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Chapter 44 – TestingAlex was glad the last two weeks were over. Being out of school because of a ‘supervillain attack’ was something that could only happen in Paradise Valley, apparently. Or Normal, Illinois. Okay, Jack said there was a high school in Eastern Europe that had been closed for a long time along with a bunch of other stuff until a super-powered threat was dealt with by the authorities, and he also said the schools and everything else around Chernobyl had been evacuated permanently.
But then she had been sick as a dog for a couple days after that mess, and she had missed Tuesday through Thursday. And then her teachers hadn’t been happy with her when she came back on Friday, even though she had a doctor’s note and everything. You’d think having a supervillain attack would make people lighten up on the students.
So then she had a ton of homework and stuff to do, and three makeup tests to study for, and so this week had been big heaping wads of catch-up work and catch-up homework and makeup tests. And regular tests. Plus complaints from teachers who didn’t like that she’d missed five and a half days out of the previous two weeks. Gee, it wasn’t like she was skipping school to go hang out at a pool hall or something. She’d been working really hard at saving people’s lives and stopping supervillains and major stuff like that.
Okay, Mrs. McGurty had been pretty much horrified when she read the doctor’s note, which even said Alex was so sick she was on an IV for two days. And Mrs. Finnegan and Mr. Porter had worried whether she should be back at school so soon if she was that sick. But Mr. Nieder and Señora Martinez had been mega-crabby. Especially Mr. Nieder. Like she wanted to be deathly ill for two days straight.
She wondered what she was going to do when Jack needed her the next time, because she didn’t think the ‘visiting colleges’ excuse was going to fly the next time. And she had SATs on Tuesday, but at least she wasn’t going to be leaving school for them, because everyone taking SATs was going to be sitting in the school auditorium with teachers glaring at them so nobody peeked at anybody else’s test. She had taken them once already, back in the fall, and got a pretty okay 1935 score since she did the written part, too, but she was sure she could do better than that, since she had learned how to write decent papers in a really short time. Plus her math was going better, and she’d gotten some SAT-type test-taking tips from other-Willow and this-Willow both. Although she was pretty sure she wouldn’t take other-Willow’s advice to walk out as soon as she was really done so she could freak out the rest of the room. She had this mental image of other-Willow smiling as she turned in her test while everyone else was only a third of the way done, and the rest of the room going into a panic. Not that SATs worked like that anymore, at last not in this dimension, but her mom said when she took the SATs there were just two parts, and you took an hour-long verbal test and an hour-long mathematical test, and when you were done you could get up and leave, not that anyone her mom knew ever finished early.
At least today would be fun. She hoped. The last few weeks sure hadn’t been, even if Danielle Atron was locked up until her hair turned white and her teeth fell out.
She also really didn’t like that the governor had made a big speech to the press that Paradise Valley wouldn’t need to deputize Terawatt since Danielle Atron was in jail, and so the whole argument was moot. What a jerkhead. Didn’t he realize that sooner or later there were going to be more super-powered supervillains out there?
Maybe he was hoping he’d be out of office before it became a bigger problem.
Anyway, it was Saturday, and she had a pile of homework she didn’t have to start until the afternoon, because she had something exciting to go do! It was the first martial arts lesson for Terawatt at Camp Atron!
And she had been practicing and working out, like Buffy said to do. Buffy told her that push-ups made your arms stronger for punching people in the face, and sit-ups made your core stronger for kicking and for when you got punched in the stomach, and leg-lifts did that, too. Not that Alex thought she was ever going to get as strong as Buffy. In fact, Alex was pretty sure Buffy could have taken ‘Crush’. Apparently, the news stories were calling Jo ‘Azure Crush’ which Alex thought was lame.
So Alex changed into her Terawatt uniform and made sure she had a few extra things in her gym bag like a towel, even though there was no way Terawatt was going to shower there. Then she and her gym bag puddled out the front door, went down the driveway into the storm drain, and took the storm runoff system all the way out to the creek before she flew off to Camp Atron.
This time, she landed at the closest gate and said to the guy manning the gate, “Pardon me, but I am Terawatt. I have an appointment here at eight o’ clock with Staff Sergeant Meadows. Could you direct me to Building G?”
The guy looked at his clipboard and said, “Yes, ma’am. We have pretty specific instructions about you, so no fingerprinting, no signature on record, and no photo badge.”
Well, it wasn’t like a Terawatt impostor could fly in and land in front of the guards and look like her.
He showed her a black and white map of the base and pointed out Building G. She thanked him and took off into the air. It was way easier to see where Building G was from the air, because from the air the base looked exactly like the map did. She landed in front of the building and walked in.
One part of Building G was set up like a big dojo, or something like that. There were cool orange and blue pads tiling most of the floor. At one side of the ‘mat’ were practice dummies and that kind of stuff. On the other side of the dummies was a smaller practice area with weapons on the walls. She had seen the staff-with-big-pads-on-each-end things in movies, but she didn’t know what they were called. It wasn’t going to show up on her SATs, so she wasn’t worried. On the side away from the dummies were some locker rooms and a bathroom and an open door into another working area that looked small but with fancier mats. And there were a few small offices.
When Jack had said he would find a martial arts instructor for her, her first thought was a little old Japanese guy like Mister Miyagi. Then, when he told her the guy’s name was Staff Sergeant Meadows, she figured he would be some huge, hulking black guy wearing a Drill Instructor’s ‘Smokey the Bear’ hat who screamed every time he opened his mouth. The guy who walked out of the office toward her was nothing like that.
Sure, he was obviously buff, with bulging biceps, but he was maybe 5'9". He didn’t move like Buffy, either. Okay, that was unfair, because no one on Earth was going to be moving like Buffy did. Buffy moved like the kung fu version of a tiger, all smooth, graceful motion ready to attack you and rip your arms off at any second.
She asked in her best Terawatt tones, “Staff Sergeant Meadows?”
“And you would be Terawatt, I take it.”
She smiled. “I would be. Did anyone brief you about me and my situation?”
He said, “A little. Stew Scott called me and said DHS needed to swear me in and get me to do a little private training once or twice a week. But I saw the film footage of you against that blue chick, and I’m not sure how to train you.”
She asked, “Have you done the ‘swearing never to tell anyone’ bit?”
He grinned. “Yeah, but that’s not what we call it.”
She said, “Good. Okay, here’s the deal. I’ve faked super-strength a few times, but I’m really no stronger than your average twenty-year-old girl. Well, maybe your average twenty-year-old girl who exercises some but doesn’t lift weights. I have some powers, but I’d like to learn to fight the way you teach anyone martial arts. That means me not using powers, except when keeping myself from getting too bruised up. Then, once I get to some level you’d have to decide on, we work together to integrate those skills with my powers. I already have some advice on doing that. But I have all the raw power of a normal girl, and my last supervillain could throw police cars. I need more advantages.”
He nodded. “Okay, we’ve got this room isolated for these three hours every Saturday morning, even if that made the base commander a little cranky. I’m not sure we can squeeze in more than that.”
She said, “Well, I can work on anything you show me. Once a week is still way better than none a week, and I can practice elsewhere.”
He looked down at her feet and said, “We take our shoes off before we step on the mat.”
She hoped this wasn’t a problem, and she said, “I’m sorry, but no can do. I’m wearing these in combat, so I need to learn to fight with them on.”
“And why are you wearing them?”
She shrugged. “Why do you think? Because I want people to think I’m six feet tall. This uniform is so people don’t know who I am.”
He slowly shook his head. “Don’t see how that’s gonna work. This may be Cali, but there aren’t that many women with hair your color and built like you, unless …” He stared at her for a couple seconds and finally said, “Oh. Got it.”
He kicked off his flip-flops and led her to the middle of the mat. She could tell there were two orange squares nearly side by side, each one big enough for two guys to spar in. He led her into the closer square and said, “Let’s see what you’ve got already.”
She nodded. “Not much, to be honest. I know a few things, but I’ve been using my powers to fake most of it. I don’t have a balanced stance, and I need to work on that in these boots. I’ve been using my powers when I kick, so I don’t have kung fu balance. And I’ve been using guide parries in my fights, but I’ve been doing it mostly with telekinesis, not arm strength and technique.”
So they spent about five minutes with her showing him what she could — and couldn’t — do without powers, and him blocking everything she tried so easily that it was embarrassing. At least, when he tried some stuff, she didn’t get all beaten up, like in a kung fu movie. Granted, he was fast. Really fast, for a guy. Not at all fast for a Slayer, so Alex had seen really fast attacks coming at her and she had some teensy idea about what to do with stuff at this speed.
When he knocked her legs out from under her, she just held herself up so she didn’t crash to the mat. And when he grabbed her arm and threw her over his shoulder, she just flew away instead of getting slammed to the mat. And when he got her in a choke-hold or something like that, she just touched his arm and said, “Zap!” There was no way she was going to zap him for real. She was here to learn stuff, not win with stuff she already knew how to do. And that one time when he asked what else she could do with her powers and he went for that choke-hold, she just went silvery and flowed out of his arms, which sort of freaked him out.
So he started her on exercises, like push-ups and leg-lifts. He wasn’t exactly impressed, but he worked with soldiers who could probably do hundreds and hundred of push-ups in a matter of minutes. Then he had her do stretching exercises, which were pretty easy because she was limber. Then he showed her the basics she was going to be working on for weeks. First, he went through the basic stuff of American Kenpo: seven stances, three switches, eight blocks, four kicks, nine strikes, and three ‘maneuvers’. He had several sheets of paper that had all the details on them, but she was worried about getting her stances right without help, and working on her balance with the kicks without help. He just told her to work on what she could do by herself, and then work on the rest with him every Saturday. Then he had these things called ‘Blocking Set 1’ and ‘Short Form 1’ she needed to memorize and be able to do properly. He had sheets of paper on them, too, but those were going to take a lot of work. And he had twelve ‘techniques’ that all had totally awesome names. Because ‘guide parry’ just didn’t sound anywhere near as cool as ‘sword of destruction’ or ‘alternating maces’ or ‘obstructing the storm’. He had papers on each of them, too. Then he went through the ‘tan belt’ moves for the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program, which were way nastier: basic punches, upper-body strikes, lower-body strikes, bayonet and knife techniques, basic chokes and joint locks and throws and their counters, and the basics on ‘weapons of opportunity’ which she was better equipped on than pretty much anyone else since her best weapons of opportunity were part of her body. He had the whole ‘tan belt’ syllabus for her, even if a lot of the MCMAP wasn’t the physical part but the mental part and the training part.
Then they worked on every single one of the things for the rest of the time. She was mega-tired toward the end, but she was not going to stop if she could learn one more technique or maneuver before she left. And she totally needed tons of help with her stances and her balance, especially on her kicks and her switches. Plus, she had to go silvery a couple times to deal with the sweat in her uniform, which was so gross.
She slipped the papers and the syllabus and a practice knife and her towel into her gym bag, making a little mental note to get a thin notebook for the Kenpo stuff to be like the tan belt syllabus which was in a small three-ring binder.
At the end, she bowed to him and said, “Domo arigato, sensei,” like Buffy taught her.
He just grinned and said, “I may know Oriental martial arts, but I’m strictly American. Just say ‘thank you, sergeant’ and ‘yes, sergeant’ and ‘no, sergeant’. That’ll cover it.”
She said, “Thank you, sergeant. And when we get to the grappling stuff? Don’t treat me like a schoolgirl. Really show me the hard stuff, because you already know I can get out of any hold anytime I want to.” She shook his hand and went silvery, puddling out of his grip and about ten feet away from him before going normal again.
“Sweet!” The sound of clapping came from across the room. And she recognized the voice, too.
The staff sergeant snapped to attention, but Jack just waved off his salute with a sloppy response and said, “At ease, staff sergeant. We’re not standing on formality in here. And better you than me, because I’ve seen what she can do to people with superpowers.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jack said, “So Tera, I was on my way north of here, and I thought I’d peek in and see how your first day went. You know, maybe the cool kids were being mean to the new girl, or nobody wanted to eat lunch with you.”
She grinned at him. It was tough to be frowny and serious with Jack, because he was so smart-alecky. Irreverent, as they said on the SATs.
Jack said, “Staff sergeant, I’m going to take this superheroine away and feed her a few tons of chow. You’re welcome to join us if you want.”
“Thank you, sir. But I am going to have to decline. My corporal and I have to get ready for classes at twelve, one, two, and four, since we couldn’t use the dojo this morning after seven thirty.”
Jack nodded. “Okay. But call Stewie on a secure line and fill him in on how Terawatt’s doing. I’d appreciate it.”
Alex floated over to Jack and asked, “Are you really buying me lunch?”
He grinned. “Oh, sure! I got a ton of stuff from the chow line here, and I brought some stuff with me. And I’ve got a small conference room just a little walk from here. How’s that sound?”
She admitted, “Actually, it sounds pretty great. I’m really hungry after all the stuff we went through.”
So she walked with him to Building E and up to a small conference room up on the second floor, where there was a big spread on the conference table. Four kinds of pizza slices, spaghetti with three different sauce options, a bowl of lettuce salad with cool veggies in it, a bowl of pasta salad, a bowl of fruit salad, and a bowl of jello salad. The jello salad was cubes of blue jello with berries in it. She had a feeling the jello salad was Jack’s.
And Jack just wanted to talk, and listen to her. It was a nice, normal lunch, except she was still dressed as Terawatt, and he was dressed like a full colonel with a ton of medals. His uniform looked like he was going to run out of room for more medals before a lot longer.
She said, “You ought to let Willow get a look at all your medals. She’d be super impressed.”
He grinned. “No, I’m gonna change on the jet when I’m going up to her place. I want something casual, so I can take her out for a nice afternoon, and then we’re going to do dinner at that sushi place where we won the free dinners. Sushi isn’t my favorite, but there’s plenty of it I like, and I want to learn more about what Willow likes.”
She still pulled out her Terawatt phone, took a picture of Jack in his fancy uniform, and fired it off to Acid Burn. Then she told him about Willow’s little Chinese restaurant she really liked, and she told him that Willow had really liked that Mexican restaurant Jack took her to.
Jack grinned. “And then, after dinner … ‘The Simpsons’! I brought the season one DVDs. Charlie and I have all the seasons on DVD except the current one, which isn’t out on DVD yet. We just have it on TiVo. She’s never watched it. Can you believe that? She said she was too busy writing programs to watch a cartoon.”
Alex wondered, “What if she doesn’t like ‘The Simpsons’?”
He gave her a horrified look. “She HAS to! Everyone loves them!” Then he stopped being silly and said, “It’s not exactly a dealbreaker, but I’m gonna be crushed if she doesn’t at least like it. A lot.”
* * *
On Sunday, Alex spent the whole day studying and doing homework. When she wasn’t studying for school stuff, she was reviewing for SATs. Hermione had given her advice on guessing words that you didn’t know, so Alex was looking at these webpages that told you about Greek and Latin root words and prefixes and suffixes. It was kind of freaky how many words that helped with. And her Spanish vocabulary helped with some of the Latin, too, which made sense. And there was also listening on her Terawatt phone to Willow talking about her date with Jack, who was insisting on not doing the sex thing again until they did a lot more dating, even though Willow really wanted more of the sexing.
Then SATs on Tuesday were looooooong. It seemed like all she did for most of the school day was do test-taking, with sneaking in some eating in between the sections. The math parts seemed easier than before, but that was probably because she knew all that trig now, and she even had time to check over most of the answers she knew. And she guessed at the few math questions she didn’t know the answer to, because she knew some of the multiple choice options were wrong, and Sam had told her what the break-even point was on guessing on an SAT question. The reading ones were harder, because there were a few questions that were just iffy enough that she couldn’t decide if they wanted one answer or the other, which was mega-frustrating. And there were some words she didn’t know that she had to guess at. And the essay one was way better now that she’d been practicing Willow’s fast-essay-writing stuff. She even had time to look over most of what she wrote and fix some stupid grammar and spelling mistakes, even if she still thought she probably put in too many commas. As long as she didn’t have to write an essay on ‘my arch-enemy, the comma’. At least the last section on writing grammar was only ten minutes, and then she could go eat a couple of energy bars because she was starving by then.
* * *
Then on Thursday, Alex and Mina had their first meeting of the assistant editors for next year’s yearbook. Tommy already had their five-question ‘Yearbook Likes and Dislikes’ webpage up on the school intranet, and lots of people were posting answers, and since you had to log in with your student ID to get on the computers in the first place, Tommy could look at the files and tell who entered what. And that was how he knew that Pete and Paul were spending lots of time filling out the form over and over, and typing in really horrible answers to try and screw things up for the next yearbook group. Mr. Carson said he would deal with that, but Alex said, “Don’t until they stop wasting their time, because they’re not hurting anyone except themselves right now.” Then the whole yearbook team was really impressed with Alex and Mina’s plan for the yearbook pages and the special CD they would include.
* * *
And on Saturday morning, she flew back to Camp Atron to get hit and knocked down and thrown some more. She had been practicing really hard every night — with her boots on, too — and so she felt okay about some of the stuff, and massively not okay about some other stuff. But Staff Sergeant Meadows was good with that. She showed him everything she was doing okay on, and he corrected some little things so she could do better. Then she showed him all the things she was not doing okay on, and they worked on that stuff a lot more. She figured it was going to take her weeks to learn all that stuff. And the ‘tan belt’ syllabus talked a lot about the mental and character parts, which she was skipping over, and that worried her.
Well, it worried her until the sergeant said, “Tera, you’re well beyond that. The character part is there to make sure that the student is hard-working and responsible and community-oriented. It’s hard to be more of all of those than a superhero who’s risking her neck fighting supervillains just because it’s the right thing to do.”
About all she could do was blush and say, “Oh.”
* * *
On Sunday, she worked on her last English assignment, which was the final paper of the year. It took her half an hour of thinking about stuff and exactly fifty-two minutes of writing, because she timed herself. Then she stuck it in her home notebook to sit for a week. She still was going to have a final in English, just like in everything else. And she worked extra-hard on Spanish, because Señora Martinez was not happy with all the classes Alex had missed, mainly while superheroing, not that she could ever say so.
And Willow called on the Terawatt phone. “Tera? I’ve got a little of that CIA traffic decrypted, but most of the decryption is gonna take me a really long time. It’s just massive amounts of CPU time trying a zillion different possibilities.”
“Okay …”
Willow groaned. “We need to figure out what to do about Jack. Because this is a teenage girl, and the CIA has hunter teams trying to track her down and maybe shoot her! And they started up in like Finland but then they jumped to Northern Africa, and now they’ve moved up into Southern Europe, I think. And they know who the girl’s going to go after, but I can’t crack that part because it’s a codename with no external meaning. And what if Jack buries this and they kill the girl? How am I ever gonna go on a date again with him if he might do that kind of stuff?”
Alex said, “I don’t have any decent advice, Burn. I mean, I want to trust him, but he’s DHS. And this is CIA stuff. I just don’t know. I mean, would he just cut us out of the loop?”
Willow said, “Well, we don’t know anything useful. So tipping him off about this can’t make things any worse. And even if we could get you to Europe, I don’t think we could do much. I mean, I could tell you where the hunter teams are to maybe a circle with a forty- or fifty-mile radius, but that wouldn’t help at all. You wouldn’t know where to go in the area, or which team to look for, or how to spot them, or anything. And none of that would help you find the girl! And we don’t know how much trouble you’d get in for superheroing outside the U.S. I mean, what if the French fired missiles at you? It could be really of the bad!”
Alex said, “I could puddle into a jet flying to Europe without a whole lot of trouble, but tracking someone down is so much an Acid Burn thing, not a Terawatt thing. I’m not Sherlock Holmes, you are.”
She could hear Willow being all self-conscious as Willow said, “I … I’m really not.”
But Alex went on, “And then we’ve got a big problem, because we don’t know if the girl is a supervillain, or on our side, or neither.”
Willow knew Alex had been taking the SATs, so she said, “D. Some of the above. Or E. None of the above.”
If it hadn’t been so serious, Alex would have laughed. But they talked it over for another ten minutes, and then dragged Alex’s mom in with the phone on speakerphone. They finally decided they needed to bring Jack in on the whole thing. As Alex’s mom pointed out, if Jack buried the case or cut them off, they would know the truth about him. Willow sobbed a little, which made Alex feel really, really awful.
Willow finally said, “Okay. I’ll call him and tell him about this stuff and send some of the intel to his IT people. And we’ll just wait and see what he does.”
Alex’s mom gently said, “Willow, he may not be allowed to do anything. He may be in the DHS, but even Pentagon generals can’t order the CIA around, and this sounds like one of those rogue CIA operations that maybe even the head of the CIA can’t stop.”
“I really hope you’re right, Barb,” Willow said unhappily.
* * *
And then it was sit-around-and-fret time. Well, sit-around-and-study-and-try-not-to-fret time. And sit-around-and-fret-while-trying-to-cheer-up-Willow time. The last week of school before finals was pretty easy, because she had her English paper all done and ready for editing, and she had her history paper turned in, and she had all her trig homework done, and she had the extra credit assignments in Earth Sciences already turned in. So she just let the teachers go through the review material, and she studied what they said to study. She even felt pretty good about how she’d do on the exams. Unless Jack wanted her to rush off to Europe and miss exam week, which would be mega-bad.
On Thursday, she and her folks got the bad news that Annie wasn’t going to come home for the summer, because she’d been offered a really incredible internship in the 3M chemistry labs in Minneapolis. Alex’s dad was disappointed that Annie wouldn’t be working on one of the projects at the Paradise Valley chemical plant, but it was really important that Annie took one of the internships that M.I.T. would issue special credit for. So Alex told Annie good luck, and then after the phone call she and her mom hugged each other and cried some.
On Saturday, after her martial arts lesson, Jack was there again. And he was with Riley and Graham, which meant it wasn’t for a fun lunch before he went off to wine and dine Willow.
She went with them to the same conference room, which had mostly Mexican food laid out this time. While they ate, Jack filled her in on his progress on the ‘unknown girl with unknown powers tracked by unknown CIA teams that the CIA was insisting were not in the field’ problem.
He really sounded grouchy as he said, “I even called in a few favors, and nada. No one wants to admit this girl has any connection to any CIA projects current, past, or even future. I’m holding ’em to that. If we catch a break later on, we’re going to cram that party line down their throats.”
Riley said, “I know a few guys who know a few guys, and the CIA definitely has some military on active teams out of the country, but it’s all Need To Know. I don’t even know if these are the right guys, or if these teams are the ones we want.”
Graham said, “Walter went through legit channels and hit the CIA liaison with official access protocols, and we’re waiting to hear if that pans out.”
Jack said, “I went and talked to my boss, who went and talked with his boss, who really doesn’t like some of the crap the CIA’s dumped on the Pentagon, so win-win for us. If Walter can’t go through official channels, we’ll see if a four-star can stomp on someone in the know, or at least get the Defense Secretary to apply more pressure.”
Then he leaned forward and said, “If the CIA lets us in, we may have to sign off on a lot of non-disclosure agreements. I have no idea how that’s supposed to work for a superheroine with a secret identity, but I’m sure the beancounters won’t care as long as they have a CYA.”
Alex frowned. “I really don’t care about signing something that says I won’t talk about stuff, as long as we can stop this mess and save the girl if she’s a good guy and stop her if she’s a bad guy. I mean, it’s not like I’m not already keeping a ton of secrets.”
Jack said, “Yeah, but we trust you. These CIA pinheads don’t know you. And they don’t even trust me.” He looked at the expressions in the room and said, “Okay, bad example. They don’t even trust Finn, who’s just disgustingly wholesome.”
“Thank you, sir,” Riley said with just a little sarcasm in his voice.
Jack pretended he didn’t hear it, even if he didn’t completely keep the smirk off his face at getting a rise out of Riley, and he said, “So. Bottom line. Looks like you can do your exams without worrying about any big news on the ‘unknown super-powered girl’ front. If we get any updates, we’ll give you and Acid Burn a heads-up.”
Jack wanted to chat about Alex’s finals and summer prospects and stuff. He pretty much hinted that he wanted A.L. Mack to do a special internship taking some photos for the U.S. Defense Department on something he wasn’t able to talk about yet, but he wouldn’t come right out and say it. And Alex wanted to keep working at Gloria’s shop, even though the news crews and paparazzi were starting to leave town now that the Danielle Atron thing was wrapped up and Terawatt might not be making monthly appearances in Paradise Valley anymore.
So Alex told him that she had a part-time summer job she really liked, and she was planning on working on a few projects and taking some on-line coursework.
Jack finally asked, “Now you’re sure you don’t want to go to the Air Force Academy? We’re way better than the Army and Navy, and Colorado Springs is a much cooler place than Annapolis or West Point.” Two men cleared their throats as a reminder that Jack was the only Air Force officer in the room. Jack suppressed a grin and went on, “We could definitely get you in, and we could guarantee where you’d be working four years later, and we could even guarantee the Academy wouldn’t complain too much when we whisked you off to save the world once in a while.”
She told him, “I still want to try photojournalism as a real job. I mean, don’t you think heroes in the comic books who don’t have a real job end up sitting on the couch watching Oprah most of the time? And I like taking pictures. I’m good at it.”
Jack smiled. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re pretty good at a lot of stuff.”