Superpowerless

by Chris Priestley

  ‘You seem interested though,’ says Marie, looking at David, ignoring his mother.

  David is interested. In one card in particular.

  ‘That card,’ he says. ‘That one on the top …’

  ‘The Tower?’

  She passes it to him to have a better look. It shows lightning hitting a tower, fragments falling off. It looks a lot like the church tower.

  ‘What does it mean?’ he says.

  ‘Oh – well, it’s very complicated. All the cards have all kinds of meaning depending on what cards they follow, but this one means change – a huge, dramatic kind of change. Are you sure you don’t want me to do a reading for you?’

  ‘No,’ says David, handing back the card. ‘Thanks.’

  It’s so hot in David’s room that he walks over to the window, raises his blinds and opens the window. The room seems to audibly gasp as the fresh air floods in.

  He looks out across the gardens, letting his eyes roam aimlessly across the view – or so he pretends to himself. But Holly’s garden is empty and so his eyes do not linger there.

  The roofers across the way are holding some meeting at the top of the scaffolding they erected the week before, pointing to various parts of the roof and to the dormer window they are working on.

  David’s super-hearing means he can hear every word of their conversation – but they’re not saying anything he’s interested in. He enjoys the fact that they are oblivious to Holly when she sunbathes because the tree in Mr Dewhurst’s garden entirely blocks their line of sight. If they only knew what they were missing.

  A boy’s head keeps appearing over a fence further down the street as he bounces on a trampoline. Mr and Mrs Wentworth are having tea outside at their little table in the shade of an umbrella. A flock of small birds flies past.

  David smiles. Then smiles at himself for smiling. How quickly Ellen seems to have changed his outlook. A scene that only hours ago might have seemed tedious and dull, seems now to have a kind of familiar charm about it.

  But no sooner does he register this change of heart than he is struck by a twinge of guilt for letting himself so easily be deflected from his secret super-destiny. Is this all he has been waiting for to lighten his mood – the attentions of a girl?

  He knows that on some level he has been waiting for a sign – a signal that it is OK for him to stop being unhappy, and maybe this is it. Maybe Marie’s card was for him.

  His mind flickers between the scaffolders, the card and the church tower it so resembles. Maybe there’s something in all that crap. Maybe it is telling him that there is about to be a cataclysmic shift in things and that Ellen is the thing that makes it all happen.

  The roofers are arguing now. The voices are louder and one of them flicks the air with the back of his hand and storms off, climbing down the ladders noisily and at speed, shaking the frame of the scaffolding.

  Then Holly steps out of her house. She isn’t wearing a bikini this time though – she is wearing jeans and a grey T-shirt. She has a white mug in her hand. David grabs the scope.

  Holly walks slowly over to the lounger and sits on the edge, cradling the mug in her hands and taking a sip. David zooms in, panning up from her candy-striped flip-flops, rising up her legs to her hands and then her face.

  She is crying.

  Her face is frozen, mask-like, but tears fill her eyes and spill down her cheek, leaving a glistening trail on her face.

  David recoils from the scope and pushes it away. It has always been wrong to spy – the wrongness was part of the excitement, part of the thrill. But this – this feels a different kind of super-wrong.

  Chapter 12

  It’s a Free Country

  David surprises his mother with his willingness – downright enthusiasm even – to go to the shop for her, given his traditional reluctance, but what she can’t know is that David wonders if he might see Ellen there. The concept of shopping has now become inextricably linked to the idea of Ellen.

  He hopes that in casually meeting her they might talk further about the things that have been playing on his mind. He registers momentarily that he seems to have gone from never wanting to talk – to avoiding anything but the most cursory conversation – to actively seeking it out. All he knows is that it feels right.

  He can’t talk to his mother. He won’t talk to Mark. He wishes he could have talked to Joe, but that was never what their friendship was about. That’s hardly David’s fault. Or not just his. Is it?

  But there’s no sign of Ellen, no matter how long he dawdles in the aisles, drawing the suspicious glances of the woman stacking shelves in the toiletries section. He refuses to make eye contact with her and goes to the tills, pays and leaves.

  It was a long shot but even so – he can’t stop himself from being disappointed. He has the vague emptiness he always feels in the pit of his stomach when expectation is smothered. He tells himself he’s being stupid, and the emptiness just gets a little emptier.

  He had walked to the shop with his face upraised, admiring the pool-chalk blue of the sky and the dusty wisps of clouds blowing across it. He walks back looking at his shoelaces. If he had not been so downcast he might have avoided meeting Matt McKenzie.

  ‘Well, look who it isn’t,’ says Matt. ‘It’s David Dickhead.’

  David has already looked startled before his brain has had time to stop his face looking startled.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ says David.

  ‘What brings you round here?’

  What the hell brings you round here, more like.

  ‘Oh – yeah,’ says Matt, not waiting for the reply, if indeed he ever wanted one. ‘You live round here, don’t you?’

  David nods. First Ellen and now Matt. Too much of a coincidence.

  ‘Ellen’s dad lives over there,’ he says with a nod. ‘So …’

  David bristles at the mention of her name. What does Ellen see in him? He looks Matt up and down. He’s taller than David, a tousled mop of mousy hair tumbling over his face like a cloud.

  ‘You look jumpy, David,’ he says. ‘You’d think I was going to hit you or something.’

  This hasn’t occurred to David until now. That doesn’t make it any less likely. A quick glance side to side shows there is no one around, and Matt likes to hurt people. He doesn’t even pretend otherwise.

  But this lack of witnesses works in David’s favour as well. With no one to see, there is nothing stopping him hitting Matt. He would have to hold back of course – hit him just hard enough to knock him out. That might be a lot of fun. But Matt would wake up of course, and it would all start again.

  ‘So,’ says Matt, ‘what are you doing for the holidays?’

  Nothing. He is doing nothing. His mother says she is too busy and they will have to wait until Christmas to go away.

  ‘I’m going to … er … New York,’ says David, for no other reason than that he has always wanted to go and his mother is doing a job for a design company there.

  Matt laughs.

  ‘You are so full of shit,’ he says, and walks off.

  David waggles two fingers at Matt’s back before setting off home. With every step he feels more and more of a pathetic weakling for letting Matt push him around and humiliate him. But what can he do?

  His mother is at the table with a coffee, doing the crossword, when he comes back.

  ‘Hi,’ she says, smiling and looking over her glasses at him. ‘Thanks for doing that, love. You OK?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  He puts the shopping down on the kitchen floor and starts to unpack it. He never does this normally, but he is still thinking about Matt and forgets.

  ‘Where does the mustard go?’

  ‘In the cupboard – middle shelf.’

  When he’s put everything away he goes over to the sink and pours himself a glass of water and then turns round to notice the jacket on the back of the stairs. He feels a little dizzy.

  ‘Wait,’ he says. ‘Is that … Holly’s?’

&n
bsp; ‘Yes,’ says his mother, tapping her pen on the newspaper. ‘She sent me a text asking if it was OK if she came a day early. I said it was fine. What’s the matter?’

  David puts the glass down and bolts for the stairs.

  ‘I checked to make sure your comics were safe!’ calls his mother, but David isn’t listening. He’s taking the stairs two at a time, bursting into his room gasping for breath.

  It’s OK. It’s OK. The scope is at the window where he left it. Holly is at the other end of the room by his bookcase.

  ‘Hi!’ he says.

  His voice sounds casual. He hopes.

  ‘Hello there,’ says Holly.

  She smiles. Maybe she hasn’t even noticed the scope, or if she had maybe she hadn’t noticed where it was pointing. He sits down on his bed and picks up a comic. Try as he might, he cannot even feign an interest in it and looks up to find Holly leaning towards him. She’s not smiling any more.

  ‘I wonder what your mother would say if I told her what you were really looking at through that thing?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  He does know what she means, and hearing her say it is sickening. His stomach feels like it flips over.

  ‘Oh, you don’t?’ she says.

  ‘No.’

  His voice cracks and almost gives out. Holly smiles at him.

  ‘I knew you had a good view from up here the very first day I came up,’ she says. ‘And I don’t mind you having a look from up here. It’s a free country. I doubt you’re the only one. But peering through that thing is just plain creepy. You’ve crossed a line.’

  ‘I don’t even know what you’re talking about,’ says David. ‘I don’t –’

  ‘It was still bloody focused on the sunlounger, you little pervert,’ snaps Holly. ‘Right where my arse would be, I’d imagine. I could see every crumb from the toast I had this morning. Every crumb! So don’t bloody lie to me!’

  David opens his mouth, but all the many things he had practised in his head for just this eventuality now seem like the silly protestations of a child – a stupid little child.

  ‘What is your mother going to say?’ says Holly, shaking her head and leaving, letting the threat trail behind her.

  Then David does find some words.

  ‘Well, what would Marie say if she knew you had a boyfriend in her house when you’re supposed to be babysitting?’ he blurts out just as Holly closes the door behind her.

  She had begun to descend the stairs, but she stops and now David hears her slowly come back and the door open. Her face looks transformed. He is genuinely scared.

  ‘What did you say?’

  David coughs before jabbing his finger towards her.

  ‘I said, what would Marie say if I told her about you and –’

  Before David can finish, Holly has crossed the room and grabbed him by the throat, pushing him back against the wall.

  ‘Are you threatening me?’ she hisses. ‘Are you fucking threatening me, you little shit?’

  Her face is flushed. Her eyes are wild, twitching, scanning his face as though for some sign. Just as suddenly as she had grabbed him, she lets him go and he scrabbles away, clutching at his throat.

  ‘You’re crazy!’ he mutters.

  ‘You better believe it!’ she spits. ‘I’m bad. Don’t you understand? Don’t mess with me, David. You’ll regret it. I promise you. I will chew you up.’

  David says nothing. What is there to say? She stares at him for what seems like a long, long time and then she turns and walks away, slamming the door behind her and clattering down the stairs.

  He hammers both fists into the bed. He feels guilty – he always feels guilty – but he also feels angry: angry at himself for being caught, angry at Holly – that she has exposed him in this way.

  The irony is not lost on him but it doesn’t stop him feeling indignant about having his private self laid bare. It is ridiculous, he knows it is. How can a voyeur demand privacy – but it doesn’t stop him from feeling like a hermit crab plucked from its shell.

  It would be the last straw for his mother if she found out. He’s seen the way she looks at him sometimes – like he’s in need of pills or worse. She might even send him away. For treatment or something. Can she do that? Maybe she can.

  ‘Did you say something to upset Holly?’ says David’s mother when he finally comes down to eat.

  She doesn’t know. Holly hasn’t told her.

  ‘What? Me? No.’

  ‘She seemed upset when she left.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘She’s had a tough time, David,’ says his mother. Again. ‘We need to be kind to her.’

  ‘Tough time how?’

  Even as he says it, he wonders why he would ask that. Why talk about Holly at all. He is an idiot, he thinks. An absolute idiot.

  ‘I don’t want to go into details,’ says his mother. ‘As a matter of fact, I don’t really know the details. But I know she had to drop out of university and she’s trying to get her life back on track. I know she’s had a tough time.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with me?’ says David.

  ‘All I’m saying is – oh, never mind,’ she says. ‘Not everything is about you, David.’

  David walks tentatively over to the window when he returns to his room after dinner. It seems wrong – it is wrong – but he can’t stop himself looking out or looking towards Holly’s garden. He has given up even trying to pretend to himself that he is anything else but lost to this addiction.

  But David recoils when he sees Holly sitting there on the lounger. Even without the scope he can see that she is looking straight up at him – and she’s holding something.

  He pulls back from the window and stares at the slats of the blinds. Is this some kind of trap? He leans forward again, puts his eye to the scope and zooms in. There is Holly’s blurred face filling the viewfinder. He focuses and pulls back.

  The thing she is holding is revealed to be a large piece of white card on which is written in black pen:

  MEET ME IN THE PARK

  AT THE BENCH BY THE

  SWINGS AT THREE O’CLOCK

  Chapter 13

  A Kind of Thrashed Electric-Guitar Chord

  David looks at his watch, looks away, sniffs – looks back. It is a quarter to. He turns towards the gardens but Holly is gone. She has seen the blinds move – he is sure of it. She knows he’s seen the sign. No question about it.

  But should he go? The look on her face when she lost her temper – she looked capable of anything. What does he know about her really? Nothing good. David finds himself wondering exactly what trouble she got herself into at university – so bad that she had to leave. She has always intimidated him – right back to when he was a little kid and she and her friends would shoo him away – now she actually frightens him.

  This amuses him momentarily and he smiles despite himself. Some superhero he is. All he has to do is stay put. He can say he never saw the sign. She can’t prove he did. And what can she say or do really?

  But David can’t stop himself. For good or ill, he has relinquished control of the part of himself that might have decided otherwise. He simply feels compelled to see where this new turn will lead.

  A fascinating new intimacy has entered his relationship with Holly and it is too unsettling and exciting to ignore, however unpredictable she is. Because of how unpredictable she is. He is a moth and he is going to flap towards that flame whatever the consequence.

  His thoughts do briefly touch on Ellen as he opens the front door, but only briefly. Holly’s lure is just too bright, too intense. It drowns everything else out. Besides, Ellen is with Matt; stupid, annoying Matt.

  David leaves the house and walks to the park, aware that he has the theatrical air of someone trying hard not to attract attention – like a secret agent or a private detective from a straight-to-DVD movie.

  He sees Holly in the distance and stops. Still time to change his mind. She is looking down
into her lap, her face in shadow. He looks at her for a while, swallowing drily, and then she looks up and there is a kind of thrashed electric-guitar chord and David has no choice but to carry on towards her, feedback ringing in his ears.

  ‘Hi,’ says David, sitting down next to her – or at least near her.

  Holly sighs. Talking about this – talking about this and/or talking about it to David – is clearly an effort; an unpleasant and unwanted, painful necessity.

  ‘Look – I won’t say anything to your mum,’ says Holly, her eyes half shut. ‘About you spying on me. Annoying though it is. I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘OK,’ says David.

  This ought to be good news, but it is delivered in a voice that gives little comfort. Even so, sitting there beside her in the park, David’s memory of her wild temper slowly evaporates. It is more like a dream he’s woken from than something that has actually taken place not long before.

  ‘I shouldn’t have grabbed either. I get angry sometimes. Just crazy angry. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ says David as though being choked and threatened is something he has encountered on a regular basis. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything either.’

  She turns to look at him.

  ‘Not that you should be spying on people.’

  ‘I know.’

  Holly turns away and stares at her own hands for a long time.

  ‘Fuck, David,’ she says finally. ‘You can’t say anything. To anyone.’

  She looks up at him with tears trembling in her eyes.

  ‘I know.’

  He is surprised at how emotional she is. She is shaking, he can see that clearly now. David can’t see why it is such a terrible secret. Embarrassing maybe – but deserving neither of the fury nor this fear, surely? She seems to read these thoughts and attempts an explanation.

  ‘Marie would go apeshit – absolutely apeshit – and she’d tell my parents and they’d get all freaked out. I’ve put them through a lot, you know? I just …’

  David nods, hoping this will look like he understands when he doesn’t really understand much at all.