Dedication
To the freaks, queers, and weirdos;
To the abandoned, abused and neglected;
You are worth something, and you are not alone.
Chapter 1
“Alex Holden, you just saved the world three times, defeated your father, and won your freedom. What do you want to do next?”
“I want to go to high school!”
Yeah, I’m weird. But my whole life I’ve wanted to be normal, and normal people go to high school.
I talked to a clerk at the local government office to get a copy of my birth certificate sent to me so I could register for school, and I registered at one of the high schools in a midsized city in California. It was nice out there, far enough and different enough from the place where I’d grown up. I wanted a whole new life. I also got an apartment using the same Jedi mind tricks—I mean, demigod powers—that I used to sign myself up for school. I paid for my apartment in cash because I can sweet-talk ATMs. Yes, I know it’s stealing. No, I don’t care.
I learned some unpleasant things about apartment living, like some people blast music late at night. I asked them once, politely, to turn it down. They did, for about ten minutes. They’d had their warning. I disassembled their stereo with my powers. I didn’t disassemble them. See, I was learning this thing called restraint. I needed it, because school started soon.
Up until then I’d been taught at home by a string of tutors, most of which couldn’t keep up with me. I was honest about being homeschooled when I registered for high school, so they gave me a bunch of aptitude tests. I got advanced placement in English, history, and science, but was at grade level for math. I can explain the structure of the universe, but I suck at equations.
The subjects weren’t really important. If I just wanted to learn, I’d probably do better on my own. I wanted to go to high school for the social aspect. I’d had almost no interaction with humans my own age. My friends were all demigods, animals, and ghosts. I’d seen so many movies and TV shows with teens in high school, and I wanted that for myself.
So tomorrow I was going to step into junior year having never gone to school with other kids. If I managed not to kill anyone or burn the school down the first week, I was going to count it as a success.
Mew-Mew, my cat and best friend, joined me on the couch as I was watching my other best friend, TV. Are you sure you want to do this? You might end up hurting people, he said.
“I know.” I sighed. “But this is my one chance to have a taste of a normal life, and I really fucking want it. I’ll do my best to stay in control.” I have this teeny tiny little temper problem and with my powers that means things break, or catch on fire, and sometimes people die. Not by accident, I mean I explode them very deliberately, and most of the time I’m not sorry about it.
Mew-Mew gave me a look. You’re getting stronger every day.
“I know, but I have better control. I didn’t kill the neighbors.” Not yet, anyway, and I’d been living there for almost a month.
Just be careful, Alex. He curled up against my leg and closed his eyes.
“I will.” I was probably the only teenager afraid for the other kids in school.
***
I waited at the bus stop with my heart hammering. This was just so surreal. The bus showed up two minutes late and I got on, finding an empty seat in the back. I set my backpack next to me and looked out the window. A few stops later someone walked by and muttered, “Can I sit here?”
“Uh, sure.” I pulled my backpack onto my lap. The other guy sat down. We looked at each other for a moment, and I wondered if he was going to introduce himself. After a few seconds of silence, we turned our heads and rode the rest of the way without talking. Was that awkward or normal?
We got to school and I pulled out my schedule. It’s not like I hadn’t read the thing fifty times since I got it a few weeks ago, but I just had to look at it again. Homeroom, English: Classic American Lit. It was supposed to be some kind of college-prep class, so I picked it since it sounded like it might be challenging. I was probably going to be bored anyway since their definition of “classic” probably didn’t include Poe.
Maybe I’d get lucky and we’d get some Mark Twain. I’d probably have to read Catcher in the Rye. I’d never finished it after falling asleep somewhere in the middle of the book and taking that as a sign I was wasting my time.
I made my way through the halls and everyone else seemed to know where they were going. I suppose they did. Most of them had been there before. The kids wandering around looking lost were freshmen. And me.
I found my way to homeroom and sat down with my backpack. They were going to assign lockers in homeroom. The bell rang and they took attendance. I raised my hand when they called my name. For a second I had this paranoid little worry that they’d see through all my tricks and start asking questions. But the teacher just moved on to the next name.
They assigned lockers and I went to put some of my stuff away with this weird giddy feeling. I had a locker. My very own locker. And I had a homeroom and a school and a schedule of classes. Just like a normal kid. But aside from the newness of it all, the morning was pretty much nothing. Teachers took attendance and passed out syllabi and made a half-assed attempt at a lesson. It was the first day of school, and pretty much no one was paying any attention.
Oh, and they passed out a bunch of forms that my “parent” was supposed to sign, but I had that covered already. I was emancipated, which meant I was legally in charge of myself. I wondered if Ken and Mom would ever dare to show up and contradict my story. If they knew what was good for them, they’d stay away.
By the second class I was pretty fucking bored. Good thing I’d brought along a book to read. It was a book on the origins of the universe, so none of the teachers could accuse me of slacking. Turns out I could’ve brought anything and they wouldn’t have cared.
Then came lunch and I got to experience the awkwardness of high school head-on. A tray full of cheap school food balanced in my hands, I stood looking out over the lunchroom and realized I had to find a place to sit. Shit. I didn’t know anybody. Even the freshmen had tables to go to with older friends, with people they’d gone to middle school with, or friends from their neighborhoods. I didn’t know a fucking soul here.
I honestly considered teleporting away to eat at home and then coming back. But damn it, I wanted to have a normal life, and that meant I had to suffer through this like any other teenager. I found a half-empty table and sat over on the far end. More people made their way into the lunchroom and it got more and more full, but people avoided sitting next to me. I didn’t know if it was some kind of jerk-ass high school shunning thing or if they had some sense that I was something dangerous. Something not human.
My first day of high school, I ate lunch all alone. The rest of the day was just as boring.
When I got home, Mew-Mew greeted me at the door. How was your first day?
“Boring,” I told him. “I didn’t maim or kill anybody, so I’d call it a success.”
The second day was much the same. On the third day I stood in the lunchroom again, staring out at all the tables and all the little groups chatting away, laughing with each other, and I thought, Fuck it. Why am I standing here like some unpopular loser? I fucking saved the world three times and faced down the devil. I was going to sit wherever the fuck I wanted to.
I deliberately picked the table full of football players. Maybe I was testing myself to see if I could stay under control.
Nah, I was looking for trouble.
One guy leaned toward his friend to tell him something and it created a little gap on the other side of him, so I squeezed into it. Silence and stares went over the table like ripples in water. After a momen
t almost everyone at the table was staring at me.
I grinned and said, “Hi.” Yeah, this was much better. There was no way they could hurt me, but I could definitely hurt them. Confidence, baby.
“Who the fuck are you?” the biggest guy asked, sitting across from me.
“My name is Alex. Nice to meet you.” I reached my hand across the table.
The jock stared at my hand, then up at me. “Who said you could sit there?”
“Nobody. I got tired of eating alone, so I decided to join you.” I kept smiling. One of the guys closest to me scooted a few inches away. I reminded myself that I had to be careful. If I started getting angry, I had to make sure my body wasn’t going to get hot. Burning a couple of jocks by accident wasn’t a good way to start my first year of high school.
“Find another table, Alex. This one is full,” another of them said.
I looked down the side I was sitting on. “If you guys scooted down a little that way, there’s plenty of room.”
They stared at me. “Seriously, what the fuck? Just leave,” the big guy said.
“Nah. I think I’ll stay here.” I picked up my chicken sandwich and took a bite. I looked across the table, daring them to try something.
One of the guys farther down asked, “Are you looking for a fight or something?”
I swallowed my bite before answering. “Nope. Like I said, I was tired of eating alone. You guys looked like you were having a good time, so I decided to join you. I’m new here, just transferred this year. No friends yet, but you guys look friendly enough.” I couldn’t help it. I gave them a very predatory grin and a few of them shifted uncomfortably.
The somewhat smaller guy studied me, more curiosity than hostility in his gaze. “You from a reform school or something?”
Ah, so they did sense I was dangerous. “Homeschooled, actually.” I took another bite.
“Homeschool,” one of the girls said. “Are you Mormon or something?”
I barely avoided choking. “No, I’m not Mormon. My parents thought they could… do a better job by getting me tutors instead of sending me to school.” That was true enough, although their concern had been that I would kill or seriously injure the other children if they sent me to a school of any kind. I had godlike powers, so all it would have taken is someone calling me a name or pushing me in the hall and there would’ve been a disaster.
The jocks didn’t start a fight with me and I finished my lunch. I said good-bye and headed off to my next class like there was nothing wrong. A few times that day I caught a few of the people from the table giving me curious looks. Right before my last class I was grabbing a book out of my locker and this emo-looking kid slid up to me. A chunk of bangs hung down the side of his head, half covering one eye. “That was cool, what you did at lunch today. I don’t know what you said to them but the looks on their faces were priceless.”
“Uh… thanks,” I said. I closed my locker and turned back around. He was already headed off down the hallway. I briefly considered going after him, but I didn’t know what the point would be. He’d said what he wanted to say and I’m not sure he wanted anything in return.
Sitting with the jocks and making them uncomfortable had been fun, but as I thought it over that night I realized it wasn’t the kind of thing I should be doing. I was playing normal, and normal kids didn’t do that. Sure, I could go right back to that table tomorrow and maybe after a few days they’d accept me, maybe even become my friends. But were they the kind of friends I wanted?
Buddying up with the jocks and cheerleaders just wasn’t my thing. If I’d been a normal kid, I hardly think I’d be a popular kid or a jock. I’d be a nerd or one of those kids who sits in the corner and writes depressing poetry. Or I’d be in juvie due to my anger issues. But who knows? Maybe if I were normal and had a nice home life, I wouldn’t have anger issues.
The next day my American Lit teacher started off with a lecture. Brilliant, a lecture first thing in the morning. He caught me yawning more than once, and on the second yawn he said, “You there, the yawner, what’s your name?”
It was the first week of school, so I gave him a pass on not knowing my name yet. “Alex,” I told him, caught between wanting him to make something of it and not wanting to end up in the principal’s office. The more attention teachers and administrators paid to me, the less sure I was that my little mind tricks would work.
“Well, Alex, since this is so boring to you, I thought you might help me out.”
I sat up a little straighter, wondering where this was going.
“Who do you think is the greatest American author?”
Ah, so he thought he could catch me out, make me look dumb in front of the class. I asked, “Living or dead?”
He smiled a little. “Either.”
“Okay, living then,” I said. “Stephen King.” Titters from a few of my classmates.
“And why do you think he’s the greatest living American author?”
“Because he holds a mirror up to us and shows us our fears. He makes us face them, and once you’ve faced your fears, you can do anything.” I knew a thing or two about facing my fears. I was only here, shit, the world was only here because I’d faced my father and won.
The teacher looked impressed and nodded thoughtfully. “That’s a very interesting reason, and an unusual insight. Your homework for next week,” he said, looking around at the class, “for all of you, is to write a two-page paper on who you think the greatest American author is and why.”
Inevitable groans all around. I shrugged. I’d been writing papers for years. My tutors had been prepping me for Harvard, so I learned papers and reports and essays at an early age. I could knock out a two-page paper in less than an hour, including proofreading and printing. I’d probably do it tonight to get it over with.
At lunch I picked an empty table and read another chapter of my cosmology book. I wasn’t using it to impress teachers anymore; I was just reading it for myself. Reading about the science of the universe is a strange and interesting thing when you’re a half god (well, demon) and you’ve seen things like the chariot of the sun and played board games in the underworld. The universe is made of many different layers and dimensions, and sometimes it hurts my head to think about it. Other times I think it’s beautiful.
In the hall that afternoon, I saw my first incident of bullying. Some skinny kid was getting shoved by one of the jocks I’d had lunch with yesterday. I’d seen this plenty of times on TV and movies and I knew the script. Jock picks on unpopular type, making unpopular type’s life miserable. The kid turned a little, trying to get away from the bully, and I recognized the emo kid from yesterday.
The bullying alone was enough to make me mad, but seeing who was getting picked on pissed me off. I’m not sure why it made that much of a difference. I didn’t know him; I’d only seen him the one time and barely spoken to him. But somehow he still felt like… one of mine. I had to take a deep breath and remind myself that extreme magical violence was not the way this should be handled. I was playing normal, so I’d try something non-magical first.
I marched down the hall. All the other kids were passing by as quickly as they could, avoiding trouble. “Hey,” I called from a few feet away. “Leave him alone.”
The jock whirled, his face set in a way that told me he was planning to tell me to mind my own business and get lost. Then he recognized me and his expression turned uncertain.
“Leave him alone,” I repeated.
“I’m not hurting him. Just having a little fun with a freshman.”
The emo kid gave me a pleading look. I locked eyes with the jock, who was taller than me. “He doesn’t look like he’s having fun. So quit picking on him.”
The jock took a half step back. I checked to make sure I wasn’t giving off heat. Nope, still under control, still normal temperature.
“He your friend or something?” the jock asked.
“I guess he is now. And I don’t think you want to find out
what happens to people who pick on my friends.”
The jock tried to rally. “Is that a threat?”
I gave him a slow smile. “Yes.”
“You better watch yourself,” the jock said, but he was backing away.
“Whatever.” I stared at him until he walked away.
When he was out of sight, the emo kid looked at me and said, “Thanks.”
“No problem. You let me know if he picks on you again.”
“Man, who are you?”
“Alex,” I said, offering my hand. I knew that wasn’t quite what he was asking, but it was the easiest answer.
He looked at my hand for a moment before taking it. “I’m Casey.”
“Nice to meet you, Casey.”
He looked like he wanted to say something else, but he grabbed a book and closed his locker. “Guess I should get to class.”
Chapter 2
Word got around, because at the end of the day a bunch of jocks tried to corner me. Half of them put on a tough face, the rest of them didn’t look so sure. They backed me down a hall and I let them because I had to figure out what I was going to do. I didn’t want to have to move and go to another school, so I had to stay away from the drastic stuff. Fighting would be satisfying, but getting into trouble was bad. I didn’t want anyone in authority looking too closely at me.
“Think you can come in here and do whatever you want?” the lead jock said, the one I’d made back down earlier.
“And what about you? You guys think this school belongs to you? Is that what it is? Same old boring story. Stereotypical jocks running the school.” I rolled my eyes. Maybe it would be worth it to put these guys in their place.
“This is our school. You don’t belong here,” another one said. Smaller than his friend, but he looked meaner.
“I’m enrolled, the same as you. We all belong here.”
The big guy snickered. “Maybe we should all have a big hug.”
Ugh. This stuff was bad enough on TV. It was even worse in real life. “Okay, here’s the deal. I don’t want any trouble, but I can’t fucking stand bullies. If I hear any of you picked on anyone in this school, you’ll be sorry.”
Saint of Sinners Page 1