“While it goes back all the way to the ancient era,” orated Mrs Watkins, “it was during the 1800s that our modern era of advertising began– rolling out the use of slogans and eye-catching visuals to lure in customers.”

Fourth period on a Friday. Kay was eager to get out of school, go out and be the water elemental he was meant to be but first he had to stomach two more hours of education. It was the day he “reawakened” to his powers, too, so he was like a kettle ready to boil.

That class wasn’t his first time having Mrs Watkins as a teacher, but it was media studies this year, not English like last. Kay slouched in his seat and paid attention to the lesson as best as he could, wrangling his thoughts away from the cool flips he wanted to do later.

“Although there’s an evolution here, the fundamentals remain the same.” Mrs Watkins gestured at the series of pictures she set up on the ledge of the whiteboard, a series of advertisements ranging from the 1860s to a GameBoy ad from the late 90s featuring bright colours and an edgy font choice. The ad from the 1860s was on photocopied paper but the others were laminated and were probably reused school resources.

Mrs Watkins centred herself at the front of the classroom. “But instead of going with a typical lesson plan, I’ve decided that what we are going to do here is imagine an advertisement as a group.” She grinned. “This class is an advertising firm– let’s put it that way.”

There wasn’t much of a response from the room but no one had fallen asleep either so Mrs Watkins considered it a small victory.

“So...” said Mrs Watkins, “What kind of product should we sell?”

Some people didn’t bother raising their hand. “Sneakers” shouted a boy from the back. “New music” said a girl towards the front. “Watches” said a boy by the window. Some students were courteous and raised their hands to wait for the teacher’s response while some hedged their bets by raising their hand but then blurted out their suggestion anyway.

Huxley was one of those who waited for the teacher to call on him. Mrs Watkins rewarded his formality by picking him out of everyone else. The class quieted down to let Huxley give his suggestion. “Pop” he said.

Jia sat at the table with Huxley. She asked, “The music or the drink?”

“The drink,” said Huxley.

Mrs Watkins nodded. “Alrighty, then. We are selling soda pop.” She used the regional term like everyone else but stuck ‘soda’ in front to specify. She clasped her hands together. “So... who wants to lead this advertising campaign?”

Some people raised their hand but Mrs Watkins took her eyes over at Kay. He was staring off to the side, seemingly uninterested in the topic. Watkins remembered Kay from last year, a quiet and shy boy, but by the end of the school year was doing pretty good. A very diligent student, but not very loud or active.

“Kay,” said Watkins, “How would you sell a soda pop if you had to advertise it?”

Kay uttered. He let out an exhale and rearranged himself in his seat. “I guess posters on busses. Or commercials.”

Watkins nodded. “Right, yeah.” She gestured a hand out at Kay. “Posters and commercials. Let’s say we were supposed to focus on television, though; how would you make the commercial?”

“I... I guess I would film it,” joked Kay. His lack of enthusiasm made it hard to tell if he was trying to tell a joke but a few chuckles came his way anyhow.

Watkins smirked. “Of course. What kind of–” She stopped and sidestepped. “Actually, Kay, come up here.”

With a reeled in sigh, Kay got up and moved to the front of the class. Was he being punished, he wondered as he looked around the classroom and saw a few students giggling at his predicament.

“What kind of commercial would you make?” Watkins asked again, her tone brightening.

“I guess...” Kay scrubbed his back and gestured his hand out like it helped the gears in his head turn. “I guess... one that shows the drink?” He thought of pop commercials and they always had shots of the beverage being poured into a glass in slow-motion. “Like pouring it into a glass?”

Watkins nodded. “Yeah, that sounds about right. That can’t be it, though. What else?”

Do I have to cast this thing, too? Kay thought to himself.

“It could be just that,” said Kay, argumentative but not too rude. “Multiple shots of cola being poured into a glass.”

Watkins rolled her eyes. “Okaaaaay, let’s have more story, though. It’s a commercial– thirty seconds– so it won’t be a lot, but what kind of images would you use? Imagine what kind of cause and effect you’d have to sell this pop.”

Cause and effect? The only cause and effect Kay had with soda pop was him drinking it and feeling less thirsty, but wisecracking and joking would tempt Watkins with giving Kay a failing grade, so the young man gave an earnest answer. “Maybe it’s hot out and people are thirsty so they crack open a few bottles of pop.”

Watkins nodded. “That’s better.” She looked out the window. “Not seasonally appropriate but I think it could make waves at the start of summer.” Watkins addressed the class. “So it’s a summer’s day in this commercial. What are people wearing?”

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Kay wobbled his head, coming up with some ideas with half-confidence. “Shirts, shorts... sunglasses.”

Watkins’ motioned a head flick at Kay’s eyewear. “Yeah. Sunglasses. Appropriate summer wear.” A good laugh rumbled across the room and Kay brushed off a pang of embarrassment. Watkins asked further, “What’s the music like? What would you want to hear?”

Kay curved his lip. “Well... What I would want to hear is a lot different from what’s marketable.”

Watkins raised a brow. “What does that mean? Do you listen to experimental stuff?”

Jia, sitting back at the worktable with Huxley and Lana, piped up for Kay. “He likes older music. Classic rock and that stuff.”

“Really?” Watkins said with her face brightening.

“Yeah,” said a kid close to the front. “Can’t you tell? With the way he dresses like a rock star?”

For moment Kay felt a bit of pride, almost pushing his chest out to show off his vintage look.

Watkins gave Kay’s fashion a comb. “Sure,” said the teacher sounding not a bit convinced.

And then the moment of pride had passed.

“So would you pick something to your liking?” asked Watkins. “It’s not like they never use old music in commercials, even things aimed at broader audiences.” She folded out her hand. “So name a song you think would work for a pop commercial about people quenching thirst with Sprite or something.”

“‘Black Dog’ from Led Zeppelin,” said Kay. Nobody rose at this suggestion, so Kay clarified: “It... it’s kind of a party song! It’s got a wild guitar sound.”

“Okay, okay,” said Watkins, trying to ease some confidence in Kay’s song choice. “‘Black Dog’ by Led Zeppelin.”

Kay grinned sheepishly. “Does it matter that Led Zeppelin doesn’t let people use their music?” He thought to unravel a little trivia on the band’s stark licensing regiment but as his mind formed an argument, a synapse sparked in his annals of 1960s hard rock and out of the darkness did another song arise. “Wait! ‘No Sugar Tonight’ by the Guess Who.”

Watkins perked a brow. “Oh?”

“Yeah...” Kay glanced around the room, eyes bright. “For diet pop. ‘No Sugar Tonight’. It’s the perfect song!”

Watkins was almost certain that she had seen a commercial for diet pop that used that very song, but far be it from her to put the fizzle on a student’s enthusiasm when she got into teaching for the exact opposite. And besides, Kay might have put together a retro look but that didn’t mean he was familiar with commercials that could have been a thing since the 1970s. He wasn’t ripping anything off.

“Not bad,” said Watkins. “Yeah, we’ll start with that idea. Thank you, Kay. Take a seat, if you please.”

Kay returned to his seat with a bit of glow. Huxley, Jia and Lana passed around sly glances like they were impressed.

Huxley could have given Kay a pat on the back, but Kay didn’t seem like the kind of guy to like that sort of thing so Huxley refrained. He said, “This is probably the closest lesson to my ideal career in awhile.”

“Filming?” asked Jia.

“Advertising,” said Huxley. “That’s what I’m gonna go to college for!”

“Got it all figured out, huh?” said Lana. She dripped her head with a smirk. “I have no idea what I want to do after high school.”

Jia let out a defeated chuckle. “Me neither.”

The more Kay thought about the future, the more anxious he got. What was he supposed to do for a living after school was done? He hadn’t the foggiest idea. He had no clue before his powers awakened and even after he wasn’t sure.

Truly, it all came down to his powers: what he was supposed to do with them after he was done school. He had no guarantee they would last, in the long run. But in the end, he really wasn’t sure what he was doing after high school, much like his peers.

“Same here,” he said, trying to sound normal with that kernel of truth.

“Well...” Huxley presented an irreverent shrug and grinned wide. “You have all of high school to figure out. We’ve only just begun the second half of it.”

Kay found that strange. He was in his second half of high school. It felt weird to acknowledge that. With him getting his water elemental powers, the timeline of secondary education didn’t have a real shape in the back of his mind.

Jia perked up. “Oh yeah. I remember you telling us about old video game advertisements in magazines.”

Huxley smiled, nodding. “Growing up, a lot of the video game ads for Sega and Nintendo were–” He fanned out his wrists, imitating a pose that the cool dudes would posture in these ads– “cool and radical.” His voice growled as he said it. He shared a giggle with Jia and Lana and continued. “I remember– when I was younger– reading an article on the internet about video game ads of the nineties and how they were trying to out-cool each other. It got me thinking about how to sell a product and what I would do in that situation– if I had to advertise Sonic the Hedgehog or... whatever.”

“So what do you want to do?” asked Lana. “Make cool ads?”

“I don’t know,” said Huxley. “I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of convincing people, but never thought about doing it as a career. Then I read that article and wondered what it would be like to be an ad executive.”

Kay was impressed. Here was someone his age who had it all figured out. Kay didn’t even know someone could have such direction so young. Kay, on the other hand, looked at the front of the room at the photographs for ads. Was that what Kay signed up for when he chose to take media studies? Was it okay for Kay to have taken a class that had nothing to do with this career? Or his life?

He went over his class selection and wondered if World History was going to be useful later in his life. He also regretted not taking drama. He considered it a few weeks into unleashing his elemental alter ego and thought acting classes would have helped him create the character of the water form.

Too bad his superpowers weren’t foresight. He could have used some of that.

Friday was for splashing around, though. Kay went home, tossed his bag in his room, then headed out to the graveyard to shift into his water form and slip into the city. Ghost Thing was ready for a full day of watering out, provided that no thugs attacked him like the week before.

As he made his way to downtown, his mind wandered, though. Was his powers his career now? His future? He might not want to be a superhero but surely there was some job that would have been suited for someone that could turn into water and slither through cracks. Ghost Thing couldn’t imagine a way for that to work with him not being found out, though, and he wanted to keep his secret identity a secret for as long as he could.

Ghost Thing stopped, slowing his run on the top of a RadioShack. He thought to himself, It’s like I’m expecting to be discovered...

“Will I get found out?” he whispered to himself.

Indefinitely, he would likely be found out. Maybe the governments would create technologies that detected powers, like what Ghost Thing had. Being “detected” was a worry that stuck with the boy: so much so that he dodged seeing a doctor since he got his powers. What if the doctor checked his blood rate or looked into his eyes and discovered something like– congrats, Mrs Karachalios, your son’s a mutant!

Ghost Thing shook his head; quite literally, in fact, like the intrusive thoughts were moths fluttering in his face. It was Friday. It was a time for rollicking and he had a week of down time to make up for. It had been a little while since he checked to see how high up the skyscrapers he could climb. Ghost had to correct that, so he continued on to downtown to make the most of his afternoon.