The Ables (36 page)

“Sure thing,” Henry said, sliding the frame in the pouch on the back of his wheel-chair. “So, anyone want to hit Jack’s before we all head home?”

“We were just there, man,” Chad exclaimed. He was the one among us that was the least used to Henry’s appetite. “Honestly!”

“What? A guy’s gotta eat, right?” Henry smiled, slapping his hand on top of the pile.

Ooph!

We were gone, having once again unknowingly done precisely what had been expected of us.

***

James dropped me off in the garage as usual, and I slipped into the main house expecting darkness and silence. Instead I smelled coffee, a telltale sign that Dad was still up. And it was probably more than a little late for me to be waltzing in casually.

“Hey, son,” he said, not seeming remotely angry. The trajectory of his voice told me he was sitting at the kitchen table.

“Um, hey,” I responded, not sure if I was in trouble or not, and therefore, not sure how to behave.

“Kinda late, no?”

It was definitely kind of late. “I guess we lost track of time.”

Dad was usually either still at work or already in bed by the time I returned home from my too-late practice sessions with the guys. I’d grown accustomed to him not really monitoring my actions the last several weeks since Mom’s coma, and I guess I’d let things go too far.

“You know your brother sat here at home watching TV for five hours this evening … alone.” The picture of my current situation began to clear up, and it wasn’t good.

“I don’t know, Dad, he likes watching TV.” Some things sound wrong as soon as you hear yourself say them. “I mean … I didn’t realize how long I’d been gone, no,” I said quickly, hoping to head him off at the scolding pass. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“I’m not mad, Phillip,” he sighed, sounding sincere. “I’m really not. I’m more thrilled than you could know to see you making friends and exploring your abilities. I just … this thing with your Mom … I’m really worried about your brother, Phillip. He’s still young enough that …” he trailed off, though I could guess fairly accurately where he’d been headed with that thought.

“I know, Dad. I’m sorry. I haven’t really been thinking about anyone but myself.” It was true, actually. I just wasn’t as sorry for it as I was pretending to be.

“When your mom comes back, she’s going to need this place to run as normally and as smoothly as possible, you see?”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“I need you to be there for your brother, even if it means you have to give up a few hours a night of practice time with your friends. He’s not dealing with all this stuff too well; you may not have noticed.”

If only you knew
, I thought to myself.

“Your mother …” he began before trailing off. “This is exactly the kind of situation I would normally turn to her for … to find out what I’m supposed to do as a father.” It was a shocking display of honesty, every bit as touching as it was surprising. “I’m kind of lost without her, son,” he allowed. “And until I figure out what I’m supposed to be doing … I am sorry, but I have to ask you to grow up a few years for just a bit and help me.”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t sure what else to say … or even if I should be saying anything right now.

“I understand the SuperSims are important to you, but your family is more important. I’d rather have you be a good big brother these days than a good custodian, and that’s not taking anything away from being a good custodian, you know?” He cleared this throat. “I guess what I’m saying is that … I am not sure I know what I’m doing here, son.” His voice cracked ever so slightly. “And until I do, I need your help with Patrick, because he’s in a very fragile place, okay?”

“Okay,” I nodded.

“Okay,” he repeated, as much for himself as for me. He took a long sip of his coffee. “So, what adventures did you have this evening? Anything exciting?”

“Nope, just Bentley’s research. Thrilling stuff,” I said, hoping to cheer him up a bit.

“No more sightings of this Finch, right?” He probably told me three times a week to let him know if I ever heard from Finch or saw him again. It was borderline paranoia, but I was equally concerned about it myself.

“No, sir.”

“Good. The less I hear about him the better. Besides, your grades should be your main focus, am I right?”

That was below the belt since there was no denying my grades had started to slip. Dad was pulling the ultimate parental trump card.

“Right. I got a B-minus on my pop quiz this week,” I offered meekly, hoping he wouldn’t remember that I’d already told him.

“I remember.”

Dang.

“Were you studying tonight?”

“Not really. I mean, a little bit. But mostly we were just talking and hanging out.”

“And planning for the upcoming SuperSim, no doubt.” Like most parents, Dad’s default position when receiving information from his children was “skeptical.”

But I decided the truth was a can of worms best left unopened on this night, so I lied. “Nope. Just pizza and video games tonight.”

Dad shook his head as he spoke. “I hate thinking about how much money I’ve given that man.”

“Jack? Oh, it’s worth it, Dad. It’s worth every penny, believe me.”

“I don’t think he’s going to stop, Phillip,” Henry yelled over the noise of the attack. “We’re going to have to take him out somehow!”

Henry, Chad, and I were pinned down behind a dumpster in the supermarket parking lot. Thirty yards away, ducking between the cars, was one of the simulation’s bad guys—a particularly aggressive fake villain who was also a fireballer.

We’d caught him breaking into the town’s grocery store on one of Bentley’s security cameras, and James had zipped us over to confront him before zipping right back to the other side of town to help Bentley and the rest of the gang.

James was part of a unit with Bentley, Freddie, and Donnie, who were across town at the car dealership checking out another crime-in-progress spotted on Bentley’s cameras. Since Henry couldn’t be around for both of us, Bentley had given James my old Personal Navigator—with some custom Bentley modifications, of course. He’d downloaded the latest 3D satellite imagery from an online maps service, which meant the Navigator was able to give James detailed audio information about his surroundings even when he was outside of the school. It wasn’t the same thing as getting pictures from Henry, but it was a step up from total blindness.

“You are standing twenty feet outside the front door of the Freepoint Grocery,” I heard faintly from his earpiece after we arrived.

After he’d deposited us on the front side of the grocery store, we’d come around the corner to the side parking lot and stopped dead in our tracks. The villain was just a few rows in front of us. He already had one fireball loaded up in his right hand; his left arm was wrapped around the neck of an unhappy female hostage. And he was just standing there like he was waiting for us. Instantly, he started shooting baseballsized fire bombs at us, and we were forced to take cover behind the dumpster nearby.

The bombardment had been going on for almost three full minutes at this point and showed no signs of stopping. This guy was clearly trying to keep us pinned down until he could either make a getaway or at least stall long enough for a buddy to come help him. He’d already taken one hostage—we assumed she’d been a shopper from the supermarket—and we didn’t currently know her status because we were too busy cowering behind a dumpster.

I began to realize that being a true hero was all about reacting in the moment and wondered if the real adult heroes ever felt the panic that was currently gripping me. The typical superhero/criminal scenarios were so unpredictable and fluid that even in a simulation, planning didn’t seem to do any good.

I took off my new pair of glasses Bentley had given me and slid over to the corner of the dumpster. I reached out my hand peeking the camera around the edge so I could get a look at what we were up against without taking a fireball to the face.

The man was now standing in the middle of the street, about fifty yards away. We were pinned up against the grocery store’s exterior brick wall, with a couple rows of cars between us and the bad guy. With his left arm, he held his hostage tight to his body while his right hand dished out punishing fireballs lofted in our direction. So far, there weren’t any other student-led SuperSim teams in the vicinity, which meant we could have the points all to ourselves if we could apprehend him somehow.

Of course, with the kind of fireworks show he was putting on, there was enough light and sound to ensure we wouldn’t be alone for long. That meant we needed to act fast.

And then, a thought hit me.
He’s not going to hurt us! What are we afraid of?
I pulled the camera glasses back, returned them to my face, and addressed my teammates.

“Okay, check this out,” I said to Henry and Chad. “This man, whoever he is, is not going to hurt us.”

They both looked at me blankly, probably wondering when I’d become fireproof.

“I mean … he’s an adult. Probably a protector or a teacher.” They still didn’t get it. “It’s the SuperSim! No adult, however much they’re pretending to be a super-villain, is going to hurt a kid during this thing. It’s an exercise! He’s not trying to hit us with the fireballs; he’s probably just positioning them carefully to keep us pinned down! What are we afraid of here, guys? We’re superheroes!”

“Just because he won’t want to hurt us doesn’t mean he can’t accidentally do it … or that he’s not still trying to stop us,” Chad reminded me.

“Sure, sure,” I said, only to continue my own argument, “but he’s trying to stop us in non-lethal ways. This isn’t a real super-villain. He doesn’t want to put any of us into the hospital or anything like that.”

“So then, what should we do, Mr. Not Afraid Anymore?” Henry asked dryly. “What’s your big plan to get us out from behind this thing, stop his fireballs, save the hostage, and arrest the adult villain?” When he put it that way, maybe I did sound a little crazy.

“I don’t know. But whenever we’re real heroes, we’re going to have to learn to think on our feet. We won’t always have time to make a plan.” Another thought hit me. “Use your powers and see what he’s thinking.”

Henry heard me but didn’t
hear
me. “What?”

“Use your powers—read his mind and see what his plan is or whatever.”

“Oh yeah,” he said, just now remembering he could read minds.

A few seconds passed and a few more fireballs smashed into the wall above us.

“Okay,” Henry said, exhaling. “He’s thinking … and I quote … ‘Oh God, don’t let me hurt these kids; oh God, don’t let me hurt these kids.’”

There was something chilling about that, but I let it slide because it also proved my point. “See, he’s not only
not
trying to hurt us, he’s actively attempting to keep us safe!”

“He actually sounded more scared than we are,” Henry allowed.

I nodded. “Then let’s do something here, okay?”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But what?”

I stretched the camera back around the dumpster again, relaying its image to Henry, who saw it on his wheelchair-mounted laptop and sent it to me.

I looked for anything I could control with my powers. There were cars all over the place, but I knew I wasn’t ready for that yet. My telekinesis wasn’t focused enough to move something that large and heavy.

There were trees all around the bad guy, but like most of the trees in Freepoint, they were ancient and giant—way too big for me to budge. I considered trying to move the branches but ultimately thought that any branch I was strong enough to move would probably be harmless if it fell on or near the villain. I couldn’t be known as the kid who tried to win the SuperSim through the use of projectile twigs. Besides, branches are quite flammable.

There were a few loose shopping carts in the parking lot. But again, I wasn’t positive I could get something of that size up in the air, let alone force it to fly across the sky. Maybe I could, but until I was sure, I didn’t want to risk it.

“Whatever you do, Phillip, you’d better do it soon, man,” said Henry alongside a chorus of fireball explosions on the other side of our shelter. “Sooner or later, he’s going to catch one of those cars on fire, and then we’re all screwed.”

Ah, Henry
, I thought, knowing he could hear me.
You’ve always got the worst-case scenario in mind, don’t you?

“Yes, I do,” he replied verbally. “Somebody has to.”

“Henry, I don’t think we need to worry about the cars catching fire, okay? This man is a professional. I’m sure he has better control of his powers than that. And besides, if those cars started exploding, he’d be in just as much danger as we would.”

I stopped cold. Had I really just stumbled onto my own solution?

“How much do you think those fireballs weigh?” I asked Chad.

“I don’t know,” he said. “They do a lot of damage, but they’re not very big.” He was right. They were the size of softballs.

“Okay. Okay,” I said to myself, working through my plan. “Okay, guys, I think I got it.” And then I went into field-general mode.

“Chad, I need a fire extinguisher.”

He just looked at me blankly.

“Use your power,” I explained, a little impatiently, “and duck back around into the grocery store and bring back the fire extinguisher. There should be one near the front desk, okay? Can you do that?”

There was about a four-foot length of wall from where we were positioned to where the building’s front corner was. Chad would have to get past that four feet of exposed air without getting hit by a fireball in order to dash around the corner and into the store. He could turn invisible, but he wasn’t invincible, so he took a moment to glance at the wall while considering my proposition.

“Yeah, yeah, I can do that,” he finally said, not sounding wholly confident.

“Okay, listen for the next round of fireballs to crash, then go on my signal.”

Chad nodded, then disappeared into thin air. We all waited a few seconds until another wave of ammo hit the front of the dumpster.