Briiiiiiing!Briiiiiiing!Briiiiiiing!
Zach groggily opened his eyes and gave the phone a death stare, how dare it try to interrupt his naptime. His long arm (that wasn't broken) whipped out and grabbed the receiver. "Yo," he said, eager to get back to snoozing. He didn't feel like moving around with a broken arm and all.
"Zach?"
He bolted upright in bed, "Terra!"
"Are you alright?" She asked, she'd been wondering ever since she saw him under the piece of ceiling.
"Other than having a broken arm I'm peachy," he said, but it came out sounding bitter.
His am was broken? She broke his arm…she couldn't stand it. All the tears she'd been holding in all day erupted. He heard her sobbing. "Terra? What's wrong?" He asked with concern.
"I broke your arm!" She wailed.
"Yeah, but It's okay…It'll be better in six months," Zach claimed.
"That's not the point…I HURT you," she explained.
"It wasn't your fault, you had to do what you had to do," Zach tried calming her.
She cried for a moment before saying anything, raking in sobs and sniffling, "Zach, you're the best friend I've ever had…"
"AND…I forgive you," he cut her off. There was silence on the other end. Terra didn't know what to say. Any other time she would get caught up in her sisters' web of emotion, she'd do damage and then get shunned for it.
"I'm sorry I didn't sit with you at lunch today," she said afterwards.
"Oh…yeah why didn't you? That really confused me. If it was because of the kissing…I'm sorry you kissed me…but not really. Yeah, I liked that kissing thing…" Zach started to let his thoughts come out of his mouth.
"No, it wasn't because of that. My sisters didn't know where I was Saturday, and we got into an argument. So it was just best if I didn't sit with you today," she explained, secretly liking the way he liked the kissing thing.
"So, what did Powers do to you after you wrecked the cafeteria?" Zach asked, because he had been curious to know all day.
"We eat lunch in the detention room...I forgot for how long. We have to clean up the cafeteria and we can't participate in extra curricular things," Terra counted off.
"So I guess I still won't be eating with you at lunch then," Zach sighed with disappointment.
"Yeah, you won't,"
They both sighed at the same time.
"So how is your report coming?" He asked with a happier tone.
"Oh, I have to put it together, all I have are the notes you gave me.
"Yeah my dad is like psyched or something that you're doing the report on him,"
"Really? That's neat…I guess," she felt herself smile.
"So when do I get to see you again?"
"I don't know…soon I hope…" she said quietly.
"Yeah for sure, but hey, I hear my mom calling for supper so I have to let you go. I will call you later," Zach said, as his mom was screaming 'spaghetti! Spaghetti! Zachary…come eat the spaghetti!'
She said goodbye and hung up the phone. She curled into a ball on her bed and thoughts of the unknown future ran through her mind.
Zach ambled to the kitchen and sat down at the table.
"So...what exactly happened to your arm again?" His father asked. "I asked your mother but she said you gave her a mumbled answer and fell asleep."
"Oh there was a situation in the cafeteria today…" Zach said while sipping a spaghetti noodle into his mouth. The tip of the noodle hit him in the nose, splattering spaghetti sauce onto his face. He wiped it off and saw his father was looking for more of an explanation. "Some kids like, couldn't control their powers and ended up destroying the cafeteria, a piece of ceiling fell on my arm," Zach elaborated.
"What kind of power was that?" His father asked amazed.
"Earthquakes and…stuff like that," Zach reluctantly said.
"That's interesting, there haven't been any earth shaking kids since my day," his dad
thought.
"Really?" Zach said with mild interest.
"Yeah, Felix was his name. He was a nice kid too...or so I heard but something went wrong."
"Like what?" Zach asked still only mildly interested.
"I wasn't in school when it happened. Felix was a freshman when I was a senior. He didn't go bad until he was a junior," his father said with a shrug.
"Went bad?" Zach said questioningly, mostly to himself. The thought of the class lecture on how super villains came to be popped up in his head.
Maybe he wanted to check out this story.
When he was finished with his spaghetti he went upstairs to his room and called Will Stronghold.
"Hello?" Will answered.
"Yo dude!" Zach greeted.
"Hey what's up?"
"Oh man, so I was wondering if I could look at your dad's yearbook?"
Will paused…wondering if he heard his lanky friend correctly. "Why?"
"Well my dad was telling me about this one guy that used to be at Sky High that went villainous on everybody one day. I wanted to see what he looked like.
"Yeah, sure…but dad'll like freak and get all ... nostalgic on you," Will warned.
"Sounds great, I'll be over in a few"
Zach bicycled over to Will's house. He parked his bike on the lawn and rang the doorbell. Josie Stronghold opened the door with a smile. "Hello Zach!"
"Hi, Mrs. Stronghold," Zach greeted and entered the abode.
"Okay, here it is," Will found him first and pushed they heavy book into his arms, "hurry before dad comes."
Zach was well on his way but Steve Stronghold knew where his yearbook was at all times. "Not so fast…" he said with a gruff voice. Don't kill me. Don't kill me! Zach screamed in his mind but turned around and Steve was ushering him into the living room with a smile. Will shook his head sympathetically at Zach and climbed the stairs to his room. "So Will told me you wanted to check something out?" he asked opening up the worn out volume.
"Yeah I needed to take a look at some kid named Felix…"
Mr. stronghold frowned behind his spectacles. "What about Felix?"
"You know him?"
"I knew him,"
"So what's the story?"
He sighed and took of his glasses to rub his head, then proceeded to flip pages until he pointed at a handsome, skinny kid, who wasn't smiling.
"Felix Cordis, he…gosh." Steve was at a loss for words.
"What happened?" Zach prodded with intrigue.
"Felix was the probably the nicest kid in school. He always helped people with their homework, even the sidekicks. You see- he was in hero class. He could manipulate all the elements with his emotions. "
"So why did he become a villain?"
"His family was tragically destroyed in a fire when he was young, so he had a pretty rough childhood. I respected him for holding up through all of it but it was revenge that turned him. It was bad for your reputation if you were caught hanging out with the sidekicks; well Felix had a crush on one of the girls he tutored. I forgot her name but some of the bullies gave him a lot of grief for it and he really didn't like fighting back so he brushed off their threats. One day that girl never showed up for her tutoring session with him." Will's dad explained. Zach's attention was fully on the story. It seemed connected with the Matters sisters. All of them could each control a certain element and were bonded by their emotions.
"Anyway, Felix was worried to death about that girl and then...well the police found her body on the side of the highway two days later. They never caught the killers although we highly suspected it was one of the bullies. One of them had invisibility power.
Felix was destroyed after that, he stopped coming to school and he was a wreck. The bullies taunted him for being disheveled all the time and he exploded with a torrent of hail and earthquakes, it was a mess and a lot of kids were hurt. They finally subdued him and locked him up…but jeez he was the most tragic boy I ever laid eyes on."
Zach felt sympathy for the guy named Felix. What would it feel to have the girl you liked, murdered, your family dead, and then locked away?
Then a thought snapped up in his head, Felix unleashed earthquakes. Terra could also. There might be a relation between that fact.
"Well thanks for the story," Zach got up and abruptly left because he was feeling sad after what he heard.
He finished up his homework and then had the urge to google Felix Cordis' name. There were a bunch of articles from when Felix Cordis demolished everything around him when being taunted by the bullies. The girl's name was Haley, Zach found out from reading another article. Before he knew it he had been to every website related to Felix Cordis.
Then a very interesting fact appeared on a webpage: Cordis in Latin meant 'often as seat of emotions or thought' which was ironic because he could control elements with his emotions but then he remembered Terra had told him that her name meant 'earth' in Latin.
He grabbed his phone and dialed her phone number, luckily she answered and not one of her sisters.
"Hello?" spoke the voice he knew.
"Terra?"
"Hi Zach,"
"This might be random but what was your father's name?"
There was a long pause.
"Terra?"
"Why do you want to know Zach?' she snapped.
"Sorry," Zach mumbled.
Terra was confused at him. Why was he calling to know about her dad? A man she had hardly even remembered because he had disappeared as soon as she could walk.
"I can't remember, we don't speak of him anymore," she said to put an end to his questions.
"Oh, well I'll see you. I miss you Terra," he said and hung up.
She hung up the phone as well but with tiny goose bumps forming up the side of her arm- no one had ever told her they missed her before.
