Chapter 9.

>       A hero's easy to be

>

>       They all start average or else passive 'till they're pulled to their feet

>

>       And via montage, they'll have gone from weak to awesome in a

>

>       In a couple of days

>

>             -- “Dollar Sign Sacks”, Bug Hunter

- Popper -

(January)

It’s not likely, I know, but I wonder if one of the FBI agents that visited Aiden might have been my dad. Or maybe Uncle Ray, who sometimes works for them. The timing could work, but I’m not ready to try to figure it out for sure. It’s nice to think that maybe they met, maybe they spent some time together, and maybe they liked each other.

I used to think about my dad all the time, or at least I thought about his absence, about the gaping hole in my heart and in my life where he used to be. But now it’s different. Whenever I think about him I can’t help thinking that he wouldn’t understand who I’ve become, that he wouldn’t recognize his well-behaved little girl and worse, that he wouldn’t approve of what I’m doing. And that hurts. Not just because of his imagined disapproval, but because it makes me want to think about him less.

So maybe I’m writing this for him. To explain to him who I am. Maybe if he knew the whole story, he wouldn’t be disappointed.

Which brings me back to the pills, I suppose. I was sitting there, staring at the pills, and decided that my nickname was a clear message from Fate himself, so I popped both pills into my mouth and swallowed.

The effect was immediate. Even as I felt them slide down my throat, I began to notice tingling in my arms and legs. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it wasn’t pleasant either. I just seemed to notice my limbs more than I had before, my arms and my legs as well as my hands and my feet. I also seemed to realize exactly what they were capable of doing.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

I had an unexpected urge to pick something up, so I stood and grabbed the heavy box the pills had been hiding in. I lifted it easily and could barely feel it. I set the box down and grabbed a side of the desk and tilted it easily into the air. Solid wood, it was. I thought about the day it was delivered, when four well-built men struggled to carry it into the house and into this office. But now it barely weighed anything at all.

Somehow I suddenly knew I could lift the whole thing into the air, if I wanted. But there wasn’t enough space to do that, so I set it down and went into the living room.

I grabbed his old recliner and lifted it completely over my head, moving it up and down, up and down like it was some 5-pound weight in a beginners exercise class. About twenty minutes later, after successfully testing my strength on every piece of furniture that looked like it might be a challenge, I went outside.

It was a fairly dark evening, and I remembered that it had felt fairly cool earlier, but now the temperature felt perfect. I moved to my car sitting in the driveway and without thinking twice, I lifted the front end completely off the ground with maybe a little more effort than anything else I had tried to do. I also knew with complete certainty that I could lift the whole thing into the air, as long as I could figure out how to balance it.

I set my car down and moved to the sidewalk, looking up and down the dark street, hoping to see something else I could lift, something that would be more impressive than a car. And then I stopped and looked down at my normal-sized arms and then at my car and then at my dad’s house.

I sat on the curb and tried to think about my thoughts. I knew there was something missing, something that didn’t feel quite right and then I realized what it was. For the first time since my dad’s boss appeared at my school, I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t upset. For the first time in a long time I felt like I was in control, like I could do anything.

I looked once more at my dad’s house and wondered what it all meant. Apparently, superpowers came in a bottle and my dad had his own stash. Apparently, two of the pills could make me stronger than I could ever have imagined becoming. I had wanted to find a secret, a mystery, and now it seems that I found one.

I wondered if my dad used the pills or if he was simply keeping them for someone else. And where did they come from? They certainly didn’t do what I would have expected them to, but then again, I wasn’t really sure what I had wanted when I popped the pills into my mouth.

All in all, it was pretty cool though.

I looked down at my arms again, taking the time to study them more intently, but there didn’t seem to be any noticeable difference. They were thin, almost scrawny, just as they always were. But they were also able to lift a car, if needed.

Definitely cool.