Upbeats

  Chapter Fourteen

  Back on the ground, the crowd was gathering around Lucy May as she walked away from the building and into a hearty embrace with her elated grandmother.

  Ned had done the right thing: when he touched down, he told Lucy to just walk out and give no details about her rescuers. We wanted to stay . . . unknown.

  It would make the news that a group of unidentified teens had saved her . . . but no one would know what we looked like, what we sounded like or what our names were.

  It was dark and blurry up there, as Lucy May claimed.

  Paramedics crowded around Lucy May, checking her over for any injuries and treating her for smoke inhalation. One of the paramedics looked behind him, as if searching for her saviours. His eyes fell on me and my team but he had to get back to his job.

  I met up with the others on the ground. Everyone was thrilled and ecstatic about our first ever victory. We were heroes, through and through.

  Brooke and System had managed to find someone’s little puppy, Robyn had guided them to the ground and Ned to us and, really, Smithy and I had located Lucy May. If it weren’t for us, she wouldn’t have been found in time.

  But, while my friends were all going on about how a rush the whole evening was, I couldn’t help but feel terrible, like dirt.

  I hadn’t intended to sound harsh and disappointed in Smithy. I was, slightly, but I shouldn’t have come off like that. And I couldn’t feel proud of our success when one of our own was feeling unwanted, unneeded, a failure and excluded.

  Try as I might, I couldn’t find Smithy in the horde of people. I guess he teleported far away, perhaps he went home, or just someplace no one would bother him.

  When we had left the scene and were walking to the bus stop to retrieve our bikes, I pulled Robyn aside.

  I took a deep breath of the fresh night air. I still reeked of smoke, though.

  "Robyn . . . do you know what happened up there on the seventh floor?"

  She nodded, her expression blank. She wasn’t impressed with me.

  "I didn’t mean to sound so harsh," I explained.

  "Uh-huh," she crossed her arms.

  "I just . . . I panicked and I shouldn’t have sounded like that," I said. "I didn’t know what Smithy was up to—"

  "Smithy hadn’t teleported a passenger before, Luke," Robyn said, icily. "And he hadn’t done it from such a distance, either. We’re all new to our powers and we mess up sometimes. How many times up there didn’t you get stuck in a pile of wood?"

  Robyn was a gentle person. But don’t you ever mess with someone she likes because that just seals your fate.

  I nodded. "I know. I was scared and I didn’t think. But that’s not why I wanted to talk to you."

  Robyn gazed at me with a stormy expression I hadn’t ever seen on her face. "Uh-huh?" she said.

  "I don’t know how to find Smithy. I don’t know where he lives, where he goes or anything. I might see him at school but not until Monday. I have to know what was going on and . . . if it turns out to be an error completely on my part, which I sincerely believe it is . . . I’ll say sorry. I need to make sure that he knows he’s a part of this team. You all call me chief, as much as I dislike it, and that title comes with a responsibility of making sure everyone in the team works well together. If I’m not working with someone, and I’m called chief, then how can I ever tell any of you what to do and how to do it?"

  Robyn softened a bit. "I’ll find him," she said, kindly. "I’ll tell him what you said and I’ll make sure he’s alright."

  "Thanks," I said, gratefully. "When you see him, tell him to meet up with the rest of us at your place tomorrow: we have to figure out how to stop Gemini and we can’t do it without our escape artist."

  "You got it . . . chief," Robyn smiled.

  I walked away, towards the bus stop, to collect my bike. When I turned around, I saw that Robyn was walking in the opposite direction, away from her home. She wouldn’t sleep till matters were straightened out . . . good ole Robyn.

  ♫

  It was about eight ‘o’ clock by the time I got home. I opened the door, quietly, and closed it as noiselessly behind me.

  But when I turned around, I saw that Dad was in the front room and was the first to see me. He closed the book he had been reading and stood up. He jerked his head towards the kitchen.

  I knew what that meant. He was about to give me one of those heart to heart talks he’s been into a lot lately.

  Since the day I turned thirteen, Dad has been giving me these talks any moment he has free. More than a year and a half later, it hasn’t ended.

  I followed, obediently. I was too tired to fight and I knew when the game was up.

  Dad didn’t launch straight into the lecture immediately. He took a few moments and piled plates and glasses in the sink, turned on the tap, and got out a sponge for him and handed a drying cloth to me.

  Nothing better than a captive audience, I guess.

  "Did you go Downtown?" my father asked, conversationally, as he started calmly washing a plate.

  How could I hide it? I smelt like a wood-fire, my hair was quite a few shades darker than it should be and there were a couple of black marks on my jeans and my shirt that Mom would have a fit about when they went through the wash.

  "Yeah," I answered as he handed me the plate to dry.

  He didn’t show if he was perturbed by my reply. "You don’t look like you were just a casual observer," he said.

  I set the plate down and accepted the next one he passed to me. "No," I answered.

  "What were you up to, then?" Dad asked.

  I don’t know how he does it. How he manages to go about his interrogations with that nonchalant air, as if he were just talking about school or my future or my report card, which he was seldom dissatisfied by.

  What could I say?

  To say that we were in or near the crumbling building, would throw up a thousand possibilities and a parent somehow always comes up with the worst possible one.

  To say I just got in the way would prove just as fatal.

  But, standing there, drying the dishes my dad passed me, I had a strong desire to just lay it all out and tell him that I had powers, that all my friends had powers, that there’s this alien, looks like a skunk, that can shape-shift, how there’s another alien with half a metal face and how we have to stop him before he destroys our planet . . .

  I just wanted to say it all, get it off my shoulders and just let my dad tell me what would be best to do next.

  But . . . just looking over at him . . . I knew I could not do it. As much as I longed to get it off my chest and have someone to help me figure out what to do, I couldn’t do it.

  There was no way I could tell him I could go through walls, my friends could either teleport, command popcorn to obey their every word, stretch their arms to grab something metres away, or be hit by a car and survive . . . really, if you were a parent, how would you respond?

  "There was a little girl, trapped inside," I said, concentrating on drying the plate as if were as delicate an operation as brain surgery. "Me and some friends went inside and saved her."

  It wasn’t lying. We’d done exactly that.

  I didn’t mention powers. I guess, I didn’t have to.

  My dad dropped a glass into the soapy water, splashing a shower of suds at me.

  He ran his eyes over me, as if to confirm my story was true by seeing the various signs I bore on my clothes and face.

  "Is that true?" he said in a voice barely audible.

  He sounded angry but he wasn’t, I knew that much.

  I nodded. "Yes, it is. You can ask my friends, you can ask Brooke or Ned, and you’ll probably see it in a newspaper. Her name was Lucy May; she was five years old and scared to death."

  The rush of information poured out before I even thought about it. When I realized I was doing it automatically, I stopped, afraid I might say something about my powers.

  Dad stumbled backwards
onto a chair and just kept staring at me in total disbelief.

  I threw the drying cloth onto the counter and headed out the kitchen for the stairs, suddenly the day was catching up with me. I stopped at the bottom of the stairs, one hand on the rail, and turned to my dad. "I asked her not to give our names," I said. "I didn’t want it to be a big thing."

  I went upstairs before I could hear a reply from my dad. Maybe he was proud. Maybe he was afraid that I may not have made it home. Maybe he was upset. . . .

  I’d never know because that was the last time we spoke about it. The next day, the newspaper did in fact showcase the story, as told by Lucy May Rogers. Dad looked over at me and winked. Mom and Jemima read the story but they didn’t know it was me. Dad didn’t tell. He understood, if not completely, that I didn’t want it to be a major thing.

  I’d saved a life.

  It was a big deal.

  But anyone, in the right mind, with any trace of kindness and goodness in their hearts, would have done the exact same thing. . . .

  Our names were not mentioned. Our age, our appearances . . . not even a hint. Lucy kept her promise and told them nothing about us.

  I vowed, silently, to myself, that if she ever came home from school with Jemima, I’d play tea party with them, happily. She deserved as much.