Superhero Effects

4. INVESTIGATE ME, I DARE YA

Cooper's eyes met mine for the briefest of seconds as he smiled politely and said, "Nice to meet you." He looked back to Peggy, and I relaxed. "I hope I can live up to the Spotlight's reputation."

Then, it was over. He left with the promise to return for the meeting after school.

Peggy turned to me after the door closed and fanned her flushed face. "Isn't he the dreamiest thing that has ever walked the halls?"

I wiggled my eyebrows and then pretended to focus on the computer in front of me, logging onto the school's website.

Was I absolutely nuts? The answer came up clear and sharp. No, I wasn't. Not in the slightest. And last night's wild ride down to the ground was no nightmare. But—they must have expected me to think it was such a thing.

Lucy... I was no Lucy. I knew who I was, and I had years of journals to prove it. I had never seen such weird things as I had last night in my life. So, what was going on?

I opened a new browser as my goosebumps began to fade, went to the Conquer News website, and searched muggings.

"The vigilantes," I said, glancing up briefly as Peggy looked over a print of Heidi and Micki's latest gossip column. "Have you been able to find out anything else about them?"

"Google vigilantes," she said, her eyes still on the sheet. "Five cities throughout the US in the last year reported similar muggings with reports of masked vigilantes intervening. You don't hear of them interfering with any other sort of crime."

I nodded and went back to the articles.

If Cooper wanted to pretend everything was hunky-dory and that he didn't try to kill me less than twenty-four hours ago, cool. I could pretend too and get Peggy the story of a lifetime.
***
My first class was History, where the essay that nearly caused me to lose my sanity was handed in at the door to my teacher's waiting hand. "This," he said, stepping in my way for a moment, stopping the small trail of students waiting to hand in theirs and take a seat, "better be up to par."

I waited to roll my eyes after I passed and walked to my seat next to Archer, whose eyes were on his phone.

"You're squinting," I said. "Did you see an optometrist yet?"

He only looked up when I reached over, leaning over the arm of my desk, and covered the screen with my hand. "I don't need to see an optometrist."

"Really? Because squinting while you read is a sign that you need some reading glasses. I bet you get headaches when you try to read too." He frowned. "That's what started happening to me, remember? Permanently strained my eyes by looking at things up close too much." I shrugged. "Bound to happen to all of us eventually."

"Trust me, T, I don't need glasses," he assured me.

The classroom door shut with a bang and all side conversations ended abruptly.

Mr. Floyd positioned himself in front of the desks with the stack of essays waving lazily in his grip. "These," he said, "better be the work of diligent Conquer Prep students who used the allotted two weeks to complete these essays and not a mere one day." His eyes roamed over the quiet class, and then he continued towards his desk and plopped the stack down before turning to us with a sigh. "We'll pick up where we left off yesterday."

If they awarded a grumpiest teacher award at the end of the school year, Mr. Floyd would win hands down every time. It was the case of: if you disliked your job so much, why bother? He assigned the most unfair assignments and reveled in handing out bad grades and then going off on a tangent about how our wealthy parents needed to focus more on teaching us life lessons than buying us things.