Chapter 30

Michael

"Open this door!” the cop ordered as he pounded on the Johnson’s front door. “Or we will break….” The officer cut off as the door budged open on its own; it was already broken. I had busted through it earlier when I’d brought Angela home from the fight with Ray.

Just before the door swung all the way open, I sparked my powers, increasing my speed, and grabbed Angela’s hand and pulled her away from the door. She looked at me, her eyes glowing too, and ran with me down the hallway and around the corner into the kitchen, so the cops couldn’t see us. Our inhuman speed had created a gust of wind that left several pictures on the hallway wall—pictures of Angela, her dad, and a blonde-haired woman who must’ve been Angela’s mom—hanging crooked.

I think the cop heard the commotion because he barged through the door, gun in hand. I heard his footsteps and several more behind him. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Mr. Johnson said. “What’s going on here?”

“Angela Johnson,” the head officer barked. “Is she here?”

“No. I haven’t seen her all day. I just flew in from New York City. Why? What’s wrong?”

Grateful Angela’s dad was covering for us, I leaned over, peeking around the corner to get a glimpse of the exchange.

“Your daughter,” the cop said as he looked over Mr. Johnson’s shoulder, “took part in a prank at the high school today that had a criminal amount of vandalism. We’re going to have to bring her in.” The officer signaled his team to start searching the house, but Mr. Johnson stopped the men before they got down the hallway.

I peeled my eyes away from the scene, my heart thumping, and looked at Angela. She grasped my hand, her face wrinkled with worry.

“Hey! I can’t let you in here without a warrant,” Mr. Johnson said. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave my—”

I heard the officer pull something out of his pocket and hand it to Angela’s dad. He unfolded it. “How in the world did you get this in less than a day?”

“I think you know,” the cop said. “We’ve seen the news. We both know that your daughter is capable of much more than just vandalism. She’s dangerous.”

Footsteps stomped up the stairs and around the front room. There was nothing Mr. Johnson could do to stop them from searching the house. Someone was coming down the hallway fast. I started to panic.

Angela pulled my hand, yanking me down the kitchen, around a corner, and into a closet. Yes, we had super speed, but no, we did not have super stealth. I was sure someone had heard us scamper across the kitchen. Angela flicked on the light, revealing a pantry filled with canned beans and bagged rice.

“Angela,” I whispered. “What are you doing? They’re definitely going to find us in here.”

“We’re not hiding,” she said as she got on her tippy toes to grab a stuffed duffle bag from off one of the shelves. It looked heavy, but she strapped it over her shoulder and hoisted it to her side as if it were as light as a pillow. She looked at me with her glowing eyes. “We’re running,” she whispered.

Before I could wrap my mind around that, she pressed by me and inched the door open, scanning the kitchen to see if the coast was clear. She crept out of the pantry, me following close behind, and we headed to the back-sliding glass door, opening it quietly.

I could hear Mr. Johnson arguing with the head cop near the front door. Footsteps pounded around upstairs. It looked like we were going to make a silent getaway.

“FREEZE!”

I obeyed. Hands up. Heart pounding. Holding my breath.

The voice didn’t come from inside the house, but from outside. Directly in front of us, in the backyard, stood a female cop with a pistol aimed right at us. She was obviously positioned here to cut off any escape attempts.

The cop pressed a button on the radio strapped to her shoulder. “Sergeant!” she said. “I’ve got ‘em! They’re in the backyard!”

“Them?” came the reply from the cop who was arguing with Mr. Johnson.

“The girl and the boy! Michael Stone! He’s with her!”

“On my way!”

Footsteps thundered toward our location.

“Get down!” she yelled at us. “On your knees! Now!”

This is it, I thought. Off to jail, or ….

I noticed Angela’s eyes were glowing… and not just from having her powers turned on. She had a plan. She took my hand and pulled me into a run. I was instantly seized with a sharp pain in my ribs. Yep, those were still broken. My powers dampened the pain, but not completely. We sped around the corner of the house, dodging around another cop, blowing his cap off in the process. The front of the house was blocked with a barricade of police cars, but we easily jumped over them before anyone could react. I heard gunshots, but no bullets ever came close to hitting us.

We ran down the street, leaving Angela’s neighborhood in a flash. Even though clouds covered the moon and the stars, I could see just fine in the dark. Light rain drops pelted my face as I ran, annoying, but not painful.

Angela ran beside me, the large duffle bag strapped over her shoulder. It was weird to see someone running as fast as me. I thought I would see concern, worry, or fear on her face from the fact that we were running from the police, but, instead, she was grinning from ear to ear.

“Woo hoo!” she yelled. She leaned forward and rocketed ahead of me, down a sidewalk next to a major highway. I remembered that Angela hadn’t run like this for years. She hadn’t had her stone ever since she was a kid. But now, with her stone in her pocket, she could run as long as she wanted without passing out.

Angela slowed down, waiting for me to catch up. “C’mon slow poke!” she yelled over the howling wind.

“Ribs!” I shouted back between gasping breaths. “Broken!”

“Excuses!”

She jumped into the air, reaching a ten-foot arc before coming down. She jumped again getting a little higher. Cars passed by us on the road, their headlights threatening to blind us. Out of instinct, I wanted to veer away from the road so nobody would see us using our powers, but things were different now. My identity had been revealed when I fought Ray. The police knew my name. There was no point anymore in hiding my powers.

Angela must’ve felt the same way as she leaped beside the highway, getting higher with each jump. I caught up to her as she descended from a fifty-foot jump. “Angela,” I yelled over the wind. “Where are we going?”

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She looked at me and slowed down to a stop. I stopped with her, the world lurching into normal speed. The rain continued to drizzle down. I folded my arms to keep myself warm and to hold my ribs in place. We were both panting. Even though we ran with super human speed, it was still a tiring exercise.

“Sorry,” she said, still grinning. “I was having too much fun.”

“You know the cops are still after us, right?” I said, looking down the road, expecting to see red and blue police car lights any moment.

“Right. Not that they’ll ever catch us, but it does make things inconvenient.”

“If the police were at your house and knew my name, then they’re probably at my house too.” I checked my phone, using my hand to block the rain from getting it too wet. “Yep. Just as I thought. I have several missed calls from both my mom and my dad. Sarah had sent me a text telling me not to come home because the cops were there.”

“That’s why I got this,” Angela thumbed at the duffle bag behind her. “But, we should get some food before we head out. C’mon, I’m starving!”

She turned and sped away, leaving me in a gust of wind. I scrunched my face, hungry for an explanation. And also, for some food.

We shortly arrived at a Chinese restaurant, dripping wet from head to toe. Angela turned off her powers and went in to order some food to go. I didn’t go in because I didn’t want to turn off my powers, since my ribs would hurt too much without them on. I would freak people out with my glowing eyes, so I just waited outside, avoiding the rain, looking nervously over my shoulder every ten seconds.

I pulled out my phone and wrote a message to Zack. Hey man, I wrote. The cops are after me and Angela for the fight we had with Ray today. Could you help us out by letting us stay at your place?

Angela came out of the restaurant with a few cartons of rice and heavily sauced chicken. We sat at an outdoor table that had an umbrella to cover us from the rain. “We outrun the police,” I said. “And now we’re eating Chinese food?”

“Yup,” Angela said as she stuffed some chicken into her mouth with chop sticks. “It’s not like they got our license plate numbers or anything.”

She chuckled. I didn’t.

“Angela, this is crazy!” I said. “We just ran away from the police! What’re we going to do now that we can’t go to either of our homes? We’re on the police’s most-wanted list. And we’re probably expelled from school. They’ve probably got helicopters out looking for us!”

She shrugged between gulps. “Yeah. Exciting isn’t it?”

I sighed, picking through my food. “Doesn’t any of that concern you?” I asked.

“A little. Here put these on.” She dug through her duffle bag and handed me a pair of sun glasses. “Don’t want anyone in the restaurant to alert the police about a guy with glowing eyes, now do we?”

I slipped them on, grateful, but unsatisfied. How could she be so calm? This was huge! I wasn’t sure if I would ever get to return home. We were delinquents now. Homeless juveniles, running from the law. They would keep searching for us. For how long? Would we have to be in hiding forever?

“You’re not much of a rule-breaker, are you?” Angela said, pointing a chopstick at me.

“I guess not,” I said, remembering that Zack had said the same thing about me. Maybe he was right. I’ve always hated the idea of being a trouble-maker. “Running away from the police,” I said, staring at my food, “was something I never—even in my wildest dreams—ever imagined me doing. We broke the law. We’re felons, Angela. We’re supposed to go to jail!”

“Would you stay in jail?”

“What?”

“Stay in jail? I mean, you could break out if you wanted to.”

“I…. If I…” I paused to think about it for a moment. The idea of breaking out of jail had never seemed like a possibility until now.

“If you wanted,” Angela said as she squeezed some water out of her light brown hair, “you could break out as easily as acne on a teenager’s face.”

“Yeah,” I said as I stirred my food around. “I could, but…”

“You still wouldn’t, would you? Even though you have the powers? Is it because it’s against the law to break out of jail?”

“I don’t know.” I paused. “Maybe.”

She laughed, shaking her head. “Wow, you’re really something, Michael Stone! Okay, you go right ahead and turn yourself in to the police. I’m going to stay right here and eat my Chinese food.”

I just sat there, watching her eat, unsure what to do with myself. I felt stuck. The idea of going to jail made me want to puke, but so did the idea of running from the police for the rest of my life. I’d always considered myself to be a good guy, a nice guy, but now I felt like a teenage crook with a hefty criminal record.

“I’m never going to jail,” Angela stated matter-of-factly. “I’d break loose before they could even get me close. Jails are for normal people, and we’re not normal people, Michael. This whole Starling thing might be something new for you, but I’ve had my powers my whole life. Even though I could use them in only short spurts, they still changed the way I saw the world.

“I grew up knowing that I could beat anyone in a race if I wanted, see in the dark when no one else could, or outperform every Olympic gold medalist ever. I knew I could actually beat up Ray that night when I challenged him. I wasn’t planning on it, but I knew I could. Having these powers takes away the fear or the restraints that most people have.”

She leaned forward. “Think about this, Michael. You hate breaking rules, right?”

“Right,” I said, though I felt guilty when I said it, like it was socially unacceptable for me to be an obedient teenager.

“Well, you break the laws of physics every time you use your powers.” She paused, pushing aside her empty carton. “The way I see it, all the laws created by humans apply to humans only, not super humans.”

I furrowed my eyebrows. “But, then every Starling—and supposedly there are more of us out there—could just rob every bank they wanted, take anything they wanted, and even get away with murder.”

Angela raised a finger. “Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not murder. I said we don’t need to follow laws created by humans.”

“Oh, so people are just supposed to rely on every Starling’s moral compass to keep them safe? What can they do against a Starling who thinks it’s moral to burn down their village? A guy like Ray?”

“Nothing,” Angela said emphatically, with a soft pound on the tiny table. “That’s my point. What can human laws and human enforcement do to stop someone like that? Someone like Ray? Nothing.”

I thought about that. It was weird to no longer consider myself as part of the human race. “They could fight. Go to war against the evil Starlings and stop them from doing whatever they want.”

“We both know that would get ugly really fast. No, the only ones who could stop bad Starlings… are good ones.”

I leaned back in my seat, shivering because my clothes were still wet, and also because of the heavy ice block of responsibility that seemed to drop on my shoulders. “You mean…like us?”

“Well, depends on what you call good or bad. Do you think I’m a good Starling even though I refuse to go to jail?”

“No, yeah, Angela. You’re good.”

“And do you think you’re bad for running away from the police? Would you be able to stop any bad Starlings if you were cooped up in jail?”

I didn’t answer. I chewed on that—and on my last piece of chicken—as I watched the rain begin to let up. She was right. Maybe I’ve been too hard on myself. I should stop freaking out about breaking rules or running from the cops. I’m a super human for crying out loud! This should be fun, right?

I felt stupid because it’s basically the same speech Zack and Sarah had been giving me for the last month. Why have I been so apprehensive about using my powers? Why couldn’t I be more chill or excited about it all, like Angela? I think the truth was that I was just over concerned about being a good guy. I wanted to follow all the rules to be good, prove that I wasn’t a trouble-maker, but Angela made a good point: manmade laws don’t make a person good, morals do.

Morals that I chose to follow. Personal rules that I committed to obey. With the power I had, no one in the world could stop me from doing whatever I wanted… except for myself.

My phone buzzed, causing me to snap out of my reverie. It was Zack. That’s tough man, he wrote. I’m sorry the cops are after you, and I wish I could help, but there’s no way I could sneak you into my house without my parents noticing, and they aren’t too fond of you right now anyway. You know, with you being a fugitive and all.

I sighed tapping the phone on my head.

He sent another text. And no, I’m not going to help you with Team Orion anymore, so don’t bother asking.

I frowned. Zack was mad at me because I was afraid to use my powers, even for good reasons. After hearing Angela’s point of view, I understood why Zack hated my guts right now. Having powers and doing nothing with them isn’t neutral, it’s bad. I was the bad guy in his perspective. Maybe he was right.

“Who’s that?” Angela asked as she threw her empty cartons away.

I glanced at the road beside the restaurant, busy with traffic. The cars splashed through the puddles. I was still expecting to see red and blue police car lights coming for us in the distance, but none came.

“That was my cousin, Zack,” I said, looking up at Angela through the sunglasses she’d given me. “He said we can’t stay at his place. I don’t know where else to look.”

“That’s okay,” she said as she hoisted her dark green duffle bag onto the table and opened it. Inside were rolled-up tents, sleeping bags, extra clothes, blankets, non-perishable foods, and thick wads of cash. “All my life my dad and I have lived with the risk that my secret would get out or that I might accidentally destroy a public library or something, and that we’d have to live for a while on the run. That’s why my dad and I always have this emergency bag ready.”

“Wow,” I said, standing up, and wincing from the pain in my ribs. “So, what does this mean?”

“It means,” Angela said as she slung the duffle bag over her shoulder. “We’re going camping!”