The 6th Power (6 page)

Chet’s grin widened. “Dig in.”

Slowly, I sat down and looked in the bowl. Dad’s cereal again. Probably covered in salt or something even worse. It was strange that Mom cared so much about me eating breakfast when she didn’t seem to care at all about what was served. Everyone in the house ate cold cereal, seven days a week.

I admit that I’d been spoiled. The previous summer, I’d spent a whole week with Grandma at her condo in New Jersey, and she enjoys a good breakfast. The first morning, she made me hash out of some hamburger and boiled potatoes from the previous night’s dinner. The next morning, she whipped up biscuits and gravy from scratch. I wasn’t sure about this at first, as the gravy looked a lot like lumpy mucous, but by the end I was licking the plate clean. On the third morning, Grandma said she was too tired to cook, so we went and got doughnuts. I had my first chocolate cruller that day. I’ve felt like crying every cruller-less morning since.

Cereal of any kind is a letdown after a week like that, particularly a cereal that is made from “12 varieties of unprocessed grains and legumes” that is probably spiked with brother boogers. Still, I didn’t have much choice in the matter. If only there was a way to make the cereal taste better or make it so that I couldn’t taste it at all. I knew all about taste buds from Health Sciences class. Saliva on the tongue dissolves the food a bit and it comes into contact with receptors that send information to the brain, and your brain says, “I’m eating guacamole!”. There were all sorts of comic book characters that messed with the senses. Professor Xavier could make someone eat a hubcap while making them think it was chocolate cake. There were illusionists like Mastermind and Sensor Girl who could change how the brain interpreted the information it received from the receptors.

Just like on Highland Way the day before, memories of illusions and taste buds and doughnuts filled my mind. The warmth spread through me as I began to understand, as things clicked into place in my mind. Almost without thinking, I lifted my spoon and took a bite of the cereal.

It crunched like frozen Styrofoam, but the unmistakable flavors of sugar and chocolate flooded my mouth. The taste was so distinct and powerful that I swore that I could almost smell the dough frying. Made sense. Our Health Science teacher said that half of what we call “taste” is actually from our smelling what we are eating. Dad’s brother had to have nasal surgery when he was kid and he lost his sense of smell as a result. He’s been Plastic-Man-thin ever since.

I looked down at my bowl and made sure that I was still eating cereal. I took another bite. This time I could taste raspberry jelly oozing from a powdered sugar-coated piece of heaven. The bran-garbanzo-cluster things tasted exactly like doughnuts, fresh from the bakery.

I started shoveling cereal into my mouth and was soon slurping up milk that tasted like toasted coconut. I had to restrain myself from licking the bowl. Instead, I put it down and stared at it.

Let’s try that again.

I took a sip of orange juice, visualizing the last time we got Chinese take-out. Mmm. Sizzling-rice soup for breakfast. I chugged it down and looked for something else to eat, something else that I could make taste like something else. My eyes settled on the loaf of bread on the counter. Toast. Should I make it taste like Grandma’s biscuits and gravy or pepperoni pizza from the City?

I was about to get up when I finally noticed that the twins were staring at me. The look on their faces… well, I was glad that I would be able to replay that memory all day long. I settled back in my chair with a smile and asked, “Something wrong?”

Chet didn’t answer, but he seemed to realize that his mouth was hanging open. As if to cover for it, he picked up his own glass of juice and brought it to his mouth. Now, I can’t say that I really meant to do what happened next, but as Chet started to drink, the thought came to me that it would be awesome if the juice tasted as nasty as he expected my cereal to taste. For instance, if it tasted like… earwax. 

I had just an instant to see Chet’s eyes go wide and his cheeks bulge. I ducked under the table. Chet blew, spraying juice all over.

Mom blew a moment later. “What do you think you’re doing? That’s disgusting!”

Chet managed to get a word in edge-wise. “The juice is spoiled!” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

I poked my head back up. Mom looked over at me and saw that my glass was empty. She pointed at it and said, “Obviously, that’s not the case! Now clean up this mess!”

I thought about what a “Good Son” would do and I jumped up and grabbed the roll of paper towels off the counter. As I handed them to Chet, I couldn’t help but smile. He slammed down his glass, snatched the paper towels and, with a growl, shoved me back.

Things got very quiet in the Holland kitchen. Seriously. Even Kiki stopped babbling. You could, like, hear crickets chirping in the field out back.

The shove didn’t hurt. I think it was shock that caused me to fall on my butt. It had finally happened. Mom had finally seen it.

She was staring at Chet, mouth open. My brother blinked, came to his senses, and put on his smile. “Oops! Sorry, Nathan. I didn’t see you there.”

For a moment, I thought Mom would buy it, but she surprised me.

“Don’t you ever let me see you lay a hand on your brother again,” she said in a near whisper. She pointed to the table. “Clean up this mess. Then go clean up the garage.”

Whoa! The nuclear option!

You see, my dad has a hard time throwing things away. For some reason, he thinks that he’s going to find a use for a ukulele with only one string, his ninth grade report card, or a complete set of glasses commemorating some television show called
Knight Rider
. Our garage holds several tons of this kind of useless junk, so Dad’s car and Mom’s minivan were always parked in the driveway. Mom didn’t like this, particularly in the winter time, but it did mean that she could use the garage as a very effective threat: “Blah, blah, do what I tell you or you’ll have to go clean out the garage!”

She’d never followed through on the threat, though, until that moment. Chet actually gasped and started to protest. He wisely stopped when Mom pointed her finger at him.

“Shut it,” she said, “unless you want the basement, too.”

Chet shut it. Large red spots stood out on his cheeks as he slowly started to clean up the orange juice.

Mom turned to me. “Are you okay?”

I stood up. Okay? Was she kidding? “Okay” didn’t even come close to how I was feeling. Centuries from now, Klingons would compose operas to celebrate this moment! However, I simply nodded. Mom gave me half a smile and put a hand on my shoulder. 

“Go wash your face,” she said. “Then you can go out and play.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

She gave my shoulder a pat and sat down next to Kiki, pointing a spot out to Chet that he had missed. I looked at Kiki’s cereal and thought about marshmallows
.
By the time I got back from the bathroom, Mom was already rinsing out her bowl.

“You were such a good eater today!” she exclaimed.

“Mah, mah, mah,” said Kiki, reaching towards the box of rice cereal. I grinned. At that moment, though, Chet appeared in the doorway leading to the garage and, seeing that Mom’s back was turned, gave me a look that would have made even an NFL linebacker wet his pants. It was a look that promised very bad things for me in the future.

My grin fell. I turned and hurried out the back door, wanting to get as much distance between me and the twins as possible.

Chapter 8

P
sychic Flavor Manipulation?

Taste Infliction?

Meal Mastery?

And what would my superhero name be? Captain Taste Buds? Not exactly something you’d find on the Justice League roster.

Still, it was a superpower. It had helped me foil whatever plan the twins had for my breakfast and Chet had gotten cataclysmically busted in the process. Pretty awesome.

Of course, the next time I set a foot in the house, Chet would likely bite it off, and unless he attacked me over the dinner table, I didn’t think that Psychic Flavor Manipulation was going to help much. Then there was that small, little problem of still not knowing whether the thing that was giving me cool super powers was somehow dangerous for me.

So, again, I needed to talk to Mr. Magellan.

And, again, his shop was closed.

My nose print from the day before was still there on the door. If Mr. Magellan had been in the shop since then, he would have wiped it off. Something was very wrong. He never closed the place for that long without putting up some kind of sign saying when he’d be back.

So Mr. Magellan disappeared the same day that he gave me pills that end up giving me super powers. I had no idea what that meant, but it made me very nervous.

I took a few steps back, cupped my hands around my eyes to block out the glare from the sun, and looked up at the windows of the office over the store. They were dark. If I somehow broke in there, would I find a clue about where Mr. Magellan was or what was going on?

After first making sure that no one was looking, I tried the door. Locked, of course. That left only one other entrance.

There was an alley behind the stores on the north side of the square, and as I turned the corner, it occurred to me that it would have been a lot smarter to try this the day before, when I was invisible and a lot more sneaky. Unfortunately, it looked like I could only access one power per pill, which I supposed made sense. I pulled a piece of gum out of my pocket, popped it in my mouth and thought about tacos. Beefy, cheesy, crunchy, greasy, yummy. Oh well. One super power was better than zero.

I headed up the cramped and smelly alley. Each of the shops had their own back door and dumpster. The door to Coralberry Comics and Collectibles was not difficult to spot. In addition to the stenciled name of the shop, Mr. Magellan had placed a Superman decal on the door. The red S on the yellow background. I looked around, made sure that I was alone, and tried the doorknob.

No such luck. I tried again, rattling the door in its frame. I even looked around the alley, desperate to see if someone had left a crowbar lying around. Nothing. With a sigh, I headed back towards Rosenberg Street.

I hadn’t wanted to go to Mr. Magellan’s house because, well, it seemed kind of rude. Weird, I know, considering what was going on, but it felt wrong to bug him outside of his normal working hours. Unfortunately, I was pretty much out of options.

The house was large and yellow, surrounded on all sides by a hedge that was even taller than Chet. The house was on the street south of Rosenberg and I had to turn the corner to reach the front door. My head was down, my hands were in my pockets, I was chewing my taco gum and my mind was elsewhere, so it wasn’t too big of a surprise that I ran smack into someone.

We both hit the ground. We both said, “Ow!” I started rubbing my tail bone. She started rubbing her elbow. Her basketball went bouncing out into the street.

“Why don’t you look where you’re going?” grumbled the red-haired girl.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. I wasn’t sure why I was apologizing as she’d run into me just as much as I’d run into her. I guess assuming blame was just my default setting. When I managed to stand up, I hustled over and grabbed her ball. “Hannah Kowalski” was written on it in black magic-marker. Had I ever heard that name before? Obviously not, or I would have remembered it.

She stood up and I handed her the ball. “Here you go… Hannah?”

She nodded, placed the ball between her feet, and looked at the nasty scrape on her elbow. “Great,” she muttered.

“I’m really sorry,” I stammered, “I didn’t see…”

“It’s fine. Whatever. Don’t worry about it.” Her words came out in bursts. She grabbed the basketball and turned to go. For some reason, my mouth started to move on its own.

“I wanted to thank you!”

Hannah turned and raised an eyebrow, almost Spock-like. “For running into you?”

“What? No! Uh, no. I mean for yesterday.” The eyebrow stayed up there. “You know, for trying to stop my brothers…”

Recognition. The eyebrow fell, replaced by a furrowed brow. “Yeah, that was stupid.”

I wholeheartedly agreed with her, but it seemed rude to say so. Instead, I said, “Well, thank you anyway.”

She looked at me and her expression softened a bit. “Don’t worry about it. Listen, I’ve gotta go. Got a cello lesson in …”

I never got to hear the rest. A hand shot out of Mr. Magellan’s hedge, fastened itself onto my arm and yanked me in. Twigs scraped my face and arms, and then I was thrown onto Mr. Magellan’s lawn. I rolled over, trying to catch my breath, and squinted up.

Chet and Robert were standing over me.

“Hey, shrimp,” said Chet.

“Hey!” yelled Hannah through the hedge.

Before I could stop myself, I said, “Hey, Chet. Got the garage cleaned already?”

Cataclysmically wrong thing to say. Robert stomped down on my shoulder until it felt like my bones were rubbing together. Chet hunkered down beside me.

“How’ve you been doing all that stuff?” he asked.

“What stuff?” I gasped. The tips of my fingers were starting to turn numb.

As if he were testing out a microphone, Chet tapped me on the forehead, punctuating his words. “How (tap) did (tap) you (tap) do (tap) that (tap) stuff (tap) at (tap) breakfast (tap) this (tap) morning (tap)?”

“Ow,” I said. “I don’t… ow… know what… ow… you mean. Ow.”

They hoisted me to my feet and Robert grabbing me from behind in a bear hug. Chet raised his fist. I tried to cringe back, but there was nowhere to go. 

“Hey!”

The three Holland brothers turned as one to see Hannah come around the hedge. “Leave him alone!” she shouted.

Chet chuckled. “Look, bro. Shrimp’s got a girlfriend.”

“Yeah,” muttered Robert. 

Hannah clearly didn’t understand what she was walking into. With the hedges, there would be no witnesses. The twins could do whatever they wanted, and Chet was clearly in the mood to do something nasty.