Chapter Eight

Leonard

After that close call, life went somewhat back to normal. I pretended to admire my love interest from afar as Dinah and I became lab partners when in truth, I was closer to her than ever. I eventually told Dinah that though Gina was beautiful (and don't get me wrong, Gina was very beautiful, but Dinah just had something... more), she was straight, and nothing could happen between us. It was another lie that I felt bad about telling, but if she only knew... I'd rather love Dinah at a distance and be in agony everyday because of it than to tell her, have her react badly, lose her and be in agony, anyway. I could only hope that a) she loved me back in secret, or b) my feelings for her would fade away and I moved on.

Until then though, I had to pretend I was a normal teenage girl who definately didn't hear other people's thoughts on occasion. Normality, it seemed, got farther away from me the more I was with Dinah. Just when I thought I had gotten the hang of all the whispers and humming, I'd touch Dinah or she'd touch me, and my heart would pound and the humming turned to buzzing. I'd gotten used to the buzzing, and I'd accidentally touched her one day to get a beaker in lab class, and I started to get flashes. At least, I got some from her. I saw a balding caucasian man in about his early fifties, which I suddenly felt hatred for. Same balding man sitting on a bed and talking on a phone. Rage, fury. Fear on this man's face. Slight satisfaction. The woman known as Huntress in a previous dream. Annyoance, rage, and betrayal. A knife in the wall besides Huntress, Huntress holding her arm. Guilt. Just as quickly as we had touched, both of us snapped our arms away. I again reached for the beaker as if nothing happened.

That was the first time that had happened, if you don't count the images in those dreams. It happened once more that day, and Dinah seemed freaked out.

Did I give off some sort of signal when I received messeges from her? Did she get them? I wasn't exactly sure, but by this point, I had only one theory regarding my abilities: Maybe being near Dinah was what brought on the stress that made my new abilities show up. But then, the humming started a little while before my crush on her began. Could it be that the whole reason I befriended Dinah in the first place was to be near her, and I hadn't even realized it as the begining of my crush on her?

After school that same day, I waited at the flagpole, but Dinah didn't show up. Usually she waited with me there until Ms. Gordon took her home, so I felt weird about being there by myself. I actually felt weird about being anywhere in that school by myself anymore. I waited a good twenty minutes though, before I started walking, not in the direction of my house, but towards the subway.

I paid my fare and waited for the subway to get there and take me to the other side of the city. After about a three or four block walk from the subway, I saw the building I was looking for, the Dark Horse Bar. The lights were off, and it was dark, chairs were up on tables, stools were on the bar, and the place was extremely clean. Not at all like the rough and tumble biker bars you see on TV. Uncle Leonard was a clean freak, not to mention he loved his bar like it was his baby, so he wouldn't let it go to ruins. He'd rather die. I saw two doors on each side of the bar. The door to the right lead to an apartment that belonged to a tenant who worked at the bar to pay for rent, and the door to the door to the left lead to Uncle Leonard's place. I walked through the door to the left and up the stairs. To my right from the top of the stairs was a rust colored door, and I knocked, not sure if he'd be home. If he was, he'd be asleep until about five, when he'd start to open the bar. I hadn't called first, so he could have been off running errands for the bar.

The door opened slowly a crack, and right above the chain lock, my uncle's eyes looked suspitiously at me before he realized who I was. "Gabby?" He closed the door long enough to unlock the chain, then opened it wider for me to enter. "What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to talk to you." I said, walking over to the couch. I realized that I didn't even give him a hello hug, that I had walked right past him, and I am sure he knew something was really wrong at that action alone.

"Are you okay?" I nodded, sitting down.

"Yeah, I'm okay." I told him. "I just needed to ask you about some stuff."

I watched as my uncle went to his refridgerator and brought out a can and a bottle. Corona Light for him and Root Beer for me, as was the norm when visiting my uncle. I took the soda gratefully, and he sat next to me on the couchturning his body so that he leaned his back against the arm, and he faced me. He waited for me to continue. "I was wondering about some of the people who go to your bar. Have you ever had to break up a fight and one of them did something... unusual?" I asked. At this, my uncle's eyebrows rose.

"What kind of question is that?" he asked.

"Well, I-"

"Of COURSE they do unusual stuff. They're drunk." I shook my head and took a drink of my soda.

"No, I'm talking about... well, I heard that when Bruce Wayne left New Gotham about 3 years after the 'quake that tore apart Gotham City, the crime rate went up, and the suspects weren't the usual crooks. These were even more dangerous, the-"

"Freaks." I winced as if he's slapped me playfully on a sunburned shoulder.

"Yeah, I've heard of 'em, hell, even saw a few crazy things happen the last couple of years, but it ain't my cutomers that worry me, it's Kyle. Hot as hell, brings customers back on nights she works, but piss her off... She's good for busness, but she sometimes scares the hell out of me." Uncle Leonard stared at me. "What are you really getting at? Why the sudden interest?" From his tone, I could tell he already knew the answer to his questions, but wanted to hear it from me. I hesitated.

"Promise me it stays in this apartment, what I have to say." His eyes narrowed.

"Gabby..." Uncle Leonard's tone was mostly 'Just tell me already!' with a hint of 'Are you SURE you're okay?'.

"Please Uncle Leonard, please promise me." My uncle remained silent, and I waited. Finally he nodded.

"As long as you're not hurt or hurting someone else, I promise not to tell your mother. I'm sure it'll cause some sibling rivalry, but a promise is a promise." He then stopped talking as he continued to watch me.

"What do you know about the Institute? My parents brought me there a lot when I was ten or eleven, but stopped. They then moved me across the country, I was told, to be near you... but that was a lie."

"I honestly don't know anything more than that." Guilt. He was lying. He seemed to go pale as he saw the look on my face and knew that I didn't believe him. He glanced at the clock on his VCR, then back at me. "It's nearing five o'clock. Kyle should be here in the next half hour, so I should start opening the bar. We've got to set up some reunion party or something."

I nodded, and set my can on the counter.

"You're not going to tell my parents that I know about the Institute, right?"

"I made a promise, Gabby. They won't hear anything from me. Tell Linda I'm coming over for Thanksgiving next week, and that your grandpa'll be there too." I sighed. I hated when he spoke to me as if I was still the eleven year old that idolixed him so long ago. I still do a little bit, but when I was eleven, I thought he was about two steps down from God because he was like me. Now, I am older and though I do like spending time with him and hearing his coming out story, I don't sit lay on the floor with my legs up in the air anticipating the story of his first love, Brian, even though the story had a tragic ending. Sometimes I wonder if he expects me to beg him for the story of how he met Brian. The last couple of years he hadn't really spoken down to me like I was small again, but he did now, possibly because I shook him up about the Institute.

"Okay. Bye Uncle Leonard," I said as I walked out of the apartment. He waved, and I could still feel his guilt for lying to me. As I stood (holding on to the railing above my head) in the crowded subway, I thought about what he'd said about the unique people of this city and how I was one of them. My father too, I think. I thought about my family here in New Gotham. I felt I couldn't trust my parents anymore, and now Uncle Leonard wasn't making my new found paranoya any better. I never rode in the Sedan after that day I had the dream about my father and me going to a place I could never remeber.

Maybe it was some sort of treatment that I got after each 'test' that made me forget.

The only person I felt safe with was Dinah, and even with her secrets she knew nothing about the Institute. As much as I sometimes felt nervous around Dinah because of my feelings for her, it was always relaxing to take a ride with her. I'd forget for a little while that I'm different. We were always in a comofrtable silence except for on two occasions. One was when 'Eternal Flame' by the Bangles came on, followed 'We Belong' by Pat Benatar (Ah.

Eighties chick rock, you gotta love it), and we sang along with the music (not well, mind you). The second time was when I had asked Dinah if she would like to come over and spend the night two weeks from then, which was the week after Thanksgiving. It was the only time I could think of where we'd both be free. She said she would love to, and seemed excited about staying over. So if I could've just gotten through the next two weeks, I had something to look forward to.