Super Powereds: Year 2 (81 page)

“How you feeling, Vince?”

Vince turned his head away from the scrimmage to see Hershel Daniels, the towel resource manager, take a seat next to him. The world went tilty for a moment as everything seemed to lose cohesion. How could Hershel be here when Roy was on the field? Because they were fraternal twins, not two people sharing the same body. Vince was slowly getting a handle on re-imposing reality over the dream delusions that dogged him.

“I’m better than I was yesterday,” he replied after his brain stabilized. “The doctors don’t think it was anything too bad. Just got my bell rung.”

“Glad to hear it. Roy felt awful last night. He has a hard time gauging his strength on the field.”

“Tell him I’m fine. And remind him I intercepted the ball, so he was supposed to tackle me. That’s why we practice.”

“I’ll try and get through to him.” Hershel turned his own attention to the field. “Looks like we’ll have another strong team next year.”

No, we won’t. We’re fighting just to stay afloat. Nick says if we don’t decimate in the final match we could lose people from the program. They need me. No, they don’t, because they aren’t real.

“Sure does,” Vince agreed, flashing his friend a large smile. “Hey, this may sound like a weird question, but I have history after this, right?”

161.

Vince did indeed have History of War next, though he wondered what he’d been thinking scheduling a class so far across campus with so little time to make the trip. He burst into the lecture hall, thankful the professor still seemed to be arranging notes on his desk. Professor Fletcher was an older teacher, and as such he’d taken tenure and said goodbye to much need for impressing people or punctuality. He was still a dynamite educator, passionately articulating stories of the ancient Greeks’ battle strategies, or dealing with more modern examples all the way through World War Two. He knew the little pieces of history that made it interesting, breathing life into what most students only ever saw as dead people and old stories.

A quick scan of the room revealed a familiar face, and Vince plopped into a seat next to Camille and pulled out his notebook.

“Made it by the skin of my teeth this time,” he whispered, feeling relieved that he didn’t have to do the walk of shame down the hall’s steps as Professor Fletcher lectured on. The man didn’t stop once he started, and it somehow made the awkwardness of coming in late even worse.

Camille didn’t immediately respond; instead she glanced at him, turned bright red, and found something very interesting on her paper to stare at. That was weird; why wasn’t she talking to him? The class hadn’t started yet, and Professor Fletcher wasn’t the kind of man who cared about people chatting before he began speaking.

Then Vince realized his error. He and Camille were friends in the dream, but in reality they only knew each other in a cursory fashion. They had several of the same friends, but rarely spoke to each other besides rapid greetings. Their social circles were like a Venn diagram, intersecting only in a relatively small portion. He’d always got the feeling she didn’t care much for him, actually, but he had no idea what he’d done to offend her. In fact, he didn’t even sit here in this class; usually he took notes up near Will.

A quick turn over his shoulder revealed his friend looking down at him, confusion evident on his face. Vince started to move, but of course Professor Fletcher chose that moment to begin his lecture. Easing back into his seat, Vince looked over at the girl once more, catching her eyes glancing at him from the supposedly safe corners of their sockets. They darted back to the paper immediately, and he didn’t suspect they’d be journeying in his direction again anytime soon.

As Professor Fletcher droned on, Vince found himself struck by the curiousness of Camille’s role in his dream. He’d cast the girl he barely knew as someone very close to him, one of his best friends. That seemed odd, given how little they’d ever interacted in the real world. Maybe he’d noticed her more than he realized. Or maybe it was just that his dream had been composed of such a large cast that he’d had to pull from all over to fill every role. He’d cast his father as the villain, for goodness sake. There was no sense in reading too far into it.

Class wrapped up fifty minutes later, the professor’s dismissal followed by a flurry of activity as students shoved papers and pens into their backpacks. Vince joined in, wondering how he was going to explain his odd gaffe to Will. If he leaned on the head injury explanation too many more times they were going to send him back to the hospital for additional testing. That would worry his father, plus he was reasonably sure it was a waste of time. Maybe he could tell Will that he’d been hitting on Camille. Nah, Will was too smart for that one.

Vince was so absorbed in thought that he almost didn’t hear the soft mutter that came from Camille’s lips. Looking over, he saw she was red again, and her eyes were facing straight forward. She wore a look of determination, and she hadn’t made any moves to put her pens or notebook away.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I caught that,” Vince said politely.

“Eleven years,” Camille repeated, this time just barely loud enough to actually be heard. “Eleven years, and when you finally talk to me, all you say to me is some comment about almost being late to class.” She grabbed her supplies and jammed them into her bag; at least two pens and a sheet of paper were destroyed in the bout of furious packing. She stood up from her seat, though with her height it didn’t make much of a difference, and finally looked Vince in the eye.

“You’re an ass,” Camille spat, turning on her heels and rushing out before Vince could conjure any sort of reply. He merely stared, dumbfounded, as the small girl dashed up the stairs and ran out of the lecture hall.

“I see that legendary Reynolds charm is still as potent as always,” Will said from behind Vince, snapping him out of his stupor.

“I have no idea what I did to deserve that,” he said. He didn’t, either; neither in the dream world or this one could he remember an action that warranted such venom.

“Women, eh? Can’t live with them, and I don’t know how to cook.” Will smacked his friend on the shoulder and gave him a smile. “Come on, that was funny.”

“Huh? Uh, yeah, I guess it was.” Vince finally shook off the strange feeling he’d had since Camille’s tongue-lashing, scooping his own bag off the floor and standing from his chair.

“It still doesn’t explain why you sat there in the first place,” Will pointed out as the two began to ascend the stairs. “I know it’s been long enough since you and Sasha broke up to put yourself back out there, but maybe you should try someone a little more affable. And who doesn’t apparently hate your guts.”

“I wasn’t... yeah, maybe you’re right,” Vince agreed. Will had given him an out from admitting he didn’t mean to sit there in the first place. Vince might not be able to lie worth a damn, but he could certainly let someone else fill in the blanks for themselves. He was pretty sure that was morally tolerable, but admittedly not preferred. “I hope my next class goes quick. I cannot wait for this day to be over.”

“The gods listen for that sort of statement,” Will informed him. “Which means you’re in for a hell of a long day.”

162.

Vince made it to lunch without much more difficulty. His sense of a split world was reduced by the fact that his next class was geometry, and he was awful at math no matter which reality he was currently in. He met up with Nick at Hoffman, only to discover this was a ritual involving more than just Vince and his chauffeur. It seemed all the students from Melbrook Avenue grabbed food together when their schedule allowed. Roy and Hershel were the first to arrive after Vince and Nick, followed not long after by Alice. She dropped her purse and backpack next to Nick, then immediately picked up where they’d left off in their most recent fight. It had always struck Vince as strange that people who squabbled so constantly would also continually choose one another’s company. Mary was the last to arrive, grabbing a free seat to Vince’s left.

“How you feeling today?”

“A little tired of everyone asking me that, honestly,” Vince said. He began backpedaling as soon as the words were out of his mouth. “I’m sorry; I know you’re all concerned, I’ve just been having some slight concentration issues.”

“I know how it goes,” Mary assured him. “I’ve gotten my share of head bonks from messing up while climbing trees.”

Why hadn’t she just stopped herself telekinetically? Because that was the dream, duh. Besides, even dream Mary had trouble grabbing humans with her ability; she was so powerful it was too easy to crush them.

“So how long does this last?”

“In my experience, the head fuzziness usually goes away after a day or so. The part I had trouble shaking was the dreams.”

A ketchup-covered chicken tender froze halfway to Vince’s mouth, his hunger forgotten as a single word of Mary’s sentence stole precedence from all the others.

“Dreams?”

“Oh yeah. I don’t know if it was just me or what, but man, I had some doozies after a few of my falls. Complex, detailed, somehow almost as real as my own life. In fact, after some of the really intense ones I even had trouble sorting out what was real and what had been part of my unconscious theatre,” Mary explained, her own appetite unhindered by the conversation.

A warm sense of relief washed over Vince and the interrupted chicken tender finally met its inevitable fate. He wasn’t going crazy. This was all just part of dealing with a head injury.

“I see. I think I had one of those last night,” Vince eventually replied. “Did the sense of not quite keeping things straight go away with the general disorientation?”

“Actually, no,” Mary told him. “I had to be a bit more proactive with those.”

“By all means, please elaborate.”

“It’s hard to explain,” she said, setting down the veggie wrap that was already halfway consumed. “I guess I’d say that talking about it helped me a lot. For whatever reason, things were sticky in my brain, and talking to the people involved usually helped me sort things out. Especially in the cases where I couldn’t understand why I’d cast someone in seemingly strange roles. Like when I had one where I was a princess in a fairytale land, I got kidnapped by an evil dragon who talked and kind of looked a lot like Hershel. Not a usual role for the boy I secretly had a crush on.”

“Agreed, I have no idea what that means.”

“Me neither,” Mary said with a shrug. “But when I told him about it, we wound up talking for a long time, and in the course of that I was able to sort out which Hershel was the real one.” She paused to look over at her boyfriend, busily scribbling in a notebook while cramming a hamburger down his gullet. The two had been sitting apart so he could cram for his big Biology final this week. Hershel was the kind of guy who couldn’t focus if his girlfriend even sat down beside him. Mary thought it was endearing.

“Huh. I’ll keep that in mind,” Vince said.

“So what did you dream about?”

“Oh... um, well, we were all people with super powers, only we weren’t supposed to be, sort of, and we were going to college to try and become super heroes,” Vince explained, the tips of his ears turning red as he realized how crazy that sounded.

“Sounds a lot like our actual life, just if you blended it together with comic books,” Mary pointed out.

“There were a few key differences,” Vince said. “For one thing, I cast my dad as the villain.”

“Ohhhh. So that’s the part that’s bothering you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Vince, you adore your father. No one here looks up to a parent more than you. I can see how your subconscious sticking him in a role like that would bother you a lot.”

Vince started to protest; he’d gotten over it this morning. Hadn’t he? The more he turned Mary’s words over in his head, the more he realized that the general sense of anxiety he was feeling seemed to be inevitably tethered back to those moments just before he woke up. Everyone watching as the father he’d thought he lost helped the man who’d kidnapped Mary escape from jail.

“What was my power?”

“Huh?”

“I was trying to blatantly change the subject since you seemed uncomfortable. What was my power?” Mary repeated.

“You were telepathic and telekinetic,” Vince informed her. “Alice could fly, Nick had control over luck, Roy and Hershel were weirdly the same person, and I absorbed energy.”

“Wow, you did not half-ass this dream.”

“That’s barely even scratching the surface,” Vince told her. “Most of the people from the football team were there, along with a good portion of the cheerleaders, not to mention Will, Jill, Stella, and even that quiet girl who hangs around with Violet. Camille. That last mix-up got me in trouble earlier today.”

Mary’s look of gentle interest turned into one of puzzlement. “How so?”

“In the dream we were friends, but apparently in this world she really kind of hates me.”

“That’s... very peculiar,” Mary said; however, Vince’s attention had drifted rapidly away from her. Instead he was focused on the place in the dining hall where trays were returned and trash was thrown away. Or rather, what he saw there.

It was only a glimpse, but he knew his eyes hadn’t deceived him. He was up from the table in seconds, damn near sprinting across the room. It took all the self-control he had not to go vaulting over tables. Vince spun around the corner to find the area empty, save for a stack of red plastic trays. Slowly sanity restored itself and he realized he must have looked like an idiot dashing through the dining hall like that. He couldn’t help it. A girl with a familiar figure and a mane of tangled dark curls had gone in here, he was sure of it, and for whatever reason he’d needed to see her. To talk with her. To touch her. She was gone; maybe she hadn’t even been here to begin with. Just another phantom from his concussion.

Vince turned and headed back to do some explaining at his table. It seemed that was the theme of his day.

163.