True Heroes (21 page)

              “But you and I both know you have theories already.”

              Thomas pulled a small piece of paper out of his left pocket and glanced over whatever data it held. “Based on the car accident way back when, and my observations today, I may be able to answer a few of these questions.” He turned the darkened paper and let Caleb read it a few seconds. It was covered from corner to corner with big, long questions and one word questions alike. “These are about you. So many of them popped into my head that I decided writing them down would be the only way to remember them all.”

              “Did I see immortality on there somewhere?”

              “Haha, your eyes would latch onto that word out of all of them.”

              Caleb smiled widely at the sarcasm. “There’s no use in having power if you can’t use it forever right?”

              “I wouldn’t know.” Their smiles subsided while the focus shifted back to the question. “But, and this is purely theoretical, my experience would tell me that immortality wouldn’t be possible even for you. After our tests today, you were bleeding and exhausted and anything that bleeds or needs to breathe can die. That’s normal-human thinking, though; your diseases heal you at an amazing rate when your adrenaline pumps and when you express your bodily energies into a field, it actually converts carbon-dioxide inside the field back into oxygen. That leads to another theory: breathing in space, but that’s not one I want to test. Anyways, your energy at its peak causes an incredible strain on your physical body. You, on average, probably use a hundred times more energy than a normal human, thus causing more strain on your muscles and brain. Your life, actually, could be cut short by your energy consumption. Very short.”

              Caleb changed his posture and leaned his entire back against the wall. His arms crossed and his head fell a bit. “Makes sense, I suppose.”

              “Nothing about the human race makes sense. Every time I’ve tried to project the path we’ll take, something takes the reins and yanks us sideways. Please don’t put too much stock in this pessimistic theory, my boy. If someone falls into a coma that looks to be permanent, and still wakes up, or if someone gives birth to a superhero, then immortality cannot be ruled out. It would be the perfect happenstance if the stars aligned for you completely, but don’t go risking your life unnecessarily.”

              “No promises. My life doesn’t mean very much next to the power to protect my loved ones.” Caleb came into his body again and realized how focused his eyes were. They were almost burning holes through the piece of paper Doctor Fink held, and it took a shake of his head to un-focus completely. “Thanks, Doc. I think I’m ready to make my move now.”

              “And what move is that?”

              Caleb looked up from his downed head and let his smile show. “You won’t have to keep my secret for much longer.”

              “Heh, Caleb, your secret will always be mine no matter how…popular you become later on.” He extended his hand to Caleb, which he strongly took and shook up and down curtly. “Either way, let’s make sure this isn’t the end for us. You can stop by the office in a few days and pick up my working estimates then.”

              Caleb didn’t really react to the news; he gave a hollow half-smile and swiftly shuffled his feet down the hall. His thoughts completely ruled his conscious mind. The subconscious need to breathe or dodge an oncoming object carried him forward and to the sides when asked, but other than that, a multitude of Caleb’s energy ran through his thoughts and connected everything he could to his power. ‘Everyone’s always looking at my aura…like an elephant in the room…Carol will be safe, Mother will be proud, Father can go on without pretending to be interested, and I can finally give good friends like Doctor Fink their dues. Everything will be perfect.’

                The overly boisterous swish of the sliding door shook his focus towards the breaks in the clouds. Nearly no evidence of the recent downpour survived the increasing heat of the sun. Even at a mild sixty-something, the rain seemed to slither straight into the grates and sewers. As Caleb rounded the corner onto Flax Street, his upward stare wandered sideways until he noted the “fun strip” further down the street. The Twinmart was the local grocery and the arcade was the high-school hang-out. Caleb leaned against a bus pole, and just stared across the street for a bit. Next to the strip of businesses—‘Grocery, arcade, Si’s take-out, Snappy’s diner,’—was the bank and some new, half-finished building. He smiled a little. ‘The architect was a diluted and convoluted person. They built the floor and four feet up on each corner first, why? The western wall is nearly complete, but the building on the picture looks to have about six floors, why start like this?’ The scaffolding made it look as though the building would be larger vertically than horizontally. The finished floor was only about twenty or thirty feet across; ‘Too small for a lobby to any huge business but still big enough to make every person that stepped foot in the building remember they were smaller than the business.’

              His deductive reasoning carried on for a few more minutes before the sudden tones of a saxophone graced his ears. Caleb turned to the sky and let his left ear carry his feet to an alcove beside a family restaurant. ‘The instrument looks like hell, but nothing compared to the player.’ A dreadlocked black man crooked his dried, cracked fingers across the broken buttons of the sax’s bridge. His torn shirt ended at the collar bone, allowing his hair—‘Mange, lice and all,’—the responsibility of keeping his neck warm. His lap was covered by a rather new looking blanket, and a starkly porous hat with a little bit of pocket change right next to him. Caleb’s own pockets jingled a little with the random change left over from his last few purchases.

              As the reward gently jangled to the ground, the man’s plangent tune stopped. His face turned. He had a flat face with pointed ears, but the broken sunglasses that were surely recovered from an old Happy Meal slid down a bit, revealing empty eye sockets behind the thin lens. His thumb pushed the glasses to his face again and he smiled a broken smile. “You’re a weird one ain’t ya, kid? There’s definitely a touch of something about you. Just stand there and let me look at you for a second. Don’t be scared I ain’t crazy. I just haven’t seen anyone in a long time.”

              Caleb didn’t feel threatened enough to raise his guard. ‘Try not to overreact just yet.’ He stood still as the musky man pushed off the ground but remained a safe distance. Still and surprisingly balanced, the man slid his glasses off and revealed his closed eyes. ‘Jab him hard with words instead.’ “How can you see me if your eyes are closed?”

              “Don’t make a difference to a blind man. My eyes are gone so it’s something else that’s looking at you now. I can see your soul. Only some people’s though, and yours is brighter than hell. I’d spot you from a mile away. What makes you glow so bright, huh? What makes you so special?”

              Caleb smiled and felt a confident grin sear his face. “You’ll see.”

              The man sat back down and laughed viciously as Caleb began walking down the sidewalk with a new pep in his step. Around back of the grocery, a man was being smothered and stabbed over a wallet the robber didn’t realize was empty.

-                            -                            -                           

              “And with this final week of school before finals week, let me be the first to say finish strong and don’t let your future slip away.”

              Principal Hackard faded from the speaker box and class resumed. ‘That man could put cocaine addicts to sleep. Not that class holds my interest much today either. Thank goodness for tests results and deductive speculation from the good doctor.’ The front page of the manila folder held descriptions of the tests and results while the reverse page was the reached conclusions, mathematical and rational. Near the back were a few personal pages, one of which was the Post-It note of questions spelled out in a regular list. ‘Quirky, doctor.’ Above the torrent of thoughts inspired by the turning pages, the cheerleader who drew the last day for presentations droned on and sputtered for new questions. ‘Too bad, so sad. You won’t be saved by me today. Not with a folder of my future in front of me.

              ‘It’s gonna be like this for the rest of the year, I can see. Screw it. I’ve given my…well, I’ve given what they perceive as my best for three-and-a-half-years. My grades speak for themselves. Even taking exams at this point is irrelevantly candid. Philosophy has one grade, American History grade hadn’t dropped below a hundred percent all year, Art’s my lowest grade at a ninety-five percent, Calculus, Writing Mechanics, and Gym are all locked up, and Study Hall, though a difficult hour to sleep through every day, isn’t doing much to hurt my GPA. The only aspect experiencing whiplash at this point is participation, but my grade should be used to that from my quiet stage to the get-back-all-the-points-you-can stage and now the too-busy-to-care stage. I’m sure my apathy has company amongst my fellow students, and mine’s for a better reason than theres.’

              “—so right and wrong are in every choice we make?”

              Caleb rubbed the reminiscent numbers out of his eye balls and focused on the discussion momentarily. Following the facetious cheerleader’s eyes to a seat a few to his right, Caleb felt the heat of the impending question. ‘Ugh almost my turn. All right focus in. They’re in a mental tennis match. They’re talking about good and evil…or something. How much energy did I push out in the second test? Later, focus now.’ Dennis fidgeted his hands and answered a question Caleb hadn’t heard. “Good and evil are subjective to the situation and the person.”

              The girl was clearly following the procedure of the assignment only. ‘No enjoyment in her face at all.’ She pivoted to the next person in the circle and looked down to her paper, which must be filled with more scribbles than words, for more questions. “Why is it that good and evil are always at odds with one another?”

              “Um, well they’re opposites and all opposites attract.”

              That answer was all that the cheery cheerleader needed to move onto Caleb. “What makes good good and evil evil?”

              Caleb chuckled as he sighed and gathered an intentionally lengthy answer. “First off, there is a massive difference between calling something ‘good’ and calling something ‘right.’ One would assume what feels good is what makes things good and what feels bad makes things evil, but that’s simply not the case. If it were, people wouldn’t die from eating good food or get rich from sending people to die, so we can’t draw a straight line between good and evil all the time. But I digress; telling good from evil is actually quite easy. If we align the good with what is right and evil with doing what is wrong, then the line can be drawn and removed from the bias of everyday labels as well. In other words, yeah, if we lie to ourselves, it’s real easy to know what’s good and bad.”

              Mrs. Drit chuckled loud enough for everyone to hear and the cheerleader gave the smirking Caleb a very pointed look. Her cocked hips and crossed arms soon relaxed as she walked over and sat heavily into her chair. ‘Mrs. Drit is obviously feeling the apathy resonating from our little circle.’ She seemed content to let the class drift off into their own smaller circles. Caleb extended his power lightly around the circle to the cheerleader. ‘Gotta hear what she’s got to say about me after that.’ She had her hands crossed and her gaze down as Caleb closed his eyes, seeing exclusively through the small amount of power he had committed to the curiosity. He saw her looking into her entwined hands and heard her whisper to some jock friend of hers, “If he weren’t so cute, yeah.”

              The jock friend gave a surprised look and gave a deep whisper back, “That kid was the damn Goth King earlier in the year and now all the sudden you’re throwing your panties at him?”

              She gave him a girly scoff. “No,” she said in a stretched way that sounded more like “Nowah,” “I’m just saying…he’s cute without that stuff on. And smart.”

              ‘Hm, nice going away present from a girl you’ve talked to three times.’

              The irritating bell rang and everyone quickly left as Caleb came back into himself with a deep breath. He opened his eyes, and saw Mrs. Drit blocking his exit with a pleased smile on her face. “As dramatic a last line as there ever was in this class.”

              “That’s what I was going for.” Caleb kept his answers short. ‘Not exactly chat-buddies since her house. She hasn’t changed. Everything about her looks the same. Her every smile and eye-sparkle is a hint to me that the invitation still stands. I told her that she needed some sort of change. She even agreed with me, but she hasn’t. I tried, at least.’

              “You always were an arrogant little grandstander, all the more suited now that you’re moving onto bigger and brighter stages. I guess that’s why I wanted to get you alone before graduation.” Caleb stood a few feet from her with his arms at his sides. Her posture suddenly sagged against the wall and a huge, quick breath shot from her body. “This is my last year teaching. I’m leaving next Thursday.”

              Caleb felt his eyes widen and his neck straighten. “Where are you going?”

              “Back to school. Not quite sure which direction I’m heading in yet, but I did what you said; I woke up one morning and realized I didn’t like that girl in the mirror. Anyways, none of this was possible a few months ago…so I wanted to show you my thanks for…redirecting my passions.”