Superpowerless

by Chris Priestley

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Fly! Maybe we can fly. And all that’s stopping us is having the nerve to take that first leap. Maybe all that stops us from flying is that we don’t believe we can.’

  David had smiled up at him, enjoying this idea. But there had been something about his father’s face that worried him. He wasn’t looking at David at all. He was looking down, longingly.

  ‘Shall we leap together? Now?’

  David had laughed nervously. The flag of St George above their heads clapped as it fluttered in the wind.

  ‘We can’t fly, Dad,’ he’d said.

  His father had looked at him for a long time and there was something about the balance of his body that David felt hinted at a sudden lurch into the void. But it never came.

  ‘I know,’ he said eventually. ‘I know. Of course. I was just saying. Imagining.’

  And then something seemed to change in his whole demeanour – a mask taken off … or replaced. He took David by the arm and shepherded him inside and they climbed down.

  A week later he was dead.

  Chapter 46

  To Be

  David stands at the water’s edge, watching the surface shimmer and quiver as a cool breeze plays across it, masking the blackness beneath.

  There is a startling lack of drama, given its place in David’s imagination over the past months. It’s a scene of almost aggressive dullness. It doggedly refuses to be elegiac. It just is – unaware of its significance in David’s life or his father’s death.

  The passing hum of the morning traffic on the road at the foot of the embankment provides a murmuring chorus offstage. But whatever power David thought this moment might have when he agreed to come here, it refuses to comply.

  After a while his mother walks up the embankment and stands beside him, slipping her hand into his and leaning in to rest her head on his shoulder.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asks.

  David nods.

  ‘I don’t really feel anything,’ he says.

  She puts her arm around him and squeezes.

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t have come.’

  But he is sure they were right to. This story needs an ending. This is as close as it will get.

  ‘He’s not there,’ says David.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No – it’s good,’ says David, only then realising it for himself. ‘It’s just the place he died, that’s all. It’s just a river. I thought I’d still feel like there was something about him here – but I don’t. I don’t feel him here at all.’

  His mother nods.

  ‘Me neither,’ she says. ‘So, shall we move on?’

  ‘Yeah,’ says David.

  They walk back to the car, arm in arm. With every metre they drive away from that bend in the river, the better David feels. His lungs seem to grow in volume. He feels healthier. It is as if a damp miasma from those cruel waters had risen up and infected him. Soon he knows he will be free of it entirely.

  They drive back towards the centre of town, fields and woods replaced by street lamps and houses, getting more and more tightly packed until they are on the long, busy road on which stands David’s sixth-form college.

  ‘I’ve decided I’m going to do art at uni,’ he says. ‘Graphics or illustration maybe.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘If that’s OK?’

  ‘Of course it is. You know it is.’

  He nods and looks out of the window. How super-normal everything seems – everyone milling about on their way to work and school. It is a dull scene, but dullness has its own compensations. Dullness can be a comfort – and today, for David, it is.

  ‘This is fine,’ says David, as the college building becomes visible in the distance.

  His mother puts her indicators on and pulls into a side road, parking the car and turning to face him with a smile.

  ‘Don’t want your mum dropping you off at the gates on the first day?’

  ‘No,’ says David smiling. ‘No – I really don’t.’

  ‘You OK?’

  He nods.

  ‘Yeah. I think I am.’

  ‘Nervous?’

  ‘A bit. Good nervous though.’

  ‘You’ll be fine.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  David smiles and grabs his bag from the back seat.

  ‘Have a great day,’ says his mother.

  David nods and gets out, slamming the door behind him, and walks around the car ready to head back to the main road to cross over to the college.

  A tap on her window startles Donna and she turns to see David looking in. She lets the window down.

  ‘David? Have you forgotten something?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says.

  Then he leans in and kisses her on the cheek.

  ‘Bye, Mum.’

  She drives away. David stands on the edge of the kerb looking at the high college gates on the other side of the road and the gaggle of students milling about in front of them.

  A bus pulls up, wheezes its air brakes, blocking his view; a huge advert for some new action movie he hasn’t heard of down the side, all frowning faces and flames.

  An old woman looks out of one of the windows at him, her face breaking into a smile that David cannot help but mirror. The bus moves off and a hand taps him on the shoulder. David turns. To his amazement it’s Holly.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ says David.

  ‘Well, that’s nice,’ she says.

  ‘No – you know what I mean.’

  ‘I thought I’d see you off on your first day,’ she says.

  David peers at her, confused. Is she mocking him?

  ‘Seriously though,’ says David, ‘what brings –’

  ‘Friends of yours?’ says Holly nodding towards the group across the road.

  ‘Some, I suppose,’ says David.

  He spots Joe and waves. Holly smiles.

  ‘Is she there? The girl who took you away? Ellen, isn’t it?’

  David nods. She is there. So is Tilly. Dylan is too. They are looking his way. Holly smiles more broadly.

  ‘Good. Kiss me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kiss me!’

  Holly grabs David and pulls him close. When their faces come within a few inches of each other she stops and looks into David’s eyes and he into hers and then he pulls her close and their lips lock together. Their bodies too, as his arms wrap around her. He can’t make out which tongue is his and which hers as they slide over each other in his mouth.

  The kiss lasts seconds. It lasts hours.

  Then, just as suddenly, they pull apart and the world floods back in. David gasps for air, like a drowning man coming to the surface.

  The sounds of engines and brakes and sirens and talking and shouting and all the music of the world flood back in, more delineated than before, his senses cleaned and polished.

  Holly smiles at him and he returns it. It is a smile he has never worn before on a face that he feels he might not recognise were he to look in a mirror.

  Holly turns and walks away without saying a word and David swallows a deep breath and watches her go, wondering if she will look back but she never does. Then he turns slowly to see the looks of amazement of the faces of those gathered on the other side of the road

  It’s like Hamlet says: ‘To be or not to be …’ David knows he has chosen to be. He knows that choosing and doing are two different things and he is not going to fake the newness he wants. No more fakery. To be and not pretend to be, that is the answer.

  Then he grins, crouches down and launches himself up into the air, flying higher and higher, bursting through the low clouds until he soars up into the big blue beyond, yelling and whooping with joy.

  Acknowledgements

  I don’t normally let anyone read early drafts of my books – anyone besides my wife and my editor, that is – but for some reason it felt right for Superpowerless. So thanks to Sam Chamberlain for reassuring me early on, to Rowan Pelling for her encouragin
g words and to Jon Mayhew for some very sound advice and generous comments.

  Thanks to my wife, Sally, and my son, Adam, for reading the first draft – and particularly to my son for declaring it to be the best thing I’d written (he doesn’t give praise lightly).

  I need also to give a huge thanks to my editors at Hot Key – Georgia Murray, who has been a fantastically friendly and supportive presence from the very start, and to Talya Baker for her sterling work in the last stages.

  Thanks also to my agent Philippa Milnes-Smith and her then assistant Elizabeth Briggs for some very well-timed nice comments.

  If you are reading this then maybe you have also read the book. Thanks to you too, if you have. I hope it worked for you.

  CHRIS PRIESTLEY spent his childhood in Wales and Gibraltar, and his teens in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, before going to art college in Manchester. He moved to London and freelanced as an illustrator and cartoonist for twenty years before getting his first book for children published. He has written lots of books, fiction and non-fiction, has won awards here and abroad and been nominated for many others, including the Carnegie Medal. He now lives in Cambridge and spends a great deal of time looking out of the window … Follow Chris at https://chris-priestley.com or on Twitter: @crispriestley

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  First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

  HOT KEY BOOKS

  80–81 Wimpole St, London W1G 9RE

  www.hotkeybooks.com

  Text and illustration copyright © Chris Priestley, 2017

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  The right of Chris Priestley to be identified as author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-4714-0565-5

  Hot Key Books is an imprint of Bonnier Zaffre Ltd,

  a Bonnier Publishing company

  www.bonnierpublishing.com