25. All Fired Up...
By the time it was second period, I was fairly confident that this was going to be a bad day. It wasn't that anything bad had happened, not in the conventional 'bad-luck' way at least. It's just that... I feel really weird. Not like a headache weird, or an upset stomach weird. If anything, I felt unhealthily energetic. It was like I had just woken up from sleeping for a few days, not even tired in the least, but then decided to throw-back several energy drinks and to top it off, had five of the strong black coffees my mum loves to drink. See what I mean by unhealthy? To sum it up in a sentence, I felt like a lit fuse to a bomb that was itching to explode.
I had a theory that it could be a side effect of my powers coming back, but if that was the case, they were more than 'coming back'. My hands had started slightly sparking in my first period English class and even though I eventually managed to get that under control before anybody noticed; I was no longer confident that I could stop myself from destroying my phone, so I had to ask Josh to hold on to it for me. I didn't even want to risk it in my pocket. It was my last living electronic device – as slightly depressing as that sounds – and I planned to keep it that way.
Right now, it's second period chemistry and my biggest issue is trying to pay attention to what the teacher is saying. From what I can tell, she is drawing some diagrams of elements using dots, and continuously mentioning some guy called "Lewis", but apart from that, I'm pretty lost. Of course, it doesn't help that Josh is talking really loudly to the girls in the row in front of us. Normally, okay, occasionally, his need to flirt with any and every woman within a five metre radius is amusing, but now it's coming across as really annoying and tasteless, expressly because he keeps on using the phrase 'Y.O.L.O'. Or maybe it's just my mood, or maybe because I'm afraid to look down at my hands because I feel like they might be sparking ag-
"Yo, Superboy," Josh whispers, breaking me out of my internal monologue.
"Yeah?" I whisper back, wondering what he wants. I feel weird again now, suddenly feel lightheaded, weightless, like the feeling when you are going down in an elevator. I look around the room in a daze, is it just me, or does everything look shorter, have I gone gotten taller in the last few minutes? That's really weird...
"Bro, you are floating in the air." Oh, that's the issue. I drop back down and he quietly laughs at me.
"Whoops," I say, quickly looking around to see if anybody apart from Josh noticed. Surprisingly, no. That was a close one, though. I awkwardly laugh, causing Josh to give me a strange look.
"Are you okay, dude?"
"Ha," I sigh, "well, ab-" My line of speech is cut off by the sound of the teacher calling my name, and by the tone of her voice, I'm guessing it isn't to compliment my hair or anything of the like. I gulp and answer. "Yes, Miss Goodwin?"
She stares me down, like the way a truck stares you down as it rumbles towards you on a dark road, in other words, her expression was neutral, unchanging as solid steel, but at the same time, she was definitely out for blood. She was a short woman, with dirty blonde hair cropped back in a bun and a green dress, in a way, she kinda looked like Tinkerbell. Kinda, as in Tinkerbell with a mad mood and a preferred weapon of a whiteboard eraser.
"I was just thinking, Timothy, if you were so busy talking to your friend Joshua, you must be an expert on drawing Lewis Dot Diagrams." I cringe, and not just because I know I'm in definite trouble. Mrs Tinkerbell is the kind of teacher that loves to call all of their students by their full names. Because pretty much everybody calls me Tim and Josh 'Josh', it just sounds weird.
"Er," I stammer, trying to give her my friendliest smile, a smile which she melts faster than paper on a bonfire.
She pulls a detention slip off her desk and writes on it, presumably my name, before smiling back and walking down the rows of desks to lay it on mine. I hear Josh clear his throat beside me.
"Hey, miss, just some advice here."
He flicks his hair and I inwardly groan.
"I think I need a detention too." She raises an eyebrow at him. "I mean, I'm a pretty naughty boy."
She scowls at him, but unfazed, Josh winks at her. "If you know what I mean."
And just like that, Josh joins me on the guest list for detention on Thursday afternoon.
At lunch, I tell Josh about my increasing feeling of having too much energy and he agrees that it probably has something to do with the sudden reappearance of my powers. Says that maybe my body is just having to get used to being 'supercharged' again. That's a fine explanation, but it confirms that I'm probably in for a few days of extreme self-control, unless I want to be floating everywhere and blasting everything I touch full of electricity. That would be easier, but it would probably also ruin the whole 'secret identity' thing. But then again, I wouldn't have to wear my annoying suit...
As Josh and I am eating, a trio of girls walk over to our table, holding trays filled with normal, over-priced and not overly eatible cafeteria food. They ask to sit with us and as it's only us two, I indifferently shrug, while Josh grins and states how he wouldn't complain if they did. They spread themselves around us and begin picking at their food, laughing at Josh's jokes. I awkwardly pick at my food, too busy trying to concentrate on not electrifying my lunch before I have a chance to swallow it to pay too much attention to them.
One of the girls nudge me and I look up in surprise.
"Hey, no need to be shy! We won't bite!" She gives me a friendly smile. With friendly brown eyes and soft brown hair, it's hard not to smile back, as awkward as I probably look.
Josh rolls his eyes at me as I try to stammer out a response. "Oh, hey."
"Your name is Tim, right?" I nod in response.
"I loved your guy's performance in Chemistry this morning," says another girl, with dyed red hair. We all laugh, expressly Josh.
"Well, it's true. I am a naughty boy." Another round of laughter, but eye rolls from me and the brown haired girl.
"I wasn't in that class," she admits, "but I do remember you from Phys-Ed at the start of the year."
I cringe and she softly laughs. P.E is most definitely my worst subject. Whatever she remembered about me was pretty much guaranteed to be one-hundred-percent traumatising.
"Why the look? You weren't that bad. I remember when you won a soccer game for our team once." I cringe again, but her smile remains constant. Normally when someone says that I'm 'not bad' at P.E, they are mocking me, as that statement isn't true in the slightest. But from the kind look on her face, I don't think so.
"Won?" I awkwardly chuckle, "I tripped over the ball and it just so happened to roll into the goal."
Everybody laughs again, apart from us two. She just shrugs. "Same thing."
"Anyway, that's why I begged the dean to let me swap out of that elective."
The other two girls frowned at me, as if confused about something.
"But you still go to the gym or something, right?" one of them asked.
I shook my head in response, confused at how they would come to that conclusion. "Uh, no, I don't."
"But you are all muscly and stuff."
"Er..." I look down carefully at my arms. Muscles, right. I carefully flexed my arm and on closer inspection, I suppose there was muscle... lumps... there... under my skin? Maybe it was a side effect of super strength or something? Unless I've been sleepwalking to the gym or something. But seriously, this is the first time I've noticed anything of the sort. "I suppose." I shrug as if it is normal, which it isn't at all. "But Josh has bigger muscles than me."
They look back at him and he gives me a quick thumbs up, as to say 'shot bro'.
"Do you go to the gym?" the red-haired girl asks.
He grins in response. "Nah, I'm naturally muscly, baby. But I do work out. Actually," he pauses, to look directly at the girls, winking as he finishes his line, "I would love to work you out sometime."
They giggle in response, whereas the brunette and I snort. Josh was clever with his lines at least, I'll give him that. But it was still a hundred percent cheesiness.
I look back at the brown haired girl, trying to think of something to break our awkward silence, caused by Josh's needless flirting. "So, uh, what was your name?"
"Anna." She smiles and it's cute, but not quite as cute as Julia. She carefully looks over at her friends, crowding around and laughing at all of Josh's jokes. "I should probably take them away before they drool all over your friend. Nice to meet you, Tim!"
Josh huffs as they leave and I raise an eyebrow at him. After several brooding seconds, he sighs.
"Okay, fine. You can have that one chick. But only that one. I get the rest of them."
"What," I laugh, "dude, what are you on about?"
"That brunette girl seems pretty into you, so you can have her." He rolls his eyes. "As long I get the rest."
I laugh as I realise what he means. "Dude, I'm not interested in any of them. You can have them all."
"Shot bro, you are the best." He holds up his hand for a high five, which I hit, laughing.
After school we catch a bus straight into the centre of the city and walk straight into the nearest cinema. It doesn't take us that long to figure out that the best thing to see is definitely Days of Future Past, so that's exactly what we buy tickets for. But the next showing isn't for half an hour, so we wait around in the foyer until it's time to go up. There are a few arcade machines so Josh and I mess around on them, spending whatever spare change we can find.
All the while, I start to feel more and more guilty about sneaking out of my mums boot-camp/house-arrest. It's kinda that I feel bad for how worried she will probably be by the time I get home, but it's mostly that I'm worried about how she will punish me. Uh oh, I knew this was a bad idea. Maybe I would be better not going home at all, if I value all of my limbs. What kind of punishment will she enforc – oh god she will probably make me cut my hair or something. No!
"Josh," I ask and he turns his head my way, "can I stay in your wardrobe for a few months, maybe years?"
He laughs, giving me a strange look. "Why?"
"See, I might not be able to return home in a long while. It will probably be a nuclear war zone by now."
He rolls his eyes, instantly getting what I mean. "Your mum isn't that bad. Worst case, she will probably extend your house arrest. Don't be so worried."
I shook my head. I was unconvinced, mostly because he didn't know my mother in all her recent... developments like I did. It was one thing being told off verbally, because you can kinda block that out if you try hard enough, but being mentally told off... Yep, I'm dead. Good bye, living world. Well, it was nice knowing you all.
"Tim, look," Josh whispers, leaning over at me from the game he is currently playing, some modern version of 'Pac-Man' and stretching out his hand to point at someone on the right of us. "I think I recognise that guy from somewhere."
"Who?" I say, looking in the direction of his outstretched arm. I think he is pointing to some man on the fringes of the ticket booth crowd, but I don't see what is so important about this particular guy. "What, dark green shirt? Maybe you have seen him on the street somewhere." Still, I take a closer look. He really doesn't look that important, sure he has this large moustache across his lip like some kind of mutant squirrel, bu-
"Shoot!" I whisper, ducking down behind the nearest machine and pulling Josh with me. He smirks at me, as to say 'I told you so'. "Oh man, it's that guy, from the news! The one who is often interviewed as a 'witness'!"
"Why are we hiding?" Josh asks, "I mean, the chances of him recognising you are no more than anybody else who likes to watch the news."
"No, like, I think I see a trend here."
"Oh yeah?" he snorts.
"Shh, keep your voice down." I carefully poke my head around the side of the arcade machine, making sure that he hadn't moved or wasn't looking in our direction. "Every time that guy turns up, a super fight happens."
"Dude, you should hear how paranoid you sound. Maybe he just wants to see X-Men too." I look back at Josh, in time to see him roll his eyes.
I shake my head. Something tells me it must be more than just paranoia and to match my thoughts, the ceiling vibrates and a crashing sound is heard in the story above us. "Dude, we gotta get outta here."
"Look, okay, I think I know what this is about." He sighs, obviously having not heard the sound above us. "The thought of seeing another movie in which Wolverine is the main character is too traumatising for you. Tha-"
"No, Josh, seriously, we gotta go. Something bad is gonna happen, I can feel it." I tug on his arm, but he doesn't wanna budge without the use of super strength.
"What, are you a psychic now?" Josh snorts and I growl at him. "Can you 'feel' the oncoming danger?"
"No, well, I can't feel anything, but trust me, it's better to be safe and-"
"I'm not going anywhere," he interrupts me, folding his arms while speaking. He shrugs me off and steps out from behind the machine, walking out into the open cinema lobby. I hear another low rumbling sound from above us, this time combined with the sound of yelling and the faint tingling of breaking glass.
"Josh," I warn, but he just grins and holds his hands out, to express how safe he thinks it is.
"Seriously dude, it's nothing, you are getting all wound up over nothing." He says it with belief, not with the intent to annoy me, but it does the latter anyway. But before I can respond, something crashes again in the floor above us and dazed, I watch in half awe, half fear as a section of the ceiling ironically falls down behind Josh, crashing and blowing up dust as plaster covers the ground.
