I GOT OFF THE SCHOOL BUS NEAR THE JUNKYARD AND walked the rest of the way. The junkyard had long been abandoned, but I guess no one had ever bothered to clear the site out. Howie, Jason, and I had discovered it a year ago and used to consider it our official secret hideaway, until Jason created 3D.
I stared at the massive piles of scraps and junk metal as I approached and wondered what answers Howie thought lay there.
Howie had arrived before me. His face lit up with excitement as soon as he noticed me. As I approached, he was leaning against an old junker pickup truck, probably pondering the extent of my mutation or whatever it was that was wrong with me.
“So what’s this big hypothesis of yours?” I asked, forcing a grin. I was trying to mirror his excitement because I was concerned that I had hurt his feelings earlier that day when I got defensive about my condition.
“I’ll get to that after a few tests,” Howie said.
“What are we testing?”
“Mainly the extent of your strength and the possibility of other abilities.”
“Alright then. What do you want to me to do?”
Howie reached into his backpack and withdrew a radar gun.
“Did you take that from the gym?” I asked.
“Sure did! I taught myself how to pick the lock and grabbed it. Don’t worry. I’ll have it back before Coach even notices that it’s gone. The reason I brought it is because I want to use it to track how fast you can move.”
“What makes you think I run fast at all?”
“Remember how fast you moved when you stopped those weights from crushing my head earlier today? Starting from a seated position, you were able to stand and cover a distance of ten feet all in less than a second. I’d like to see if you can move that fast again, and I can track the exact speed with this.”
He was right. I didn’t even remember moving when it all happened, but somehow I had managed to cross the distance in far less time that I should have been able to.
I took a position 40 meters away from Howie and waited for him to give me the signal. When he raised his left hand and dropped it, I took a deep breath and clumsily sprinted forward. I wasn’t quite the blur that I had been in the gym earlier, but I was definitely moving faster than I usually could. Eventually, I gained much more momentum than I could handle.
I zipped by Howie, whose eyes widened as he gazed at the radar gun. My attempt to stop was too sudden, and I lost my balance and tumbled head over heels into a huge pile of scrap metal located just before the tall, wooden fence that stood at the edge of the junkyard. As always, the only thing hurt was my pride. Howie rushed to my aide, but once he noticed that I wasn't hurt, he laughed hysterically at me.
“I wish I had had a camera handy for that,” he said, smiling from ear to ear. I couldn’t help but laugh as well. I usually wasn’t comfortable laughing when the joke was on me, but this was Howie. I knew he was laughing with me and not at me.
Howie didn’t bother trying to help me up. We both knew he could offer little assistance with my 700-pound body.
“So, how fast was I going before I wiped out?” I asked as I pulled myself to my feet.
Howie looked back down at the radar gun.
“You registered 38 miles per hour on the gun, but I’m sure that’s nowhere near your top speed.”
“Yeah, my takeoff was horrible and I was moving so fast that it was hard to keep my balance.”
“I noticed. I’m sure if you practiced maintaining your balance you could probably run three or four times as fast as you did just now.”
“Seriously? You think I could run over 100 miles per hour?”
“Of course you can. I just watched you stumble around at nearly 40 miles per hour! That's about twelve miles per hour more than the fastest human footspeed ever recorded. Imagine if you had the training and running form that they had? If you practiced maintaining your form, there's no telling what you could do.”
I could tell he thought I should be excited by that but I couldn't help feeling depressed. The way he said the fastest human footspeed didn't sit well with me. If I could stumble faster than the fastest recorded human sprinter could run, did that mean I wasn’t human? Did that mean that I was something else? I turned my back to Howie and stared into the distance as I thought about quitting his round of tests.
“What’s happening to me, Howie? What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing is wrong with you, Adam.”
“I think you know something. There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?” I asked without looking at him.
“You’re just different, Adam. That's all there is to it. Contrary to popular belief, different is not always a bad thing.”
“It is when that difference makes you a freak.”
“Being faster and stronger than the average human doesn’t make you a freak, Adam. And it doesn’t make you any less human. It makes you special. Do you know what the average human IQ is? Between 85 and 115. Mine is over 200. Do you think I’m a freak too?” he asked.
“No, but that’s not the same,” I said as I glanced at him over my shoulder.
“But it is the same!” he shot back. “I’ve always looked at my intelligence the same way you’re looking at yourself right now. You have no idea how it feels to have to give everyone an abridged version of your thoughts lest they not understand what it is that you’re attempting to say. I’ve only just now understood the folly of looking at myself that way. Because of you, I’ve realized that I’m not a freak just because I’d prefer to discuss theoretical astrophysics as opposed to some mindless reality show or some god-awful sports team. Because of you, I know that I’m special. I am not a freak, Adam, and neither are you.”
As always, Howie was right. In my heart of hearts, I still felt like a freak, but his words were enough to let me know that maybe my subconscious was wrong in this case.
“Are you going to tell me this theory of yours?” I asked as I faced him.
“I will, but I need to see a few more things first.”
A wave a frustration rushed over me but I fought hard to suppress it. “That’s fine,” I said. “What do you need me to do?”
“This one is simple. I need you to jump as high as you can.”
Simple for you, I thought sarcastically as I prepared to leap into the air. I took a deep breath and with one great leap, I found myself seemingly floating in the air thirty feet off the ground. I couldn't believe it, but Howie’s expression showed no indications of surprise, as if he had expected me to be able to jump that high.
I landed with a hard thud and lost my balance as I hit the ground. This is going to take some getting used to, I thought as I pulled myself to my feet.
“What else?” I asked, still trying to hide my impatience.
He smiled and pointed to the broken down pickup truck that he had been leaning against when I initially arrived. I glanced at the truck, then back to Howie.
“What do you want me to do to it?”
“I want you to lift it.”
“Howie, that’s impossible.” I knew he had to be joking, but it worried me when he didn’t crack a smile.
“Just try it, Adam. You can start by lifting one end from the ground. If it’s too heavy, you can simply put it back down and we'll move on.”
Why did he have so much confidence in my newfound abilities? What was he not telling me?
“Okay. I’ll give it a shot,” I mumbled before trudging over to the corpse of a truck. I placed my hands under the rear bumper of the junker and prepared to be humiliated. Who am I kidding? I thought. Howie’s smart, but he has to be grasping at straws with this one.
I planted my feet and pulled upward on the back of the truck with as much force as I could muster. To my surprise, even the weight of the truck was not enough to deny me. It wasn’t as easy as the 700 pounds of weights that I had lifted earlier that day, but it wasn't nearly as impossible as it should have been. Inch by inch, I managed to lift the rear of the truck into the air.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Howie making mental notes and calculations as I maneuvered my way underneath the truck and grabbed a sturdy bar near the center.
This is crazy, I said to myself as I kneeled to regain my balance. Howie gave a simple nod of reassurance and I pushed against the truck with all my might.
Every muscle in my scrawny arms fired away as the rusty tons of metal and gravity tried desperately to foil my plans. I could hear my pulse throbbing inside of my head as I slowly forced the truck higher into the air.
I was almost there. Beads of sweat raced down my forehead as I rested the truck on my back and shoulders while I balanced it with my hands. I was one giant thrust away from hoisting it above my head, but I could feel the rusted frame of the truck quickly wearing out. Finally, I planted my feet and pushed upward as hard as I could, but the truck’s frame could not sustain its weight any longer. I fell to the ground and cowered as the rusty metal beast snapped into two pieces and tumbled onto me.
“Adam!” Howie shouted as he rushed over and frantically tried in vain to remove the pieces of the truck from on top of me. “Adam! Adam, talk to me!” His voice cracked as he yanked at a piece of the rusted truck.
“I’m fine, Howie. I’m not hurt. I’m just trying to catch my breath,” I said between huge gasps for air. “Stand back for a minute.”
Howie took several steps backward without taking his eyes away from the tons of scrap metal that lay on top of me.
In one big heave I pushed the two pieces of truck away and sat up. As Howie looked on, frozen in awe, I flopped back to the ground and stared up into the sky above.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Adam?” he asked nervously.
“I’m fine, Howie. I’m just exhausted.”
Howie walked over and collapsed to the ground beside me. He looked into the horizon as the sun started to sink into the trees in the distance.
“I’m sorry, Adam.”
“Howie, I’m fine. It didn’t even leave a scratch.”
“Did you feel any pain?” he asked. The sudden change of tone in his voice let me know that he had switched back to his probing mode again, now that he knew I was unharmed.
“Yeah, I did, but not very much. It's nothing really. How much does that thing weigh, anyway?”
“Approximately three tons,” Howie said as he rubbed his chin, seemingly lost in his inner thoughts.
“Three tons! 6000 pounds! Are you kidding me?” I exclaimed, eyes wide with disbelief. “Howie, are you serious?”
“Yes, I'm dead serious. The average pickup truck weighs around 6000 pounds.”
“Howie, what’s going on here? How am I able to do these things?” I asked, hoping he was ready to spill the beans. I had grown tired of his tests and I needed answers.
“A part of it is adrenaline, but I think the most important factor is your molecular density. Your molecules have to be a great deal denser than the average human’s. That’s the only way to explain why you look so small yet weigh so much.”
“I have no idea what you're saying, Howie. Dumb it down for me, will you?” I said as I struggled to comprehend his words.
Howie looked around, then finally grabbed a baseball-sized rock that lay near him and held it where I could see. “This rock is about the size of a baseball, yet it’s a lot heaver than a baseball. The reason why is because the molecules that make up this rock are packed a lot closer together than the molecules that make up a baseball. That means that even though they appear to be the same size, the rock is heavier because it contains more molecules than the baseball. Now imagine if you have two boxes that are the same size. Suppose we were to fill one box completely and only fill the second box to one fifth of its full capacity. If we shut both boxes and simply observe them with our eyes as opposed to weighing them on a scale, they would both appear to look the same size and weight; however, one would actually be much heavier and essentially larger than the other because it contained more mass. In terms of volume, they are the same size, but in terms of mass, the full box is much larger than the other.”
“So that makes me the full box,” I said, finally catching up to Howie’s theory.
“Precisely,” he stated.
“But that doesn’t explain the things that I can do.”
“Actually, it does. Take our arms for example. Your arm is just as scrawny as mine, yet you’re considerably stronger than I am because your muscles are actually several times larger than they appear due to your density. Your entire body is about four to six times as dense as the average human’s, which consequently makes you considerably stronger and faster than the average human.”
“Then why do I always feel so weak? Why am I not always as strong as I am today?”
“The dinner,” Howie said calmly, as if he expected the question.
“Dr. Kate’s dinner? What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m not trying to embarrass you, Adam, but it was pretty easy for me to deduce the reason as to why Dr. Kate invited you over for dinner. Just by looking at you, it’s obvious to see that you don’t get enough to eat on a regular basis. Only eating the scraps that they feed us at school for you is like me only eating a slice of bread a day for my entire life. Malnutrition is the reason why you were never able to do the things you did today before now.”
“So, you’re saying food has given me power?” I asked, puzzled.
“No, Adam, the food merely provides the energy you need to tap into the potential that lies within your dense molecular composition. Simply put, your 700-pound body requires a lot more food than the average person’s does. There is nothing magical about what you’ve done today. You’ve always had the potential; your muscles just never had the energy they truly needed. You said you ate over twelve plates of food at Dr. Kate’s dinner. That's why you were able to do the things that you did today. When you metabolized that food, for the first time in your life, your body had enough fuel to do what it’s truly capable of.”
“So you’re saying I should eat that much every day? Where am I gonna get that much food, Howie?” I asked.
“By my calculations, you should eat 15 to 20 standard meals a day in order to give your body the energy it needs. As far as how to get the food, you can leave that to me.”
“How are you gonna get that much food?”
“You would be surprised at what people will give up in order to have me do their homework, my friend,” Howie said with a wink.
“You're gonna do other people’s homework in exchange for food?”
“Absolutely. Half of the students never actually eat their breakfast and lunch at school anyway. Trading unwanted food for a guaranteed ‘A’ is a no-brainer. You’ll still have to eat that cafeteria crap, but at least you’ll get the volume of food that you need.”
“That’s a lot of work, Howie. I’m not sure if I’m okay with this.”
“Two things, Adam. One: Homework at this school takes me all of five minutes to complete. Two: You’re my best friend, so even if it took me forever, I would still do it for you.”
As we both stood and faced the exit, I realized why Howie would always be my best friend. He may not have the means to shower me with gifts or pay for a state of the art secret hideout like Jason, but he obviously cared about me just as much as he did himself.
“What are you grinning about?” I asked as I noticed a wide smile on Howie’s face.
“Nothing,” he said quickly. “We should probably get moving.”
“Come on, Howie. What are you thinking?” I asked as I followed him to the exit.
“Maybe some other time. I don’t want to overwhelm you.”
“I’m fine. Come on, lay it on me,” I urged as we neared the junkyard exit.
“Well, I think we should explore the possibility of forming a team.”
“What kind of team?”
“A superhero team,” he replied.
Something told me that this was not what was really on his mind, but I didn’t pu
sh the issue. I couldn’t tell if he was serious about the superhero idea, but I was completely against it.
“Absolutely not!” I said, firmly.
“Like I said, I didn’t want to overwhelm you. You’ll come around though,” Howie said as we exited the junkyard and started down the trail that led back into town.
“And what makes you so sure?” I asked.
“There's no way you’ll be able to resist the opportunity to work with the greatest sidekick of all time.”
“You’re out of your mind, Howie,” I said, and we both laughed.
It felt good to finally have someone to share my secret with but I was still mortified by the drastic differences between me and what Howie had constantly referred to as the “average human.” He had managed to answer a lot of questions as far as what I could do, but he failed to address the one question that burned in my mind as we made our way home: Why was I born this way?
11. DARKER