An Unmasked Hero

An Unmasked Hero Part One

The Un-Masked Hero

Before I begin, there is something I must make clear to you. This is a story of a hero, but it is not an ordinary story of heroism. This is not a tale of a knight in gleaming, polished armour saving an exotic princess from the mouth of a hideous, fire breathing dragon. This is not an account of a masked vigilante ridding the rotting streets of his beloved city of the filthy underbelly of organized crime. This is not even an anecdote about a poor, oppressed citizen who decides to take a stand against tyranny, like a modern David against Goliath. This may be a fictitious story, but it is one based on truth. The truth is that knights in shining armour end up scorched to death. Vigilantes are murdered by thugs in their sleep or sent to decrepit prisons by courts of law. And David is always crushed to purple jelly by the unyielding weight of Goliath. The real world is harsher, grittier, and dirtier and that is the truth.

Lynn May was nothing if not well acquainted with the truth. In the entire world there could not have been a quieter, more reserved girl. There was no one that knew her, except for her closest relatives, but there was no one that really cared either. Lynn used her voice so little there had been speculation from her classmates on its non-existence. When asked a question in class she would nod or shake her head. When that wasn’t sufficient she would cringe and curl her head and her arms into a ball on her desk, nothing more could be pried from her. Her fellow students believed her to be gothic or anti-social, but they all attended a fancy, reputable academy in Boston. All the children dressed head to toe in smart, conservative uniforms. No, for Lynn, the white make-up and black lip-stick was implied, the hood was insinuated, but the brick wall between her and the rest of the world was real enough to block all but the wind from reaching her. When she walked down a crowded hall, the blotches of students would separate, making a distinct passage for her, all trying to avoid her gaze. It was reminiscent of Moses parting the Red Sea, but it was clear no one would worship Lynn. To all she was a nebulous ambiguous figure, more mysterious and less understood than the surface of Pluto.

The O’Hare Academy of the Arts was a sparkling, beautifully ornamented building, perfect for the higher caliber of people that attended it. It was right across the street from the public school, the building was twice as large and held half the students, was thirty years younger, and was inhabited by teachers that were paid three times the salary as their counterparts that said and did exactly the same thing, only to poorer children. It was one day, reasonable pleasant for a Monday, at that fine private institution that Lynn May met the hero of this story, Peter Kelley, or as his less than affectionate followers had dubbed him, Pudgy Peter.

The drab and rather prosaic lecture that their science teacher had been giving about something that was probably already outdated and would be of no use to anyone listening (which didn’t really matter since most of his students were texting or participating in various gaming tournaments on their mobile devices) was finally wrapping up and Lynn was actually looking forward to her sculpting class when Mr. Gwenct decided to end with some rather dubious words.

“And as for this week’s project, all of you will be partnered off as shown (Mr. Gwenct opened up a file on his smart board). You and your partner will choose one of the following spatial anomalies. You will both research and give a six to eight minute presentation about how they are formed and what their features are to the class. You will be marked both on Content and Collaboration, make sure you fill out your reflection sheets so I can see who did what. Due on Friday, no exceptions.”

There were few words other than “time to die!” that could have elicited a stronger response from Lynn. The assignment itself started Lynnʼs mind in a tailspin, but then she met her partner. With his hair neatly combed to a style last fashionable in the fall of 1958, and his face nearly covered by two awful, behemoth lenses connected by some shanty piece of wire that made him look more a skyscraper with two huge windows on the top was “Pudgy” Peter Kelley. He was not the leviathan that he been made out to be, but it was obvious that the track and field team wasn’t going to be asking him to fill in for an absent athlete any time soon. Cradling a gigantic pile of books to his chest and pushing up his glasses with his index finger Peter attempted to catch up with Lynn as she scurried to her next class.

“What a great project! All those reports and diagrams they get so dry. But this. I was thinking about a skit. I could be Stephen Hawking discovering the black hole, you could be the Universe, telling me its secrets. Wouldn’t that be great!”

Lynn spun around for almost a second and attempted a smile, which appeared more like a grimace, nodded her head making sure to keep her eyes wide and looking excited. Then she turned back and took very deep breath and ran to the bathroom before everyone could see the tears glistening on her face.