Super Series (Book 4): Supervised (3 page)

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he laughed. “I just stopped in on the way the work and noticed you over here planning our wedding with Cindy. So what are you thinking for the reception? Skittles or Starbursts?”

“Ha. Ha. Ha,” I deadpanned.

“Oh come on. Kids say the darnedest things, right?” He smiled at me in that way that made me really want to swim backstrokes in his eyes.

I went back to studying the candy selection. “I just want to keep this whole thing professional. I don’t want to lose my job because I’m doing one of the tenants.”
And I also don’t want a boyfriend.
But I kept that to myself.

He must have read my mind, though. “Just explain to Hy that you have tried every man in New York City and the best one you could find was two floors up.”

“Or I could just explain that I’m lazy and so I only looked two floors up.”

“Or that.” He picked up two Butterfingers and gestured for me to go to the register. “I’m gonna buy these for you.”

See?
I thought to myself.
This is why I like him. He gets it.

At the counter, Mike put all of the stuff next to my sandwich. “Hey, Rafi. Put this all together. I’ll take care of it.”

“Sandwich is on the house,” Rafi said before giving him the total for the rest of the stuff.

Mike handed Rafi some money. “What did I do to deserve that?”

Rafi handed him back his change and nodded to me. “Not you. Her.”

I grabbed all of the stuff from the counter and rushed Mike out of the store. I didn’t want him to know about me and the robbery. I didn’t want to explain why I got involved and why I wasn’t afraid to be shot.

Outside on the street, I tried to draw attention away from what had just happened. “So, um, what are you doing today?”

Mike looked at me strangely. “Like I said, I’m headed to work. You?”

“Oh, you know, stuff around the building. I have to work on 2C. Something is wrong with one of the dryers. You know—”

“Yeah, yeah, super stuff,” he finished for me. I tried to push down the flutter of anxiety that appeared in my stomach. I knew he was using it in the lowercase way but my body got nervous at the idea of him knowing about me in the uppercase way. “What about tonight? I’m meeting some guys from work for happy hour. You wanna come?”

“Uhhhh. . .” I was having dinner at my parents’ house but I didn’t want to tell him that because I wasn’t ready for him to even know my family existed. And the last thing I wanted was to meet his coworkers. “I have book club.” It came out before I could even think about it. And it was the stupidest lie in the world. When had anyone ever seen me with a book?

Mike cocked his head to side and echoed my thoughts. “I didn’t know you were in a book club. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with a book.”

“Well, um, we’re a secret book club. So we don’t advertise that we’re reading. We only read when no one can see us.” Mike just looked at me. “What? You don’t know everything about me,” I finished defensively.

“No,” Mike said. “No, I don’t.” He wrapped me in a bear hug and kissed me on the forehead. “Stop by after your secret book club if you want.”

I hugged back, gingerly at first and then with more pressure. “OK,” I said, muffled by the hug, my own anxiety, and the weight of my own lies.

Chapter 5

“You’re alone.”

After spending the day working and eating candy bought by someone I was telling lies to, I took the 2 train from Crown Heights to my parents’ brownstone on the Upper West Side. I had a typical family growing up—two parents and an older sister. The only thing that was different was that we were all Supers. Sometimes I felt like the black sheep of the family and that made me keep some distance between us. But I came back regularly for family dinners. It’s amazing what the promise of leftovers can do.

“All my life,” I quipped as I followed my mother through the apartment and into the kitchen, throwing my coat on the couch as we passed through the living room. “Thank you for reminding me.”

My mother was still wearing the frown she had opened the door with. It went perfectly with her apron, dark slacks, and mint colored turtleneck. Her hair was dark, shoulder length, and elegantly coiffed. She put her free hand on her hip and started stirring the sauce on the stove top. “No. I mean, I thought you would bring
him
.”

“No, you didn’t.” I didn’t need to ask who “him” was. But I’d already told her that I wasn’t bringing Mike. What more did she want from me?

Unlike me, Mom knew what to do in the kitchen. She nimbly went from chopping to stirring to grinding, while keeping everything in check. Mom’s super power was being a brainiac but her real talent was the way she made Martha Stewart look like a raggedy slob. Even when she was still assigned the New York Public Library, Mom was always the type of person to come home and spend three hours scrapbooking our precious moments after making us a four course gourmet meal. That kind of stuff made her feel alive the same way eating raw cookie dough at 10PM made me feel. Different strokes for different folks and all that.

Even though she was retired now and my sister and I were out of the house, Mom still made it a point to cook like a four-star chef. And yet, it seemed like she was outdoing her normally high bar on that night. “Why are you making so much food?” I asked, dipping my finger in the sauce.

Mom swatted my hand away. “I thought we would be having guests so I wanted to make an impression. But since that isn’t going to happen, I guess I just wasted a few hours of cooking on you.”

I was about to throw up with the guilt of disappointing my mother yet again when I heard the front door open. Moments later my dad appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. He was a big hulk of a man in his youth but he had gotten a little rounder with age. He was still wearing his winter coat and his reddish brown curls were covered with a knit cap. He was holding a bag with a liquor store logo on the front. “Hey, Junior,” he said, using his childhood nickname for me. He’d been hoping for a boy but he made due with what he got. We had the same reddish brown hair and the same Super power, except it was a lot more respectable on him.

“Hey, Dad. Whatcha got there?”

He pulled a bottle of wine out of the bag and showed it to me proudly. “We only have beer in the house and your mother wanted to make sure we had something fancy just in case your new boyfriend wasn’t a hobo or a DJ or something.”

*****

“I can’t believe you beat me here. That has to be a first.”

By the time my sister Ella had arrived and we got dinner started, I had already drunk three beers and had opened my fourth. I was going to drink my way through the night. Ella looked like a younger version of my mother—petite and put together. She was never late. She spent just as much time making things just-so as I did messing them up. In fact, I was just as surprised that I hadn’t been late as she was.

Mom passed me a dish of stuffed asparagus. “I told her the wrong start time so she would get here on time.”

“Figures,” I said, passing the dish on to Dad without taking anything. “You know, if people keep doing that to me, I’m going to start factoring it in and be even later than usual.”

“You’re right,” Dad said. “We just thought it might be worth it if you were bringing a guest.”

Ella took the asparagus from Dad. “Yeah, what happened with that anyway?”

“I told Mom I wasn’t bringing him. I don’t know why she didn’t relay that to everyone else.”

Ella wasn’t going to let it go, though. “But why didn’t you bring your boyfriend? Who are you ashamed of? Him or us?”

“I didn’t bring him because he’s not my boyfriend. Just because you see me with a man doesn’t mean that he’s my boyfriend.”

“Well, it must mean something,” Mom said. “We haven’t met any of your boyfriends since high school. What was his name?”

“James,” Ella answered for me. “And we didn’t exactly meet him. We walked in on them when they thought no one was home—”

“OK, OK, OK,” I practically screamed, trying to drown her out. Having a sister that never forgets anything is the worst. “We all know what happened next. No need to bring that up again. Besides, not everyone can bring home every man they hold hands with.”

“I don’t do that,” she cried. But I could tell I’d hit a sore spot. For as smart as Ella was, she had a problem picking appropriate relationships. She tended to fall for these actor/model types that she had nothing in common with, only to have it crash and burn before it even really got off the ground. I couldn’t remember how many times I’d sat across the table from some guy she had brought home, knowing it was a lost cause.

Dad took a big gulp of his beer. “Can we talk about something else, anything else but the love lives’ of my daughters?”

I clinked my glass to his. “I second that.”

“I have something to talk about,” Ella announced in a funny voice. “I think Din-Din is pregnant.”

“What?!” Mom, Dad, and I cried at the same time. Din-Din was a cat I’d saved during a Super shift and brought home. Only, I was living at home at the time and wasn’t exactly allowed to have pets. So I got Ella to take her in on a temporary basis. Unfortunately, because I wasn’t supposed to have pets in my building, the arrangement seemed to be more and more permanent by the day.

“But how?” I said.

“I know! But she got out last month and she was gone for a couple of hours.” I vaguely remembered a frantic call from Ella where she blamed me for giving her a cat and then blamed me for that cat being missing. “And now she’s acting pregnant.”

Mom looked at Ella in disbelief. “You didn’t get her fixed?”

“Mom, I don’t own a cat.” Ella pointed at me. “Audrey, asked me to watch a cat for her for a while and has never shown up to get the cat back. It wasn’t my responsibility to get her fixed.”

“Well, how are you going to know if she’s pregnant?” Mom asked. “Are you taking her to the vet?”

“I have an appointment on Sunday morning. Hopefully, I’ll find out then.”

“Audrey will go with you,” Mom volunteered.

I almost spit out a mouthful of my Cornish game hen. “What? Why me?”

“Because you’re the reason she has Din-Din, dear. You can at least accompany her to the vet.”

Even though I knew Mom was right, I didn’t want to do it. But I knew that if I said that, they’d all gang up on me. “Fine. I’ll go with you.”

Dad clapped his hands together. “Well, that settles it. Audrey doesn’t have a boyfriend. Ella doesn’t have a boyfriend. Din-Din
does
have a boyfriend. And I’m tired of talking about all of it. Now what’s for dessert?”

Chapter 6

I’m not a very good Super. I know that. Anyone who has taken a look at my file down at the Super Council headquarters knows that. There was a time when I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a Super. In fact, I never really agreed to it.

Like every other Super, I started showing signs at puberty and my parents took me down to the Council to have me evaluated. And the next thing I knew, I was in Super School—which is basically high school but instead of having gym class, you learn how to control your powers. There’s government class but you spend a whole year learning about how the Council governs Supers. And it’s really hard to cheat on test when your teacher has telekinesis.

When I was done with school, I took the licensing exam just like everyone else. And much to everyone’s surprise—myself included—I passed. Not by much, though. So when I was given my district assignment, I was given a low level Super clearance. That meant that I wouldn’t get an alter ego assignment. I was expected to live and work in my district, while patrolling frequently to keep back any chaos and crime I might see. It was grunt work.

On the other hand, when my sister Ella graduated Super School, she got her license, an acceptance into Columbia University, and instructions to become an astrophysicist. Later, she was placed as a professor at the same school. She does her duty by working within that system and keeping peace and order. She doesn’t have to sit in a park for four hours waiting for someone to snatch a purse to get the job done.

I used to be a little bitter about that but after my audit last year, I realized that I actually wanted to be a Super. It was a calling, not a job. And although I wouldn’t necessarily say that I was the most valuable Super the Council had, I was happy I still had my license, probation pending.

So that night when I was walking up to St. Jude Church on Montague in Brooklyn Heights, I was a little nervous. The text from Nathaniel said that the meeting was in the church basement. As I was walking into the foyer of the building, I saw the bulletin board papered with fliers for bake sales, clothing drives, and mission trips. I looked over a little to the left and saw a sign that said “St Jude—Patron Saint of Lost Causes.” It had to be a sign. I was the biggest lost cause I knew.

“Audrey.” I turned to see Nathaniel walking into the main door of the building. He was just as impressive today as he had been the other night. Dressed in jeans, loafers, and a cable knit sweater, he looked like an Abercrombie and Fitch model. He jerked the arm holding his coat to the right. “This way.” I followed him down through a door and down a few set of stairs to the meeting room.

The meeting room looked like any random classroom or an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. It had a white board along the front of the room with a large desk off the side. There were four or five rows of plastic chairs lined up in the middle of the room, with a couple of people sitting in them. Along the back wall of the room, there was a long folding table with coffee and donuts on it and a couple more people clustered around it.

As we walked in, Nathaniel put his hand on my shoulder. It was warm and meaty. “Hang back after we’re done. I want to talk to you. We’re going to get started here in just a minute. Refreshments are in the back.” He gave me a final pat on the shoulder and headed to the front of the room. I promptly grabbed a donut and inhaled it like my life depended on it. Then I went to take a seat near the back of the room.

By then a few more people had trailed in to make about twenty or so. After a few minutes, Nathaniel closed the door and pulled the shade down on the window in the door. He stood in front of the room. “Hi, everyone. Welcome to this month’s Brooklyn Council District Meeting. You’re all familiar face but in case you forgot, I’m Nathaniel Kane, head of the Brooklyn District.” There was a smattering of applause and Nathaniel raised his hand to wave it away. “C’mon guys. None of that. Let’s get started.”