by Kipjo Ewers
As she walked through the village she felt the eyes on her. They varied from nervousness, to kindness, to curiosity. Through her disinterested glances she became aware of the various races and ethnicities that were around her. For the most part she could pick up within ear shot that majority spoke English or a form of English, but some had learned to speak other native tongues. She was sure she heard a woman with a thick Russian accent speaking either Chinese or Korean to an Asian woman who responded to her in her own Russian language. While an Arabic man addressed a husband and wife who appeared to the Mexican in their Spanish tongue, or his best rendition of it.
All of their conversation became quiet as she passed by.
It was obvious that they all knew who she was. The village, though sizable, was not that big. She could tell that some of the villagers wanted to approach and greet her.
Her evil demeanor was the perfect shielding making her unapproachable.
To her relief it protected her until she got out of the village, where she trekked to a remote side of the island to be alone. She sat cross-legged in the sand collecting small pebbles. Sir George, looking to be helpful, leapt down and scurried about picking some up as well handing them to her. Sometimes he would come back with seashells, which she gratefully took, putting them off to the side.
After collecting a good amount of pebbles, she began flicking them from a seated position. Her memories of watching people perform the action allowed her to execute it on the first try, while her newly acquired superhuman strength granted her the ability to fire the pebbles like bullets from a high powered rifle.
Each hurl sent the pebbles tearing through the water a hundred yards at a time depending on how hard she threw them. Unbeknownst to her as she repeated the act, the anger within her slowly began to fade away. It also helped that every time she flung a stone, Sir George would screech and clap at the feat, and then scurry off to find more stones for her to do it again.
As much as she hated to admit it, the island was beautiful. She ran her hand across the warm white sand wondering if she was being too hard on the woman who had given birth to her. If she was being unfair and not giving her the chance that Michelle asked that she give her.
“Hey! Where’d you learn to throw like that?” a young boy’s voice howled.
His voice was not only irritating to her; it brought back the anger and all of the reasons she wanted to get off the island.
She turned glaring to find not one, but two, of them.
“Oh my bad.” The boy backed up with a concerned look along his friend. “We’re not bothering you, are we?”
From what she could tell he was about her age, maybe a year older. He was clearly from the states like her with his carrot colored fade and freckles. His friend looked to be the same age as him and from the Middle East with his dark brown skin. He wore a similar faded haircut, but with a little more hair on the top of his head. They both were wet and wore black fishnet tank tops with colorful board shorts. Under their arms they held boogie boards with anime character graphics painted on them.
Kimberly quickly fixed her face throwing on a fake smile. The last thing she needed was to be told she was being mean to the local brats.
“No that’s okay.” She got up dusting herself off. “I wasn’t really doing anything.”
“My name is Kyle.” He grinned from ear to ear before motioning to his friend. “This is Akram, my best bud. He lives next door to us with his mom. They’re from Iraq. His English is so good yet, but he’s cool.”
“My name is Kimberly.” She waved before motioning to her monkey. “And this is Sir George.”
Sir George, formally known as Cornelius, gave a big wave while standing next to her. Akram smiled, waving back at him.
“So do you have family here?” Kyle curiously asked.
Kimberly’s smile slightly disappeared as she hesitantly responded, “Ms. Dennison is my mom.”
Kyle and Akram gave her skeptical looks.
“Seriously?” Kyle cocked and eyebrow.
“Yeah.” She looked down at the ground, “She is.”
“So, you like got powers like her?” He scratched his head.
“I think I’m strong like her.” She shrugged her shoulders.
“Can you prove it?” His enthusiasm came back. “Can you pull up that palm tree?”
“Okay,” she nodded.
Kimberly walked over to an extremely tall palm tree with a fat base. She gripped the base and took a deep nervous breath. As she did it, she realized she didn’t need both hands. With a simple pull, the tree groaned as she uprooted it with very little effort from the sand.
Kyle and Akram’s eyes widened at the amazing feat as a now fascinated Kimberly held up the one hundred ninety-six pound sixty-foot tree.
“Wow, it’s not heavy at all,” she grinned.
“Put it back!” Kyle snapped out of his amazement. “Your mom will kill us if she see this!”
Kimberly nodded. As she quickly slammed the tree back into the hole she pulled it from; Kyle and Akram dropped their boards and scurried over, filling it back with sand along with Sir George.
“That was close.” He wiped his brow. “Wow, she really is your mom. How come your eyes don’t glow like hers?”
“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “A day ago I wasn’t even strong like her or even this big.”
“What do you mean?” He asked, perplexed.
“Yesterday I was about your height, then I got hurt roller blading. Next thing I knew I turned into this.” She threw her hands up in the air.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“I’m ten,” she said plainly.
Kyle shook his head in disbelief, “You’re a huge ten.”
She kicked around the sand as the sadness came back in her face; Sir George scurried back over to her climbing back on her shoulder to stroke the side of her head.
“Maybe you have powers like a mutant.” Kyle rubbed his chin thinking of an upbeat topic. “In the X-Men, mutant’s powers develop at certain ages.”
“Do they come out during accidents?” she asked, interested in the topic.
“Sometimes, Cyclops’ powers manifested when his parents had to throw him and his brother out of a plane to save them. He ended up using his optic blasts to slow his decent to Earth to save himself and his brother,” he said.
“Mines activated after I got hurt,” she said. “I wiped out on some concrete while skating down a guardrail.”
“First of all, that reeks of awesomeness.” He pointed to her. “Secondly, how you get your powers isn’t an exact science, if you know what I mean.”
“Supaboy,” Akram said trying to join the conversation.
“Hey you right, Akram.” Kyle snapped his fingers. “You could be like Connor Kent!”
“Who?” She cocked an eyebrow, confused.
“Kon-El? Conner Kent? Superboy? Superman’s clone? Well actually he’s part Superman’s clone and part Lex Luthor’s clone,” he said.
“I thought Superman was Superboy?” she asked with clearly no knowledge of comic book mythology.
“That was during the Silver Age era.” Kyle smirked. “In the modern age, Superboy is a clone. Point is, Superboy originally didn’t have all of Superman’s powers due to his human DNA, and the fact he didn’t have long exposure to the sun like Superman did. He was super strong and could jump really far like the Hulk.”
“You talking about de Young Justice Version,” Akram corrected.
“Dude,” he bit back, “she’s obviously not a telekinetic so her powers fall in line with the Young Justice Version. They still have the same premise.”
It is unclear if Akram understood all that Kyle was saying. Kimberly, however, was getting bored with the talk of comic books.
“So, how did you all get here?” she asked, changing the discussion a bit.
“Oh,” Kyle halted his debate with Akram, “well Akram’s dad died in Iraq, and his house was destroyed. Your mom found him an
d his mom homeless on the streets. His mom was really sick, so she brought them here, made her better, and gave them a new home. She did the same thing for me and my family.”
Akram nodded in agreement to Kyle’s explanation of how he became a resident of Sanctuary.
“My dad was an accountant for a big company in New York,” he went on. “He got laid off, tried to get a new job but just couldn’t find one. For a while, we were okay, but then we lost our house. We started living in hotels, and then motels, but even that got too expense. We started living out of our SUV, but then one night some guys came and robbed us at gunpoint and took it. We were out on the street for a while, and when it got colder dad managed to get us into a shelter. That was really scary. Then one day your mom walked into the shelter and announced to everyone that she had a large island and homes and food for anyone who wanted to come and live with her. A lot of people thought she was nuts; plenty were afraid of her. I think my folks were a bit of both but, for some reason, they decided they would go with her. My dad said it was because he prayed the night before about it. Anyway she brought us here and gave us a huge cool new house that had basically everything our old house had only it’s on this cool island. She even gave my dad a job. He helps manage the finances for the island. My mom is a part-time English teacher for those who want to learn English, and she also helps maintain our vegetable crops. Akram’s mom teaches Arabic and is one of the town’s seamstresses. She made me these cool board shorts for my birthday last month.”
As Kyle showed off his orange board shorts with Goku’s symbols from Dragon Ball Z on each of the pants legs, Kimberly looked around with a mixture of wonderment and resentment on her face. Was being a hero and savior to other people and children more important than being a mother to the child she gave birth to? She thought.
“So she built all of this?” She looked around.
“Well, yeah.” Kyle cocked his head. “Your mom is, like, loaded. I think she’s like Tony Stark/Bruce Wayne combined loaded. She also got this cool superhuman memory that allows her to do almost anything.”
“How do you know that?” Kimberly sneered.
It was irritating for her that he knew more about her biological mother than she did.
“I watched her one day,” he shrugged. “She was on her iPad looking at a video on how to build a concrete foundation and some other stuff about houses. Next thing you know she was doing it. She didn’t even refer to the video.”
“Oh mimicry,” she snorted, rolling her eyes. “I can do that.”
In an instant she got into a Jeet Kun Do stance mirroring Master Lee. Her voice and mannerism changed, mimicking the final fight scene from Enter the Dragon. She exploded throwing powerful kicks and punches cutting the air and spraying sand as she barked and howled like the legendary martial artist causing Kyle and Akram to back up a bit in amazement. She then did the unexpected.
Switching styles, her voice mirrored Street Fighter Chun Li’s voice as she mimicked her video game version of the Hyakuretsukyaku “Hundred Rending Legs” technique. Her new long powerful legs sent shockwaves cutting the air. Akram covered his ears while looking on with Kyle, who was awestruck, by the display of power. After completing one hundred kicks in less than three seconds, she held her stance like the famed anime video game character. A bright smile beamed across her face with her own personal amazement. She had done the move before but never that fast and never with that much power. She was now drunk off curiosity with the need to test her limits.
“Marry me,” was all Kyle could say.
“Ew,” was her reply with a coiled expression.
“Hancock!” Akram screamed with an epiphany, jolting both Kyle and Kimberly. “She can do Hancock!”
“Dude!” Kyle’s eyes widened with excitement, “you are so right! That’s why you’re my main man!”
The duo stared with a fist bump into an explosion. They switched to “The Whop,” and then finished with the “Kid and Play” leaving Kimberly standing there rolling her eyes at the antics boys do.
“What’s he talking about?” Kimberly asked, confused about the impromptu celebration.
“I think we know how to teach you to fly,” Kyle grinned.
CHAPTER 17
The next early afternoon, Kimberly stood huddled on the beach around Kyle, Akram, and a couple of other kids from the village viewing the scene where superhero Hancock played by Will Smith took flight after his strength returned on Kyle’s iPad Mini.
Their plan from yesterday was to meet back at the same area to see if Kimberly could mimic the feat with her new abilities.
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Kimberly went home to a waiting Sophia trying to mask her concern that she went out by herself without allowing her the chance to formerly introduce her to everyone.
She asked how her day went, only for Kimberly to respond that it was okay, and that she met some friends. She remembered she had to keep from being the problem child while maintaining an aura of indifference. Not outright hating her but not caring about her, as well.
It was a silent dinner between the two, followed by her asking to be excused because she was tired.
Sophia knew it was a lie. Her new abilities prevented normal human fatigue. With a timid nod she allowed her to leave.
After cleaning up, she snuck up the stairs to her room with the newly fixed doorknob baring witness to a private conversation she wished she did not hear.
“Kimberly, you have to give this a chance,” Michelle responded over Skype.
“But I want to come home,” Kimberly sat pouting with her arms folded.
Tears ran from her eyes as she fought not to breakdown so the woman downstairs could hear.
“That is your home and your mother,” Michelle reminded her.
“She’s not my mother, she’s someone who gave birth to me…” she snapped back.
“Young lady! That is not how I raised you!” Michelle scolded her.
“That’s right!” She answered back. “You and Mark raised me! The Stones raised me! She didn’t! And the only reason I’m here is because I look like this! Please… let me come home… please… I don’t want to be here.”
“Kimberly, no.” Michelle firmly put her foot down. “You don’t understand now, but your mother loves you so much, and she had her reasons for not being there, which trust me are harder than you will ever know. She’s hurting too. You have to give her a chance because right now you need her more than you need me.”
“I don’t.” She shook her head.
“Yes, you do,” Michelle assured, “now try and get some sleep, honey. I love you.”
“I love you too.” She wiped her eyes.
Sophia crept away before she knew she was outside of her door and spent the night in silent tears of her own.
The next morning, too ashamed to see her, Sophia left early leaving a fresh batch of assorted clothes for her in her size outside of her door in a basket and warm breakfast waiting for her downstairs.
Kimberly, needing something more durable, raided her closet and found one of her spring wetsuits in a blue and yellow color scheme.
Glad to be alone, she munched on the breakfast as Sir George ate his daily banana, threw out the rest, cleaned up, and then headed out to the beach to see if she could learn how to fly.
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“You see,” Kyle began to explain, “Hancock’s flight as shown here is based on a feat of strength. He uses his super strong legs to escape Earth’s gravity and fly.”
“Yeah but,” Kimberly paused uncertain, “this is still a movie, not real life.”
“Dude,” Kyle persisted, “a lot of our real life concepts come from movies! Hello, Star Trek, where do you think Steve Job got the idea for the iPad?”
“I’m not a dude,” she snarled.
“Anyway,” he stuck to the to
pic at hand, “based on this, with those pistons you got for legs, you should have no problem getting airborne. Worst case scenario you crash and burn in the ocean and swim back to shore.”
“Gee thanks.” She rolled her eyes.
“Best case scenario,” he reminded her, “is that you’re up there flying speeding bullet style with madukes.”
It was the prospect of actually being airborne that kept her interested in this extremely dangerous harebrain scene of Kyle and Akram’s but not for the reason of just being able to fly like her mother. In her mind, achieving flight was her ticket off the island and back to Washington DC with Michelle and her friends where she belonged. She was willing to take the risk and overcome her fear in order to do so.
“Okay,” she nodded. “Let’s do this.”
Kimberly took a deep breath, rubbing her hands together, before crouching down and positioning herself the way Mr. Smith did within the movie for his final aerial lift off.