by R. A. Nelson
“Do I look crazy to you?” I said to Manda.
“Only one million percent,” she said. She dipped her finger in the peanut butter jar for another lick.
“Don’t do that. You really shouldn’t do that.”
“I don’t care, Emma, it’s so good.”
I didn’t say anything. For some reason my seizure had gotten me thinking about what I had seen in the eye specialist’s office. The way my mom had been glowing blue in the dark. Was this some weird new offshoot of my epilepsy? What was happening to me?
“Emma? Are you listening?” Manda yelled. “I said, did you know I can count to a billion? Emma!”
“What? Um, oh, you can?”
“One, two, three, four, five, a billion,” Manda said, and collapsed into giggles on the living room floor.
I was thinking that I could try it again right now. Take my little sister in the back bedroom, close the curtains, cut out the lights, and see. See if it happened with Manda too. But I didn’t. I don’t think I wanted to see.
The next change came all at once. I told Mom I was trashing my crutches, no matter what the doctor said. I had been walking around the apartment just fine and was sick of dragging the things to school. She knew it was useless to try to force me, so instead she turned the situation on its head.
“Okay, if you’re all healed up, tomorrow is garbage day, right?”
“But my poor leg,” I said.
Mom smiled sweetly. “Besides, you can take Manda to the playground. She’s been cooped up all afternoon.”
I grumbled and grabbed my sister and we headed across the Autumn Creste complex to the Dumpsters. She held my hand the whole way, skipping and practically jerking my arm out of its socket. Manda spent eighty-eight percent of her waking life either dancing or singing or both.
I got her started on the swings, then headed over to the Dumpster to jettison the bag of kitchen crap only to notice that some doofus or, more likely, team of doofi had blocked the Dumpster door with a huge yellow refrigerator.
I knew the Dumpsters had tops that opened so they could be raised and emptied into a truck, but the Dumpsters at the Creste were old. Iron Age old, complete with lids so rusty they looked like they were welded shut. I thought I would give it a try anyway. Maybe I could get it open a crack, enough to slip the bag in. I found the cleanest-looking grungy spot along the rim of the lid and heaved with my left hand … only, it didn’t just open a crack, it kept going. Flipped all the way over and slammed against the back of the Dumpster like a bomb.
“Holy …”
One of the kids over at the swings finished the thought for me. All of them were watching. I looked suspiciously at my hand. Huh?
I took my shades off, kept my eyes closed against the light, and mopped my brow. Put them back on and opened and closed my fingers. Something … something moved inside me.
I didn’t know any other way to put it. It was as if there was a new kind of energy there—an energy that was suddenly loosened to where it flowed freely down my arms and legs and back. I had the sense that if I flexed my calf muscles and jumped, I could fly to the top of one of the apartment buildings.
I looked at the refrigerator. No way. But why not? I stooped next to it, stuck the fingers of one hand underneath, and gripped the bottom edge. Stood very rapidly …
The yellow refrigerator came completely off the ground. I watched in shock as the metal trim at the bottom came level with my eyes, then the whole thing kept going higher and higher as it left my hand. It all felt so effortless. The refrigerator tumbled in midair a moment, then gravity caught up and it came crashing down on its side.
The sound boomed off the nearest buildings. The kids at the swings came running over, shrieking and laughing, all wanting to touch me, calling me superhero names like Spider-Man and the Hulk. Manda was right in the middle of them.
“Emma! Emma! You’re Superman!”
“No, shhh, no, I’m not!” I said. “It was just really light. I didn’t do anything.”
“Emma! You’re a superhero!”
They begged me to do it again. I shook my head over and over. Thankfully, none of them was older than five or six. Nobody would believe them if they told anybody what I’d done. I thought it again.
What’s happening to me?
I was stunned and more than a little afraid. It was almost as if … as if I were turning into something new. Some new kind of human.
But what kind? I didn’t know.
One thing that hadn’t changed: my impulsive nature. Why couldn’t I have waited until after dark to have tested my strength?
But it had been impossible to ignore once I had felt it—that power—inside me. The moment it had surged through me, I didn’t give a rip who was watching. Who cares? I would have thought if someone had tried to warn me not to do it. What? You think you can stop me?
I took Manda’s hand and hustled her back to the apartment with her complaining the whole way. I stopped when we got to our steps. “You can’t tell Mom about this,” I said. “You just can’t.”
“Why?” Manda said. “She has to know. She has to know you’re Superman, Emma.”
“I’m not Superman, Manda. I’m not.”
“Supergirl, then.”
“No.”
“Superwoman.”
“No, I’m nothing. I mean, I’m just strong, really, really strong. This has to be a secret, do you understand? A secret just between me and you. If you tell anyone, even if it’s just Mom, she’ll get really scared and other people will find out. And then …” I wasn’t sure what I could say to convince her. Then I had an idea. “The bad guys will get me, Manda. Do you see what I’m saying? You don’t want that to happen, okay? The bad guys would get you too. And Mom.”
“Oh! Like Peter Parker.”
“Yeah, just like Peter Parker. Nobody else can know or—”
“Or the bad guys, they will come and hurt us.”
“Right. Okay. Talk about something else when we see Mom. Anything else.”
“Okay.”
My head was bursting with thoughts, so many I couldn’t keep up with them all. The most disturbing was this: while it was happening, what I was doing didn’t feel disturbing at all. Lifting that refrigerator didn’t feel strange. It felt natural. The most natural thing in the world.
The next morning I begged out of school and nagged my mother until she drove me to one of those doc-in-the-box places to get the stitches removed.
“But it’s more than a week early!” Mom kept saying all the way there.
“I know, but it feels fine,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her what I already suspected.
I looked at the doctor’s name tag: OLOKOWANDI.
“And may I have your name, miss? Call me Dr. Olo,” he said when I climbed up on the paper. He was a dazzlingly handsome black guy with the most striking smile I had ever seen. Though right now he was looking kind of perplexed.
Dr. Olo had just taken the bandage off my leg and run his finger along the top of my thigh. Where the sick-looking wound had been, there was a slight ridge of flesh about three or four inches long—and nothing else. The skin was perfect, otherwise.
“I don’t mean to … say this,” Dr. Olo said. It sounded like an accusation. “There are no sutures. You took them out, didn’t you? You are a strong girl to take them out yourself. Or did your father or mother do it for you?”
My face must have told him that wasn’t the case. His expression changed. “Take your finger, there.”
Dr. Olo guided my hand over the same ridge of flesh he had just touched. It was smooth, but …
“See how hard it feels? That is the scar tissue. If someone did not remove the stitches, I would say it is almost as if they have been … reabsorbed.” He shook his head wonderingly. “The only thing I would know to do, Miss Emma, is to take a scalpel, so …” He pointed the tip of his fingernail against the raised place, drew it along like a knife. “… And see what we will see is beneath.” Dr. Olo l
aughed heartily. “Of course, I am making a joke. There is really nothing to be done. You are healed! It is a miracle! Please have a glorious day.”
When my mom saw me back in the waiting room, she asked, “How did it go?”
“Butter,” I said. And we left.
The next impossibly weird thing came later that day. It had rained all day, so I knew the soccer fields would be closed, which was good because I wanted to test my leg with nobody watching.
Besides, I just needed to get away, do something physical. Running had always been my therapy, ever since the curse had come on the scene. Running helped me to think, settled me out when I was feeling over-amped and crazy.
I would have loved to run on the grass, but the fields were damp and spongy from the storm. So the asphalt jogging trail it was. A fresh mass of black clouds was threatening in the west and the light of the day was already failing. Well, failing for everyone else.
It had been more than a week since I had really put the hammer down, so I went through a light stretching routine. Then I was off.
Supreme.
The word popped into my head as I rounded the first long curve in the running trail. I was moving uphill and already gaining speed. My injured leg didn’t hurt at all. But that wasn’t really accurate. It was more than just a lack of pain. I had never felt anything like this, anything this good.
I felt fantastic every time I ran. In spite of my size, I was built for speed. But this … I glanced around me. The glowering clouds were starting to spit rain. Nobody in sight.
Push it.
I lengthened my stride, intending to kick like I would for a sprint, the kind of flat-out running a person can only hold for a few seconds.
Something inside me kicked back.
Oh my God … I was moving. Really moving. Faster than I had ever run before. It was so easy. But I could instinctively feel it wasn’t a full sprint. I was still in a lower gear.
I pushed harder and could feel wind whistling past me now just as if I were sticking my head out the window of a moving car. Only unlike in the movies when someone is going terrifically fast, nothing was a blur. Everything was as rock steady as if I were standing still.
I felt my heart as I ran. It should have been racing like a high-performance engine, but I couldn’t even feel the beat at first. There it was, about like the pulse you would feel lying down, maybe sixty, seventy beats a minute. Up to then I had thought I was blazing. But now I realized I could go faster. Much faster. Try it.
I opened the throttle all the way, running as if I’d heard a baby crying in a burning building. It was like flying. It was flying, while still touching the earth. The black cloud above me burst and lightning shivered across the horizon like the glowing ends of a witch’s broom. Rain ricocheted against me—I was racing into the big fat drops so fast, they were bouncing off of me sideways like liquid bullets. It felt amazing, transcendent.
I would have lapped the fastest Olympic runner on the planet three, four, five times already. I was something beyond human, more than human. I’m a god.
I began screaming. I screamed over and over. At last I slowed, finally stopping next to a giant spreading oak. I sat beneath it and watched the rain thunder down. Checked the time on my cell. I had been sprinting like that for more than thirty minutes.
The next morning I floated through school in a dreamlike state. In homeroom, kids moved around me sleepily, slinging their books down, talking about their weekends. The box on the wall blared the usual scratchy salute: “It’s a great day to be a Red Raider!” Followed by announcements I ignored. My body was in the room, but my spirit was still on that track, flying.
The truth is, I didn’t know if I even belonged there anymore.
What was I becoming? Would it end or just keep on going? I turned my hands up and looked at my palms. Not one crease out of place, everything just as I remembered. But I was something different and new. Maybe some kind of genetic anomaly? A new kind of human being, anyhow. I refused to consider any possibility beyond that.
After lunch we rehearsed a school lockdown, cutting the lights off and locking the classroom doors, pretending a shooter was on the loose in the halls.
We huddled in the dark. Only—oh my God—I could still see everyone by the ghostly bluish light their bodies were giving off.
I turned my head right and left in complete disbelief.
James Wharton was kissing D’Shika House and feeling her up. I could see D’Shika’s wet eyes blinking, their bodies moving. I could see kids waving their arms blindly, trying to poke other kids.
I felt uncomfortable watching what people do in the dark when they are certain no one can see them. Kids scratching in embarrassing places. Picking their noses. But the hardest thing to watch was the faces. Once I got used to the blue, I got to see each kid’s secret face. What their public faces relaxed into in the safety of the dark. Some of the kids looked happy, well adjusted, sure. But the faces that haunted me were the others. Sad. Depressed. Frightened. Overwhelmingly tired.
My math teacher, Ms. Timms, who was new and young and hot, fresh out of college, and Ben Wheland were right next to each other, leaning against a table at the front of the room. Not touching. Not moving at all. But so very close, their hips were less than an inch apart.
One of the most interesting things about the lockdown was this: knowing that if someone really did attack the school, I could very easily walk out there and stop him.
No matter what weapons an intruder had, from pipe bombs to an M16—unless he had a gang of shooters with him, he would be completely helpless against me. I was just too fast. I could dodge around behind him, make it seem as if he were moving in slow motion. To the killer it would seem almost as if I had the ability to disappear in one place and reappear in another.
I could basically do anything I wanted to do.
“Emma. Emma!”
“Huh?”
The last class of the day, creative writing, and Ms. Walker was looking at me as if she was expecting something. She’d already accused me of trying to sleep behind my sunglasses.
“We’re selecting partners for the Argumentative Essay project. Like to join us?”
I sat up straighter in my chair. “Anybody is fine with me. Could I go see the nurse?”
“Is there something wrong?”
“I don’t know, I just need to see the nurse.”
Given my medical history, Ms. Walker was afraid to say no. She made out the pass and I left. I strolled past the nurse’s office and then right past the checkout office too. Out the front door. A clean getaway.
I spent the rest of the day walking aimlessly all over town, finally sitting on a bench outside the library. For a while I tried not to think about anything at all. Just absorbed my surroundings. The brick dentist office in the little house across the street. Broom sage blowing in the empty lot next door. The smell of french fry grease from the McDonald’s up the road. A ladybug crawling along my finger. The world seemed so incredibly alive. Alive in a way I had never imagined before. Beautiful. Interconnected.
Then I heard something … a kind of whirring, fluttering sound. I looked around trying to find the source. Then I saw it, a bird with blue-tipped wings, fifty yards away, landing in the top of a locust tree.
I can hear its wings flapping.
Of course I thought about it. How there must be some connection between my accident in the Georgia mountains and what was happening to me now. If only I could remember …
That night Mom was working at the Blue Onion again and I had read to Manda and gotten her in bed. She wasn’t sleepy, though. Five minutes after I had her down, she charged up the hall to where I was sitting in the living room with my trig book, trying to care about homework. A nature show about vampire bats was on, but I wasn’t paying much attention to it.
“Can’t sleep,” Manda said.
“How come?”
She jumped into her favorite place, my lap. The trig book fell to the floor, closing itse
lf. “I keep thinking about those pale green pants with nobody inside them,” Manda said. “What’s inside them, Emma? There has to be something inside them. Or they couldn’t move, could they?”
I let out a deep breath. “It’s just a story, Manda. You know what Dr. Seuss is like. Everything he writes is all made up and crazy.”
“But Horton is not made up. Horton is an elephant. Elephants are not made up. I’ve seen one at the zoo.”
“But a talking elephant? Who sits on an egg and hatches it?”
Manda looked at me as if I were slow. “That’s just for the story, silly. But the pants …”
“There’s nobody inside the pants.”
“Not a ghost?”
“It’s just drawn that way. The pants are supposed to be alive. They are alive, but that’s all they are. Pants. It’s supposed to be … a mystery. You’re not supposed to know how the pants work. That’s why the story is so good.”
“Like the secret you showed me?”
“What secret?”
“About your superpowers?”
I swore to myself. “Well, yeah, I guess so. That’s a mystery too, isn’t it? That’s why it has to be kept secret.” I put a finger to my lips.
She threw her arms around me and clung to my neck. When she spoke again, she was speaking very softly, just under my ear. “Fly me away, Emma. Fly me away from the pale green pants.”
I squeezed her hard. “I can’t fly. That’s silly.” Was it? I didn’t know. I had never tried. Stop it.
“But …”
I pulled her away and got up to take her back down the hall. But she wouldn’t let me go. “Let me watch something, Emma.”
“You need to be in bed.”
“Just a little bit, so I won’t think about the pants.”
So we settled down again and watched the nature show. Five vampire bats were hopping around a pig’s legs in the middle of the night. I never imagined they would move that way. There was something unsettling about the way they bounded around and around the pig. At last they climbed aboard, settling onto the pig’s back.