Halfway Heroes

by Dustin Martin

“This sucks!” Dariela said, throwing up her arms in exasperation. Lydia already knew what her friend would rant about, as it had been the subject of her discontent for the past few days. But she sat on the bus and allowed Dariela to complain. Lydia was far too busy worrying that her clothing was a bit too short to hide her body. She’d been carefully managing her clothes, making sure they were long and baggy enough to cover her arms and legs. True to her word, Debra had bought Lydia several shirts, jeans, and a couple of jackets to fit her new size. Luckily, the August weather had grown chillier, so Lydia didn’t stand out with her bulkier, more conservative choice of attire.

  Controlling her strength had been equally challenging. Lydia had lost count of how many pencils she’d snapped from the tiniest ounce of pressure. She had refused to open doors, choosing to wait for other people to enter classrooms before she slipped in.

  The bus engine roared loudly, and the entire vehicle came to life, as did Dariela’s spiel. “Three weeks! No TV, no computer, no going to your house, nothing! Straight home, homework, and then bed!”

  “It could be worse,” Lydia pointed out.

  “How? Detention for an hour every morning ‘until further notice’ kind of seals the deal on being worse,” Dariela said.

  Lydia shrugged. “At least your parents gave you a time limit and allowed me to come over. I had to beg mine to let me come to your house and study today.”

  Dariela’s frustration lapsed for a moment to dwell on that. She grumbled and flung herself into the seat. “It still sucks,” she muttered, her eyebrows knitted tightly together. She looked like a child upset that her parents wouldn’t buy ice cream for her. Lydia turned away, stifling her laughter.

  The bus soon came to Dariela’s stop. Lydia hopped out first and Dariela trudged along after her. When the bus drove off, she beckoned Lydia along. “Come on,” she said, heading to the other side of the deserted residential road.

  Lydia was following along, but she heard fast wheels approaching. Too late she spotted the sports car flying down the two-way street toward her. It looked like it wasn’t going to stop anytime soon, and Lydia, standing in the middle of the road, froze up. Time slowed to a crawl. Hours could’ve passed. For all Lydia knew, several already had.

  Dariela was screaming at her. The driver had a shocked, wide-eyed expression, which must have matched Lydia’s own. The car started to slow, its tires screeching. But it wasn’t going to stop in time, was headed straight for her. Lydia wanted to run, but her nerves weren’t sending the message for her feet to move. Her arms worked and all she could do was to stick them out in front of her, hoping against hope that they might take a small brunt of the pain. In some part of her mind, she found it ironic that she’d be going to the hospital so soon after her last visit. Or would, if she survived.

  When Father Time had had enough, everything resumed its normal speed, trying to make up for the lost seconds. Lydia braced for impact. The front of the car slammed into her hands, crunching up in her palms as she held on for dear life. Her feet slid across the ground backward. Maybe I can hop on top of the car to avoid being crushed under the wheels. Her feet would still not move but only scraped across the asphalt as the car’s tires screeched. All she could do was push on the hood of the car, trying not to be dragged underfoot. She closed her eyes tight, too afraid to watch the outcome, and held onto the car.

  Agonizingly slowly, she stopped, her muscles and bones throbbing and shaken. The car stopped, too, and idled there, the engine puttering along. The whole world was silent but moving. Lydia was alive. She didn’t feel the intense pain she had anticipated. She was alive.

  She cracked open one eye at a time. The driver, a young girl barely older than she was, gawked at Lydia. Dariela, ramrod stiff, stood dozens of feet away, wearing the same expression of disbelief as the driver. Lydia looked down at herself and at the car. She wasn’t injured. She stood still, clutching the hood of the car, her hands digging into the metal. It bent and shifted as she pulled away. When she released it, part of the hood fell to the ground, crumpled and damaged. On some level, she’d expected an outcome like that, but the whole experience stunned her into speechlessness.

  Her hands were red and her arms painfully sore. Lydia was surprised no bones were broken. She felt jarred more than anything else. But she was alright, alive and breathing. She couldn’t ask for anything better than that.

  The driver realized that Lydia was fine. She stepped out of the car as Dariela found her feet and moved toward the girl.

  “What’s your problem?” the girl said, berating her near-victim and flipping her black hair. Her dark eyes matched her scowl. “Like, you need to watch where you’re going! I could’ve killed you!” Lydia saw the fear of that thought and any repercussions on the girl’s pale face. She was shaking.

  “Her?! You watch where you’re going!” Dariela lashed out. “It’s your fault!”

  “My fault?” the driver said, slamming the door. “I wasn’t, like, dragging my feet across the road! And who’s going to pay for this?” She pointed an accusing finger at the hood of her car. Now that Lydia looked at it, the dents left by her hands were deeper than she’d thought. The car was emitting thin trails of smoke as well. “She wrecked my car! She needs to fix it!”

  “What do we look like? Mechanics? It’s not wrecked anyway! And you did that yourself!” Dariela shot back. She ignored the fuming driver and rounded on Lydia, searching her face. “You alright?” Her eyes held other questions, no doubt the obvious “How on earth did you do that?” But she refrained from asking anything else for now.

  “Yeah,” Lydia said, nodding and straightening her fingers. “My arms are sore, though.”

  “I’ll bet. Can you walk?”

  Lydia tested one leg and then the other. She nodded while the driver huffed and puffed about being ignored. Impatient to be heard, she stepped up to Dariela and began yelling at her. Lydia held her friend’s arm while Dariela yelled right back. Eventually, Lydia managed to drag Dariela away and together, they began walking toward her house. Although Lydia didn’t need it, Dariela supported her, allowing Lydia to throw one arm over her shoulder.

  “Hey! Hey!” the driver called. “Get back here and fix my car! You’re responsible for this wreck!”

  Dariela looked at Lydia and then at the driver. “Forget her,” Lydia said. “Let’s get to your house.” She wanted to lie down, in case there was any latent trauma from her near-death experience.

  “Two seconds,” Dariela said. She left her friend in the middle of the street, walked back to the car, and kicked the front end hard. Lydia, watching, realized that she had damaged the car more than she’d originally thought. The front bumper crashed to the ground, earning a shriek from the driver. Dariela smiled smugly and said, “Now it’s a wreck.”

  The driver’s face turned bright red and, her hands forming fists, began screaming at them, declaring how she’d make both girls pay. Dariela ignored her and helped Lydia across the rest of the street and to her beige house at the end of the block. Once they were in her bedroom, she shut the door and turned to Lydia. “Tell me everything,” she said, her back to the door, refusing to let Lydia out until she’d told her all the details.