Super Nobody (Alphas and Omegas Book 1) (13 page)

“You're going to be fine,” Mr. Springfield
had said. “We've got our best people working on this.”

“I want Montgomery in to look at him!” his
father shouted. “She's the best. Why can't they even spare him a
single look? He's
my son
!”

“Get a hold of yourself Michael,” Susanna
said, loudly. “You're going to wake him up.”

“Yeah, that's another thing. Isn't it about
time we told him the truth? I mean, my God Susanna, considering who
I am, and his grandfather...he has the right to know.”

“You agreed not to tell him. For his
protection!”

“That was before all this!”

What did he have a right to know, exactly,
except that several of the teenagers over at Marcus Patterson were
going Active even though the mathematical chances of that happening
were astronomically low? That the teachers at LADCEMS and Marcus
Patterson and the High School were Actives themselves? That he
basically lived in Superville?

“Go home right this minute,” Susanna said.
“You're not thinking clearly.”

“Oh yeah, and maybe you can sort me out,” his
father hissed. “That's your
job
, isn't it?”

“Maybe you should spare a few seconds and
think about your son,” she said. “He's lying in there, hurt,
confused, probably scared. You want to dump a nuclear bomb right in
the middle of that? Personally I think he's taking this better than
you. He's the one who has to cope with this situation, not
you.
Now, put some faith in the administration and the
school system. They're in place to handle these types of things.
You're not.”

“I-”

She steamrolled him. “Michael, I understand.
You're confused, you're upset. We all are. But you're not the best
qualified person to deal with this. The superintendent and the
regents know what they're doing. Trust
them.”

Michael could just about hear the sigh of
defeat.

She said something else, but Michael couldn't
make it out.

“You mean it?” Michael's father asked, a
hopeful note obliterating all the anger from earlier.

“It's been a while, hasn't it? Too long, I
think. Go home, get ready.” Suddenly his mother had gone from stern
to playful in an instant. What was that about?

Michael's father came in and stood over him
for a few minutes. Michael wanted to open his eyes and tell his
father everything was fine. More importantly, he wanted to start
asking questions, mostly about their discussion outside. But then
he would know that his son had been spying on them, and Michael
couldn't have that.

He felt a bit guilty, but mostly he burned
with loneliness and a little shame when his dad put a hand on his
forehead, and left.

A specialist came to see him over the next
few days, a woman named Mrs. Montgomery. She was big and round,
with permanent smile lines deep in her bright red cheeks. She
didn't carry a clipboard like the other doctors, but she did have a
soft blue shirt and matching pants. Whatever she was doing when she
gave him a back massage or had him exercise, it was working. The
agony had faded on the first night, and his arms and legs were
itching to move.

“Hi there Michael,” she said, after the third
day. She always gave him the same bright smile that wouldn't go
away, no matter what.

“You're Active aren't you?”

“Bad news,” she said, still smiling broadly.
“Your parents sent me over with the homework you're going to have
to do while the school jumps back on its feet. And I think today we
can get you out of this bed and get you home.”

He wasn't a doctor or a mathematician, but he
could put two and two together. This was the same woman his mom and
dad had fought about. When Mr. Springfield said he was getting the
best treatment, he really meant it. This woman was putting his
bones back together just by looking at him. Or maybe when she did
the back massages. He'd never heard of someone with broken ribs
getting a back massage. Then again, he admitted to himself, still
not a doctor.

He groaned, looking at his backpack stuffed
full of books. But, seeing as how he had a table on his bed, he
figured he had to do it sooner or later, and he could do it
standing up. When he pulled open his backpack to start his
homework, he remembered the letter from Charlotte. Something still
got to him about it, and he opened it.

Hi Michael,

I'm really sorry I couldn't come 2 school the
last 3 days. Actually I can't come anymore. Anyway don't worry
about me. Just spin one of the old CDs I was telling you about. You
should play track 6 on the Janis Joplin album. Or if you want, song
#2...

He hadn't seen it before, but there it was!
All the others were numbers.

He couldn't wait. He changed in the bathroom,
telling himself that his parents were keeping secrets from him,
this Montgomery woman was keeping secrets from him, and maybe even
Grandpa too. At least Mr. Springfield had told him he couldn't tell
Michael everything. This city was one big secret factory, and they
were all working hard at keeping Michael (and everybody else) from
knowing the truth. He resented being left in the dark, just because
he was a kid. If they were worried about something, he felt he
should know what it was, at least.

Sneaking out of the hospital wasn’t as hard
as he thought it might be. There were stairways at the end of the
hall where the nurses didn’t often go. Once, when he overheard two
of them talking, he ducked into the floor above them and walked
through as if he owned the place. At the other end of the hall was
another stairway. He avoided the middle of the floor, where the
elevators were. There he would be trapped with whoever decided to
ask him questions.

He walked home from the hospital, keeping to
the windswept side roads. He couldn't stay on the main roads, where
people would stop and ask if he wanted a ride. On the other hand,
his backpack weighed half a ton, and he couldn't be as sneaky as he
wanted without risking a broken back.

It was weird, breaking into his own house,
but it had to be done. His father was home, and his mother too, and
they wouldn't understand if they saw him tromp through the front
door, go out the back, go into the garage, and leave for
school.

The garage had a motion light, and so did the
back door of his house. Instead of cutting across the driveway, he
stowed his ridiculously heavy backpack next to the garbage cans and
went around back.

The back of the garage was a sort of
micro-no-man's land of thorny bushes and broken equipment, like the
shovel head from two summers ago when his dad had been working on
the sump pump (a gross, horrible smelling thing that was buried in
your yard for some reason), or Michael's first bike, which was now
rust all over. The back of the garage was even worse. Sawhorses
were piled with warped, gray old lumber, a canoe, and several
unrecognizable shards of metal. Not to mention more tangles of
thorny bushes. It was slow going, but at last he managed to duck
under the canoe and pick his way carefully across the back.

Now for the hard part. Out in the open, there
were windows to his parents' room, and the motion sensor could
flash on at any time. He got his garage key ready and started
inching his way down the side of the garage.

Time slowed down. His breath came super fast,
but he was moving super slowly. He expected his parents to look out
the window at any second. He expected the light to flash on, and
his dad to come out with a baseball bat, shouting to get off his
property. Plus, it was getting pretty cold, now that he wasn't
moving around.

He was just within reach of the doorknob when
the bedroom lights turned on. He froze, even though he realized he
was out in the open. His heart was hammering in his chest, ready to
burst out as soon as he heard the first shout.

But it didn't happen. He could barely make
out the forms of his mom and dad moving around the bedroom, but he
didn't feel like they were moving in any strange way. Well, it was
now, or just give up.

He inched his way down the side of the
garage, moving as slowly as he could bear. After a few centuries
the door came up ahead, and he slipped his key inside. Instead of
the normal metallic rattle, it sounded like a machine gun going
off. And the squeak of the garage door was like that fifth grade
girl from the day before, screaming in protest.

He pushed the door open and eased himself
inside. His bike was next to the unused but nicely built tool rack,
and the other woodworking tools his father was never home to use.
Then, with all the speed of a half-sleeping snail, he inched his
way out the door and around the garage again, this time with his
bike.

Only once he was down the driveway did he
consider that it might have been faster just to walk to the school
and walk home. His bike was better than running, that was for sure.
He knew by his entire fifth grade year that with the right running
start to hop on the bike, nobody could catch you.

The blocks flew past, and he crossed at the
light that usually brought him over to the library on his paper
route. He'd have to ask his mom who they found to sub for him while
he was in the hospital. Last time they'd asked the neighbor girl, a
fifth grader named Rachel Pescatello, and he had to pay her and
everything.

But he couldn't think about that now. As the
school came into view, he couldn't think about anything but being a
stealth ninja. Because there were people crawling all over the
place.

The school looked like a construction zone
crossed with a police investigation. There were guys with hard hats
and big steel-toed boots looking over the damage from hydraulic
platforms. Several spotlights were pointed at different parts of
the building, washing it in blinding white. A couple of fire trucks
sat on the large lawn on either side of the school, with
firefighters standing by. Police cars and officers stood nearby,
drinking coffee and eating donuts. The firefighters weren't in full
gear, just heavy pants with suspenders. Michael guessed they were
waiting for the school to blow up, or at least catch on fire.

And someone was floating in the air, just
next to the construction guys.

He didn't have time to stand around gawking,
as his mother put it, so he pedaled on and circled around the
school. He went the long way, all the way around the hulking Marcus
Patterson building and the sports fields near them. He went in at a
good clip, and pulled up behind a lonely van standing sentry in the
school's parking lot.

Another police car sat near the rear entrance
to the school, but the only officer was inside and reading
something on his tablet. Crouching low, it was easy to get right
behind the car and get a look at the rear section of the
school.

The back door was locked. He knew that, after
school, you had to be buzzed in, and if there wasn't anybody in the
office, it was tough luck, said the duck. He didn't need the door
though. There were several enormous cracks in the school, big
enough to get through easy. Big enough to get through without being
noticed, that was a different story.

There was also a problem of motion detectors,
but from the absolutely black look of the inside, Michael figured
they had probably cut the power to the entire building. Who would
be stupid enough to sneak into an unstable school, surrounded by
police and firefighters, at night?

Michael smiled to himself.

It was a matter of a quick dart, though
Michael thought he saw the policeman look up as he disappeared into
the school. He wormed his way into the band room, headed out into
the hall, and made his way to the stairs over near the office.
Thank goodness for the carpeted hallway floors. He could hear
voices, but in this spooky gloom it seemed like the wind was
bringing strange sounds to him. There was no way to tell where they
were.

Somewhere nearby, the structure groaned in
protest, like a dinosaur with a stomachache. A bit of moonlight
filtered in through some of the school's cracks, but other than
that everything was black.

He'd never trembled with fear and excitement
at the same time, except maybe when he made his first money
delivery to Trent. It was a long time ago, but the memory came back
fresh. He remember thinking that everybody in the dodge ball area
was his enemy, any of them might just punch him for no good reason.
Here and now, it was the same feeling, that there were threats
everywhere, just around this corner...no. Good.

He took out the note. “Twenty-three, sixteen,
twenty-four,” he muttered.

He had to jump over an enormous crack in the
school up here, but made the stupid decision to see what was down
there first. As soon as he looked down, he regretted it. The
moonlight clearly showed him a tangle of sharp edges, from the
concrete and snapped off pieces of rebar poking up like frozen
snakes. Below...yikes, he hadn't realized it was so
far
down.

No problem. Just don't trip, he told himself,
you can jump three feet. Three feet is nothing, you do it in gym
class all the time. Yeah, another part of him said, but in gym
class the floor is
there.
It's not ready to eat me.

He backed up to get a running start. When he
took off, he heard a noise, and nearly missed his footing. The gap
seemed to stretch out as he ran up, but he launched himself across,
and only tripped as he landed. He landed a little off, skinning his
knees and his palm.

“Rug burn,” he muttered. “Ugh.”

There, her locker was there, bathed in the
soft moonlight not far from the crack.

He ran up to it and began spinning the
lock.

“Twenty-three,” he said.
“Sixteen...Twenty-four.”

He took a deep breath. If this didn't work,
he could be in trouble with the police for absolutely nothing. He
could be in trouble with his parents, with the school. This note,
and these three numbers could be the end of him. He pulled. The
lock came open.