THREE
I pace the hall. I tremble from my core and all the way out to my limbs.
In one short year there, I’d seen a few new girls come to Superior High, girls who got shipped in from across the country for the “community” and hadn’t been around those asshole boys for their whole lives, so they didn’t know any better. I heard the jeers of, “Hey, sweetie, you know I’ve got X-ray vision, right? Might as well take it all off right now.” I saw superhuman strength used in threats against girls, veiled or not-so-veiled.
In junior high, Patrick Ryan, who could make people do anything he wanted by talking to them, convinced a girl to drive away with him in his car. The next day, she came to school dressed in the same clothes as the day before, and everyone knew what had happened with her. Her brother kicked the shit out of Patrick, but still.
I was relatively normal when I got to Superior High. Even tried to dress cute for my first day. Sean Cooper, the quarterback, started watching me, and a few days later, he was talking to me kind of a lot. Everything was fine until I realized his Super was strength.
One afternoon in an emptying hallway, he stood so close he forced me back against my locker and put his hand on my shoulder, and I realized everyone else was gone. He leaned down to kiss me, and everything closed in on me, and I told him to stop, but…
His thumb pressed on my cheek, and his breath steamed in my face, suffocating me. I tried to struggle away from him, but I guess he was angry that I didn’t want to kiss him because rage flooded his face, and he glared straight into my eyes as he dug his thumbs into my shoulders. The only way I stood a chance against his iron grip was a swift knobby knee to the balls.
Sometimes I still feel the bruises he left there, like they’ve been pressed into my bones.
Michael and Max were only in the third grade and too young to kick his ass, though they would have loved the chance. I never told them about it. Never told Mom and Dad either. They only thought I was having some pretty serious popularity problems, which, if they noticed how I started dressing after that day, made perfect sense.
Ever since then, I’ve hated to look right into a guy’s eyes. No matter how beautiful they are.
When I hop back in the car with Dad after last bell, I finally feel like I can take a deep breath. Even though I’ve always hated having to remember to plug in the damn electric car, I do love that it lets us ride home in silence. I park myself at the kitchen counter while Dad starts dinner.
My eyes flash to the vintage Public Super Service poster on the kitchen wall. A little girl flies up to a tree branch to rescue a kitten. Below the pigtailed heroine and the unbearably cute kitten, the poster reads, “Supers: Making the World a Better Place.” I know that Mom and Dad bought that poster 10 years ago, when I first went light, and had it framed for our kitchen. Probably hung it with tears in their eyes. That girl was supposed to be me.
“Do you want to talk about it? Your first day?” Mom calls as she enters the house, carefully setting her briefcase on the big bench in the hall. The boys’ shouts fill the back of the house. Mom sighs and walks over the kitchen counter, looking as exhausted as I feel.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I say, shoving a piece of licorice in my mouth and a pack of snack cakes in my bag for tomorrow. I don’t mention history class. As awful as that holo-lecture was, it wouldn’t be as bad as going back to Superior. And besides, I know how to think for myself. My grandparents met in one of those camps. I already know they were less than comfortable, less than humane. I don’t need to sit in a school where I really don’t belong so a teacher can tell me the same thing.
