Upbeats

  Chapter Seven

  I wonder what went through Ms Ling’s head when she found her students, soaking wet, shivering cold and standing around as if we didn’t know what to do next. (Which, we didn’t.)

  I’d love to be a teacher someday, just so I can deal with crazy situations like this one.

  We explained everything to her: being chased by bees, jumping into the lake, breathing through straws but omitting the part about System, the talking skunk. She already thought we were lying about the whole bee chasing matter, till Brooke showed Ms Ling her arm, which had two bumps from stings.

  She handled it okay, though. She gave us towels and applied some ointment to Brooke’s stings. Then she ordered us onto the bus with the rest of the kids.

  We sat in different places on the bus, none of us together. Maybe it was just that we didn’t want to talk about it. I was sure no one wanted to forget it.

  I sat on the back row of seats, in wet jeans that refused to dry, a towel slung over my shoulders, and kids snickering in my direction. They wouldn’t think it so funny if they had been in my shoes. My wet shoes.

  But I couldn’t care less. I was tired, cold, wet, and just wanted to go home. So much had happened, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and wake up, this whole nightmare forgotten in an instant. But I sat there on the bus with the image of Gemini imprinted on my mind for life.

  It was too real to have been any work of imagination.

  ♫

  We got back in the dark. Not too much of surprise, the sun sets early at this time of year, the whole school had taken a few hours extra in their browsing of the zoo and they took a while to find us, as well.

  When I got home, I crawled up the stairs, said a weak "hello" to my parents, skipped dinner (what’s the point?), slunk into bed, and then, as an afterthought, took off my damp and muddy clothes.

  I slept like a log that night. Though, I did have a few strange dreams. Like one of a hippo shooting bees the size of pineapples at me.

  Besides that, everything was fine.

  I woke the next day, a Friday, to more rain outside, Bailey, and a sense of pessimism. I would have to face the world, against my will. I really wanted to stay home and just forget about school, people, the whole world . . .

  But I vowed to go to school, on the condition that every moment eyes were off me, I’d experiment and discover my power.

  At breakfast, I stared at the milk, trying to burn a hole through it with my eyes.

  It didn’t work.

  "Luke," Jemima walked into the kitchen and shook her head in pity, making her curly blonde ponytails bounce. "I’ve tried, mind control doesn’t exist."

  Normally, I would have laughed and ruffled my sister’s hair. She didn’t know, but, she had just given me an idea.

  Mind control . . .

  I quickly gave it a go. I willed the milk to quake. No such luck, it sat there on the counter like . . . like a carton of milk.

  Now I laughed and ruffled Jemima’s hair.

  "You’re weird, Luke," Jemima said with a concerned look.

  "Thanks, sis," was all I said.

  Later, I tried to turn invisible. Then I walked in front of my mother and asked her what she thought of my hair. "Fine, it always looks the same," she said.

  On my way to the bus stop, I paused for a second and tried to pick up my dad’s car. It didn’t budge. I pretended to pick something off the ground, just in case someone was watching me.

  I scanned the seats for any of the others. Brooke had just gotten on but I wasn’t going to start sitting next to her. So I sat on my own. Ned would be picked up next, Robyn last, as she lived in the countryside and I had no idea where Smithy lived. Probably Downtown.

  I don’t know why but on that particular school day, it was busy and overcrowded. I managed to bump into every other person, but kept missing my friends.

  I was still trying to figure out what power I might have gotten so, in every class, I tried something different.

  Mind reading . . . didn’t work.

  Super speed . . . nope.

  See through walls . . . I just stood staring at a blank wall for ages.

  Maybe it hadn’t worked. Maybe I didn’t get anything. System said it hadn’t been done the way he wanted it to be done.

  So I let it go. I stopped worrying about the whole power thing completely and got back to just being a regular, normal, not special in the least, kid.

  I focussed a lot better in my classes and everything went smoothly.

  I went skateboarding after school with some other friends of mine down by the boardwalk, near the beach, I went home and did my homework, I did my chores, I walked Bailey and I just spent time with my family watching some old black and white film.

  Nothing spectacular, nothing amazing . . . just the normal kind of stuff people tend to take for granted.

  I chose to lose myself in the mundane world I had been brought up in. System, Gemini, Amepips . . . I let it slide. I forgot it. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I still had the image of Gemini, flickering, but even that managed to fade.

  Until Friday, a whole week later.

  Mr Johnson’s chemistry class, the class I have just before lunch. Among all the kids rushing in, I saw Robyn, sitting a few chairs away from me. Robyn looked sideways at me as she pulled books out her backpack. I couldn’t tell if it was disappointment or sadness or trust but she was trying to say something. It was almost like I could hear it . . .

  I hadn’t seen any of the others for an entire week. Not even a glimpse. The memory of everything that had happened a week ago came flooding back suddenly as a strange wave of nausea washed over me.

  I had given up trying to find my power. I felt relieved. I couldn’t be a part of this crazy thing if I didn’t have powers.

  But, for that same reason, I felt disheartened. The planet was in danger. How could I feel comforted that I was not going to be a part of it?

  How can you ever feel relief when the rest of the world was going to fall into the hands of some evil, crazed madman with half a metal face, like Gemini?

  All my worries were laid to rest during that chemistry class, though.

  Mr Johnson, the teacher, was gesturing wildly, as he explained something about ionisation energy, putting many glass objects on his desk in jeopardy.

  He brought his right arm up in a wide circle and brought it down in a low swoop, sending a glass beaker to its doom. It crashed onto the floor and shattered into a million pieces.

  "Oh, brilliant," Mr Johnson muttered, all the gesturing put on hold as he brushed glass off his papers. He scanned the class for someone to clean the mess.

  I was sitting in the front. And I was just about the only one who had not jumped when the glass broke. I may have been sitting there, but I was miles away.

  Mr Johnson, who has always had a soft spot for me, noticed this. "Luke, my boy, would you mind running to the storeroom closet and fetching a broom?"

  He broke me from my trance.

  "Um, sure," I said, lamely. I shuffled out the classroom with a blank expression. I guess the other kids took it as embarrassment or something: they all started giggling.

  Rockwell High School is an oldish, long, rectangular shaped, double storey building. Mr Johnson’s chemistry class is at one end, and the storeroom closet is on the other end, far away.

  Oh well.

  I skidded around corners in a hurry. I had missed so much of the lesson anyway so I don’t know why I was rushing. In hindsight, I should have slowed down . . . then I may have been able to see the WARNING: WET FLOOR sign.

  A dumb mistake.

  "Be careful!" Janitor Joe shouted in his heavy Scottish burr. He temporarily halted, mop in hand, as I blew past at top speed.

  "Huh?" I said, glancing over my shoulder. Bad mistake. It sent my balance spiralling. My left foot landed in a bucket of soapy water, sending the rest of me tumbling, arms flying, desperately trying to keep me up.

  I cried out just as I
was about to smack into a wall of lockers that would knock me out cold.

  I closed my eyes just inches away from slamming into the metal doors, knowing my fate was sealed.

  I felt myself hit something. But it didn’t feel like the locker doors. It was softer than that, hard, but soft at the same time. When I came to a halt, I felt around and identified it as a backpack full of books.

  I opened my eyes, only to find myself inside the locker. No joke. I was in the cramped locker. Maybe a door had been left open . . .

  Then I looked up and saw slivers of light drifting in through the slits in the locker door. It smelt like stale bubblegum in there.

  I tried to sit up. But I couldn’t. As soon as I tried, I found my arm was wedged in something hard. My eyes adjusted to the faint light and I nearly screamed again, had it not been for the fact that someone would have heard me. As it was, I was lucky Janitor Joe hadn’t decided to turn the corner and see what had become of me.

  My arm was stuck inside the wall. Up to the elbow. It just disappeared inside a solid wall.

  And my leg was sticking out the door. The closed door.

  The locker was solid metal. But my arms and legs were sticking out of it.

  I went through a solid metal locker door and got myself stuck.

  Some kids get their heads stuck in pans or in between the rungs of a ladder.

  Me?

  I somehow got stuck in a locker. A closed, cramped locker.

  How was I going to explain this one to my parents?

  Would I ever get free?

  I struggled for ages, endeavouring to free myself, but it was impossible.

  I tried to calm down and retrace my steps. How had I done this in the first place?

  Simple physics. Solid objects just don’t go through other solid objects. It is just plain old unachievable.

  Maybe . . .

  Could it be that I had discovered my special ability?

  I had once read a comic book about a hero who could go through solid objects.

  It made perfect sense. It was the only way I could explain this breach of the laws of physics.

  Maybe I could go through things!

  But . . . how?

  I closed my eyes and concentrated hard on just pulling my arm free. Slowly, painfully slow, I managed to get my arm out. I had to really focus. At any moment, if I just let another thought pop into my head, and let myself get the slightest bit distracted, though I was still feverishly concentrating on my arm, it would stop, go solid again.

  The process didn’t hurt. It actually felt like I was slipping my arm through a wall of water or unsettled jelly, just, it wasn’t so wet.

  Eventually I got the hang of it.

  I climbed out of the locker, shaky with the kind of feeling you get when you survive something horrific. That, and achievement.

  Fortunately, no one was around.

  No one had seen.

  But I had discovered my power.