Searching for You

The Search Begins

I kept rubbing my forearm, which was still sore from arm wrestling Adam. To be fair, anyone's arm would be sore from arm wrestling him. It would actually most likely be broken. The fact that mine was only sore was an accomplishment. 

I entered my house, shutting the door behind me. Mom looked up at me from the sink where she was washing dishes.

"Welcome home, kiddo," she greeted. "How was school?"

It still felt really weird to hear my mom talk to me normally. I was so used to having her yell at me. But, to be honest, I liked the change. Who wouldn't? Landon was more willing to come out of his room, Mom was happier and more lenient, everything was supposedly normal.

But we still didn't know where Dad was.

"School was meh," I replied. I slung my backpack off of my shoulder and winced as it came in contact with my right arm.

Mom stopped washing dishes for a moment when she saw my pain and narrowed her eyes. She wiped her hands on a towel and then placed them on her hips. "Why are you hurt?"

I sighed. "Arm wrestled with Adam," I explained.

"You were at the Davenports' after school?"

"Yes Ma'am."

She moved to the table and sat down, gesturing for me to do the same. I complied, pulling a chair out from the table and taking a seat. I sighed and propped my arms up on the table, telling her what happened in the lab. Her eyes grew wide as I told her about the arm wrestle and what I was doing. I had never seen her that impressed before.

"Okay, so refresh me," she said. "Adam's the one with the insane super strength. Right?"

"Right."

She started listing them off on her fingers. "Adam can also burn things with his eyes and cause a massive shockwave. Bree . . ."

". . . has super speed and the ability to mimic anyone's voice," I finished for her.

"Right. And Chase is the one with the shield, super smarts and molecular kinesis."

"You got it all right."

"Okay, cool." She folded her hands on the table in front of her. She smirked. "And you made Adam try to beat you in an arm wrestle. I'm impressed."

"Thanks," I said with a smile. 

I looked down at my hands as I remembered what exactly I was supposed to be doing. I met my mom's eyes.

"Do you have those papers I asked for?"

She nodded and stood, disappearing into her room for a moment. When she was out of sight, I heard a door open and was bombarded with a massive hug from my little brother, Landon Strickland. He squeezed me tightly around the neck, almost making me choke.

"Hey, kiddo! How was school today?" I asked him.

"It was super super great!" he cheered, looking up at me and smiling. "I got a star on my math homework!"

"That's awesome!" I high-fived him.

"Did you go see the superheroes after school?"

"I did, yeah."

"What did they say?"

I sighed. "They don't know anything yet," I admitted. "But, I did get to arm wrestle Adam."

Landon's eyes grew wide with wonder. "Did you win?"

"No. But I made him actually try harder."

"Cool!"

The sound of shuffling footsteps stopped our conversation and we both looked up to see Mom walking back into the dining room. A stack of papers were in her hands, clutched tightly like she were holding a Bible. Landon's mouth opened in a big O and he left me and took his own seat at the table, leaning in to get a better look at what Mom had.

She placed the papers down on the table and spread them out. My interest piqued, I leaned in too. The papers were mostly pictures, but there were some cutouts of newsletters and screenshots from social media. They were gathered from what seemed like years and years of searching online. How long, exactly, I didn't know.

Mom pulled her chair back out and sat down, gesturing to the pictures and articles. "These are all of my attempts on finding your father over the years," she stated, "just like you asked."

I inhaled sharply as I scanned every single detail. Some were social media posts of kids on vacation in New York with a circle drawn around my dad's head in the background. Apparently he hadn't anticipated potentially photo bombing selfie-takers and tourists. So much for "keeping a low profile" and "not wanting to be found."

"When did you stop looking?" I inquired.

"Right after you went into middle school," she replied. "Right after you discovered your own powers."

Right, I thought. That makes sense. 

And in all actuality, it did make sense. Mom was searching for answers as to why my dad left us, trying to find some genuine reason as to why he wouldn't want to see us anymore. And after discovering that her own daughter had the same sort of freakish powers her husband did, Mom assumed she had found the reason and thus began to hate me. Because she thought I was the reason he left her.

I picked up a cutout of a newspaper, reading it carefully. It was an article about an abandoned school building in Westchester. By the looks of the picture attached to the article, the building definitely had to have popped up around the '20s or '30s, around the time World War 2 started. It looked super old. It also looked like it used to be some sort of mansion before it turned into a school. It was way too fancy for any random private school.

It looked like it belonged to a prince.

There was a sign in front of the school and it read "Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters". I groaned. What on earth did this have to do with my dad?

I flipped the paper around for my mom to see it. "Why is this in the stack?" I sighed. "There's nothing about Dad on it."

Mom gave me a cheeky grin. "Look again."

I raised an eyebrow and turned the page back over, scanning it carefully. My eyes landed on something my rain refused to comprehend. There was no way. There couldn't be a way for this to be true.

But yet there it was.

Circled in light pencil with an hand-drawn arrow pointing to it.

"Can I see?" Landon asked eagerly, rushing behind me and peering over my shoulder.

I barely even registered he was there beside me. My brain was too focused on what was right in front of me; the doubt, the fear, the overwhelming joy and relief. Why relief, you may ask? Because the date of the article was recent. Only a few months ago.

"You started looking again," I realized aloud, gaining a nod from my mom.

And I will never forget why I looked at that newspaper in such a way. It was because I saw clearly what was circled in pencil. There, standing behind the wall trying to conceal himself but failing miserably, was a tall man with brown hair and glasses.

Dad.

"He's still in New York."

But now the question was, would he continue to stay in New York?

Hey guys! Sorry for the late update, a lot has been going on this week. It's so crazy that "He's Just a Kid" has reached over 500 reads!! That's insane, thank you sooooo much! All that being said, I hope you enjoyed this chapter as much as I did, and hopefully I'll be able to update more regularly now.