The 6th Power (5 page)

I wanted to say something to her, to thank her, to apologize to her. Maybe suggest that she seek counseling for her obvious suicidal tendencies. I searched my memories of her and didn’t come up with much. She’d only lived on Rosenberg Street for a couple of years. I remembered a conversation over the dinner table during which Mom informed Dad that the girl and her mom had moved here from California. At school, there had been the usual whispers about “The New Kid,” girls commenting on her clothes and her height and her tan, which some said looked weird with her red hair. I had no memories of the girl sitting with anyone at lunch or talking with anyone in the hallways of Coralberry Elementary.

Just like me.

Then I remembered that the fun on Mr. Clifford’s lawn wasn’t the first time that the girl had witnessed Chet and Robert’s work. She had been there when Chet had snuck up behind me during a game of kickball and had pulled my pants down. Everyone had laughed as I’d struggled to cover up my Fruit of the Looms. Everyone except the girl.

And when the twins had put that picture on the bulletin board of me in my ducky pajamas? I’d been too busy freaking out about it at the time to realize that it had been the girl who had pointed it out to one of the hall monitors.

Wow. I really wished that I knew her name.

Eventually, her watch must have said something that she liked because she picked up her ball and started heading back towards Rosenberg Street. I glanced down at my own watch and remembered that I’m an idiot. The big clock on the library across the street said that it was two o’clock. How time flies on the weirdest day of your life. I pushed off the tree and followed the girl, trying not to feel like a complete and utter stalker.

I hoped that the twins wouldn’t come after her. Chet had been pretty mad about her interfering that morning, and he wasn’t the kind of guy to forgive and forget. I thought about warning her to keep out of Chet’s way for awhile, but that was kind of difficult unless I wanted to pretend to be a ghost. (Boooo! Stay away from the Holland boys! Boooo!)

Lame.

Well, at least she wouldn’t have to worry about Chet for the rest of the day. Mom had sent him to his room to “think about what he had done.” Mom had said the exact same thing to me, like, a billion times. Once when I was just a toddler, playing in the kitchen while Mom was upstairs, Chet had walked in carrying the glass vase that Mom’s parents had given her as a wedding present. The same parents who had died in a car crash before any of us kids were born. Needless to say, the vase was strictly off-limits. Chet didn’t even look at me as he approached. He just tossed the vase up into the air, turned and ran. Before it had even hit the linoleum, he was out the door, Robert hot on his heels. Mom ran downstairs and found me sitting there, surrounded by crystal shards. I tried to tell Mom that I hadn’t broken the vase, but since I couldn’t tell her who really had done it, the conversation did not go well. I was given a long time-out to “think about what I had done.”

I had perfect recall of this memory and each and every other time that the twins had gotten me into trouble with my parents. But I’d finally managed to turn the tables on Chet. I’d played a prank on him that was as good as anything he had ever done to me…

I stopped walking as that sunk in. Huh. I’d done something just as bad as the things that Chet was always doing to me. Of course, the twins had started it. They had started it even before I’d woken up that morning. They deserved a little payback.

But then I remembered Mom standing there in the bathroom, yelling at Chet, her voice bouncing off of the walls over and over again, joining in with Kiki’s screams until I thought that the memory of it would make my brain go shooting out of my ears. Kiki, terrified, tears streaming down her face. How many times had I been woken up out of a sound sleep by the twins, scared and disoriented? I knew exactly how many times, and I had just done the exact same thing to my little sister.

So not good.

I closed my eyes as the bathroom memory replayed itself over and over again. Stupid invisible eyelids.

It didn’t take me long to jog back to the comic book shop. From a block away I could tell that the lights were still off and the Closed sign was still up. By the time I hit the door, I literally hit the door. A passing pedestrian whirled around at the noise, but I ignored her. Lunchtime was over. Where was Mr. Magellan? It was completely unlike him for the shop to be closed that long.

I sat down on the doorstep and tried to calm down. There was an explanation, a perfectly normal explanation, for him being gone. Maybe he ran to the bank. Maybe he had a doctor’s appointment. Maybe he was an alien invader who was performing chemical experiments on helpless kids and he was up in his spaceship, monitoring the results. You want a result? The result is that I was a creep who made his baby sister cry!

Okay. That wasn’t constructive.

I decided to wait there, on the doorstep, until Mr. Magellan showed up and gave me the answers I needed. I didn’t care if I had to wait there all day long.

I waited there all day long.

The sun started sinking in the west. Shops closed. Shoppers went home. Cars started streaming in from the east, bringing in weary workers from The City. Dad would be in one of those cars and if I wasn’t home when he got home, Mom would get on my case about holding up dinner. And I was truly starving.

The library clock chimed six. Closing time for Coralberry Comics and Collectibles. The owner obviously wasn’t returning today. I’d just have to hope he was there tomorrow.

When I got home, I discovered that I wasn’t the only one who’d had a fruitless afternoon. Robert was still sitting in the backyard, fiddling with his shoelaces, obviously waiting for Chet to come out and tell him what to do next. That struck me as incredibly pathetic. I thought about tapping him on the shoulder again, seeing if I could get him to freak out, but the memory of Kiki crying reasserted itself. I walked on by him.

Making sure that no one was looking, I eased in the back door. Mom was at the stove, her back to me, pulling a dish out of the oven. I was so famished that I didn’t even mind getting tuna-noodle casserole for dinner. I headed for the living room and saw Kiki sitting in her bouncy seat, staring at the television, giggling along with Elmo. She looked fine. No more tears. No permanent psychic damage, hopefully. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Upstairs, all was quiet. The door to Chet’s bedroom was closed. I crept past it, remembering the location of all of the creaking floorboards, slipped into my room and gently closed the door.

There’s a mirror on the back of my door. Obviously, the only thing I saw in it was my room. Okay. I had turned invisible after I had reviewed all of my memories about invisibility. It was like I had somehow merged with my recollections. No, that wasn’t it. I had perfectly understood what it meant to be invisible, so I was just able to do it. But none of the invisible characters that I had remembered were stuck being invisible. Frodo took off the ring. Harry took off the cloak. The others just thought about appearing and they did. I should have been able to do that, too.

So why wasn’t I visible? Maybe because, despite all the drama and freaking out, being invisible was being safe, and safe was something that I hadn’t felt in a long time, and I didn’t want to give it up. But I couldn’t show up for dinner like this, obviously, and if I didn’t show up for dinner, the world would end. So…

With a sigh, Nate Holland appeared in his bedroom mirror. He looked tired. He’d had a long day. I gave him a sad smile and headed downstairs.

Things were pretty quiet. Mom fed Kiki. Dad went over some paperwork. He was still wearing his tie, and his thick, dark hair was rumpled from a long day of trying to sell stuff to people that they didn’t really need. Robert picked at his food, stealing a glance at the ceiling every so often. Dad had taken Chet’s dinner up to him. 

I gobbled my tuna noodle casserole, not caring how dry it was, and went to the stove for seconds. As I sat back down, Dad seemed to notice that I was there and asked, “What did you do today?”

I tried not to laugh out loud. Oh Father, you have no idea. Instead, I shrugged. “You know. Wednesday,” I said. He looked puzzled, so I clarified. “I hung around the comic book store.” Which was true.

Dad nodded. Before he bent back over his work, I saw the look of disappointment cross his face.

Mom, not bothering to tear her eyes away from Kiki, said, “And he forgot to take out the garbage.”

My fork fell from my fingers. “I did take out the garbage!”

“Don’t raise your voice to me!” she said, raising her voice. “You know you didn’t get the garbage out in time, like I asked you. You had to chase after the garbage truck.”

Dad froze in mid-bite and looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Reewry?”

Mom pushed a spoonful of strained plums at Kiki. “Don’t talk with your mouth full, dear.”

 “Sorry, Hon.” He swallowed and turned back to me. “Really? You ran after the garbage truck?”

I shrugged. “Had to.”

“And you were able to catch it?” There was something strange about his tone of voice, something I wasn’t used to hearing.

“Yeah, over on Highland Way.”

Robert looked up at that. Uh oh. I hadn’t thought that through. Would Robert remember that he and Chet had been on that street, that he’d seen the garbage truck go by, but that he hadn’t seen me? Probably not, but still…

“Wow,” Dad said. “You must have really been hustling.”

I found myself smiling. I couldn’t remember the last time Dad had complemented me on my doing anything athletic. Oh, wait, I could remember. It had never happened before. Then Mom had to chime in.

“If you had remembered to take out the garbage before the truck came, you wouldn’t have had to chase it, would you?”

I shook my head, suppressing a sigh. Dad opened his mouth as if to say something, possibly to come to my defense, when his cell phone rang. He was up in a shot, walking towards his study, the phone already pressed to his ear.

So much for father-son bonding time.

Robert went upstairs after dinner. Mom put Kiki to bed. Dad stayed in his office. I was alone in the living room. The television was on, but there was nothing worth watching. I found myself thinking about my day, remembering every moment of it, the good and the bad. You’d think that the day that I finally got a superpower of my very own would be, like, the best day ever. Sure, I’d felt safe while I was invisible, but I’d still gotten in trouble with Mom. I’d still had to tiptoe around the twins. And Kiki shrieking…

Enough. I changed tracks, firmly setting my mind on the memory of the last Iron Man movie, starting it up from the beginning. But as my mental picture show went on, it started getting harder and harder to remember all of the details. 

Making sure that I was still alone, I held up my hand and tried to make it invisible. It faded for just a moment, then popped right back. I tried to think about Susan Richards and Jonn’ Jonz, tried to remember what it meant to be invisible, but it just wouldn’t come to me. I glanced at the clock on the wall.

Hadn’t Mr. Magellan told me that the pills lasted for only 12 hours? I guess if I couldn’t remember for sure, that pretty much answered my question. My superpowers were over for the day. I sighed, sort of disappointed, but also a little relieved to have the stuff out of my system. I definitely needed to talk to Mr. Magellan before I even thought about taking another pill. Sure, awesome to be a living comic book character, but there were just too many questions, to many unknowns…

I jumped at the sound of someone clearing their throat. I looked around and saw Chet sitting at the top of the stairs. He stared at me, that smile on his face. When he was sure that I saw him, he drew his thumb across his throat. Then he winked at me, stood up and glided out of sight, back to his room. Back to plan tomorrow’s festivities.

I sighed and, with a trembling hand, reached into my pocket and pulled out the little envelope with the three remaining herbal supplements. Unknowns, yeah, but Chet was a big psychotic known who’d had a very bad day, and even though there was no evidence linking me to the thing in the bathroom, our house wasn’t a courtroom. If Chet had a bad day, it was my fault, period, and Chet got over a bad day by making sure that my day was even worse.

So I knew that, despite the unknowns, I’d be taking another of the memory pills when I woke up in the morning.

Chapter 7

T
he second one wasn’t as bad. It was like the pathways to my memories had already been blown open the day before, so when I let the pill dissolve under my tongue the next morning, there was just a pleasant tingling sensation in my brain. Then I recited all of the Gettysburg Address. I’d gotten a “Progressing” in Social Studies a year ago because I hadn’t been able to remember it well enough for the test.

It was time for breakfast again. The twins were already downstairs. I could hear Chet asking Mom if she wanted some toast. There was no yelling, so apparently all had been forgiven and forgotten from the day before. How nice.

I showered, got dressed, and headed downstairs. The scene at the breakfast table was pretty much the same as the day before. Mom feeding Kiki. Chet and Robert sitting there with empty cereal bowls. This time, though, there was already a bowl of cereal waiting for me.

“We poured that for you, Nathan,” said Chet the Helpful Brother. Once again, his eyes didn’t match his tone of voice, but there was something different there. He was angry, of course. Furious. But I could tell that he was also wary. He didn’t know what had happened in the bathroom yesterday, and he didn’t like that one bit. 

“We put plenty of sugar on it,” smiled Chet.

I doubted that, and since I had more important things to do than play a round of “guess that additive,” like tracking down Mr. Magellan, I decided to skip Chet’s little game. Instead, I cleared my throat and said, “I don’t really feel that hungry.”

Mom’s head came around with a snap. “You’re always complaining about being short, Nathaniel, so sit down and eat.”