Superpowers (7 page)

EDITOR'S NOTE

Some people need everything explained to them. You can't just dump some girls, because they have to know
why:
what they did wrong, can't it be fixed, how could you whisper all that sweet stuff and then say you never want to see them again. And if you take the time to give an honest answer, there's no way you're going to get any bittersweet breakup sex, so you're better off just cutting them loose and not returning their calls.

So don't think I don't realize that some of you are expecting me to explain how five ordinary college students acquired these extraordinary powers. Well, you're going to have to get used to disappointment. There are two reasons you'd want to know that: first, because you want to know if you can duplicate the results and get some superpowers of your own, which you will then use to carry out your no doubt nefarious plans; second, because you want to see me explain it and then send me smug letters telling me that's impossible, my science is all wrong, I am a moron and should be digging ditches instead of calling myself a journalist.

So even if I knew how this all happened, I wouldn't tell you. I'm not in favor of having a bunch of superhumans running around, and although you might not believe it, I'm thinking of you when I say that. That's the plural
you,
all of you, not just the ones wishing they could sneak into the girls' locker room or break into Fort Knox or cut the morning commute by a factor of ten. You'll see what I mean. For the rest, I haven't got time to read a lot of letters from people whose greatest talent is making their impressive knowledge pale in comparison to their overwhelming arrogance.

So let me say this right now, and anyone who can't handle it can put the book down and go read a nice murder mystery: I'm not going to try to explain how this happened. At no point in this narrative will you find a scientific reason for what is scientifically impossible anyway. Bruce Lee said that an intelligent mind is nourished by the search for answers, and not by conclusions. Maybe you won't be nourished, but you'll have to be satisfied.

FRIDAY

In Cleveland Caroline had worked at a German-themed restaurant where she'd had to wear a dirndl that pushed her breasts up nearly to her chin and men three tables away stared every time she leaned forward to set down a drink. Once a week there was an employee meeting, almost always on days Caroline didn't work. She had to take the bus there after school to sit and listen to the owner say the same things he'd said the week before— push the wurst, spilled beer is lost profits, and his favorite couplet, "If there's time to lean, there's time to clean." Then she took the bus home, by which time it was six o'clock and she had to start dinner.

Meetings were a waste of time. She would have told Mary Beth as much, but there had been only the note: "Meeting 5:30 Friday, the Attic." Caroline wasn't even getting paid for this meeting, and it didn't look like anyone else was going to show up. No one besides Charlie, who sat at the opposite end of the attic, wearing a stupid baseball cap. He'd been there when she'd come in. She'd nodded at him and looked away before she saw whether he nodded back.

The attic of 523 had always been a dusty place, low-ceilinged and with a floor that seemed to be made of thick cardboard. It had three windows, two of which were covered with plywood. Grayness seemed to flake off the walls and into the air, making it difficult to breathe.

Caroline hardly recognized the attic now. Mary Beth had pulled the plywood off of the windows, leaving an open breezeway through which cool air was blowing. She had placed lamps on the bar, set an easel in front of it, and five chairs around that—the kitchen chairs from their apartment, Caroline noticed. A pitcher of ice water sweated on the bar with a tray of glasses and a plate of crackers and cheese.

Caroline cleared her throat, which was—either from the lingering dust or from the thick silence between her and Charlie— clogged with phlegm. "Has your roommate been around?" she asked.

Charlie played with the brim of his cap before answering. Looking at him now it was easy to be angry at herself for sleeping with him. His hair stuck out from beneath the cap in brittle tufts, and his thin beard made him look unwashed, which Caroline was almost certain he was. He wore stained red sweatpants and a T-shirt torn in several places.

He had looked good enough that night, despite his lack of fashion sense; it was actually sort of endearing, how utterly oblivious he was to his appearance. That, and the beer, had gotten her into trouble. It was too bad, because she liked Charlie. But in her experience, sex and friendship didn't mix. It was simpler, and safer, to sleep with guys she didn't particularly like and to dump them when they became insufferable—or, in rare cases, when she actually started to like them.

He was answering her question, and she had to think for a second to remember what she had asked.

"I haven't seen Scott," he said. "Actually, I heard someone moving around in his room last week, so maybe he was here. I didn't go out to look."

"You couldn't tell?" Caroline asked. "I mean, with the, the mind thing?"

"No. I have to be pretty close to someone for it to work."

"So that morning after we . . ."

Before she could go on she heard someone tramping up the stairs behind her. Mary Beth climbed into view, followed by Harriet and Jack.

"Sorry I'm late." Mary Beth handed Caroline a stapled stack of paper. "Took me longer at Kinkos than I thought it would."

"Kinkos?" Caroline looked down at the document she was holding,
OPTIONS FOR SUPERPOWERED INDIVIDUALS,
it read.

Mary Beth handed copies to Harriet and Jack, who blinked at the changed appearance of the attic before taking their seats. Charlie held up a hand as Mary Beth started to approach him.

"Could you just toss it to me?" he said.

Mary Beth flung a handout in his direction. It spun, and the pages flared out to fall in a heap a few feet short of Charlie's chair. He sighed and stood to retrieve it, retreating again quickly to his seat.

Mary Beth took her place in front of the easel. "The handout is just a survey of the different routes I think are open to us, based on my research. Maybe we should take a few minutes right now to look through it."

"Let's just get started," Caroline said.

"All right," Mary Beth said. "The first issue is that of going public or not." She wrote
IDENTITIES: PUBLIC OR SECRET?
on the easel pad. "I see a lot of problems with revealing our identities, but it's worth discussing."

"No it's not," Jack said.

"It might not be a bad idea," Harriet said. "We could control our own destinies that way. No shady government outfit would be able to kidnap us and do tests on us, because they'd be toasted by the public."

"You're assuming the public will love us," Jack said. "They might be terrified."

"It's all in the spin," Harriet said. "I could handle press releases and interviews, minimize the negative publicity."

"You can't control it all," Jack said. "And I don't want the press all over me and my family."

"They'll be all over us anyway, and if we're confidential we'll have no way to answer back," Harriet said. "The police will be after us, too."

"Why the police?" Jack said.

"Vigilantism is against the law."

"It's against the law to help people?"

"No. But if we're going to be anonymous, we can't claim a citizen's arrest. We can't testify in court. We're not going to be enforcing the law, and we might as well face that right now."

Mary Beth wrote
USE PRESS TO ADVANTAGE? PRESS HARRASSING FAMILIES?
and
VIGILANTISM = ILLEGAL
. Her handwriting was smooth, clean, and legible.

"I have a question," Caroline said. "What the hell are you guys talking about?"

They all looked at her. "We're trying to decide how to approach this," Mary Beth said.

"Approach what?"

"The group."

"What group?"

"The superhero group."

"I didn't join any superhero group. Was there a meeting before this one?"

"I guess we all just assumed—"

"I didn't," Caroline said. "My first thought upon finding out you all had developed strange abilities was not, 'Oh goody, now we can all fight crime together.'"

"What was it?" Charlie asked.

Caroline wasn't going to get into that. Her first thought had been disappointment. She had been looking forward to a lifetime of quiet nighttime flights, the solitude and the quiet and the sensation of passing effortlessly through the air. Being found out was like being dragged back down to earth.

"Who are we going to fight?" she asked. "Muggers? Young Republicans?"

"Hey, I'm a Republican," Jack said.

Caroline squinted at him. "You are?"

"Let's put politics aside," Mary Beth said. "What are your objections to the superhero group?"

"Do you want a list?"

"Sure." Mary Beth turned to a clean page.

"Fine. First, Madison doesn't need a superhero group due to its tragic shortage of supervillains. Second, if we dug up some supervillains we'd have to fight them, which I don't know how to do, and getting killed isn't on my list of summer plans. Third, Harriet just said it's illegal. Fourth, I already have a job, and school, and a social life. Fifth, I don't look good in spandex. Should I go on?"

"Let's address those first," Mary Beth said. Numbered 1 through 5, she had written
NEED, FIGHTING SKILLS, LEGALITY, SCHEDULING,
and
COSTUMING.

"Are we going to be wearing spandex?" Charlie asked.

"God, I hope not," said Harriet.

"First," said Mary Beth. "Does Madison need a superhero group?" She underlined
NEED
twice. "Who'd like to start?"

"There isn't much crime here," Harriet said. "There were maybe five murders last year."

"How many mad scientists and giant monsters were there?" Caroline asked. "This isn't exactly a city under siege. What are we going to do, break up rings of bicycle thieves?"

Mary Beth wrote down
STOP BIKE THIEVES.

"My dad's a cop," Harriet said, "and even as quiet as Madison generally is, there are still too many crimes for them to solve."

"I don't think we're ready to start
solving
crimes," Jack said. "We're not detectives. We don't even know how all this started."

"Did you do something to the beer?" Harriet asked.

"What?" Jack looked genuinely shocked. "No. What could I have done?"

"Why do you think this is happening?" Mary Beth asked.

"I just told you, I don't know."

"You're the scientist," Caroline said.

"Yeah, well, I'm not sure science can explain this." Jack spread his hands. "What do you think happened?"

"I don't care," Caroline said. "Don't you understand? I
can fly. Why
doesn't matter to me in the least. So I'm not convinced that the universe is telling us to put on costumes and start making fools of ourselves."

"My only point was that I'm sure the police would appreciate any kind of help we could offer," Harriet said.

"What does that mean?" Caroline asked. "They're going to give us honorary badges after they slap the cuffs on us for breaking the vigilante laws?"

"I think we should help any way we can," Charlie said. "I know I wish I had."

"What do you mean?" Mary Beth asked.

"I mean Marsha Tanner," Charlie said. "The guy who killed her—the first day I went outside, I got inside his head. He was thinking about killing her then, and I didn't do anything about it. He looked normal, you know? Sometimes when I'm angry, I might think about hurting someone. But he meant it."

"You didn't know," Harriet said.

"I was the only one who
did
know," Charlie said. "That's my point. We
can
do this, and to me that's reason enough that we should. It's not about whether there's enough demand. It's about what's right."

Mary Beth wrote
MARSHA TANNER
next to
NEED.

Caroline held back a sigh. They must all think she was horribly selfish, and possibly she was. If Harriet hadn't caught her floating in the bathroom she would have kept right on being selfish, without anyone making her feel guilty about it.

"All right," Caroline said. "It's the right thing to do. But do we know how to do it? Just because I can fly doesn't mean I can take down a guy with a gun."

Mary Beth underlined
FIGHTING SKILLS.

"I know a little," Harriet said. "I've taken tae kwon do, karate, and wing chun."

"I've seen all of Bruce Lee's movies at least six times," Charlie said.

"Are you making fun of me?" Harriet asked.

"I took the free self-defense class the UW Police teach," Caroline said. "But they didn't teach me anything about fighting while flying."

"Can you teach the rest of us what you know?" Mary Beth asked Harriet. She had written
H: TKD, KARATE, WIN CHUNG (SP?)
on the board.

"Maybe," Harriet said. "But we can't do it at the SERF or anything."

"We could do it on my parents' land," Jack said. "There's enough acreage that we could work without being noticed or interrupted."

"My dad might pay for me to start classes again," Harriet said. "He'll worry less if he thinks I can kick ass."

Mary Beth wrote
JACK'S PARENTS' LAND—TRAINING.

"I don't know if I can fight, or even train," Charlie said. "When I get that close to somebody, I just sort of fall into their head."

"Can't you control it at all?" Harriet asked. "I couldn't control the invisibility at first, but now I'm doing fine."

"I can't turn it off," Charlie said. "It's like Mary Beth's strength—I just have to deal with it. The hat helps some."

"Maybe we can see about getting you some more effective headgear," Mary Beth said.

"I don't think we've addressed the fact," Caroline said, "that the moment we use our powers on someone, we'll be breaking the law, whether they're bad guys or not."

"I've thought about that." Mary Beth underlined
LEGALITY.
"But I think ethical considerations outweigh the legal ones. If we see someone being assaulted or robbed, we have a moral obligation to do anything we can. In other cases, that might mean calling the police. We're able to intervene more directly, but we have to stay anonymous in order to protect ourselves."

"Maybe we shouldn't be anonymous," Charlie said. "Maybe someone could help us."

"I agree with Jack on that," Mary Beth said. "There are too many unknowns. We might not be safe, or our families."

"It's different for me," Charlie said. "I was supposed to go home this weekend, but I had to tell my parents I was sick. Then I had to talk them out of coming down here."

He hunched forward in his chair. "I'm not saying I'd turn you guys in. If I decide to tell someone, I'll leave you out of it. But I keep thinking maybe there's someone who could help me out. I mean, now that it's happened, I can't believe it's never happened before. There might be some medicine or special training or something to make this a little easier."