I always thought it was weird how strong of a correlation not being able to sleep and not being able to wake up had. I mean, sure, it made a lot of sense, but it also seemed unfair that I both get punished by not being able to sleep when I needed to, and for wanting to sleep when I couldn't. But no matter the unfairness, I put fourth the herculean effort to force myself into a sitting position before I turned off the alarm on my cell phone. Without even having to try it I knew what sort of horrible spiral getting myself used to hitting a snooze button would do, and so I forced myself the rest of the way out of my twin bed and shuffled down the hallway into the bathroom.
I suppose there is one good thing to be said about the parahuman power I got, it lends itself to a lot of nice creature comforts. Well, and laziness. With a little planning, I could be extremely lazy. Locking the door behind me, I absorbed my underwear and the the loose T-shirt and fuzzy pants that were my pajamas into what I could only figure was an extradimensional space. Currently occupying said space, I had several changes of clothes, assorted jewelry, a kitchen knife, some pepper spray, my backpack, a spare pencil, my phone, and an empty pretzel bag that I really needed to remember to throw away at some point. I had a hazy understanding of how full what I had begun thinking of as my "grab-bag" was and a sort of recollection or list of what all I had in there.
Stepping under the warming cascade of water that allowed the grogginess to slowly dissipate from my limbs and mind, I began wetting my long hair and working shampoo, then conditioner into it. At one point I accidentally knocked the bottle of bubble-bath I kept on the side of the tub down into the watery bath, but I just tapped it with the side of my foot to bag it, and then brought my finger to where it belonged and made it reappear in its proper place.
After the shower, I wrapped a towel around myself and made my way to my bedroom. Due to the shower helping me wake up, my steps were much more spry than on my way to it. Choosing my outfit for the day was simple, I just threw open my closet or a drawer on my dresser, touched an article of clothing to make it disappear, and then moments later it would appear in the appropriate spot on my body. I mean, sure, I could make pants appear on my head; but going to school like that might raise too many questions, and I had a secret identity to keep now.
Going into the kitchen I heated up some instant oatmeal for dad and I. While it microwaved, I got myself a drink of water, then filled up a glass of orange juice for him. "You up dad?" I called from the kitchen, as I added a pinch of brown sugar and sliced up a banana for my oatmeal. His oatmeal got a fair amount more brown sugar and the rest of the banana.
"Yeah hon, I'll be out in a second." He grunted and I heard him shift his weight from the bed to his chair. I had the table set (well, there was food and silverwear on it. Who actually sets the table for a quick breakfast?) by the time he rolled himself out.
It's a strange feeling to both be utterly used to something and completely saddened by it at the same time. For me, it was my father. My memories from before dad had a spinal injury were vague, but even from the pictures I had seen it was obvious that of the two men, the one standing on his legs was the real Michael Walker, and the one in the chair was simply a sad imitation. Dad still had the barrel chest—though it was starting to go to fat, if I was honest with myself—but his legs were thinner than his arms. On the back of his hand sat that tattoo of a swan that had made his life so miserable.
Decent jobs wouldn't hire. Nothing that required a person to be face-to-face with customers or doing any sort of sales. The jobs that did hire would only pay a fraction of what the non D.D.I.D. workforce was paid, and of course anyone with that tattoo (and the related Simurgh stigma) could forget about promotions. Right now, dad was doing stay-at-home data entry for sixteen hours a week which supplemented what he got from disability pay, even though it really should have been the other way around.
"Oatmeal again, eh girly?" He joked, snapping me out of my ruminating as he wheeled into his spot at the table, "I figured you'd be tired of it by now."
"Oh, I'm tired of it, I just know you're more tired of it." I said with a half-grin. It looked like today was one of his good days. "It's a war of attrition." I scooped a spoonful into my mouth while staring at him with wide eyes. Hopefully, the look I gave him was one of defiance. Yep, defiance would definitely fit the situation better than constipation or any number of other looks that are surprisingly similar if you thought about it.
It seemed to work, because he laughed at my antics before we settled into a companionable silence. As our bowls quickly emptied, I was working up the nerve to talk to him about...everything. It was so much to tell him. Especially him. By the time I had mustered the nerve, I had also realized that this conversation would take more time than I had before I had to leave for school. It crossed my mind that maybe, I had just found another way to dodge the responsibility and never really had mustered the nerve. Whichever was true, I found myself pushing him into his desk, kissing him on the cheek, and then walking out the door without a word of it spoken.
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When the bus came to a halt in front of me I climbed on and found a seat, but my mind was wandering elsewhere. I didn't really have much time in the mornings to experiment with the powers I had only had for six days, and I certainly wasn't going to risk blowing my cover on the bus ride or at school. Ah school, it's amazing how something so mundane can waste so much time for a potential hero. And yet my powers didn't mean I could simply not go to school. If anything, the requirement to go was stronger if I ever managed to get into the Wards. Oh well, I had long consigned myself to simply keeping my head down and getting all the work done. Of course, that had become a lot more difficult since I became a cape. Why would I want to spend fourty-five minutes on algebra homework when I could be experimenting with my powers, or thinking about cape names, or trying to figure out a costume?
And speaking of algebra, the bus had arrived and I would be walking toward that class shortly after a visit to my locker. The students around me were trying to mill about, but lacked the room. Many were half-standing half-crouching in their aisles like that would help them get off the bus any faster. After most of the seats in front of mine had exited, I finally joined them in their hunched-over positions before having enough room to straighten and making my way off the bus.
Using a locker never felt more pointless. My power made it trivial for me to carry any and all the books for the day (no strained back muscles, either!), but I had to maintain appearances, and so I piled all but two of my books into my locker, closed it, and spun the lock. Walking past the graffiti of a circle around an open palm, I lost myself in the mass of people on the trek halfway across the school to algebra.
Honestly? I felt like I didn't really belong with the rest of the students in my school, and I think it showed. While I wasn't really a pariah, I certainly wouldn't be considered popular, either. Sure, "popular" was a title I would have loved to have. At times the little girl inside of me yearned for the adoration of my classmates: I wanted to boys to like me and the girls to want to be me...but most of the time it all seemed like so much work. No, there were really only two titles that people would stick to me most of the time: "ice queen" or "tomboy." Ice queen because I wasn't interested in dating any of the nervous sweaty-palmed shy boys that didn't even know me but somehow knew we would be great together, and tomboy because I was often a bit of a tomboy.
It didn't matter that the end of school was less than a week away, or that it was probably some of the most perfect weather we would have all year (which you never really appreciate until you're stuck inside for most of it). Today was the second day of Finals, and so Mrs. Schumaker's class promised to only be more interesting than usual because 1) I was banking 20% of my grade on this test, and 2) I didn't have to listen to Mrs. Schumaker's droning. And so, despite all the math cartoons on the wall that would have been more suited to an elementary school than a high school, I removed a pencil from my backpack instead of retrieving one the easy way and prepared my mind for a day of tests. Yippee!