by Laer Carroll
Whoa! Her little bedside clock said she’d worked straight through two-plus hours.
Bethany stretched, worked her shoulders. But out of habit rather than need. She felt relaxed, not at all stiff or sore.
She should get some sleep. She slithered to a position on her side, placed her head on the pillow, and slept.
·
Breakfast was nicely satisfying if still not enough. Her scavenging afterward netted her less than the day before. More patients were finishing their food, courtesy of Beth’s tampering with their health. And because she stayed longer in her fellow patient’s rooms. She’d never paid all that much attention to old people before except a few from her “entourage.” But Dorotea three doors down was a professional opera singer who’d traveled all over the world and was very good at describing those places.
Her only morning visitors were her Mom and biodad and step-dad.
“Where’s Miri?” she asked her biodad Allan.
Allan told her his girl-friend didn’t want to intrude on family matters .
Bethany nodded but after they left she thought a bit. Maybe she and Helen had been a little hard on Miri. Maybe they could be a little friendlier. She WAS making her father happy.
Physical therapy went by fast. She did her thirty reps of each exercise smoothly and easily and wished a bit for more to stretch her body. But she was already recovering from her ordeal so fast that she might freak out her therapists.
Afterward she was tempted to jog up and down the stairs between floors to stretch her body further. But they were too public.
So went her weekend, full of study, scavenging for food and socializing with the other patients, with visits from family and friends.
·
After breakfast and a visit from Dr. Chu-Thi the doctor phoned her parents and asked them to come to the morning visiting hour for a meeting. A fact Bethany found out at the meeting.
Besides Beth and the doctor there were both her bio parents, her step-father Nicolas, and Miri. Beth and Helen had been friendly with her in the weekend and it had paid off, apparently, by making her feel easier about considering herself part of Beth’s family.
Dr. Chu-Thi began by saying how pleased she was at Beth’s recovery.
“All the tests we’ve given Bethany, up to and including my check of her this morning, indicate she’s had a complete recovery. An almost miraculous one. Friday I was already considering suggesting that she go home. But I wanted the weekend to be absolutely sure. If you approve, we’ll release Bethany right after lunch.”
Predictably her father Allan was concerned about her “early release” but he was eventually brought around to the doctor’s opinion. The meeting ended with a great deal of jubilation all around. Beth made sure she gave Miri a big hug upon parting.
Beth visited opera singer Dorotea and a few other patients on the floor to say Goodbye. Then after lunch she was dressed in clothing brought from home by her mother, put in a wheelchair, and wheeled out to the driveway in the front of the hospital to the car driven by her mother and accompanied by her step-dad.
Chapter 2 - Normal Life
At home Bethany unpacked her few belongings in her bedroom upstairs of their two-story house on the tree-shrouded Burbank hillside. This included a few toiletries and her notebook computer and school books. Then she wandered down to the first floor into the living room. Her parents, step-father, and her father’s lady friend Miri were waiting for her.
So was Kendall.
“Hello, Ken Doll.” She went over and hugged him.
“Hey, Sleepy.”
Beth groaned. “How long before I outlive that?”
“Oh, years.”
They joined the four others on couches and easy chairs.
Her mother took the lead.
“We are so happy to have you back, dear. But do you feel up to a return to normal life?”
“You saw all the test results. I’m fine. More than fine, in fact. I had time to think a lot while in the hospital. And I want to change some things.”
Her father Allan shifted in his seat next to Miri. “Like what?”
“Oh, studying, first. I’ve just been getting by at school. I’m going to change that. And, oh, I don’t know yet about other things. Ask me again in a few months.”
“Very well.
“So. About studying. We’ve been in contact with all your teachers this semester. And they’ve all agreed to give you a chance to make up for lost time.”
“Hah! I’ll bet! I’ll bet my math teacher wasn’t very encouraging.”
Her mother hesitated. “True. But he’ll come around.”
“I know he will. I’ve been working hardest on my studies there. More than all the others put together. I’ve been further behind on math than anything. But I’m almost caught up. ”
“Really?” said Kendall. “Don’t bite off more than you can chew. There’s no shame in repeating a class.”
“True. But I started back at the beginning of the book and did everything over again, all the test exercises after each section. Everything. It made a lot more sense the second time around. And, funny thing, I actually started to like it!”
Ken got a Don’t bullshit me look on his face but kept silent.
“I’m glad to hear that, dear. Because tomorrow afternoon we have a conference with your teachers right after school. And we want you there.”
“Sure.”
Her mother looked around at everyone else in the room. When no one else showed they wanted to talk she stood up.
“I for one should get back to work. Ken, you’re going to keep Bethany company the rest of the day?”
He nodded and stayed seated. Beth stood. All the others stood, said a few Goodbyes to Beth, accompanied with a hug, and left. They had work to return to also.
She sat down. “Going to be my bodyguard?”
“We didn’t want you to be alone here. Just in case.”
“In case I had a relapse? Don’t be silly.”
“You’re stuck with me. Get over it. Meanwhile, what do you want to do? Get back to studying math, which you love, oh so much?”
She laughed. Consulted her inner self.
“I want not to be cooped up. Let’s go out.”
“OK. Where to?”
She shrugged. “The mall. The beach. Sky diving. You pick.”
“The mall it is. You need anything?”
“My pocketbook. And a quick trip to the bathroom. Meet you at the car?”
Minutes later she found him leaning against the hood of his silver midsize car, enjoying the cool sunny weather. Mid-November in Southern California, the air had shed the late-summer heat and mild smog. The trees were all green and there was a slight breeze which caused the shadows of the leaves of the nearest tree to cast a dancing pattern of light and shadow onto him and the car.
Inside and belted in he started the car as she slammed her car door and clicked shut her seat belt. He pulled away from the curb and two blocks away turned left and south onto Olive Ave.
Here just below the low VerdugoMountains to the north the land sloped gently downward. The four-lane street had nice houses on each side shrouded by tall old trees. The street was straight for miles and it was a pleasant vista for the two or three miles till the land flattened. The flatter land seemed to be tilted up for display and a greater panorama of buildings stretched further till the Hollywood Hills rose up, blue-grey with the distance.
Kendall said nothing as he drove, very focused on his driving as always. It was a friendly silence and gave Beth the chance to look out the open window and to enjoy being free to go anywhere she wanted and the view and the pleasant breeze and the scents of the greenery.
Idly she identified one odor as that of an oak tree, and another a maple tree used just for decoration, and a lemon tree which might have been in someone’s back yard. There were the occasional flower, roses of course (everyone loved roses), and...
And she jolted. She’d never been able to ID
so many scents, or even smell them!
The odors vanished.
She’d sat forward at the jolt. Now she relaxed back into a near-slouch .
“Something?” said Kendall. Just because he was focused on his driving didn’t mean he wasn’t aware of her.
“Oh, nothing. Just a stray thought. About cheerleading. I won’t be able to do any. I’ve got to focus on school work now that I’ve told everyone how important it is to me.”
“Too bad,” he said.
Then they were nearing the downtown Burbank area. The Courthouse passed on one side and City Hall on the other. Then he’d turned to go a few blocks and park in the mall’s big four-level parking lot.
Inside the mall they strolled, window shopping a bit. Every once in while one would stop and look at an interesting item, different for each of them. The fabulous wedding dresses in The Bride Shop had no appeal to him. The subtly gleaming high-tech gadgets in the Elec Tech shop had no appeal to her.
He’d twitted her about drooling over dresses. So she started mock-impatiently patting a foot after a few seconds of his own drooling.
When he turned his head toward her she gave a lady-like snort and assumed a nobly lifted nose.
“Boys and their toys!”
He grinned.
It was a southern California weekday early in the afternoon so more of the strollers and shoppers were older women and younger mothers. Who dressed lightly and often skimpily. Her brother took advantage and admired them, none too discreetly. Kendall was such a guy sometimes!
Women returned the favor, though more discreetly. He was tall, strong, young, good-looking.
They traveled the entire length of the mall on the top floor, then the entire top-floor cross hall, ending up in the food court. School was beginning to let out, so teenagers began to swell the crowd and swell themselves with food .
Bethany took a tray to the gourmet hamburger vendor and bought two big fat burgers with all the trimmings and two large containers of a juice drink. She also added to it a plate of fat onion rings.
Kendall met her at a round table with a large pizza with lots of toppings and his own large container of soft drink. As they sat down in the echoing central area he eyed her tray.
“Wow! You got carried away after all that anemic hospital food. Don’t make yourself sick, Sleepy.”
“I won’t.” Then she began to eat hungrily.
The very first bite, with lots of mustard and pickles and meat, was overwhelmingly good. Her jaws locked, for an instant painfully. The pain vanished in a second instant and she began to eat.
She took her time, eating steadily but savoring all the flavors.
Her brother watched her, at first with amusement then with growing alarm. He put a big hand over one of hers.
“You’ll make yourself sick!”
For an instant Maelgyreyt looked out her eyes and measured him for a coffin. She growled at him.
“If you don’t want a stub you’ll take that hand back.”
His eyes widened and his hand clenched. It should have been painful on her small hand, but wasn’t.
Then Beth grinned at him.
“Gotcha!”
He grinned back but kept an eye on her burger. When she’d finished it she picked up the second, considered it, then re-wrapped the half-unwrapped bun.
“I’d better save this for a midnight snack. Stay here. I’ve gotta go.”
She stood, taking her near-empty juice container with her. Walking by a trash can she slurped it empty and discarded it .
Later they took the escalator down a floor and made a second window-shopping sweep of it before heading home.
That night dinner was busier than usual, with her mother, step-father, and her father’s friend Miri standing in for him as he was working late at the police station where he was Assistant Chief of Detectives, Kendall, Beth, and Lihua. The two girls were allowed a champagne flute filled an inch with the bubbly drink and the four adults took full ones. The toast was heart-felt and funny, showing a verbally witty side to Miri which Bethany had never seen.
Afterward she and Lee retired to Beth’s bedroom for chatting, gossip, and experiments with a new lipstick which Lee had bought. Any awkwardness the two might have felt earlier was gone.
Her friend left at 10:00 since it was a school night. Beth hit her school books for a couple of hours till midnight, when she and Ken shared the living room while she ate her second hamburger and he talked idly about recent jobs he and the security group had done. It included a well-known celebrity couple while they attended a movie premiere.
·
At about 4:30Bethany woke. The house was still.
Most of the upstairs windows were cracked to let in the cool November air. That included Beth’s. Her mother had asked her to leave her bedroom door open a crack so they could check on her if they needed to, so there was a faint cross breeze. It felt as if the night breathed on her, carrying odors of the trees and bushes and flower gardens of the neighborhood.
Under that were fainter odors of made things, houses and streets, automobiles parked by curbs. One of which started up three blocks down, faint in her ears but suddenly loud as if a few feet away. Then the sound was normal again.
She opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. Its off- white was painted a faint green. She turned her head and saw her cell-phone charging cradle was lit. Normally not bright, it seemed bright now.
She thought about getting up to study or raid the kitchen. But neither appealed to her. She’d eaten her fill the night before.
Something else appealed: the outdoors. The night was cool and quiet and she could run as she pleased without onlookers slowing her down. Her legs almost ached with the need to run.
She eeled out of bed and out of the oversized tee shirt she wore as pajamas. Sports shorts covered her panties, a sports bra her bosom, and a normal-sized tee shirt covered her bra. She slipped her phone into one pocket of her shorts, and house keys, some coins, and a slim wallet with some cash and credit cards into another pocket.
She ghosted down the stairs, automatically noting that her mother and step-father and brother slept peacefully in their rooms. Outside she re-locked the front door and walked leisurely down the walkway to the sidewalk and turned onto the uphill path. She began to jog. Several blocks away she began to run, swiftly but silently, only on her toes, heels never touching the pavement.
In a few minutes she’d covered the mile or so of tree-shrouded neighborhood. She slowed at the last east-west cross-street before the gentle tilt of the land folded abruptly upward into the VerdugoMountains. They were small compared to the mountains to the east and the west and much further north, but they covered several miles and rose more than a half mile above her.
Bethany crossed the street into a small park with lots of grass and a stand of trees shading several picnic tables. A baseball field stood in one far corner. She wandered over to it and passed onto the rough ground which began to rise into a fold of the mountains. The grass and shrubs would be brown in daylight. They’d been cut back here to provide a break for the frequent summer fires of Southern California.
A sudden thought stopped Beth. She looked down. Until then she’d not realized she’d left the house without shoes. Her feet should be scraped and bleeding from the spiky dead vegetation she’d been walking over. Yet she only felt a mild roughness underfoot.
She lifted first one foot then the other and peered at them. There was just enough light from the stars in the nearly clear sky and from the faint glow of the clouds reflecting the lights of the city behind her. She could see her feet were untouched.
Beth turned to stare out over Burbank. At this height her neighborhood looked like a dark nubbly carpet. Beyond it spread the golden lights of the valley with dark hills rising beyond and spreading east and west.
She only half saw it. Part of her was wondering what she had turned into.
Something very strong and tough. But what good was it to her, a teena
ged girl? What unseen problems went along with the “improvements”?
She had to eat more. So far that was the only downside. But she still remembered those comic books of Ken’s. Superheroes had to hide their powers. Else jealous and fearful people would attack them.
Bethany took a deep breath. It was no use looking forward to problems. They’d show up soon enough. Meanwhile she was going to enjoy her new powers as well as hide them.
She ran downhill onto the cool grass and leaped twenty or thirty feet. Coming down she stumbled, caught herself, and flung herself into a series of somersaults and handsprings with twists in the air. She ended up breathing only slightly more deeply than usual at the edge of the picnic area .
Her body was warm, however, quite warm. And she was beginning to feel an edge of hunger.
Beth went through the small stand of trees at the edge of the park and across the street beyond. A block westward she turned left onto Olive Avenue and sat down at a bus stop with a concrete seat to wait for an early-morning bus. And discovered a new power.
As she relaxed her metabolism slowed. Time seemed to speed up. The low clouds raced across the sky. And eventually the eastern sky in front of her began to lighten.
She heard the bus from several blocks away before she saw it. She sped up her body and the high-pitched whine of the bus motor became a lower bass sound.
Then it rounded a corner to her left. She stood up and faced it, digging a few coins out of a pocket.
The bus wheezed to a stop before her. She mounted the steps and dropped the right change into the change bucket. Her smile was lost on the driver as the woman closed the door behind her and started the bus rolling again.
A few people got on and off as the bus moved. The numbers picked up till it was half full. It passed into the downtown, turned right at the bottom of the downtown area, passed the long outdoor mall then the indoor mall.
Bethany got off before it turned south to go over the freeway. In the next block was a Frank’s Family Restaurant where she ate a big breakfast of meatloaf and mashed potatoes with orange juice. Then she went across the street to the Pancake House and had a second breakfast of pancakes and bacon with orange juice and well-creamed coffee.