by Drew Hayes
Camille inhaled and rotated her legs. None of that mattered anymore. She wasn’t the weirdo of her school, she wasn’t the outcast cowering behind the bushes, willing her pursuers to not find her. She wasn’t helpless. Camille was a Super. She’d owned that term for years now, and if she wanted to take it to the next level, that meant keeping her concentration in the face of distractions.
A set of voices reached her ears from some distance away. They were getting closer; soon they’d come upon her doing her morning exercise. Her breath tried to catch in her throat, but Camille refused to let it. It was fine if people saw her. It was okay to be noticed. There was nothing wrong with being seen. She had to come to terms with that, because if it came to a point where she had to use her full potential in this test, people were going to notice the living crap out of her. And she had to push through that. She had to be strong. No matter what, she had to advance to the next year.
She knew that He would advance. He would undoubtedly be here next year, fighting and training and laughing and growing. He would be one step closer toward being a Hero. And He would need someone to heal him.
Camille exhaled as she lowered her hips and raised her shoulders. She heard the people walking by her, felt their eyes as they noticed the small, pale-haired girl stretching in the sunrise. She felt the blood rise in her cheeks, but otherwise showed no response. Soon the voices passed and Camille changed position again.
He would be here next year, and He would unavoidably get himself into trouble. He would get hurt. So Camille and her power would be here, too. That’s all there was to it.
137.
Shane knocked on Michael’s door again. He and Chad waited patiently for a few moments before Shane turned around.
“Still no answer.”
“I’m aware,” Chad said.
“That’s weird, though, right? Michael has his crap, but the guy never flakes on training.”
Chad shrugged with the casual apathy Shane had grown accustomed to. “Pressure makes some people better, it makes some people break. Maybe he couldn’t take it.”
“I guess. That just doesn’t seem like him,” Shane said.
“Yes, because Michael has shown such excellent coping mechanisms throughout the year,” Chad replied.
“Never this bad, though,” Shane pointed out.
“That’s why it is called escalation,” Chad told him. “Look, he isn’t picking up his cell and I can hear through the walls that he isn’t in there. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s off doing some special training on his own. In the meantime, you and I have only a few days left.”
Shane started to protest, then thought better of it. Michael had barely shown up for three days of training throughout the two weeks, and he’d been distracted each time. Shane considered Michael a friend, but whatever was going on, it was apparent Michael wasn’t going to share. So Shane needed to focus on making sure he was at his peak when test time came.
“Okay,” Shane agreed. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”
* * *
Vince released a blast of heat into the concrete wall, creating a focused pillar of flame between himself and the boundary. In the corner of the training room was an ever growing pile of Sterno cans, adding an even more decrepit ambiance to the seared room. Vince had been training down here for most of his two weeks, stopping only for study, tests, food, and more fire. He’d worked hard with his heat, trying new blast patterns and ranged techniques. He’d focused on close combat as well, driving up the temperature around him to near intolerable levels for any human who passed through it. His body was sore, sweat poured from him constantly, and some of his muscles felt like a bat had been taken to them.
Vince couldn’t remember a time he’d felt better. He released the bolt of flame from the wall and cupped his hands. Between his palms a fireball formed, swirled about until he threw his arms forward. The fireball launched into the wall and spread across it, leaving a swath of fresh scorches in its path.
Vince paused to pick a new target area and realized that he was more or less out of clean space to hit. They were going to have to do a hell of a job fixing up this combat room. Then again, Vince had faith there was an efficient process in place for such things; otherwise there was no way this school could function with people like himself in it. He picked up a water bottle at his feet and took a deep drink.
Tomorrow was his down day, the night of the festivities. The day after that was the exam. He still didn’t feel ready, not completely, but Vince had been around the block enough times to know that he never would. He would do the best he could to prepare and then things would just play out. He wouldn’t know if he was ready or not or until it was all over, because that’s when the results would dictate the answer.
In the meantime, Vince still had a few hours before dinner with Sasha. The air around him seemed to be rippling as the temperature was strong-armed upward. The water bottle at his feet began to melt into the grey stone floor. Vince trained his eyes on a heavily scorched section of wall. Well, if he couldn’t measure his progress by marking, he’d have to measure it by melting.
Vince stepped forward and let fly with everything he had.
138.
Vince wandered into the common room to find Hershel and Alice already watching television on the couch. All three were clad in pajamas, though Alice’s were a pink silk set and Vince’s were composed of a tank top and sweats. Hershel, on the other hand, was sporting an enormous t-shirt and a pair of work-out shorts. It was definitely dead day, a day in which lounging was not only encouraged, it was downright mandatory.
“Morning,” Vince said.
“Hey,” Hershel replied.
“Hi, Vince,” Alice said.
“Anything good on the tube?”
“Nah,” Hershel said, changing the channel. “Just some wildfires out in southern California they’re trying to get under control. Interesting story, but once you’ve seen one clip of trees on fire you’ve kind of seen them all.”
“Too bad,” Vince said. “I know the HCP carnival thing doesn’t start until around six tonight. I’ve been spending so much time training I’m not sure how to kill a day off.”
“Ooooh, we could go into town and do some shopping,” Alice suggested.
Vince and Hershel stared at her, their eyes unblinking.
“Screw you both. I’m a girl, I’m allowed to like shopping.”
“I’ll give you that,” Vince agreed. “But we’re boys. We’re allowed to really not like it.”
“Would you rather we let Nick organize another movie gore-a-thon?”
“The lady makes a point,” Hershel conceded. “I’m scared we’ll be seeing more than enough gore for my tastes tomorrow.”
“It won’t be that bad. We had to fight each other at the beginning of the year, and there were matches all through the first semester. Not to mention, we also had our daily sparring. I think the coaches have a good sense of what they’re doing and won’t let anyone get seriously hurt,” Vince assured him.
“That’s easy for you to say, you’re smart enough to quit when you can’t win. That’s a trait my alter ego lacks,” Hershel said.
“I think you give me too much credit,” Vince said.
“Oh, you’ll both be fine,” Alice snipped. “Remember, you two have actual powers. I just float.”
“It served you pretty well in the semester final. You outlasted both of us,” Vince pointed out.
“Not to mention it saved Nick’s life on the mountain.”
“Ah yes, what on earth was I thinking with that one?” Alice asked aloud.
“That we had a friend in need,” Vince said, giving her a smile and plopping down in a chair near the couch. “It’s kind of weird, though, you know?”
“That I saved Nick?”
“No, I mean being here, at the end of the year,” Vince said. “Thinking back to how things were at the beginning, it feels like so much has changed.”
“True,�
�� Alice said. “I was terrified of living next to a telepath. Now Mary is a dear friend.”
“Roy was completely unmanageable. Now he’s... well, still pretty unmanageable, but at least he’s motivated to put in effort,” Hershel said.
“I was so scared of my power I went into the initial test with nothing more than a single lighter’s worth of energy,” Vince said.
“How much do you have now?” Hershel asked.
“About two and a half,” Vince replied.
“Oh yeah, the world is completely flipped on its head,” Hershel chuckled.
Vince shrugged. “I’m just not one to take unnecessary risks.”
“So some things haven’t changed,” Alice said. “That’s a bit reassuring.”
“Just weird to imagine, if this is how different things are after one year, imagine what it will be like after four,” Vince mused.
“I think that’s the entire point of the HCP. Bringing us from Supers we started as and radically changing us into Heroes,” Hershel said.
“Yeah, except for the whole ‘starting as Supers’ part of it,” Alice said.
“We were Supers when the school year started. It counts,” Hershel replied.
“Very true. And given how many years of practice everyone else had on us, it’s amazing we’ve all hung in this long,” Vince said.
“I don’t know, I think being Powered for so long gave us an edge over the rest of them,” Hershel said.
“And that is?” Alice asked.
“We know what it is like to lose. We know what it is like to not be the cream of the crop or the top of the class. We’ve spent most of our lives considered pariahs while they were hailed as demigods. Long story short, we had vastly more motivation to work for the Hero title than the rest of them.”
“I can see that,” Vince agreed. “With a few exceptions. Shane is certainly one determined Super.”
“Credit where it’s due, Chad is a pretty relentless guy as well,” Hershel admitted.
“Yeah, what is that guy’s deal?” Alice asked. “I mean, I rarely ever see him smile, or laugh, or do anything besides train.”
“He and Roy trained together for a while. I can’t say for sure, but I got a strong impression that whatever his motivation is, it had something to do with his father,” Hershel said.
“Eh, who isn’t at least a little messed up from their parents?” Alice said. “Anyway, gents, we’ve strayed from the main point of this conversation.”
“How different things are?” Vince asked.
“No, figuring out what the shit we’re going to do until tonight,” Alice said.
“I have all my Dungeons and Dragons books,” Hershel volunteered softly.
“Let’s table that as Plan B,” Alice said.
“You have a Plan A?” Vince asked.
“Did you miss the whole ‘let’s go shopping’ thing?”
Vince and Hershel groaned together.
“We could get some of the others together and see what they think,” Hershel said.
Alice shook her head. “They’re as bad at this as we are. By then Nick will be up and we’ll all just go along with whatever asinine activity he pitches.”
“Someone call?” Nick said, walking in to the room.
“We were just going over our plans for the dead day,” Vince said.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Nick said. “It turns out there is a Skull Splitter marathon at the Cineplex downtown. They start with the original Skull Splitter and go all the way through Skull Splitter 5: Daughter of Son of Skull Splitter.”
Vince and Hershel cast glances at Alice, hoping against hope she had come up with some idea in the last ten seconds that would deliver them from this terrible fate.
“As much fun as that sounds, we’ve already come up with a way to burn the day,” Alice said.
“Oh did you?” Nick asked.
“Yup,” Alice confirmed. “So Hershel, go get your books.”
“Really?”
Alice looked at his excited face, then at Nick’s cocky grin, then back at Hershel.
“Really.”
139.
“Holy crap,” Alice said, her eyes taking in the full array of festivities. Mr. Transport had just dropped off the five Melbrook students in the central area underground, which wore a significantly different look than its usual cold stone veneer. Instead there were bright colors hanging from the ceiling in the form of streamers. Large pictures of famous Heroes had been hung along the walls, and several oversized signs directed the students to different locales within the area.
“A midway?” Nick said, skeptically reading one such sign aloud. “I thought they were kidding about the games.”
“Evidently not,” Hershel said. He was dressed more nicely than usual, a collar on his shirt and slacks rather than jeans. The lovely girl whose hand he was holding, Mary, obviously, was also adorned in a slightly fancier fashion. The two of them had decided to treat this evening like a date night since it was quite possibly the last one they would have before summer break. That was, of course, ignoring the possibility that one of them might not be invited back after the semester’s end.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m supposed to meet Sasha in the dancing area,” Vince said. He was also wearing a collared shirt, though his pants were still of the blue jean persuasion.
“Dancing, and I’m sure with a DJ no less,” Nick sighed. “So much for life after high school.”
“Actually, I think it’s kind of nice,” Mary said. “A lot of us didn’t get very normal high school experiences, being Supers in a school full of humans. This is a good fill in for some of the things we missed.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” Nick said. “You go find your girl, Vince. I’m off to check out the games.”
“Count me in with you,” Alice said. “I’d be more comfortable throwing ping pong balls at fish than huddling around a punch table.”
“What about you guys?” Vince turned to Hershel and Mary.
“I think we’ll take the punch table,” Hershel said, not quite controlling his idiotic grin. He couldn’t help himself; it was impossible not to be smile-happy when he had such a wonderful girl on his arm. Had Mary been listening to his thoughts, she would have blushed. Then again, had Mary been listening to many people’s thoughts, things certainly would have played out very differently that night.
“Okay then, we’ll catch up to you later,” Vince said. He gave Alice and Nick a perfunctory wave and headed off toward the gym where the dance area was set up. Hershel and Mary followed suit, though not before Mary shot a sly, knowing look at Alice.
* * *
The gym hardly seemed to be the same place as the temple of sweat and pain the students had toiled in throughout the year. Instead there was a series of refreshment tables, paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling, and an impressive sound system woofing from the walls. This controlled noise was directed from a small booth near the corner, currently manned by a junior in a grey uniform. The occasional authority figure, be it Dean Blaine, Coach George, or an adult none of the freshman recognized, dotted the landscape. They were experts at blending in, making their presence known only in the capacity that they existed, not in that they intended to interfere in the night’s revelry. It was, in truth, a little overly high school for the maturity level of the attendees, but it resounded with many just the same and the overall spirit could be described as boisterous.
One such cheerful soul was Vince as he scooped up Sasha into a spinning hug, the outer layer of her bright pink skirt (it matched the tips of her hair) was sent twirling about behind her. They kissed briefly and Vince set her back to the ground. The music was loud enough that talking was possible, if a bit uncomfortable. Fortunately, Vince and Sasha had little to say that required words. They looked into each other’s eyes as her feet made contact with the floor and she kissed him again. This one was less brief.
It didn’t take long before the rest of their friends ha
d clustered around them. Will, Jill, Stella, Violet, and Thomas seemed to have all come as a singular unit. Alex surprised everyone, introducing them to his date for the evening: Selena. Her caramel skin looked all the deeper against the deep green of her dress and her long hair had been styled up expertly with just a few wisps left hanging down. Vince gave his friend a questioning look, which was met with a shrug and a smile as if to say, “Beats me how I pulled it off.” Vince laughed and squeezed the hand of his own date. The group stayed clustered for only a short while before giving in to the inevitable expression of high spirits and close friends.
They found their way to the dance floor and began to make utter fools of themselves. Limbs thrashed about, rhythm became a poor, downtrodden concept, and endorphins surged through their veins. In the shadows their supervisors smiled. Despite the harsh nature of the program, those selected to teach the HCP genuinely enjoyed the education process. One perk of that process was this time every year, when they got to see the young, happy sides of their charges, not the hardened warriors they were sculpting them into. It was both rewarding and heartbreaking, because each teacher knew that most would lose the ability to act so carefree. Probably by this time next year.
Another set of eyes watched the dancers, though these were not filled with such kind-hearted sentiments. No, these eyes were calculating and hard, but nearly brimming over with excitement. These eyes told the story of retribution long denied that was on the cusp of being unfurled. For the moment, all they did was watch. This moment had been so long in the making that there was no need to rush. It needed to be perfect, because the owner of those eyes had a feeling he would be savoring it for years to come.
140.
The various classrooms that dotted the underground area had been filled with carnival-style games of chance for the delight of those who considered themselves too refined for such frivolity as dancing. The music from the gym could still be heard thanks to a well-connected (but thankfully low in volume) PA system with speakers at each corner. Grey-uniformed middle classmen were tasked with manning the various booths, serving as free labor as well as a control should some of the youngsters get rowdy.