My So-Called Superpowers

by Heather Nuhfer

  “It is,” Betsy said.

  “Maybe we should all sit quietly?” Charlie suggested, and for once he, Betsy, and I agreed on something.

  Ms. Watson took a seat behind the main library desk and proceeded to mostly ignore us. She had given the impression that our detention was akin to some kind of water torture, sure to break all of us in the end. She was right. Just sitting at the table, we were soon bored out of our skulls.

  “I never thought I’d say this,” Charlie asked, “but can we do some work or something? You know, library research?”

  Ms. Watson looked over and, after considering, nodded.

  Soon, Charlie and I were wandering the aisles, secretly trying to find anything that might help us learn about the mystery article I’d been sent. But I came up empty-handed.

  “Nothing here, either,” he said, standing in front of the cookbook section. “I looked really hard.”

  “You can’t just make a newspaper vanish into thin air,” I whispered.

  “The microfiche machine,” Betsy’s voice grumbled from back by the chairs. “Prolly some pictures and junk there.”

  The microfiche reader! I hadn’t even thought of that old, dusty contraption.

  “I’m so confused,” Charlie said. “Did Betsy just help us?”

  “I think she did?” I wasn’t sure. “Let’s just enjoy this moment.”

  Fifteen minutes later, I was still trying to get the dang machine to work with zero luck whatsoever. It simply wouldn’t power on.

  “It’s useless, Veri,” Charlie finally said.

  My frustration had mounted to a dangerous level. I stared at the faulty plug—and a massive static shock of stupidpowers shot out of my fingers and into the machine.

  Whoa.

  I flipped the On switch for the microfiche reader—and it came alive, a bright light shining behind the screen. I was really proud of myself. The first successful result of my superpowers. I kicked the power cord out of sight. Hopefully no one noticed that the machine wasn’t even plugged in.

  Once we figured out how to find the film we needed, we finally found the same article that was sent to me. Encouraged, we started scanning newspapers from the next few days and weeks.

  Charlie leaned in to get a better look at the screen. “Whoa, Veri, look at this.”

  He pointed at an article about another rare storm, about sixty miles north. That storm hit almost a week after ours. The article also referred to yet another strange and powerful storm that had happened a few days before that in a nearby town.

  “Add another check mark to the Government Cover-Up Conspiracy!” Charlie said excitedly.

  Another fifteen minutes of looking resulted in many more unusual storms, including one with reported “burning winds,” in even more surrounding towns.

  “We need to map these,” I told Charlie.

  “That’s a good idea. See if there is a trail.”

  Just as it was getting really interesting, Ms. Watson called time on detention. The janitor was waiting to lock up the library.

  More sleuthing would have to wait until the next day. I had to prepare for another event I had planned the next morning: convincing a very large man that a few small preteens wouldn’t cause any trouble.

  * * *

  Occasionally there is a night where Dad leaves for work at the club before I’m home from school and he doesn’t get back until I’m asleep. On those days, the following morning we go out to breakfast before school. Usually it’s pretty fun. This morning, not so much.

  “You’re outta your noodle, Veronica.” Dad chuckled as he shook his head. “Letting Charlie in every once in a while is one thing—a thing I probably shouldn’t be doing in the first place, mind you—but letting in a bunch of your new friends? Nuh-uh. Sorry.”

  He crammed half a cheese Danish in his mouth and took a big swig of coffee before he went back to pretending to read an article about ear candling in Yoga Today.

  Our Parkin’s Family Diner waiter refilled Dad’s mug, noticed the uncomfortable silence as I glared at my dad, and cheerfully said, “I’ll check on you two in a minute.”

  I knew there was no way Dad would ever okay the Ests coming to the club—at least, not right off the bat. He would take some major convincing, but I was willing to do the hard work to become an Est.

  I sipped my juice, never averting my gaze. I knew he could feel me watching; his feigned interest in yoga could only hold out for so long.

  I could wait.

  I had a lot of patience.

  As long as this was all resolved by nine p.m. tomorrow.

  Finally he tossed the magazine back onto the pile on the windowsill and met my stare. “This isn’t open for debate,” he said. “Those kids get caught, I lose my job, probably both jobs, then we lose our house, and we starve to death in the cold. No more delicious fresh Danishes or choco-banana-peanut-butter waffles for us.”

  I didn’t think it would be this hard. There weren’t many topics that weren’t open for debate in our house, aside from which Beatle is the best Beatle. (Don’t listen to my dad, it’s totally John.)

  “No one will even notice them,” I said. “It’ll be like they aren’t even there, I swear. Besides, it can’t be that big of a deal.”

  Dad raised his eyebrows. “You realize that letting them in would be breaking the law, right?”

  “But you let Charlie in.” Dad’s reasoning on this was stupid. Stupid, I say. (Just not out loud.)

  Dad leaned in and lowered his voice. “I let Charlie in because he is one person. A person we trust; not some random kids you barely know. Trust is everything.”

  “I know, I know,” I mumbled. Trust, trust, blah, blah, blah. “But just this once—”

  “Zip it. I’m not saying it again.” He gave me the look that said he really, really meant it.

  “Gah! I’m so close to being an Est! You treat me like a baby!”

  With that, Dad got up and headed toward the door.

  “Dad!” I cried after him.

  “Hey, grown-up,” he called back, pulling a cigar from his pocket as he stepped outside, “thanks for breakfast.”

  And with that, the dude left me with the bill.

  With my allowance and all the change from the bottom of my purse, I managed to pay the bill and leave our waiter a seventy-eight-cent tip. I bet he loved that. Hopefully he wouldn’t be our waiter next time.

  The walk to school was long, and I knew Dad thought it would give me time to think, time to be reasonable and all that garbage, but what it really did was give me time to get more irritated. My dad was a rule breaker for most of his life. A big flippin’ rule breaker. But never when it came to me. He was as bad as Charlie sometimes.

  A buzzing sound caught my attention as I spotted a couple dozen small yellowjackets starting to buzz around me!

  “Ahh!” I screamed. On closer inspection, I could see their wings each had a little skull and crossbones on them. One yellowjacket even had an eye patch. These were more stupidpower manifestations.

  “Ow!” I shouted as one of them stung me. I swore I heard a little, evil laugh. Wait, were they all laughing at me? Before I knew it, I was running from the swarm! I made it about three blocks before I ran out of steam. I hid behind a tree, covering my face with my arms.

  Much to my surprise, after a few breaths, they disappeared.

  By the time detention rolled around that day, I had managed to accept that Dad wasn’t going to change his mind, and I would have to break the news to the Ests before they showed up at the club the next night. I was not looking forward to that. Even less than I was looking forward to being stuck in the library.

  “Here we are again,” sighed Ms. Watson. She looked gloomy—nowhere near as crisp or stern as usual—as she sat behind the librarian’s desk. A fresh issue of a tabloid magazine was open in front of her.

  “What did we learn yesterday?” she asked as she turned a page in the magazine. “Respect? Is respect even real?”

  Charl
ie and I shared a look. Ms. Watson apparently had a bad day.

  “You can try and try and try,” Ms. Watson continued, “but it doesn’t mean that anyone will take your efforts seriously. Or back you up and work for justice. Some people want the status quo over truth!” She looked at us like we knew what she was talking about and should also be outraged.

  “Are, uh, you okay, Ms. Watson?” Charlie asked.

  “I am fine,” she replied quickly. “I just lost my job.”

  “Then why are you here?” Charlie said, deeply puzzled.

  Ms. Watson put her hand on her forehead. “No, no. I apologize. I don’t mean this job. I mean my … other job.”

  “Where else do you work?” I asked.

  “It’s nothing,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said sheepishly.

  “Just don’t ever give up everything for your job is what I’m saying.”

  Charlie leaned over and whispered to me, “She’s gone off her rocker.”

  The chut-chut of an automatic camera shutter made Ms. Watson wince. “Enjoying the new camera, Betsy?” she asked uncertainly.

  Sure enough, Betsy had a camera, but I wouldn’t call it new. It was huge and held together by duct tape. The lens cover dangled by a twist tie.

  Betsy grunted an acknowledgment.

  “Good,” Ms. Watson said. “May I speak with you in private?”

  Charlie and I used their little meet-up as an excuse to get back to our research. On one of the tables nestled way back by the encyclopedias we stretched out a state map and marked every place there had been a freak storm or other weird incident. It was pretty wild—they formed a trail that followed right along the highway for about one hundred miles north. The last storm had been in a tiny town I had heard of, but never been to, called Westchester.

  “Why did they stop there?” Charlie wondered.

  “Well, if my mom also has these powers, maybe that’s where she went. Maybe that’s where she is now.”

  Charlie shrugged.

  There was only one way to find out if my suspicions were true, but that would cause some major issues with my dad. Charlie and I put the map away and went to rejoin Betsy and Ms. Watson to wait out the last hour of our detention. But we discovered Betsy was leaving with an elderly woman in a faded plaid dress and a crumpled felt hat.

  “What the heck?” Charlie asked Ms. Watson. “Why does she get to go early?”

  Ms. Watson sighed. “Betsy is leaving for an appointment at the request of her legal guardian.”

  Legal guardian? I recognized the woman; it was Betsy’s grandmother. She had gotten her dentures from my dad. I’d heard Betsy’s parents had split up last summer, but I didn’t know she’d been sent to live with her grandma. Suddenly Betsy’s transition from Est to Goth chick made more sense. For once I actually felt bad for her.

  “What does it matter?” Ms. Watson said after they left. “You two are also dismissed.”

  “Woo-hoo!” Charlie threw his backpack on and did a little dance of happiness to pass the time while I got my stuff together.

  Before going, I stopped at Ms. Watson’s desk. She was mindlessly drawing mustaches and monocles on celebrities in her tabloid magazine.

  “That’s a great look for Sandra Bullock,” I offered.

  “What? Oh, yeah. Well enjoy your evening, Ms. McGowan.”

  “Ms. Watson,” I asked, “did you give Betsy that camera?”

  She nodded. “Affirmative.”

  “That was nice of you.”

  She furrowed her brow. “I just saw a situation that needed to be rectified. ‘Nice’ has nothing to do with it.”

  “Well, I’m sure your help made a big difference to Betsy.”

  “Really?” She sounded amazed.

  “Yeah. We have a lot of problems. I think most of us need someone to ‘rectify’ things.”

  She paused and stared at me like this was the first time she had ever thought about it.

  “That’s why you became a guidance counselor, right?” I asked. “To make a difference?”

  “Oh yes! Yes, indeed.” The look in Ms. Watson’s eye was suddenly far away, like she was deep in thought. Then she started to slowly nod her head, like she was realizing something for the first time. “Guidance counselors can really change lives and help ignored and belittled voices be heard.” Her eyes sparkled. “Young voices, I mean. Not adult ones.”

  “Veri!” Charlie called from the door.

  “Coming!” I smiled at Ms. Watson, who, much to my surprise, smiled back.

  * * *

  On the way home, I wanted to see the art contest, which had just gone up in the gym. Charlie was done with school, though, so he split. I quickly spotted Betsy’s two entries and felt my newfound empathy for her melting away. One was a photograph of an abandoned shoe in an intersection and the other was a drawing of the same picture. They were really good, but don’t tell anyone I said that. Believe me, Betsy already knew.

  “Where’s your stuff?”

  I turned to see Blake.

  “Hi, uh, what are you doing here?” I managed to spit out.

  “Just meeting some people at the football field when they’re done with practice,” he answered.

  “They still let you in here? Once I’m in high school, I’m never coming back.” I was quite proud of myself for actually making a joke.

  “I know, right?” He laughed. “So? Art?”

  “Oh! Well, I don’t have anything in the contest this year.”

  “That’s a bummer. Art is your thing, right?”

  “Yeah, I was just too late entering.”

  He nodded as if this was something that happened to him every single day of his life.

  I didn’t know what to say, so there was an awkward silence.

  “We’ll see you tomorrow?” he asked. “Jenny told me about the show. Really cool.”

  You mean the show that I need to tell everyone they can’t go to?

  “You’re coming?” I croaked.

  “If that’s all right.”

  “Yeah, of course!” I gushed. “See you tomorrow night.”

  “Rad.” He left, waving over his shoulder.

  Well, there ya had it. My dad had left me no other option: I had to totally disobey him.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MISSION: INCOMPREHENSIBLE

  Getting Derek, Hun Su, Jenny, Titan, and Blake into the club wouldn’t be too hard if I timed everything exactly, completely, without fail, 100 percent perfectly with no one noticing me. I could do that, right? It wasn’t like I had some weird condition that made me randomly have very noticeable outbursts.

  Ha-ha.

  The plan was fairly simple. All I had to do was get them through the club’s broken side door and sneak them up the stairs into a corner spot near the rafters. No one would ever know. As long as no one ever saw us.

  That was plan A. I didn’t have a plan B, but I soon learned B stands for “You would B stupid not to have a plan B.”

  Derek and Titan arrived at our meeting spot (around the back corner of the club) about fifteen minutes late. I had spent that fifteen minutes biting my nails and holding in about a year’s worth of anxiety. So far, no stupidpowers had appeared, which was a relief. A painful, need-to-be-constantly-vigilant-and-not-show-your-feelings relief, but a relief nonetheless.

  “You guys know where Hun Su is? Or Jenny?”

  “Yeah, they’re on their way,” Derek said after checking his texts. “Jenny loves to make people wait.”

  “Hey, B-man!” Titan hollered over my shoulder.

  “Shh!” My dad was just around the corner at the front door. Wait, did he say “B-man”? I turned to see Blake coming toward us. He was wearing ripped jeans and a super old, threadbare Mickey Mouse T-shirt. Really, I couldn’t think of anyone else who could pull that off.

  “OMG! Blake!” Hun Su exclaimed behind me in a voice one would normally save for winning the lottery.

  I turned to see that Hun Su was wearing an adorab
le Minnie Mouse T-shirt. Ooof.

  Did I mention it was tight? Like, really tight? I looked down at my own purple shirt with its crocheted hem. And saw my sneakers below it. Unlike the other Est girls, there was barely anything filling out my T-shirt to block the view of my feet.

  Blake gave a sly chuckle. “Great minds.” He turned to me. “What’s the plan, McGowan?”

  “We’ll just need to be really quiet,” I answered.

  “I thought your dad was gonna let us in?” Hun Su asked.

  Blake laughed. “We really don’t want Veronica’s dad involved in this. Trust me.”

  Inside, I swooned a little bit.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “There’s a spot where we can hang out and no one will see us. It might be a little cramped with six people, but we’ll manage.”

  “What about Kate and her brothers?” Derek asked as he pointed to the three people walking toward us.

  “Nine people including me,” I whispered as I did my best not to panic. We were doomed. The spot near the rafters was too small.

  Blake leaned into me. “Come on, Veronica, a little mischief never hurt anyone.”

  For that, I happily silenced the alarms going off in my head and waved the others to follow me quietly. The club was full, and the opening band had already started their set. It was perfect timing. The room was dark, and this far-off corner was the last place anyone was looking. Except one dude, who regularly had to hide back here.

  “Holy crap on a cracker. Veri, what is going on?” Charlie asked as I sent the Ests, Kate’s brothers, and Blake up the steps to the little loft area.

  “They’re just gonna watch the show. No biggie,” I said. Once my “guests” had made it up the stairs, I added, “Please don’t tell my dad.”

  “I won’t.” Charlie crossed his heart.

  Above us, the Ests had crammed onto the little landing in the loft between the rafters. They were having fun, obviously, as giggles drifted down to us.

  “Not much room up there for you,” Charlie noted.

  “It’s okay. There were a few more people than I expected. I’m just glad they made it up without getting caught.”