“Charlie, I think I’ve got it. If I’m angry, I breathe fire. If I’m scared, I shrink. If I’m humiliated, I disappear. Maybe this is all connected to my emotions?”
He nodded slowly. “Could be.”
“Now what?” I asked.
“Tomorrow we get a second opinion. And a pretzel.”
CHAPTER SIX
HEART OF STONE
Much to Charlie’s delight, we hit the mall after school on Wednesday and went straight for the pretzel stand. The cheese came out of industrial-sized cans and oozed into the warmer. It looked like a cross between magma and snot. Charlie wolfed down his pretzel, snot cheese and all, before he even handed mine over. Luckily, I wasn’t at all concerned with how fresh and hot my snack was. I was desperate for advice on my superpower situation. How desperate? Considering who we were about to consult with, very, very desperate.
Charlie threw away his pretzel wrapper while we waited for Ted to finish reloading the cheese.
I looked at Ted. King of Pretzelasaurus. I couldn’t remember when he started working there; it was when I was still little. He was the same age as my parents. However old, he always looked exactly the same: stringy, shoulder-length light-brown hair and a wispy goatee. Ted also had the worst posture I’d ever seen. I wondered if it was from lifting all those cans of cheese.
Pretzelasaurus had been a favorite since we were kids. I used to get so excited when we saw that animatronic dinosaur with the pretzels clenched in its claws. It seemed so gigantic back then, towering over me, smelling like warm dough and WD-40. Now the dino seemed small and rickety.
“How much did you tell him?” I whispered to Charlie. I wasn’t too worried about Ted knowing too much, since he’d be hard-pressed to find someone who’d believe him.
“I just told him that you were having some problems and could use his advice,” Charlie said.
Hoo-boy. This was going to get interesting pretty quickly. Ted was eccentric, to say the least, and had somehow (cough-Charlie-cough) gotten the reputation as something of a fortune-teller among kids our age. One time, Charlie asked Ted what the answer would be to a bonus question on the next day’s history test. Ted told him “Albuquerque” and was right. Coincidence? Probably, but Charlie thought Ted had a sixth sense and now regularly asked him about things.
Normally, I thought of Ted as a trippy dude who felt many crystal necklaces and beaded bracelets were the proper accessories for his polyester Pretzelasaurus uniform. That was not judgment I could trust.
Normally.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What happened here?” Ted asked when he turned back around and pointed at my face. One of the tassels from his bracelets grazed the top of the cheese.
“Yeah, I hurt my nose.” That was as much of an explanation as I cared to give at the moment.
“Ted, Veri wanted to talk to you about something,” Charlie said.
“Oh, really? What may I help shine a light upon?” Ted asked as he hopped onto the counter and sat cross-legged.
Charlie smiled up at him. As annoyed as I could get with Charlie, I was amazed that he never seemed to judge people. Or, at least, he never judged weird people. Which, I realized, meant that I was judging people as being weird or not weird. Not cool, Veronica.
I took a deep breath. Was I really doing this? “I’ve had some strange things happen to me lately, and I wanted to know how to stop them.”
Ted interlaced his fingers behind his head. “I know, man.”
“You know?” I was both excited and nervous.
“What do you know?” Charlie chimed in.
“Something is cosmically wrong,” Ted said to me. “I can see it. Your aura is all jacked up. It’s puce.”
Defeated, I said, “What? My aura? What does that mean?”
“You got all sorts of things going on in there.” He nodded knowingly. “Gotta sort ’em out.”
Okay. He was right in a way. “I know that. How do I get rid of all the things?”
“Well, I’d suggest making an offering to the wise ones.” He opened one of the cupboards below the register and revealed his own altar-type thing. From what I could tell, it was a mishmash of who he thought of as his own spiritual leaders: Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the pope, and Matthew McConaughey.
Charlie and I looked at each other. Charlie winced.
“Just give him a chance,” Charlie pleaded.
I dug through my bag until I found a smashed bag of CheezTwigs.
“Here, St. McConaughey, I think you’d appreciate these the most.” I placed my offering below his shirtless picture.
I turned to Ted. “Now what? Is my aura better?”
“You tell me,” Ted said with a genuine smile.
“Thanks, Ted, but I really gotta go.” I picked my backpack up. “I think my aura is the least of my problems right now. You coming, Charlie?”
We’d started to leave when Ted called out after us, “Veronica, just one other thing. It’s important. I swear by the soul.”
“I’ll be right there,” I said, gesturing for Charlie to keep going.
Back at the pretzel stand, I laid it on the line. “Ted, I’m totally out of CheezTwigs.”
“This is what I mean. You’re missing the grand vista! You need to just be, child. Exist happily in the nature that is you.” He folded his hands and bowed toward me.
I stood there for a second and fantasized about him existing in nature. With man-eating bears. What a waste of time.
“What’d he want?” Charlie asked when I caught up to him.
“Nothing. Ted is just … so Ted. Whatever that is.”
“He’s so … Zen?” Charlie said. “Yeah. Zen. I think. That’s why he’s so cool and, you know, emotionally open. It’s like he doesn’t let his emotions faze him.”
A light bulb blinked on over my head. Yes, literally, a tiny light bulb appeared. Thanks, stupidpowers! It danced around a bit until I swatted it away.
“I can see you had an idea, Veri. Spill.”
Reluctantly, I said, “I’m not endorsing anything Ted said or will ever say, but do you think his advice was to relax? Be Zen? Do you think that could work?”
Charlie took a bite out of my uneaten pretzel. “Only one way to find out.”
* * *
The botanical garden was in full bloom. Cherry trees lined the block-sized park, their pink flowers floating through the air. It was beautiful.
I chomped the last of my doughnut and handed Charlie the bag. He was still hungry after pretzels, and I was in charge of making my own dinner tonight, so pretzels and doughnuts it was! He could entertain himself with the rest while I tried my experiment.
I had my dad’s noise-canceling headphones ready to go, and I’d synced up a series of guided-meditation MP3s that would hopefully squelch the madness within. Maybe, just maybe, if I chilled out enough, I’d be able to brush off all these feelings and their related stupidpowers.
The soothing Australian accent of a man named Randu filled my ears. He directed me through a series of deep-breathing exercises to let my thoughts come and go as they pleased. I started to feel a little zoned out. I couldn’t feel the breeze anymore, or the grass under me. My limbs felt heavy. Impossibly heavy. I could stay in this position, just like this, forever … I was so at peace that—
“ACK! UGH! What is—” I sputtered, thrust out of my Zen state.
Charlie stood in front of me, looking terrified and holding one of his nasty socks in front of my nose.
“Gross! What the heck are you doing?” I cried, wrinkling my nose.
“Look!” he said, pointing to my crossed legs.
“Oh, fudgebuckets!” I said.
My legs had turned to stone.
“Your whole body was like that a second ago!” Charlie said. “You were a living statue. It really freaked me out, so I had to give your system a shock—of the foot-odor kind.”
Looking down, I realized I was still stone from the shoulders down. I tried to wiggle my limbs free, but there was no
give. This was going to take some time. That was when I noticed Charlie looking over his shoulder.
“What?” I asked, suspicious of his very suspicious behavior.
“Um, ah, can you move yet?” he asked, scratching his eyebrow the way he always did when he was nervous.
I could feel my legs now, but they were still gray and immobile.
“Not yet. Why?” I had a feeling I really didn’t want to know.
“Well…” Charlie fake smiled. “It appears Blake is headed this way.”
“No. No, no, no, no, no.” I used every ounce of concentration I had to force my legs to move, but it didn’t work. At this point, it would take something like a crane to move me. If I couldn’t get up, Blake was going to see how freakish I was!
“Relax!” Charlie said. “This guy was nice to you once last year! Who cares what he thinks?”
“You don’t understand.”
“That’s totally accurate. I do not understand.”
“At stupid band camp, everyone was so mean to me, Charlie. You know how tone-deaf I am! He was the only one who would rehearse with me. He didn’t care.”
Blake was getting closer.
Naturally, I panicked. “Charlie! What do I do, what do I do?”
Charlie shrugged as he took my headphones off. “I guess Dream Man needs to learn the truth. Apparently, he’s cool enough to take it.”
Blake would spot us any minute. In a moment of brilliant yet stupid inspiration, I came up with the only solution.
“Put the doughnut bag over my head,” I whispered.
Charlie gently shook the bag. “Dude, there are still two doughnuts in here.”
“I don’t care. Shove them in your gullet and put the friggin’ bag over my head! Please!”
“Ten wut?” Charlie asked, mouth now packed full of confectionary delight.
I didn’t have time to explain; Blake was just a few yards away. Charlie yanked the bag over my head, showering my freshly washed hair with crumbs and sugar.
I could hear Blake’s footsteps getting closer. I couldn’t see what was going on, but here’s what I heard:
BLAKE:
Hey, Charlie! What’s up?
CHARLIE:
Oh, wofthin’, dwood.
BLAKE:
Really jamming on those doughnuts. What are they? Powdered sugar?
CHARLIE:
Wep.
Oh no. All the powdered sugar was making me need to sneeze. I felt it brewing. My eyes started to water. Come on, Charlie, move it along!
BLAKE:
(laughs) And up to some early-morning vandalism? Right on, man. Is that statue new? I’ve never seen it before.
CHARLIE:
Mwusta gwhot it while yoo were away.
BLAKE:
True. Just remember, doing stuff like that is what got me sent off to boarding school.
CHARLIE:
(big gulp) Noted.
I couldn’t hold it in anymore. A delicate but audible achoo! radiated from my paper bag.
BLAKE:
What was that?
CHARLIE:
I, uh, had a little sneeze there. That’s all. Allergies. Outside. All that.
BLAKE:
Bananas! It sounded like it came from your little stone friend!
CHARLIE:
Ah, yes! Ha! How funny and unlikely that would certainly be.
I cringed. Charlie always got super proper when he was nervous.
BLAKE:
Uh, okay. See you, man.
CHARLIE:
Indeed, sir.
BLAKE:
Man.
CHARLIE:
Man?
After the sound of Blake’s footsteps were out of range, Charlie whipped the bag off my head.
“Oh dear.” Charlie wrinkled his nose at me. “It appears you’ve been attacked by the Sugar Plum Fairy.”
We had to hang out for a while until my legs allowed me enough movement to get home. I spent the rest of the day trying to recover.
* * *
“You’re stuck with these powers, right?” Charlie was skipping along in sheer annoying merriment. “So why don’t we use them to our advantage?”
I sighed, dragging my still-heavy legs down the English department hallway the next morning. “I don’t have any control over them, remember? I just need to wait for them to go away.”
Charlie replied, “What if they’re permanent?”
I stuffed my books in my locker, trying to avoid dealing with the question. “It might just be some … puberty thing.” I nodded my head, agreeing with myself.
“Puberty?” Charlie laughed. “I guess that puts my worrying about facial hair in perspective.”
He playfully smacked my shoulder. I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Come on, study hall,” Charlie said.
“Not me. I got called in for an appointment with Doctor Dirk.”
“Eesh. What did you do to get slapped with a guidance counselor chat?”
“Nothing,” I said, searching my memory. “I mean, nothing that he would know about. I hope.”
Doctor Dirk Phillips was an old-school hippie-type dude who wore velvet vests and once caught his office curtains on fire while burning incense. Still, fire hazard aside, he was pretty harmless, so I wasn’t too worried about whatever he wanted to talk about.
I headed to the counselor’s office and had to wait a few minutes. I watched the school secretary, Mr. Fenkel, search for his lost car keys, and was mildly fascinated by just how many tissue boxes were on his desk. From what I could see, the desk itself may have been made of tissue boxes.
“Miss McGowan?” Mr. Fenkel finally droned through his cottony white teeth. “You may go in.”
I smiled as I opened the door, trying to start this off smoothly.
“Veronica, I’m your new guidance counselor.” An angular woman in a stiff navy-blue business suit leaned over her desk and shook my hand. “Ms. Watson.”
I felt the corners of my mouth fall. “Where’s Doctor Dirk?”
“Doctor Phillips was reassigned,” Ms. Watson said as she sat down. “I thought it would be wise to get some face time with everyone involved in the fire the other day.”
I leaned way back in my chair, hoping to look relaxed. “Me? I’m totally fine. All is well.”
“You weren’t traumatized?” Ms. Watson leaned forward.
My mind raced. Traumatized? What did she know about it? Could she tell something was up just by looking at me?
“A lot of your classmates are having a hard time dealing with the fire,” she said. “They feel unsafe.”
I nodded. “Understandable, for sure. It was … scary.”
“Why did it scare you, specifically?” she asked.
Don’t dig yourself in deeper, Veri. “Well, middle school is generally scary. There’s no need for a fire to make it scarier. I guess.”
“You’re frightened on a daily basis?” she asked as she rummaged through her desk drawer. “Show me on the Emotion Wheel,” she held out a rainbow circle of cardboard. Each color of the rainbow had an emotion written on it. Red was anger, blue was sad—you get it, right?
“No disrespect to the cardboard, but I think I should probably get back to studying.”
She pretended she didn’t hear me. “Do you feel that you’re different from the other students?”
“Uh, no? I think I’m pretty average.”
“You are Rik and Rebecca McGowan’s daughter, correct?”
“Uh, yes?”
“We may need to schedule a parent-teacher conference,” she said.
“With my dad? Sure, if you wanna go down that road. He doesn’t handle authority that well though, so…,” I drifted. “My mom has been gone a long time.”
“And you don’t know her whereabouts?” She pressed, raising an eyebrow.
“No. Why, do you?” I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. The level of snark in them was probably felt on the moon. But who did this lady t
hink she was? You can’t just ask a kid such a loaded question.
I smiled, but as I thought about my mom I could feel tears welling up.
Ms. Watson must have noticed, because she became very flustered and started rifling around in her desk. “Oh, shoot. I thought he left some tissues…”
I looked away and wiped my eye with my sleeve. “It’s fine,” I said. “Just don’t make me use the wheel.” Although come to think of it, that Emotion Wheel might come in handy to assess upcoming superpower outbreaks.
Not that I’m big on the whole stealing thing, but this was a little hunk of cardboard. I bet she had a zillion of them. I stuffed it in my backpack just as Ms. Watson produced something else from her desk drawer. Ooh! She had chocolate!
“Can I take two?” I asked. “Charlie will want one. He’s big on eating lately.”
“He’s the red-haired Caucasian male? Approximately five feet three inches?” she asked. “He was with you on the television.”
I stopped halfway through the bite of my mini Mounds. “You saw me on the news?”
“Yes, that’s why I was particularly interested in talking to you. You seemed so … so affected, I guess.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “But thanks for checking.”
“Righty-o!” replied Ms. Watson, smiling at me as I got to my feet.
* * *
The door shut behind me. I was chewing the rest of my chocolate but didn’t taste it. I was lost in thought. The detective on the phone had said “righty-o,” too. Maybe it was a new thing to say if you’re an adult trying to not sound like an adult?
I threw the candy wrapper in the trash, but my arm wasn’t moving very fast. I looked down to see several thick, smooth ridges on my wrist. I slid my hand over the skin there; it felt smooth and hard. The weird armor there was expanding! And it was green! It looked familiar, like my old turtle, Darby.
Holy cow, Ms. Watson had really gotten to me! I was growing a turtle shell!
It was time to employ my favorite old sweatshirt. It may have seen better days, but a few rips were nothing compared to its ability to conceal my new shiny green shell. I zipped it all the way up and shoved my hands in the pockets.
My So-Called Superpowers Page 5