Chapter Three: The Beginning of Our Days at Sky High
Layla and I sit in my room and talk for a while before she asks, "You ready to go see Will?" The sky is darkening from what I can tell by glancing out my window.
"You go on," I tell her, "I need to finish working on something." I smile at my quick, fabricated lie and waved her on, "Tell me how it goes." Layla smiles at me before she climbs out the window, which has become the instinctive way to come and go from my house.
Walking to my desk, I grab the poster board that I've been putting together. From old pieces of sheet music, I've cut out the lines and pasted them randomly around the board. When I finish, I am going to 'frame it' with pieces of wood that I've gotten cut and polished for this purpose and place it above my bed.
Layla is gone for a while, and I can't help but feel happiness for her. Her and Will would be the perfect superhero couple, once Will gets his powers of course. I smile at rethinking the encounter with Zack, which patched up our broken relationship. After about half an hour, Layla comes back through my window and smiles at me.
She sits on my bed as I put my nearly finished project away. "Are you excited about Hero classes?" Layla asks and falls backwards onto my bed, still looking at me.
Swiveling my chair to look at my red-headed best friend, "It'd be more exciting if you were in there with me. You could have easily made hero."
"You're starting to sound like Will," Layla leans up against the backboard of my bed. Layla looks like she's processing an idea, "How long did you know that Will didn't have any powers?" I swivel back around to my desk, I was the only one Will had told about not having any powers. "Ari . . ." Layla says, and I hear her stand up.
"He told me, okay?" I can feel my mother's temper flare up within me, "He asked me not to tell anyone, so I didn't. It's called being a good friend." Layla puts a hand on my shoulder, calming me as she looks into my eyes. I take a deep breath, and after a minute, I respond, "Sorry that I got angry at you, Layla. There's just a lot of stuff going on right now, and I'm really stressed."
"C'mon, ladies," I hear my father from my doorway, "you don't want to miss the bus." I groan, throwing my pillow over my head and shooing him out the door. I feel Layla spring from the bed; she's such morning person. Layla begins tugging on my arm, luring me out from under the covers.
With an exertion of force that could have only come from one person, I am pulled onto the floor. "Thanks Pres," I mutter sarcastically against the floor.
"Anytime Sis," he claps his hands together and walks from the room. Grudgingly, I stand up from the floor and get dressed for school while Layla changes in my bathroom.
Opening my door to go downstairs for breakfast, Lash is leaning against my doorframe, "Hello beautiful."
"Do you ever sleep at your own house?" I ask, pushing him from the frame, and closing the door behind me and walking down the stairs.
I hear him following me, "Regularly," as I reach the bottom of the stairs, he's already down them smiling at me, "I just come here in the mornings because you people have food."
"What, no Lash and Speed tonight?" I ask, coming down the stairs from my room, having finished all the homework they gave us the first day of school. 'You're heroes.' They'd said, 'You should get used to this type of responsibility.' Preston was sitting on the couch alone, flipping through the channels. He shook his head and quickly changed the channel as I finished down the last step. As I sit down next to him, I look at him, swallow deeply, and think 'Just come right out and tell him. Preston your best friend is creeper who's hitting on me. Just say it Ariel. Come on, you chicken.' "Pres, there's something I need to tell you."
The seriousness of my tone knocks him into reality, "What is it Ari?"
Swallowing the lump in my throat I tell myself, 'Just say it, he'll be furious, he has to be furious.' "Lash . . . is . . . he's developed a sort of . . . thing . . . for me. He's said it to my face so don't think I'm just making it up." His face looks pained. He stands up from the couch, "Where are you going?" He never answers me, but he rips the door off its hinges and storms out.
"Pres!" I call after him and chase him down the street. For a while, I had just been sitting there, kind of stunned, but had gotten a handle on myself and walked out the hole in our house to chase after my brother. I know I can't just take off flying down the street, someone might see me.
But after a chase down four blocks, uphill, my hands are on my knees and I am breathless. Rationalizing, I can't let him kill Lash, which what he'll surely do if he goes further a block, while I am three behind him, but if I can get to him in time, then Lash will only have the beating he deserves. But to do that, I'll have to fly.
"Here goes nothing," I stand and sprint a short distance before taking off into the air at a speed quicker than what I was running. I see Preston waiting outside as Lash comes out the front door. Preston holds him still and starts punching him as hard as he can. I land in front of him. "PRESTON!" He's still in a fazed state. Lash is close to losing consciousness. "PRESTON! DON'T DO THIS!" I yell at him and he turns to me, dropping Lash. There's a fire in his eyes. "You almost killed him, Preston."
He looks at Lash on the concrete like trash he just tossed away. "He deserves it."He walks in the direction opposite of our home. Stunned, I stand and glance between my brother and Lash. Not really caring what comes of him, I leave him there. I pull out the phone in my pocket, dialing my dad's number.
After a moment, "Hey Ari, what's up?"
"Are you still at the Journal?" My voice obviously sounds worried.
"Yes, do I need to leave?"
I swallow the lump in my throat, "It'd probably be best. Preston ran off and I know I won't be able to calm him down."He accepts and says that he's on his way when I interrupt him, "You might want to call a repair man in the morning. We no longer have a door."
"I don't even want to know," he says and hangs up.
The next night, after Dad had finally forced Preston into coming home, all I hear through the night are their angry voices having a shouting match that they obviously want the entire world to hear.
Sick and tired of their arguing, I stuff some clothes in my backpack and jump out my window, and walk next-door to Will's house. Going to the back of the house, I fly up to Will's window and knock, slightly freaking him out.
"What are you doing here Ari?"
I step into his room, "Dad and Pres are fighting. I couldn't go to sleep." He motions me over to his bed, where I sit next to him. He hugs me comfortingly and I lean into him. We talk for a while. Just about everything. We do it a lot.
He kisses my forehead in a brotherly way. "You should get some sleep, we have classes tomorrow."
I nod, leaning into his shoulder while drifting into sleep peacefully.
A few hours later, Will is shaking me awake, "Ari, Ari, you need to get ready for school. The bus'll be here in half an hour." I grudgingly sit up in his bed and look up at him. I guess it's a good thing we're such good friends and he's seen me in this state before, otherwise I would be really embarrassed. "Mom has breakfast ready downstairs," Will says and heads downstairs.
Dressing quickly, I then head downstairs with a warm welcome from Mrs. Stronghold, "Good morning Ariel. I'm sorry that you had to come here under the circumstances that you did, but just remember that you're welcome here any time at all."
"I'm sorry that I dropped in so unexpectedly, but thank you, means a lot," I smile at her and eat a few pieces of breakfast before heading with Will out the door to the bus stop where Layla is waiting for us.