by Brent Meske
The day was drawing close. Nobody at LADCEMS knew, of course, or they would have stopped the Spring Ball and saved all the hospital bills... and the screaming. It could’ve saved on the screaming.
It was a month before the Ball, and his mother was grumbling again. She'd forgiven dear old dad, for mysterious reasons only parents could understand. When he started to head to school without his bike she naturally became suspicious. He hadn't thought until later to just take the bike to school, and walk it back home every day. The damage was done on the first day, and by the end of that day she'd found out about Charlotte. And that was that.
Of course, Charlotte's life, and her parents' lives, and the lives of her two baby brothers were put under the microscope, and scrutinized down to the tiniest detail. Susanna Washington made gossip her stock in trade, since she could do laundry, iron clothes, cook, clean and go shopping with a bluetooth earpiece synced up with her phone attached to her at all times.
Still, the relentless questioning started to bother Michael.
What was her last name? Sulzsko.
Where were her parents from? No idea, but Charlotte had said something about 'out west', so Michael's only ideas were Phoenix, Las Vegas, or Los Angeles. Those were the only three she could possibly come from in Michael's mind.
What did her mother do? She was a stay at home mom, but also a painter.
A painter? Yep.
What sort of paintings did she do? The kind that were flat, with paint on them. Really mother.
Mrs. Washington was like a jackhammer; she could get to the bottom of anything. She eventually learned, through her 'friends' that Mrs. Sulzsko exhibited her paintings in one of the two galleries in town, Mimsy's Whimsy. She also had some ceramics which, she learned and informed her husband with Michael listening, were for burning incense.
Which made his father nod and say, “Ahh, one of those.” Like an exotic plant.
“One of those is right,” Mrs. Washington said. Like that exotic plant was probably also poisonous, and best not even to look at it. “You mark me, there's going to be a drug bust there soon enough.”
A drug bust? Michael's imagination went into overdrive. Was there a drug lab under Charlotte's house, like the radio station in that Stephen King book? Were there a dozen people in white suits cooking chemicals down there in the basement? Michael seriously doubted it. His mother had a pretty hefty imagination though.
Which brought them to the present. His mother knew about Charlotte, probably more than he did, and he knew she knew they were friends now. She hadn't yet let him go over to Charlotte's house for her own strange reasons. He wondered, because she seemed to say the word 'art' with the same sort of light sneer as she said 'drugs'.
Instead, Charlotte had come over several times, mostly to listen to music and dance whenever she felt like it. While his mother didn't exactly approve of such things, she always put on a bright smile for Michael's only friend. She always made cookies and served milk and asked Charlotte polite, non-threatening questions that were, regardless, specially designed to know the enemy.
Michael supposed his mother was in a tight spot. Should she allow him to befriend the daughter of an 'artist' and 'drug dealer' or should she forbid them from seeing each other, and ruin Michael's only shot at a life outside his e-reader? He knew, and she knew, and he knew she knew, that if she tried to stop him from meeting and talking to Charlotte, she was going to fight a losing battle. She couldn't watch him at school, though he sometimes wondered about this. She could probably drive him to school and pick him up every day, but that would just be nuts. Surely she wouldn't go that far. Best to assume he still had some privacy.
The whole situation came to a dizzying, confusing conclusion when his mother piped up one night late in March.
“Have you asked Charlotte to the Spring Ball yet?”
He stared at her. She was kidding. She had to be kidding.
“Don't look at me like that,” she grinned.
“But...” he said. He was going to say 'but you don't even like Charlotte' but thought better of it. Then he congratulated himself on the brilliant insight.
“Oh go on,” she said. “You'll have fun. Once the dance is over you don't have another chance at going. And you'll only be in sixth grade once.”
With all the seventh graders going to be there. Davey Rightman being the highest on Michael’s list of people to avoid, and a few of his other jerks from Trent's old crew. Though the last time he saw Davey, he was picking on a little fifth grade kid. He seemed to have forgotten all about Michael.
On the other hand, only sixth and seventh graders were allowed at the Spring Ball, so maybe Davey would focus on Michael again, for the first time all year. And anyway, he didn't have any intention of seeing all the people who thought he was nuts.
“But I wasn't even going to go.” He also didn't think Charlotte wanted to go, since all her musical tastes were fifty to a hundred years old.
“Trust me,” she said, “I didn't go to a couple of my school dances and I always wondered what the heck I was thinking. I should have gone. I wish I had.”
His mother had once been young. It was one of those facts that seemed to turn the world upside down to Michael. There were a couple of others. First, that his teachers had lives. Or ate food. Or went out of their sheltered monk hermitage homes far, far away in deep mountain valleys, and did things normal people did, like buy groceries or watch movies.
“Mom, I'm not going,” he said, and turned back to the virtual book in his lap.
“You're asking her tomorrow. And that's that.”
“Mo-om!” he said. “She's probably not gonna go anyway!”
“I'll take your invisible book away,” she warned. She couldn't even call it by its real name. Adults were so stupid sometimes. Most times, actually.
“That's not fair! Because I don't want to go to a dance?”
“Young man,” she said, “You don't realize it yet, but you don't have a whole lot of time to have fun and be a kid.”
“And dancing is kid stuff,” he said, rolling his eyes at her. Dancing was the sort of thing you did if you wanted to be a grownup. Never mind that he was twelve years old and had at least six years of fun left, which would probably be followed by plenty of fun while he went to university. And who knew? Maybe in the murky depths of the future he might find something he loved, and was good at, and had fun doing for his job. Like his dad.
“Alright,” she said. “Hand over the glasses and the thumb thingies.”
“Alright, I'll ask her! Gaggghhhh.” he snarled, and flung himself into his room.
He wasn't sure what happened the next day, when Charlotte said sure she'd go with him. On one hand, he was excited, but he was also anxious about the whole thing. If there was no date, there could be no expectations. He wasn't too worried about the rest of the kids, but what if he did everything wrong? He could make a fool of himself and ruin his entire friendly thing he had with Charlotte. He could do a hundred ridiculously stupid things, like dance, for one, and the whole school would decide to laugh at him instead of being afraid of him. He didn't want to admit that he was scared of a dance. Okay, so he was a little worried about the rest of the kids.
But it seemed so far away. Three weeks was practically half a lifetime for him.
And steadily, through English homework where he had to read stupid stories and then read the author's mind, and math homework of every even numbered problem (all the odd answers were in the back) along with showing his work, the days marched on. Finally, after school on Friday, his mother announced that they were going to go shopping.
“Shopping?” he asked. “What for?”
“You need something to wear,” she said. When he stared at her, she said. “At the Ball. You know, the Spring Ball, the one this Friday? You know, Marcus Patterson Day’s on Monday, no school.”
Monday off. It was Marcus Patterson day. The dance was seven days away and he hadn't talked to Charlotte about it since she’d agreed to go
with him.
“Why do I need something special?” he asked. “I could just go in this.”
He had on the same faded, ripped blue jeans he always wore, and a Led Zepplin t-shirt Charlotte had given him she found at a thrift shop.
“If you think I am letting you go to a dance wearing that, you need to get your head examined.” Then she brightened. “Come on, it'll be fun!”
It was actually a sort of torture, picking out clothes. He would have been okay in an oversized t-shirt and a pair of shorts, but his mother was really into it. She also had no clue what to get for him. She wanted to pick out things with collars, and pants that weren't even called pants, but slacks, and shiny dress shoes, and he was horrified by the end of the shopping trip. She'd won. When he was an adult, he would be able to win all the battles.
Michael fought with himself that week, trying not to think about the terror or the awkwardness, the fact that he might royally embarrass himself. He even thought about trying to create a time machine like in that HG Wells book.
On Friday his mother had a flower for him. It came in a plastic box and smelled nice and sweet.
“If you think I'm wearing that at the Ball,” he said, “you're crazier than I thought.”
She sighed. “It's not for you. It's for Charlotte.”
“Oh.” That made sense. “Then awesome! It's great! Thanks, Mom.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “You're welcome.”
By the time he was dressed and ready to go, his mother was shouting out worried orders and fussing around making the house look nice. It didn’t make any sense, since Charlotte wasn’t coming over, but that’s what Susanna Washington did when she was nervous. In true Mrs. Washington style, she was at the front of the assault on the Sulzsko household, which involved Michael picking Charlotte up.
“We're going to be late!” she said.
“But I've been ready for ten minutes,” he said, confused.
“And what color socks do you have on?”
“Um...what? White.” Duh Mom.
“White socks with slacks, did you leave your head in one of your dresser drawers? March right back to your room and pull on some dark colored socks.”
He went with a groan, because there was no getting out of it and because there were so many rules he didn't know and couldn't care less about.
But when he was all ready, and he passed by the mirror in the hall, he had to stop and look at himself. It couldn't be helped. He looked like something off a kids' clothing website, or one of those giant posters in the stores. He looked so...respectable.
“You're so handsome!” his mother said, which made him detest these clothes even more. “Now let's move.”
Move they did, Michael thinking about dancing onto Charlotte’s feet and getting punch on himself. Looking back on this later, these worries seemed so silly.
“Now,” his mother said. “If she invites us in, you are to be polite. You can call her mother ma'am and her father sir. Speak when you're spoken to. Is that clear?”
“Yes ma'am.”
“Don't get cheeky with me, young man.”
Impossible, he thought. You do what they ask you to and this is what you get.
He'd never been to Charlotte's house, but it wasn't as big or as nice as he thought it would be. Sure, it was nice. None of the houses in town were eyesores. But this one had been painted brown, and you could see where the paint hadn't been scraped off before, because it was sort of reddish brown. The yard hadn't been mowed in a while, and there was a crack in one of the windows that had been taped over with silver duct tape. Toys littered the yard, from overturned tricycles to a thing called a big wheel, which was missing one back wheel.
“Hm,” his mother said. Clearly this was just what she'd expected to find.
“Mom,” Michael said quietly. He was beginning to feel the same anger come on when Trent had put his foot down.
“Hm?”
“If you're not going to be nice to Charlotte, we can walk to school.”
She finally turned away from the house and looked at him, the shock plain on her face. He immediately felt guilty, and a bit ashamed, but he wasn't going to let his mother ruin this for him. It was her idea, after all.
She just got out without a word to him. They went up to the front door. It wasn't enough to worry about how Charlotte was going to react to him, and if the night was going to go well, now he had to worry about his mother too. He was twelve years old, for Pete's sake.
All his worries flew right out of his head when Charlotte opened the door though. She was beautiful.
“Oh my,” his mother said.
He opened his mouth, but all that came out was, “Aaaahhhhh.”
“You look wonderful, Charlotte,” his mother said for him.
“Yeah, really...um, really nice.”
“Thanks,” she said. The smile she answered with was better than anything she could have said.
She had curled her hair and piled some of it up around her head. Some sort of makeup effect made her gray eyes twinkle, and she definitely had lipstick on. The dress was some sort of thin, sheer fabric similar to the tie-dyed shirts she wore, which started out purple and blue on the bottom, but graduated into a rainbow as it came up. It was sleeveless, but she had something draped over her shoulders, something that looked like it might have once been a sweater, but had been slashed apart. Still, the way the fringes fell on her arms and the low-cut neck of the dress made him swallow to unclog his throat. She'd put a necklace on too, a little sparkling heart that peeked out from beneath the shoulder wrap as she turned to call to her mother.
“Mom, it's Michael and his mom!” she said.
Charlotte's mom appeared with a small child in each beefy arm. She was a solidly built woman with long rust colored hair and faint smudges of paint on every part of her body. One of the children was fast asleep, and the other was bawling at the top of his lungs.
“Sorry about this!” she chuckled. “Total opposites, these ones are. I'll be right back with you. Feel free to come right on in.” She called as she disappeared back into the house.
“Oh no, we couldn't—” Michael's mother said, but she was already inside.
It was like someone had shot a toy-filled missile at the place. There were action figures hanging from the ceiling fans and vehicles peeking out of the potted plants. Michael had to catch himself before he tripped on several balls, a NERF gun, and finally some sort of castle playset that probably didn't belong to any of the action figures, but had been taken over by them anyway. Charlotte laughed and went over to scoop heaps of Legos back into a huge plastic bin. Soothing jazz music drifted out from somewhere in the distance.
“Sorry about the mess,” she said. “The twins are little hurricanes. The property damage is somewhere in the trillions.”
“Everyone's an artist, I see,” Mrs. Washington said, eyeing some crayon artwork on the wallpaper. The crayons had mostly been snapped in half and left where they could be safely stepped on when coming in the door.
Charlotte laughed again, no trace of nervousness. Michael felt his cheeks flame with embarrassment. “They want to be just like their mom.”
There was more crying, even louder now. “Come now,” Charlotte's mom said. “Enough of that now. You got no reason to cry and you don't want me to give you one. I brought you in this world, boy, and I tell you, it was painful. It's gonna be just as painful taking you out.”
Michael watched his mother's face stay carefully stony neutral, just taking in more and more and more information as the seconds passed. He didn't even want to consider what was going on in her head, or how many people she would call about this just as soon as he and Charlotte stepped out of the car to head into the gym. Susanna Washington, the gossip grenade.
Well, there wasn't much he could do about it, except. “Mom, let's head out. We're gonna be late.”
“I haven't had a chance to talk to Mrs. Sulzsko,” she said.
“She's pretty busy,”
Michael said.
“She'll be out in a minute,” Charlotte told them. “No problem.”
But she wasn't. The boy continued screaming, and Charlotte's mom continued in her sweet death threats, reminding him that if his brother woke up, he wasn't just going to die a nice and painless death in his bed, she was going to string him up by his big toes and poke him a million times so he couldn't sleep for weeks. Then he'd die stark raving mad, and she'd make another one just like him, only better behaved. She delivered all this as if she were sharing a cinnamon roll recipe with an eager neighbor.
It must have been too much for Michael's mom, because her lip started to twitch and Michael saw her folding her hands together and wringing them. Finally, after another five minutes of awkwardness and screaming, she broke.
“Maybe we should come back,” she said. “After all, I'll need to pick you up when the Ball's over.”
“Sure!” Charlotte chirped, and bounded towards the door. “Bye mom!”
“Bye honey!” came the reply, over the screams. “Have a good time.”
Michael expected the questions to start again, but his mom was mercifully silent the whole five minute drive to LADCEMS.
Someone must have swapped out a nightclub for their school. There were a pair of huge, kid-diameter searchlights cutting the night into big chunks, and a red carpet leading into the gym. They had those velvet ropes from movie theaters at either side of the red carpet, and plants up to his neck. Beneath those was some track lighting, making the evening into a sort of dim yet sparkling afternoon time. And a teacher dressed in a tuxedo with white gloves there to open the door and help Charlotte out of the car.
She turned to him and flashed him a grin. “Wow huh? I feel like I should have my zoot suit on.”
Michael didn't say anything. He was too busy looking at the movie posters. Star Wars Episodes VII, VIII and IX, the Exterminatrix, Groskin's Run, So I Blew Up My School, and Invincible (the Marcus Patterson Story) were all in plain view as soon as he'd walked in, along with all the romance films he didn't know and couldn't care less about. There was a massive statue of the huge golden guy with the sword.
“Oscar,” Charlotte breathed. “I totally want a picture.”
Not only was there a photographer on hand to take their picture, but he led them over to a little station not far off to put accents and their names on the photo. They decided not to go with the wigs or silly costumes.
“We can do it again later if we get bored,” she said.
They were early, so only a few other kids were milling about. The parents and administrators were already outnumbered, but not by much. The gym had been decorated enough that it didn't much resemble what it started out as. Streamers hung everywhere, balloons were taped into large clusters, and in the center of the gym was a small section of painted plywood from which hung hundreds of little Oscars, to chest height. Charlotte immediately went over and started looking at them.
“Ah,” she said. “One for each of the sixth and seventh graders. That's pretty tight.”
“Tight?” he asked, and immediately wished he hadn't.
“It was a slang word in the eighties. I started listening to really old school rap, the first ever rap, you know, when the synthesizers were really just getting going. Totally radical time to be listening to music. Hair metal, synth pop, emerging rap, it was a good time for America.”
“Sounds like,” he said, and scanned the room. It wasn't lit like normal. There were a few spotlights piercing the dimness, and some strips of Christmas lights in strange places. There was even a raised platform, probably a dance floor, with hundreds of lights under it, pointing straight up. Well, he wouldn't be touching that with a ten foot pole.
“You want something to drink?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said, still picking through the Oscars.
He went over to one of the tables and checked out the refreshments. A pair of those big orange sports coolers were labeled 'ice water' and 'lemonade', but the punch was a mystery. The principal, Mr. Samuelson, sauntered over. “Having a good evening, Mr. Washington?”
“Yep,” he said. “I mean, yes Mr. Samuelson.”
“No need for the mister. Just call me Samuelson. I see you've brought the Sulzsko girl. A very bright young lady.”
Michael didn't know how to respond to that one. “Uh...thanks.”
“Punch?”
“I'll sue,” he said.
“I definitely don't want to get on the bad side of your grandfather,” Samuelson smiled. “No sir, not when your grandpa was my teacher growing up. Never met a scarier, nicer man in the whole world.” He must have caught the politely puzzled look on Michael's face, and the intention flooding out of him to get away from there and back to people his own age. “Two punches coming right up. Right and left hook.”
Charlotte had found his Oscar. It was a picture of him from last year's yearbook photos, but only his face remained, glued to the yellow piece of paper. On the back was printed 'You're a Star!'
“I bet they don't have one for me,” she said.
“Don't count on it,” he said. Sure enough, they found her Oscar a few minutes later, just as a massive rumble came from outside. Michael spilled some punch on himself, but was lucky Charlotte didn't notice because she was looking over toward the door.
“What is that?”
“Don't know,” he said.
Someone passed by them. “Davey Rightman, his brother brought him.”
Michael knew all about this. When he caught Charlotte's mystified face he explained. “Ronnie Rightman is in high school, and he's got his own car, and he likes his music nice and ear-bursting.” It seemed like all the nastiest jerks got cars. His mother had no plans to get him a car, ever, as far as he knew.
Davey showed up a few minutes later with a girl on his arm who was more undressed than dressed. Michael knew her name was Candice something, but everyone called her Candy.
After a while the deejay started up with a selection of new garbage pop from BTwixt and Elena Montroy and Red Velvet, along with the really hokey garbage you always danced to whenever there was a cousin of yours getting married, like the Chicken Dance and that one song that told you all the moves and stomps you had to follow. Charlotte's face crumpled up in agony until she stormed over to the deejay's blaring table and started making requests. Then, after the deejay had shaken his head a number of times, she stormed back over to Michael.
“You were right. They don't have anything from the forties or fifties.”
“Why don't you ask about the eighties then?” he said. “I'm sure he's got some synth pop. Maybe some, uh...Depeche Mode?”
She smiled, which meant he'd just scored more points. “It's okay. I'll just dance at home.”
After the pop, they got into some harder electronica. The new music just sounded like a cosmic ballet danced by skyscrapers, all bizarre echoes, groans of metal, and glass breaking with some words in there, only you couldn't hear anything they were saying. Michael hadn't understood the world of music until Charlotte began explaining, and still didn't know much. It just seemed like every time the world changed, the music changed with it, like a mirror. So when the world was happy, there'd be all sorts of sunny, cheerful music, like this old rocker John Fogerty, but when everything got serious, the music turned dark and moody and made people want to jump off tall buildings.
So right now the music sounded something like the world ending, only played in reverse. It wasn't exactly dance music, but layered somewhere in there was a kind of beat, so you could twitch and jerk to the rhythm. Davey and Candy were in a tangle of dancers, spread out around and inside the hanging Oscars.
Michael guessed it wasn't that bad, all told. He was spending time with the best looking girl in the school. There were more than a few confused glances, and a couple of open-mouthed starers. Charlotte might have had a chance at getting in with the popular people, a shred of possibility someone would see her as just the misguided new person instead of a
freak, but that time was gone now. He was still a bit worried for her, but he realized that it was her choice. If she wanted to damage her social life beyond hope of repair, it was okey dokey with him.
“Let's get another glass of that punch,” she yelled at last.
Mr. Samuelson smiled at them again, and served up the punch.
“Enjoying yourselves?” he asked.
“The music is a bit much,” Charlotte yelled.
“Ah.”
“Yeah it sounds like the whole place is about to blow up.”
Then the whole place blew up.
The wall with the big scoreboards imploded in a shower of concrete and sparks, throwing up a shower of screams and leaving behind a trail of flames. Something flew in, streaking across the entire gym, blowing through a bunch of hanging paper Oscars, smashing into the bleachers, and crunching into something beyond that. After that it was all smoke and confusion. People were rushing here and there, and smashing into each other or climbing over each other. Plenty of exits were suddenly thrown open and they out of the sudden nightmare.
They, not he.
Michael had been knocked over by the refreshment table. The punch bowl had come down on him, soaking him from the waist down. He gasped, trying to remember how to breathe. His body was completely encased in pain. He looked around for Charlotte but couldn't make her out in the sudden gloom and thick smoke. Most important, his place in the gym put him closest to the thing that had embedded itself into the bleachers.
That something was a man, a well-built and square-jawed fellow with a few scraps of shirt that hadn't been burned to a crisp. Most of his hair, and all of his eyebrows had been singed off. He was coughing and smoking quite a bit where his pants were on fire. And he looked to be in a lot of pain.
Michael took one of the big orange coolers, righted it, and unscrewed the top. Then he dumped it on the man's leg.
“Thanks son,” he said quietly.
He wanted to ask if the man was okay, but that was a silly question. Surely, if you could rocket through a wall, through a set of bleachers and halfway into a cinderblock wall with only a bunch of nasty smelling burnt hair, you were all right. At least, that's what he would have thought, until the man fell out of the hole and onto his face. He was out cold.
“Are you okay?” he heard himself ask, even as he thought about how stupid that sounded.
That was when Michael realized he was alone. And not alone. The gym was clear of almost everybody, anyway, though there was a lot of smoke. Teachers and students were making their way out, but there was someone standing at center court, hands balled and encased in smoke. Blue flashes erupted around him.
“Where is he?” the figure said. Michael knew that voice immediately.
“Trent?”
“What the...loser? Skinny loser Michael? Broke my nose Michael?” Yeah, it was Trent. The same ridiculous bowl haircut, the same too-tight t-shirt, only now his nose wasn't beaky, it had its own elbow. And now he looked to have gained about fifty pounds in the arms and shoulders.
Lightning lashed out from Trent's body in long, ragged arcs. They left black marks all over the basketball court floor. One of them latched onto the refreshment table and, sparks flying, whipped it across the gym.
There was Charlotte. She must have been knocked over by the refreshment table too, somehow. She was lying on the ground, and a surge of terror went through Michael as he saw that she wasn't moving. The bits of lightning were licking the floor not far away from her.
“Oh, man,” he chuckled. “This is too sweet. I didn't think I'd find you here. I get you and Springfield both at the same time. Bonus.” He whipped his hands out to the sides, and arcs of lightning made a sort of web out behind him, scorching the floor, four coming from each of his forearms.
“What happened to you?” Trent said. “One minute I'm lying down in the hospital, the next thing I'm getting told that if I look at you the wrong way again my parents are gonna have to move out of town. What's that about, I want to know? You baby up on me, that what happened? Run crying to mommy and daddy? Get them to talk to the principal? Well they're not here to stop me now, Mikey.”
His hand flashed up, but Michael was already diving away. A zing and the smell of smoke and burnt hair followed. He tumbled to the ground, sprang up, and started running. Away.
“Aww come on,” Trent said.
Blue arcs flew by him, along with a crisp smell of air frying just beside him. He got another three steps before something went throughout his entire body like a freight train. One second his legs were pumping, his lungs huffing and puffing, the next minute every muscle in his body freaked out, shooting new pain from scalp to toes. He went down on the floor with a crack, and felt warm blood on his lip. And his shirt was probably on fire.
“You don't turn your back on the enemy Michael.” He came over and stomped down on Michael's back. “There you go buddy. Don't want you to get too badly scorched, you know. We've got a little catching up to do.”
Michael looked back at Charlotte and the meteorite who had face planted on the gym floor.
“You stop right there, young man!”
“Samuelson?” Trent said in a mildly curious tone, like you would comment on finding an Armani suit on sale for twenty bucks.
“I don't know what the devil is going on here, but you can stop this nonsense right now.”
Trent chuckled. “And you're going to stop me, are you? How exactly?”
He held out his hands, and Michael had just enough time to yell 'NO!' before electric bolts flew out everywhere. One jabbed Mr. Samuelson on the shoulder. In a second, Michael saw what had just happened to him. The principal's hair stood on end, and his teeth clicked together as every muscle in his body seized up.
“Stupid lightning bolts,” Trent muttered.
“That...” Mr. Samuelson gasped. “...is...enough...of that...young man...I am...calling your parents.”
Trent snorted, but Michael saw the fear there. The real world hadn't existed for Trent before, there were no parents and no police and no army with tanks and high-powered rifles. Only Samuelson had said the magic words.
“Don't listen to him dude!”
“Davey?” Trent asked.
“Go ahead man. Fry that sucker!”
Another flurry of lightning came out, and this time latched onto Mr. Samuelson's body like a dozen remoras. He didn't scream, but did a sort of jerky dance before the lightning winked out and left him smoking on the ground. Davey came out from behind one of the overturned tables at the side of the gym, still loping like a chimp, and grinning like one too.
Charlotte was stirring. This wasn't good. She probably had no idea what was going on.
“Now back to this little...what the?” Trent looked from Michael to Charlotte. “Oh ho! Hey man, nice work on the chicklet. She's a pretty nice one, hey?” He walked over and bent down over her. “Prime, bro. Prime. Got to say though, I find it hard to believe you snagged one this hot. What are you, paying her or something?”
Michael caught sight of one of his teachers in the far doorway, waving over to him. Yeah, just run away. No problem. Leave Charlotte and Mr. Samuelson and the human cannonball over there to Trent, with Davey to egg him on.
The orange water cooler was standing nearby. Michael could just reach it. If he remembered anything about science...
He lunged towards it, and Davey shouted. Trent, bent over and with his back to them, was too slow to react. He only just turned his head before a five pound cooler whacked him in the head and splashed freezing water all over him. As soon as he stood, the lightning began to play over him. Only it went wrong, and Trent staggered back, jerking the same way Mr. Samuelson had. Then, to Michael's horror, he started to trip over Charlotte, and a visible web of electricity jumped from Trent's leg into her body. Michael was on his feet and pelting across the gym before he could think of anything else to do. Before Trent could properly fall over, Michael had barreled into him, both of them airborne an
d flying over Charlotte. And the shocks were back.
And the last thing Michael was aware of before going black was his head jerking forward from the electricity, bashing against Trent's nose.
Chapter 5 – Battery