The Ables

by Jeremy Scott

  To hear him tell it, Chad’s last few months had been even rougher than my own. First, his father had apparently beaten him before sending him off to Goodspeed after the cafeteria incident. Not because Chad had done something bad but because he’d tarnished the family name. I have to admit, an abusive father is so far from the reality I personally had known that it was hard to get my head around.

  Then, as soon as he’d gotten to Goodspeed, his father had arranged for Chad to join the custodian equivalent of a military boot camp. They took young super-powered individuals on the verge of turning evil and beat the good back into them with a three-month regimen of running, rock-climbing, team activities, and lots and lots of pushups.

  And it sounded, for a while, like the story might go exactly as I expected—that Chad had learned what it felt like to be bullied by his drill sergeants. That he’d come to regret his behavior toward me and other students. That he really had changed. And indeed, that’s the story Chad was telling. But the unexpected wrinkle was his missing arm.

  On a weekend field training exercise, Chad had been involved in an accident, and it had cost him his arm. One of the other soldiers in the camp, a kid named Rodney, had bumped a vehicle Chad was changing a tire on, dropping the two-ton auto onto Chad’s left arm. The doctors told him they had no choice but to amputate, and he didn’t even find that out until after he’d woken up in the hospital with the surgery complete.

  “It didn’t take long,” he said honestly, “for me to start getting frustrated by the normally simple tasks I could no longer do myself.” After a long pause, he added, “I even got a taste of my own medicine … you know, with the insults and bullying and stuff.”

  Chad Burke—the biggest bully I’d ever known in my short life, at least until I met Finch—was apologizing to me and asking me to forgive him. He’d turned from his former ways. It was surreal yet real. It was too good to be true, and yet it seemed true. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard a more sincere apology speech in my life, which is saying something if you know anything about my Patrick’s history of fake apology speeches. Chad was either being honest, or he was a better actor than he’d been a bully.

  “If I’d known what it felt like, I never would have said or done those kind of things to you. I know it will take time and that you understandably have some reservations about me … but I hope you can find a way to forgive me.”

  Truthfully, I guess I’d already forgiven him. I had bigger fish to fry than a kid that punched me three months ago. I had servants of “the one who can do all” after me now, for Pete’s sake. Forgiveness wasn’t a problem.

  “Maybe we can even be friends,” he added softly.

  That … will probably take more time.

  I told him I accepted his apology and that I was willing to start fresh with a clean slate together. But I also told him I’d come to master my powers a lot better since he’d been gone, and if he ever tried any funny business with me again, I’d use my abilities to make something sharp fly at rapid speed into his crotch.

  ***

  “Phillip, I’m sorry.” It was Bentley this time, sitting down beside me in the cafeteria.

  I’d been ignoring the guys all morning throughout class, trying my best to maintain my grudge. It was difficult; everyone in school was buzzing about another teacher having gone missing.

  “You were right,” Bentley continued. “We never should have gone down there without knowing what we were up against, and it was a huge mistake. And I just hope you can forgive us.”

  “Yeah,” Henry added, wheeling up to the other side of the table. “All that stuff he said goes for me, too.”

  I took a few seconds to ponder it. I wanted to hold onto my anger. I wanted to stay bitter. But I’d never really had a group of friends before, and the temptation to get back to our old ways was too much for me.

  “It’s okay,” I finally said with a sigh. “All is forgiven.”

  “All right,” Bentley said happily, as Henry and James rejoiced as well.

  “But no more teleporting into unknown places, okay?”

  “Done,” Henry agreed.

  “Promise,” Bentley added.

  “I really want to get that guy,” I said, betraying how much I’d let him get into my head. “Even if he lets my mom wake up tomorrow and disappears forever, I want to get him.”

  “Hey, Phillip,” I heard behind me, recognizing Chad’s voice. He had apparently been passing by.

  I turned around to acknowledge him. “Oh,” I said awkwardly. “Hey.” I heard his feet shuffle away, so I turned back around.

  “What in the heck was that?” Henry said, unable to hide his amusement.

  Bentley thought I might have made a mistake. “You do know that was Chad Burke you just said ‘hey’ to, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a good thing Donnie wasn’t here,” he added, still a bit confused.

  “Oh yeah,” I said, “how is Donnie doing? Does anybody know?”

  “He’s good,” Henry said, “I think he gets to come back to school next week.”

  “Good.”

  “We’ll have to have a talk with him about how you’re apparently not enemies with Chad anymore,” Bentley said, thinking out loud.

  “Just Phillip, though,” Henry said, stuffing a chicken nugget in his mouth. “I’m still considering Chad an enemy.”

  “Well,” I said, deciding to explain things a bit further, “Chad and I had a little talk the other day. He, uh … wanted to apologize.” I let it hang there in the air, though it received nothing but stunned silence in return. “For being such a bully and for making fun of me and punching me.” Still no response. “And … he hopes we can be friends someday.”

  There was a sizable pause. “What?!” Henry was incredulous.

  “And you believed him?” Bentley asked.

  “I did. It was … honest. I don’t know … I could be wrong … but I usually have a good sense about when people are being truthful, and … I mean … he even cried. You know, his life hasn’t been so easy, particularly since he got shipped out of town. He lost his arm and has had to endure some pretty crappy bullying himself.”

  Henry was always quick to add his own opinion. “I don’t really care what he says: I still wouldn’t trust him.”

  “I agree … that guy gives me the creeps,” said James.

  Since Chad had turned over his new leaf, his old friends had quickly shut the door on him. He wasn’t popular anymore and had been cast out of their ranks. Steve Travers was the new head bully at Freepoint High, and Tad was just a rung or two above complete outcast status.

  “I’m sorry to hear you say that,” I said. “I was actually thinking of asking him to join our team.”

  “What?!” Henry again.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea at all,” Bentley said. His words fired off in several directions as he spoke, indicating he was shaking his head back and forth. “Even if this guy’s no longer a bully, that doesn’t mean he’s going to mesh well with our team.”

  “Don’t look now, Bentley, but none of us really meshed that well in the first SuperSim either. And we could use the experience from a guy like that—he’s a senior, for Pete’s sake!”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, obviously on the fence.

  Henry was less on the fence. “I don’t care how old he is. I don’t trust him!”

  The debate raged on from the end of lunch all the way through to our team meeting that evening. We were still deliberating even after Dad had cleared the empty pizza boxes from the table. Patrick was spending the night at a friend’s house, which allowed us the rare opportunity to discuss our powers openly at my house.

  “Once a bully, always a bully.” Henry had now uttered that phrase roughly fifteen times in the last few hours.

  “You don’t think losing an arm like that changes a person?” I asked in Chad’s defense.

  “It might very well change someone, Phillip,” Bentley explained, “but th
at doesn’t mean we have to be the guinea pigs who find out firsthand if he’s really different. I mean, we’re trying to do well and show that disabled kids can be just as good as regular heroes … we don’t need the drama.”

  “You’re right, Bentley,” I said, seeing my chance. “We are trying to do well and show that disabled kids can be as good as regular heroes. And … how exactly did that work out the last time we were in a SuperSim?”

  “Pretty bad, actually,” he allowed.

  “Right! Pretty bad. Heck, since this school year started, the six of us have probably done more harm than good to the reputation of disabled heroes. We’re certainly not making our case very well. So don’t you think we could use someone with his abilities on our team? Basic math tells us that seven is better than six.”

  “Unless seven punches the six of us in the stomach and runs away laughing,” Henry said.

  “He’s not going to do that, Henry,” I said. “Even if he doesn’t end up helping our team, he’s not a bully anymore.”

  “So says Chad,” Henry scoffed, clearly not ready to buy Chad’s story. “Like I said before, once a bully … always a bully.”

  “You guys don’t think a person can change?” It was Dad, who’d been reading his paper in the other room, and as it turns out, eavesdropping.

  “Well, Mr. Sallinger,” Henry countered, “my dad says you should always trust what you can see with your own eyes. And I’ve never seen a bad guy turn good.”

  “Me neither,” James chimed in, giggling.

  “Well, I have,” Dad replied knowingly. Without us having to prompt him, he knew we wanted to hear him continue. So he did. “How many of you have heard the story about my dad, Thomas Sallinger?”

  We all raised our hands because we’d covered it in Superhero Studies earlier in the school year. It had only been the slightest bit awkward for me.

  “Who can tell me what happened—you don’t need to include all the details; just give us a refresher.” He leaned forward, folding his paper and laying it aside. It was the most engaged he’d been with the real world in weeks.

  Bentley, of course, was the first to respond. “Your father was killed in the Battle of New York, right?”

  “That’s correct.”

  Bentley continued, “he was betrayed by his best friend Luther, who used his powers to keep Thomas from defending himself against Artimus.”

  “That’s correct. Very good. My father, Thomas Sallinger, was killed by Artimus Baxter, a notorious killer and villain who was attempting to take over New York City entirely.” We shuffled a bit from our seated positions, turning to face Dad and inching closer. “Artimus was a cold-blooded killer, an electro with an attitude, you might say.” An “electro” was a slang term for someone whose powers involved the use of electricity. In Artimus’ case, he was a modern day Zeus, hurling lightning bolts at will to destroy his enemies.

  “Near the end of the battle, the heroes had things well in hand and had cornered Artimus, who leaped to the top of the Empire State Building and began firing electric bolts in all directions. He was desperate and out of options. His armies were defeated. It was only a matter of time.” Mrs. Crouch hadn’t given us anywhere near this level of detail.

  “Luther and my father were sent up to bring Artimus in since they were partners and had hunted the villain together for years. But on top of that building, in the driving rain, Luther turned on my father unexpectedly, encasing Thomas in a no power zone temporarily. That allowed Artimus to kill my father easily … one final act of villainy and mayhem. He fired his lightning only once at my dad—a direct hit—sending him flying off the building and down onto the rain-soaked street one hundred stories below.

  “Luther felt so guilty that he immediately turned and used his power on Artimus and then shoved him off the top of the skyscraper to his own death. Still … Luther stood trial for his heinous acts. And he even served time in Sperrington.” Sperrington was the name of the remote custodian prison facility, located somewhere north of inhabited Canada.

  “Now,” Dad continued, “the part of the story you probably haven’t heard before is this: After Luther was released from prison, he went on to live a healthy, productive, and crime-free life. And he never chose evil again. So you see, a tiger can change his stripes. A villain can become good again, and a bully can change his bullying ways.”

  “But how do you know Luther never turned evil again?” Henry asked. “He could be out killing people right now for all we know.”

  “Ah, but he can’t do that. He can’t. Because if Luther was out killing people … who would look after his corn?”

  It probably took about five seconds for me to even begin putting together what Dad was saying. I didn’t understand the reference to corn when the entire previous story had been corn-free. By the time it dawned on me, I could tell the others were having moments of realization as well.

  I turned toward my Dad in shock and surprise. “Dad?” I asked hesitantly.

  “Yes, son. Luther’s last name is Charles. The infamous criminal who murdered a hero and the quiet old man who comes to dinner every month are one in the same.”

  ***

  “Dad?”

  It was later the same night. All my friends had gone home, and Dad had let me stay up late to read and watch TV. I’d spent most of the time mulling over the revelation that old Mr. Charles had killed my grandfather. I wanted to know more about why this evil man was allowed in our house … and in our town. Was he no longer evil?

  Was he a prisoner of some kind?

  But more than any of that, I wanted to know about my grandfather. Who he was and how he’d died.

  “Yes, Phillip?”

  “Tell me about Grandpa’s power?”

  “What’s that?”

  “His power. That day in the cornfield you told me it was absorption, right?” Just like Finch’s.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, tell me more about how that works.” No need for Dad to know my ulterior motives for asking, at least not yet.

  “Well,” Dad said with a sigh, looking up from his newspaper. “Well, Phillip, his power is called absorption. People with the power of absorption are incredibly powerful. The power is basically like a sponge, soaking up the powers of any other superhuman people in the vicinity. It’s one of the rarest powers around. They say it only shows up a handful of times in each generation.”

  I thought about that a moment. “So … he had every power?”

  “Well, probably throughout his entire life … yeah. I guess he probably did have every power at one point or another. But they weren’t permanent. He only possessed the powers of others while he was close to them.”

  “How close?” I’m a stickler for details; it helps build the mental pictures I use to “see” things. Plus, this was information I sort of needed to know in case I ran into Finch again.

  “I don’t really know, son. Maybe fifty yards? It’s not a very large distance. But while within that distance, he could make use of any power nearby. He could be fast, he could fly, he could even shoot lasers out of his eyes … if he was close to someone else that had that power.”

  This only made the next question all that more pressing to me. “So if he could do that, then how did he get killed? I mean, can’t he just use the power of his attackers against them?”

  “Sure could. Yep. But my father didn’t really see his attacker coming.”

  “Mr. Charles,” I murmured.

  “Correct. You see, Grandpa and Mr. Charles were partners. But more than that, they were lifelong friends. They’d defeated hundreds of villains together throughout a long career, and they were virtually inseparable. Then one day, Mr. Charles betrayed your grandfather. He was supposed to use his NPZ against Artimus, but instead, he used it on my dad and killed him.”

  “Well,” I said, playing devil’s advocate, “Technically it was Artemis that killed him.” I think I was searching for reasons not to hate Mr. Charles completely.

 
“Isn’t it really the same thing, son?”

  “Yeah, I guess it is.” I was dejected. “Then why do you treat Mr. Charles like such a good friend? Why don’t you hate him or kill him or something?”

  “Mr. Charles paid his debt to society long before I met him, Phillip. He served twenty years in prison. And while inside, he was a great resource for the custodian police forces in tracking down some of the last remaining old-generation super-villains. The entire hero population has deemed him rehabilitated.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why you have to invite him over for meatloaf.”

  “Phillip, something I hope you learn one day is that forgiveness is far more powerful and fulfilling than anger and revenge.”

  I was instantly skeptical anytime an adult told me that I would agree with them later on in life. “That doesn’t make any sense at all,” I responded honestly, but not argumentatively.

  “Well, someday it will, son. Someday it will.”

  Chapter 19: Happy Holidays

  Christmas came entirely too quickly, most likely because I was dreading it so much. It comes too fast any other year, when I’m a normal kid and I just want to open presents and stuff my face with homemade food. But this Christmas, for at least one year, I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was a young man, growing up too quickly as a result of his mother’s coma.

  I tried for weeks to ignore the coming holiday, instead telling myself that Mom would wake up in time to take on her usual array of holiday-cheer responsibilities. It was almost as though Christmas without her would end up being some sort of morbid milestone. A note of finality to her damaged state. I couldn’t imagine the season without her, so I simply pretended as though it wasn’t upon us. A Christmas version of denial.

  Believing that she would be fine and back with her family for Christmas was the only way I was able to make it this far without falling apart.

  But two weeks prior to the big day, I had a total change of heart. The holiday was going to come, whether I wanted it to or not. So I went the other direction. Instead of putting on blinders, I became obsessed with Christmas. I convinced myself that, somehow, despite all logic to the contrary, if I were able to keep Mom’s vision of the season alive for our family, perhaps God would let her come back to us. It wouldn’t be the last time I would try to force the hand of fate with my own insignificant actions.