The 6th Power (3 page)

“Actually, I used to have a lousy memory. Comes with being old, I guess. But a few months back I was wandering around this shop in The City that specializes in herbal remedies, and I picked up these little beauties.” He reached in his shirt pocket, pulled out a small envelope and shook a couple of blue capsules into the palm of his hand. They didn’t seem particularly special to me, but Mr. Magellan looked at them as if they were mint copies of the first issue of
Action Comics
.

“Don’t know precisely what’s in them,” he said. “St. John’s-whatever and gecko-baboona or something. But I just let one dissolve under my tongue and, for twelve hours, I can remember my high school locker combination and the name of the girl I kissed at summer camp in 19… well, never mind about that.” He put the pills back in the envelope and considered the contents. “Hmm. Only four left. I’ll have to get on their website and order some more. ”

I stood there and watched as Mr. Magellan placed the little envelope back in his pocket. I had to stop myself from making a grab for it.

He must have noticed the look on my face, though, because he said, “Mr. Holland? Do you… do you want to try one of these pills?”

I blinked. I dropped my head. I mumbled something and turned back to one of the boxes. If I hadn’t made a deal to help Mr. Magellan, I might have run out of the shop right then and there. No way did I want the only person in the world that I sort of considered a friend to know that I was mentally defective, that I was going to need to tattoo my locker combination on my hand when I got to junior high, that…

“We all have different strengths, Mr. Holland. Just because you have difficulty remembering things, doesn’t mean that you’re stupid.” His voice was quiet, all trace of humor gone, and it pulled my head up. He looked kind of sad. “Perhaps you have difficulties remembering things at school because of… distractions in your life.”

I shook my head, though I wasn’t sure whether I was disagreeing with what he had said or denying that I had a problem with my memory or simply indicating that I didn’t want to talk about it. I mean, I’d seen Mr. Magellan practically every day of my life, either in the store or in the neighborhood, but how could he know about my problems? I don’t talk about the twins. I don’t talk about what they do to me. Sure, Mr. Magellan struck me as someone who would be understanding if I did share my tale of woe, but he was a grownup. If I told him, he’d tell my parents, and that couldn’t happen.

“Look, these things are completely herbal,” he said, taking the envelope from his pocket again. “They are not much different than the stuff you’d find in your mother’s garden. Nothing in there can hurt you.”

I didn’t respond. Mom grew broccoli in her garden, so his argument wasn’t exactly winning me over.

“Tell you what,” he said, bagging up my comic books, “why don’t I put these in here,” he slipped the envelope in the bag, “and you can decide if you want to try them. If not, no harm done, just return them to me the next time you’re in. If you do decide to try them, remember that they only last for twelve hours.”

I nodded because it seemed rude not to. I know, I know. Red alert! Stranger giving you pills! They teach you, like, on the first day of kindergarten that you never take medicine from anyone who’s not your parent. But like I said, I’d known Mr. Magellan forever. When I started kindergarten and Mom went back to work at the advertising agency, she planned on having the twins watch me after school. Instead, I’d gone to Mr. Magellan’s shop every single day. If he’d wanted to poison me, he’d had plenty of opportunities before then. Heck, he could have just slipped something into the full-size Snicker bars that he gave out every Halloween. Seriously. Full-size. Not those measly little “Fun Size” bars that last for just a bite. Full-size Snickers bars. I mean, how cool was that?

So I took the bag of comic books and herbal supplements, managing to smile and nod my thanks. He ushered me to the door, thanking me for my help and telling me to let him know how things went. As I hit the sidewalk, Mr. Magellan said, “Mr. Holland?”

I turned and looked at him. The sun was higher now. His face was covered in shadow.

“Memories can be powerful things,” he said. “And you know what they say about great power.”

Anyone who’d ever read Spider-Man knew that one. I opened my mouth to ask him what he meant, but Mr. Magellan had already closed the door and retreated back into his shop.

Chapter 4

T
he backyard of our house bordered a giant field of prairie grass. There were “For Sale” signs in the field, and someday it would be converted into places where people would sleep when they weren’t in The City or on the train. Past the field was a line of trees, and past that was farmland. The grass in the field grew pretty high, making it a sometime effective place to hide from the twins. I took my comic books there every Wednesday. By the time I was done reading, my nose was stuffy and my eyes were running, but it was totally worth it.

I had to read my comic books right away. Since I lived with Chet and Robert, nothing I owned was sacred. I used to try to hide the brown paper sack each week, but the twins never failed to find it. It was easier just to leave the comic books on my dresser when I was done with them. They were usually gone by dinnertime. I didn’t know what my brothers did with them, but it would not have surprised me if many an issue of
Justice League
had met its fiery end out in the woods.

It may seem stupid to buy comic books each week if they are just going to get torched, but before the torching, I got to sit in the field and spend an hour not thinking about my life. That hour was totally worth my allowance going up in smoke.

I sat. I read. I didn’t think about how weird it was that Mr. Magellan gave me those pills and how he seemed to know about the crud I was going through. I didn’t think about what Chet and Robert had done that morning, and what they might do when they returned from baseball practice. I didn’t think about that look on Mom’s face when she told me about the tutor. Instead, I imagined slipping an emerald ring on my finger and shooting straight up into the sky, away from Coralberry, forever. I imagined saying a wizard’s name and getting hit by a bolt of lightning, turning into someone who could tie the twins together using one of the knots in Chet’s scout handbook. I imagined…

There was a rumbling noise on Rosenberg Street. Hydraulics moving metal. The sound of the garbage truck. I kept on reading.

The truck moved. The truck stopped. The truck moved. The truck stopped. I kept reading.

The truck should have stopped. The truck kept moving.

The truck should have stopped in front of my house.

The truck didn’t stop in front of my house because I’d forgotten to take out the garbage.

I stood up and looked. Yeah, there it was, moving on down Rosenberg Street. The Holland house had been skipped. The garbage would pile up for a whole ‘nother week, and every time Mom opened the door to the garage and smelled that smell and looked at the pile of bags, she’d sigh that sigh and shake her head and…

Stupid, lousy, stinking brain couldn’t remember to do something it was told to do not an hour ago! Now I was going to get hassled again, and not just by Mom, but Chet will chime in and Dad will say something and why can’t I just remember?

The bag of comic books tipped over as I started to pace. The little wax paper envelope slid out and landed at my feet. I stopped and looked down at it.

Mr. Magellan had said that it was just an herbal supplement. Nothing in there could hurt me. It probably wouldn’t even work. I picked up the envelope and shook out a pill. It was small, blue and a little sticky. It smelled kind of like the spice aisle at the grocery store. Mr. Magellan had said that I just needed to put it under my tongue, that it would dissolve and my memory would…

The kindergarten training kicked in again. I shook my head. No, I’d just give the pills back tomorrow. Tell Mr. Magellan thanks, but no thanks. Like he said, no harm done. I couldn’t…

“Nathaniel David Holland!”

Mom, at the back door, calling for me, ticked off. Guess she heard the garbage truck, too.

I sighed. I looked at the pill. I opened my mouth and shoved it under my tongue.

Uck. It tasted like black licorice and oregano. I almost spit it out, but by the time I thought to do so, the pill had already disappeared. It left a bad taste behind and my tongue started tingling.  Weird.

The tingling spread down my throat and straight up my spine. That freaked me out. Normal medicine didn’t do that. It was more like those descriptions we read in health class of what it was like to take illegal drugs. Meth. Mr. Magellan had given me meth! Why would he do that? I was one of his best customers!

The tingling spread into my brain. My head started to pound, just like when the twins had held me upside down over that dog doo that morning or when I had to practice hand stands in gym class or that time in second grade when the twins made me hang upside down on the monkey bars at recess until I turned the exact same shade of purple as our school’s colors, Go Purple Penguins, Go! It was also like the time I…

Whoa.

The pounding started to fade. The tingling was already gone. I noticed the world around me again. I was in the field. Once, when I was five years old, I’d run here when Chet caught me drinking the last of the Kool-Aid straight from the pitcher. He’d called for me to come take my punishment, but I’d been young and foolish, so I huddled down in the tall grass. The twins followed the trail of bent stalks, grabbed my arms and started to twist. A rope burn. Chet had told me that it was for my own good, that I had to learn to follow the rules.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the rest of the memory. Memory. The pill. The pill was working. Really, really well. Mom called my name again, sounding just as angry, and I remembered each time that she had called my name over the years and how she was usually angry at the time. Mom was mad about the garbage. The truck was gone and I’d forgotten to take out the garbage.

Memories flowed through my brain, linking up, forming a clear path to follow. I knew what I had to do.

I picked up the comic books, shoved the pills in my pocket, and ran as fast as I could go towards the house. I dove under the fence that separated the field from our backyard and was momentarily flooded with memories of all of the times I had done that before and how I was usually being chased at the time. Mom saw me running straight for her, and her face changed from anger to confusion.

“HiMomcan’ttalknow,” I blurted as I zoomed by her and through the screen door. Opened the cabinet under the sink, pulled the garbage bag out of the can, put it by the door to the garage, went through the living room, waved to Kiki in her pack-n-play, went up the stairs, put the comic books on my dresser, waved goodbye to them, pulled the garbage from our bathroom, pulled the garbage from my parent’s bathroom, back down stairs, all the garbage into the garage, Mom saying something behind me, no time, no time.

I glanced at my watch. I could do it. Everything went into two big bags. Pushed the button to open the garage door, scooted under it as soon as I could, a bag in each hand. Crossed the street, between two houses, through a backyard, between two more houses, out onto Dorchester Street. Down two blocks, breathing really hard, stitch in my side. I was slowing down. I couldn’t slow down, I was almost there.

Between two more houses and I was stopped by a fence and a barking dog. I shook my head, turned around, and a bag fell from my sweat-slicked fingers. I rubbed my hand on my jeans, snatched the bag back up, went down three more houses, through a backyard, over an herb garden, nodded to some little kids playing on a swing set, and out onto Highland Way. I stopped. I looked behind me.

There was the garbage truck.

Dripping with sweat, gasping for air, dragging two bags of garbage behind me, I must have looked pretty weird to the sanitation engineer. The lady just took the bags from me without comment, though. I nodded my thanks and collapsed onto the cool grass of someone else’s lawn.  

That… was…. awesome!

Okay, it wasn’t like I had memorized the route that the garbage truck takes when it leaves our house. That would be weird. But I’d lived here all my life and I’d roamed the neighborhood since I could walk. I’d seen that garbage truck hundreds of times, on Rosenberg Street and Highland Way and everywhere else, and even though I’d never given much thought about the route that the truck takes, I was able to access all of my memories of the truck and… there it was. Clear as day. I knew where the truck would be.

I wondered whether people who didn’t have memory problems would have been able to do what I had just done. It didn’t seem likely. The pill didn’t just improve my memory, it gave me… super-memory!

Which was kind of a lame power, as super powers went, but no arguing that it did the trick. But if such a thing were possible, and obviously it was possible because I could suddenly remember who inked issue number 96 of
The New Teen Titans
and who did the lettering in issue 29 of
Dial H for Hero
, why hadn’t I heard about such a thing before? You’d think if some shop had made an herbal supplement that could boost memory that much, every high school and college student who was facing final exams would be shoving little blue pills under their tongues by the handful. Maybe the pills were…

“I am going to pound that shrimp!”

My eyes flew open. The twins were close, walking down the street. Only a hedge had kept them from noticing me. A few more steps and I’d be busted.

“Make me late for practice! Make me have to run laps!”

I was in the middle of someone else’s yard and no one was around. No way would I get under cover before they saw me. Nothing was going to stop Chet from catching me. The only thing that would save me would be if I could somehow turn invisible. Despite my being wetting-my-pants-scared, I snorted at the thought.

“Time to teach that little baby some manners!”