The morning bells rang at Liberty High School. Seth Tanner grabbed up his books and rushed for gym class to make the time to watch the girls doing their aerobics. Shelia Odom and Shelley Billingsley made up vicious rumors about their female classmates: who was stuffing their bra and who might be sleeping around. What dirty lie could they make from Bridget Hennessy's absence today? Principal Gibb stopped Keely Michalka for chewing gum, and Scott Ullman argued with Kim Buckner in the school bookstore about the prices of the school supplies. Horace Patterson and Lyle Diffy were smoking in the boys' restroom and quickly stopped as Principal Gibb charged in to catch them. As they denied it, the dried paper hand towels in the waste receptacle burst into flame from the burning cigarettes. After the fire alarm was pulled, the herding and unherding of students and the suspension of Horace and Lyle, Kerry Hennessy tried to maneuver through the meandering crowds of students looking for Kyle. She had missed him this morning at the front entrance of the school. Drifting between crowds of boys swapping offensive jokes, she parted between a coven of gossiping prima donnas and a group of stoned rejects. Mrs. Lassiter the math teacher moved past her trying to get to her classroom before another school reject tried down-loading porn from her computer. Ambling down past the library, Kerry finally found Kyle holding up the wall at Owen Wosmer's locker with the rest of the under-achievers.
"Kyle, I've been looking for you." Kerry stood holding her books before her on one arm and her purse and book bag off her other arm.
"I'm right here." Kyle looked at her then applauded Owen for the story about the nun, the duck and the bar. Kerry groaned exasperatingly and pulled Kyle from his male-bonding ritual. She pulled up from off the wall he was leaning on and pinned him covertly in the corner next to the soda machine into the lunchroom lobby.
"Look, Kyle…" Kerry gasped tiredly annoyed for a second. "About last night, what you screamed about Bridget was completely inappropriate. It really upset her. Now, you know as well as I do what she's been doing, but outing her to everyone would ruin her life. I mean… She was practically hysterical by what you accused her of, but for now, I think we ought to keep it between us. For right now, we…"
"Kerry," Kyle scowled confusingly and searched his memories looking for a clue. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Kyle…." The red-haired middle child looked at him suspiciously. "You was at the bank when it was held up."
"Yeah," Kyle recalled that. "Everyone's been treating me like a celebrity or something asking about…"
"Focus here!" She restrained from choking him. "You was at the bank when Bridget showed up and saved your life."
"Bridget?" Kyle didn't recall it like that. "Bridget wasn't there!" He shook his head confusingly.
"Kyle!" Kerry pulled his ear to get his attention. "You barged into my house last night claiming Bridget was Supergirl!" She reminded him with a dull whisper.
"Come one, Kerry. I dated Bridget." Kyle rolled his eyes and scoffed at the notion. "She is nothing like Supergirl. I mean she is like really beautiful… more beautiful than Bridget. I mean you should have seen her. She…"
"Kyle!" Kerry was getting frustrated with him. "Stay with me here, okay?! You came by my house after the police and announced to my whole family that…" She stuck her hand into her purse to pull out her handheld and replay his testimony from the previous night.
"No, Kerry, I think you misunderstood." Kyle chuckled, looked away then focused back on Kerry. "I came by your house because I knew you were a fan too." He remembered his take of last night's events. "I mean you borrowed all those pictures from me. She looked nothing like Bridget. "
Kerry fought with her handheld. Her footage with Kyle was all distorted and ruined. She had interloping images of Rory on a dirt bike, her father yelling at Bridget for staying out late and herself at the park. How did this happen? She had not hallucinated last night!
"Oh my god!" She stared at him. "She got to you, didn't she?"
"Who? Who did what to me?" Kyle asked her. Kerry just looked away disgustedly and sighed defeatedly.
"I can't do this anymore." She told herself. "No matter what I do… she is always five steps ahead of me. I just… can't get her to confess."
"What?" Kyle tried to understand what she was talking about. "Who are you talking about? Hey, why didn't Bridget come to school?"
"You want the truth?" Kerry rolled her eyes sideways at him in disbelief. "She had a little stress attack after your confrontation last night. My mom and dad actually let her stay home to compose herself..."
Staying home was the furthest thing from Bridget's mind. She wanted to go running to gather her thoughts, but she had also made a promise she intended to keep and she chose to do her running several states away and hundreds of miles from Detroit jogging the park walkways of Denver's Cheesman Park. With the skyline of the city rising around her in the acreage of undisturbed land, she started from the portico and jogged the walkway listening and brooding with her thoughts. Her long hair pulled into a ponytail, her face expressionless and garbed in her gray sweats, she started slowly at first, her white sneakers pounding at the asphalt of the path with a rhythmic pulse of a ticking clock. Coming up along the waterway alongside the park, she increased her pace past another morning jogger that turned round to notice her then a homeless person sitting on a bench.
On approach of the marker describing the history of the park as a former cemetery, Bridget turned and jogged over the bridge over the creek and down through an open glen lined with wet flowers and near piles of raked brush. Her mind drifted to her youth, back to when she and Kerry were each other's best friends. They once did everything together. They once did the Norman Rockwell scene of selling lemonade; the playing dress-up out of their mother's closet, the worship of their father and the ritual competition of sniping and insulting each other, but then Junior High School happened and they found the world. Bridget found out that boys liked her and she absorbed their praise and worship through the eyes of school cliques and peer pressure. In her shadow, Kerry retreated into the intellectual shadow of school and lessons. Rory had come along too and changed the picture, seemingly becoming dad's favorite. Looking back now through the eyes of the world and the wisdom of time, Bridget realized now she had deciphered the picture wrong. She had never lost the love of her parents, but rather she had become frustrated by them not realizing how restricting the world of teenagers was. It was only as restricting as the boundaries she and Kerry had put on it. The world did not end beyond the school, it only seemed like it. Beyond it, the adult world made much more sense and had much more common sense to it. She now understood the restrictions her parents had been putting on her. She now had her purpose in life and she knew what to do with it.
Coming up under a bridge extending over her to the ground above, Bridget had jogged into the shadows of the park, along a fenced-off walkway along a babbling brook against a face of exposed bedrock and ascending up over brush covered in vines up the main park. She could hear the roadway from the cars echoing in her ears, and she could sense another person racing up behind her. His pulse was racing, his heart was beating and his feet methodical as if what he had to do was nothing personal. It was just something he had to do. She felt his hands grab her from behind and spin her round to face him. She saw the quick glint of his weapon just before it pierced into her abdomen… or tried to. The tempered-steel blade couldn't pierce her dense flesh no matter how hard he tried. It was like trying to stab a figure made of hardened galvanized steel!
"Been looking for you." Bridget used his momentary confusion to toss her attacker over her head, but he wasn't going down without a piece of her. He kicked out her leg and pulled Bridget down under him reaching for the top of her sweat pants. She countered his attempted rape reaching out and punching him to the chest and allowing her legs in the air to continue their flight over her attacker until she was standing once more. She spun round to her opponent unwillingly to give up. He charged at her again trying to pin her to the foundation of the bridge behind her; waving his knife, he responded desperately to take out his demons upon her young innocent flesh. Before him, Bridget levitated over his head with the effortless nimbleness of an aerobic spirit and extended her leg into his back, turning him from antagonist to victim with one movement. The breath knocked from his body, the obscured male in the hood and shorts skirted and stumbled to his feet trying to make his getaway. This one was not worth the effort. He charged up the path toward the tunnel and froze when the blonde he attacked dropped down before him on the far end.
How many more of her was there? He turned to dash round the way he came and felt the rush of air dashing up over him. Something knocked him to his feet again and his head bounced off the edge of the tunnel opening. Skidding to a stop, he rotated around once as the blonde girl came up over him and grabbed him by his sweatshirt. Umpteen girls through his life and he finally met one who couldn't be killed or tired out. She was going to teach him a lesson here. Refusing to be overwhelmed, the career rapist grabbed at her neck and tried choking her as hard as he could, but it was like trying to squeeze a steel pipe! What kind of girl was this? Bridget grabbed him by the front drawstrings of his pants and lifted him up off his feet. When her playmate looked again, he realized he was no longer on the ground. They were both slowly rising ten feet into the air!!
What kind of girl had he attacked?
A few minutes later, traffic was blocked along Mississippi Avenue in Denver. The local rescue squad had been called as police officers stood outside their Mississippi Precinct and looked up to the cell phone tower across the street. Someone had heard the figure screaming his head off from the tower. His underwear had been pulled up tight through the seat of his pants and secured to the tower. Pedestrians and by-standers wanted to know how he got up there. When they finally dragged him down, they found tattooed to his chest a message:
"Deliver to Captain Ed O'Neil, 38th Precinct, New York City."