Chapter 7

>       Because the options are endless, they're overwhelming at times

>

>       You just have too much to sell me, so many things to decide

>

>             -- “Creature of Habit”, Bug Hunter

- Popper -

(January)

Superpowers are interesting things.

I remember watching the news with my dad the night of the Rampage, when two men with superstrength tore up a good chunk of downtown. No one had ever talked about superpowers before that, not outside of comic books or movies, anyway. But now they seem to be commonplace. Which seems like it should feel strange.

I have to admit I’m enjoying this part of Aiden’s journey, all of these little stories when he was just beginning to discover what he could do. I’ve only known him for about three months, but I’ve seen him in action, I know what he’s capable of doing. And it’s fun to compare who he is now with who he is in his journal. I know his story isn’t all good and happy, but I feel happy reading his happy parts, which is good enough for the moment.

Of course, reading his story makes me think about my own journey. More painful, of course, and certainly more embarrassing in parts, but I think I’m turning out okay.

I suppose the next thing I need to talk about are the pills.

I’d been missing my dad more than usual and decided to drop by his house for a bit. This was last June, a couple of months after he died. Technically, it was supposed to be my house, but it hadn’t yet occurred to me that I should move in and I had been actively avoiding all the legal stuff that would officially make it mine, so I still lived in my apartment near the University.

It was a Thursday night, and as I walked through the various rooms I suddenly realized it was up to me to do everything, to go through all of my dad’s things and make decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of; decisions that I was in no way ready to make.

So I stood there numbly for a while, my ever-present anger simmering at the injustice of my life and the impossibility of the task before me. But then I looked at all of the familiar rooms and hallways and furniture, which reminded me so very much of my dad, and I realized that there wasn’t a hurry. Whatever needed to be done didn’t need to be done right away. But the thought of going through his things had stirred my curiosity, had made me wonder what I might find. So I went into his office and began to look around.

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There was a lot of boring stuff, of course, such as dozens of files filled with papers and letters and receipts that didn’t interest me at all. He had a few items of memorabilia scattered throughout the room, but other than the ones I had given him, I didn’t know any of the memories that were attached to them. I studied a few of them for a while, a pewter eagle, a ceramic dog, a wooden coin, and wondered if they reminded him of his parents, or maybe an important case he had worked, or maybe my mom. But there was no way for me to know.

He also had about ten yellow pads of paper and quite the collection of pens, many with names of companies or schools or causes and no two of them were alike.

There was a stapler and some paperclips and a gun, which I now know was a 9 mm Glock. He had a decent supply of bullets, too, neatly arranged in rectangular boxes. This didn’t surprise me as he was an FBI agent. In fact, the more I looked, the more the lack of surprising things surprised me, which doesn’t make sense, I know. But the more I looked the more I realized that he had memories, but no secrets. And for some reason, I wanted--I needed--to find something that didn’t make sense. To find some mystery that might never be solved but would mean my dad wasn’t boring, that his life was more remarkable than a home office filled with boring stuff.

And then I found it: a sturdy wooden box wedged into the far back of the bottom drawer of his desk. It was unusually heavy, but I lifted it out, placed it on the desk, and studied it for a moment. Its footprint was nearly the size of a normal sheet of paper and it stood about six inches high. The sides were flat, but decorated with strips of wood and leather straps and metal bolts and it looked exactly like what I was hoping to find.

I held my breath as I opened it.

The inside of the box was much smaller than I had expected, maybe two inches deep, and all it contained was three small bottles, each made of a brownish glass. After lifting and gently shaking each one, I realized they each held pills, but there were no labels, so I couldn’t tell what the pills were for. I opened each bottle and found that all the pills looked the same: greenish-gray in color, flat, not shiny, relatively big. Two of the bottles held exactly a dozen pills. The third, however, was mostly empty and I poured both of its pills into my palm.

I just sat there for a while, staring at my hand, trying not to act like I wanted to try the pills, denying to myself that I hoped they would take away the emptiness that I mistook for pain, possibly forever.

I thought about what my dad would say if he came in right then, with me sitting at his desk with his secret stash of pills before me.

“Popper,” he would say… And then I started laughing.

My dad had called me Popper. I don’t remember why, but as far back as I can remember, he always called me Popper, which doesn’t sound at all like Cassie, so there must have been a story, but he never told me why and now I knew I would never know.

Popper, he had called me. As in one who pops pills, which I’m sure wasn’t the reason, but it seemed too perfectly ironic for me to ignore.