The Mighty Odds

by Amy Ignatow

  “If it were a trap, he probably would have had to write something like ‘I have ice cream. Come over for ice cream,’” Martina chimed in, still sketching in her book.

  “That would be kind of random,” Nick said.

  “Do you like ice cream?”

  “Sure. Who doesn’t like ice cream?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Good thinking, everyone,” Jay said, pacing the short length of Nick’s bedroom. “I think you should go see Farshad.”

  Nick looked at him. “Who, me?”

  “Well, you’re the only one who can go,” Jay said.

  “Like my mom is going to let me out of the house.” Nick ran his fingers through his hair. Martina quickly reached up and grabbed his arm to prevent him from teleporting. “I’m okay,” he said. She shrugged and let go.

  “The lovely Angela won’t even notice that you’re gone,” Jay said.

  “Of course,” Nick said, throwing up his hands. “And how am I supposed to get out of the house without my mom noticing?”

  Jay put his hand on the wall next to Nick’s desk. “How thick do you think these walls are?”

  Nick stared at him. “You can’t be serious.”

  Jay knocked lightly on the wall. “It’s probably thicker than four inches. Probably.”

  Martina also knocked on the wall. “Probably,” she said.

  “Oh, you can tell that from knocking?” Nick was getting agitated. Jay grabbed his hand.

  Martina furrowed her brow. “Also, he’d end up fifteen feet in the air.”

  “Bad plan,” Jay said, turning back to Nick. “You’d better just sneak out through the back door, into the garage, and go out from there.”

  “My mother will definitely notice the garage door opening,” Nick said.

  Jay looked him straight in the eye. “Then don’t open the garage door.”

  Lately, before making any big decisions, Nick had started wondering what his dad would have done. Before he got sick, his dad had worked in Auxano’s IT department, but spent a lot of his time volunteering at a local food pantry. Nick’s mom was always talking about how he’d really liked working “with the good guys,” so Nick would try to think of what a guy who liked working with good guys would do. It wasn’t easy. Nick’s father had been in and out of the hospital since Nick was six, so he didn’t remember him as a person who worked with good guys.

  But Nick remembered that he loved his dad, and that his dad had loved him. He remembered the days spent in the hospital when they’d play cards together or watch movies or when his dad had tried to tell him stories about his life, like when he first kissed a girl in high school or how he took a year off from college to backpack around the world. His dad had known that he probably wouldn’t be around to tell them to Nick when Nick’d be old enough to actually understand what his dad was saying.

  Of course, Nick’s dad had never told him any stories about what it was like to suddenly find out that you have supernatural abilities. Nick wished he knew what his dad would have thought of the whole situation, and wishing it made him feel hollow inside. He looked at Jay and Martina and then left the room.

  A moment later he was standing in the darkened garage between his mother’s car and the closed garage door. He moved himself as close to the door as possible without his left arm touching it. And then he was outside. Nick began to run.

  I just teleported through a solid door. I JUST TELEPORTED THROUGH A SOLID DOOR. Nick kept running and trying not to think about it. After a while he could only think about the stitch in his side. If he was going to have to keep running from explosions and running to save people, he was really going to have to get into better shape. Maybe eat a salad or something.

  Nick staggered to a tree and leaned against it. He was about a block from Farshad’s house, and the streets were very quiet except for his wheezing and the sound of footsteps behind him. Nick turned to see Cookie Parker.

  “I heard you coming,” she said, slowly lifting her hand and tapping her index finger to her temple. Her eyes were filled with tears.

  Nick wiped the sweat off his forehead. He remembered what his father used to tell him, and how it would make him feel a little better even when he knew that it couldn’t possibly be true: “It’s going to be okay,” Nick told her.

  Cookie and Nick wound their way silently back to Farshad’s house. She didn’t want Nick to see her all cry-faced again and it seemed like he didn’t particularly want to see that, either.

  A police cruiser was parked outside of the Rajavis’ house. Nick ducked behind a tree. “What are you doing?” Cookie asked.

  “The police are here!”

  Cookie eyed Nick. “Are you a criminal?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you hiding?”

  Nick looked sheepish. “My mom doesn’t know I left the house.”

  Cookie rolled her eyes. “I genuinely don’t believe that the police are going to call your mom.” She looked worried. “I wonder why they’re here.”

  “We need to find a way to let Farshad know that we’re outside.”

  “You didn’t email him back to let him know you were coming?” Nick had told Cookie about Farshad’s email on the way there.

  Nick looked flustered. “No, I just left. Can you use your phone to call him or email him?”

  Cookie looked down at her phone. There were dozens of unread texts and two missed calls from her mom. She wasn’t going to be able to avoid everyone for much longer, and it was almost evening. “I don’t know if this is a good idea. He kicked us out of his house.”

  “He emailed me. He’s trying to watch out for us.” Nick took a deep breath. “Whether we like it or not, I think that we all need to start watching out for each other.” He faced her. He was sweaty and kind of a mess. He held out his hand for her phone. She looked up at the Rajavis’ house and saw Farshad looking down at them. He looked aggravated. Great.

  “He’s looking at us,” Cookie told Nick, who whirled around and started waving at Farshad like a great big goober. Farshad gestured for them to meet him in the backyard.

  “Why are the police here?” Cookie asked as soon as Farshad came out the back door. Farshad ignored her and looked at Nick. “Why are you out of breath?”

  Nick looked pained. “Your email sounded urgent. I ran all the way here.”

  “Couldn’t you have just . . . teleported here?” Farshad asked, annoyed.

  “No,” Cookie said quickly, “he can only go a couple of inches.” She didn’t know why, but she felt the need to defend Nick.

  “I think it’s about four,” Nick said, wiping his brow. “Four inches at a time.”

  “And only to the left,” Cookie added.

  “Why did you bring her?” Farshad asked, shooting a look at Cookie.

  Cookie was used to people giving her strange looks; it was par for the course in Muellersville for one of the town’s two resident black people (the other one being Cookie’s mother). She’d lived in the small town for seven years, but she still felt the stares when she went into nice stores with Addison and Claire. People who didn’t know her were very careful when they talked to her, and sometimes even people who did know her were careful about what they said when she was around, as if they were afraid they’d offend her. Sometimes Cookie felt like she had a power over people like that. If they were going to be obviously nervous around her then she might as well take advantage of their fear. Ridiculous people.

  But Farshad wasn’t like that. He wasn’t afraid of her; certainly he must have received his fair share of stares in Muellersville even before he became Terror Boy. He was the Arab Kid, just like Cookie was the Black Girl and Harshita Singh was the Indian Girl and Danny Valdez was the Hispanic Guy and Emma Lee was the Asian Chick. They should have all formed a posse long ago and walked around Muellersville together, just to freak people out. But Farshad seemed to hate her and had made sure that she was aware of his feelings. She didn’t really understand what she’d ever done to ea
rn that hate, but whatever. People had the right not to like each other. If he wanted to be a jerk to her, fine. Two could play that game. But like Nick had said, they needed to start watching out for one another. It was one thing to be a brown person in Muellersville and another to be a brown person in Muellersville with superpowers. Or okayish powers, at any rate. Like it or not, they were stuck with each other.

  “He didn’t bring me. I heard him and I came,” Cookie said.

  Farshad looked at her and raised his eyebrows

  “Why did you email Nick?” she asked him.

  Farshad turned to Nick and began to recount his story. Cookie gasped when he told them about the exploding slow cooker, and he looked annoyed. “It’s fine,” he said, “we can buy another slow cooker.”

  “Did you see Mr. Friend do it?” Nick asked. “You know . . . explode the slow cooker?”

  Farshad looked down at his hands. “Not exactly,” he admitted. “But he was there. Then the slow cooker exploded. We’ve never had that happen before . . .”

  “But what did he want from you?” Cookie interrupted.

  “How should I know?” Farshad snapped.

  “Do you think he knows what happened to us?” Nick asked.

  “Well, whatever has happened to us, it looks like it’s happened to him, too,” Farshad said.

  “Wait.” Cookie looked at Farshad. “Are you admitting that something happened to you?”

  “Cookie . . . ,” Nick started.

  “What? He calls us over here because all of a sudden he’s so worried about us?”

  “I didn’t call you,” Farshad said.

  “Before, he didn’t think that there was anything wrong with him and he couldn’t have cared less about anything that we said. But now all of a sudden he’s all worried.” Cookie turned to Farshad. “We know Nick can teleport. Extremely short distances. And we know that I can read minds—”

  “Actually, I didn’t know that,” Farshad said.

  “Well, now you do. I can read minds, and you probably have super strength. Well?”

  Farshad looked at her strangely. “You can read minds?”

  “Sure,” she said, sounding infinitely more confident than she actually felt about her newfound ability.

  “Then what am I thinking right now?”

  “Guys . . . ,” Nick said.

  “You’re thinking that you hate me but you’re too scared to say it so you choose to give me nasty looks instead,” Cookie snapped.

  Farshad let out a short, harsh laugh. “No,” he said, “I was thinking of the number seven.”

  “Liar.”

  “Guys . . .”

  “Faker.”

  “Guys . . .”

  “Well, where’s the super strength?” Cookie asked, ignoring Nick’s weak attempts to calm them down. She’d had a rough twenty-four hours, and letting loose on creepy Terror Boy was actually making her feel more like her old self again: Strong. Sharp. Not afraid all the time.

  Farshad looked around angrily, and found a large pebble. He squatted and put it on the flagstone patio, and lowered his thumb onto it.

  The pebble shattered to dust.

  “Whoa,” Nick said.

  Well, Cookie thought, hello again, fear.

  Farshad had scared Cookie. He knew that, and it gave him more pleasure than he cared to admit. He had to stop that sort of thinking—not just because his parents were good people who had strived to teach him the value of kindness, but because Cookie might read his thoughts.

  The truth was, he had been thinking about the number seven, but he’d probably also been hating Cookie because, well, he’d always hated Cookie Parker. But he had to be careful. If she was telling the truth, then she could do a lot more damage than reducing some small stones to dust. Given the choice, he would have much rather had the power to read minds. That way he could be sure about what people really thought about him. Plus, it would probably help with academics.

  “So Jay was right,” Nick said. “You do have super strength.”

  “Sort of.” Farshad looked down at his hands again, which yesterday had seemed perfectly normal and not particularly worthy of consideration. “It’s really just my thumbs,” he admitted.

  “Wait,” Cookie said, regaining her composure. “You have super-strong . . . thumbs?”

  “Yeah, but didn’t you already know that from reading my mind?”

  Cookie sucked in a breath. “That’s not how it works,” she said.

  “So how does it work?” Farshad asked.

  “I don’t exactly know,” Cookie said. She looked at Nick, who shrugged.

  “I don’t know how any of our powers work,” Nick said. “I can barely control mine. Martina is back at my house and her eyes are changing colors every two minutes. I think my mother might have noticed.” He turned to Farshad. “Did you tell your parents about . . . this?” he asked, gesturing to the small pile of crumbled stone at their feet.

  “No,” Farshad said, looking back at his house.

  “I didn’t tell my mom, either,” Nick said.

  They looked at Cookie.

  “I’m not telling anyone anything,” she said. “Like we want to be connected to Mr. Friend in any way.”

  Farshad nodded. He hated agreeing with her, but the last thing that a guy whose nickname was Terror Boy needed was to have people know that he had super strength. Even his parents. Especially his parents. They already worried about him too much. He could see them through the kitchen window, cleaning the charred area where the destroyed slow cooker had been. “I’d better go back inside,” he said.

  “Wait,” Cookie said.

  “Do you think we should maybe get together soon?” Nick asked. “Like, all four of us? Talk all this over?”

  “Wait,” Cookie said.

  “I don’t know,” Farshad said. “We should probably wait until this whole Mr. Friend business dies down.”

  “Wait,” Cookie said.

  “The police are probably going to catch up with him soon,” Nick said. “I mean, if the guy is limping around in a hospital gown—”

  “HE’S HEADING TO YOUR HOUSE.” Cookie was staring straight at Nick. He stared back at her, the color draining from his face.

  “My mom,” he whispered, blinking out of existence and reappearing four inches to the left of where he had just been.

  Cookie grabbed his hand. “Let’s go,” she said, and turned to Farshad. “You coming?”

  They were all running together. Cookie was keeping up but it was pretty apparent that Farshad could easily outrun them both. He wasn’t even breathing hard. He was probably one of those guys who ran around for fun. Nick felt like his lungs were going to explode.

  He was frantically worried. If Mr. Friend could blow up cars, and trees, and slow cookers, his mom was in danger. (What was a slow cooker, anyway? Nick had been sort of afraid to ask. He made a quick mental note to do an Internet search later, if his whole house wasn’t on fire.) But Jay and Martina were also in his house. What would Mr. Friend do to them? What could he do? And what could they do to stop him?

  Farshad stopped at the end of a block. “Where do you live again?” he asked Nick. He wasn’t even sweating. Nick wheezed out his address and Farshad took off again.

  “Stop,” Cookie said. Nick stopped and looked at her but Farshad kept going. “STOP!” she yelled.

  Farshad turned around and jogged back to them. “I was under the impression that we were in a hurry,” he said.

  “No . . . ,” Cookie started.

  “So you’re not so certain that Mr. Friend is going to Nick’s house?”

  “I’m sure, I’m sure, I heard him,” she said frantically to Farshad. “But now I’m hearing you.”

  Farshad frowned. “What am I thinking right now?”

  “No, I can’t hear you now.”

  “But you just said—”

  “I just heard you figuring out how to get to Nick’s house.” Cookie looked at him, hard. “Is that what you were thinkin
g?”

  Farshad blanched, and was quiet.

  “Yes,” Cookie answered for him.

  “What’s going on?” Nick asked.

  “Tell him,” Farshad said.

  “I just heard him again,” Cookie whispered.

  “What did he . . . think?”

  “He was wondering about the best way to get to the library from here,” Cookie said.

  “Yes,” Farshad said. “Can you hear what I’m thinking now?”

  Cookie shook her head.

  “Interesting,” Farshad said. “How about now?”

  “No.”

  “And now?”

  “Eww! Stop that.”

  Farshad laughed.

  “Come on, guys!” Nick said. The longer they stood there, the more chance there was that he would return to find his house engulfed in flames. His mom, his best friend, the weird but friendly girl that they were now apparently hanging out with, and everything his dad had ever owned would be gone. Nick looked at Farshad.

  “She can hear thoughts,” Farshad explained, “but only if someone is thinking about how to get somewhere. That’s why she heard me but not you. You know how to get to your house—I had to figure it out.”

  “Oh, so that’s why you could hear Mr. Friend trying to get out of the school,” Nick said. “And him trying to find my house.”

  “Right!” Cookie said. “He is almost there. I can hear it.”

  “WE HAVE TO GO!” Nick yelled, and took off in the direction of his house. Farshad quickly caught up and jogged beside him.

  Nick was trying to keep pace, but he had to know. “What were you thinking that grossed Cookie out?”

  Farshad smiled. “Directions to the boys’ bathroom at school.”

  Cookie was trying very hard not to think about urinals, but Farshad had put the image in her head and she hated it. As they ran, he transmitted a few thoughts to her: Turn left at the corner. Four more blocks, over the train tracks. Turn right. She wondered if he was trying to annoy her. If he was, it was working.

  She slowed down to let Nick catch up with her. “Do we have a plan?” she asked him.

  “Save . . . my mom . . .” He looked miserable and sweaty.