I rubbed my finger along the crack until the metal started glowing red. I then scraped small amounts of metal off the rod and worked them into the crack. With my finger all neutrino, it was like working with Play-Doh. I went slowly and carefully and soon the crack was filled, and the metal was cooling.
I sat back on the cement and let the cool air flow over me.
My dad handed me a beer, sat down next to me and said, “Good job, son. So, shall we talk about her?”
You know what strikes horror into a superhero’s heart? Not the League of Villains, Extraordinaire (LoVE) not the Arcturian Alliance, not Toxicwasteman, nope, none of those. What strikes horror into this superhero’s heart is talking with his father about his romantic feelings.
My dad is a good, kind man. I know he cares for me and my mother deeply, but he’s not the warm-fuzzy kind.
When he handed me the beer, his face was his usual stony mask as he ran his fingers through his thinning brown hair.
We weren’t done with the door yet. We had to wait for the metal to cool and try it out, make sure the hinge hadn’t gotten warped and that the door still shut. I knew it, and he knew it.
“You like her,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.
I nodded.
“It’s scary,” he said, as he took a pull of the beer. He didn’t mention Ashley—for which I was grateful—but she was implied.
I drank too and nodded again.
“And the worst part is that this was your mother’s doing, and you don’t want to give her the slightest hint that it worked.”
I laughed hard then, his baritone rumble joining my laughter. It was funny because it was true.
When the laughter had run its course, we sat in silence drinking our beers. After a time, his brown eyes locked with mine and he said, “She’s a good kid. Don’t overthink it, go with your gut. Just call her.”
I nodded, finished the beer, and we got back to work on the car.
~~~
“Hello,” she said, after the fourth ring.
My hands were sweating, my belly tight. “Hi…” I began, and then stopped. I was mad at myself. She was just a girl, for God’s sake, get over it.
“Hello?” she said again.
“Oh… yeah… sorry. Umm. This is Nik, Nik Nichols. We met the other night at my parents’ house.”
I was out in the garage pacing back and forth. I had needed some privacy so had come out here after I took the requisite three days to worry like hell and then finally get my nerve up. I could feel a trickle of sweat rolling down my back and my dry mouth longing for a beer even though I had just had breakfast.
“Ummm, hmmm.” She was not making this easy on me.
I took a deep breath and just got it over with. “Look. I really enjoyed meeting you. Can I take you out for dinner?” It wasn’t elegant, but at least it was done.
There was silence. I am not sure how long a silence, but long enough that I felt like throwing up. I didn’t know her, she didn’t know me. We could be a disaster together, but there was something about her and I just had to find out what it was.
“Look, Nik, please don’t take this personally,” she said, and after that I was taking it real personally. “I am just not in a good place… you know?”
I licked my lips and nodded. Realizing she couldn’t see me, I said, “You know what, neither am I. There has been a lot happening lately, so yeah, I get it.”
“So we’re good?”
“Yeah, if you go out with me we are.” I winced after the words spilled out, wishing I could take them back. It was just not me. I waited helplessly for her retort, scraping my shoe on the clean cement of the garage floor.
She laughed. It was a small laugh, really only a chuckle. “Really?”
“Sorry, that came out strange, what I meant—”
“It’s okay, Nik. It’s okay. I appreciate your… enthusiasm.”
“So, dinner? I would be happy to drive up to Flagstaff, take you wherever you want to go.”
“Slow down. How about a glass of wine? I know this great winery, Page Springs Cellars, down in the Verde Valley. It’s halfway between us. I have time today.”
Chapter 3
Our Heroes Meet
Fall 2004, Verde Valley, Arizona
As I drove my old Ford Focus up I-17 towards Flagstaff and the Verde Valley, I replayed the conversation over and over in my head. Wondering what had worked and what hadn’t. Worrying that I had made a complete ass of myself. Concerned that romantic disaster loomed large. Stunned by the suddenness of it all.
I had worked myself up to the call, that was it. When she suggested we meet today, in two hours, I was thrown way off balance. I didn’t have time to plan, or prep, or… or worry too much about it. I had to change my clothes, get in the car and go.
We had tried to arrange something later in the week, but our work schedules made that difficult. So it had ended up being that same day.
I turned on the radio to distract myself. NPR was tuned in; my dad must have had it playing last time he tinkered with this car. I changed it to a classic rock station. I needed some old friends to distract me.
I wound my way out of Phoenix and started heading up out of the Valley of the Sun. It’s a steep climb up onto a rolling high-desert mesa, filled with dried grasses, a few cactus, epic views, and little else. I was nearing Cordes Junction when a blaring noise broke through Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”
“Attention: This is the Emergency Alert System. This is not a test. Repeat, this is not a test. What is being called a sizable meteor is being tracked and headed towards Central Arizona near Camp Verde. Residents are urged to stay inside and stay off the roads. Travelers headed towards the region are urged to turn around. Repeat, a meteor is headed towards Central Arizona and expected to hit at approximately 2:00 p.m. Pacific standard time.”
I glanced at the clock on my stereo. It read 1:50 p.m.
I pulled to the side of the road, emptied my pockets, throwing the contents under the driver’s-side seat, got out of the car, and ran into the desert.
If anyone had been looking, I am sure I looked like a crazy man. I kind of felt like a crazy man, to tell you the truth. It wasn’t something heroic and graceful. It was a hurried dumping of my pockets and a mad dash into the desert.
I saw a few other cars pulling over and people getting out. I ignored them and ran. I was looking for cover, but there wasn’t much, just a few scrubs here and there. I was about to give up and risk a witness when I found a small gully and jumped in.
I let go of my biological form and summoned my neutrino form. I watched my hands turn yellow and my shirt start to smolder. I looked down at my feet. My new Simple shoes (complete with recycled tire soles, hemp uppers, and water-based glues) were smoldering too. Damn! I should have taken those off first. I had bought them right after I met her, hoping to see her again, hoping to reveal another side of myself to Licia—she lived in Flagstaff and was a rock climber, I suspected she was at least a little granola. And women pay attention to shoes, don’t they?
But it was about time, and I didn’t have it to spare. Licia was down there. I had no clue how I was going to stop a meteor, but I had to try.
I surrendered myself to the process, changing quicker than I had before. I leapt into the air, a yellow streak, my clothes a smoldering ruin on the ground, and headed towards the Verde Valley.
~~~
How does Neutrinoman fly? It is a common question, one that the government spent millions trying to figure out. I suspect they thought there would be some military application if they could reverse engineer the process, but they failed.
From what I understand, from what the scientists told me, and what I have experienced over the years, it comes down to two things.
First, my body undergoes a profound shift from my biological form to my neutrino form. I am not human anymore—my neutrino form is a “coherent pattern of neutronic energy.” This doesn’t exactly rescind the laws of ph
ysics, but it puts me into a different category. I am governed more by quantum mechanics than Newtonian.
Second, I can control where and how that neutronic energy is released from my form. So, those yellow jets coming out of the soles of my feet and the palms of my hands power me to flight. Kind of like Iron Man, but you don’t have to scratch your head wondering where all the fuel is stored. I am one big nuclear reaction.
Back then I wasn’t all that refined in my skills; it took time to really get good at it. I was, though, capable of reasonably accurate flight. And boy was it fun!
~~~
I soared over the mesa that sits between the Valley of the Sun and the Verde Valley. Cordes Junction passed by in a blink, not more than a few gas stations and an artist’s community. I searched the skies for the meteor and spotted some fiery streaks heading towards Camp Verde, which sat right in the middle of the Verde Valley.
The Verde Valley is a broad green valley that sits between the Mogollon Rim and Flagstaff to the north and the large mesa Cordes Junction sits on to the south. “Verde” means green in Spanish—aptly named, huh? It has one of Arizona’s rare rivers, the Verde, running through it and a bunch of small towns nestled here and there.
I increased my speed as much as I could. It wasn’t what I would soon be capable of (no sonic booms this time), but it wasn’t bad. Then next thing I noticed were bolts of lightning flying up from the ground near the river. The lightning jumped from the ground and impacted some of the smaller rocks, exploding them into dust.
I smiled. I had, of course, been briefed on Lightningirl, but we had never met.
She was standing in the median between the northbound and southbound lanes of I-17, right in front of the bridge that crosses the Verde River. There was a smoldering wreck in the northbound lane and a large hole in the southbound lane blocking traffic. People were milling about, staring, whispering, and pointing.
I came to a rather ungraceful landing, first stumbling, and then falling flat on my face, coming to a rest several feet in front of her. If my face hadn’t been yellow, I’m sure I would have turned red. I could blame it on my poor track record with landings (and that was part of it); but mostly, I think, it was her. She stood there, a coruscating display of electrical energy in the shape of a beautiful woman. I was a bit distracted. After all, what was there not to like?
She laughed. Not a sly snicker, or a suppressed hoot, but a full-on guffaw. Her laughter was loud and sharp and carried a long distance.
I was about to say something when her laughter was replaced by an intake of breath and an “Uh oh.”
I turned and looked, a clumping of about twenty bowling ball sized meteorites were headed right for us. Her lightning bolts stabbed out from both her hands, but it wasn’t going to be enough.
Those meteors would kill most of the crowd.
I didn’t think, I just reacted. From my prone position, I held up both hands in front of me to protect myself. A column of yellow shot out from my chest, forming a large shining yellow shield in front of us all.
The meteorites impacted the shield and evaporated with a sizzling sound, like ice on hot grill.
“Nice,” Lightningirl said. It helped take out some of the sting of the laughter.
“Thanks,” I replied, getting up and taking a step towards her.
When I did, small threads of electricity jumped from her body to mine, and small tendrils of neutronic energy jumped from my body to hers. The feeling was… well, it was electric, and energizing, and exciting, and not wholly comfortable.
I ignored it for a moment and turned to the crowed. “Go! Run! Get under the bridge,” I shouted, pointing to the bridge that was about fifty yards away. “I don’t think we’ve seen the last of this.”
Some people turned and started to walk, some ran, some stood there gawking at us.
Lightningirl turned then, pointing her hands towards them, her fingers splayed. “Go!” she shouted, as ten tiny bolts of electricity flashed out from her fingers and connected with the ten closest gawkers. They yelped and ran.
“Nice,” I said.
“Thanks,” she replied.
The energy was still flowing between us, and I was feeling… it was hard to describe it, but I felt buzzed (more buzzed than my Neutrinoman norm) and strong (stronger than my Neutrinoman norm).
I had opened my mouth to say something about it when she cut me off. “Oh my God,” Lightningirl said as I turned from the fleeing bystanders and looked south.
Up in the sky, barreling down upon us, was the flaming, spitting meteor the emergency alert had been about. It was huge, a football field across, and about ten seconds from making landfall right on top of us.
This thing was moving faster, much faster, than the speed of sound. Its trajectory was all the more terrifying because of the eerie silence.
Chapter 4
Ashley
Nik’s Past 1995–1998
I’m afraid that I’m terribly new to this memoir thing. How should it all go together to make any kind of sense? How do you give enough history without being boring? Which pieces add to the story and which others take away?
And I guess to understand me in 2004, you have to know just a bit about my past. One person really.
Ashley Long.
A tall, curvy, athletic blond with almond-shaped green eyes. The kind of girl that never bought herself a drink at a bar. The kind of girl that could get herself out of a traffic ticket with a flirty smile. The kind of girl that never goes for an average guy like me.
Ashley Long. I’ve mentioned her but really have been avoiding the reality of her in telling this story. As much as I want to, I can’t. You won’t understand my romantically bumbling thirty-year-old self without knowing about her, about us. So here goes.
I met her on May 5, 1995, in my ECON 301 course. I was a twenty-year-old junior at Arizona State University (ASU—go Sun Devils!) studying business. Ashley was in the same class. I had noticed her—every male and most of the females had noticed her. She had this authoritative walk, like she always knew what she was doing. She was beautiful, tall, and had an unerring sense of fashion. As the saying goes: girls wanted to be her, boys wanted to be with her.
I had said hello to her a few times, prompted by my buddy Robby Holmes. Rob wasn’t in the class, but after hearing me wax all poetic about her, he had shamed me into action. But nothing happened when I did speak to her. Just a tight-lipped smile and a nod and then back to her fashionable friends that she sat with.
Anyway, during the class final—glorious multiple choice—I caught her taking a look at my test. I was a solid B student. Not the best, but I did okay. I kept catching motion in the row behind me and smelling whiffs of her flowery perfume (smelled kind of like lilacs to me). We were seated in one of those big classrooms with raised seating, each row back higher than the last. I turned and caught her eye as she craned forward. She flushed—I had never seen her embarrassed before—and leaned right back. I moved my test so she could see it easily. What the hell. It was her education, not mine.
After class she lingered, so I did too. We were both standing, about to leave, when I said, “Maybe you should buy me a coffee now.”
“What?” she asked, her furrowed brow marring her normally smooth forehead.
“I don’t mind being used,” I said, a silly grin on my face. “I just prefer a little foreplay first.” Cocky, right? Well, I was a bit different back then, and I figured if I didn’t do something Rob would never let me hear the end of it.
Her eyes narrowed and she looked me up and down like I was some piece of meat, her green eyes settling on my brown. I felt my cheeks flush and was about to turn to go when she said, “No. Sorry.” She paused, our eyes still locked, before a smile broke out on her face. “Coffee’s not enough. I’ll buy you dinner instead.”
~~~
Fortune favors the bold—well, at least sometimes. Ashley and I had a great time at dinner that night. She was smart and funny and more than a little full
of herself. But from my point of view—a twenty-year-old male looking at her—she deserved to be a bit full of herself. I insisted on returning the favor and buying her dinner the next night. I knew I was way out of her league, but the semester was winding up and I was feeling daring, hoping for a fun summer.
She accepted and one thing led to another and six months later we were living together in a crappy little apartment south of the university. I was stunned, really. Ashley Long and Nik Nichols. No one would have predicted it.
I had hit her at just the right time. She was tired of the beautiful rich boys using her and leaving her. She was in the mood for a nice guy. And she said she liked my eyes. Said they were soulful.
If I had to pick a few words to describe Ashley (beyond the physical) I would say: stubborn, athletic, and mercurial.
It’s the last one that bears the most attention in this story. She was the very definition of mercurial. Her moods would change as fast as the stock market. She was intensely focused and driven as long as she was interested in something, but that could change at any moment.
I learned all about this our first winter together when she wanted to go up to Flagstaff and ski. She had never skied before and by the end of the day was better than I was. I was no champ, but I had done it a few times a year since I was a teenager. I thought I would be teaching her something, but her focus, drive, fearless attitude, and athleticism came together and she was a wonder to watch.
That season she got better and better and better. She would carve up the slopes with an eerie grace, her long blond hair flowing behind her, her body clad in only the best Patagonia coats and hats.
I told her she should get serious, that she could probably go pro. She agreed and dove in with gusto. Reading, learning from the best she could find, taking trips with me to Colorado and Utah for better snow. And then…
And then she was just done. Two seasons of skiing and she was bored. One day she was on track to go pro, the next day she had everything up for sale on eBay and was done.
Neutrinoman & Lightningirl: A Love Story, Season 1 (Episodes 1 - 3) Page 2