...
Coco slammed her fist on her desk as she finished reading a mail letter from Davey Gravy, who was in another town. Turns out everyone there teased him for his Japanese accent and long, Southern drawl that didn't go well together. Idiots. They didn't know whom they were dealing with. He was clearly unhappy in New York City, but Coco supposed he was being a good man and decided to accept it for his chef, who, according to him, was happy everyday because of his new job.
I know if I had a child, I wouldn't put my happiness before a happy childhood, Coco thought angrily, as she had her glass of juice float towards her.
Indeed, Coco had both telepathic and telekinetic powers. It was a gift, as Chef John said. Coco thought it was a curse. She could forever hear the thoughts inside other people's heads, things she didn't want and need to hear. Being able to levitate objects wasn't easy to control either. Sometimes, she'd suddenly see a chunk of sirloin coming towards her.
It wasn't easy to hide it from the others as well. They had no clue of her "special gift." No one did, besides Coco, Pie Tin and Chef John. Even Chase didn't know it because the "gift" skipped her generation.
At school, though, it came in handy. Whenever she didn't study for a test, she could just read the mind of the smartest person in class. Cheating, yes, but if she had the advantage, why not use it? That was her way of seeing it, anyway.
"Coco! I'm home!"
CRASH. Coco jumped in surprise and the glass of juice dropped in midair. This was definitely not her day, Coco realized, as she heard a train of thoughts in her head: Oh dear. That must be Coco. How many times do I have to tell that girl never to use her powers? What if someone saw? That would be horrible…. Why can't she understand that I'm disciplining her for her own good?
A nanosecond later, Chef John appeared at the doorway. "I assume you already know what I'm going to say?" he asked matter-of-factly.
"Yes, Chef John."
"Then go on and pick that mess up. No levitating any of the broken glass. Do it like a normal person would."
Coco sighed. "All right, all right. No powers."
But the second Chef John headed for Albert's house, Coco levitated all the glass pieces except for the biggest one. Coco planned to give herself a small wound to cover up what happened.
Just before she could cut herself though, her wok rang. It was Pie Tin. Coco reached her hand out and the wok instantly flew to her. "Hello? Who's this? Oh. Pie Tin."
"Glad to hear from me, aren't you?"
Coco scoffed. "Um, no. You call whenever you get the chance. Why are you calling this time, Pie Tin?"
"Kayla called for Kids Rebels-only meeting without Cue and Barb at three o'clock today at Central Park, Davey Gravy's old hideout. You coming, curry dish?"
"Coco is, curry dish is not," Coco replied, ignoring Pie Tin's lame witticisms.
Pie Tin smiled from the other line. "You're at home, right?"
"Yeah?"
"So I'll be there in about ten minutes."
"I hope Chase is there. Bye." Coco hung up on Pie Tin, not waiting for him to say good-bye.
...
Pie Tin ran out of his room, going straight through his door. Unfortunately, Sir Dumpling was in the room he just stumbled in.
"Pie Tin!" he yelled. Out of habit, he lowered his voice. "What did I tell you about going through things and teleporting to places? What if there was someone in the room? They could tell the government! Every Tin in Gorge Town would be arrested and tested in Dia's lab!"
"I'm…sorry."
"I'm afraid sorry isn't good enough anymore, Pie Tin. You're not 5 anymore. You're 6 1/2 now. If you want me to treat you like a adult, you have to act like one, clear?"
"Yes, sir."
Sir Dumpling sighed. "All right. By the way, I'll be home late tonight." His eyes shifted uncomfortably around the room.
"You're meeting Omelet again tonight, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"So I'm eating alone again tonight?"
"Well…um, ye-"
"No worries. I'll hang out with someone else tonight then. If I end up sleeping over at a friend's house, I'll leave a message on the answering machine, all right?"
"All right."
Pie Tin raced out the door before his father could say anything else.
...
Chase and Kima were walking together towards Central Park as they talked about every guy's favourite topic in the world-girls. Lately, Chase had started going out with Coco. It was…fun, or so he claimed. And Kima had met a bunch of girls on the former Banana Island Satellite and had already met a few of them. The others found it to be somewhat annoying since that's all that Kima would talk about for the past week but they knew he'd snap out of it once he meets "an undesirable someone," as Albert "wisely" put it.
"Oh yeah, and there's Cue, who's into karate and was like, 'We should fight if we meet one day' and she mailed me her picture and I was amazed at how much she looked like-"
Sirens cut Kima off and Chase pulled Kima farther from the street which was now beginning to fill with fire carriers, firemen, an ambulance, paramedics and the sort. Without a moment's hesitation, they ran off, following the fire truck. A block later, the air started to reek of smoke.
"There's a fire!" Chase told Kima. Kima nodded-as if he didn't already know. Chase was a little dense at times but he was a good kid.
When they arrived on the scene, they saw that a big building full of apartments and a house beside it were burning steadily to the ground. Chase stared, and started to think about using his powers. He looked around. Besides Kima, he didn't know anyone else. No member of the press was in attendance; there weren't even any onlookers. The paramedics were too busy giving people already rescued from the burning inferno oxygen while most of the firemen were inside, looking for more people to save, while the rest sprayed gallons of water on the fiery place.
But when he heard the cry of a baby, Chase knew what he had to do. All fears and hesitation faded away. He shot his hand at the fire and began taming the flames.
Beside him, Kima saw an angry gleam in Chase's eyes, like there was fire in them, before he acted. He made water appear at the most base of the fire that he could see and began making the water lash out at the fire. In a few minutes, the fire was gone. The owner of the apartment and the house beside it counted the rescued people and saw that everyone had been saved.
Kima and Chase immediately ran from the scene and on their way once again to Central Park. Once they got to the entrance, they stopped to catch their breath.
"You…you did something to the fire, didn't you?" Kima asked Chase cautiously.
Chase raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Like what?"
"I don't know…."
"Are you having another one of your insane ideas again?"
Kima shrugged. "Am I insane if I think that you just controlled the fire and made the flames disappear?"
"Only if I get to think that you concocted water at the base of the fire and helped me."
"Then I guess I'm not insane. So…when did you know that you could…do this?"
Chase brushed a branch away. "When I just made Bell Peppers Flame, he accidentally threw a flamethrower at me. I yelled and it didn't affect me. It weirdly just separated when it reached me. My parents know about it. Chef Jack has the same power, Mom's cool with it. Runs in the family. You?"
"I control water, obviously. It came out once when I was seven. I was swimming at the beach and this wave crashed into me. Basically, I would've drowned but I didn't. It comes in handy." Kima opened the gate to access the staircase going up to Davey Gravy's old hideout. "Remember when we were at Banana Island and got separated from the others? Then we swam in water and realized we could breathe in it? Well, I thought it wasn't ordinary water, as I told you then, only because I couldn't control it."
Chase asked, "Does your king know about it?" as they climbed the staircase.
"Nah. I don't think mine's genetic."
"How about any others? Any signs of having mystical powers?" Chase wiggled his fingers for effect.
Kima rolled his eyes. "Nope." They went around back and crawled through the hole they had made when Albert went back to his house in addition to boarding up and barricading the doorway. They even camouflaged it with leaves and Chet and Saldavor grew some plants around the front.
Inside the makeshift hideout were Chet and Salvador. They were munching on chips and drinking soda in the middle of the place. Food, drinks and other things were piled up on the table they had put in before sealing the doorway.
"Hey guys," Chase greeted them. Chase looked around, noticing that the hideout was much brighter than before, and said, "What's with the light? Who put that there?"
Salvador grinned. "Awwww, Chet, me and E. Claire. We installed it just the other day," he said, ominously spraying them with bits of chips from his mouth.
"Honestly, Salvador. Haven't you ever heard of chewing with your mouth closed?" No one had to look me to know who that sour voice belonged to. They all sat down in a circle.
"So Kima, what's up? Why the meeting without Barb and Cue?" asked Kayla.
Kima cleared his throat. "As you all know, I've been making friends with tons of people online," he said pompously. "One day, while I was exchanging IMs with a few hundred people, I received one from a guy with a screen name ProDigi01, whose name turned out to be George. We talked longer and soon it was evident that we were both chosen and apparently, he calls it being a 'Elite Chef.'
"He lead me to a private group When I entered, I saw that it was full of stuff concerning the stronger Foodons, including a list of every Foodon that George knows of."
Coco asked, "How many are there, so far?"
"Thirteen, excluding our Foodons. Anyway, most of them live in Japan, in a city nearby called Odaiba, and they want to meet us."
"ROAD TRIP!" yelled E. Claire gleefully.
"I also arranged a private talk with Izzy on the rope at eight o'clock tonight. You guys all right with that?" Kima added, a wary glance to Pie Tin, who usually had to say no to things not scheduled three days prior. Apparently, he had a busy social life.
Coco nodded. "I'm good."
"Me too," said Chase. Even Pie Tin said yes.
As they left the hideout, Coco remembered to ask. "Kayla, how come Barb and Cue were excluded from this meeting?"
Kayla gave a small smile. "They're too young."
"A road trip? No, absolutely not." Chef John could be so harsh sometimes.
Coco jumped up. "What! Why?"
"You spend too much time with boys, Coco," Chef John said. "Look, why don't we go shopping instead? We could buy you a new dress-"
"No!" Coco yelled. "I'm going!" And with that, she ran to her room.
Her mother stared after her. Chef John simply took a sip of her coffee. "Teenagers. They're all alike," she said.
Hey Coco. I'm holding up nicely here. Thanks for your concern. Really means a lot to me that, even if she's on the other side of the world, I have a friend.
NYC has been really stressing. There are so many things I want to do, but I can't because the kids at school are everywhere. I bumped into this girl at the bookstore earlier in the week. She's one of those popular girls. She was different, though-she didn't antagonize me, even if I sort of did. My bad. We've been mailing each other a lot. Her name's Mischa. (And as if that isn't enough coincidence to Mischa Barton, she's really pretty too. ) Really funny and more cynical than you would believe. Not like the other people I've met here. This girl is real.
Well, we're going to a Dashboard Confessional concert tonight. Not my type of music, I know, but "Vindicated" is my favourite song, currently. Mischa's like, "But that's the song where they sold out!" and I get the feeling she's an old fan. She knows her music, Mischa.
I'll post pictures on my website tonight. If not, tomorrow.
Anyway, how is everyone there? Anything new?
Talk to you soon.
Take care,
Davey Gravy
...
Davey, hey. Don't forget, you also have boys here that are ready to beat up whoever picks on you there. Not that they'd win, of course.
Mischa sounds like a cool person. And yes, I have to admit, Dashboard Confessional DID sell out with "Vindicated." I'll check your site out later tonight.
Things have been okay around here. We're going on a road trip to meet Foodons from another city. Pie Tin's still taping everything that's happening, apparently his documentary ambitions haven't faded yet. He's psyched and so are the rest of us. Except, you know, he's psyched that he's already finished his fifth tape and we're psyched about the road trip.
So I guess that's all for now. I'm sorry this wasn't longer. I'm really sleepy.
Always,
Coco