by Kai Strand
Jeff schooled his expression, hoping to convince everyone that he didn’t care either way. He wished he could convince himself.
Chapter 4
Kids streamed from the academy past Jeff. His gaze hopped from head to head searching for the sheen of black hair, though his mind was somewhere else completely. He leaned against the column at the top of the steps, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, tipping his chin and managing half of a fabricated smile for anyone who greeted him. Part of him couldn’t wait to confront his dad about the mass suicide accusation Mr. Hammond had sprung in class, and the other part of him never wanted to know.
Finally, Oceanus pushed through the door, and Jeff felt his tension melt away at the sight of her.
“Where were you at lunch today?” he asked as she approached. “I missed you.”
Oceanus hugged her books to her chest. “I had studying, I mean research, to do.”
Jeff wrapped his arm around her as they walked down the stairs together. He kissed the top of her head and breathed in her scent.
Oceanus had transferred to FVA after they’d ended the world together. She lived at the academy, whereas he’d moved home under Mother’s orders. Outside of class time, they’d been pretty inseparable, though. At the least, Jeff walked her to her dorm after school every day. He didn’t want to just drop her off though. Not today. “Want to go get a burger or something?”
Oceanus shook her head and stared at the sidewalk.
“Ice cream?” Jeff asked.
“No. I just want to go lie down,” she said.
“What’s wrong? Aren’t you feeling good?” Jeff rubbed his palm up and down her upper arm; just touching her gave him a thrill. He pulled her tighter against his side. Was she holding herself stiffly?
She shrugged. “Bad day.”
“You too, huh?” Jeff mumbled.
Oceanus was stonily silent and kept her head angled toward the pavement throughout the walk across campus. Jeff tried not to wonder why, distracting himself by finding faces of kids he knew and being the first to greet them as they approached, as if being social would fill in the awkward silence and make everything all right. Jeff was never the social one, so his greetings were met with more than one raised eyebrow or frown. When he and Oceanus arrived at the dorm, she walked straight through the common room and over to the elevator. Jeff wasn’t allowed past the common room.
“Don’t you want to hang out a bit?” Jeff asked. “We could talk about your day.”
Oceanus looked alarmed at the suggestion and shook her head.
Disappointment swelled through Jeff. He had hoped to be able to talk about his own rotten day. He’d planned to tell Oceanus about the psycho Savannah, knowing Oci would get a good laugh at Jeff’s discomfort, but he’d really hoped to talk to her about his dad. He’d like to talk to someone about it before he saw his dad.
“You sure?” Jeff asked.
Oceanus nodded and stepped onto the elevator before the doors closed. She didn’t even look at him again.
Jeff rubbed his eyes until stars burst behind the closed lids. Now he could add another mystery to his sucky day. 1. The marvel that is psycho Savannah, and the hyper-anxiety he’d felt at her house. 2. His family history, which included two mass murderers. 3. A suddenly sullen and seemingly mad, or scared, girlfriend.
Jeff looked at the elevator doors, as if he could still see Oceanus. Was she acting this way because she’d heard about his dad and grandfather? Was she freaked out about Jeff being the descendent of a mass murderer and an assistant mass murderer?
Jeff ran his fingers through his hair, scraping his long bangs from his eyes, but they fell right back where they’d been. Long bangs had one advantage: he could avoid greeting people when he didn’t feel like it, such as at this moment. He tilted his head, letting his bangs swing forward like a visor.
“Hey there, Polar! Did you walk Oceanus home? Of course you did! You always do. If she were my girlfriend, I’d walk her home too. But I live here, so it would make sense.” Snort.
Jeff sighed; there were some people for which long bangs offered no shelter. He flicked his head sideways so that his hair flopped into its normal position. “Hey, Myron.”
“Are you and Oceanus going to the sock hop tomorrow night?”
Jeff wrinkled his nose. “No.”
“Villains never go to the dances. Have you noticed that? They never go!” Myron spoke a mile a minute in a high-pitched, nasally voice. He was the epitome of nerd, the reason behind the stereotype. Jeff really didn’t know what Myron’s super abilities were, but he suspected they involved talking his enemy to death.
“We aren’t villains anymore, Myron,” Jeff said. He stopped walking and glared at him. “Are you following me for a reason?” Myron had followed him all the way out to Jeff’s car.
“Oh! No. Just got carried away, I guess,” Myron snorted again and shrugged. “See ya later, Polar.”
Jeff got into his car and started it. He fiddled with radio stations until he found one playing a mellow symphonic piece. When the inside of his head buzzed like a chain saw, nothing soothed better than a clarinet concerto.
He backed out of the parking place, put the car in forward gear, eased his foot down on the gas, and then slammed on his brakes. A large dog with icy-blue eyes stood smack dab in the path of the car. The black and charcoal gray mottling of the dog’s fur gave it a dark, manic look, like anything would send it into a fury of snarling teeth and guttural growls. It stared directly at Jeff, as if appraising him. Jeff gunned the engine, letting the car lurch forward. The dog didn’t even flinch. Lifting its nose, it sniffed the air, and looked at Jeff again. Then it huffed and bounded away.
Jeff shivered. “Creepy!”
Chapter 5
Jeff pulled to the curb in front of his house, killed the engine, and unfolded himself from the driver’s seat. He scooped up a piece of trash that blew out of the car and tossed it back in before slamming the door shut. He shoved the car key into his front pocket and stepped up onto the curb. A static-ball of nerves rolled through his stomach. He lurched forward and wrapped his arms around his middle, surprised by the intensity of the anxiety attack. He eyed his house suspiciously. Someone was inside, yet there were no cars out front. He quickly checked all the windows facing the street to see if he could catch a glimpse of someone, but the house looked deserted.
Just outside the front door, Jeff ignited the fire in his left palm. He crept into the house, ready to arc the swirling ball of flame at an intruder. Shoot first, ask questions later was his motto.
Though the living room was vacant, Jeff sensed that someone had just been in there. A faint odor lingered that Jeff found familiar, but couldn’t identify. He slunk to the doorway of the kitchen and peered in. No one was there. He had to decide if he should go upstairs or into the basement first. Jeff closed his eyes and tried to employ super hearing or super smell, but he’d never shown the aptitude for either. Knowing he had a fifty-fifty chance, he chose to go upstairs first. Halfway up the stairs, the anxiety ebbed slightly, and he knew he’d chosen the wrong direction. Just as he turned to go downstairs, he heard the backdoor slam. He darted so fast to and through the back door that his wake knocked a picture frame off the wall.
Jeff stopped in the middle of the backyard and twirled in a circle, trying to pick up any clue of which direction the intruder ran. Other than that faint familiar odor which quickly dissipated on the warm afternoon breeze, Jeff found nothing to indicate which direction the intruder had gone. He clenched his fist, squashing his fire back into his palm.
He knew it was a super because of the knot of anxiety he’d experienced, and the speed that the intruder employed to make his or her get-away. But why would a super break into his house? They were all supposed to be balanced now, learning to apply their super skills to a vocation, not toward good or bad. As far as Jeff had noticed, he was the only one who hadn’t truly been balanced when he and Oceanus rebooted the world.
Jef
f gnawed the inside of his cheek as he went back into his house. What if there was another villain or white hat that the balancing hadn’t affected? It wouldn’t be all that bad if it were a villain. Plenty of supers had chosen to apply their skills to law enforcement, so if it were a villain, they’d be dealt with quickly. It actually bothered Jeff more to consider the possibility of an unbalanced super hero. The thought of a super righteous being determined to defend honor and goodness with their super pious attitude unchallenged by anybody—except for him, like he would care—unnerved Jeff.
Back in the house, he searched all the rooms for evidence of what the super had been there for, but nothing was out of place. The odor lingered strongest in his bedroom. Jeff stood in the center of his room and examined each surface, including the door, the windows, and the closet, hoping to find something out of place or missing, but nothing seemed disturbed. Granted, it would be hard to tell if the mounds of crumpled clothes on the floor were piled the same way they’d been that morning when he’d left. Jeff closed his eyes and let his nose do the work. He slowly turned in a circle, sniffing each time he turned. When he thought he noticed the scent stronger in a particular direction, he stepped forward, and did the same thing again and again until his legs bumped up against a piece of furniture.
He opened his eyes and found himself standing over his bed. Ew.
He knelt on his bed and sniffed his rumpled, unmade sheets, and found the odor clinging to the material. He crawled further up the bed and sniffed his pillow, choking on the strong whiff he inhaled. Jeff pulled back and stared at his pillow as if it were a traitor for allowing the intruder to nestle into it so intimately. Cautiously, Jeff leaned forward again and sniffed a smaller amount of the scent. Bricks and yeast came to mind, but Jeff couldn’t figure out why the smell was familiar.
The front door slammed downstairs.
He climbed off his bed and took one last look around the room for a clue to what the intruder had come for. Certainly it wasn’t to snuggle his pillow.
“Ew.” Jeff walked to the top of the stairs. “Hello?”
“Hi, honey.”
“Oh, Mother, good. Can you come up here for a second?”
When Sarah joined her son in the room, Jeff explained what had happened and then handed his pillow to her. “Sniff. Does that smell familiar to you?”
Sarah sniffed and then blinked. “Jeff, you need to do laundry.”
He rolled his eyes, “Mother, not now, please.”
Sarah held the pillow further from her nose and sniffed again. Then she sniffed the air around the room before returning her nose to the pillow. “I know what scent you’re referring to. It doesn’t belong here, but I don’t recognize it at all. Do you?”
Jeff nodded. “Yeah but I can’t place it. It makes me think of places I haven’t been, or maybe people I don’t know.”
“Someone you know from the academy, maybe?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t know.” Jeff shook his head and looked around at his messy room. A tinge of embarrassment colored his cheeks, knowing someone had been trudging through the piles of dirty clothes and had seen the science experiment growing on the dirty dishes on his bedside table.
Jeff saw Mother’s eyes rest on the dirty sock on top of the largest pile of clothes and the wadded up fast food wrapper on his laptop. She stepped forward and picked up the science experiment. Jeff opened his mouth to protest, but realized he held no credibility in the area of straightening up, so he allowed her to carry away his dishes without argument. He picked up the fast food wrapper and tossed it into the wastebasket, but it bounced off the over-flowing trash and rolled to a stop next to a discarded pair of boxers. He ran his fingers through his hair, sighed, and then followed Mother downstairs.
By the time Jeff’s sister, Sandra, and his dad got home, dinner bubbled on the stove. The family sat down to dinner together and discussed the intruder and the many possible reasons someone might want to break into their house and snuggle in Jeff’s bed. Sandra dismissed the incident as a super crush and texted under the table whenever her parents weren’t looking. With super hearing, Mother had obviously chosen to ignore her daughter’s disrespectful behavior. Jeff glared between Mother and Sandra, annoyed at his parents’ ongoing unequal treatment of them.
“Are we sure the person only crawled into Polar’s bed?” Frank asked, drawing a grimace from his wife, who was not a fan of the villain habit of nicknaming.
“Yes, I checked Sandra’s room and our room, and I don’t even think the intruder went into either of them,” Sarah said. “She seemed to spend some time on the couch, though.”
Frank raised an eyebrow.
Sarah nodded. “In Jeff’s favorite spot.”
Jeff curled his lip. “Ew. This person is creepy.”
Frank grinned. “I think your sister might be right. I think someone has a crush on you. It’s probably a white hat who’s too embarrassed to admit it. Who could blame her? You’re good-looking, practically a descendant of royalty.”
“He’s freakishly tall, Dad,” Sandra said.
Jeff only half listened to them banter about whether or not he was good looking. He’d remembered the other time he’d used the word creepy that day. The dog. Were the two incidents related? Under any other circumstances, he would never consider they had anything to do with each other, but two very random things happening in a short space of time made both incidents even more odd. What would a wild, wolf-like dog and a female intruder have to do with each other, besides being creepy?
Looking down at his plate of food, he realized he’d lost his appetite.
Chapter 6
“I called you a million times last night. Where were you?” Jeff ran a hand through his hair, looking down at the top of Oceanus’ head as they walked down the hall at school.
“Sorry, I got your messages this morning. I told you I was tired. I just went to sleep.” Oceanus stopped at her locker.
Was it Jeff’s imagination, or was she concentrating unnecessarily hard on exchanging books and folders? Had she even looked at him since he caught up to her inside the front doors? He leaned against the lockers next to her. “Man, have I got a lot to tell you.”
Oceanus slammed her locker shut and merged back into the flow of students.
Jeff’s mouth fell open as he watched her walk off without a word.
“Hey, Polar!”
Jeff dropped his gaze to the person who bounced on tiptoe in front of him. “Oh, hi Myron. Gotta go, have a good day, buddy.”
Jeff fell in pace with the flow of students, and wondered if he should try to catch up with Oceanus. If he were honest with himself, her distraction was really pissing him off. Had she not heard him say he had a lot to talk to her about?
“Change your mind about going to the sock hop?”
“Huh?” Jeff couldn’t believe Myron was jogging along beside him. He’d thought he’d successfully dismissed him.
“I thought that if you and Oceanus went, then maybe it would set an example for other villains, you know?”
“We aren’t villains anymore,” Jeff said.
“Well, you know what I mean. Ex-villains, then,” Myron said. He pushed his glasses up his nose and knocked shoulders with a guy walking the opposite direction.
“Watch it, moron!” the guy yelled.
“Sorry, Bulk!” Myron called back, fumbling with his glasses again because they’d been knocked askew from the impact. Myron grimaced and rubbed his shoulder. “Anyway, I think, because you’re a leader and all, that you could lead by example.”
“I don’t dance, Myron. Hit up Ricco. He’d probably be happy to spend the night dancing with a room full of ex-white hat girls,” Jeff suggested.
“Ricco Suave? Yeah, I’m sure he’d be happy to, but that is not the kind of mixed relations I’m trying to encourage.” Myron’s cheeks burned red.
“Can’t help you buddy. Gotta go.” Jeff lengthened his stride and moved smoothly around knots of kids until he successfully outpac
ed Myron. Oceanus was nowhere in sight, and it was too close to the bell for him to try to find her. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to. Discouraged, he headed to his first class.
Oceanus didn’t show up to lunch again. Jeff tried to talk to her in the hall between fifth and sixth periods, but her responses were evasive and she claimed to need to use the bathroom before class started.
It wasn’t until he walked into the history classroom that he realized he’d never talked to his dad about what Mr. Hammond revealed in class the day before. Luckily, Mr. Hammond didn’t have any new ‘big reveals’ for the students that day. After school, Jeff waited for Oceanus in his usual spot, but a half hour later he realized she’d ditched him. Frustrated and confused, he headed to his car. Too many unanswered circumstances had arisen in the last couple days. He turned the key in the ignition and revved the engine, but his hand paused on the gearshift. He didn’t want to go sit at home wondering what was going on. He needed answers, or at least one of the answers. He refused to sit around doing nothing when so many questions went unanswered.
He turned off his car, climbed out, and headed toward the administrative office building.
When he walked into the little paneled office, the man behind the desk glanced up from the computer screen. When he saw Jeff, he popped out of his seat and stood straight enough to be accused of having rigor mortis.
“Hey, Hans! How’s it hanging?”
The man flushed and pushed his glasses up his nose. “What can I do for you, Mr. Tohler?”
Jeff opened his mouth, then slammed it shut again. He cocked his head back and forth. “You know, Hans, there’s something wrong with you.”
Hans made short eye contact with Jeff and knit his eyebrows. “What do you mean, sir?”
“See, that’s what I mean, Mr. Sir. You’re polite, and you’ve always been polite, even before the balancing. Why is that, Hans?” Jeff shoved his hands in his front pockets and leaned against the door jam, crossing one foot over the other.