Derek knelt and stretched his calves as he approached me. We were halfway into the city, walking three miles downtown in a quiet neighborhood.
"What's up?" I asked.
"I was just going to ask you the same question?" He answered, letting out a puff of air.
"You know how you and Sam know my secret, but dad has no clue?" I asked. Derek sighed, acknowledging me, and we started moving down the block.
"I'm sure he knows. He doesn't want to accept it yet. Remember when you were eight, and he caught both of us in the garage? You lifted his car, and that's how the back bumper got smashed in," I shook my head. But briefly, I could picture a younger Derek is standing next to me.
Derek and I opened the back garage door and snuck in. I was eight, and Derek was about twelve. We were looking for something to do while our dad napped in the living room foyer.
We first spotted our dad's police cruiser parked in the middle of the garage. We both knew dad would have a fit if we touched his car, but we were curious kids. However, curiosity killed the cat.
"I bet you can't lift the back of dad's car," Derek said as he pointed to the end of our dad's cruiser.
"You'll owe me a week's allowance if I can." I offered a deal.
Derek grinned. "Deal, but you have to use your super strength. It doesn't count if you use your-what. Is that a long word Sam used to describe your floating thing?"
I shrugged. "I think it's telekinetic or something like that."
"That's right." He nodded. My legs and upper body lifted as I clutched the rear bumper of my father's cruiser. The bumper's back end shrieked and bent as it heaved off the ground.
"Holy shit!" Derek's eyes widened, amused.
The garage door wasn't closed, and Mr. Simpson, a fit thirty-five-year-old man who lived a few blocks down, peered in the garage wide-eyed and stared at me.
"How much milk do you drink, kid? " His voice dripped with bold curiosity. Derek and I chuckled.
"Hi, Mr. Simpson. " Derek waved at him and covered his lips with his index finger. "Don't tell our father." Mr. Simpson shook his head and walked on, slapping his flip-flops against the floor as he did. I lifted the car further up in the air until the vehicle's front hovered from the ground.
Footsteps pounded the floor from inside. Derek panicked, and I still lifted the car higher and higher. My stunned father's face flushed with worry as a coffee mug dropped from his grip in slow motion as the back door flung wide. He locked in place, muttering a four-letter word beneath his breath. Derek panicked, and I slammed the car's rear end to the ground, watching myself bounce on the tires as I returned my gaze to my astonished father.
"He knows?" I asked myself more than Derek.
"Have a seat." Derek gestured to the curbside, and I walked over. Derek sat next to me on the side of the road as he chatted with me like any other good brother.
"James, you can do the impossible, and sometimes when people don't want to believe the impossible can happen, people ignore it like dad is doing to protect you and your safety. You may be invincible, James, but I've witnessed it. You can get hurt, and I don't want to see that, and neither does dad nor Sam. That's why dad doesn't want to believe you have powers."
"I guess so?" I spoke. I knew Derek was right. He was right ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time. That point-one percent was rare, so I took his advice.
"Thanks, Derek," I replied. Derek and I continued along the road. I followed his pace, so I only passed him a little.
"Do you like anyone in particular?" I asked Derek. He smiled, gesturing to the curbside again. We sat down, and Derek lowered his head, looking sad.
"Her name is-" Derek stopped mid-sentence as we both rose, gazing at something big plunging from the sky above.
A person fell fast, almost like a missile, his hood concealing his features, but instead of catching himself on a blanket of air, his body crashed onto the paved road with force powerful enough to start an earthquake.
The ground didn't rumble at all. Instead, the hooded boy lay against the concrete, unconscious. Derek and I glanced at each other before running toward the boy on the floor.
"What do we do?" I asked. My eyes scanned the boy, looking for anything to help me identify him without first removing the hood.
"I have to call this in. Are you good, James?"
"I'm peachy, Derek, " I said, poking at the boy. At least the boy was still breathing, I thought. I just watched someone fall over thirty feet from the sky. They should be dead, but for some good reason, they weren't. A deep, raspy, recognizable moan escaped the boy's throat. I turned my head to Derek.
"Update me," I told him. Derek kneeled to pull the boy to his side before nodding in my direction. And the world slowed down as I raced home, picking up speed, and was at my front doorway in a blink of an eye. I knocked twice, and the door swung open. Sam was standing there with a blank expression.
∆∆∆
"How was your walk?" He asked. I pushed him in a fit of rage into the living room.
"Fuck." I cursed. "We're in trouble."
"What's wrong?'' he asked.
"Mark-Fucking-Reignson." I roared. It had to be him. Mark's painful moans played in my mind on repeat. "Son of a bitch."
Sam pulled me inside and scanned the open lawn before shutting the door. "What happened?" Sam tried again.
"He fell from the fucking sky," I roared. "It was one of those supers, but what do they want from you?"
"Is Derek okay?"
"He's calling in backup, but I assume he'll be all right."
Sam sighed. "You left him there alone, by himself. At the least, go back and keep him company. I can only imagine what those supers could do to him." Sam chewed on the skin around his nails to refrain from a panic attack. "Go help your brother," he ordered. I turned around, my hand curling around the door handle, and took off back to the scene-a bunch of cop cars arrived.
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