Running for Home

Chapter Six – Never Meant to be So Cold

Disclaimer: I own nothing, I am simply borrowing the wonderful characters and settings for my own enjoyment and amusement, and not for any profit.

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The detention room was pretty easy to find. Take my first left, go down three doors, take the next right, past the long hallway, find the short hallway, take two lefts, skip the next left, go two turns right, past the water fountain, cut through the corner of the gym, past the janitor's closet, go right and it's the fifth door on my left.

Even if I didn't have trouble with lefts and rights (I always have to check which thumb and forefinger make the L), it still would have been impossible to find, mostly because I made the mistake of continually asking heroes for directions, which they were all too happy to give me, and which were all too often complete lies because yeah, that's funny.

School let out at 3:45. The bus down to the rest of the world left at 4. I was supposed to be at work (Aunt Paige had found me a job with a couple of her friends) at 4:30, so there was no way I could miss the bus.

It was 3:49 by the time I ran into Tara, who showed me the room, all the while rolling her eyes. She left me there, muttering under her breath, something about me being a glutton for punishment.

I stood outside the detention room door, wasting another minute while I gathered my courage. It had already taken me three class periods just to get to the point where I knew that this was what I had to do. And now, going through the door…

Deep breath. In. Out. I could do this, I could do this, I could do this. Okay. Go me!

Once the door slid open, I rushed in, courage up, ready to apologize until I was blue in the face without actually giving him the real explanation.

The room was empty.

And the door slid shut behind me. The very pretty door. With no handles, buttons, or anything that said push-me-and-I'll-slide-the-door-open on this side of it.

Shitake mushrooms. What if Principal Powers had given him a fake detention? Just something she had to do in front of the cafeteria, but then she'd pulled him aside to tell him to forget it. What if it had been a real detention and Warren Peace was the type of student who said forget it? What if he had actually forgotten it? What if these doors didn't open and no one knew I was here and I got stuck here overnight in a room without a bathroom? What if the janitor found me here as a skeleton in three weeks?

And why did this room look like the afterlife? White walls, white floor, white furniture… It gave me the shivers and only served to increase my panic.

Which is why, thirty seconds later, the door slid open and Warren found me acting like a jumping-bean, hand-waving, hoarse-voice-hollering lunatic in front of the itty bitty window on the door.

Since my dignity and pride were pretty much ruined for life with no hope of redemption, I literally fell through the doorway, laying on the floor, half in the hallway and half in the detention room, breathing in freedom and the knowledge that I would not end up as a skeleton on the floor of the afterlife room. Warren stepped over me.

After turning to get another look at the weirdness that was me, Warren opened his mouth, shut it, opened it, and again stopped just short of actually saying anything. Since I had already landed him in detention and in the awkward position of being my savior from a fate worse than death—being stuck in the afterlife's waiting room—I decided I wouldn't make him ask the obvious. "I thought I was going to be stuck in here forever and then have to rescued by the janitor."

"The door opens at five o'clock."

Oh. Right. And even knowing that, when I sat up and started casually brushing myself off as though I hadn't just proven myself to be a complete nutjob, I kept my butt firmly planted in the doorway so I wouldn't get locked in again.

Warren sat at one of the creepy white desks and looked at me, not angry, not waiting for or wanting an explanation, just utterly bored. Alrighty, so ball's in my court, and I had—watch check—3 minutes left to explain before I needed to be hauling out of there.

Since this apology was going to be made with me half in the hallway, I checked first to make sure no one else was around. All clear. "I'm sorry you got detention."

"Just not sorry enough to explain why I have to serve a detention for something I didn't do, right?" He shook his head in disgust.

"No, I can't explain. At this point, I don't think I even have the power to be explaining anymore. I think it's gone beyond my control. And although I don't have a choice in the lie, I am sorry that you got stuck in the middle and that you're the one paying for it." For once, my brain-mouth connection was working in my favor, and I was able to say all the things I wanted to say.

"So you admit I'm not the one that threw you out the window."

I gave him a look. "Well, obviously it wasn't you. I mean, you might be all muscle under that nice looking leather jacket, but that wouldn't be enough to cause me to go flying across the room and through glass windows. No offense to you and your muscles, but you know what I mean. And unless your flames are coming out as jet propulsions, which I doubt since I saw them on the bus ride this morning, even your superpower couldn't have done that."

"Did you just call me weak and insult my power, all in the same breath?"

Giving him a wary look, I tried to decide if his more even expression meant that he was not so angry about the whole him-being-my-scapegoat idea, or if it just meant his revenge plottings were becoming clearer and more planned out. I kind of liked the idea of him not being mad. "No, I wasn't doing either of those things. I was actually kind of insulting the minds of the student body here at Sky High. Apparently not the brightest crayons in the box. Hello! Obviously it wasn't you who threw me out the window."

"So it was you?"

"No, it was the one-armed man—of course it was me. Duh." And as soon as the words were out of my mouth, as soon as I saw his slow smile of satisfaction, I knew I had just been outtalked and outmaneuvered into revealing things I had no business revealing. "Shitake mushrooms!"

I quickly stood up and moved out of the doorway. The last thing I saw before the door slid shut? Warren Peace's still smiling face for having outwitted me.

Which, as my watch chimed four o'clock, was quickly replaced in my mind with visions of me having to jump back down to earth because I'd missed the dang school bus.

I ran out the front door, pretty much jumped from the top landing all the way to the lawn, which I ran across, waving my arms like a lunatic (boy, did THAT feel familiar!), and throwing my arm through the bus door just as the driver was closing it.

I'm guessing the driver wanted to avoid the wrongful death lawsuits that he imagined would occur if he just took off with me stuck in the door and if I were to fall to my death. Thankfully, he opened the doors and allowed me on, with only minor glaring to accompany his kindness.

Sitting in the back seat, I spent the bus ride contemplating my most recent Warren-encounter. And trying to figure out just how much damage my big mouth had done. The good news was that he didn't know I was an empath. That was good—although likely to be short-lived in a school like Sky High. And even if he did find out I was an empath, it would take a lot of dot-connecting to figure out why I had gone flying out the window.

I really hoped he was bad at connect-the-dots.

Upon arrival at my new work place, I was told that since one of the busboys had called to say he wouldn't be coming in for the dinner shift, I would be bussing tables instead of doing the dishes, which is what I'd been hired for. Bussing the tables was the easy part – dirty dishes go in a tub, tub goes back to kitchen. It was the pouring-of-the-water part that I had trouble with. I even managed to spill a whole pitcher; and I suppose I should count myself lucky that I spilled it on myself rather than a customer, but somehow, I just didn't feel all that lucky.

All in all, by the time I finally got home, I was beyond ready for bed. Well, I guess in my case, it would be I was beyond ready for fold-out-couch. There was a note on the counter from Aunt Paige saying she'd been called in to work the late shift at the hospital.

My thoughts drifted to the end of my first day of high school, last year. The shift my life had taken between that day and my first day at Sky High was glaringly obvious. And yet, even looking around Aunt Paige's one bedroom apartment, even without anybody to talk to about my first day, even with all the mini-disasters that had made up this day, even though I was only able to go because of a scholarship, even though I had to have a job to help Aunt Paige with my expenses, and even though I'd had to start a whole new life, this day and this life were still better.

And tomorrow, I'd have my first power development class.

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Author's note: Thanks to reviewers Kara Adar, Readerfreak10, inTHEgrid is where i live, papersoul, Nival Vixen, and T. Reviews keep me writing even though it's 2:15 a.m. and my eyes are trying to seal themselves shut!