I knew there were plenty of overly dramatic stories about guys buying feminine hygiene products for their girlfriends or whatever, so part of me had been expecting some weird looks when I walked inside the pharmacy before I realized it made no sense for people to care in the slightest. What, was someone going to think I was having my period? Yeah, if someone thought that, they could keep thinking that. It wasn’t going to be something that made me upset.
The exact pads Lizzy jotted down on my phone were there, I grabbed the package and went to pick up a few other things. I grabbed some ibuprofen, and they didn’t have any heated blankets or heating pads, so I just grabbed a fluffy fleece throw they had on sale. Shelly liked chocolate as a comfort food when I had to do pharmacy runs for her, so I grabbed a few bars and hoped Lizzy wouldn’t get upset at possibly bloating in her horrific pleather pants.
“Did you find everything okay?” the peppy lady at the cashier asked. Oddly enough, there wasn’t another customer in the entire store, which made her voice carry across the entire open space.
“I did, thank you.” I put everything up on the counter and grabbed some fruit-flavored candy for all of us. Lizzy was definitely going to blame me for any weight she put on during our trip. There was going to be no getting away from that wrath for me. “And these too, please. Is it always this dead in here?”
“Usually, yeah. Between you and me, I think this place might be a front for organized crime. I get maybe a dozen customers a day.” Still looking down at the counter, I could see the woman’s hair shake back and forth, following her head.
When I looked up at the lady—her nametag identifying her as Amy—her mouth went from a smile to wide open in shock. I looked at my shirt to see if I had a stain I’d missed. When I didn’t find one, I looked behind me to see if there was something weird like someone with a knife ready to stab me. I didn’t find anyone else in the quiet store.
“You’re Ethan! You’re him, right? The guy who stopped McLeod near Phoenix.” She planted her hands down on the counter, leaning closer. She was closer to Lori in height, so she had to crane her neck back to look up at me. Her eyes were so wide and filled with wondrous awe that I had trouble maintaining contact with them.
I felt my face go red and I suddenly felt warm, not just from the scorching Las Vegas heat. Awkwardly, I pulled at my collar. “Y-yeah, that’s me. Nice to meet you.”
“You...you saved my family. I can’t believe I'm meeting you in the flesh like this.” She laughed and put both her hands over her mouth. “My mom and dad were down in Arizona for vacation. They didn’t mean to go to Glendale. Their GPS brought them there and they had no idea that anything was wrong. By the time they realized something wasn’t right and that the city had mostly been evacuated, it was too late to get back out. Mom and Dad managed to get out later, but their car was destroyed. All I wanted was for them to get out of Arizona as fast as possible.”
“Oh wow, I’m so sorry to hear that they had such a scare. How’re they doing now?” I had no idea what I should have been doing with my limbs, so I just put my arms behind my back and started kicking the ground with the tip of my right toe.
“They’re alive because of you!” I couldn’t tell if she was going to jump with joy, break down crying, or start laughing. Maybe all three at the same time. “They only barely got out of their car and hid. If you hadn’t come along...” The unspoken words were in her eyes and quivering bottom lip. I hadn’t stuck around to talk to anyone in Arizona. I knew I’d helped out, but to see someone who got to benefit from my actions? I was feeling a mix of emotions.
“I’m glad I could help,” I finally said, any cooler or more appropriate words escaping me. My neck and chest felt itchy like I’d just walked in to some poison ivy without a shirt on.
“Would it be okay if I, uh, got your autograph?” It was Amy’s turn to go red in the face and shy in her mannerisms. “Not for me, of course. My son is a huge fan. Ever since he saw you stand up to McLeod, he wants to be a hero like you. He can’t stop talking about how Ethan saved Grandma and Grandpa. Sorry, he might be a little obsessed. I haven’t tried to pump the brakes on it because I want him to be able to believe in heroes, you know? And you didn’t hear it from me, but I think he might have some powers too.”
“Really? How do you know?” That last part surprised me. I couldn’t tell if she just wanted to believe he had powers, so that’s what she thought she saw. If he was talking about my “heroics” and she was still elated about her parents making it out okay, who knew if she wasn’t doing some wishful thinking? Not me, though I wanted to give Amy the benefit of the doubt. Anomalies were weird things that manifested in strange ways sometimes.
“Well, I see lights coming out from under his door sometimes. They're so bright and colorful, even from under the door. He doesn’t have a TV in his room right now, and I don’t think his phone could make lights that bright.” She leaned in closer to me and spoke in a hushed tone even though no one else was there to overhear us. “How did you figure out about your powers?”
I gave her a brief rundown of how I met Lori, fudging just a few details to keep as much private as I could. If she thought her son seriously had powers, I didn’t want to tell her that Lori had found me because she essentially used a tracker to contact me so close to my old home. I didn’t feel great about keeping that info from her, but I didn’t want her to feel like we would actively hunt people like her son, even though a tracker might come through and talk to them one day.
The entire time, she looked like she was hearing the coolest stuff in the world. I tried not to be unsettled by the fact that I was the center of those cool things in the story. I may have worked to push McLeod out of Glendale and talked back to the president, which might have made me a badass to some people. None of that did anything to eliminate the shy teenager inside me. Hell, I was still reeling from how nervous I’d been proposing to Rebecca. I wasn’t a cool guy in the slightest. I was just a guy who had a bizarre break in life, maybe lucky or unlucky depending on one’s perspective.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Wow! You haven’t had your powers for long. You’re just a kid yourself.” A look of sadness came over her. I wanted to quip back at her. She wasn’t that much older than my sister, so she was fairly young herself. “A kid saved an entire city from that bastard while the people we rely on to protect us sat back and did nothing.”
“Kids have to grow up fast now.” My mind drifted to Megan more than my own experience. Amy’s sympathy was clear as day on her face. “I know someone who’s been dealt a really bad hand with all this. Just a little girl and she’s been so strong through it all.”
“I’m glad people like you are here. My son’s father isn’t really in the picture and I’m sure you can guess I don’t make a lot of money from this job.” Amy looked embarrassed by all that. I didn’t think there was any shame in her working a cashier job to support her family or in being a single mother. “But I feel like my luck is turning around. I’ve been wishing that my little Freddy could become something special so he can live a good life, not working a dead-end job like his mother. I wished my parents got out of Arizona as fast as possible. I wished someone would stop McLeod. And, this is so embarrassing, but I wished I would get to meet you at some point.”
The things she listed made me pause. It seemed like she was doing a lot of wishing and getting them granted, at least partially. Was it all just a big coincidence? Probably, if I was being honest. It wasn’t like they were overly surprising or in-depth wishes. Wishing for your son to have a better life than yours, wishing for your parents to be safe, and wishing for someone to stop a madman who was destroying cities weren’t out of the ordinary. The one that seemed a little odd was her wish to meet me before I happened to be in her store because my friend somehow forgot to pack her feminine hygiene products for a trip while she was on her period. With how capable I learned Lizzy was, that last one was more than a little unlikely.
“Hey, do you mind if I get your number?” I asked. “I’d like to talk to you about something later down the line once all this settles down a little.”
She smiled at me, yet it was full of pity. “I’m sure you’re a nice guy, and I cannot thank you enough for saving my parents, but I’m not just interested in seeing someone right now. Especially not someone who could be my son’s brother.”
I went red and I looked right at the floor. “I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant. I’m, uh, happily engaged to a wonderful lady who’s waiting for me back home. I was asking because if you think your son has powers, I think I can get people to help. It’s not something I can handle directly, but I have some connections.”
“Really? You’d do that for me?” Amy took out her phone and hesitated, staring hard at the device in her hand. Yep, Amy was a lady who had been burned by trusting before. When it involved her son, I completely understood why she’d be a little on guard, even if she thought I was a hero.
“For you and Freddy. And, as a bonus, I’ll sign as many autographs as you want.” I took a permanent marker from the stand next to the counter, popped the cap off, grabbed a candy bar, and wrote my number down on the back. “Here, this way, you don’t have to worry about giving me your number unless you absolutely want to. I know how scary it is to suddenly have these powers and then have your world changed in the blink of an eye.” Then I grabbed a few more chocolate bars and signed my name across them, planning on giving them to her after I paid for them.
Amy put her phone away and slowly smiled. “Thank you. For your number and the autographs. By the way, you have to pay for the marker now.”
Sadly, candy bar wrappers weren’t the coolest things in the world to sign, so I made a mental note to get her something more worthwhile if she came with us to Luna. I didn’t necessarily doubt that Freddy had powers. I had a suspicion that it might not just be Freddy who was special. Of course, her saying she wished for all the things she did and her just getting lucky was entirely possible, or my theory about the wishes being so understandable could have still stood. Stranger things had happened, and my gut told me to extend the olive branch to her and her kid. After all, even with that magical feeling of chance in Vegas, how lucky could a single mother working in a drug store be at the end of the day?
We said our goodbyes and I went back to the hotel under the scorching desert heat. All of the concrete structures absorbing the heat were making it worse. Places like Las Vegas and Glendale were on the bottom of my list for places to move, so low that death might be a preferable alternative. There was no way those habitats were meant for human survival, even with air conditioning and running water. It was a good thing the hotel was just a few minutes away on foot, and I had the situation with Amy to mull over in my head, keeping me largely distracted.
When I made it back to the hotel room, Julio was still out, hopefully enjoying the heat more than I had been. Lizzy was stretched out on the bed, still trying to fidget with her pants to get comfortable. For a few seconds, I wondered how she’d even change out a pad with pants that had been so miserable to get on and off. I stopped myself before I could think about it more. There were some obstacles in a woman’s life that she would have to be able to overcome on her own. She almost looked surprised when I walked in.
“I thought you died out there. Was it packed?”
“No, the exact opposite. The cashier is a lady who recognized me.” I wasn’t quite as bothered as I had been in the store, but I did go a little red again. “We talked a bit. She says her son has powers. I think it’s her who has them, or maybe even both of them. Just a gut feeling. I gave her my number so we can try to arrange for her to come to Luna soon.”
Her eyes widened a touch. “That’d be something. Good job, just another thing to check off with this visit. Did you have any trouble getting me what I asked for?”
“Nope, no issues. Here you go.” I tossed her the bag of stuff. “I didn’t know if you had ibuprofen, so I got you some of that. I also didn’t know if you had any trouble swallowing pills, so I got you both regular and chewable ibuprofen. It’s meant for kids, so you might have to up the dosage. Oh, they didn’t have a heating pad or anything, so I got you a little throw blanket to help make you a little more comfortable. Sorry that I couldn’t do more there.”
“What are you apologizing for?” Lizzy looked on the verge of stunned tears. “You bought the whole damn store to make me feel better. I take back everything mean I’ve said about you. You’re going to be such a great dad to Megan and the eighteen little girls Rebecca’s going to pop out for you”
I shuddered at the horrific idea of having nineteen daughters. “I give it a few hours until you’re mean to me again.”
“Probably,” she admitted. She downed some of the ibuprofen with a bottle of water and took her phone out again. “All I really need to do is put on my makeup and I’m ready to go. Was thinking about black lipstick, but when I thought about it more, I just don’t know if it’d work for me.”
“That’s all your domain, boss. I’m just here to keep an eye out.”
A sly grin spread across her face. “Great, then let’s get to studying the footage we have of the Andersons. I want you to be able to pick them out by body language alone by the time we’re ready to head out.”