Chapter 4 – The Meeting
On Saturday night, I went to what wass affectionately referred to around my house as ‘the meeting’. Saying, ‘The support group for teenage super-nots attending Ashlin High School’, was just too much of a mouthful. According to the flyer they gave to all in-coming Ashlin High super-nots, the group was founded about ten years ago to help super-nots deal with the, “...somewhat unique realities of being a member of the supernaturally-challenged minority in a high school setting”.
Out of the approximately 1,500 students at Ashlin High, there were exactly fourteen super-nots, and they’d all attended this group until about six months before. That was when Faedra stopped attending the group. Whenever I talked to her about it, she said she just didn’t feel comfortable sharing in the group anymore. That was hard to believe because she normally did fine in group settings. Now I thought it had something to do with her superpowers. Did she start manifesting her powers then, and that’s what motivated her to stop coming? Just thinking about it made me mad... and sad. I missed seeing her at the meetings.
Mr. Franklin led the group. He was a local minister at the Anglican Church. At first, I thought he was geeky, but was actually pretty cool. We usually started out the meetings with some sort of group game, and then Mr. Franklin or his assistant, Ms. Hernandez, would share about something related to being a super-not or dealing with stress, or something like that. Afterwards, we would break up into two smaller groups for sharing time.
Sharing time was pretty cool. You would share what was going on with you, good or bad, and then move on to the next person in the circle until everyone had had a turn. Nobody told you how to fix your problem or told you that you made the wrong decision or anything like that; they just listened. Mr. Franklin sometimes asked some questions, but that was it. It felt good sometimes just to tell somebody else what was going on in your life – just to be heard and maybe even understood. I hadn’t wanted to come to the group at first, but my mom had made me. Now... now I actually looked forward to it.
The game of the night was dodge beach-ball. All thirteen of us showed up, so Mr. Franklin joined in to make the sides even. I made it to the final four before Joey Zappa zinged the ball at me. I pivoted to the wrong side right before he threw, and I was tagged out.
Five minutes later, the game was over, and we all gathered around in a big circle. Mr. Franklin shared a news article about how to handle cyber-bullying in the virtual reality social networking site called “Jammin!” I was surprised that the article talked about some privacy settings that even I hadn’t known existed on the site. Mr. Franklin was alright in my book – this stuff was very relevant to my life! Imagine that.
When we broke up into the smaller groups, I was in the one led by Mr. Franklin. I was seated three chairs to his left, which meant I was going to be the third person to share. My head was spinning with everything that had been going on since I found out Faedra was a super. It was pretty much all I had been able to think about. Should I ‘out’ her to the group or not? I was conflicted about what to do. As I was trying to decide what to share, Mr. Franklin gave the introduction.
“Okay, guys and gals, time for open sharing. You know the rules. Keep your sharing focused on yourself. We all respect what anyone shares. No cross-talk or interrupting anyone. Shaniqua, you’re first,” he said as he turned to his left.
Shaniqua was normally very bubbly and vibrant. That night, not so much. She hung her head a little and stared at the floor. I could barely hear her when she said, “Hi, my name is Shaniqua.”
“Hello, Shaniqua,” we all said in unison.
I could tell she was blushing, and I could also see she was about to cry before she even started talking.
“It’s okay,” Mr. Franklin said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to share if you don’t want to.”
“No,” she finally managed to say, “I need to say this.”
We all waited, wondering what she was about to reveal. You could have heard a pin drop in the circle right then. She started to say something and then inhaled sharply, like she was about to start sobbing. It took a visible effort for her to regain her composure, but she did it.
“You all know I’ve been dating a boy named Tommy – a super. He’s a brainiac. Last weekend, he... he said he couldn’t see me anymore.”
Tears started streaming down her cheeks as she spoke.
“He said his parents want him to start dating someone more like them...”
Mr. Franklin waited a moment, but when she didn’t continue, he asked her, “...do you mean another super?”
“Yeah...”
Mr. Franklin waited. He was good about that, like he had a sixth sense and knew when someone wasn’t finished sharing yet. It didn’t take long before Shaniqua continued.
“It’s not fair!” she exclaimed, fists clenched, double-stamping her feet on the floor. “What is so wrong with me? Why can’t they accept me? Why does everyone seem so fixated on superpowers? I mean, am I somehow a sub-human just because I can’t perform integral calculus in my sleep?!”
Another pause. Still not done yet. We waited... When she continued, she was quieter.
“I just thought he loved me... And to be rejected over some stupid missing genetic code is so... is so... wrong... Thanks for letting me share.”
“Thanks for sharing, Shaniqua,” we all responded.
Tom Stanton was sitting between us. He waited a few seconds, then introduced himself.
“Hi, my name is Tom.”
“Hi, Tom,” we replied.
“This week’s been pretty good. I placed at a track meet for non-enhanced runners today.”
A small round of cross-talk began with several people congratulating him on his accomplishment before he continued.
“Thanks, everyone. So... that’s all I’ve got.”
“Thanks for sharing, Tom.”
Then it was my turn. I hadn’t really figured out what I was going to say yet, so I just opened my mouth and started talking.
“Hi, I’m Dylan.”
“Hi, Dylan.”
“I found out a few days ago that a friend of mine has been lying to me. I’m pretty mad at them right now. We’ve known each other for a long time, and now I don’t know if I can trust them anymore. Thanks for listening.”
“Thanks for sharing, Dylan.”
Everyone in the circle shared something except for the very last kid. He just smiled and shook his head from side to side when Mr. Franklin asked him if he wanted to say anything. Then Mr. Franklin led us in our closing.
“Okay, everyone, we have a great way of closing our meeting. Let’s all say it together: God, grant me the grace to accept with serenity the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
* * * * *
I drove over to Chandler’s house in my mom’s car once the meeting was dismissed. We went down to the basement to what I called his ‘tech-cave’. It was where he kept all of his electronic gear. The new drones, a tower computer that he’d modified so that it was supercooled and probably had enough processing power to control the space shuttle, some kind of virtual-reality tool-kit he’d been working on since he was a sophomore, and a bunch of other cool stuff.
He led me over to a trio of computer monitors in the corner and pulled up a second chair for me.
“I downloaded the video we captured before the first drone was destroyed. Thankfully, it was backed up on the handset. The onboard storage is totally junked. I think you’ll be very interested in what I found. First, let’s look at it in full-speed.”
He played the clip, and I saw Faedra and her dad, and then her dad looked up, and his arm moved, and then nothing.
“Yeah, just like before. I didn’t see anything new,” I replied.
“Not yet. Now, let me slow it down to one tenth of that speed.”
He clicked on something, then punched a few keys, and the video began playing again – much slower this time. I could see Faedra’s dad pick something up right before his arm moved in a throwing motion in the direction of the drone. Then, as the video moved forward, I began to see something appear in the middle of the video. It was small at first, but as it came closer it looked somewhat shiny and silver. Next, the screen went black.
“What was that?” I asked.
Without speaking, Chandler moved his mouse over some controls on-screen, and the video feed began moving backward, one frame at a time. I could see the thing slowly taking shape, until Chandler finally stopped backing up the feed. A perfect up-close shot of a screw appeared in the center of the frame.
“So...” I began, “Faedra’s dad threw a screw from the garage to the edge of the fence... say, maybe a hundred feet? And he hit a drone bulls-eye that is small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Something tells me Faedra’s superpowers didn’t come from strangers,” I said. Her dad was obviously an accurate. That’s what we called supers who had eyesight like a hawk and could pretty much hit anything they aimed at. They were great at golf, basketball, and anything else that required good hand-eye coordination. Apparently, they were pretty good at throwing screws, too.
“I thought Faedra said her dad was a super-not?” Chandler asked.
“Yeah, she did. Obviously, there’s more to her family history that she’s hiding besides her own powers.”
“But that’s not the best part,” Chandler said as he moved a dial on-screen and re-positioned the video to a different spot. “Wait ‘til you see this.”
The video was at the point right before Faedra’s dad looked at the drone. Faedra’s back was toward the screen. She was standing in front of the car, facing toward the hood.
“Look at the tire,” Chandler directed.
I watched as the tire suddenly began to rise two, maybe three inches off of the ground.
“No way!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, way.”
“Play it again.”
Chandler played it again, and I watched in amazement as Faedra bent down slightly towards the hood of the car, her hands hidden from view in front of her, then began to straighten up, and the car tire in view lifted off of the ground.
“She’s a double,” I pronounced.
“Yep. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and lift a car off of the ground without a car jack.”
“Whoa... this just keeps getting more weird by the minute.”