Brink

She feared for Barry. Who would take care of him in his team of mutants? Although no information about their fate had popped up on the news for months, there wasn’t a doubt in Eugenie’s mind that they were there, lingering, that their presence was dormant, and that they would be back soon to rob Barry away. She was bothered about how skeptical she was of them and how many bad intentions she attributed to them while all they were, as a matter of fact, was this gathering of selfless individuals using their powers for good and protecting vulnerable civilians such as herself. They had been the ones giving a sense of identity and belonging to him, grounding Barry while he was discovering his superabilities. They were also the only ones, as of now, able to relieve her of her current responsibility towards him, so why was she dreading their imminent return?

“Is Uberwoman nice?” she had questioned Barry

“She’s smoking hot”

“I know” Eugenie was trying not to giggle at the thought of how magnificent and wonderful Uberwoman was, having been a fan of hers since she was a little girl, “but she also seems kind, benevolent, right?”

“Yes” Barry said, “she’s very kind. Why, you’re into her, Ms White?”

Of course, she thought, you would have to be a psychopath not to be, “noo, I mean to know if, like, she’s taking care of people, like, if she’s the nurturer of the group”

“Yes she’s the nurturer of the group”

“Does she take care of you?”

“Take care of me?” Barry seemed to have heard someone asking him if Uberwoman ate cats for breakfast, “why would she take care of me?”

She conceded that it was an arduous thing to imagine the Bolt, in his natural element, as needing attention and tending. For sure, he was projecting the image of a force of nature, a supple, elastic, fiery creation compacted into a hard ball of volcanic rock but, as a Geography teacher, she also knew that volcanic rock was artificial in nature. There was no such thing as truly hard volcanic rock, “but what if you get shot again, will she take care of you?”

Barry jumped on his butt, interrupted in the middle of his task of brushing the soles of his new Bolt suit he was slowly putting back together, “WHAT? I will never get shot again”

“Not as long as you live” she teased him

“Not as long as I… Ms White why are you saying those things?”

“You probably told yourself something similar when you got stabbed by this teenager and his butter kn—”

“Hold on” he waved the shoe in the air like a bell, “I was a beginner back then” that was funny to see his offense and the resurgence of his ego, “and he didn’t stab me, he like, scratched me”

“Hm. He tickled you”

“I don’t like what you’re insinuating” he spoke very seriously, although the soft and deflated half slipper in his hand was detrimental to that picture, resembling a molten brownie or a useless chunk of rubber.

“Yeah. I must be too overprotective”

“Wow. You’re making me sick” he gagged. Eugenie had nodded and bitten her tongue to repress her laugh.

She also feared for herself: was she alright? Did she need the Team back to liberate her from watching over Barry? She walked to the next room in her apartment, changed shops on her street during her grocery trips, entered the post office, connected tram to metro, and she felt a darkness in the corner, following her, creeping on her. It was the question about tomorrow, about Barry, it came with a blackness and a special stuffed air she would breathe that would dig a pit inside her belly. Delaying the day Barry would depart wouldn’t help with anything, she saw; spending more time living together would only make it worse.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

You’re not his mother, his aunt, his spirit guide. She was not his relative, they were not buddies, nothing. The boy had to spread his wings and fly, soon, and that was the normal order of things. When patients got better at the hospital, they would sign a discharge and leave and move on. Medical staff didn’t require guarantees that the rest of their patients’ existence would be safe from danger. Medical staff doesn’t look at empty hospital rooms with a feeling of emptiness and missing their patients.

One night, she had lifted her head from her grading papers at the dinner table and discovered that hours had passed and it was dark outside. She was about to get up when she realized that the cat was peacefully sleeping on top of some students’ dissertations in front of her, drooling from the corner of his almost-toothless mouth on one of the sheets. During all this time, Barry had been sitting next to her, listening to his audio book in his earphones and taking some devices apart, piece by piece. Now, he was trying to attach the box to his new Bolt suit he was assembling from scratch, sticking out his tongue, his face focused. She permitted herself a short second of contemplation but quickly put an end to it, as a big sponge of emotion was making its way up her throat.

“You are both my little pets, following me around the house everywhere I go” she had remarked to him about him and the cat, smiling light-heartedly, and she grabbed some pans and spoons to make some food.

“Wow, you have such a cringy way to describe it” he had said without looking up at her, but she saw he was trying to dissimulate a smile. He put the hood of his sweater on to hide underneath, fidgeting hard with his tools and threads. She never told him she had not been completely asleep when he had secretly admitted to her cat that he wished to stay in her flat forever.

There was something very balanced about Barry, that she esteemed. He was able to put down his guard and build a relationship, as theirs became warm and genuine, at ease with each other, but he was never guilty of excess of overstepping, he maintained a bienséance that she had seldom identified in people, and which stood diametrically opposite of what he had designed their exchanges to be back when he was her student. The word recognition scared her too, although that was what she felt from him, some uncomplicated gratitude for her stepping in when he needed it and some basic decent fair indebtedness that he didn’t seem to struggle to produce and release and let float between them on a daily basis.

He seemed, ô surprise, to have been schooled outside of their school, at a rare equilibrium, between respect and flow. And so un-found this mix was that she wondered if this was also something that he had been born with, keeping it a dark secret the whole time. He still enjoyed roasting her and ridiculing her special needs and dull habits, but she didn’t hate it, now that she found herself in an environment where she could throw back a jab or two at him. Who would she talk to and joke around with, when he departed her flat? You didn’t use to need someone to talk to or joke around with.

For sure I will not talk to you, she grunted back at her inside voice.

You’re already talking to me

I didn’t think I needed someone to talk to and joke around with. I mean before. Facing her old walls instead of Barry, talking to her cat, who was more qualified for napping and eating than for chitchat. She was laughing so much with Barry that her jaw hurt, her abdominal muscles hurt, and the sound of his laugh was a gift from outer space, especially after she had initially thought he would perish in the middle of her apartment. At the beginning, she had been determined to use her learned skills at being a pleasant person to accelerate his recovery, believing in the power of affirmations and lifting people’s spirits and, following that, she had been happy to make him feel welcome and not like a burden, since he was staying, she didn’t see the point of admonish him for it or acting cold about something he couldn’t control. Now, well, now? Who knew what she was doing.

“Get this Barry” she said one Sunday afternoon, as she was finishing a crime novel and wearing an avocado facemask. Barry was stretching inside the prototype of his new suit on the old yoga mat that she had never used, having incorporated on it the audacious concept of underarm gliding gear, “I’m almost at the end of this book and the hero just got shot by, like, a gun. He said, listen to this: ‘I felt the bullet hit me before I heard the shot’” Barry glanced at her, unimpressed, his eyes suspicious

“And?” he asked with affront.

“And?” she put her book down on her lap, smiled at him irreverently, “I wonder if that makes any sense to you, from like, personal experience”

“That makes absolutely no sense, Ms White, in terms of sound, speed of sound travel, and it just makes no sense”

“I just thought it would amuse you”

“That it would amuse me?” He broke off his workout session to sit straight and look exaggeratedly upset.

“I just thought it would interest you”

“Interest me?” As usual when they ran out of provocations, something was thrown, this time the yoga mat, that he folded messily and tossed in her direction, missing, and she counter attacked with some balls of rolled socks that she had retrieved from the drier a couple days before and that he had not tidied up. That was the day she told him she would gift the damn mat to him, and wrote his name on the side of it with a permanent marker, since he used it way more than she ever did or would. He nodded solemnly, as he did when he was happy and didn’t find any proper manner to respond.

And that’s why you don’t like his Team.

I don’t understand

That’s why you don’t want them to come back and pick him up