by Kelly Oram
“What?” I asked.
“Look, don’t zap me for saying this, but you sound a lot like your dad right now.”
“My dad?” I shouted. He was lucky we were talking over the phone. “I am not completely paranoid!”
“Jamie, you think the boogieman’s after you because of a newspaper and a nice pair of shoes.”
“They were Jimmy Choos,” I grumbled. “And what about the guy at the hospital? He wasn’t a doctor! He was recording our conversation!”
“He was probably exactly who you thought he was,” Ryan said, “a reporter looking for a story after a nasty car accident. He saw you in Mike’s room and thought he could get information from you. But it had nothing to do with your powers. It couldn’t. How could he have possibly known?”
“But—”
Ryan didn’t let me interrupt. “There was absolutely nothing suspicious about Mike’s accident. You didn’t save him,” he said. “You didn’t use your powers this time, remember?”
I felt as if I’d been punched in the gut. The frustration in Ryan’s voice broke my heart. I knew he blamed me for not helping his best friend. How could he not? “I’m sorry!” I blurted.
Ryan heard the tears in my voice and sighed again. “I wasn’t accusing you, Jamie. Call me selfish, but I’m glad you didn’t expose yourself. Mike is my friend, but if I had to choose between you and him, I’d choose you. You did the right thing.”
“Then why do you sound angry?”
“Because I knew you were going to do this to yourself. You’re overreacting because you’re stressed out about the accident. What is your couple on the bench doing now?”
I risked a glance behind me, only to find the bench empty. I scanned the entire area, but didn’t see the couple that’d been watching me anywhere. “Actually, they’re gone now.”
“There, you see?” Ryan said, as if I’d just proved something for him. “They were just enjoying some fresh air on their break and are probably starting their next classes by now. Nobody is following you.”
I sighed. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m losing my mind. Mike’s accident really messed with my head. I’m sorry.”
Ryan’s response was, “I love you.” It made me smile. Ryan says I’m the smitten one, but he throws those three words at me more than my parents, who are embarrassingly affectionate.
“I love you, too.”
“As you should,” he said. “Because, like I said before, I have figured out a solution to your problem.”
“You have?”
Ryan laughed. “Why do you sound so skeptical? Yes. I have figured out the answer to your problem, and you are going to love it, so get your superbutt over here right now.”
“All right,” I relented. But I looked back at the empty bench and shivered. “I’ll be there in half an hour. There’s one thing I need to do first.”
. . . . .
Before heading over to see Ryan, I made a quick stop in New York City. I really, really didn’t want to see the man I was visiting, but I needed his help. I couldn’t shake the bad feeling in my gut, but if anyone could get me answers, it was Dave Carter—tabloid journalist turned hard-hitting reporter—and the man of my nightmares. Well, one of them.
My skin crawled as I walked into CNN’s New York offices. I’d almost rather be locked up in a lab at Visticorp than walking into this lion’s den. The only thing I hated worse than evil mad scientists were reporters, and Dave Carter was the worst of them all.
Carter was the man who used to stalk me when I first got my powers. He wrote up every cracked-out theory his mind could create about me and published them all, the most popular being that I caused my car accident on purpose because I was suicidal over a breakup, and wanted to take my boyfriend down with me. My boyfriend did die that night—and it really was my fault—but those were the only facts Carter ever got right in any of the articles he wrote about me.
He turned my entire town against me with his lies. So much that my family was forced to move clear across the country to the dull, dreary, life-sucking city of Sacramento, California. He claims he did it to throw a group of psychotic scientists off my superpowered trail. That may be true, but I still think that he took great pleasure in my misery. He definitely profited from it, anyway.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my least favorite paparazzi scumbag.”
Carter frowned like he smelled something foul. As if he had a reason to dislike me.
“What?” I asked dryly. “No smile for your old BFF? How about a thank-you for this depressing little cubical you’ve got here? I mean, it was my story that got you this job, wasn’t it?”
Last year, when my English teacher found out the truth about me and tortured Ryan in an attempt to make me cooperate with him, Carter helped me cover up the truth by writing a story that made my teacher look more like a psycho pervert than a man desperate to study my superpowers. The article made Carter look like a hero and bumped him from the minor to the major leagues of reporting gigs.
Jerk never even sent me a thank-you card.
“It was my story,” Carter grumbled. “I wrote it, and I did all the investigating. You were just the subject.”
“Fine. You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes,” I said. As much as I loved annoying him, I couldn’t make him too mad, considering I was there to ask him a favor. “Seriously, though, congrats on the new job. I’m happy for you.” Happy that you now report clear on the other side of the country…
Carter, smart man that he is, didn’t buy my sincerity. He rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair. He crossed his arms over his chest as he scowled at me. “What are you doing here, Jamielynn?”
“You never call. You never write…” I shrugged and flashed my best smile. “I missed you. I was thinking maybe I could blow up your computer for old times’ sake.” I eyed the silver laptop on his desk and smiled at the Apple insignia on top. “I see you found the Mac store. Welcome to the twenty-first century.”
Carter grumbled something about obnoxious teenagers.
“Okay, fine.”
Obviously I wasn’t going to win him over with sentimentality, so I decided to play on his insufferable curiosity. I pulled out my cell phone and showed him the picture I’d taken of Mr. Definitely-Not-a-Doctor.
Carter took a good look despite himself and then grudgingly asked, “Who is he?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. Does he look familiar to you at all?”
“Should he?”
I shrugged. “Don’t all you stalkerazzi types know each other? Isn’t there like a guild or something?”
Carter’s eyes narrowed at me. “What’s going on, Jamie?”
I shrugged again, but this time I could feel how defensive it was. “Maybe nothing.”
Carter gave me a look and I cracked. “Maybe he’s a tabloid journalist, and maybe he’s someone else. There was sort of this accident the other day and—”
Carter groaned. He rubbed his hands over his face and then glared up at me with a look that almost felt like hatred. “Didn’t you learn your lesson last time?” he snapped. “I should just let them come for you. You can’t keep using your powers and expect to—”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” I shouted, so angry that I made the power in the room surge.
I closed my eyes and took a couple of long, deep breaths. I’d just lost control in a room full of reporters. Several of them were now staring curiously at me while others looked up at the lights or tapped their computer screens. I had to get a grip, or the entire world was going to know the truth about me.
Once I was calm I found Carter frowning at me, the anger gone from his face. Now he was only curious.
I hated that I was so fascinating to him. I didn’t want to explain myself. I didn’t want him to know how messed up I was, but I needed his help and he wouldn’t give it unless he had details.
“I didn’t use my powers,” I hissed. My anger turned to guilt and I had a hard time getting t
he truth out. “I stood there and watched my boyfriend’s best friend get mowed over by an Escalade, and I didn’t do anything. The guy almost died because I was too big of a coward to expose myself.”
Admitting it out loud to Carter made me slip again and the lights flickered once more. This was getting out of hand.
“For heaven’s sake, Jamielynn, do you know where you are?” Carter hissed in a low whisper. “Get yourself under control!”
“I am trying! You have no idea what it feels like to know you let someone get hurt when you could have stopped it.”
Carter’s face paled and he suddenly looked a good ten years older.
“What?” I demanded.
“Nothing.”
“Yeah, right. If anyone knows what guilt looks like, it’s me. What’s your story?”
For the first time since I’d met Carter I saw honest emotion dripping off his face in the form of regret. “Just drop it, Jamielynn,” he whispered. “Please.”
I had no comeback. I couldn’t form words of any kind. Carter was an actual human being. One with feelings. All this time, I never knew.
I shifted uneasily, wishing I could bail. I didn’t like thinking of Carter as a person.
Carter scowled at my shock and then sighed heavily. “Tell me what happened.”
I told him about the accident, and then explained my encounter with the fake doctor in great detail. Carter seemed to agree that the man was probably a reporter fishing for a story. He chastised me for breaking the man’s voice recorder, but said I did the right thing by not using my powers to help Mike. Considering Carter’s selfishness and heartlessness, his assurances that I’d made the right decision only made me certain it was wrong.
When I got to the part about the couple on the bench, Carter laughed.
“I’m not paranoid!”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Carter said, still chuckling. “You of all people need a healthy dose of paranoia, but Johnny Football” —he meant Ryan— “is right. You overreacted.”
“What do you know about it? You’ve never been stalked!”
“But I’ve been the stalker.”
I glared at him. No freaking duh.
Carter sighed again and held out his open hand, palm up. “Give me your phone. I’ll call my contacts in Sacramento and see if I can figure out who this guy is for you.”
I was surprised that he was actually offering to help before I had to resort to death threats, but I quickly managed a smug look. “And here I thought you didn’t care.”
Carter rolled his eyes. “If I don’t help you, you’ll do something stupid trying to figure it out on your own and you’ll end up in a secret government facility somewhere.”
I flashed Carter a bright smile. “Oh, how well you know me.”
Carter downloaded the photo to his computer and then handed my phone back with another over-the-top sigh. “Now get out of here, Jamielynn,” he said in a tired voice, “before you turn all my hair gray.”
As I backed out of his cubical, I looked up at his hairline, which was only slightly receding, and left him with the parting words of, “What hair?”
I really love my boyfriend, but I hate hanging out at his dorm. It always reminds me how gross boys are. Especially athletes. I think his entire team lives in the same dorm. All of the old pizza and endless supply of dirty socks are enough to make a girl sick. And that’s without supersmell. At least this time I wasn’t getting there right after practice. Most of the guys we passed on the way to Ryan’s room had already showered.
“So what’s this surprise?” I asked, plopping down on his unmade bed.
He answered me with a deep kiss. Somehow I didn’t think this was his solution to my dilemma, but with Ryan you never know. I wouldn’t put it past him to believe that his kissing skills could solve any problem. Either way, I went with it. After seeing Carter, I needed a good kiss to clear my mind.
Just as Ryan pushed me back onto the bed, his roommate stumbled in wearing more sweat than clothes.
Makeout mood officially dead.
“Miller,” he said with a laugh. “I know you’re a new freshman and all, but I thought the do-not-disturb necktie on the doorknob was universal knowledge.”
“It’s all good,” Ryan said. “We were just saying hello.”
The guy flashed me a wide grin as I sat up. “Do you say hello to everyone like that, or is Miller just a lucky S.O.B.?”
The couple of times I’d been to Ryan’s dorm, I hadn’t met his roommate. Ryan had told me a little about him, though. His name was Sean, he was a sophomore, played tight end, and Ryan liked him. I could see why. He seemed as easygoing as Ryan.
I stood up and extended my hand. “I’m Jamie.”
“Oh, I know.” Sean laughed again and shook my hand. “Miller doesn’t shut up about you. He has the women on this campus all going crazy, but he’s devastatingly faithful. Did you know that the cheer squad came to visit him Sunday after he’d bailed on the game?”
“Becky told them about Mike,” Ryan explained. “I guess they were concerned about me after I left early.”
Sean snorted. “They said it was their job to cheer up their quarterback. The entire cheer squad was fawning over this shmuck, and do you know what he did? He took out your picture and told them all the story of how you guys got together—his bet with the guy in the hospital over winning a date with Becky. They were all swooning and he didn’t even notice.”
I shook my head. “Oh, he noticed. He does it on purpose, you know. Don’t let his boyish smile fool you. Ryan Miller knows exactly what he’s doing all the time.”
Sean laughed. “Well, it looks like he’s found the perfect girl to keep him in line. It’s good to finally meet you, Jamie.” Sean flung a towel over his shoulders. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to hit the showers.”
Sean flashed me one last bright smile and then jokingly tossed Ryan a necktie as he left the room. Ryan held it up with a suggestive look that made me laugh.
“Focus.”
“Right.”
Ryan grabbed a stack of magazines off his desk. When I realized they were comic books, I frowned. “Funny.”
“Think about it, Jamie. You have superpowers. You want to use them to help people, and you don’t want people to find out about you.”
“I don’t want to be a superhero, Ryan, and it wouldn’t solve my problem, anyway. It’s not like I can wear a mask all the time. What if I’m just walking around as Jamie Baker and another accident happens, like with Mike? I don’t know if you’ve noticed the lack of phone booths in the world these days. I can’t just run off and change my clothes every time some idiot crosses a street without looking.”
Ryan was trying to help me, but the more I talked about this the more I realized I was screwed. “Face it. The only way to really solve this problem would be to run off to the Canadian Rockies where the only living beings I’ll risk exposing myself to walk on four legs instead of two.”
I didn’t realize how worked up I was until Ryan took my hands and prompted me to take a long, deep breath through my nose.
“You can’t save everyone, Jamie. You did the right thing the other day.”
“It doesn’t feel like I did the right thing.”
Ryan pulled me into his arms, which is the absolute best place to be. He pushed my hair away from my face and then settled his hand on my cheek, forcing me to meet his stare. “Stop focusing on only the negative. Mike is going to be okay, and you weren’t exposed. Be grateful for at least that much.”
Ryan has this annoying talent of sounding firm and sympathetic at the same time. When he uses that gentle voice and stares at me with those understanding eyes, it’s almost like I feel grateful or lucky to be receiving a lecture from him. It’s why he always gets his way. The most exasperating part is that I can’t even be mad at him for always getting what he wants, because he always manages to make me feel better in spite of myself.
“You can’t save everyone, Jamie, but m
aybe if you were able to help some people, it might make up for the times you have to put yourself first.”
“You think saving someone else is going to make what I let happen to Mike okay?”
Ryan shook his head, but he was still smiling at me. “Mike is the only one responsible for what happened to him, and, no, I don’t think saving people would make the guilt you feel disappear. But I do think it would give you something to feel good about. It would give you something to focus on that you could actually control.” Ryan gave me a tiny smirk. “And we both know how much you love control.”
Ryan grinned and I kissed him. I was a lost cause.
“How is it that you can make even the craziest ideas make sense?” I asked.
Ryan’s face lit up. “So, you’ll do it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. This isn’t a game we’re talking about—it’s my life. It’s other people’s lives.”
“Lives that will only be better because of you.”
“Unless I screw it up.” I picked up Ryan’s stack of comics and scattered them across his bed. “There’s no way it’s as simple as it is in these magazines. And most of these aren’t even simple. You’re trying to turn science fiction into reality.”
“Says the girl who shoots lightning from her hands.”
Ryan laughed at the glare I gave him and kissed my hands. “Babe, in our world science stopped being fiction a long time ago, but we figured it out, didn’t we? Look at everything we accomplished last year. You gained control of your powers. You took back your life.”
“I know, but—”
“You have a gift, Jamie. Now that you have control of that gift, maybe it’s time to take it to the next level. Maybe it’s time for you to become more than Jamie Baker.”
I was terrified of putting myself out there for everyone to see—I didn’t think Ryan gave the supervillains of the world enough credit—but I was more scared that he was right. Mike’s accident had changed me. I couldn’t do nothing. Ryan was right about my control issues. If I was going to be exposed, then it was going to be on my terms.
