The first time I manifested something, I was seven. I wished my hamster, Nibbles, would just disappear. One moment he was scurrying on his wheel, the next—a silent puff of sawdust. A perfect, empty void in the middle of the cage. My mother said he must have escaped. I knew the truth. The universe had listened, and it was a terrifying, literal genie.
The second time was today.
My name is Elara. My superpower is serving overpriced coffee to people who look through me. My life is a carefully constructed monument to silence, a desperate attempt to stay invisible. To keep the genie locked away.
The café was quiet, filled with the low hum of the espresso machine and the scent of bitter beans. Then he walked in. He was a man carved from sharp suits and sharper ambition, the kind who looked like he owned cities, not just visited them. He moved with an unnerving stillness that made the air feel thin.
"Black Eye. Double shot. To go." His voice was cool, devoid of the usual morning pleasantries.
As I took his money, his fingers brushed mine. A static shock, small and mundane, but it jolted through me like a live wire. My carefully maintained walls shuddered. A thought, raw and unbidden, erupted from a deep, lonely place inside me: I wish he saw me. I wish he wanted to see me.
The air in the café crackled. The espresso machine whined, its pitch climbing to a pained shriek. The man—Julian Thorne, I'd later learn—flinched, his hand flying to his temple as if struck.
Then his eyes locked onto mine.
The polished, distant coolness was gone, scraped away to reveal something raw and frantic. It wasn't admiration. It was hunger. A terrifying, all-consuming need that had me pinned.
"Your name," he demanded, his voice rough, stripping away the professional pretense. "Tell me your name."
My heart hammered against my ribs. "Elara."
"Elara." He said my name like a command, a key turning in a lock. "I'm Julian Thorne. You're coming with me."
This wasn't a daydream. This was a nightmare. This is where the woman in the movie runs. But my feet were rooted to the stained tile floor. The Law of Attraction isn't about finding a parking spot. It's a fundamental, brutal force of creation, and I, Elara, the invisible girl, had just bent it. I had pulled a star into my orbit, and now its gravity was crushing me.
He reached for my hand across the counter, his movements unnervingly deliberate. His touch wasn't just skin on skin; it felt like a probe, an attempt to download my very soul.
Panic seized me, cold and absolute. I couldn't breathe. I did the only thing I could think of. I focused every shred of my being, every ounce of my terror, into a single, silent command—a desperate patch to the code I had just broken.
Stop. Forget me.
His grip on my hand loosened. The frantic light in his eyes dimmed, clouded over by a flicker of profound confusion. He blinked, looking at his hand, then at me, a stranger behind a counter.
"Sorry," he muttered, shaking his head as if clearing a fog. "My... apologies. Just the coffee. To go."
He took the cup, his movements now stiff and impersonal, and walked out without a backward glance. The bell on the door jingled, a ridiculously normal sound.
I collapsed against the back counter, my knees turning to water. I could still feel the ghost of his touch, the psychic echo of my command. I had done it again. I had un-made a reality.
And then my phone, sitting beside the register, buzzed with a violent shudder. The screen lit up with a single, anonymous message.
WE SAW THAT. DON'T MOVE.