“Of course I am, I got an A on my psychology report last year!” He grinned.
“Oh yes, that makes me feel SO much better,” I told him.
When we finally approached the school building, Tony spotted us and held the door open as he waited for us to enter. “Come on you two, let’s not be late for homeroom,” he prompted. Since I’d put Tony in his place last week, he’d been so nice to us both.
“Thanks, Tony,” I said.
“Wait, no tip?” he asked.
I turned to look at him. He took a step back and grinned. “Just kidding you. My friends get into the school for free!”
“Tony, everybody should be let into the school for free,” I lectured.
He smiled and opened up his arms. “Of course they should, because they’re all my friends! Now come on. Let’s get to homeroom. We don’t want to be tardy…”
I grinned. I got the school bully to hold the door open and use the word tardy. Yeah, being super might have its bad points but overall, being super was well, super. Sure, I had a strange voice in my mind. But I decided to take Jason’s advice and ignore it. After all, who better to give psychology advice than a 13-year old who got an A on his paper?
Dear Diary: Jason is a great friend. I often wonder if he might be more than that someday. I kind of hope so. But I also kind of worry about that too. What if we broke up? I’d lose his friendship. That would crush me.
Oh, that Tomas kid gives me the creeps. Hard to believe he’s related to cute little Felipe.
Bot rot…
As we walked towards our lockers, we saw Janitor Jan being trailed by a hovering domed robot with big white brushes on its bottom. A woman in a white lab coat and holding an iPad followed them both. The woman’s lab coat had a BM Science logo on it. Looking closely at the robot, I saw that it too had the BM Science logo. Well, I had to give BM Science credit for being persistent. The mayor, TJ Bass, a big tall gawky guy with curly hair, had previously come to our school and given us all a little speech. “We welcome the addition of this cleaning robot and thank BMS for their contribution. They truly want to help make Starlight City a better place.”
At the time, we had all clapped politely. Then the mayor headed out to what I could only guess would be another short, meaningless speech somewhere else.
And now it seemed, the new addition was in action at our school. I wondered what Janitor Jan thought of it. I guessed she was probably worried that a robot would end up taking over her job. I watched as it cleaned the floor around the lockers.
Marie and Lori had just arrived at the locker area as well. Their attention turned to the robot as it used a laser beam from its dome to clean a spot on the floor.
“Not sure if that’s cool or overkill!” Lori said.
Marie shuddered. “I don’t like it,” she said
The BM Science lady overheard them and commented, annoyed at their reaction. “I assure you this cleaning robot is 100% effective.”
“Like the home aide robot in the mall yesterday?” Tim asked. He and Krista had just arrived as well. Tim pointed at Krista. “It scared my poor friend here!”
Krista dropped her head. “It only scared me a little.”
The BM Science person rolled her eyes. “I’m sure the robot would have deactivated if that annoying Super Teen hadn’t stepped in and destroyed it! That cost us a ton of money.”
“See! Super Teen is a menace!” Wendi exclaimed, leaning on her locker. “Plus, she doesn’t wear cool outfits at all! I don’t know what everyone is going on about!” she added with a smirk.
Brandon seemed about to say something, but Wendi cut him off with a look. I like to think that Brandon is on my side. Well, the side of Team Super Kid.
“Yeah she is dangerous,” Lori agreed. “But gotta love her power!”
“I think she tries to help!” Marie said.
Wendi zoomed in on Krista. “Krista you were there at the mall when it happened. Didn’t she knock you out with her super foot odor?”
Krista nodded. “Yeah, I was there, and yes she put me to sleep, but it was by accident.”
Wendi shook her head. “Well, that’s even worse than doing it on purpose!”
A couple of kids nodded and grunted in agreement. I decided to stand back and see how this played out. Jason got ready to jump to my defense, but I squeezed his arm preventing him. I didn’t need him to seem too eager.
“The thing is,” Krista said slowly, “I don’t think it was the smell that hit me. I just felt overwhelmed by her raw power.”
A couple of the kids, with Tony as one of them, seemed impressed by that.
Wendi, of course, was not. “That doesn’t make it any better to me.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” came a voice from the back of the crowd. Jessie came forward. “Face it, Wendi, you have a very limited understanding of the world.”
“Who do you think you are?” Wendi asked, making a fist and heading towards Jessie. Jessie held her ground.
The always calm Brandon stopped Wendi by grabbing her arm and pulling her back. “Wendi, don’t worry about it,” he said. How could she not calm down with him at her side? “I don’t think Jessie meant anything by it.”
Jessie shrugged. “Well, you’ve been in Starlight City all your life so you see life through a very narrow lens; which is fine. You just need to accept that you don’t know everything. In fact, you don’t know much at all. You’ll be happier when you do.” Jessie walked by Wendi and Brandon and into the classroom.
Wendi opened her mouth to say something, and all eyes locked on her. But instead of speaking, Wendi sneezed. “Achoo! Achoo!! Achoo!!!”
Everybody cracked up, even Brandon. Wendi glared at us all. “Sneezing is not funny!”
Brandon hugged her. “Yeah, that was kind of funny, especially with the timing!” he insisted.
Before any of us could say anything else, the bell rang announcing the start of a new school day. I guess both Wendi and Jessie were literally saved by the bell. Jessie certainly had a different way about her. I liked that!
The rest of the school day actually went fairly normal, at least as normal as middle school can ever get. I found morning science class pretty interesting. After spending the last couple of weeks on the planets, this week we started talking about space travel. Mr. Ohm’s little round face lit up when he talked about the future of man in space. We started learning about rockets, and how it was so important for them to be launched with enough energy to escape Earth’s pull of gravity. This was necessary in order to break past Earth’s atmosphere into space.
For a while, I actually even forgot that I was super. That was until lunch when I was forced to pass on the baked beans. Even before I was super, those weren’t a favorite. Now, they were a definite ‘No.’ I wasn’t even sure why the cafeteria offered those.
Jessie sat with us at lunch again. She mostly read a book called Watership Down. But if we asked her a question she would answer it with either a polite yes, or no, or maybe. Tim thought that meant she was warming up to us. I noticed Wendi shooting Jess the evil eye all through lunch. That was until the entire cafeteria cracked up when Bobby Parker slipped on a banana peel and spilled his chocolate milk all over Wendi. Wendi screamed and threatened to have poor Bobby banished from the school. But Brandon told her being school President didn’t give a person that power. Plus, Brandon pointed out that Bobby was a good guy who had just slipped and slips do happen.
I caught Jessie smirking through the entire event. She might have seemed cool and aloof but she paid attention to what went on around her. A weird part of me started to wonder if Jessie had anything to do with the run of bad luck that was happening to Wendi. Nah, that’s impossible. Right? Of course, until last week I thought it would be impossible for me to lift a moving car off the ground like it was a toy car, and to drop a room full of people by popping off my shoe. So, I guess really anything could be possible. Like Great Grandma always said, “The world is a random wonderful crazy place!�
�
In History, Mr. P reminded us that we had until midweek to finish the oral part of our projects. The entire class groaned and moaned. I did too. We thought we’d have until the end of the week at least. Mr. P explained that because we each need to speak for ten minutes, the only way he could make this work was to bring the deadline forward a bit. Each day, starting on Wednesday, he would randomly draw five names from a hat and those five people had to be ready to present their oral project. The paper to go with the project would still be due next Monday. He apologized to us but then pointed out that life often changes the rules as it goes along.
Wendi raised her hand and even offered to go first since she was already organized. She said that because she had such an awesome family the report had been easy. Mr. P thanked her but told her he’d still use the hat, although it was good that she was ready. Wendi knew he’d say that; she just wanted to brag about her family and already being prepared.
The rest of the school day happily passed by without any problems. A big kid, Ryan Taylor accidentally bumped into me, and I had the good sense to fall down. I wanted to make sure nobody even got a hint that I was Super Teen. Yep, I was pretty proud of that.
All in all, the day went well. Of course, that couldn’t last. As I stood at my locker after school preparing for LAX practice, I heard a scream.
“Hey, you crazy robot. Stop that! Stop that now!”
Then in a robot tone: “You have dirt on your buns, therefore I must clean it!”
ZAPP!!!!
“Ouch!! You crazy robot!”
I rushed towards the commotion. I saw the cleaning robot hitting Janitor Jan in the buns with a red beam of energy. The BM Science person ran behind the robot saying stuff like:
“Stop!”
“Abort!”
“Humans aren’t dirt!”
The crazy robot (a phrase I’ve been using a lot lately) didn’t listen. It hit Jan with another blast. Jan swatted the robot with her mop.
“Ha! It will take more than a cleaning device to stop me!” the robot taunted.
“Yeah, but how about a LAX stick!” Lori yelled.
Lori and Marie launched themselves at the crazy robot. Marie hit it over the dome with her stick! Lori threw a shoulder block at the robot. She hit it hard. But the robot bounced off her.
“Better than a mop!” the robot admitted. “But still not enough to harm me!”
I had to stop this robot. But I had to do it in a subtle way. Lori and Marie had it distracted as they whacked it with their sticks, but that wouldn’t hold it for long. I thought about using heat vision, but that might be noticed. The last thing I needed now was people seeing heat coming out of my eyes, and then realizing what was going on. I didn’t believe I was even considering this, but it may very well be a time for super spit. Yep, super spit. Not ladylike at all, but it could work.
I rolled my tongue around my mouth to collect some spit. I aimed. I blew out a little wad of spit! The spit hit the robot in the midsection, breaking through the robot’s metal shielding. The robot crumbled to the ground.
Lori and Marie raised their sticks in victory. I felt good for them. I also felt great that I’d saved the day even though nobody else knew it. I had used my brains to use my powers in a secretive but effective way!
Dear Diary: So now this is normal in my life, defeating robots that have gone mad. Well at least nobody can say I have a boring life. I take pride in knowing I took the crazy bot down very intelligently without anybody knowing I did it! Gotta admit I did miss a bit of the praise and awe from other people, but I didn’t miss the haters on social media pretty much saying Super Teen isn’t all that great at all. BTW, social media loved that Marie and Lori took out the robot and saved Janitor Jan. Sigh (yes I wrote sigh). I guess normal kids doing heroic things are easier for people to deal with than Super Teen doing something heroic. I need to remind myself that I am Lia Strong. Super Teen is just a small part of my personality and not a defining part. Super Teen is a tool for me to get things done while still leading a normal life as Lia.
I talked to mom about that weird message I had heard in my mind. She told me that it was either 1) I was overtired 2) it was absolutely nothing 3) it was another super being trying to communicate with me.
Mom did hint that there may be other advanced or supernatural beings around. She had never met any, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t or wouldn’t exist. She told me, and I quote, “It’s impossible to prove a negative.” When I asked her to explain she said it meant you can’t prove something doesn’t exist. The universe is always expanding.
So who knows?
A different kind of kid…
During the next couple of days, life was pretty boring. But boring can be good. Boring lets you recharge and energize for the not so boring times, the times when you need all your wits and strength. I was glad that Super Teen could take the time off and let me deal with just being Lia.
I put the finishing touches on my paper and oral report about my family history. My heart pounded on Wednesday when Mr. P pulled the lucky names from the hat and announced who would go first: Carol Lester, Vanesa LeBlan, Meghan MacKenzie and Buddy Jason.
I gotta say they all did way better than I could. Sure, they were probably the four smartest kids in the class (kind of weird how that happened), but they seemed to hold back any nervousness they had. Later, Jason told me the secret of public speaking was to picture everybody in their underwear, as it would help you to relax. Not sure I wanted to do that.
Walking home, we noticed Felipe being met at the bus by his cousin, Tomas. Felipe gave us an enthusiastic wave. Tomas gave us a polite nod. We decided to go over and introduce ourselves to Tomas. After all, being a new kid in town, he probably wanted to meet people.
“Hey, Felipe we thought we’d come over and chat with you and get to meet your cousin, Tomas a bit!” I said.
Felipe smiled. He stood there with his legs crossed. “Ah, ah great,” he said. “But I have to rush to the bathroom now! I’ll leave you guys to talk!” He leaped into the house.
“Well, thank you for coming over,” Tomas said, not looking either of us in the eye. “It’s hard meeting people when you’re homeschooled. Plus, I’m kind of shy. Even when I go to the public library I sit in the basement. It’s quiet there, just me and my books. Well, not my books, but a bunch of books for me to read. I love books.”
“I do too!” I said.
“I think we all love books,” Jason said. “But why don’t you go to the public school?”
Tomas looked up at him. “My family insists I am special. Too special for public schools!”
Okay, I got the impression Tomas didn’t want to talk about this. But Jason, for all his brains, wasn’t always the best person at picking up on somebody else’s vibes. He pushed the matter. “You know, Starlight City Public Schools have a great reputation.”
Tomas laughed. “That sounds like something Mayor TJ Bass would brag.”
“Perhaps, but it’s still true!” Jason said. “We get an excellent education and we get to hang out with our friends.”
I love Jason, but he could be such a dense geek at times when dealing with new people.
“Really?” Tomas said.
“Really!” Jason said.
Tomas crossed his arms. He looked at Jason. “I bet you don’t even know how many moons Mars has?”
“Sure I do, one hundred!” Jason said. “Wait, that’s not right.”
“I know you don’t know the Pythagorean Theorem!”
Jason stomped a foot down. “A something equals CAT!” he said.
“Ah Jason, that’s not right! Not even close,” I told him. Something weird was going on here.
“Let’s do an easy one. I know you can’t spell cat!” Tomas taunted.
Jason gave him a confident wave. “Oh please, that’s so easy! I’m not even going to tell you!” he said, with a bravado in his voice I hadn’t ever heard from Jason.
“You can’t do it!” T
omas laughed.
I turned to Jason. “Jason, you can spell…cat!”
Jason nodded. “I can but I won’t!” he said, taking a step away from me.
This was very unusual behavior from Jason.
“Show us how you spell CAT!” Tomas ordered.
Jason spoke slowly like he really didn’t want to, “C – A – N!” He said.
“Jason, he means CAT like the animal!” I said.
“Right!” Jason said, standing up straight. “I got this…”
“No, you don’t!” Tomas grinned.
“K-A-T!” Jason said proudly.
Tomas laughed.
“Well, it was close,” I said, patting Jason on the shoulder.
Tomas shooed Jason away. “Skip along home now so the smart people can talk!”
“Right boss!” Jason said. He turned and skipped across the street.
I curled my hands into fists. I showed Tomas my fists. “Listen, buddy, I don’t like people playing with my friends like that!”
Tomas took a step back, eyebrows raised. “Calm down!” he said. “Just having a little fun. You like fun!”
I took a step closer to him. “I will not calm down!” I shouted. The force of my voice sent him reeling backward.
Tomas held up both hands for me to stop. “I knew you smelled different!” he said.
“What?” I said storming towards him.
“Don’t get me wrong, you smell fine. Just way more powerful than normal humans. I knew you were her. But when you didn’t respond to my mental message I thought maybe I was wrong.”
“So you’re the one who tried talking in my mind?”
Tomas nodded. “I didn’t try. I did talk to your mind. You just didn’t respond. Not my fault.”
I rolled my eyes. “It kind of was, since I had no idea what was going on!”
Now Tomas rolled his eyes. “I thought that because you’re super, you’d figure it out!”
I put a finger to my mouth. “Sssh, don’t say that out loud!”
The New Normal Page 5
