kent

barry allen

Carly is fifteen. It is a Saturday night in her freshman year and while she knows how to roll with the punches when engaged in battle, high school has proved to be an entirely different beast, and she isn’t quite sure how to avoid being pummeled by the essay that she is meant to be writing.

She gives the essay a good five minutes and manages to write a lackluster thesis statement that just manages to get the job done before rewarding herself with a YouTube video that lasts twice as long as her work efforts. Somehow, those ten minutes seem to be ten times shorter than the time spent on the essay. However, since Carly has some sort of work ethic, she manages to pull herself out of the vortex of YouTube before she can be fully consumed and clicks back onto her opened Word document.

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, as if the right words are printed on the back of her eyelids. Carly places her hands on the keyboard and presses the shift key, willing the next letter to be typed. She pictures a sentence in her mind and deems it worthy of being written. She moves her fingers and finally jabs her third finger triumphantly on the period key. Carly reads over the sentence she typed and decides that some things sound much better in her head than on paper. The string of words are deleted much more quickly than they had appeared.

Carly slumps over on her desk.The world is continuously in the process of ending, so in the grand scheme of things, she can’t find a good enough point to write an essay over some ancient Shakespearean melodrama. She looks out her window, half hoping that the apocalypse will hit now, because surely that would cause her homework to be unassigned. But alas, there are no fires or meteors or flying elephants.

Her cellphone buzzes, and Carly peels her face off of the desk. It’s a text from Isaac. It’s no apocalypse, but it is good enough. Carly now has a legitimate excuse to leave her hardly started essay in favor for something much more enticing. She is halfway through her window and heading towards the skyscrapers before she has even finished reading the text.

The night beckons, and it is far more entrancing than any essay or any YouTube video. Still, she somehow remembers to grab her mask out of the depths of her closet before sliding her window open yet again.

The bright lights lay ahead. Isaac waits patiently for her and she’s off. The cursor blinking on her still opened Word document is quickly forgotten.

----

Carly finds Isaac with his back turned towards her. The wind dances through his hair, and he relaxes back into the passing air current. His head turns as his eyes sweep across the city. Scenarios play inside his head. There are so many adventures to be had, so many things to be done, and he can have them all.

She floats towards him and eventually Carly’s feet tap onto the surface of the skyscraper. Genesis’s eyes twitch over to her- his eyes vivid and alert, and suddenly his being is transformed from laidback to excited. He holds his hand out, gesturing to the entirety of the never-sleeping. “This is the city we protect.”

Carly frowns at his obvious statement. The change in her facial features is noticeable enough that Genesis picks up on it. He holds up a finger, “Just bear with me. I’m not quite done yet.”

He jumps onto the guardrail. His heels precariously hanging over the edge, not that it matters for someone like him. “What’s the point of protecting New York if we can’t enjoy it? Look at it. It’s beautiful.” His eyes never leave hers. “There’s so much to explore. So much potential. And I’m not going to protect something that I don’t love properly. It’s my birthday. Let’s fall in love.”

“Happy Birthday,” she mumbles, her words catching in the wind. His last sentence echoes in her head, and she can only hope that he means to fall in love with the city. She is capable of that.