To the 4th Power (Open Novella Contest 2)

Inherited

Sophia. Adam. Francis. Eugene. Those were our heroes names. I just knew it. It had to be them. For generations I had been passed down from parent to child. By the time I got to Francis Brown's possession I was desperate. So desperate, in fact, that I decided to interfere for the first time in centuries. Before, I thought that fate would take care of everything but I learned that this assumption was wrong. In the past, every time an inheritor found me it was too late. They had seen too much of the bad in the world to be receptive to me. Not to mention they were always alone. There couldn't be just one hero. The power was too strong and the enemy too great. There needed to be more than one. There needed to be four.

That's why I decided to interfere after all these centuries. Luckily, I had spent upwards of ten years in the closet of Francis Brown and I knew what made her tick. I also knew that if I didn't act right at that moment it would be too late. She would be too jaded. The four of them were already too far apart. They had already spent thirteen years growing up in a place that required you to keep to yourself. So, I did what I had to do. I took what was most important to Francis and then I became what she would need most.

"Mama! Where's my picture?" Francis asked as she tore through her room looking for something before school.

"What picture?" Jennifer Camson, Francis's mother asked in a rush. She was too busy scrambling to get ready for work to give her full attention to her daughter. 

"The one of me and Danny! The one I always keep on the table by my bed!" Francis's hair was half done and her school clothes were crumpled on the floor. She didn't care. That picture was the most important thing she owned. That's why I had to take it.

"You'll miss the bus! Get down here right now!" Jennifer had just managed to find her car keys and place two pieces of bread in the toaster for her daughter's breakfast. There wasn't time for anything else.

"My picture!"

"You forgot where you put it! Find it after school." Time was up. If Jennifer didn't leave right that second she would be late for work, again.

"I always keep it in the same place! I could never lose it! It's too important!" Francis got no answer. Her mother had already left for work, chalking her child's screams up to the irrational hystarics of youth. Tantrums she often called them. 

The toast popped up from the toaster and the squeaky wheels of an out of date school bus sounded outside. Francis was distraught over her missing photo but she knew better than to miss the school bus. She feared facing her mother's wrath if she didn't make it to school. She pulled on some pants from her bedroom floor and grabbed the toast as she ran for the bus. 

She made it. Of course she did. It would have been irresponsible of me to cause Francis to miss even a single day of her education. Getting her in trouble once she got to school, however, was exactly what I wanted to do.

"Wake up on the nasty side of the bed this mornin'?" Sophia Brown asked from the bus seat across from Francis. On further inspection, Francis noticed she was still wearing her pajama shirt, complete with last night's sleep slobber on the collar. The pants she had chosen at random were the ones from yesterday. It was a particularly rainy day and there was dried mud all over the pants. Ignoring Sophia, Francis pulled a scrunchie out of her backpack and forced her kinky, brown hair into a ponytail.

"As black women we owe it to ourselves to always look our best. Otherwise society will look down on us." Sophia sarcastically repeated a phrase that her mother often said. Francis continued to ignore her while she tried to rub the slobber stain off her shirt.

"I guess it's hard to look nice when you only have a mom at home and she's too busy to tell you when you look a mess." Sophia added.

"What did you just say?" Francis asked through angrily gritted teeth. The two girls had many things in common. They shared a neighborhood, living only a block apart. Both had the same home room. At Fullester Downes Middle School students were assigned to home room classes by alphabetical order of last name. Francis and Sophia shared a last name because, most importantly, they shared a father. Francis was born first. Sophia came along three months later.