Earthian

Exposure

Saturday morning. I’ve been lying in bed for an hour or two, begrudgingly awake with an arm draped over my face to guard against the light… to blot out this stupid day.

All I can think about is the sight of Helena Moore dangling from her fingertips, the street so far below that I could swear we were in orbit. How long would that fall have taken? Minutes? Hours? Would she have run out of breath before she hit?

I want to sleep but I just can’t manage to shut off. My body knows it’s time to get up, despite my brain’s furious disagreement.

That’s when I hear it. June is shouting something unintelligible and I can hear other voices murmuring. She isn’t angry. This is her excited voice.

I honestly prefer an angry June.

I roll over and put my feet on the floor, and I have that feeling like I woke up in the wrong house. The lighting’s a little off and the air feels weird. This is going to be another one of those memories that really burns itself into me. I just know it.

“Jason!” June shouts down the hallway. Something hits my door with a thud. Rolled up socks, I’d wager.

And I’m up. I stretch, and after all the challenges I’ve taken recently, every bit of me feels like a loose guitar string. Slackened, sloppy, funky. My shoulder pops, and it sounds a little too much like my dad’s… which sounds like a walnut being smashed under a cement truck. That can’t be a good sign, can it?

I throw some clothes on, but my eye catches for just a second on an old toy on the shelf. It’s the Orange Prism Trooper, and I know he should be stored away somewhere but he hasn’t gotten there quite yet.

The guy in the show… I bet his shoulder didn’t pop like that at my age, and he fought giant rubber monsters once a week. Orange Trooper, how’d you do it?

Then I head off to investigate all the commotion. I step through the door and I can already see June bouncing and jumping like a puppy begging for a treat. It’s safe to say I’m having second thoughts about coming out of my room, but it’s too late now. I’m ensnared.

“Jason!” my mother says, while waving me over. She looks absolutely immaculate, as always; not a wrinkle out of place, or a single flyaway hair. “There’s something going on with Audition!” she says.

I suddenly recognize one of the things that’s odd today. Everyone’s here. No one is out at a challenge.

I stumble out, rubbing my eyes, and I can only imagine what a spiky mess my hair must be. Susan Villalobos is on the big screen in the living room, but her streams usually aren’t on until prime time.

“…and we here at News Focus promise that all of your questions will be answered. Again, this is a breaking report, and we’re proud to have it exclusively, due to…”

Man, I hate the news.

“What’s going on?” I grumble.

“Don’t know anything yet,” my father says. “Not really.” Inside his square-framed glasses, his eyes are lit up like I haven’t seen in a long time. “The challenges have all stopped, though. Maybe they’re announcing winners.”

Or maybe they’re announcing the next level.

“What do you think they win?” Mom wonders out loud.

Dad is all over it. “A trip to Hawaii,” he says in a giddy voice, and I’m left wondering if he switched from tea to coffee this morning.

“I hope it’s a new car,” Mom says dreamily. It’s hard to overstate how much she hates her car. She says its computer has a bad attitude, and she refuses to drive it.