Leah almost missed it when she was called. She was one of the last ones- she'd paid only enough attention to know that her new friends had all gotten sidekick. Lunch had been alright- she'd sat with Natasha, Liam, and Michelle, who Liam had seemed oddly fixed on.
Leah had a feeling he was developing a crush, but it was still in the infant stage, so she didn't say anything. Given time, though, he'd be madly in love with her, and Leah would be dancing up and down on the sidelines, cackling.
Boomer stared at her, as her dreamy ocean blue eyes snapped back to reality and she looked at him politely. He rolled his eyes, and Leah walked up to the stage, bunny hopping up the steps.
The people in the class that were paying attention- her new friends and a couple others with nothing better to do- snickered to each other.
"Please demonstrate your power," Boomer droned. Leah frowned. He was awfully rude to the sidekicks, and she didn't look forward to having this middle aged idiot make fun of her, but she had to do it.
Leah held up her hands and rubbed them together. Instantly, sparks started to shoot out of them, flying into the air. Leah held her hands up in front of her, showing them to Boomer. He lifted an eyebrow.
"Lightning?" he asked doubtfully. Leah shrugged. "Yes or no?" he snapped.
"They're sparks," Leah said flatly, her good mood gone and her temper short. Her sister ragged on her all the time, telling her what a useless power she had, and her mom didn't ever contradict her. She had a useless power and she knew it, and she wasn't in the mood to have Boomer tell her so too.
"Sidekick," he announced, rolling his eyes again. Leah gave him a nasty look and walked off to the back of the room. Asshole. His power was pathetic as he was, she thought meanly. And he looked down on her!
Leah pulled her mp3 player out of her pants pocket and stuffed the ear buds into her ears. She flicked through it, looking for a good song, and found 1985 by Bowling for Soup. She hummed inaudibly to herself, trying to wash Boomer out of her mind.
If she allowed him to get her down this early in the week, she'd be a downright bitch and lose all her friends by the time Friday rolled around. Monday was always her best day of the week, right after she'd spent the whole weekend surfing, and Friday was the worst, after she'd spent an entire week on school shit and listening to family.
Natasha wandered over eventually, and turned and waved to Michelle and Liam, who wandered over slowly. "We're all sidekicks," Liam said gloomily, as if he hadn't expected it.
Leah pulled the earphones out of her ears and raised her eyebrows. "I said we're all sidekicks," Liam repeated. Michelle sighed gloomily, and Leah's lips twitched. For someone in a color coordinated cheerleader like outfit, Michelle was awfully gloomy.
"What did you expect?" Leah asked, shrugging. She put one ear bud back in her ear and switched the song to Baba O'Riley by the Who. She loved the piano at the beginning- it was awesome, in her opinion. "We all knew we'd be sidekicks before we even got on the bus, which is why we're all talking to each other now. Because we're losers, but we're losers together."
Natasha laughed and rolled her eyes, and Liam and Michelle gave almost identical sighs. "Oh, cheer up," Natasha ordered. "I don't mind being a sidekick. It would be nice to save the world, but who cares? Maybe I'll just dump my hero after graduation and get a whole bunch of crime fighting gizmos and beat all the villains with those!"
Leah shrugged and picked up the other ear bud from where it was dangling next to her hip. "Maybe," she said just before she went back to the wonderful world of music. Power placement took until the bell rang at the end of the day, and Leah spent most of her time singing along with the music in her head and snatching bits of the conversation her friends were having- whether they agreed or disagreed with Boomer's placement of the rest of their class.
"I feel sorry for Will," Natasha commented as the little group walked down the steps and made their way to their bus. "Imagine having parents that are the greatest superheroes in the world and not having any powers yourself. They must be so disappointed."
"Who cares?" Liam interrupted. "I mean, it's not like we've got it any better. I don't know about you, but I'm going to kill my mom when she finds out I'm a sidekick. She so hoped I'd be a hero like her, and I'm going to have to tell her I didn't make it."
Michelle nodded. "My dad wanted me to be a hero," she said, probably the first personal thing she'd said all day, not to mention the longest. "But I think he knew I wouldn't make it. I mean, a ball? What use is that?"
Leah shrugged. "At least it doesn't hurt, when you're a ball," she commented. "Boomer kicked you halfway across the gym and you just bounced back up- literally. And think of it this way- if some villain was after you in a toy store, you could change into a ball. Me, I'd have to pretend I was baby sitting some little brat who knew I wasn't his mother."
Natasha laughed quietly, and Michelle smirked in amusement. "True," she mused. "But what if some kid bought me?"
Leah shrugged. "Let him take you home and hope like hell he has a hot older brother?" she asked jokingly. Michelle even laughed a little at that, and Leah grinned. She loved to make people happy. Pleasing people was one of her few ambitions, mostly because it seemed like she could never please her mother.
"You do lightening bolts, right?" Liam asked, frowning thoughtfully to himself as he got on the bus and walked towards the back. "What do they do?"
"What do you mean?" Leah asked, frowning herself as she thought about his question.
"Well, do they hurt, or are they just a light jolt? Is it like sticking a fork in the electric socket, or- or licking a battery or something?" Liam sounded doubtful, and Leah laughed.
"I think you must be my long lost twin," she mused. "Our names sound alike, we both like the color blue, and we both have minds that work in odd ways." Leah grinned at Liam and plopped down in a seat next to Natasha as Michelle walked past and sat behind them.
Liam frowned jokingly and sat down next to Michelle. Leah highly doubted he knew she'd done it on purpose, but he shifted uncomfortably for a second before he shrugged and relaxed. Leah sighed in her mind, wishing she was as calm as he was around the people she liked.
But then, maybe he wasn't as calm as he seemed. After all, her old friend had told her that she would never have guessed that Leah liked her old crush if Leah hadn't said something, while Leah always felt she was totally obvious in watching him walk past in the halls and glancing at him every five minutes at lunch.
"So, does it hurt or not?" Liam prodded. Leah snapped out of her daydream and turned around halfway, looking at him out of the corner of her eyes.
"Huh?" she asked stupidly. Natasha and Michelle snickered, and Liam rolled his eyes.
"The sparks," he reminded her. "Do they hurt, or not?"
"Oh," Leah sighed. She hated her power. It was so useless. Sometimes it was cool, and it kept people she didn't want touching her away, but mostly it was just there, too useless to use. "If I want it to."
"What do you-" Leah cut Liam off by jerking around and flinging her arm up, flicking her fingers in his face. A small current of electricity ran off each finger and hit Liam. He stopped in mid sentence and his eyes went wide as he seemed to shake slightly.
"Wow," he breathed when the sparks were gone. Leah hadn't hurt him- he was her friend, after all, even if she barely knew him. The electricity had been as soothing as she could make it, which meant that it wasn't painful, but it was still electricity. Liam's hair was standing on end, and his mouth dropped open as the power went through his system.
Leah smiled in understanding. It was so invigorating, being shocked like that. It was like you were more alive, somehow. She'd never gotten shocked by her own lightening- that was impossible- but she had felt electricity before, and she loved the way it felt.
"What's it like?" Michelle asked curiously. Leah shrugged. What was she supposed to say? If she wanted it to hurt it was like being stabbed with a thousand tiny needles, if she wanted it to be gentle it was merely a rush of energy flowing through you, making your entire body tingle with it.
"It's weird," Liam said after a long pause in which no one said anything. "It hurts, but- it's like you're so-"
"Alive?" Leah offered. "Like every nerve is as aware as it's ever been, like your entire body is humming with the energy?"
Liam nodded vigorously. "Yeah," he breathed. Leah smiled slightly, even though something was bothering her. "It makes the pain not really matter much," he added, and Leah frowned.
"It doesn't hurt," she protested. "It can't. If I want it to hurt, it does, but that's not painful, that's when it's just energy running through you."
Liam frowned slightly. "Yeah, it does," he told her slowly. "Not much, but it is a little bit painful. Not much, but a little bit."
Leah scowled at the back of the seat in front of her. "I know the difference between painful and not," she muttered. Liam sighed behind her, and Leah suppressed a sigh of her own. She didn't want to piss her friends off. If that was something about herself she didn't particularly like, it was that she was too dependent. Of course, others said she was very independent, but Leah always felt like she went out of her way not to piss off what few friends she was able to make.
But still, she knew what it meant when lightening hurt- she'd gotten hit once, hadn't she? Until then she hadn't known the difference in what she did, she had just had sparks, but after the lightening hit her, she could control whether it hurt or not. She could make it painful for anyone who felt they could treat her any way they pleased.
"Forget it," Natasha said. Leah suppressed another sigh, because she could tell already that Natasha would end up telling Liam and her to forget many, many fights in the future. Leah was a pessimist pretending to be an optimist, and Liam was an optimist pretending to be a pessimist, so of course they were going to fight.
"So how do you think your parents will feel about you being a sidekick?" Leah asked Natasha calmly. They knew how Liam and Michelle's parents would feel, but not Natasha's.
"Oh, they won't mind," Natasha said happily. "They're just glad that I'm able to go. My parents haven't got powers, see, so to them having a power is really cool, even if I'm only a sidekick."
Leah gave a wry half smile and nodded. "You're lucky," she murmured. "It must be nice." Natasha shrugged, and Leah pulled out her mp3 player and lost herself in the music until it was time to get off the bus.
Leah smiled instead of saying goodbye and turned, waving over her shoulder. She walked home slowly, kicking the tiny bits of rock and broken pavement laying on the sidewalk, not particularly anticipating getting home.
She didn't have homework yet, but she didn't have anything else to do, either. It was to be another day of sitting around her room doing nothing. Wonderful.
Leah opened the front door and looked around. Her mom was home- she left just before they went to school and got home just before they came back- but where was she? "Mom?" Leah called, frowning. She wasn't worried, but usually her mother was puttering around the kitchen, planning or making dinner when she got home.
"In the living room," Adele called back. "I'm cleaning and watering the plants. Your sister isn't home yet, but she should be here in a minute or so. We're having lasagna for dinner, is that alright with you?"
Leah smiled. They would have lasagna whether she liked it or not, because it was tradition, but she loved lasagna. It was so good the way her mom made it, with pepperoni and sauce she had made herself. Canned sauce just wasn't the same, somehow.
"I love lasagna," Leah said to herself happily. "It's more than alright!" she called louder for her mother's benefit. "I don't have any homework, so I'm going to listen to music, okay?" Her mom made a noise of agreement, and Leah walked out of the kitchen, bringing her embroidered bag with her.
The front door went into the kitchen, and there were two doors leading out of that. One lead to the dining room, and the other led to a small 'room' with the pantry door, a staircase, and the living room door taking up all the wall space.
The doors to both the living room and the kitchen were left open at all times, and Leah saw her mother scrubbing diligently as she started up the stairs. It was kind of sad, the way her mother's life revolved around cooking, cleaning, and work.
It was her dad's fault. Adele dated occasionally, but most of the time she just puttered around the house, making sure everything was immaculate and taking care of Lainei and Leah. It shouldn't be like that- she should be happy again, but whenever Leah said something her mom just waved her away with a sad smile on her face.
Leah shook her head, knowing she would probably never see her mother married again. "Ah, well," she sighed to herself as she opened the door to her room. As soon as she entered, Leah looked around to make sure everything was in place, and then tossed her bag on her bed.
Everything in the room matched in an ocean theme. Pale, almost white wood for the bureau, bed frame, and doors (one to the hall, one to the closet), a light sandy colored carpet, and light turquoise walls and ceiling. There were seashells painted around the top and bottom of the walls, and around the doorways, coming up from the bottom.
Leah spent the rest of her evening doing nothing. Dinner was the same as always- there was very little talk and the sound of silverware clattering on their plates was deafening. She went to bed as soon as the dishes were done. She couldn't stand staying awake any longer.