2 Aftermath
The phone rings in the gaunt man's study. This is strange, because the hour is late and he's not expecting any calls. His number is unlisted and the few employees who do have his contact info know better than to call him in anything short of an emergency.
He picks up the phone. It's an emergency.
2.1 Waiting
Richie sat in the doorway of a dollar store closed for the night, wondering if this was what it was like to be homeless. Probably not, he figured. Homeless people had shelters, or churches, or at least sleeping bags and cardboard mats so they didn't have to sit on the cold cement.
Some bar patrons had passed by, but no one had noticed him there yet. People were pretty well trained not to notice the homeless, or dark shapes in dark corners. He pulled his dark gray beanie down further over his blond hair. Too bad he didn't have a ski mask, then he'd be practically invisible. Or extremely suspicious.
He glanced at his watch, using the little LED light he'd borrowed from his mom's keychain to see its battered face. Quarter to ten. A little more than two more hours before he could call the cops. What was Virgil doing that took almost a whole hour to get done? Wasn't he just going to drop off the gun and come back? Something wasn't right.
A siren sounded in the distance, high-pitched and wailing, not a police siren or a fire truck. More like an air raid siren from an old World War Two flick.
Richie stood up, not that he'd be able to see anything happening on the pier from his spot by the payphone. He squinted at the sky, pushing up his glasses even though they hadn't slid down. Was that smoke? Under the blare of the siren there was a distinct cracking sound, like fireworks almost. But Richie lived in a not-so-nice neighborhood in Dakota and he knew the difference between fireworks and gunshots.
His hands went to his head and he started pacing. Should he stay, or should he go look for Virgil? Would it be a good idea to call the cops now?
He moved closer to the payphone, debating with himself. What if he called and they came here and dragged him home? He wouldn't know if Virgil was going to be safe or not. He wouldn't be there to report Virgil as missing if he didn't show up, and wouldn't be there to make sure his friend got home okay if he did show up.
The air raid siren was joined by the more common sound of police sirens, growing higher in pitch as they got closer.
Richie felt a wave of relief, which was immediately destroyed when the boom of an explosion blotted out all other sounds. A second explosion followed immediately after, even bigger than the first.
"Screw this." He ripped his beanie off his head and ran towards the explosion. He and Virgil had decided earlier on the best route for Virgil to take between the payphone and Pier Fourteen and Richie followed this path now.
He was within sight of the Pier Fourteen fence when the helicopters roared overhead. Searchlights cut through the sky and illuminated the ground below in crazy patterns. One of the lights swept over the fence just in time for Richie to catch a glimpse of a figure climbing right over the barbed wire. The stark illumination showed bright green shoes and short dreads that stood straight up on end.
The light moved away and Virgil dropped to the ground. A moment later he got to his feet again and started half running, half stumbling towards Richie.
Other people were climbing the fence now too, and blue and red lights flared as the cops rolled in, brakes squealing.
Richie ran forward and grabbed Virgil by the arm, dragging him away before they were both caught. Virgil panted and coughed behind him but Richie kept running, trying to get them both as far from the cops and the explosions as he could.
"Rich!" Virgil coughed after a couple blocks. "I can't."
Richie slowed to a walk and let go of his friend's arm. "You okay?" He was a little out of breath himself.
Virgil shook his head, dreads flailing like seaweed underwater. "Breathed some smoke, I think." He looked at his palms. "Am I bleeding?"
Richie looked. There was something dark and wet on Virgil's hands. "Does it hurt?"
Virgil coughed again. "Everything hurts."
Richie cringed. "You need to go to the hospital?"
"No."
They walked along, as fast as they could, while Richie thought about what to do next. Their original plan had been for Virgil to call home, let his dad know that some distant family member of Richie's had come over unexpectedly, and they needed the extra bed. And since Virgil didn't have a sleeping bag or anything, it'd be best if just went back to his house.
But they were far from the payphone now—not that they couldn't find another—and Virgil was in bad shape. He would need to get the smoke out of his lungs and get his hands bandaged up before anything else. Would his dad notice the bandages?
What they needed was a safe place to lay low for a couple hours without parental interference, where Virgil could wait while Richie got some first aid stuff. Fortunately, Richie knew just the place.
The abandoned gas station had been condemned about five years ago, not long after the '96 riots. The whole neighborhood was in such bad shape that no one had ever bothered to tear it down and rebuild it. Anything even remotely of value had been looted long ago, and the store part of the building was empty except for the cashier's counter and a couple of plastic shelves knocked to the floor.
Richie led the way inside, and between the streetlight outside and his tiny LED flashlight, he found the door to the back room and let them in.
The back room was way more furnished than the front. Back in middle school, before the rec center had opened at its new, accessible location, this had been Richie's hiding hole for when he didn't have anywhere to go after school and didn't want to go home. Most of the stuff he'd either pilfered from a poorly guarded junkyard not too far away, or bought at garage sales with the odd jobs money he got from his neighbors.
A pair of tatty lawn chairs faced each other, and there was a garbage bag of old tablecloths (two bucks for the whole bag!) he could drape over them to make them more comfortable. Two milk crates and a piece of plywood made a table, and a third milk crate overflowed with sci-fi paperbacks and partially finished crossword books.
The more valuable stuff he'd hidden in the corner, underneath a big piece of corrugated aluminum and other garbage.
"Hold on," he told Virgil, and got out the duffle he'd hidden in the corner. It had bottled water, a flashlight, some batteries, a bag of Fisherman's Friend chemical hand warmers and a few other things that weren't important right now. He turned on the flashlight and went to see what Virgil had done to his hands.
"Yo, Rich," Virgil said, looking at the setup with a confused face. "What is this?"
"An abandoned gas station. You know how kids in the 'burbs have tree forts? Well, I have a gas fort."
When Virgil didn't make the obvious, 'P.U., I wondered what stinks' joke, Richie knew that his friend wasn't doing so hot.
"C'mon." He led Virgil to the old employee bathroom. The plumbing didn't work and the mirror had been broken before Richie had ever got there, but it was the drain in the sink he wanted. He unscrewed the water bottle and poured the water over Virgil's cuts.
"What happened?" Richie asked.
"I dunno. Probably got scraped when I tripped." Virgil winced and picked some pieces of asphalt out of his hand. The cuts didn't look too deep though, just messy.
"I'm gonna run home and get some bandaids," Richie said once Virgil's cuts were clean. "You stay here, okay?"
Virgil frowned. "Can't we both just go to your house?"
Richie shook his head, kinda surprised that Virgil would suggest that. Never, in all their years as friends had Richie invited him over, and Virgil had always seemed to understand that the Foley house wasn't a cool place to hang out.
"My parents, man," Richie said, then paused to think about it. Virgil probably wouldn't have asked if he wasn't scared and tired and hurt. He needed his friend right now. Richie's parents never noticed him coming and going, so would they really notice if Virgil snuck in too? Only if they were right there and saw the two of them come in the door.
"Let's try it."
2.2 Sleepover
I was kinda surprised that Richie agreed for us both to go to his house. He'd never invited me before, and I'd always kind of assumed he lived in a trailer or something and was embarrassed about it.
It wasn't as nice as my house, for sure, but it was a house. A one-story bungalow. There were lights on in the front room, so Richie led the way around to the back door. I waited on the back step while Richie made sure the coast was clear.
After a couple seconds he waved me in and we tiptoed through the kitchen and to Richie's room. A TV blared at the other end of the hall, so we probably didn't need to be so careful, but Richie put a finger to his lips after showing me to his room and crept away again.
I found the light switch and turned it on. Richie's room was cleaner than mine, though that might have been because he didn't have as much stuff. A boxspring and mattress sat on the floor, and there was a beanbag chair wedged in the corner between a dresser and the baseboard heater. He had more paperbacks stacked on top of the dresser, and the walls were almost totally covered with pictures cut from magazines. Outer space, superheroes, pictures of nature...
Richie came back with a bottle of iodine and some bandaids. Under the bright overhead light I picked out the last of the asphalt, smeared on some iodine and stuck a couple big bandaids over the mess. The cuts weren't that bad, and didn't hurt half as much as my lungs did. Getting away from the smoke had been good though, and by this point I was breathing almost normal again.
With some pretty forceful whispers, Richie ordered me to sleep in his bed while he took the beanbag. "I'm not the one who almost got blown up," he whispered, and I gave in. He set his alarm for some crazy early hour in the morning, before his parents would be up, and lent me a pajama shirt that didn't smell like smoke.
I lay down, exhausted. It was hard to believe it wasn't even eleven o'clock yet. Richie got the light and I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.
2.3 Breakfast
The alarm beeped, and for a second I thought it was another siren, but then I opened my eyes and saw Richie grope for the clock and unplug it. He reached again for his glasses, but didn't find them right away. I spotted them, halfway between the beanbag and the bed and handed them over.
"You feeling okay?" he asked, keeping his voice low.
To my surprise, I did feel okay. The scrapes on my palms still hurt, but only if I poked them, and the last of the smoke was out of my lungs. "Yeah. You?"
"Yep."
He rubbed some gunk out of his eye and snuck out of the room to use the bathroom. I got out of bed and put on my own shirt again, the smoky burnt plastic smell mostly gone by now. I took a peek between the blinds and saw a high chainlink fence and a sliver of pale blue sky. The sun was up, but just barely.
Richie came back and got dressed. He grabbed a box of cereal for breakfast as the two of us headed out the door. The rec center wouldn't be open for another couple hours, so we caught the bus to the park and ate cereal out of the box while we walked slowly around the circuit, getting passed by early morning joggers and grown ups walking their dogs before work.
Being careful not to let anything slip when someone else might hear, I told Richie about what exactly had gone down at the pier. Wade's trick, the fight and the explosions.
Richie swore when I ended my story with me climbing over the fence and meeting up with him again.
"Man. I am glad you got outta there when you did. Any longer, and..."
I grabbed another handful of cereal. "Nah, man. If you hadn'ta come met me by the gate, the police would'a caught me for sure." I offered him my fist. He bumped it and shook out his hand like he'd been stung by the power of brohood.
"What do you think happened with Wade?" Richie asked.
I popped sticky sweet cornflakes in my mouth and waited for a white girl in a pink sports bra to pass us again.
"I dunno. He either got hurt or killed or captured by the police. Or he got away. I guess we'll have to wait till school on Monday and see if he's there or not." I kinda hoped he'd gotten caught by the police. That's what he deserved.
Richie offered me the last of the cornflakes and tossed the empty box into the trash. The sun was all the way out now, and we sat on a bench to soak up some rays. Well, I soaked them up. Richie reflected them.
"So, about that gas station," I said after a little bit.
Richie made a face. "That?" He shrugged. "You know me and my folks don't get along. I needed a place to get out of the house and be by myself, so I kinda made one."
"And you never told me?" It was kinda cool, now that I thought about it. With a little money and some work, it could be like a secret clubhouse. Get a battery powered stereo, some real chairs, maybe some board games... We'd be kinda limited with no plumbing and no power, but it was still a pretty cool idea.
"It's embarrassing," Richie said, looking at the ground.
"Nah, man! It's way cool," I said, and explained how we could turn it into a clubhouse. He loosened up after that and started really getting into it, going on about garage sales and camping equipment.
We ran out of ideas eventually and I grabbed Richie's wrist to look at his watch and see how long until the center opened, since mine had stopped working sometime last night. Richie yelped and shook out his hand again.
"Jeez. What is up with you today and giving me shocks?"
2.4 News
The rec center was almost deserted when Richie and I got there. The girl at the reception desk didn't know us, so we flashed her our cards and she let us into the gym. I snagged a towel, fresh out of the gym's industrial sized dryer, and took a shower, glad to get the last of the burnt plastic smell out of my hair. Without Pops to yell at me for wasting water, I stayed in there long enough to make my fingers go all wrinkly. All that water melted the glue on the bandaids, but the cuts were almost healed so I threw them away.
Still squeezing water out of my dreads, I went to look for Richie, who must have finished his shower ages ago. I found him in the big activity room, watching the news on the TV in the corner on the other side of the foosball tables.
"The pier?" I asked.
Richie nodded, making room for me on the couch. "So that warehouse? They're saying it was a chemical storage facility."
"Really?" I leaned forward, bracing my elbows on my knees and watched Shelly Sandoval, the channel three on-site reporter, talk about what had happened. She stood in front of Pier Fourteen, wearing a white surgical mask. The scene cut to another reporter, who was interviewing a doctor outside the hospital.
"What can you tell us about the incident last night?" the reporter asked. He was a young, clean-cut white guy who looked like he got his teeth whitened at least as often as he got his hair cut. The glare on his smile almost ruined the rest of the shot.
"Incident? It was a Goddamn fiasco!" the doctor shouted at the camera.
Richie and I shared a smile, glad we'd caught the uncensored live version and not the edited one that would air on the evening news.
The doctor looked at someone outside the shot and faced the camera again, practically ignoring the reporter. "I don't know where the chemicals came from or what exactly they are, but I do understand that some of them were highly volatile, very toxic and potentially lethal."
Richie and I looked at each other in horror. I'd breathed in some smoke from the explosion, but my lungs were fine now, right?
"Do—" I started to ask, but Richie shushed me and pointed at the screen.
"Yes, they should go to the Goddamn hospital!" the doctor was shouting. "I'll foot all the bills myself if I have to." He took a step closer to the camera. "No matter the symptoms, no matter how minor. Not that I know what they'll be."
It sounded to me like he did know what the symptoms would be. I got up. I couldn't watch any more.
Richie turned, watching me. "V, we gotta go."
"No way." I paced back and forth behind the couch, feeling jumped up like I'd drank ten cups of coffee. "I do that and the doc's gonna have to call my pops, 'cause I'm just a kid. The whole thing was on the news, so he's gonna know it was a gang thing, and I can't let him know. It goes against everything he's worked for, everything he's taught me. Even before my mom..."
Richie shut off the TV and hopped over the back of the couch. "I know, man. I wouldn't wanna disappoint him like that either. But promise me, if you start coughing up blood or something, you'll go."
"Yeah, man. I promise." I paced for a couple seconds. I still felt jumped up, like I needed to burn some energy. "B-ball?"
2.5 Discovery
Sharon was home, studying at the kitchen table when I got there that afternoon. Richie and me had killed a couple hours on the court and hung around the center for a while, but I was still kinda on edge.
"Heya, baby bro. Have fun at your slumber party?"
I made a grumbling noise on the way to the fridge, not wanting to stoop to her level. Even though she was technically an adult and going to college, she still found it necessary to bug me whenever she could.
"Aww, big boy's too grown up for slumber parties, isn't he?"
"At least I didn't have to eat your cooking!" I said, trying to needle her back. Richie and I had gotten burgers at Burger Fool before the fiasco at the docks.
"Ooh, low blow," she said, and groaned like she'd been shot. I ignored her and got out the peanut butter.
"Say," she said as I made a PBBH sandwich. Peanut butter banana honey. The best. "You haven't heard from Adam or seen him around, have you?" Her voice was serious now.
"Why would I've heard from him? He's your boyfriend." I licked some honey off the knife.
"I dunno," she said. I could almost hear her rolling her eyes. "I just thought you might'a seen him at the center or something. We were supposed to meet up earlier, but he never showed."
I shrugged and put the peanut butter back in the fridge. "Nope, haven't seen him."
She humphed and went back to her studying. I leaned over her shoulder, seeing how close I could get before she noticed as part of my younger brother duties to annoy her.
"Virgil!" she shrieked and shoved me away. "Ow!" She glared at me. "What'd you do, rub balloons on your head all day?" She put her finger in her mouth.
"Shocked you!" I jeered like I'd done it on purpose and ran up to my room.
"Idiot!" Sharon shouted with sisterly love.
I closed the door behind me and put the plate on the bedside table. That was the third time today at least I'd shocked somebody. What was up with that? Was that a symptom? I looked at my hands, which were still pretty well scabbed over, and shook my head. How could electric shocks be a symptom of something? A symptom of sleeping with a wool blanket maybe. Or a thunder storm on its way? Still, it was kinda weird.
I rubbed my hands together and touched the corner of my metal desk. Nothing. A little tingle maybe, but that was probably just my imagination, or just the jitters I'd been feeling all day. I dug an old Green Lantern comic out of the pile and sat back on my bed, trying to enjoy it.
But I couldn't. I'd spent most of the day deliberately not thinking about what I was gonna say to Pops when I saw him. Comic books weren't as distracting as sports, and I couldn't help but wonder, would Pops ask me about the thing at the pier, just to see if I'd seen the news? If he did, what should I tell him?
I picked up my sandwich again and went back downstairs.
"Hey, Sharon. You mind if I turn on the TV? Something happened down by the docks last night, and I wanna see if there's anything new on the news."
"Oh, that's true," Sharon said from the kitchen and her chair squeaked against the linoleum. "Put it on." She certainly wasn't a procrastinator.
I made room for her on the couch and she sat down next to me, taking the remote out of my hand. She turned on the TV and flipped to channel three. Shelly Sandoval was on again, in front of the hospital this time. Her hair and makeup weren't as perfect as they had been on the seven AM news.
"Thanks, Dan," Shelly said, "and thanks to the Dakota Police Department for keeping us updated on the situation. I'm here at the North Dakota Hospital, where six of the fifteen officers admitted earlier today still remain under observation. As Dan said, all of the officers on the scene were equipped with pepper spray protection masks and should be safe from any side effects caused by the gas.
"Hospital staff inform me that they have begun seeing other patients come in who were present at the site of the explosions, but they are unable to release more information about those patients at this time. The hospital does however beg anyone who may have come into contact with the gas to admit themselves to the hospital as soon as possible. Back to you, Dan."
The image shifted, to show the anchor sitting at the desk in the station.
"Thanks, Shelly." He looked at the camera. "As you may have heard, the cause of these explosions and subsequent gas leak have been linked to gang activity-"
The phone rang and Sharon and I both jumped. She hit the mute button and ran to pick up the phone.
"Adam!" she shrieked. "Babe, where are you? Are you okay? I was just watching the news and-"
Adam must have started talking on the other end, because Sharon went quiet, except for the occasional "uh-huh." I picked up the remote and turned the sound back on.
"Virgil!" Sharon hissed and took the phone into the kitchen. I tuned the sound down to the minimum and moved closer to the TV so I could hear it over Sharon's babbling.
There was something wrong with the picture though. It was going all fuzzy, which was lame, because Pops had just bought a new TV last year. I tapped the side of the TV box, but it only got worse, turning into a snowstorm for a split second. I hit it again, and again the snowstorm.
My heart hammered in my chest as I placed one hand on top of the TV. Snow. Static. Slowly I backed away and the picture cleared up again. Oh, no. The shocks, the jittery, shaky feeling, and now this?
I turned off the TV and ran upstairs. I had to test this. Not on my computer, I didn't want it to get damaged. The lamp. I went to turn it on, but the bulb flickered before I ever turned the switch. I wouldn't admit it to anyone later, but I started giggling. I unscrewed the bulb and spun it around in my fingers so I was touching the metal part. The wire inside gave off a steady glow.
Brighter, I thought. Brighter, brighter... The light grew and grew, and then there was a little pop as the filament burnt out.
I dropped the bulb.
"Okay. It's okay," I told myself, struggling to keep from shouting out and getting Sharon's attention. "Just a little static electricity."
But I knew, just intuitively knew it was more than that, much more. I held my pointer fingers close together, about half an inch apart. "Focus, V." That jumped up feeling I'd been getting of and on all day was coming on strong now, like my whole body was buzzing, vibrating. I focused on that feeling, trying to push it out of my chest and into my fingertips. A wave moved through me, like nothing else I'd ever felt before and a glowing white thread spanned the gap between my fingers. It was hot, but not painful. Buzzing, alive almost.
And then I lost focus and the flickering arc went out. I had to call Richie.
"Sharon!" I flung open the door and ran down the stairs, almost slipping and falling at the bottom. "Sharon, I need the phone!"
"Virgil! Be quiet! Sorry, Adam, what?"
I ran and tried to take the phone from her, but her defense was top notch, for a girl.
"Yeah, yeah. I can be there in ten minutes." She ended the call and threw the phone at me. "Take it!" she shouted and stormed out.
I dialed Richie's number and after four rings his mom answered.
"Is Richie there? It's Virgil. A friend from school."
"Hold on," Mrs Foley said, sounding tired. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, that jittery feeling building again.
In my ear, the phone crackled to life. "Virgil?" It was Richie, sounding worried even through the static. "What's up?"
"Some stuff. I can't tell you over the phone."
"Kkksh, kk, for sure," Richie's voice said.
"Meet me at the junkyard!" I shouted.
Something that sounded kind of like junkyard buzzed over the line and I told him again to meet me there, just in case he hadn't heard the first time. I hung up the phone, hoping this wasn't going to get any worse. What if I was never able to use a phone again? Or worse, never watch TV?
For all those worries, I was still excited, electrified, you could say, by that little white spark between my fingers.
2.5.1 In the Dark
A man sat on the edge of the platform in the darkened subway tunnel. The Dakota subway system had been product of the city's boom in the 80's, but that boom had bust and the subway system had never been completed. One or two lines still ran between downtown and the marina and downtown and the mall, but the vast majority were abandoned, unfinished.
The man sat in the dark, but somehow, he could still see. He was one with the dark, not entirely sure where his body ended and the darkness began. He looked at his hands resting in his lap. They were solid, and yet insubstantial. The whole world felt insubstantial, flat. Even his body felt flat. But he knew in his heart there was another dimension beyond the regular three bound by the singular dimension of time. He felt like a drawing in a comic book who knew it was possible to stand up off the page, he just didn't know how.
He smiled. Whenever he learned that something could be done, it was never difficult for him to go out and do it.
2.6 Junkyard
I ran all the way to the junkyard near Richie's house. Fortunately I was wearing the kind of clothes you might see runners wearing, so no one gave me a second glance. It's funny, how running for the sake of running is okay. It's fine if you're wearing all the right clothes and fancy shoes and little monitors to tell you how fast your heart is beating and how far you've run. But if you want to run for the sake of getting somewhere fast, then you're a weirdo.
It's all about appearances, I guess.
Richie was already in the yard when I got there, loitering in the hallway between the stacks of cars near the hole in the chain link fence. He didn't look happy.
"What happened?" he asked before I even ducked through the hole in the fence.
"On the news," I said, out of breath from my run. "Said there was a gas leak. The doctor said it was toxic, but I think he's trying to cover it up. I think it's more like the Flash."
Richie's eyes went wide. He knew the rumors. Of all the active superheroes, the Flash was supposedly the only real homo sapiens with actual superpowers that he'd managed to fabricate for himself. He hadn't had his powers granted to him by aliens like the Green Lantern, and he wasn't just a smart, well-connected, but ultimately normal martial artist like Batman. The Flash was a scientist who had cooked up some Jekyll and Hyde potion in his lab and after that decided to ditch the whole scientist thing and become a full-time superhero. Or so the conspiracy magazines would have you believe.
"You're kidding," Richie said, and then smirked. "If that was true, how come you're out of breath?" He pushed his glasses further up his nose.
"I'm not saying I am the Flash, I'm saying I think there was something in the gas leak kinda like whatever it was that gave him his powers."
Richie's smirk turned into worry. "Virg, are you sure? Maybe there was something in that gas that makes you cr- makes you think crazy thoughts."
"I'll prove it!" I marched over to the nearest stack of cars and focused on that jittery buzz inside my chest. It had died down during the run, but it was still there, waiting. The first car I checked was a dud, but the second had one headlight in tact. I popped the hood and unplugged the bulb it from its socket inside the headlight housing.
I held the greasy bulb between two fingers and brandished it at Richie. The light flickered at first and I focused on pouring more into it, waking up that buzz inside me and forcing it down my arm and into my fingers.
"Holy cow."
I kept feeding it until the light popped, burnt out.
"Dang, man! There's no way. No way!" Richie shouted, clapping his hands to his head in disbelief. He went on like this for a good five minutes. His smile eventually faded though. "Virg..."
I knew what he was gonna say though. I'd been thinking about it on my run over. "I'm not going to the hospital. Think about it. A bunch of gang bangers gets sprayed with Flash gas, and what're you gonna get? Way more electric supervillians than the police can handle. The best way to deal with them is to round them up before they realize what's going on. Scare them into going to the hospital, knock them out and lock them up."
Richie looked like he was gonna argue, but the grin crept back onto his face. He was as overwhelmed with the cool as I was.
"Yeah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense! You're gonna keep this secret right?"
"'Course." I didn't want to get lumped in with a bunch of gangsters just 'cause we all had the same superpower.
"Good." Richie glanced around the junkyard, making sure we were alone. "What else can you do?"
I made a C shape with my thumb and pointer finger and willed the little arc into existence again. It lasted longer this time, but after it was out, the buzz in my chest was a whole lot quieter.
"Tazer-u finger-u," Richie said, like it was an anime attack name, brandishing his own thumb and pointer finger. "We could call you Taze."
"More like Static. Could you hear a thing I said over the phone?" I said. Richie had only seen the cool parts so far, not the drawbacks.
"Not really," Richie admitted.
"The TV got all screwy too."
"Oh, no." Richie groaned in sympathy. "No more Star Trek?"
"Maybe. I dunno if this is just gonna keep getting stronger, or if I'll be able to control it more..." I trailed off, thinking of all the ways this could turn from something cool into something terrible. I'd been giving shocks to people all day. What if it got to the point where if I ever touched anyone they'd pass out or die? What if I started disrupting more than just TVs and threw a wrench in the whole city's power grid? What if all the power got to be too much for my body and I just up and exploded one day? Little bits of Virgil, all over the place.
"Then, you know what we need to do?" Richie asked.
"What?"
He pushed his glasses further up his nose. "Science."
2.7 Research
We found out pretty quickly that wherever I was pulling the electricity from, it wasn't an unlimited supply. Richie scavenged half a dozen lightbulbs from the junkyard, but I only managed to blow out a couple more before the buzz in my chest dwindled down to nothing.
"You don't think it's totally gone, do you?" I asked as we ducked through the hole in the fence.
"I'd guess not. But if it is, at least you're way less likely to spontaneously combust, right?"
"Right."
We walked for a block or so before Richie had to turn one way and I had to turn the other.
"So you'll see if your dad has any of that stuff?" Richie asked. He'd come up with a list of things that might react one way or another to jolts of electricity.
"Yeah, I'll see what he has."
"So, meet at the gas station, I guess?"
It was better than anywhere else I could think of in terms of privacy, so we agreed on a time and bumped fists, no shocks this time.
I spent the rest of the day going through the junk drawer and all the other places in the house where random things tended to collect. Pops came home around dinner time and we made mac and cheese together while he told me about what he'd heard about the incident at Pier Fourteen. Apparently they were calling it the "Big Bang" now. I pretended like I didn't know much about it and let Pops explain the media's version of events.
"Sharon didn't say anything to you, did she?" Pops asked as we sat down to eat.
"What do you mean? About the Big Bang?"
"No, I mean in general," Pops said. "I haven't seen her all day, and her books were still on the table when I got home."
"Oh. I think she went somewhere with Adam."
"I see." He sounded stern.
I wasn't sure if Pops like Adam or not. Adam had gotten in trouble with the law in the past, but he seemed to be playing it straight now, which was exactly what Pops was all about. But prejudices die hard, I guess, and he couldn't quite bring himself to trust Adam, I think. Either that or because the big oaf had made the stupid decision of asking Sharon out on a date. Dads are kinda required to dislike their daughters' boyfriends, right?
Not too long after, Sharon and Adam showed up, but they didn't talk with either of us and ran straight to her room. Pops just shook his head.
I helped Pops with the dishes and excused myself to my room to pick up that Green Lantern story I'd almost started reading earlier. It was a pretty good one, with plenty of fights and not too much dialogue.
The next morning I woke up to find my room trying to smother me. My blankets stuck to me like velcro and anything with the least bit of metal in it had snuck up, ready to attack if the blankets were unable to finish the job.
I untangled myself from the cozy death grip, only to step on a handful of thumbtacks that had pooled around the foot of my bed. The buzzing had built up again while I was sleeping, and now I had to deal with the consequences.
At least I'd learned yesterday that I could drain my batteries, as it were. I should have thought to do it last night, but I hadn't. Better late than never, I guessed, and I set up the arc between my pointer fingers, seeing how far I could stretch it. Pretty far. A couple inches maybe before it fizzled out. The buzz faded and I got ready to go meet with Richie at the abandoned gas station.
I grabbed my backpack, already full of odds and ends from around the house and tried to put on my shoes while I ran out the door.
"Someone's in a hurry," Pops said, looking up from his newspaper.
"Yeah, gotta meet Richie, bye!" I jammed my foot into my shoe and jumped down the front steps without touching a single one.
The gas station was closer to Richie's house, so of course he was already there when I got there.
"Heya, V." He was sitting in one of the lawn chairs, reading some old notes from freshman science class. I was willing to bet all my money which unit he was reviewing.
"Lemme guess. Electricity?"
"No, the life cycle of plants," he said, closing the notebook. "Of course electricity. Did you find all the stuff?"
"Kinda." I took the other chair and started emptying my backpack onto the table. Some wires, a couple new lightbulbs, Sharon's hair dryer, a pack of batteries. I'd grabbed a few other things that Richie hadn't put on the list too—a wool hat, a handful of paperclips, some fridge magnets...
"No multimeter?"
"Sorry, man." I'd looked everywhere, but Pops wasn't a handyman. "Maybe we can get one at school tomorrow?" We'd used them in a couple labs last year, the black boxes with the swinging needles and little alligator clips. They were kinda fun.
"Maybe. I'm sure we can find one somewhere. Till we do, we don't have a way of knowing how much juice you're putting out. Electricity's dangerous stuff."
"Yeah, man, I know." We'd got this huge safety lecture last year about not putting our tongues on the batteries in lab, and I'd seen enough people getting tazed on the news to know what a few too many volts could do to a person. I really might end up killing somebody if I wasn't careful, and given that I spent more time with Richie than anybody else... I had to be careful.
"Let's make a list," Richie said, opening a new page in the notebook. He clicked his pen. "What can you do?"
"Just those two things. Screw with lights and electronics and make sparks."
"Right." He made a note. "I bet it's really just one thing; generating current. Or maybe voltage?" He turned back to his notes from class. I still remembered the difference, even though it had been a while ago. Current was how much juice was flowing, and voltage was the difference in charges between two things. If you touched something with high (well, not too high) current, but low voltage, you'd be okay, and same deal for high-ish voltage and low current. It was high current, high voltage that was the danger. High-high meant lots and lots of electrons really excited to get where they were going.
"I guess we should see if it's AC or DC," Richie said. "Any ideas?"
I thought about it. Richie hadn't been kidding when he'd said we were gonna do science. Fortunately we were both graduates from our elementary school's gifted program. It was a miracle we didn't own our own lab coats already.
"If it's AC, I should be able to power something that plugs into the wall. If it's DC, then I can power something that takes batteries."
"Right," Richie said, writing. "But not lightbulbs, 'cause those work with both."
"Uh-huh." I picked up the hairdryer, holding the end of the cord in one fist. "Here goes." I reached for that buzz in my chest again, regretting now that I'd used a lot of it up before leaving the house. Maybe it was a good thing though, because before I willed up any power, I remembered that the hairdryer had two prongs for a reason. I changed my grip and started feeding power in.
Something didn't feel right though. AC was called alternating current because rather than the electrons flowing in one direction across the wire, they wiggled back and forth. I didn't quite get how this made things like hair dryers or electric fans work, but I guessed I didn't really need to understand it, I just needed to do it.
So, rather than pushing the buzz out exactly, I tried making it buzz more, vibrate, getting bigger. The hair dryer made a weak hum. Nothing too exciting, just enough to tell me I could do it.
I quit pushing and grinned at Richie.
"So. Cool." He reached under the table. "Now this." He handed me an RC car with the batteries taken out.
I was pretty drained by now, but the car turned out to be a piece of cake. The wheels spun in the air, going nowhere. I set it on the ground and the car sped away from me, slowing to a stop before it hit the far wall.
"Huh. Think you can do it without touching it?" Richie asked. He picked up the car and set it on the floor near my feet.
I reached for the juice one more time. There wasn't much there, but what little there was I pushed towards the car. It gave a feeble whir and inched away from my sneakers.
I sat on the table, pooped. "I'm done, Rich."
Richie stood up straight and tapped his pen against the notebook. "I think we have everything we need for today," he said in a pompous voice. "We can do more tomorrow though, right?"
"'Course." I held up a fist.
Richie bumped it, but there was a half a second of hesitation there, just barely long enough for me to notice it.
