Amelia's 'gift'

"Oh my God! Laney's on fire!"

These were the words that marked the appearance of Amelia's superpower where the adage "If looks could kill" amazingly came true.

Fortunately for Amelia but rather too late for Laney, (who had been foolish enough to comment on Amelia's choice of hair dye and the dubious notion that it would make Amelia look 'cool', an opinion Laney did not endorse) nobody knew the origin of Laney's spontaneous combustion except the human match who lit it.

For Amelia, it was a crash course in learning to control your emotions. Or not, as the situation required it.

The fact that in the moment that Laney began to burn, Amelia had been staring at her with the warmth of embarrassment and anger smouldering in her eyes goes someway to showing how her superpower worked. Glaring at Laney, Laney unaware, with the full power of her emotion behind her, Amelia's eyes decided to channel the enmity that was pressing against them and in a quirk of nature not yet analysed, transformed it into invisible death rays.

Amelia wore sunglasses on days where she was feeling particularly dark and avoided eye contact with people who had irked her in some way. This led to her becoming viewed as a shy, recalcitrant individual who was a bit of a loner, which she wasn't. Before her 'gift' had been discovered, she had been quite the socialite, but until she could get things under control, she was reluctant to mix.

She tried to conjure the image of Laney's funeral as seen that day; this worked for a time, but with hormones raging and the constant pressure of high school, she opted to go to Anger Management classes.

It was some years before Amelia's "withering glare" became a diminishing force for good.