The Weight of the World (8 page)

as
it left his head.

In
minutes the wound closed on the God-King's head.

The
cyclone slowed, tensed, and refined its figure.

Left
standing in the presence of the stunned gods

was
a young woman.

“
Everything
is in a state of metamorphosis. Thou thyself art in everlasting
change and in corruption to correspond; so is the whole universe.
”

-Marcus
Aurelias

V.

Zach
waited beneath the neon sign for the movie theater at the mall. The
walls around him were painted bright orange and gold. Over the buzz
of teenage voices and TVs playing pop videos, Zach could no longer
hear the thunderstorm that raged outside.

The
boys had decided to make the food-court and film a weekly ritual that
summer. It had rained every day this week and weather forecasters in
Miami Dade County were now calling in guest meteorologists to try to
figure out why the patterns were so unpredictable. Rain had driven
the local teens indoors. The mall was once-more packed with bored
kids and their parents, who needed an escape from being cooped up
with them at home.

Lewis
met Zach at the entrance and they split up. Lewis went for tacos
while Zach got a standard burger and fries. Zach was standing in the
absurdly long line for his lunch when he heard Lewis.

“
Oh
man,” Lewis whispered. “Zach needs to see this.” The whisper
sounded like it was right in Zach’s ear. When he turned around to
see why Lewis had changed his choice of meals, however, he found
nobody behind him except a tired-looking mom with two toddlers.

Zach’s
eyes searched the food court. Lewis was still at the taco stand
across the entire width of the court.

Zach
paid for his meal and met Lewis at their table.

“
You’re
gonna think I’m crazy,” he said, when Lewis sat down. “I swear
I heard you talking to me in line.”

“
Yeah?”
Lewis smirked.

“
You
said ‘Zach needs to see this.’”

Lewis’
smirk fell away. “Did I?”

“
Yeah.
I hang out with you too much, man. Your voice is in my head.”

“
Well...
I did say that, but I was way over there.”

Zach
raised an eyebrow at him. Was Lewis just messing with him? He
couldn’t tell. Lewis seemed serious. “So you’re telling me that
you whispered and I somehow heard it?”

“
Yeah,
I mean, unless you can read my mind.”

“
What
did I need to see?”

“
Oh,
just some redneck picking a fight with the clerk at the next stand
over. Total cliché with the sleeveless plaid shirt and trucker hat.
Thought it was gonna get physical. That’s not really important
right now,” Lewis said. He hadn’t sat down and was practically
bouncing. “What if this is another power, you know? I mean, did you
get that mass email from Evan?”

“
Yeah,
how he can melt metal now?”

“
What
if this is my second power?”

“
Just
because he has one, doesn’t mean you do. I mean, knowing machines
wasn’t exactly a clear-cut supernatural ability, Lew. Maybe that
was really his first actual power.”

“
But
what if this is my second power?” Lewis set his bag of food down.
In a blink, he was gone. Zach saw him stop his blurred run at the
opposite end of the food court.

“
Can
you hear me now?” he whispered. It was as clear as if he were right
at Zach’s shoulder.

“
Yeah,”
Zach said. “I can. Weird.”

“
I
can’t hear whatever you’re saying, dude.”

Zach
waved for him to come back. Napkins flew off of tables as Lewis
rushed back.

“
Dude,
stop doing that in public. You moron.”

“
Nobody
can see me.”

“
Someone
is gonna notice. Some preteen girl is gonna be staring at us and see
you vanish like Clark Kent and we’re gonna get busted.”

Lewis
shrugged. “It’s super easy now I know I can do it. I mean I just
focus and tell you something, you directly, and it gets there. I
wanna try someone else.”

Lewis
turned and stared at a man in cut-off jeans and a Nascar hat. “Hey,
stupid,” he whispered. The man looked around wildly, but nobody was
near him. Lewis laughed.

“
Eat
your tacos,” Zach said.

“
Grumpy,”
Lewis retorted before flopping down into a chair.

“
Look
at her,” he said, pointing at a woman across the sea of tables.
“What do you think, sorority girl?”

Zach
shrugged.

“
Come
on, Lightning,” Lewis moaned. “Hot girl, straight ahead, and you
don’t care?”

Zach
put his burger down and took a proper look at the girl Lewis was
ogling. She had black hair that went down past her backside. It was a
very nice backside. He nodded. “Probably.”

“
That’s
more like it. Wonder if I could use my new gift to convince her that
God was telling her to go out with me.”

Zach
shrugged again. He ran his hand through his summer haircut and
scratched his stubbled chin. He could play along, but he wasn’t
really feeling it.

“
What
is wrong with you? Her body is easily a nine!”

“
It’s
not really that exciting, Lewis.”

“
Six
months ago you would have been there, right now, using a line on
her.”

“
Six
months ago that might have been worth it.” In truth, Zach had been
with a string of girls just as gorgeous as the mysterious food court
girl that Lewis was currently so fixated on. Since his breakup with
June Herald in February, Zach had embraced his freedom and made moves
on more girls than he could count in retrospect. He had been
successful, too. Now the idea of flipping on the Zach Jacobs charisma
and bringing home yet another gorgeous girl seemed exhausting.

“
This
is what senior year of High School is supposed to be like. Man,
you’re really a downer this week. You know that? Like, the last few
weeks. Buzzkill!” Lewis threw a french fry and hit Zach square in
the temple with it. Zach rolled his eyes and plucked the fallen fry
off of his rain jacket.

“
It’s
boring.”

“
Boring?”
Lewis couldn’t believe his ears. He had spent most of his high
school career living vicariously through the upperclassman and now
Zach was telling him that being his hero was boring? “You’re just
not trying hard enough.”

“
I
don’t have to,” Zach said.

“
I
know! That’s the problem.” Lewis clapped to punctuate his point,
“You need more challenging girls. You’ve been picking up easy
girls. You need to try someone who isn’t the type to sleep with any
tall quarterback who comes along. I mean, look at you, man. You’re
a god. Literally. You don’t need to aim so low. You can get girls
with standards to bend over backwards for you.”

Zach
looked up from his food and back at Lewis. He was smiling, obviously
lost in that last image he had created for himself. Zach shook his
head. He knew that Lewis wanted him to simply up the ante and put
some more difficult notches on his bedpost, but that wasn’t Zach’s
style. Zach didn’t want to trick some good girl into wasting her
purity on him. Maybe he was ready to actually date again-- just not
with June.

“
I’ll
think about it,” he said.

Lewis
clapped him on the back.

“
Finish
up your food,” Zach said. “Our movie starts in fifteen minutes.”

“
Fifteen
whole minutes,” Lewis said. He had formed a recent habit of waiting
until the last second on everything these past few months. Lewis
leaned back on his elbows and looked up through the glass ceiling.
“Hey, look,” he said, pointing up. “Sunshine. Hallelujah.”

They
ate. Zach stopped Lewis from using his new power to tease anyone else
while they were there. When they had thrown their trash away and put
their trays up, they headed across the mall to the theater for their
weekly flick.

Lewis
went home to mow his parents’ lawn and Zach decided to hang around
the mall a while longer. He got an ice cream from the food court and
made stops at the standard teen hang outs. Zach bought a Florida
Gators cap at a hat store and browsed through the dirty birthday
cards at Spencer’s.

Eventually
he ended up at the book store, drawn in by the green Hulk statue in
the window dressed up like Harry Potter. Zach wandered down the
aisles, browsing the covers and killing time. The book store was on
the second floor of the mall, and so the radio was muffled by the
patter of rain on the roof above.

“
You
need self help?” someone behind him asked. This time she was really
behind him. Zach didn’t recognize Minnie at first. She had cut her
hair short and changed her glasses to frames that suited her face
since the last Pantheon meeting. The Pantheon hadn’t held an
official meeting since school let out. She wasn’t in a t-shirt and
jeans, either, but nice, tailored clothes. She looked professional.
She was wearing a name badge.

“
You
work here?”

“
Nope.
Just wear a tag to confuse people.”

“
You
look different,” Zach said, looking her up and down. Minnie had
always been the teacher’s pet at school, but it was hard to imagine
her as a goddess in gender-neutral t-shirts with her hair straight
and hanging in her face. The new cut and glasses showed off her
strong cheekbones and let Zach see her large, dark eyes. The new
clothes revealed that Minnie had been hiding a killer figure. “Very
different,” he said, staring.

“
Looking
for anything in particular?” Minnie asked. “Could I interest you
in a copy of
The
Friendly Guide to Mythology
?”

“
Just
trying to bust boredom. D’you guys have comic books?”

Minnie
nodded and crooked her finger in a signal for him to follow. She
walked away from the Self Help section and guided him along the back
wall, past the Manga, and stopped at a section of graphic novels.

“
I
should have guessed you’d work at a book store.”

“
You
have no idea,” Minnie said with a smile. “It’s not just the
discount that I’m benefiting from.”

Zach
had absolutely no idea what she meant by that.

“
I’ve
been working here a week and I’ve already read thirty-five books on
the job.”

“
What?”
Zach knew she was brainy, but he thought that even defied the best
speed reader.

“
Pick
any book. One without pictures, preferably,” she said.

Zach
turned around and plucked a teen romance novel off the shelf. Minnie
opened it at the middle and, without even glancing at the page, ran
her hand over the words. She promptly passed the book to Zach and
started reciting it. He followed along as she recalled the page
word-for-word.

“
Woah,”
he said when she stopped talking. “I knew you had perfect memory,
but how did you even read it?”

“
By
touch,” she said. “I just have to touch the words and I’ve read
them. And, well, you know I just have to read or hear or see the
words and I’ve memorized them.”