True Heroes (10 page)

              “Oh no, no. When have you ever been bored in my class?” She chuckled in a casual, high-pitched tone. ‘Never heard that sweet laugh.’ The lingering laugh carried over into her next statement. “No, trust me, this group guarantees that you won’t be bored.”

              ‘Okay, this experiment is over for now. She must not be feeling well or something.’ Trying to conceal how awkward he felt, he reached down for his answer. “I’ll think about it. When’s the first meeting?”

              A flash of disappointment came and went through her eyes. ‘It was brief but it was there.’ “When I get some members together, I’ll let you know. Sound good?” Her hand jutted forward for a handshake as he nodded and smiled, actually feeling a little more comfortable now. “Good luck this year, Caleb.”

              He turned and began to walk to the door as it was being opened by the glowing principal. Hackard’s aura faded with Caleb in sight, but energized while he passed by and straightened to Drit’s desk. ‘She’s got an in with Hackard. No idea if they’ve done anything, but I can promise he’s thought about it on quite a few lonely, cold nights with a box and a bottle. Who doesn’t think like that about her? I’m definitely in the minority for being platonic. I wonder how he talks to her. Only one way to find out.’ He slowed his pace and submerged his hearing into his power to catch their conversation. “Sorry, what was that Henry?”

              Caleb slowed further and listened closely. “I asked why our prized student was held after. If it was because of his tardiness I—”

              “That wasn’t it. Unlike you, I don’t like to dim the brightest students over something as stupid as tardiness. No, we were just talking about college and his stuff for debate team. Lots of informal stuff, really.”

              Caleb retracted his power as he moved out of range. ‘Was it really necessary to lie to him about that?’

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              ‘She’s being really nosey lately,’ Caleb noted to himself while dropping the phone to his flat chest. ‘Fifth lap. Expensive shoes, I bet. It’s good that somebody gets to use this old stadium. Well, besides me. Still, he’s not bothering me.’

              He traced the outline of a passing cloud with his finger. ‘I’m wasting my time here. When’s the last time I didn’t think that? Here, at home, doesn’t matter. Jeez, what’s wrong with me? What, do I really think my time would be better spent doing? Seriously, pick anything and I’ll get into it, Brain. Sewing? Sports? Shuffleboard?’

              The man circled the track for the sixth time as Caleb’s phone vibrated.

              “Do I know what I want to do tonight,” he whispered aloud. ‘Good God Carol, will you please text normally? You’ve got a better vocabulary than me and it’s your free period; what exactly is your inhibiting factor?’ He sighed as the sun was caught behind another cloud. His back straightened until he was sitting upright on the squeaking metal bleacher of the outdoor stadium. ‘Don’t take it out on her. Being around her is the only time I don’t feel like a waste. My power and her. That’ll be with me forever, but I can’t lose her. That part’s up to me.’

              The man was still rounding off his seventh lap as Caleb strolled down the stairs and through the back entrance to the school. ‘Answer her. She already sent me another one….’ “I could pick you up right from school,” he whispered again while carelessly rearranging the contents of his locker in the crowded hall. ‘No, no, no not a chance.’ He typed away into his phone and quickly sent the message. ‘I’ve got to get out of here now. Tell her I raced home for something. Absolutely no way I’m letting her see me like this.’

              His phone vibrated again.

              Caleb skipped down the school steps and weaved past the kids blocking his way. ‘Dodged a hail of bullets there.’ He slid his cell phone back into his pocket. ‘Calm down. Deep breaths. She won’t be finding out anything today. Carol coming to pick me up directly from school: very bad idea. The trouble brought with that would be akin to a blitzkrieg. Why am I still like this? Knowing her for years and sharing intimacy doesn’t buy her a small window into my life?’ That question plagued him as he jogged around the corner and down Flax Street. The sidewalks were mostly deserted because of the construction that was happening at the same time, making his jog not seem as out of place. Across from the furthest edge of the largest bank in town he accelerated and veered off the sidewalk into another construction site. ‘This one doesn’t seem as urgent as the other site. That one’s chugging right along while this one has rusting equipment all over the place. People are there every day after school, but never here. Oh well, no complaints from me….

              ‘Not going to focus on Carol now?’ He sighed out a heavy breath as his pace quickened enough so his legs, deep in power, could bend slightly and vault the eight-foot fence, over the cliff overlooking his very elementary set-up, and down just inside some of his fallen markers. The steep climb back to the fence served as a fitting protectorate from wandering people curious of the acts he practiced while barrels rusted against tanned dirt away from his stance, both beside where his shoes felt the tickling comfort of grass on the left. Two bulldozers and a cement truck were left to their stationary devices yards ahead for what looked like a while now. ‘Not much time for idle staring today. Carol will be at your house in a bit. Set your alarm and reset the markers.’ The shadow of his dirt mountain cooled him as he laid his phone out of the danger zone. This simple set was comprised of little flags on sticks that marked off twenty yards in front of him: his goal for the extent of his power. ‘I’ve been stretching and pushing it. I think I should look at applications today.’

              Caleb’s neck and fingers crackled as a deep inhale came in and out, allowing his power to flow freely. The world was dipped into a vat of color, emerging with an extra dimension added; every action creating a colored wave of reactions that bounced from a fine mesh wrapping the world in constant time. An orb with the slightest blue light could be seen surrounding him. He assumed his relaxed stance in the center of his markers and began to push and flex his power to its maximum area; the blue steadily gaining wattage and spread as more energy flowed. His emotionless face didn’t contort or try to force anything; he was still a picture of relaxed precision with every gained inch. Pushing, feeling; his senses became massive tentacles that moved and stretched to intermingle with everything around him. Everything from the earth beneath him to the air he breathed came to his mind in droves as he felt himself getting stronger and his muscles tighten. Harmony came to him between his mind, body and soul; a balanced scale that added weight to each golden cradle in equal amounts as the crux rose further and further up the mountainside. Feeling his limit coming on, he slowed his advance and gazed through his bright eyes. Within this new bubble of strength, everything was under his control. He glanced at his markers and saw he was at the very edge of nine yards, an all-time high for him.

              “Getting there,” his inner voice echoed against the walls of his brightly extended globe. Deep blue fiercely cut the air at the furthest fallen marker while his stance relaxed slightly. Very little pride made it past his inner sanctum simply because he knew there was nothing to celebrate yet. Caleb’s feet carried him toward the grouping of barrels as a joyless smile came to his face. Each old barrel sat on the edge of a patch of grass curling around the gravel he treaded on now, and as he approached, the grass bent over and lay flat as soon as his nine-yard sphere reached the blades, as if the life of the green were laid to rest beneath a blanket. They lay further under his power’s warmth as he moved forward. The barrels soon permeated his spherical haven by his choice, wiggling lightly with his bobbing approach. He lifted one of his arms and concentrated on the closest rusty metal until it started to rock to a greater extent. “Let’s try it.” He refocused and put everything he had into the barrel, large dents beginning to appear and a crunching sound making his mind wince. He dropped the crumpled drum, or the human-head sized heap of metal it had become, to the ground and turned his attention to the second barrel in line. Using much less of his strength, his energy gripped and moved as an extended hand, gently lifting the cylinder off the ground about a foot and settling it back into the grass.

              Another joyless smile came to his lips as he backed up and studied his body and power. To him, everything outside his energized eyes was a shade of blue like the one his eyes exposed every time he fell to this state. He could feel his power waning; the normally perfect ball of energy around him was starting to flux on its own, sending tremors and waves throughout the blue seal between him and the rest of the world. The millions of pebbles under him were being moved to and fro, making everything look as if they were thrown into an ocean during a hurricane. Caleb gazed at his hand. “I do hope this fluxing will fall into my control with more practice,” he said with a voice devoid of emotion. 

              Through his power-enhanced ears, Caleb could hear the ringtone that warned him he had only two minutes to get home. He trotted over, taking care not to harm his phone by creating a deepening crevice the further into his extended field it came. A pile of unbalanced metal and rocks fell behind him. His power flared up again as he turned, but quickly calmed with the beautiful sight of the thunderous waves of sound and motion making their way through the air. Their intricate web of beauty held something else. Eyes squinting, he saw two silhouettes at the end of his power that were, as usual, just out of focus and devoid of any waves. He recognized the smaller outline as it was a frequent visitor in these visions, but the other was larger and unfamiliar to him. The large one began to push and beat on the smaller one. “Reminds me of Stephen. That smaller silhouette isn’t me, though. It’s smaller and more feminine than me. It hugs at the ground as if the dirty bits will save it. Nature surely cares nothing for the desperate beating.

              “Tick Tock.” Caleb nodded at his permeating reminder and placed the thought aside as he slowly retracted power into his body. He reached down for the cell phone, which had been knocked halfway up the dirt slope by his power explosion, and did some math in his head. To have the opportunity to shower and change, he had about a minute to go two miles to his home. A third, meaningless smile came to his face as he tensed his body and was gone in a second. One second: an amount of time that seemed so fleeting to any other person was an eternity to him simply because he could react so much quicker. That seemingly paramount interval passed, already seeing him leap to the top of the cliff and sprinting away. Ten seconds ticked by as the backstreets began to blur together, his breath remaining steady. Another twenty seconds ticked off the world’s clock with the distance nearly half done. An empty field held a short cut which he took as he began to feel a strain on his power. It was like an aching muscle in his brain that he had to push forward still, but with a final sprint and a jump over a picket fence, he landed and slipped out from under the weight in simultaneous fashion.

              Quickly looking at the digital time on his phone, not even a minute had ticked by. ‘Pretty sure that’s another record, gotta start timing myself.’ He stood there for a second to catch his loosing breath. ‘My intestines are boiling and my skin’s goosey. There it goes…it’s setting in now. My brain’s confused. Get inside, regulate your body temperature. Should’ve transitioned slower. Why the heck did I push myself when I knew I was weak? God you’ve done this for months now and you still can’t get the transition right. The air turns to poison when you don’t learn fast enough; lukewarm becomes lava hot and ice cold at the same time. Stay up legs! Left, right, repeat c’mon. Too much stimulus for my body to take.’ A grimace came to his sweaty face as he walked forward with wobbly strides the last thirty yards to his house. He glanced around as both legs buckled with each step. ‘Nobody saw. What would you do anyways? You’re breaking down just walking.’ Painfully aware of his sudden state, he walked through his front door and hobbled through the living room. “How was your day, Caleb?”

              His mother’s voice came from one of the rooms on the second floor, but he didn’t have the energy to climb the stairs and see her. ‘No more tests. Your health may be at risk here.’ “Talk in a minute. In pain right now.”

              Caleb didn’t bother waiting for her response as he limped to the downstairs bathroom. His clothes flew off as gingerly as possible and he stepped into fresh pellets of cold water that sprang from his command. He didn’t even bother turning up the heat. He, in fact, kept it as cold as possible and let it run over his body like a waterfall. ‘First time showering after practice. This is sweet.’ The water almost sizzled as it hit his skin, half of it misting while the surviving droplets barely experienced the tumble from his body. ‘Good thing I love the cold.’ The ocean blue tiles surrounding him, mixed with the cold, gave him the illusion of being in an arctic setting; his mind suddenly took him there: ‘The sun would make little difference against your bare skin in the white desert. My hands are relaxed even as the wind howls between my solid body and arms, all the while the oceans are frozen in time and local blizzards are anarchic against it. My eyes and I would be the only change in shade between the color of the whitened abyss and the filtered sunlight; a flashlight in Judecca.’ 

              That illusion entertained him for the rest of his shower. Upon emerging from the plexiglass cage, Caleb wrapped a towel around his waist and went to the mirror. His hand ran through his hair as some version of a comb before he checked his face for blemishes, one of his muscles catching his eye. Backing away from the mirror, he began to tense his upper body. He began noticing emerged contours of his biceps, the curve of his triceps and deltoids, and the six odd divots signaling his abdominals. ‘Looking pretty good. How in the hell can I lift those things when I’m not even the biggest guy in school?’