Queeroes

by Steven Bereznai

“I can turn them on or off on their own, or…” He focused and his ears grew pointed, fangs sprouted from his gums, and his claws returned all at the same time. “It’s almost like flexing a muscle in my brain and focusing myself in whatever part of my body I want to go wild. And to turn them off, it’s like relaxing a muscle. Mandy, try it.”

  They watched as she winked in and out of view.

  “Oh my God!” She clapped, jumping up and down excitedly. “Save the cheerleader, save the world!”

  “That is the gayest thing I have ever heard,” Chad replied.

  Hand on her hip, Mandy gave him her fiercest ‘oh no you did not’ look.

  He held his palms up in peace.

  “I’m totally turning it into a cheer. Now.”

  “I want to run a couple of tests,” Gibbie interjected, rolling up the sleeves of the white lab coat he wore overtop of his Cobra Commander shirt.

  Half-an-hour later, back in Gibbie’s room, Mandy stood in the center of a series of circles, each one larger than the next.

  The first consisted of miniature starships resembling the Enterprise. The next circle was made from plastic green soldiers. The next, Lego men. The one after that, He-Man figurines. Each ring was about half-a-foot away from the next.

  “All right,” Gibbie said, “turn invisible.”

  Mandy winked out of view.

  “See if you can expand your invisibility field.”

  The row of spaceships dissolved from sight.

  “Notice how the floor stays completely visible,” Gibbie said. “Her field’s moving outward, not downward. Keep going.”

  The plastic soldiers vanished.

  “Any more?” Gibbie asked.

  They heard a little grunt from her, and the Lego characters began to fizzle, and then popped back into full view.

  “One-and-a-half feet seems to be your upper limit,” Gibbie said, writing it down on his clipboard pad.

  Mandy blipped back into sight, and wiped the sweat from her forehead.

  “Let’s try out your force field now,” Gibbie instructed. “Let’s see what you can knock over.”

  She concentrated and the field buzzed around her.

  “See if you can knock down the first circle,” Gibbie instructed.

  She tried to push the field out, but nothing happened.

  Gibbie moved one ship right next to the crackling shield.

  “Try some more.”

  She grunted, squeezing her eyes shut.

  The little ship grudgingly fell over. She gasped and the field dropped.

  “It would seem that you can expand the field, though only marginally. You might want to work on that.”

  “I might want to take some Aspirin,” she replied. “I don’t know about you guys, but I feel this all in my head.”

  “Fascinating,” Gibbie said. “Any luck turning invisible and turning on your force field at the same time?”

  She shook her head.

  He scribbled once more on his clipboard. “Perhaps they use the same part of the brain, or parts that balance each other out, like antagonistic muscles.” He looked to Troy to see if his brother had caught the fitness reference. The others looked at Troy as well.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Three down,” Gibbie answered. “Only you to go.”

  But testing an empath’s abilities was not quite so easy. Gibbie’s power seemed to work by moving his focus into his body. Mandy was all in her head. Chad appeared to be a bit of both. Troy’s just seemed to be on all the time.

  “Did the Cosmo quiz help?” Chad asked.

  “Apparently I’m a passive-aggressive taker/withholder,” Troy replied.

  “Shocking,” Mandy added.

  Troy gave her the finger.

  “So what am I feeling now?” Mandy asked.

  “Annoyed,” Troy replied. “Oh wait, that’s me.”

  Actually, he was getting something from Mandy—affection, and attraction.

  “I…you…” he stammered, unprepared for the interest he could sense from her, the polar opposite of earlier today. Chad watched with growing worry.

  “So, Troy, any luck turning your power off?” the blond said a little too loudly, giving Mandy a warning look.

  “Um, kind of,” Troy said. “If I shove all the emotions into a room in my head, lock the door, I can mostly ignore the pounding as they try to get out.”

  “Can you separate them?” Gibbie asked. “Can you tell which are my feelings and which are Chad’s feelings?”

  The jock looked at the muscley blond and, unusually for Troy, he grew red.

  “Still working on that,” he lied, scratching the back of his neck and avoiding eye contact with anybody.

  “Right.” Gibbie jotted down the details, “And you said that you can sometimes recognize a person without seeing them, like their feelings give off a fingerprint.”

  “Or a reflection,” Troy added.

  “I have an idea,” Gibbie said, putting down the clipboard. From his desk drawer he pulled out a contraption that looked like a

  bulky PalmPilot. He began moving it in the air in front of his

  brother.“Interesting,” Gibbie said.“What is that thing anyway?” Troy asked. “Medical tricorder,” the younger Allstar replied. “If these read

  ings are correct…” “Give me that.” Troy grabbed it from Gibbie’s hands and held it

  up. “This is a Star Trek toy.”“No it isn’t,” Gibbie protested. “It says Mattel on it.”“I…I have to go to the washroom,” Gibbie said, rushing out.Troy popped a panel open on the back and yelled after him. “It doesn’t even have batteries in it!” Chad and Mandy laughed, oblivious to the true tests lying ahead.

  Chapter 12

  Monday morning arrived.

  Troy got up at six o’clock and jogged to school, as usual. The jock picked up his pace when he felt someone approaching from behind—and easily catch up.

  He looked at Gibbie, running at his side, wearing one of his new Aberbombie and Stitch T-shirts. It had a print of a regal-looking Indian chief, and the words underneath, “Native Aberbombian.”

  “Wow,” Gibbie said, not even panting, “so this is why you get up so early. The world’s so quiet and peaceful.”

  “It was,” Troy corrected. His brother didn’t notice.

  “So I was thinking, maybe I’ll try out for the track and field team,” Gibbie said.

  “I didn’t know you were into that sort of thing,” Troy replied.

  “Well,” Gibbie said, easily keeping pace while Troy began to feel a tightening in his calf, “now that I’m super strong, I should do something with that. Originally I was thinking football—”

  Troy sputtered.

  “—but it would be way too easy to hurt someone. Track, on the other hand… I could run, throw stuff, jump. I won’t always come in first—too suspicious. But you know, we’re changed now.

  Our lives should change too, right?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it,” Troy lied, panting a little as he tried to keep pace with Gibbie. “It’s not like my power’s really going to change my life.”

  “Well,” Gibbie said, “instead of becoming an engineer like you were going to, maybe you should be a counselor.”

  Troy struggled to process this possibility.

  “Anyway, do you mind if I run ahead?” Gibbie asked. He didn’t wait for an answer before picking up his pace, zooming off into the distance.

  Troy came to a stop and stared at the trail of dust raised in his scrawny brother’s wake.

  “Hey Liza!”

  Liza’s Amazonian frame started, and she slammed her locker door shut. Mandy stood in the hall where Liza could have sworn she’d been alone.

  “I didn’t see you there,” Liza said.

  “Yeah, I know,” Mandy said smugly, “I’m super sneaky that way.”

  Liza nodded in that slow way of hers.

  “I remember.”

  “Of course you do!” Mandy chirped as if
she were a Disney animated songbird. “Which reminds me. We really should talk about what happened at the mall.”

  “I don’t remember any of that,” Liza lied.

  “Come on,” Mandy said, taking Liza by the shoulder. The larger girl looked at Mandy’s arm like it was a black widow. “Let’s go somewhere more private.”

  Devon watched from a few lockers down. Liza made a cringing face, but there was no help to be found.

  “Listen, I know the whole blowing-up-the-mall thing wasn’t

  your fault,” Mandy said as they stood out by the school dumpster.

  “You do?” Liza regarded her hesitantly.

  “I know that you would never hurt anyone on purpose.”

  Liza flashed back to hitting Devon’s mom on the head with a frying pan, and what they did to her after. “I wonder how much your overseas clients would pay for this piece,” she heard Devon say.

  She shook it off and realized Mandy was looking at her expectantly.

  “Sorry,” Liza said, “I missed that last bit.”

  “Silly!” Mandy giggled. “I was saying that you’re not alone. You’re not the only one who can do something special.”

  Liza’s eyes widened in alarm.

  Devon.

  “There’s you”—Mandy pointed at her—“there’s me, and Chad, and Gibbie, and Troy.”

  “They can all…”

  “Do stuff,” Mandy said perkily. “You kind of have to see it to believe it. Well, except for Troy. Not really the glitziest of powers, to be honest. And you have to show them what you can do! Just not at the mall, okay?”

  Liza nodded dumbly, looking about for some sort of escape.

  “And don’t worry, we’ve all been practicing and getting better at what we can do. We can totally help you with that whole destructo voice thing. So what do you think?” Mandy said cheerily, slapping her hands together and hunching her shoulders excitedly. “Want to hang?”

  “So what did she say?” Chad asked Mandy as they filled their trays

  in the cafeteria.

  “She said she’d think about it,” Mandy replied.

  “Hold the light mayo right there, lady!” Chad said, stopping the lunch line. “Am I to understand that you, the most popular girl in

  school, gave Lezzie Liza the social invitation of the century and she has to think about it?”

  “I don’t know what’s going on in this crazy upside-down world of ours,” Mandy agreed as they sat next to Troy. He was picking at his chili.

  “Why so glum, chum?” Chad asked.

  “Nothing,” Troy lied, his gaze turning towards a sudden uproar on the other side of the cafeteria.

  A blonde cheerleader was hoisted into the air atop her chair. She squealed in delight. Whoever was doing the lifting was hidden by the crowd of onlookers.

  “Gibbie?” Mandy asked.

  “Gibbie,” Troy replied. “He showed up at the track team’s practice this morning. Guess who their newest member is.”

  “I thought sports tryouts ended ages ago,” Chad said.

  “Apparently they were very impressed with his discus throw,” Troy replied. “I think it landed in China.”

  “China?” Mandy tittered, putting a flirtatious hand on Troy’s forearm. “That’s practically my homeland.”

  Chad looked at her askance.

  “Uh, your parents are Korean,” the blond cheerleader said, giving Troy a warning look. Troy pulled away from Mandy’s touch.

  “Well, I said practically,” she snorted defensively.

  “Is showing off like that such a good idea?” Chad asked, jerking his head towards Gibbie’s display of strength.

  “And what happened to making the world a better place?” Mandy added.

  “I think he’s starting to figure out it’s fun being strong and fast,” Troy observed sourly. “I’ll go talk with him.”

  But instead of making a beeline for Gibbie, Troy felt his attention pulled elsewhere. He was being watched. It made his skin prickle, as if fingers were running along the down on his forearms.

  He knew that feeling. His eyes flicked over to a table full of raucous jocks, and there sat Jesse, Troy’s former best friend.

  Their eyes met for the briefest of moments, before Jesse’s gaze darted back to his book, Stephen King’s The Drawing of the Three. A couple of the other guys held up scores as if they were Olympic judges, rating girls as they walked by.

  “I’ll catch you guys later,” Troy said, stepping away from the table and looking at Jesse’s smooth skin, strong cheekbones, and shaved scalp. Gibbie’s words during their jog that morning rang in Troy’s head.

  We’re changed now. Our lives should change too, right?

  Another cheer rang up for Gibbie Allstar, Mr. Popularity.

  Gibbie was surrounded by other students and appeared to be arm-wrestling a strapping quarterback. His little brother was pretending to struggle.

  He’s playing, Troy knew.

  “Ha-tchoo-loser,” someone sneezed as Troy just stood there.

  It was Markham. Two seats down, Jesse gave Troy a “you’re on your own” shrug. Troy could feel Markham’s satisfaction as his teammates smacked him encouragingly. Troy stepped over to their table, leaned in and whispered in Markham’s ear.

  “Hey tough guy. How’d it feel having my little brother toss you across the mall? Want him to do it again? Right here, right now?”

  He felt strong as he said it, a hammer smashing into glass, and Markham suddenly looked fragile. Troy felt the other boy’s feelings churn, his innards shrinking like Saran Wrap thrown into a campfire.

  Maybe Gibbie was right, Troy mused.

  Maybe I can control people’s emotions.

  All it took was the right words, the promise of a little social humiliation, a mental push, and voila.

  He felt Jesse watching. He met the handsome youth’s eyes.

  The Stephen King book remained in his hands, but was otherwise

  forgotten.

  “What do you think, Jesse,” Troy asked. “Am I a loser?”

  His former best friend said nothing—didn’t need to, in fact. Troy could feel what Jesse felt—sadness, loneliness, need buried deep away. He wants his friend back. The wrestler looked over at where Gibbie was surrounded by a hive of people. And then there was Chad and Mandy leaving the cafeteria together. Everybody had somebody. Troy had his wrestling teammates, but what he really needed was his bud, especially with so much screwed-up stuff going on.

  “How’s wrestling?” Jesse asked.

  Troy pondered that, staring at his friend.

  “Not as much fun as football was,” Troy said.

  Jesse’s expression shifted, radiating hope and excitement. He was so different from Troy, bold without being overbearing, while Troy was a stone.

  “The team’s not the same without you,” Jesse said.

  Words, just words, but conveying perhaps a deeper meaning.

  I’m not the same without you.

  “I know tryouts are over, but…” Troy hesitated. “But maybe, I don’t know, maybe you could make an exception?”

  “Seriously, man?” Jesse asked, his face genuinely brightening. The warmth in his chest was like a balm to Troy.

  “If that’s cool with the team’s captain.”

  Jesse grinned. “I’ll have a word with him.”

  Gibbie let his knuckles get dangerously close to the table. The bulky quarterback he arm-wrestled was Riley, who seemed determined for a rematch. He put all his weight onto his hefty arm to force Gibbie’s down. The smaller boy kept waiting for this to feel hard, but it wasn’t. The cheerleader he’d hoisted in the air earlier turned away. “I just can’t look!” she cried.

  Without even a grunt, Gibbie slammed Riley’s hand onto the table.

  “No way!” guys shouted. “That has got to be fake!”

  Gibbie held up his arms.

  “Nothing up my sleeves, ladies and gentlemen. For my next act…”

  Troy caugh
t the closing moments, and now slunk forward, putting his hand on his younger brother’s shoulder.

  “Could I steal you for a minute?”

  “In a second,” Gibbie said dismissively.

  “Now would be good.”

  Troy said it in a tone that barely rose above his normal flatline, and yet a hush descended on those in earshot. He’d been thinking about the time when Gibbie used to beg him to bring him trickor-treating with the big kids, would have done anything to tag along, promised him all his candy, whatever he wanted.

  “Sure,” Gibbie said, his voice trembling softly.

  Troy led him to the pop machine and then rounded on him.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m just having a little fun.”

  “Gibbie, we need to keep a lid on this, okay? All those heroes in your comic books, they have secret identities, right? It’s for a reason. What do you think would happen to us if the world knew what we could do?”

  Gibbie shrugged.

  “Don’t sulk,” Troy said. “Just use that brain of yours, okay?”

  “I am using my brain,” he replied, “And I know what you’re doing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve gone from feeling like I’m on top of the world to feeling like a piece of garbage. I’m not manic, Troy. You’re doing this to me.”

  “No I’m not,” Troy protested. “I just want you to remember who you are.”

  “I remember who I am, Troy, and I hate him, okay?” Gibbie said, pushing past his brother. “But I guess he’s all you’ll ever let me be.”

  A pair of tall-stem glasses clinked together in the home of what was left of Mrs. Dedarling. School was done for the day. Now the real learning began.

  “To new projects,” Devon said. He and Liza stood in the dining room. His mom’s corpse remained merged with the table. Flies buzzed around her sinking flesh.

  Liza’s hand trembled and she spilled a bit of her champagne.

  Devon steadied her hand.

  “Easy there, my angel,” he said.

  His angel. Her heart fluttered at that and a smile twitched at the corner of her lips. She took the jeweler’s loupe from Devon. It was easier looking at Mrs. Dedarling through the eyepiece, as if she were a thing and not a person. Devon stroked Liza’s hair. She’d given up on anyone ever doing that since her grandfather died, yet here she was.