Super•Villainous

VI

Our week passed somewhat uneventfully and, fortunately, my punishment for sneaking out never actually came beyond my dad sternly telling me not to do it again.

College application denials began trickling in around March, which meant the deadline to confirm the sporadic acceptance was coming up soon, as well, and we were, tragically, back in school to polish off our last few months of public education. It all felt so surreal in light of my most recent near death experience.

But life moved on, and so did I. Or I tried to.

Because my wounds from the brief impact with the car were surprisingly minor — just a few scratches, really — I made the dubious choice to keep the encounter between myself and my friends, and I would have gotten away with it, too, were it not for my meddling sister. The little narc saw the video circulating the internet within hours of the event, despite Nicole's promises about the fickleness of media focus and she ran straight to our dads. To be fair, I should have had the presence of mind to preemptively buy Alexia's silence. My mind felt like it was being pulled a million different directions lately, causing all the regular things I would normally anticipate to slip past and cause me problems later.

I shouldn't have wanted to keep the matter to myself. After all, it wasn't like I personally did anything wrong that needed concealing, but it still felt like I did, and being caught only added a layer of irrational irritation to everything else I was already feeling.

I struggled to focus in my classes as a result, and definitely saw the impact it was having after scoring a nice round fifty percent on my fourth period physics quiz. Ms Geiger looked at my paper with a frown, stared at me long and hard, and then projected to the class, "Senior-itis is no excuse to let your grades slip. You're almost at the finish line, so it would be a shame for you to fail my class this close to graduation. No offence, but I don't want to see any of you next year."

Believe me, I thought. The feeling is mutual.

Luckily, the bell rang at that moment, and before she could start the "The bell doesn't dismiss you, I do," spiel I was already snatching away my paper and herding out the door.

"Geez, how bad did you do to earn that speech?" Leigh asked, coming up behind me.

I pressed my lips into a resigned line, shrugging. "Take a guess."

"Hmm... thirty percent?"

"Who got a thirty percent?" Nicole popped into the conversation, fresh out of Advanced Chemistry a mere two doors down from mine and Leigh's shared bare minimum physics class.

"Lily did."

"I did not get a thirty," I clarified.

Leigh's brows disappeared into her hairline. "You got below thirty? Ouch."

"You twit. When did I say that? I got a fifty."

"That's not even that bad," said Nicole sympathetically, the same girl who probably hadn't gotten bellow a B+ in her life.

"Oh well." I smiled, feigning detachment. "You can't really blame me for my lack of focus, given the circumstances. You get hit by a car and tell me how up to test taking you are afterwards. In related news, what do you think about me dying my hair pink? Now that red-headed me is also viral for the whole flying over the car thing, I should probably go with a different color for the sake of anonymity, right?"

"Why are you so threatened by the idea of being recognized again?" Leigh asked.

We turned the corner, the exit doors coming into sight over the heard of seniors clambering for a lunchtime escape. Riotous chatter grew the closer we drew into the throng, cresting over our senses. Some discussed school, or where they wanted to get lunch, but most fell into the default: superhero politicking. Given that scientists estimated the birth of a Thaumaturge (their fancy term for those with special abilities) to be roughly one in three dozen births, people enjoyed speculating who amongst their classmates might have powers and be concealing it. At those odds, there should have been nearly one hidden Super per class period, though that sounded more impressive than it actually was. Most powers were useless, such as seeing extra colors, being able to communicate with ladybugs (who apparently didn't care to listen), or never getting brain freezes. They weren't exactly going to be a formidable crime fighting force. Beyond trifling speculation, they also liked to debate the morality of registering people with abilities into the government database to track any misuse of power, or the true identities of famous Supers, the motives behind Shade's villainy, and the drama of the latest attacks — including the identity of that girl Tempest saved last week.