"Chapter 5 "Bravery"
To be fearless, whether in a small struggle or in a great danger is something we all want. That can be difficult for some, of course. We hope we can be courageous for whatever reason, we pray for it. Then if we fail to be fearless, that makes it less likely it will be different some other time.
- Michael Mules, Journal Entry
The day after Michael confided in Wendy, they went to the warehouse again, and he brought Chandra Suresh's book. While he was jumping - or rather hopping - around the warehouse, onto and over the catwalks, testing his stamina, Wendy was sitting on the hood of his car, reading the book.
"So your senses, have they gotten better?" she shouted to him, as he had just landed back on the floor on the other end of the room.
"A little!" He then started running back in her direction. "My sense of smell, mainly! Still working on the others."
Midway across the room, he launched off the floor once again, spinning himself backwards as he went over another catwalk.
"There's another chapter on people being able to fly," she said in awe. "Can you imagine there being people who can actually do all these things."
"Amazing, huh?" Michael said when landed back on the floor.
Flipping back to the start of the book where the directory was, Wendy looked through the different chapter titles. "Mind reading, telekinisis, spontaneous regeneration. These things are actually possible."
Michael walked back to his car and sat on the hood next to her as she continued to flip through the pages.
"There's even a chapter on being able to see into the future," he told her. "If I had the chance, I might trade my powers for one of those."
Wendy looked at him, narrow-eyed. "Don't bring yourself down. You can jump higher than any other person, and in time you'll be able to hear a faint whisper from a mile away."
"I amaze you that much?"
He laughed a bit and she joined in, knocking her shoulder at his. Michael couldn't recall when he had last felt so relaxed around someone. Maybe just with family. To think that the two of them had not even known the other existed a month ago. It probably had to do with the crowds they were in.
"Say, have your friends asked about where you've been disappearing to?"
This question caused Wendy's grin to dim. She drew her gaze around the large and empty room for a long moment.
"Those guys aren't really my friends," she finally admitted, stuttering. "We just smoke together. Truth is you're the person who I've had the longest conversation with."
Now Michael looked at her with narrow eyes.
"Come on. You're telling me that you hardly talk to your parents at home? He asked in disbelief. "Or any family member?"
"It's just me and my parents. My dad is a total hick and my mom spends half of everyday kneeling in front of her Jesus shrine. They're not even married." In a pause, she rolled her eyes. "I know my mom just stays with him to have a roof over her head and my dad just wants someone to do the cooking and cleaning."
Swallowing hard in shock over Wendy's revelation, Michael tried to find the right way to respond.
"So where does that leave you," he asked, hoping it wasn't the wrong move.
It took a minute for her to answers.
"I was a knot on their little arrangement, but they accepted me and just - tolerated me existing."
In letting all of this information sink into his head, Michael suddenly remembered dropping off Wendy at her house yesterday and seeing her mother She had been bagging a pile of leaves in the front lawn and didn't even acknowledge her daughter coming home, even when Wendy greeted her. The woman had also given him a look of concern; at first, Michael thought it was for Wendy, but now that he heard this.
"Mark told me about your mother's rant at church once," he said.
Wendy rolled her eyes again. "Not one of her proudest moments. None of it matters, though. One more year, and I'll be eighteen and graduating, and I can go to wherever I please."
"You'll just take off like that?" he asked her in interest.
"I've been saving from my job since I was fourteen, and by next year I'll have enough to start a new life." She proclaimed this with glee in her voice and eyes.
"I've thought about doing that," Michael professed. "Just pick up and leave to wherever the road takes me."
Wendy smiled. "I guess that's something we have in common."
He nodded. Talking to her was easy, that was for sure.
"Come on, I'll take you home." Michael hopped off the car's hood and offered his hand to her. She took it, grinning widely and allowed him to sit her down in the car and close the door for her.
Parked at the front of her house, Wendy took a deep breath before unbuckling her seatbelt and getting out of the car. "Thanks, see you tomorrow then?"
"Definitely."
As she walked into the front lawn, an idea flashed into Michael's head.
"Hey Wendy," When she looked back at him, he quenched at his fear. "Do you want to go to the prom with me?"
"Prom?" Wendy had to be sure she was hearing him right.
"Yeah, would you like to be my date?"
To her surprise, Michael"s face was turning into a scarlet red that she had never seen on a person.
"Yes," she said as calmly as possible after an awkward silence.
"Yes?" Now Michael had to be sure that he heard her right.
"Yes, I'd love to," Even though she didn't realized it at first, Wendy knew she was smiling more than she had ever done so before.
"Alright then, so we can talk about it later," Michael said.
"Yeah, okay."
Wendy started back towards her house again, only a bit slower, unsure of what to do now. There was no point in yelling it out to her parents in delight, but that didn't matter. As she reached her door, she brushed her hands over her head in both nervousness and excitement.
As Michael drove off, he was feeling like he had jumped off the Empire State Building and landed on his feet without attaining a single bruise.
The house was more quitte than normal, and though it was peaceful, Angela found herself concerned. Sure, she couldn't hold it against her grown up daughters for staying out late, or even for not coming home for a few days at a time; the only reason they were still living with them was to save money. Now, however, Michael was staying out constantly until the very end of his curfew.
Her husband, Dan, was sitting next to her on the living room couch, watching CNN. She would bring this up with him, but when it came to finding out what their kids were doing, he would usually put together a wrong conclusion.
"Do you know what responsibilities a congressman actually has?" he asked her as they watched a report on the candidates for different states.
"Not really, I never did pay attention in government class." She looked at the clock hanging on the wall over the TV. It was nearly seven. Should she even be this concerned, her son was eighteen now and graduating high in just under two months. This would become a normal thing, as it was with his older sisters, but Michael was her only son and now that he was pretty much grown up, Angela was mourning over the fact that in way she would be losing him, soon.
Finally, footsteps sounded from behind the couch. She turned her upper body around to face a seemingly cocky-looking Michael who apparently entered from the back of the house.
"Hey guys, what's for dinner?" he asked casually.
"Is that all I'm good for?" Angela came out sounding more irritated than she meant to. "You are gone all day and you finally come home just so I can feed you."
Her son tried to smile innocently. "You do my laundry pretty well too."
"Don't even joke with that to her," Dan said without turning around to face him, his eyes still on the report on the candidates.
"Right." Michael listened to his father and thought carefully about what to say next. "How was your day?"
Now Angela smiled. "Fine, thank you. Right now, we're watching the announcements on the run for congress. You should start watching these things if you're going to vote."
The three of them watched the TV as a photo came up of another suited man with short-cut hair and the usual grin that politicians showed people. The bar on the bottom read: NEW YORK STATE CANDIDATE, DISTRICT ATTORNEY NATHAN PETRELLI.
"Politicians, not enough good ones to save the world," Michael remarked.
That was not a surprising comment from her son on this topic. Politics, mostly a pain, he would always say. Government officials usually became corrupted crooks who did as they pleased to keep their power.
"Well they're the ones who are supposed to," Angela told him. "They're some of the only ones who can."
Behind her, Michael darted his eyes sideway.
Patting on the empty space on the couch next to her, she said, "Sit down and watch with us."
"No thanks." He turned for the direction of the kitchen. "I'll go get some of that spaghetti and go to my room."
Frowning, Angela looked back to Michael as he left the living room. "How did you know I made spaghetti?"
"I smelled it."
In the kitchen, Michael started putting a mountain of spaghetti in his bowl when the room suddenly went dark.
"Oh man," he groaned. "Hey mom, the power's out!"
Moments later, the floor suddenly shook lightly for mere seconds. That was the quickest earthquake ever, as far as Michael could remember. It sounded as if a giant had thrown his fist on the ground in anger.
"Oh my God!" His mother yelled from the living room.
"This has happened before, you know!"
"Call the fire department, Michael!" she shouted. "The Jameson's house is on fire!"
"What -" His mouth fell open when he saw the flames erupting from outside the window over the sink. Oh my God was right.
He let his plate of food drop from his hands and smash all over the floor as he ran out of the kitchen, and out the front door. Running across the lawn and jumping over the wooden fence, Michael spotted a person tumbling out from the smoking house and dropping onto the lawn facedown.
Kneeling down, he slowly rolled the now unconscious form. It was the Jameson's fifteen year-old daughter, with a torn gash on her forehead. She moaned faintly.
Wait, where was the other Jameson girl? The six year-old, Marie. Michael had seen her running into the house as he had driven by just a few minutes before. If she was still in there -
He knew what his instincts were telling him to do, but his fears weren't allowing him to move. The fire was could be seen though the front door, already enveloping the inside, quickly. Was she even still in there? The girl might have escaped another way. Then he heard the horrific scream that belonged to a little girl like a vibration in his ear.
"Marie . . ." whimpered the older Jameson girl, still half-conscious.
The girl screamed again, this time it sounded like a blow horn that's sound wave was going completely into his ear.
There was no room for fear.
Without another thought, Michael put his sweater's hood over his head, leaped onto the front porch, and he went through the front door in a dash.
He went through a line of flames in the living room, with mo regards to it's high temperature. When spinning into a hallway that was barely seeable in the thick smoke, he stopped. The fire had certainly spread fast. Smoke was trying to break into his nostrils heavily, but he kept his mouth and nose covered.
How was he going to find her?
"Just concentrate your hearing," he told himself.
Michael ignored the sound of the fire eating at the house and everything in it, and he looked for the girl's voice. For a minute, there was nothing - but then he heard the soft whimpering coming from down the hallway. Following with his eyes closed and by instinct, he knew to turn into at a corner. The smoke cleared a bit as he moved forward, so he opened his eyes and reached the doorway to the kitchen.
It was good that he had scanned the condition before entering: the ceiling was broken apart like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle; through it, he could see what looked like a huge log with two thick cables hanging off it.
They were power lines and they reached the floor where it was dripping in water. Sparks erupted from the ripped lines and they flickered when making contact with the water. To the right corner of the kitchen there was a small, round table and sure enough, there was little Marie Jameson, in a huddle with her legs covering her face. She knew she couldn't set foot on the floor without being electrocuted.
The table was twenty feet away from the doorway and all Michael had to do was avoid touching the floor and the power lines. It was now or never, from the looks of it, the ceiling wouldn't hold for very long. Taking a few steps back, Michael relaxed his body and then sprinted two big steps before jumping out of the doorway, the nose of his left foot missed the electrical floor by centimeters. His right arm breezed passed one of the power line, then his feet landed on the edge of the table in a firm manner, without shaking at all.
Marie raised her head up in surprise but responded to Michael putting his arms around her by placing hers around his neck. Making sure he had her in a tight hold, he jumped from the table back into the doorway and he started back down the hallway with the girl still safely in his arms.
He kept Marie's face covered in his chest, as the smoke was more unbearable than it had been just a minute before, and what was worse; the fire now blocked the direction where Michael had come from at the corner. He could feel ashes of burning down from above him. Standing in the middle of the hall, he looked to their left, not being able to see a thing for a moment; then a door seemed to stroll into view right in front of him.
It then strolled back as quickly as it came, but Michael now realized he was looking down at another hallway.
He sprinted and grabbed the doorknob without having to see it. When inside, he closed the door behind them and before being able to scan the room for a way out, the wall on the left combusted, Michael ducked with his back on the wall to protect a screaming Marie.
They needed to get out of here, now. Soon this room would be in flames like the rest f the house. On his opposite side, there was a curtained window and just an arm's length to his right, a small wooden chair. Michael freed an arm from Marie to pick up the chair and in one swing, he threw it towards the window. The chair smashed through the glass, taking the curtain with it, and revealing the safety of outside.
His legs suddenly felt hot as the fire had reached the door behind him and was creeping from beneath the it.
Michael ran and leaped through the broken window
They had made it.
He ran to the end of the backyard, placed a reluctant Marie back on her own feet, and began to examine her. The girl's face and cloths were covered in black, and she was breathing fast but seemed virtually all right. A thumping heart sounded out of nowhere, Michael quickly realized he was hearing Marie's rapid but seemingly all right heart beat.
Behind her, he saw the broken down power pole that had stood right behind his and the Jameson's backyards. Judging by the scorching marks at the cut up point, it looked like it had been burned off. They both looked back at the destroyed house, where it's smoke was flowing up into the sky in a mist.
A thought caught Michael. The fire had erupted so quickly and so destructively; though he wasn't much of a chemist or physics expert but he didn't think this sort of thing would cause such a big a disaster. At least it was just the house that was gone, whatever the case.
Marie was now looking at him without blinking. He wondered what she was thinking; could she recognize him through his black-stained face? What mattered was that she was safe, but he didn't want to be asked questions. "Stay here," he told her. "Someone will come for you in a minute."
The girl nodded and Michael stood up, giving the ruined house a last glance before he jumped over the broken down pole and into his family's backyard.
Bravery is not something that is taught, but something that has to be found within each person. It's also not about being brave, but seizing the opportunity to be courageous. Feeling and being something are two different things. So when we rise to the chance to be fearless, that is when it becomes worth wild.
- Michael Mules, Journal Entry
To Be Continued