his inability to allow anyone, but him think made me hate him even before I knew I was a mutant.

I didn't shiver as I walk through the snow despite my threadbare coat. Thanks to my school's and house's lack of heat I was very experienced at ignoring the cold. I singlemindedly headed home.

I'd need a job.

I had the brains to be a doctor yes, but things changed quickly. I needed something I could train for quickly so I'd at the very least not become homeless if I had to run.

Given my new affinity for metal and that need I decided to become a mechanic.

My mother appreciated the fact that I'd taken the GED and managed to get me a job at a lab working security (yes, even the working poor networked).

The hours were long and the pay barely enough to compensate for that. I loved that job. I spent hours reading in the dimly lit camera room.

I found a small steel pipe in an abandoned lot and often shaped it into various miniature models of things in my books as I read. If I lack material to read I often spent hours playing with it like clay. This honed my abilities considerably.

The more I read the more I wanted to know. On my scarce off days I spent hours in the junkyard. There away from the pressures of living I could simply be and enjoy the metal that jumped at my requests.

Once I'd acquired a small sum of money, I bought the cheapest car that looked like it could still drive. I was never one to shy from a challenge and by February it was restored to it's former glory. In the end, I sold it back to the junk yard manager (who was very surprised that I'd managed to fix it).

The money wasn't a lot considering how long I spent on the car (the car had every possible problem a car could have), but I thought long and hard about what to do with the extra money.

I came to the conclusion that I shouldn't tell my mother. I didn't see why someone who worked as hard as she did and earned as little as she did gave all her extra money (as well as some money that would've went to bills) to charity and her church.

Besides, this was exactly what I wanted in the first place. I bought another car with the money and spent the rest of the money on the repairs. In a few weeks I finally had my own personal haven. Somewhere that was actually mine. One night, I looked outside the window smiling.

It's cold outside but I have heat.

I turned back to my bookshelf in the of the car and my fingers touched the covers of my books.

Now they'd never be burned in a fit of religious fervor. Never again.

No one can take this away from me. I'll always have somewhere to go.

I buried myself in my blankets and started reading by a flashlight.