|
|
Chapter 3 – Ordinary AfternoonsJo growled, “Mack. The biggest pain in my ass. I’ve been staking out the school for weeks, just waiting to catch you alone.”
Alex just sighed out loud. Oh, sure, Jo Baker was maybe a couple inches taller than Alex, and Jo was maybe twice her weight, and Jo liked getting in fights. But it wasn’t like Jo was the kind of threat Alex needed to deal with. No, Alex had much bigger threats to deal with.
She calmly said, “Jo, I’ve been out sick, and I have more important things to worry about than you. Why are you even bothering with me anymore? You could get arrested just for being on school grounds. If you hit me, I’ll press charges, and then you’ll get arrested for felony assault, which could put you in jail until you’re wearing dentures. So why are you even here?”
“What makes you think I’m gonna let you walk away from here? All I have to do is beat you up so bad you have a giant concussion and then you won’t remember who did it.”
Alex said, “That’s not really true. Concussions aren’t reliable like that. I might remember all of it. I might remember all of it except the actual blow. I might remember all of it except the last ten seconds or so. But I’ll almost certainly remember this little chat. You’re risking an awful lot on bad information.” It was amazing the kinds of stuff you learned from listening to Buffy tell stories, even if she really doubted Buffy’s Watcher got like a concussion a month, every month, for half a dozen years in a row.
Jo snarled, “Shut up, Mack. Why should I believe you?”
Alex coolly explained, “Because I’ve been using my time to study stuff. I’m going to go off to college and be someone. What are you going to do?”
Jo rumbled, “I’m gonna beat the holy shit out of you, and prove I’m still top dog in this town. You’re my only failure. People used to be afraid of me, until you made me look bad. I need to fix that. So you’re going down. Right now.”
Alex said, “I don’t think so.”
“Oh, yeah?”
Even Jo’s tough-chick attitude wasn’t as scary as it would have been even a week ago. After facing vampires and demons — oh, and getting her behind kicked by Buffy in sparring — Jo just wasn’t the scariest thing around anymore. Alex had fought an eighty-foot, flying, fire-breathing dragon. She had needed to deal with Dark Willow. Compared to that, Jo was hardly worth bothering with.
Alex reached into her backpack and used her telekinesis to find her dad’s tube and lift it into her hand. Then she took it out and showed it to Jo.
Jo sneered, “Whatcha gonna do with that? Throw it at me?” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a switchblade, which she snapped open. “I’m not scared, Mack.”
What Alex was holding wasn’t very intimidating. It was a black plastic-and-metal tube about an inch thick and eight inches long. It looked harmless. Technically, it was harmless. Alex lied, “It’s a taser. I’ll simply shoot you with it, and then call the authorities. And it’s a ranged weapon, so I can shoot you before you get close enough to stab me.” ‘Ranged weapon’? Maybe she had been hanging with Sam and Willow a little too much.
“Yeah? That doesn’t look like any taser I ever saw before.”
Alex lied some more. “It isn’t like any taser you ever saw before. My sister built it for me. You remember Annie, don’t you? The school genius?” In reality, it was just a plastic tube her dad had lying around in his work area. She had told him what she wanted, so he shoved an old lithium battery, some electronic components, and some wiring into it. Now if anyone looked inside, it looked like it was something ingenious and homemade, even if it was useless.
Sam had come up with this great idea that Alex was going to use from now on. Any time she had to use her electrical powers when she wasn’t in her superhero costume, she was going to wield this piece of nothing and claim she was using a taser built by her sister the genius. Instant cover for her powers, in case anyone saw her. Sam was an amazingly smart genius.
Alex could see Jo was getting nervous. Maybe not nervous enough, but nervous. Alex carefully held the fake taser in one hand, with her index finger lying along the ‘barrel’ so her fingertip was just short of the tip. If Alex needed to, she could shoot a lightning bolt from her fingertip, and anyone would assume the electricity came from the end of the tube. Still, she didn’t want to. She had done a lot of damage with her lightning bolts, most of it completely accidentally, and she really didn’t want to hurt Jo. Even if Jo was a bully and a thug and obviously working her way up to being a big crook.
Alex said, “It’s up to you, Jo. If you want a piece of me, I’ll zap you with this, and while you’re knocked out, I’ll call the cops. It won’t help your reputation. It’ll just put you in prison for real. I don’t understand why you want to do this.”
Jo finally glanced over Alex’s shoulder and took off running. Alex waited until she was sure her opponent had left the field of battle, and wasn’t just pulling a fast one. That was another awesome thing she had learned from Sam. Well, from Buffy, too.
She turned around and found Ray racing toward her with Mrs. Wright, the vice-principal, behind him.
He ran up and hugged her. “You okay?”
Mrs. Wright was right there, close enough to hear, so Alex said, “A little shaky, but okay. Thanks for coming to my rescue. I was worried there for a while.”
Mrs. Wright asked, “Was that Jo Baker?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Wright kept checking. “And was that a knife she had?”
“Yes, ma’am. A switchblade.”
Mrs. Wright frowned. “And you just stood there? You could have been seriously hurt.”
She pulled out the black tube again. “I have a taser for self-defense. My sister Annie made it for me. I think I could’ve shot her before she did anything, but if I turned around and tried to run away, she might’ve attacked me. I can’t run as fast as I used to, because of my bad knee from track.”
Mrs. Wright stared at the plastic tube. “Weapons aren’t allowed on campus, Miss Mack.”
She said, “This one is. My mom talked to the principal just this morning. My dad got kidnapped by Danielle Atron a couple years ago, and he has reason to think she might be after him, or maybe our whole family, again. It’s just for emergencies. But anybody crazy enough to do what Ms. Atron did can’t be trusted to do sane stuff. My mom’s pretty worried.”
Ray distracted Mrs. Wright by saying, “I was pretty worried when Louis told me Jo was out here going after you.” Then he hugged her tightly, like he really had been worried.
Mrs. Wright made her go into the principal’s office and file a report, and then wait for a policeman to come out to the school and give him a statement, too. So she totally missed Spanish III and she was late to Earth Sciences. And she never did get time to eat that second energy bar.
She still had to make an effort not to smile too much when she talked to Mr. Nieder, the Earth Sciences teacher. It totally wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t mean or anything, even if he was one of the assistant football coaches. But he was a big, solid guy with really dark hair and a heavy brow ridge that dominated his face. And he always had a five o’clock shadow, even at eight in the morning. He looked kind of like a caveman. So when he was teaching the Earth Sciences sections on anthropology and paleontology, it was really hard not to look at him and giggle. Especially when some of the guys in the class called him ‘Mister Neanderthal’ behind his back. His wife was like the complete opposite. Mrs. Nieder taught French, and was thin and pale and had a sort of beaky face.
Mr. Nieder said, “Alex, I hear you’re not having a very good day.”
She shrugged. “I’m okay.”
He went on, “Your first day back, you still don’t look completely well, you got a math quiz, and then Jo Baker jumped you at lunchtime?”
She shrugged again. “It’s okay. I got all my homework done while I was out sick, and I did good on the test, and Jo ran off when Ray and Mrs. Wright came and rescued me.”
He asked, “Do you have some assignments for me?”
She said, “Oh, sure! I did yours first.” It was even true, mainly because the assignments in Earth Sciences were way easier and shorter than in her other classes.
Then, when class was over, she hurried over and caught Señora Martinez and turned in her homework and apologized for missing class, even if it wasn’t her fault at all. Spanish III was even an okay class, and she liked Señora Martinez a lot better than Señora Garcia, who was kind of an old crankypants, even after she lightened up. Señora Martinez wanted her to take Spanish IV next year and then take the AP test to get college credit for Spanish, even if Alex wasn’t sure she was going to be able to fit everything into her schedule for next year. But her mom and dad and even Annie were really pushing her to take AP courses and get college credit before she got to college, because then she wouldn’t have to take the really cruddy required courses and she could take the things she wanted. She just wasn’t sure what that would be.
Selina wanted her to take journalism in college. Selina said one of the biggest superheroes in her world worked as a reporter so he got paid to go to places where criminals were doing stuff, or where people needed to be saved from natural disasters. And he got paid to investigate criminal stuff he would have needed to investigate anyway as a superhero. Alex liked taking photos, and she was really good at it, so maybe she could be a photojournalist. She would probably be able to get photos no one else in the world could. She could go photograph lions or tigers and not worry about getting eaten. She could go photograph natural disasters and not worry about getting drowned or blown up or whatever. She could get in and out of places that regular people would need weeks to get to. She could fly to the top of Mount Everest if she wanted! Maybe she could make photojournalism work for her.
Sam wanted her to take military courses, so she could learn about warfare and tactics and things. Sam even wanted her to go ROTC and then go in the army for a few years so she could learn about real weapons and real army stuff, but Alex figured there was no way she could pass a physical when her DNA was all weird.
Hermione wanted her to take lots of courses in history and science. She had said, “Those who do not understand the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.” Which Willow said meant if you were Danielle Atron and you didn’t think about how this kind of thing always blew up sooner or later, then you ended up getting caught. Sam said it was like the military guys in World War I who lost thousands and thousands of soldiers because they didn’t understand the lessons they should have learned from the American Civil War over fifty years earlier.
Willow wanted her to take courses in computers and folklore and chemistry and a bunch of other things. Willow thought a superhero ought to be a generalist and know a lot about a lot of different things, which Selina said was what made the Batman guy so incredibly awesome as a superhero. Willow also thought Alex ought to learn enough biochemistry to be able to work on her own GC-161 problems, just in case. But Alex figured you had to be a chemistry super-genius to do that. But maybe it would be good to learn enough that she could understand the stuff Annie and her dad talked about.
Buffy wanted her to take courses in martial arts and the history of warfare. Buffy said a lot of colleges had maybe half a dozen different martial arts groups around campus, or at dojos off campus but close enough to get to when she wanted. Alex thought it would be really cool to learn how to use a sword really well, but Buffy said the college groups for epee and saber taught ‘competition’ styles that were fine for college competitions but not so great for really killing stuff in the real world. Plus, they expected all the epee people to be super tall and super thin with really long limbs, and they expected all the saber people to be built like a block of concrete. Alex didn’t fit either of those molds.
After that, Alex had to rush to homeroom for last period study hall. Normally, she pretty much goofed off in there, like Ray and especially Louis. But she concentrated hard on the stuff that was due the next day and Wednesday. First, the Spanish assignment. Then the studying for the history quiz. Then the trig assignment. She was most of the way through the trig assignment when the bell rang.
Ray walked her off to her car and rode with her to downtown. And he made sure she had her ‘superhero outfit’ in her backpack. She just didn’t have that wig yet, so she was hoping she wasn’t going to have to do any superheroing today.
She forgot that she still looked sick. She walked into Gloria’s doughnut shop. Gloria took one look at her and rushed her into the back. “Alex? Are you well enough to be working here?”
She could have slapped herself in the forehead. Duh! She said, “Oops. I used the wrong foundation this morning, and I didn’t find out until after I got to school.”
Gloria cautiously said, “Well, I could really use your help today, but I can’t have you looking like Typhoid Mary out there.”
She said, “Oh, no problem. I can wash my makeup off at the sink.”
Gloria nodded. “Okay, you go right ahead and do that, and get the apron on, and I’ll see how you look after that.”
“Sounds good!” she said.
“Oh, and I’ve got a new doughnut for you to taste test,” Gloria said.
“Mmm.” Gloria made the best doughnuts for miles and miles around. And doughnuts were Alex’s biggest weakness. She’d probably eat doughnuts for three meals a day, if her mom wasn’t keeping an eye on her. At least, she might if she could eat Gloria’s doughnuts, which were scrumptious. Alex and her dad had tried every doughnut place they had found within about an hour’s drive of their house, and Gloria’s doughnuts were like a dozen times better than anybody else’s.
Alex washed up and made sure she had all her makeup off. Then she applied just some mascara and bronzer, along with the nude lipcolor she liked. She put her hair up and put the waitress apron on, and she trotted out to see if she met with Gloria’s approval.
“You look a lot better. That foundation was awful on you.”
Alex lied again. “I have no idea how Annie’s makeup got mixed in with my stuff. I mean, we share a room when she’s home, but she hasn’t been back for months. Maybe Mom cleaned up the room and stuck it where she thought it ought to go.”
Gloria grinned. “And now you finally have a good reason to clean up your own room. Right?”
“Right. I guess,” Alex said. “So. Do I look okay now?”
Gloria nodded. “So here’s the Bavarian cream and the two plain glazed for table two, and here’s the chocolate éclair for two, at table five. And when you get a break, here’s your taste test. An apple fritter with a cinnamon glaze. Tell me what you really think. Too much cinnamon in the glaze? Not enough glaze? Too much apple in the fritter? Sprinkles or not?”
Alex got to work. She just kept her cell phone in its little holder, which was clipped inside her waistband instead of outside, so she’d feel it if it vibrated. Louis had really gotten a lot more responsible since he nearly got her and her whole family killed. She figured he really felt guilty about it, and he’d been trying to make up for it ever since. He even went and told his dad he completely screwed up and nearly got someone really hurt, and asked his dad for advice. And he actually kept her secret after that. Which was like a ‘never happens’ thing for Louis.
So Louis and Robyn had taken over this part of Alex’s superhero gig. Sometimes Nicole helped out, when she wasn’t busy with all her stuff. They took turns watching for bad guys. She knew it was Louis’s turn, so he was listening to the police band radio and watching the area news, in case another of Danielle’s GC-161 super-crooks attacked somewhere.
Having a team who knew her secret really made her life a lot easier, even if she was doing more now than ever before. She had her parents covering for her, and her friends helping her, and a boyfriend who knew her secret and helped her as much as he could. She wondered how some of Selina’s superhero pals managed if they wouldn’t tell anyone their secret.
And Gloria’s apple fritter was awesome. Another Gloria masterpiece. The cinnamon glaze had a hint of nutmeg or something in it, so it was just incredible. She thought it needed a little more glaze, though. Definitely not the sprinkles, though. Alex ate two of them. Even though she was going to go home and have dinner after work.