Chương 6: The Boy Who Lived

The double doors of my high school opened like the yawning mouth of hell. With my backpack full of books weighing me down, it always felt much like the journey of Sam and Frodo on their way to Mordor. Except instead of otherworldly creatures, the landscape was largely filled with acne, body odor mixed with cologne, and gum on the tiles of the floor. Plenty of Gollums, though. We all knew what their precious was. Their own fragile egos. I sat down in history class.

Two weeks had passed and snow was on the ground, Christmas break was about to begin, and not a single time-slowing moment had occurred since the incident at Friendly-Mart. Not that I hadn't tried. Every second, the question was always there. The toaster seemed a little slow popping out my Eggo waffle, so it had to be because of my new mind powers. The page I flipped when reading stood still for five whole seconds before finally flopping, and it could only be because I stopped time with my thoughts.

Science class dragged on for what felt like five hours, so surely it was because I slowed it with my brain. Except that I would never willingly do that, and it was just that Mr. Flander's droning voice could cause even an insomniac to fall asleep. I barely heard anything in class. I took notes, my hand restlessly writing back and forth, acting as a nice conduit for my nervous energy, but my brain was always elsewhere in the moment. Later, with enough rereads, I was able to glean the information.

This morning I sat at my desk tapping my pencil loudly against it as I took in everything in the class, scouting out potential items to slow down time for. Brandon "Meat Tower", sauntered over and then flopped into his chair behind me. Normally he'd chat with friends, but today he leaned over and whispered, "Hey, Zero. Feeling queasy? Need a bucket?" His breath carried the distinct scent of old milk in it. Normally, I don't feed the trolls. Especially ones that could break me in half like a KitKat.

But I was in chaos mode, so I turned my head towards him.

"I'm getting nauseous from all of your Axe body spray. Do you think girls want to make out with the can itself?" His eyes narrowed a bit, so my target must have hit hard. The teacher's voice barked from the front of the class.

"Miss Keene, do I need to move you to a different seat?" I turned to look at him, waving a hand in front of my nose.

"Yes, Mr. Reed. There is a weird smell here, so I would appreciate changing seats." Mr. Reed blinked owlishly, my quick acceptance seemed to be unprecedented.

"Ok… Miss Hendrix, will you switch with her?" Kelly Hendrix's head snapped up.

"I don't want to sit there. She says it stinks!" Brandon slammed his fist on his desk.

"I DON'T STINK!" The whole class was staring at him.

"I mean, it doesn't smell bad." He then mumbled under his breath, "It's called Arctic Phoenix." Mr. Reed looked too tired to be dealing with any of this.

"Girls, just get up and switch seats." Class dragged on but at least I wasn't sitting in front of Meathead anymore. Every now and then, I found myself trying. I'd watch a piece of paper fall to the floor and I'd focus on it, watch it drift down, willing it to slow down. It never did. I'd glare at the clock, eyes locked on the minute hand, counting the seconds in my head. I was the last person to want class to last longer, but counting out the ticks of the minute hand was easily quantifiable.

Unfortunately, each time, it was exactly sixty seconds, and the teacher continued to drone on about colonial trade routes. At lunch, I tried again. A mini food fight broke out from the Peaking-In-Highschool table towards the Future-Tech-Engineers table. Jocks vs nerds, basically. The jocks had their superior muscle strength and the nerds did not have the materials to demonstrate their superior intellect. There was a lot of staining of Star Wars themed shirts. I watched small food items whizz through the air.

Mentally I aligned it with the memory of the bullet streaking towards me, trying to slow down the paths of grapes, power bars, soda cans. You'd think the bags of potato chips would trigger something, but alas, they slammed against their targets at completely normal speed. You'd think if I had superpowers, I would be able to use them against bullies, but no one would be the savior of these nerds other than humanity's increasing dependence on technology.

In gym, I threw basketballs in the air heedless of where they landed. I kept expecting them to hang in the air, fall to the ground in slowmotion. Each time, they just hit the floor and attacked some unsuspecting bystander. Maybe that was a power. I was as obsessed with supers as everyone else now. Might as well just buy all of Squid Guy's merch and camp out for a month for his conventions. Get as many super logos as possible tattooed on my body.

Endlessly talk about what they were doing, what they were wearing, and dedicate an entire website to the mole on their left cheek even though it's clearly cancerous. Get a grip, Cass. There was more to life. The end of the school day always felt like a prison release, especially now that it was officially Christmas break. Everyone was rushing for freedom, yelling, fighting to get a spot on the bus. I preferred walking, even in the light snow and slippery sidewalks.

Some kids were starting a snowball fight, others a pornographic snowman contest. So far, it looked like Tina the Twerking Snowgirl would win. Brandon stood next to a small freshman boy near the parking lot where parents drove through to pick up their kids. He was one from the table who got pelted by food during lunch and still had grape juice stains marring his Millenium Falcon t-shirt. Could have been Harry Potter when he still lived in a cupboard, small and skinny from his aunt and uncle not feeding him enough.

Certainly looked closer to an eleven year old in comparison to Meat Tower. They bickered back and forth. Brandon circled him, poking, laughing. Kids slowed down to watch, but none stepped in. I was walking down the same concrete path, about to pass by. Maybe I'd get the deets on what was going on. Then Brandon shoved him- harder this time. The kid stumbled off the icy curb, heading face first onto the street. Only there wasn't just black tarred road waiting for him, there was a silver Sedan about to glide past.

I saw the angle, the geometry of disaster: the kid's head, the car's tire, the split-second before it would crack his skull like a watermelon. But he was too far, and Brandon was in the way. My head began to pound and my legs shook as my nose began to run. A car's horn dragged out into a deep, slow moan. The sound of a yard full of students became a deafening hum. The air around me felt so heavy I could choke on it. My brain had a pickaxe pushing through it.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Harry Potter's arms rose up to shield himself. Brandon's laughter warped into something demonic. Syrup world was back. I pushed through the atmosphere like I was wading through clear jello, my foot pivoting as I lunged past Brandon. Two achingly slow steps took me past him and my hand reached out for Potter, moving honey-thick.

Harry's fingers touched the smooth glittering silver paint job of the sedan as I grabbed the strap of his backpack and pulled backwards. Now he was heading for safety while I was falling headfirst into car-assisted suicide. Didn't think this one all the way through, did I? I did the only thing I could think of. I buckled my knees and arched my back. It flung my head back enough to have us both fall steadily, safely out of the car's path.

Reality snapped back just in time for me to feel every bit of Potter's bony body and my back cracking as we hit the pavement. The sedan whooshed past, oblivious. Everyone looked down at me and the freshman playing pain-filled Twister. Brandon froze, mid-smirk, his face as confused as it must be in his fifth grade math class. Potter just blinked at me, pale and shaking. My hand was still clutching onto his backpack strap. A crowd surrounded us and I was back on the farm with headless chickens running around.

"What just happened?"

"How did she get there?"

"Did Brandon push him?"

"Did Cass push him?"

"Get a room!"

"Ew gross, someone report her for getting with underage boys." Meat Tower had finally recovered his brain cell enough to say something.

"Oh hey, look, the zero's trying to be a hero." The Boy Who Lived Because Of Me finally rolled off and I pushed myself up. I looked past Brandon's shoulder and started waving.

"Hey Principal Barker, let me tell you all about how Brandon here just tried to push this poor kid into oncoming traffic." Everyone turned their heads. Principal Barker wasn't there, he was probably in his office, desperately sending out resumes to other jobs. I was already walking away when their heads turned back. The chosen one caught up with me.

"Hey, thanks for that," he stuttered out.

"That could've been really bad if you hadn't…" His eyes darted back to the street like he still couldn't believe that the car hadn't smeared him across it. I shrugged, still shaky myself.

"Don't thank me, thank physics." He smiled then frowned, eyes focusing on the middle of my face.

"Oh, by the way, your nose is bleeding." His hand dug into a pocket until it emerged with a tissue which he held out to me. I took it, pressing it to my dripping nostrils, watching as red quickly spread out across the thin paper.

"I dink I'm gonna need anudder one of dose." My skull still felt like a giant claw was squeezing it occasionally and I could really use a Sprite to settle my stomach. He handed me the whole pack of tissues. After about three, I could finally stop. The kid was looking at me with raw, wide-eyed gratitude.

"You're… like, super fast or something, right? I didn't even see you move." I hitched my backpack higher on my shoulder.

"Nope, I've just had a lot of experience with bullies myself. Let me give you a pro-tip: don't wait for Falcor to save you." I'd lost him. He was giving me that look that ninety-nine percent of the population does. Like I was speaking an alien language. Maybe that was the problem. I just speak in the ancient language of eighties movies. And then- blink. Green letters began typing into my vision.

Fight summary Unnamed (Vigilante) vs Bully (unaffiliated) Civilian saved from significant bodily harm 200 HP: Final Total 200 Hero Points Error system in atrophied status. Hero Points unable to be allocated. Insignificant use of power forcibly activated. 1. 8 seconds lapsed. Atrophied status reduced from 65% to 47% —--- I walked down Beck street, the same one I took everyday after school to get back home. The one that always had the distinct smell of hotdogs and burning tires in the air.

People walked by me, I passed by shops, but mostly I wasn't there. All I could really see was my hand grabbing the boy's backpack and yanking it back while the world played two times slower. I looked down at my hands. It had been real, hadn't it? I'd had that same feeling of my head being carved in two, my pulse ricocheting out of my veins, but… I hadn't puked all over poor Harry Potter. It wasn't my usual PTSD flashback. Brandon saw it, everyone had. They'd all crowded around us.

The boy came up to talk to me afterwards, to thank me. And that screen popped up again, this time telling me that the atrophied status had gone down and that I had distorted time for a little under two seconds which was insignificant. Didn't need a green memo to tell me that. But guess who no longer had a reservation at the local psych ward? Guess who wasn't delusional, strapped into a straightjacket, ready to fly over the cuckoo's nest? I had power. I was a super.

I could get my card, go to the registration office. They might do a segment on the news, not a big one because my power wasn't big, but interesting enough for the grandmas watching the five o'clock news. Word would get around, the grandmas would ask their grandkids, "hey, do you go to school with that girl?" And they'll realize they do. The same kids I was walking by now could be begging for my autograph tomorrow. Some people's reactions wouldn't change.

It was certainly better than having no powers at all, but it wasn't enough to make me one of the cool kids. They'd want me to show it off at school and I'd have to say, "Okay, you need to almost die first." It would be nicer if I could trigger it whenever I wanted. Maybe someday I could use it on the police force. Since it only happened in life-threatening situations, I could use it and one second could be enough to save someone's life. There was an academy for people with real powers.

They got trained, sharpened into weapons, put on combat teams. I won't be accepted. Slow time up to five minutes, three, even one minute? Sure, that would be powerful, that would be enough. But less than two seconds? Nice enough for regular life, might be helpful in everyday situations, but that was all. Even at school, I would still get teased. I would be cool, but not that cool. I might not be a zero anymore, but, at best, I've only upgraded to a six.

The people who bullied me the most weren't going to turn into my overnight adoring fans. They'll have more reason to hate me and they'll still have ammunition to shoot my way. Because the person they thought was a zero is now a six, when they're just a five. Just a little bit higher up in the hierarchy than they are, and that's going to sting. Deep down, they'll be jealous. Not enough to idolize, but to want to jeer at. To punish. But some people would become my fans, my groupies.

The day before, they'd laughed at me, whispered behind my back; tomorrow they'd insist that they'd always liked me and could we be best friends now? I could have a whole entourage of kids who, since I was five years old, had pretended I didn't exist right up to the day it came out that I had powers. As I passed a shop window, I saw shelves crammed with superhero merchandise. Kids crowded at the window, salivating over anything new like they were Oliver Twist with a bowl of porridge.

Trademarked watches, hats, sunglasses, shoes- toilet paper featuring your most hated villain. Nothing says rebellion and originality as obeying the mandate to collect all twelve. As much as they worshiped them, as much as people devoted their lives to obsessing over them, the supers didn't even matter all that much.

What really mattered to people was the ability to show off- show off their latest buy, the fact that it was new and expensive, that it put them into a certain group, a specific team- and their team was better than yours. Did I really want people to only like me because I was slightly above normal? Would it be worth buying friends because I could do a little party trick now? I didn't need my face on a cereal box. I didn't need groupies or people wanting my autograph just to try to sell it later.

This was just for me. I'd be happy to use it whenever I could. I'd look out for those moments when it would be useful, when it would help someone. If my secret comes out, it comes out, but I'm not going to be the one to tell. Everyone knows renegade superheroes are way better anyway. My power was small. That meant it was mine. No one else could take it, twist it, or tell me how to use it. The secret felt better than the spotlight.