Super Nobody (Alphas and Omegas Book 1) (34 page)

Play time. Girl-chasing. Who did this guy
think he was?

“Yes sir.”

“Wonderful. And if I hear your name, or see
your face in connection with anything outside of LADCEMS for the
rest of the year, mind you, what happened at the library is going
to be absolutely nothing compared with what will happen when I'm
not worried about Archibald Lansing.”

For a brief moment, Michael's entire body
shuddered with remembrance. Or was Mr. Jackson doing something to
him right now? It seemed like all the hairs on his body were
standing on end, and there was a painful, awful itching in his
fingers and toes. But it lasted only a moment, and then it was
gone.

“We understand each other, I trust,” Mr.
Jackson said darkly.

“Yes sir.”

He shook his head and left.

Michael set out, straining his tiny non-adult
brain to its maximum capacity in order to find Charlotte. She
wasn't in the extended care portion of the hospital, so he
eventually had to ask one of the nurses where he could find her. In
the end, after the nurse tried asking him to go back to his room,
and after she threatened to call security, and after she told him
Charlotte was in no condition to see him or anybody right now, she
relented. After that it was a matter of heading down a few floors
and patiently, with good manners, telling them to go suck an egg,
that he was going to see Charlotte, and there was no way they could
stop him without an Active. Plus he threatened (lightly, lightly)
to inform his grandfather that they had stopped him from just
looking in and saying a few words to the girl who had basically
saved the entire town. At least, she'd saved his life.

A rush of emotion hit him when he finally saw
the door. He'd told her about liking her. He was pretty sure he
wasn't going to see her again at that point. Now it seemed really
stupid. The situation was going to be awkward. Ugh.

Mr. Jackson was wrong. Michael didn't want to
worry about girl stuff. Making up plans to fight Mr. L was much
better than this sappy, crying stuff. What would he say? Sorry I
got you shot? Thanks for turning into a wolf? Thanks for putting
your neck on the chopping block and hoping that Mr. L would miss
when he swung his ax? I'm glad you're not dead? Everything sounded
really horrible, either silly or something out of a romance movie
like his mom watched all the time. Which made them horrible. So,
horrible either way.

Not knowing about her reaction was worse than
being afraid of Mr. L and his legion of zombies. His palms were
suddenly sweaty, and his face was probably on its way from red to
purple. Did he smell bad? He'd just been sitting in his bed. Maybe
he should just go sit this one out. She was awesome, the most
awesome girl in the entire world. Surely she would come and see
him.

...unless she hated his guts. If she hated
his guts, then he was wasting his time even being here. She would
shout and rant at him until he had to run out of the room before
crying in front of her.

His only friend in the world, and he had to
go and tell her he liked her. What an idiot.

Well, there was no way to know how she felt
unless he went into that room and stared into her eyes, talked to
her (somehow anyway). There was no way to prepare, he just had to
summon up the willpower.

“Just go and talk to her,” he muttered to
himself.

He pushed open the door and tried to sneak
in. It was silly, he knew it. He couldn't stop himself though.
Beyond was another sterile room with pastel yellow walls and too
many machines quietly beeping away. Only this room was dark.
Somebody had pulled the venetian blinds closed and left Charlotte
in shadow.

She was wearing a mask, just like in his
dream. It was clear and made her look a bit like a jet fighter
pilot. The nearby machines pumped a little accordion up and down,
and spat out a thin roll of paper showing how close she was to
death. She was paler than he could ever remember it, so white it
almost seemed like he should be able to see through her skin to
whatever was hidden underneath. The bed dwarfed her, shrank her
down somehow until she was the size of an eight year old.

He just stared.

“Hey,” she said, after a while. He hadn't
seen her eyes open. Her voice was muffled through the mask.

“Hey,” he said.

“What've you been up to?”

“Oh...you know, doom and gloom from my
parents, from Mr. Jackson...and, oh yeah, the nurses are all trying
to kill me.”

She shook lightly. At first he thought there
was something wrong, but he soon saw that she was laughing.

“I dreamed your mom came in here,” he told
her.

“Yeah, she was in. She had to take the twins
out.”

“I saw her cry.”

Charlotte's smile widened. “You know already,
my mom never cries.”

He stared at her some more. There were a lot
of things he didn't want to say. He didn't want to look stupid
again. But something inside made him want to tell her that she was
really important to him. He liked her. A lot. But that couldn't
come out. It already had. What would be the point of telling her
again? She knew.

She sat there, just looking at him. A slow
smile started creeping up beneath the mask, and he felt himself
heat up around the neck and ears. She didn't even have to say
anything and he was embarrassed. He went over and opened the
window.

The falling sunlight transformed her. He
didn't know how, but when he turned around, there was Charlotte.
She hadn't been there before. It was only a shell. Now this was the
real thing, alive and sparkling. With a little sun on her, he
realized he'd just helped her start to glow. Because that's what
she did, she glowed.

“You're super, Michael,” she said.

Brent Meske lives, works, takes care of his
son, loves his wife, reads, writes, and experiments in Photoshop
all from the comfort of his home just south of the border with
North Korea. Some nights he dreams of transforming into a superhero
and ending the communist regime in a little under three hours.

Thanks for reading.

Sadly, free books aren’t free to write, as my
wife enjoys reminding me. The next few can’t be free. I have to
eventually clear up my debt and put my son through school. If you
liked this one, please ask your mom to fork over her credit card
for a couple of bucks, because
Super Anybody
and
Super
Everybody
are on their way. Or if you’re old enough, skip going
to Starbucks one day and buy one of my pay-for books. I’m sure you
won’t be disappointed.

An awesome fan might also write a review for
this book wherever one found and downloaded it, hint hint. I also
welcome folks to my
Facebook page
, like
and look around for some inspiration, reading, news, and community
story writing, if you’re into that kind of thing.

A special thanks goes out to Matt, who helped
me polish this one up, Kevin and Brian, who weighed in on the cover
design, and Renee who’s been relentless in supporting everything
creative I’ve ever done. She’s kind of my hero.

Something Super:

Patriots
(Something Super, the First)

Superhero Stories
Written in Ink
(Something Super, the Second)

Coming Soon: Super Anybody (Alphas and Omegas Book
2)

***

Seven and the Eggs
of Cadbury
(a sugar-coated tale)

Exo
(a
short sci-fi adventure)

Bagged in
Korea

***

The Clements Tales:

From the Desk of
Col. Garrett Ross
(the compiled tales)

Two For
One
(From the Desk of Col. Garrett Ross #1)

Amour Amour Amour
Amour
(From the Desk of Col. Garrett Ross #2)

Inheritance
(From the Desk of Col. Garrett Ross #3)

Just A
Phase
(From the Desk of Col. Garrett Ross #4)

Water
Torture
(From the Desk of Col. Garrett Ross #5)

Medicate
(From the Desk of Col. Garrett Ross #6)

The Elf and The
Ogre
(From the Desk of Col. Garrett Ross #7)

Three Simple
Rules
(From the Desk of Col. Garrett Ross #8)

The Long Road
Home
(From the Desk of Col. Garrett Ross #9)

No Games
(From the Desk of Col. Garrett Ross #10)

Forever
Ends
(From the Desk of Col. Garrett Ross #11)

Under the
Knife
(From the desk of Col. Garrett Ross #12)

Broken
(Breaking Benjamin #1)

Buildup and
Breakup
(Breaking Benjamin #2)

A Preview of

Super
Anybody

Alphas and Omegas: Book Two

(Available soon from Smashwords)

Down there, the
cars were so small you could fit half a city block on one
fingernail. People were just a stream of particles, like those
diagrams of your blood cells zipping along your capillaries. It was
so high, and so far down, that Michael’s stomach wriggled and
lurched like he was hanging over the edge instead of just looking
down.

He couldn’t
understand how it got to this point. He didn’t know how the summer
could have changed into that horrible fall. Everything had gone
wrong, and he had taken all of it, crunched it up into a ball that
just barely fit inside his head until he was waking up every day
with a headache. He didn’t know how he kept at it, and he didn’t
have any idea what had brought him through. But it was over
now.

“
What are you
doing?”

He looked over but
couldn’t see a face. His eyes were brimming with failure now. He
wasn’t good at anything, good for anything.

“
Hey, look, don’t
do this, okay? Come on down, buddy. We don’t want to do anything
permanent okay? Okay, listen, it’s not as bad as you think, okay?
There are options, okay?”

“
Stop saying okay,”
he said.

“
Okay, okay, done.
Just don’t, I mean, come on back down. Whatever you’re thinking of
doing, there’s a better way, okay? Don’t do
nothing-”

Don’t do what, he
wanted to say, but his throat was closed up. Blocked up and
painful.

He
jumped.

Michael Washington was
just not the right sort of super. Oh, sure, he'd done the sorts of
stuff the superheroes all dreamed about: he'd saved the day. He'd
(well, almost anyway) gotten the girl. Gotten the girl to like him
at least. He'd gone up against practically the entire city, when it
was in the clutches of a power hungry madman and come out on top.
You couldn't get much more super than that.

Unless you could
fly.

Michael had to shade
his eyes against the sun, his feet firmly planted on the ground as
Danny Silverstein soared overhead like a bullet. Michael hoped he
got a bunch of bugs stuck on his face, like they had on his
mother's windshield.

Danny did a couple of
loop-de-loops, then darted off to one side to catch a football
thrown at hypersonic speed maybe half a mile off. The throwers were
laughing to each other. One of them slumped down to the ground,
made himself into a real ball, and gestured to the girl to toss
him. She picked up the ball boy as if he weighed no more than a
tennis ball and heaved him out toward the lake. Ball boy flew like
a line drive, and actually skipped over the surface twice, then
three times before splashing beneath the water. Then he came up,
made himself into a sort of boat, and floated out to where a couple
of girls were sunning themselves on a raft in the middle of the
lake.

“
Don't sneer,”
Charlotte told him.

And really, when you
looked at Charlotte, your sneering days were over. Or when you
listened to her. Or smelled her. She was, at fourteen, already
primed to be much more beautiful than her mother. You could see it
in her broad, welcoming smile and the way her eyes twinkled
whenever she smiled or laughed, both of which happened quite often.
You could also catch the way her hair seemed to soak up the
sunlight and glow, whether she was inside or out, whether it was
night or day. It was naturally gold. She was naturally amazing. And
there was the way she went through clothing styles, following
whichever bands and musical trends she happened to be following at
the time. Right now she was dressed in something ridiculous, a hat
that covered most of her head, and a long dress which ended at her
ankles. Around her neck, in the June heat, was a fake fur stole.
She was calling herself a flapper, for some reason. The strangest
thing was that the clothes suited her. They always
did.

Michael scowled to
himself.

“
I wasn't sneering,” he
mumbled.

“
I could practically
hear Danny smashing into a mountain in your mind, you silly head,”
she told him.

“
He wouldn't have to
hit it very hard.” He didn't even bother with the silly head
comment. If Danny’s head was as full of crap as the rest of him, it
would pop like a ripe melon on the side of a
mountain.