There was plenty of hot water this morning in the Hennessey house. Paul dragged himself from bed a little before six and took his medicine. His heart surgery was a month away. His prescribed diet and health regimen was driving him nuts. No pizza, no chips, no soft drinks, no flavor, no nothing… He and Cate were hiding his health woes from the kids, or at least from two of them. Whether Bridget knew the truth already was open for way too much speculation he wanted to stay out of for right now. Clad in his robe and slippers, he strolled down the walkway pretending not to see Fred O'Doyle across the street and looked for his column on the second page of the Detroit Tribune. Along the way, he noticed the headline in the corner of the newspaper reading "Supergirl Revealed!!"
"Cate!!!" Paul stormed into the house waving the paper.
"Hey, Kyle…" A few houses over on the next block, Sports writer Tommy Brady read the newspaper as he hovered over his cold cereal. Having replaced Paul at the Tribune, he revered in his job and lusted for the ladies there so much he was nicknamed Mr. Sexual Harassment. Hovering over him drowsy and tired, his son plunked down next to him nearly ready for school. "Your girlfriend's in the paper." Tommy referred to Kyle's obsession with the enigmatic beauty not knowing it was also a thin allusion to the girl who posed as her. Kyle grabbed the paper and read what Captain Edward O'Neil had told the world about the stunning superhuman protector.
"She's a goddess???" Kyle read the paper and leaned sideways. His eyes rolled back and he passed out.
"You were right." Tommy pulled a five-dollar bill from his pocket for his wife. "He couldn't handle it."
"Bridget, look!!!" Up in her family's skiing cabin, Becca Weller jumped on to Bridget in bed and flashed her a copy of the Detroit Tribune. "She got interviewed by this guy in New York City. That's like where Spiderman lives!" She paused a second. "And maybe Batman too!"
"What?" Bridget rolled over in her toasty warm bed and fretted with her comforter. She sat up rubbing her eyes and tossing back her long hair as she focused on the newspaper. The Associated Press had a photo of her in the air near the Statue of Liberty. Her mind was still hazy about half of what she had done. She didn't even recall returning to Canada or going to bed. Her eyes looked over the paper and skimmed over the facts reported about her. Where did some of these facts come from? She claimed being the daughter of Thor and Aphrodite, deities from separate pantheons, but where did the idea come she was born in Atlantis and watched the pyramids being built? She didn't mention that stuff!
"He should have been a writer…" She mumbled under breath.
"Bridget, think about it…" Becca sat on the bed with her best friend. "Everyone I know who has seen her claims she is like… incredibly beautiful. She's supposed be beyond beautiful…."
Bridget looked away as if she were looking at an invisible studio audience watching her life on television.
"It makes so much sense!!" Becca was fascinated by the claims.
On the nightstand of their bedroom loft, Bridget's cell phone rang. She lifted it up rubbing the crystals of sleep from her left eye and yawning. The Caller ID screen on it read simply Detroit, Michigan.
"Oh, gee…" Bridget mumbled knowingly sarcastic. "I wonder who that is." She picked it up and pressed the button inaudibly voicing words to Becca then talked to her relative on the phone. "Hi, mom…"
"How'd you know it was me?" Cate stood in her kitchen ready to leave for the hospital.
"You said you'd call me."
"Got a really good article in the newspaper here." Cate responded wickedly smug and amused then turned to read the article again. Kerry had it again and she had to wrestle it away from her. "Want me to read it to you?"
"Mom, I really don't care about anything in the newspaper." She told the truth. "Becca's mother is going to show me how to ski."
"It's a really good article." Cate voiced out loud. Kerry annoyingly grabbed the phone from her mother and pressed it to her ear reading the newspaper.
"For the last three to four months," She read the story with excited relish and a knowing grin. "The area from Chicago to Detroit to Cleveland has been getting unconfirmed and unsubstantiated accounts of a figure raging from an unknown presence to a flying young girl in a superhero costume. Last night, this unknown and enigmatic mystery increased the range of her flight plan by appearing over the Greater Manhattan area. Police are still collecting reports, but at last count, there were stories from over five hundred people all over New York City ranging from actors Tobey McGuire and Jerry Seinfeld to Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg…."
"Oh my god, Kerry…" Bridget fought with her sister through the phone. "You got me. You… Oh wait, I'm in Canada. She hasn't been seen up here."
"That's what you want me to think!"
Cate took her phone back from her daughter.
"Stop persecuting your sister!"
"Get her to confess!!!"
"She can't be that girl!"
"No, you just don't want her to be!"
Bridget listened to them fighting back and forth and quietly turned off her phone without another word. Becca had listened to just part of it and tried to understand. Sometimes she wanted a younger sister like Bridget had instead of two brothers invading her privacy, but at times like this, she wished she was just an only child.
"What's that about?" Becca asked Bridget.
"You don't want to know…."
After dropping Kerry off at the library and Rory off with his friends, Paul Hennessy was off to a covert rendezvous with a heart specialist. Expecting hope and optimistic dreams of avoiding major heat surgery, he listened to reviews of his weight and beats per second and plans for his surgery. How did this happen? He was only 50 years old. That was still young in most cultures and he didn't feel like a doddering old man. What if something went wrong? Who would take care of his wife and kids? He had spent years not worrying about this stuff and now it all was catching up to him in the form of the specter of old age reminding him his time was coming up. That was the reason he didn't tell his kids. They had enough imaginary problems and perceived tribulations to worry about it. They would learn about it soon enough, and he was not going to sour their life until he could not possibly hide it anymore.
After the doctor, Paul walked the few blocks to the Detroit Tribune. He returned to his jovial self to say hello to Mr. Ritter the custodian and share a grin to his friends. Nick Sharpe was the Editor now. A former football player turned journalist, he had acquired the job through his father's friendship with the owner of the paper… or so it was claimed. Joyce and Suzanne ran the restraunt and gossip columns and always shared with him something edible and delicious. His resulting health problems had become public knowledge here and they shared with him their new fat-free and health-free muffins. Larry Kline was the newspaper's entertainment editor; he welcomed Paul's visit with a hearty handshake and heartfelt hope telling him not to worry. Nick was nowhere to be seen yet. In the heart of the newspaper's journalistic inner sanctum, Paul stopped short and saw Bridget's picture in the awards shelf. Twelve years of rewarding students of excellence and his first-born daughter, once a young pixie with blonde pigtails and rosy cheeks, was going to a future novelist or journalist. His heart pumped with pride to the aspect of that. A few months ago, he feared she was on a narcissistic and materialistic path to nowhere. Wait, that was a mere few months ago.
"Hennessy…" Sports Editor Tommy Brady strolled into the reporter's lounge area. "What are you doing here?"
"I work here!" Paul reminded him.
"No, I mean… really?" Tommy stared at him blank-faced then started grinning to turn the insult to a joke. "I'm just kidding, big guy…" He rapped Paul to the arm then turned to pour a cup of java. Tommy could be so annoying. Paul didn't hate him, but he felt he was the only one who really knew him. Balding, slight of frame and often condescending, Tommy had been his assistant editor back before Rory was born, but then when Cate decided to go back to work and Paul decided to work at home, Tommy moved up and Paul was moved to being a weekly columnist. Pining for a cup of coffee, Paul instead took a bottle of water from the drink machine, his eyes noticing a new newspaper article decorating the lounge. Preserved in a gold and glass frame was an article with the title, "Blonde Bombshell Buzzes City."
"How's the wife and daughter? You know, the hot one?" Tommy tilted back his coffee. He noticed Paul reading the article. "Oh yeah, her…." He sipped his drink. "She buzzes past the building about once or twice a week."
"Has anyone seen her face?" Paul asked discreetly worried.
"Who looks at her face?" Tommy answered. "I figure her to be a thirty-four, thirty-five DD…."
"Tommy!!!"
"What? What?"
"There is a reason you're known as Mr. Sexual Harassment around here."
"Don't be ridiculous… I'm anything but,…." Tommy noticed a figure pass by the door. "Hey, look, there goes Boobs from reception." Paul just started turning away shaking his head. He needed to check his health insurance with Nick if he could find him.
"Paul, Paul…" Tommy tried to excuse his carelessness once again. "Look, I'm hearing there's been a shake-up in the higher ups… The owner of the paper sold some of his shares to build his stock portfolio and we got a new investor. He's planning some wing-ding thing to invite her to the newspaper. If I can meet her, I should be able to call some shots around here."
"What kind of investor is she?"
"Who cares what kind of investor she is?" Tommy was unknowingly treading into another indiscretion. "I just hope she has huge knockers."
From the library, Kerry Hennessey stepped down off the bus and looked back a second to wave good-bye to Mr. Tripper, the bus driver. He'd been driving the Hennessy girls back and forth for years and knew almost everyone on the block. The air was damp and misty as Kerry tossed the strap of her book bag over her shoulder and briefly removed her stocking cap to shake loose the form it made in her hair. Loose leaves crunched under the heels of her books. The empty Shapiro house reared up with its empty windows and deserted ramparts. The "For Sale" signed tilted at an angle amidst the trees obscuring the reputed haunted house. Next door, O'Doyles were already starting on their Christmas decorations. Thirteen-year-old Chrissy O'Doyle and eight-year-old Mary Maureen O'Doyle waved to Kerry as she half-heartedly acknowledged their existence. Their mother was one of those types still trapped in the stereotype of the stay-at-home 50's throwback homemaker mother. Kerry just sighed and continued on past the Somers house across the street to her home. A breeze kicked up tossing the leaves around her and Kerry looked round for a car or something passing her. The sound of air rushing past her filled her perceptions and she turned round just before the tight clutch of something jerking her off her feet. Her book back was removed from her shoulder and tossed to the front porch of her house. Her feet were lifted off the ground and she was lifted up over the house, over the tips of the trees and up to an unobstructed view of the orange horizon looming over the city. Someone was holding her about the waist and as Kerry's hands grabbed for something to hold on to, she recognized Bridget holding her from around the waist and carrying her aloft.
"Oh, my god!!! Oh, my god!!!" Kerry's heart began racing. "You're going to kill me! You're going to kill me! Bridget!!!!"
"You wanted to know my secret, right?!" Bridget beamed ear to ear and voiced through the rush of winds and her hair rushing over her face. "I love it up here! I've never felt so free!" She beamed toward the sun. "It's like swimming on the winds through the air!"
"Oh, my god!!! Oh, my god!!!" Kerry looked down to the ground scared to death. She was… what, a hundred, two hundred feet into the air? She was far up enough that she could see only houses and blotches of trees laid out in geometric patterns, distant enough that she could not be seen by people and remote enough they were indistinguishable from earth. Gravity was still beckoning to her, and the only thing holding her aloft was her sister's right arm around her and the wind rushing under her.
"Bridget…" Kerry's eyes widened in shock. She was scared to death. "Please… please… I can't take…"
"Kerry, accept it!!!" Bridget grabbed her sister's arm and let her go, carrying her at arm's length. "Remember when we were little girls and wanted to fly like Peter Pan and Wendy! Just think happy thoughts!!!"
"Oh, my god… Oh, my god…" Kerry stuttered and mumbled in fear through hesitant giggles. She looked around as the sky opened clearer and clearer. The lights of the city were coming on under her. A blanketed landscape of shapes and lights and sounds were laid out beyond her. She couldn't tell where creation began and heaven ended. Her eyes were at the heights of gods and immortals. Bridget shined back at her imploring her trust. Memories of being a child rushed back to the middle child.
"This… is… impossible!" Her voiced cried out to the expanding sky.
"Nothing is impossible, Kerry…." Bridget replied nearly drowned out by the jet stream with her left arm stretched out to balance herself with her sister on her right arm. It was almost as if she meant it. "Canadian geese fly at this height. I've seen the moon in the middle of the day. I've seen more cities in a few days than most people see in a year!"
"How do you do this?!" Kerry screamed to make her voice heard. "Were you hit by radiation or…"
"Magic and science, Kerry!!!" Bridget screamed to the heavens Her cape snapping behind her. "Science and magic! They're two sides of one coin like belief and knowledge! Neither can exist without the other!"
"Oh my god…" Kerry's left arm was hurting her. All of her weight was stressed on it with Bridget pulling her along by it. "It is beautiful up here!" She gasped both chuckling in fear and stuttering in awed shock. She had to hold on to her sister with both hands. The cold air up here also chilled her legs, but the friction from the air speed dried her eyes and burned her face. Despite those discomforts, she loved it. Her sister did love her. She did trust her. Despite whatever happened between them, they had no secrets between them. Bridget was this girl, and the fact she used her immortal gifts to do what no one else could make her more proud than she ever had been in her life. She heard a chirping noise next to her.
"Oh, I gotta take this…" Bridget let go of her sister and took her cell phone off her skirt. Kerry's eyes looked to her and she tried to grab her by the waist, but she was already plummeting back to earth. Gravity quickly reclaimed her and suddenly Bridget was nowhere to be seen. Kerry's hands clawed at the empty air and her scream and the roaring air merged together into one shrieking echo filling the sky. Her eyes looked again and she was clutching the coffee table in her living room and still screaming. Her book of World Mythology had fallen underneath her body. She couldn't breath! Her heart had stopped! It hadn't happened, but it was so real! So real!!! Her mother rushed to her and pulled her tight.
"It's all right, care bear…" Cate sat on the floor and whispered into her daughter's ear and pulled her close into her body. "It's all right! It was just a dream! You just had a dream." She rocked Kerry with her body and stroked her head. "Catch your breath, honey. I'm holding you now, and I won't let go…"