Either they hadn’t noticed the scar that ran from my temple to my right hand, or they didn’t find it as interesting as the lizard-scale tattoos covering Dean’s entire body, Raquel’s beard, J.D.’s eight-foot height, or Katie’s fourteen-inch waist that looked even tinier compared to her ample hips and double-D chest. It was still early, too. Most of Showtown USA’s regulars didn’t get here until after nine.

The couple continued to stare at the group by the bar without any attempt at subtlety, and the annoyance I felt over my friends being gawked at shook me from my brief melancholy. Some tourists came to Gibsonton to marvel at the carnival remains decorating many streets, or to see the occasional trained bear, elephant, or other exotic animal on someone’s lawn, but most of them came to stare at the “freaks.” The locals were immune to it, or played up their peculiarities for tips, but I still couldn’t shake my anger over the rudeness so often displayed. Different didn’t equal subhuman, yet that’s exactly how many of Gibsonton’s residents were treated by passersby.

Still, it wasn’t my place to lecture people on their lack of manners, not to mention Raquel wouldn’t take kindly to me chastising her customers. With my lips compressed together, I headed to the door, startled when it flung open as I reached for it. I jumped back in time to avoid being plowed over by a man who strode through as though he owned the place, but I wasn’t fast enough to prevent his hand from grazing my arm.

“Ouch”! he snapped at the contact, giving me an accusing glance. “What the hell?”

He didn’t know it, but he was lucky. If I hadn’t learned to harness some of the currents in me, or released the worst of them into lightning rods only an hour before, his experience would’ve been much worse.

“Static electricity,” I lied. “It’s bad around this area.”