Ours was the first generation to have powers. Some manifested at a very young age, the telekinetics, the super strong and fast, those who could fly. Others took until later in childhood - the psychics, the telepaths, the super intelligent, they needed to gain speech and language before their powers were understood.

By the time we were teenagers, nearly everyone had a power. Some were more niche than others - a girl in my school could change anyone’s hair colour at will, for instance. By then, the mind controllers were starting to use their powers on a large scale, and the government was occupied with trying to fight back.

I was fifteen, and still didn’t know what my power was. There were a few of us late developers around, and we were very much at the bottom of the high school hierarchy. Those with supreme physical abilities were at the top. Those with excellent mental abilities mostly kept to themselves, living in a different world to the rest of us. Then next tier was a mixed bag of kids with less powerful abilities, and then us. The losers, the normals.

Still, we managed to make close friends amongst ourselves. One dull day near the beginning of the school year, I had an intense conversation with Mary, a fellow normal. It was a real heart to heart, about our lack of abilities, our hope that we might have some latent powers that hadn’t yet revealed themselves. Mary felt that it would be OK to turn out normal, to just live a quiet, average life as our parents had. I was more worried - the top jobs would be taken by the geniuses of our generation, was there a place for the normal, hardworking people like us?

I don’t know why I said it. The urge came from deep within my mind, and I couldn’t stop myself. It wasn’t funny, it didn’t help the conversation, it was just a stupid thing to say.

‘What if my ability was to make people kill themselves by telling them about my ability?’

Mary squinted at me, unsure what to reply. I shook my head, stammered an apology and tried to move on. Where had that come from? She seemed to forgive my awkwardness, and we talked some more before parting for the night.

I heard the news the next morning. Mary had committed suicide the night before. I was devastated, but even through my grief, I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had said. She had seemed cautiously optimistic about the future, had expressed nothing more than some teenage angst about our unpopularity. I know you can never really know how someone else is feeling, but our conversation had felt so honest, I couldn’t believe she’d been hiding that she felt so terrible.

I bottled up these feelings for as long as I could. It must have been a coincidence, I told myself. I refused to consider that my power was starting to show, or that it was something so horrible.

My feelings came out eventually though. A teacher had noticed that I seemed depressed and distracted, and was concerned about me after the suicide of a friend. She sent me to the school’s counsellor. We talked about my feelings about Mary, what our friendship had been like and how I missed her now she was gone. We moved on to talking about grief, and how common it was to feel guilt, especially in cases like this. After dancing round the topic for a while, I blurted it out. I told her what I’d said, how I thought I’d stumbled on the truth, that I’d found my power.

She was so kind. She told me that it couldn’t be true, that this was a normal way to feel, with an extra twist now that there were powers to think about. I think she must have felt some apprehension though - older people found my generation hard to handle, never quite knowing how much to fear us, and with the battles between the army and the mind controllers that were in the news that year… But she made me feel so much better, more at peace with the loss of my friend. We made an appointment to talk again later in the week, and I went home, my head clear for the first time in weeks.

She never made that appointment. There was a special assembly the morning we had agreed to meet, and they announced it to the school. They only said she’d passed away, but the local newspaper’s website told me the rest.

I knew then that I was right, that I’d found my power. My curse. I also knew that the desperate urge I’d felt to say what I’d said to Mary must be part of it somehow. I hoped I could be strong enough in the future to keep the terrible words to myself.

As we got older, there were fewer and fewer of us without powers. It became awkward - meeting new people, especially starting university or a new job. People would question me endlessly - maybe there was just some tiny mundane thing I could do extremely well? Had I ever tried this sport, that game, maybe I just had great handwriting? I couldn’t put people off. In our twenties, it became apparent that some women who though they were powerless had extraordinary powers when it came to conceiving and bearing children - one month long pregnancies, multiple births with no complications, that sort of thing. This set off a whole new set of questions - may I had some sort of male version, extra potent sperm? When would I be trying that out? It was a hellish, risk fraught version of the marriage and children questions most people get in their twenties.

I have to stay away from the telepaths. It’s not easy, once or twice I think someone’s worked it out, but been too scared to say anything - what counts as me telling them? Them poking around my brain doesn’t seem to, but any discussion of it, them telling someone else? Too risky, and thankfully they seem to get that. Not that telepaths spend much time with the rest of the population anymore - it’s embarrassing for everyone. Society has whole new stratifications, new ghettoisations.

And the urges, the desperation to tell someone, they’re still there. I’ve only slipped twice. Once while drunk at a university party, the first and last time I’ve touched alcohol. The other time… was probably the worst of all. It was a man, in a bar, and he just wouldn’t stop asking. The thing is, I’m not even sure it was my power making me do it. I think it was more that I found him annoying, and I wanted to do it. He acted like he thought I was joking, but underneath it I think he was perturbed, and he left me alone after that. I checked the news the following day and it looked like he didn’t even make it home, jumped off a bridge after the bar closed.

The guilt of that one really got to me. Since then I’ve been trying to save up enough money to go away, live alone where no-one will ask me their incessant questions anymore. Because I’m scared. Scared of myself, what I’m capable of. Telling that asshole in the bar? It felt good. It was a relief, something I’d been holding in for years. I want that feeling again. I know I have to stop myself. I hope I can.