“Don’t run until I tell you,” Damon
directed his brother. Eldon was no Vee,
but he was all Damon had to practice on until school started.
Like a runner waiting for the gun to
go off, Eldon nodded and watched Damon intently, almost challenging him. He stood in the family room, as close to the
couch as he could get, to give himself more running room.
Damon exhaled sharply, wanting to
make the darkspace come as fast as it could, and let out a “hulp!” Eldon took off
running before the darkspace spread to half of the family room.
“No, wait—!” Damon shouted, but it
was too late. Eldon reached the living
room before the darkspace had spread to half of the family room. Damon inhaled, and the darkspace
vanished. “I said don’t run until I tell you to!”
“I thought you said, “Go!” Eldon
protested as he bounded back into the family room.
“There’s a difference between
‘hulp!’ and ‘Go!” Damon argued, but this was getting him nowhere. If he couldn’t make the darkspace come fast
enough for an ordinary 11-year-old, he would never be able to compete with the
Power Club.
“What are you boys doing?” Their mom
asked a she carried a basket of laundry through the living room.
“Nothing!” they answered in stereo.
“Damon,” she said, looking down at
him, “you should know better than to teach Eldon to lie.”
Damon lowered his eyes. “Eldon’s helping practice so I can make my
darkspace come quicker.”
“Why do you want it to come
quicker?”
Damon dreaded this question, but he
answered truthfully. “Kyle and Danner
and Vee formed a special club. I tried
to join, but they said my power’s not strong enough.”
His mom sat her laundry basket by
the steps leading upstairs. “Damon, I
don’t want you hanging out with those boys.”
His dreams evaporated like heat from
the freshly laundered clothes. “Why
not?”
“What if someone gets hurt? Remember your last run-in with a special
club?”
How
can I forget? They stole my bike. Thinking
about it still made Damon angry.
“You’re lucky you weren’t seriously
hurt,” his mom went on. “ You had a
guardian angel watching out for you.”
Damon turned around so she wouldn’t
see him rolling his eyes. When his
mother started talking about guardian angels, he knew she wouldn’t budge. He jogged back into the family room to get
away from the words he knew would be coming next, but Mom only said, “No more
practicing on your brother!”
“Okay,” he said, trying to sound
dejected. Whether she knew it or not, his mom had left a loophole. She didn’t tell him he couldn’t join the
Power Club. She said she didn’t want him
“hanging out” with them. But if I join, I won’t technically be hanging out. I’ll be one of them. That logic would hold up in a court of law,
even if it didn’t hold up in the Court of Mom.
In any case, he’d find better volunteers once school started in a few
weeks.
***
On the first day of school, Damon’s
new teacher, Mrs. Fox, told the class about special programs. They would be trained to use their powers for
the military or to work in the district when grown. But Damon couldn’t wait that long—not with
the Power Club in his own neighborhood.
Recess was the only other
option. Damon told his pals, Andy and
Arick, to meet him by the basketball poles on the upper level of the
playground.
Andy went first. He stood facing one of the basketball poles
and took a deep breath. He let out an
explosive frost that covered the entire pole in seconds.
Damon went next. He created a darkspace around another pole.
Arick timed them both, studying a
stopwatch through his thick glasses. “He’s got you beat by four seconds.”
Damon and Andy turned to face two
different poles —
“Hey, stupids! Don’t freeze the poles!”
Four boys ran toward them. Eighth graders.
“Basketball poles are for playing
basketball, dummies!”a shaggy, blonde-haired boy taunted them. “You’re going to ruin them!”
Damon knew Andy’s frost breath would
wear off in a few seconds and there were never any lasting effects from his
darkspace. “No, we’re not.”
But the older boys didn’t seem to
care what Damon had to say. “Get lost!”
the blonde boy shouted. He stood in
front of one of the frozen poles and looked up at the sky. His body began to glow and the air around
them all turned very hot. Melted ice
dropped off the basketball poles and evaporated. One of the other boys bent over and transformed himself into
something resembling a large, metallic ball.
Then other boys tossed him around and threw him toward the hoops,
ignoring Damon and his friends.
Protesting that they had been there
first would have been useless. One
didn’t argue with eighth graders.
“Come on,” Arick said with
resignation.
They ran to the lower-level
playground, where a swing set, jungle gym, and castle were set up. The younger kids had already had their recess,
so Damon and his friends had the playground to themselves. Arick ran to the jungle gym and turned to
face the others. “Damon, try your power
on me.”
Damon released the darkspace. As his night vision activated, he saw Arick
standing there, a tiny speck next to the skeletal frame of the jungle gym. Poor
Arick. He’s just gonna stand there—
But Arick casually took off his
thick glasses, put them into a case he pulled from his back pocket, and laid them
on the ground.
Damon watched, amazed, as Arick ran
to the jungle gym and climbed up on it. His
friend, who had so much trouble seeing in plain daylight, climbed to the top of
the metal bars, hung off of them, and spun around with confident abandon before
he leaped off and ran to the castle.
Can
he see in the dark? The idea made Damon strangely anxious until he realized
Arick was using his radar vision to get around.
“This is too easy!” Arick called
from atop the castle. “Can’t you do
anything else?”
Damon’s amazement turned to
irritation. The Power Club’s rejection
reverberated in his mind. Is that the best you can do? He thought for a moment.
Whoa. . . . What if I create second darkspace?
He concentrated and exhaled . . . It was like blowing into a balloon that was
already full of air. Damon feared
something might pop, but nothing
did. Gradually, the darkspace expanded.
Arick climbed down off the castle
and ran toward the swings, but stopped. “Hey,
Damon!”
Winded from the effort, Damon didn’t
answer.
“DAMON!” Arick’s shouted. He stood still, frozen in one spot. “Cut it out!
Make it go away!”
Damon’s stomach hurt as he inhaled. The darkspace vanished.
“What happened?” asked Andy, who had
remained outside the darkspace.
Damon filled him in.
“And then all of a sudden,” Arick
continued as he retrieved his glasses, “it got darker. Everything disappeared. My radar vision couldn’t detect anything.”
“Is it some new power of yours,
Damon?” Andy was impressed.
“I dunno.” Damon didn’t want to admit he’d tried creating
a second darkspace. Besides, when kids used misused their powers,
they could be reported to the teachers.
He turned to Arick. “What do you
mean everything disappeared?”
Arick searched for the right
words. “Your darkspace got .
. . darker.”
No comments:
Post a Comment