Jackson Humes is Not a Superhero

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Officer Velasquez jumped forward with her hands held up in front of her and spoke in a firm voice. "For God's sake Richards put your gun away, he's not a danger to either of us."

The burly cop lowered his weapon with a low growl of protest. I'd grown accustomed to his disdain toward me, but I decided to play it safe and flew higher up into the air in case he got any funny ideas. Now that his initial shock had passed, his poker face slid securely back into place. The only clue that gave his panic away were his eyes, which were a little too wide and scanned the area around me a little too quickly.

"Now Chris," she said, "I need you to listen carefully to what I am about to tell you."

It took her a considerable amount of time to finally win his complete attention because his gaze kept shifting up to where I was hovering. At one point she even asked me to come down so that he wouldn't be distracted, but I stood my ground. Well, metaphorically at least. When she finally brought him up to speed, she asked me to fly around the room a few times like a show pony, so that he would see I wasn't being held up by wires or that we weren't playing some kind of weird prank on him. I happily obliged, satisfied by the sudden look of indigestion on his round, jowly face.

Officer Richards shook his great big head "I knew there was something wrong with you from the moment I saw you. I'm never wrong about these things." He didn't say it in a mean or accusing way, it was more matter-of-fact.

"It's not his fault this is happening to him," she said speaking up on my behalf. He was clearly prejudiced against the superhero-ly abled. I suspected that Officer Velasquez was the only thing keeping him from either shooting me or calling in the National Guard. I had to make sure I was never left alone in a room with him. Like, ever.

"So what's the plan?" he asked, motioning with his chin toward the bag full of weapons on the ground. "Are we going to storm into this underground lab with no back up and go against who knows what?"

I took the time to practice some tricky maneuvers. I slowly flew forward while rotating in a circle (not unlike a rotisserie chicken). I was on my twentieth spin and felt very dizzy so I stopped and closed my eyes. "You won't be alone," I called down at them.

There was a long pause before he spoke up again. "You can't be serious; we can't bring a kid into this."

"It's complicated," I didn't have to see her to know Officer Velasquez was probably glaring at me at the moment, "but he's going to come with us. He may even prove himself to be useful."

My stomach was still a little queasy from all the spinning, so I adjusted myself into a standing position in the air. I instantly felt better.

"You're going to get him killed," he argued, "although in this case that might be a plus."

She gave him a withering look that made his shoulders slump a little. She was incredibly effective at being menacing for someone so petite. Officer Richards threw his hands up in defeat and asked how he could help. He followed her over to the cabinet and let out a low whistle when he saw the cache of weapons. I could have sworn I caught a glimpse of a hand grenade of some sort being stuffed into one of the bags. The severity of what we were going to do came crashing down on me. Suddenly, I wasn't feeling so brave.

Officer Velasquez, whose first name I found out was Grace, pulled her hair back up into a bun and slipped into some sort of bulletproof tactical gear. She handed Officer Richards the largest size available, but he didn't look very comfortable. The term sausage casing came to mind. I smiled in spite of the anxiety I was feeling and almost got hit in the face with the vest she tossed at me. After struggling with it, I finally had to come out of the air and let her help me put it on.