Worm (Parahumans #1)

Chapter 2: Gestation 1.2

My thoughts were on Emma on the bus ride home. For an outside observer, I think it's easy to trivialize the importance of a 'best friend', but when you're a kid, there's nobody more important. Emma had been my 'BFF' from grade one all the way through middle school. It hadn't been enough for us to spend our time together at school, so we had alternated staying at each others houses every weekend. I remember my mother saying that we were so close we were practically sisters.

A friendship that deep is intimate. Not in the rude way, but just in terms of a no-holds-barred sharing of every vulnerability and weakness.

So when I got back from nature camp just a week before our first year at high school started, to find that she wasn't talking to me? That she was calling Sophia her best friend? Discovering that she was now using every one of those secrets and vulnerabilities I had shared with her to wound me in the most vicious ways she could think of? It was crushing. There's just no better way to say it.

Unwilling to dwell on it any longer, I turned my attention to my backpack, setting it on the seat beside me and sorting through the contents. Grape juice had stained it, and I had a suspicion I would have to get a new one. I had bought it just four months ago, after my old one had been taken from my locker, and it had been just twelve bucks, so it wasn't a huge issue. The fact that my notebooks, textbooks and the two novels I'd shoved into my bag were wet with grape juice was more troubling. I suspected that whichever girl had been holding the grape juice had aimed for the open top of my bag as she poured it. I noted the destruction of my art project - the box I'd put it in was collapsed on the one side. That bit was my fault.

My heart sank as I found the notebook with the white and black speckled hardcover. The corner of the paper was soaked through with as much as a quarter of each page stained purple. The ink had diluted and the pages were already turning wavy.

That notebook was - had been - my notes and journal for my hero career. The testing and training I'd done with my powers, pages of crossed out name ideas, even the measurements I was using for my costume in progress. After Emma, Madison and Sophia had stolen my last backpack and stuffed it in a wastebasket, I had realized how big a danger it was to have everything written down like that. I had copied everything over into a new notebook in a simple cipher and wrote it bottom to top. Now that notebook was spoiled, and I was looking at having to copy some two hundred pages of detailed writing into a new notebook if I wanted to preserve the information. If I could even remember what was on all of the ruined pages.

The bus stopped a block away from my house, and I got off, trying to ignore the stares. Even with the gawking, the knowledge that my notebook was ruined and my general nervousness about missing afternoon classes without permission, I felt better as I got closer to home. It felt worlds better to know I could drop my guard, stop watching my back and that I could take a break from wondering when the next incident would happen. I let myself into the house and headed straight for the shower, not even removing my backpack or taking off my shoes until I was in the bathroom.

I stood under the stream with my clothes on the floor of the tub, hoping the water would help get the worst of the juice out. I pondered. I don't know who said it, but at one point I had come across this notion about taking a negative and turning it into a positive. I tried to take the day's events and turn them around in my head, to see if I couldn't find a more positive twist on it.

Okay, so the first thing that came to mind was "Yet another reason to kill the trio." It wasn't a serious thought - I was angry, but it wasn't like I was going to actually kill them. Somehow, I suspected that I'd hurt myself before I hurt them. I was humiliated, frustrated, pissed, and I always had a weapon available - my power. It was like having a loaded gun in your hand at all times. Except my power wasn't that great, so maybe it was more like having a taser. It was hard not to think about using it when things got really bad. Still, I didn't think I had that killer instinct in me.