Birthday
We went to school in the sky, so you couldn't expect NORMALCY or anything out of us. And we were learning to use our SUPERPOWERS. Not all of them quite so super, but the point's the point.
Normalcy? Not exactly happening. Not from us.
But this was really, really ridiculous.
"Stronghold, WHAT are you doing to my locker?"
Stronghold tried an innocent smile.
I wasn't buying.
"I SAID, WHAT are you DOING to my LOCKER?" A quick flick of my left wrist had a fireball in my hand. Another quick flick had it about three inches from his nose.
It fizzled out, of course. I wasn't about to melt his face in. That was an actual CRIME, and I wasn't that stupid.
I'm still not that stupid. They voted me most likely to become a villain, you know? I figured I might as well spite them all by NOT being one.
I'm a firefighter in the rundown Chinese part of Maxville, ha-ha, joke's on them.
The bastards.
Will shrugged and re-opened my locker.
For the son of The Commander and Jetstream, he got my locker open quick.
It was full of honeysuckle.
"What. The. Fuck. Did. You. DO!"
"Honeysuckle," Will shrugged again.
I slammed him into the locker by his throat, my hands heating up. He yelped.
"I fucking KNEW that, dipshit, but WHY did you put HONEYSUCKLE in my LOCKER?"
"Layla's idea! Happy birthday, by the way."
I let him go, shaking my head. "How did you know it was my birthday?"
"Layla knows everything."
THAT was a scary thought. The girl who had taken the advice of a fortune cookie knew everything.
Knew everything my ASS.
And then I laughed. She and Will had cared enough to give me honeysuckle on my birthday. On my BIRTHDAY.
You know how people talk about forgetting that it's their birthday? I couldn't do that, because I knew my mother hadn't forgotten it by the fact that she wasn't there.
Every year, she took a little 'trip' on my birthday. Anywhere but Maxville. Anywhere but the Maxville Maximum Security Prison for Super Villains.
Anywhere but Maxville's China Town, anywhere but...
Well, where I was.
I had to laugh. For once, somebody actually CARED about my birthday. In a good way.
Well, somebody who wasn't a career criminal and also a supervillain who wanted me so badly to follow in his footsteps that he outright LIED to my face.
There's no such thing as ordinary, I told myself as I sat down beside them at lunch.
I had the honeysuckle wound around my neck. She'd hate the way I'd used it, I knew.
I might be their friend, but I could still bug the hell out of them.
