I spent Friday helping Mr. Kortis figure out which one of his floorboards were squeaking and then trying eliminate that squeaking. I also painted the hall on the stairway to the basement because someone had drawn on it with crayon. I suspected the Phams but I had no proof. I ate dinner early and then took a nap to prepare for my appointment with Miss Fine.
When I woke up, I quickly dressed in black jeans and a black hoodie. I had a Super suit that my parents bought me for graduation. But with its molded armor and cape, that was for high concept stuff so I rarely wore it. I’d stick out like a sore thumb if I wore it on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Walking up the stone stairs to the bridge, I imagined all the Super shifts I’d done over the years. I’d gone to all sorts of places that might need someone to keep back the chaos— shopping centers, concerts, festivals, etc. I’d been to all of those places but I hadn’t really experience them. I was always on duty.
The Brooklyn Bridge was a huge tourist attraction. It connected Manhattan to Brooklyn and offered beautiful land and water views. It was generally packed during the days on weekends and it saw its fair share of traffic at night. On this Friday night, the paths in both directions had a steady stream of people walking and people on bikes zoomed down the center lanes. I walked for a bit and then sat down on a bench. I didn’t know where to meet Miss Fine but I assumed she would find me.
I’d gone on plenty of Super shifts where nothing happened. I had walked around a neighborhood or outdoor concert for hours waiting to come up on something—to get that little niggling feeling in the bottom of my stomach that something wasn’t right—only to come up with nothing. But other times, I wouldn’t even be looking for trouble. It found me.
About a half an hour into waiting for Miss Fine, a girl walked past me and I immediately got that feeling in the bottom of my stomach. She didn’t look like trouble but my eyes involuntarily followed her as she walked by. She was petite with long dark blond hair. Her size said that she could have been either a small adult or a teenager. She was wearing a pair of skinny jeans and a short sleeved shirt. The girl’s arms were crossed, like she was trying to protected them from the cool autumn night. I stood up and followed her along the pathway.
She wasn’t paying attention to anyone. I didn’t notice her make eye contact with any of the other people strolling the bridge that night. She didn’t notice me following her.
The girl was walking quickly to the center the bridge. When she reached the commemorative sign that marked the halfway point between Manhattan and Brooklyn, she stopped and kissed it. And then she climbed on the railing of the Brooklyn Bridge and stepped over the edge.
“Stop!” The girl looked at me for the first time. Some people that happened to be in hearing distance of us turned to us, too. I heard a few people yell out, too, screaming that there was a jumper and calling for someone to call 911.
But the girl kept her eyes on me. She didn’t say anything until I rushed to the railing. “No.” It came out quietly and defiantly. I might not have heard it if I hadn’t been so close to her. But I ignored her and climbed over the railing to stand beside. Only then did I realize how thin the edge was.
When I heard my voice, I was worried by the shakiness in it. “Please. Don’t jump.”
She shook her head. “Leave me alone.” Her voice was so calm in comparison to mine.
“No! Get back on the bridge.” I started scooting closer to her.
She swatted at me. “Go away! Let me be!”
But I kept moving closer. When I got close enough, I reached out to her while trying to keep my balance on the edge and my grip on the railing. People had gathered nearby but they seemed scared to come any closer. From the looks on their faces, I could tell they didn’t know what was going on, whether I was chasing her or saving her.
Now that I was right next to her, I reached out and placed my hand on the girl. She tried to wiggle away from it but gave up. There wasn’t really any room to move anyway. She stopped struggling and just pleaded. “Please, just let me go.”
I shook my head. “I can’t.” Then I turned to the small crowd of people forming nearby. “Please help us!” A man ran forward. I held the girl close to the railing while he reached over. Another man joined him and together they pulled the girl back over the railing, her body limp like a life sized doll.
When she was safely back on the bridge, the men turned their attention to me. As I reached out to the hands offered to me and raised my right left to climb over, my left food slipped. In one instant, I was on the side of the Brooklyn Bridge after midnight. In the next instant, I was falling through the air three hundred feet down into the East River.
In the moment I realized I was falling, a single thought ricocheted through my brain. Shit, I can’t swim.
* * * * *
I technically don’t know if I can die. I suppose I can. Regenerating Supers that came before me have died. At the time I fell off the Brooklyn Bridge, the common theory was that if one of my vital organs were separated from my body, I wouldn’t heal. Or maybe I’d die of old age when my body just finally wore out from all the years of taking bumps, bruises, and burns.
The first thought that I had when I opened my eyes was Well, at least I know I can survive downing. My second thought was that I hurt so bad that I wish I had died. I lifted my head and looked around. Behind me was what I assumed was the East River. Ahead of me was the shore. I couldn’t tell if I was on the Brooklyn side or the Manhattan side. But I felt like I’d been hit by a truck.
“Finally.” I followed the direction the voice came from. There was Miss Fine, sitting primly on a rock, scribbling on her clipboard.
“What?” My brain couldn’t wrap around the fact that she was there. How long had she been there? How had she known this is where I’d be? Did she pull me out of the water?
She didn’t look up from her writing. “You need to regenerate more quickly?”
I stood up. I was soaking wet and filthy. Water was streaming down my face and down my head. I was probably going to grow a second head from being exposed to the most polluted waterway within twenty miles. But I couldn’t think about that right now. I needed to understand what was going on here. “I didn’t know I could control it, actually. I heal when I heal.”
Miss Fine didn’t stop writing. She just shook her forehead and continued taking notes.
“Hey, what’s your first name?”
That stopped her. She looked at me. “Excuse me?”
“What’s your first name? What do your friends and family call you? It can’t be Miss Fine?”
“You should be more concerned with your dismal showing up there, Audrey.”
“What do you mean?! I saved that girl. She didn’t jump. I fell but I’m fine. I may have swallowed a used condom floating in that river but I’m gonna live,” I added.
“No, you failed to deliver that girl disturbing the peace up there. Instead, you fell and let her get away. And then you took too long to regenerate.” She was talking with her hands and her nostrils were flaring. It was the most animated I’d ever seen her.
“So you’re saying that the right thing to do was to make sure she got back on the bridge and then make sure she got arrested? That was the objective? You’re crazy! You have no idea what you’re talking about!” I was shouting now. If someone could hear me from the path above us, I didn’t even care. “You’ve probably never even been in the field. All you know how to do is write notes and nitpick at the people actually doing the work!”
By now Miss Fine was a bright red and she was shouting as loud as I was. “I know that you aren’t Super material. You botched this test tonight and you still haven’t paid your dues! It’s been years since you were current, if ever.”
The Council dues had always been a challenge for me. Between my personal expenses and my inability to keep a job, I just never could catch up. But I had made some progress earlier that year. “Hey, I paid off a big chuck this summer. I’m more paid up than I’ve ever b
een.”
In the meantime, Miss Fine had regained her composure. She smoothed her hair down, adjusted her trench coat, and secured her pen to her clipboard. “None of that matters. There are two options on the forms: Paid or delinquent. And you’re delinquent. Good night, Audrey.” She turned her back to me and started to make her way through the rocky shore and up to the walkway.
I waited for her to disappear from sight. Only then did I start to walk home, wet, tired, and defeated.
Chapter 10
That night, I dreamed that I was chasing flying dollar bills down the street with a net. For most of the dream, I couldn’t catch up with them but I eventually caught a few. But as soon as I did, a big black monster ran up behind me and ripped them from my hands. When I screamed in terror, the monster yelled back at me “DUUUUUUEEEESSSSS!!!”
I didn’t need to pay a psychiatrist two hundred dollars an hour to tell me what that was all about.
I woke up with dry mouth, wild hair, and feeling like I had been hit by a truck. It was two thirty before I tumbled out of bed and remembered the disaster of last night. I fed Crash and remembered that I didn’t have any food for me to eat. And I needed to talk to my dad.
When I was a kid, my parents were still doing Super work. Their assignments gave them mostly office hours but I remember that they worked a lot. Mom was assigned to the New York Public Library, which suited her and her knowit-allness just fine. And Dad was embedded as a firefighter. When I realized that I had inherited my power from him, I thought maybe I would follow in his footsteps. That was before I realized how much running he had to do.
They retired around the same time and Mom started doing volunteer work and committee stuff, which kept her just as busy as when she was working. Dad, on the other hand, treated retirement completely different. He spent most of his time hanging out with old buddies, watching TV, and just doing whatever he wanted.
As usual, Mom was out and about and Dad was watching some show on the History Channel about weapons. “Dad,” I heard myself say. “Do you ever think it’s weird that we do all of this work as Supers and spend our whole lives in service to the Council and we don’t even get paid for it?”
“No.”
I glanced at him from the side of my eye. “Just no?”
“No, because it’s not about money. And we’re not doing it for the Council. We’re doing it for all the people who can’t do it.”
He was repeating things that I had heard all my life. Justice. Order. All of that. But I wasn’t in the mood to hear it. “But civilians don’t even care that we do it. They don’t even know about it.”
Dad sighed. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not about those things. If it were, it would be a job. But it’s more than that. It’s a calling. You do what you can. You win some and you lose some. And then when it’s your time, you move on. It’s not that complicated, Audrey.”
Easy for you to say, I thought.
He stood up and stretched. “You want a sandwich?” Maybe he could hear my stomach growling. I followed him into the kitchen and watched him put the food together.
“How much money do you need?”
I frowned. Sure, I was there to borrow money. But I wasn’t ready to admit that yet. “What do you mean?
Dad rolled his eyes as he added an extra piece of cheese to my sandwich. “Come on. I’ve known you a long time, Audrey. I used to wipe your butt. I know what you look like when you need something.” He pointed to the food. “I’m already feeding you. You don’t need to move back in because you get your apartment with your job.” He paused. “Wait. Did you get fired again?”
“No!” It was a fair question. I’d been fired a lot over the years. But I was still offended. “It’s probably the best job I’ve ever had.”
Dad handed me the sandwich. “So why do you need money?”
I took a bite and chewed slowly to prolong what I had to say as long as possible. Finally, I swallowed. “I need money to pay my Council dues.”
“Again?”
My parents had given me money earlier that year for my dues. When I got evicted from my last apartment, I’d finally confessed to them what a mess I was in with everything. I’d been losing jobs consistently because I was having a hard time balancing them with being a Super, which put me behind on my bills—rent, car insurance, dues, etc. Being behind on my car insurance meant that when my car disappeared, it was just gone. Behind on my rent meant I had to move back in with my parents for the summer. And being behind on my dues was part of the reason I got audited.
“I used that money for some of the past dues and I gave some to my old landlord so he wouldn’t sue me for eviction.”
“What about the money you made this summer working at Cranky’s? We let you stay here rent so you could put money aside and you didn’t need it for your new apartment.”
“I did use that to pay the rest of the money to my old landlord. And since I got the new super job, I’ve been doing a lot better. I got caught up on my bills,” I said, starting to list all of them. “I paid my fines for getting arrested last year. I paid off all of my old parking tickets. I paid by back balance to Bank of America and they let me open another account. I actually have a bank account now, Dad.” Even I could hear how high my voice was getting.
He raised his hand up in a stop motion. “OK, OK, OK. How much money do you need?”
I repeated the number that Miss Fine had given me. Dad took another bite of his sandwich and walked out of the room. He came back with his checkbook and a pen. “This is a loan, Audrey. You have three months to pay me back for this. And if you don’t, I’ll tell your mother it was you who broke that porcelain figurine she had on the mantel.”
It took me a half of second to realize that he was talking about something I’d broken as a kid while I was throwing a ball in the house I’d been specifically told not to throw in the house. Mom had been livid and Dad had taken the fall for me. “That was twenty years ago!”
“And if you think thatmatters to your mother, this must be your first day in the family,” he shrugged. “I’m going to make this out to the Council because I want this to go directly to the Council, Audrey. Not paying your dues can get you in big trouble.” He ripped the check off of the book and handed it to me. “You don’t want to end up audited or in jail do you?”
I stuffed the check into my pocket and said with what I hoped was a straight face. “No, I wouldn’t want that.”
“I know I don’t have any appointment but I know how important it is to get this paid.”
I was standing in the doorway of Miss Fine’s office. I’d gone there straight from my parents’ place, taking a chance that she’d be in the office on a Saturday. She seemed like the type of person who would work on Saturdays.
I could have mailed the check. I could have gone to the accounting office, which was two floors down from the auditing department, and made the payment. It would have been credited to my account within hours.
But for some reason, I wanted to put that check in her hands. I wanted to see her face when she saw that I had taken care of the back Super dues. I wanted to see how she looked when I got an unequivocal win from her.
Miss Fine didn’t offer me a seat. In fact, she didn’t say anything. Her face didn’t register any emotion at all. She just took the check from my outstretched hand and looked at it silently. Then she turned it over and inspected the back. Finally, she looked me right in the eye, and ripped the check into as many pieces as she could.
“What the fuck are you doing?!”
Miss Fine calmly swept the pieces of the check into the trash can under her desk. “Audrey, your Council dues are not for your parents to pay. They are for you to pay. These payments are your contribution to the cause.”
“But it’s not against the rules for my parents to help me with them. It doesn’t matter where the money comes from,” I pointed out.
“True,” she agreed. “But it should be. Your lack of responsibility with these dues is just one
symptom of the overall disease. You don’t care about your oath. You don’t care about the community enough to help shoulder the burden of financing it. You don’t care about anything but yourself.”
Miss Fine stood up and took a step toward me. “You’ve slid through life without any consequences, Audrey. I don’t know how but I know it’s going to end here. Consider your audit over. I’ll see you at your hearing.”
BAM! BAM! BAM!
I need a sign, I thought, as I dragged myself from bed and made my way to apartment door. A sign that says the super is not available until noon. All violators will be evicted and/or shot. Too bad I didn’t have the means to evict or to shoot anyone.
I opened the door to see my mother standing there. “Mom? What are you doing here? How do you know where I live?” None of my family had been to my apartment before. I always went to them.
“You’d be surprised at how much I know.” She stood in the middle of my tiny living room and waved her hand around. “This is cute. Better than I expected. Not as much dirty laundry as I expected.”
“Thank you.” I have a policy of taking my compliments wherever I can find them.
Mom clapped her hands together. “Get dressed. We have to get to Macy’s to look for an outfit.”
“An outfit? Why do you want me to help you shop for an outfit? Isn’t this the type of thing you take Ella to do with you?”
Mom put her hands on her hips. “It’s not for me. It’s for you.” I stared at her. I really had no idea what she was talking about. “For the family photo,” she finally said.
I hadn’t thought about that thing since the vote. “Mom, I don—”
She cut me off. “You owe me. I haven’t forgotten about the vote.”
I threw my hands up in the air in disgust. “Fine! I’m coming.”
Super (Book 2): Super Duper Page 6