Chapter 14

Michael

It was bright outside, which was weird because it was about 9 p.m. The moon was a sliver in the sky which shouldn’t have granted as much light as it did. The stars in the Orion constellation were especially bright, almost as bright as the moon, much brighter than they ever were before. The night sky seemed so foreign, so different than it did before I’d touched the mysterious, blue meteorite. Maybe the stone gave me enhanced vision. But why would Orion be so much brighter than all the other stars? What does that constellation have to do with anything?

“All set.” I turned around. Sarah sat in a camping chair, her legs crossed, as if she were ready to judge me for an audition. She hadn’t even bothered to unpack the telescope. She turned my blue meteorite around in her hands. “So, is there an on button or something?”

“I wish,” I said. “Getting my powers to turn on seems a little more complicated than that.”

“Well,” she said. “Let’s figure it out.”

“Let’s? I’m the one practicing here. How are you supposed to help?”

“I’m your coach. Now drop and give me five, boy!”

I just rolled my eyes and turned my back to her. Verde Ranch wasn’t too far out of the city like Red Knoll, so it wasn’t as good for stargazing, but it had more open spaces usually meant for camping. Fortunately, nobody was here. We were completely alone with all the room needed to test out super powers. I bounced on the tip of my toes and shook my hands in anticipation.

The last time I’d used my powers, a few days ago, I’d accidently jumped thirty feet in the air. What else can I do? I wondered. I supposedly have multiple abilities. So far, I have super jumps and super sight. I chuckled to myself. This sounds like something straight out of a comic book. Perhaps the super jumps are just a part of super strength. Let’s see…

“You know what?” I said to Sarah. “I actually am going to do some pushups.”

“Good,” she said, still using her coaching voice. “Now don’t let me catch you doing any girly pushups, you hear!”

I placed my hands on the dirt in pushup position and pressed up. I could do it just fine, but it didn’t seem any easier than normal. I did four more. Nothing out of the ordinary. I started tiring around twenty. Pushups weren’t really my specialty. I don’t think I’d done any since my last soccer practice, more than over a week ago. I stood back up and dusted off my hands. “No powers.”

“Try thinking back to what you did the last time you used your powers,” Sarah instructed.

I scratched my chin. Last time I was acting out of instinct, a reflex to blocking soccer balls. Can I somehow reenact that moment? I thought. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine a soccer ball flying above me. Just as the imaginary ball was directly above my head, I opened my eyes and jumped to reach it. I was in the air for just a second and came back down. Completely normal. No powers.

Sarah chuckled behind me, but I didn’t pay her any heed.

“Hmm…” I mumbled to myself, rubbing my neck. Maybe, I thought, it was a fluke? Perhaps I had one burst of powers to jump really high a few days ago and now it wore off. I glanced up at the night sky. It was still impossibly bright. I could see Verde Ranch with as much clarity as if the sun were behind a dark cloud. My vision powers seem to be working, though. Maybe those don’t have to be turned on or off. They’re permanent or something. But, my super jump powers…

I tried to recall what else happened when I used my powers. Finally, it clicked. The tingling feeling, I remembered. Every time I did something inhuman, I’d felt that weird tingling feeling in my gut and underneath my skin. How do I turn that back on?

With my eyes closed, I concentrated on my body’s senses, searching for that feeling again. I felt completely normal. Maybe a little hungry. I could—

There it is! I thought. With my eyes shut tightly, I focused on a tiny ball of energy somewhere within my gut. It was dormant, I could tell, because I only felt a small tingling in that one spot in my core. If it’s asleep, then maybe I can wake it up… how do I do that?

I told it, in my head, to wake up. Nothing. I tried imagining the tingling feeling all over my body. Nothing. Ugh… I thought. This thing is stubborn! I had never meditated before. Yoga always seemed extremely boring to me, but now I was wishing I’d taken a class.

I stood there with my eyes closed, trying to will the ball of tingling energy to open. I took a deep breath, and calmed down my nerves, observing the feeling more than prodding it.

It was like a dimly lit light bulb stuck in my stomach, slightly irritating but also electrifying. The energy it gave off was thrilling, making me feel a little anxious. It was like that feeling I got on a rollercoaster. Not the fast part at the bottom of the hill, but the part at the top, when you’re slowly climbing up to the peak. That always twisted my stomach into knots, and then those knots turned into hell-bound bats as I went over the hill and plummeted down the ride. Just thinking about it makes my hands sweaty.

Suddenly, the ball of energy exploded! The tingling feeling surged through my whole body, reaching the tips of my fingers and toes. “Whoa!” I said out loud. The tingling felt like electricity, energy, needles, and bee stings all at once. It was like a mixture between getting goose bumps and having a limb go numb at the same time. But most importantly, it wasn’t painful. It was… awesome! Pure energy! Invigorating! I felt alive, powerful! I checked to see if my skin was glowing, but it looked completely normal.

Now, I thought . Let’s see what I can do with this!

What happened next was a blur. I took my first step to sprint around the open area and was surprised to get hit by a blast of wind in my face. Before I could get my bearings, I slammed into something prickly. I fell to my knees and looked up to see that I’d run into a saguaro cactus at the edge of the open area. I hit it hard enough that it toppled over and landed with a thud onto the desert floor. “Whoops,” I groaned.

I heard Sarah laughing in the distance. I turned around and was surprised to spot her in her camping chair about half a soccer-field away.

I quickly checked myself for needles but couldn’t find any. Maybe the needles couldn’t penetrate my skin while my power was turned on. “Super speed and super skin?” I said a smile. “So cool!”

I can’t believe I was afraid of these powers! I thought. I guess I was more afraid of how they would change my life, but now they’re intriguing.

I could sense the tingling feeling dying down, so I thought of the rollercoaster again, and it reignited, keeping me supercharged. I laughed to myself. That’s so funny that my powers work that way!

I leaned into a run and instantly skid to stop right in front of Sarah. She shrieked, curling up into fetal position in her chair. A cloud of dust passed over the both of us. I must’ve kicked it up while running. I just ran about fifty yards in the blink of an eye! I remembered taking every step of the way, but I could sense the world slowing down around me as I ran.

Sarah glared up at me, and then quickly changed her expression to amazement. “That was awesome! You have super speed, too, huh?”

“I guess so,” I said, looking at my hands.

“Michael, your eyes…”

“What?”

“They’re glowing!”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. It looks so cool, and a little… spooky.”

“Spooky?” I chuckled. “I’ve got to see this!” I walked over to the car and looked at my reflection in the side mirror. Sure enough, my eyes were glowing. “Whoa,” I said out loud. I moved closer to get a better look.

The glow was coming from my eyes’ pupils. It was a soft glow, no brighter than a dying candle, its color a pale white. The glow pulsed very subtly, reminding me of the same glow Angela and I saw coming from the meteorite I’d touched last week, except a different color. I wonder…

I concentrated on the tingling feeling, took a deep breath, and willed it to subside. It did, and my eyes stopped glowing, looking like completely normal blue eyes. “Sweet!” Sarah said behind me. “You can turn it off?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Turning it on is the hard part.” I closed my eyes and focused once again on exciting the ball of energy with my imaginary rollercoaster ride. It worked; the tingling sensation spreading through my body. I was starting to get the hang of this. I opened my eyes, and sure enough, they were glowing again.

“So, how’d you get your powers to work?”

I explained to her how I’d imagined riding a rollercoaster.

“Hm,” she said. “Did your hands get sweaty when you thought about it?”

I wiped my hands on my pants. “How did you—?”

“Same thing happens to me whenever I think about cliff jumping or kissing…”

I raised my eyebrows. “What? Kissing who?”

She waved her hand as if she were swatting flies. “Oh, just forget I ever said that. But, I think I know how your powers work.”

“Really? How?”

“Turn your powers off.”

“Okay…” I complied, taking deep breaths.

As soon as the tingling died down and my eyes stopped glowing, Sarah chucked the blue meteorite at my face without warning. I reacted out of pure reflex and caught it easily in my right hand. “Hey!” I said. “What was that for?”

“Your powers are on again,” she said with a smirk.

I blinked. She was right! I could feel the tingling rushing around my body again.

“I think it’s adrenaline. Whenever your body produces adrenaline, your powers turn on. Calm down, and your powers turn off.”

“Ah… and I get an adrenaline rush whenever I get in a fight or flight situation, like when you threw the rock at me. Or when I was blocking soccer shots the other day.”

“Yep. And you can have an adrenaline rush just by thinking about an intense situation, like riding a rollercoaster.”

I nodded my head, absorbing the information. So, I thought. I’ll have to be careful to stay out of intense situations in public.

“So, let’s see what else you can do,” Sarah said. “Try doing a pushup now with your powers on.”

“Hold this.” I gave the meteorite back to her, dropped to my hands and tried doing a pushup. It was easy! I pumped up and down and did about thirty in less than half a minute without breaking a sweat. I put one hand behind my back and did a one-handed pushup. And then I did ten more. Easy! I couldn’t help but grin.

“Nice!” my sister said, sounding impressed.

“How about this!” I put one finger down and pushed up. I did it! Again, and again. It was weird because I could feel my finger digging into the dirt beneath to withhold my weight, but it didn’t hurt, and it didn’t strain me at all.

I’m strong! I thought with a laugh. I placed both hands down and lifted my feet into to the air, doing a handstand. I’d never done a handstand before, but it seemed so easy with my new strength. I did have to focus on keeping my feet in the air, but my muscles reacted quickly and powerfully to keep me balanced. I could still feel the tingling feeling coursing through my limbs like a swarm of tiny electric spiders. I took a breath, lowered my body, and then pushed up, a hand-standing pushup. Again, easy. I did several more. I could tell it was harder than a normal pushup, but it still felt far from my strength’s limit.

I returned to my feet and bounced up and down. I was feeling great!

“Wow,” Sarah whispered behind me. “You’re strong! Like Chuck Norris strong!”

I laughed looking at my arms and frowned. “I don’t look like Chuck Norris, though.” Sadly, my muscles didn’t look any bigger than they had before. That tingling feeling must supercharge my body without changing its appearance, I concluded. Too bad. I wouldn’t have minded a super body with a six-pack and huge biceps.

“Yeah, well,” Sarah said. “No one does. When Chuck Norris looks in a mirror, it shatters, because not even glass is stupid enough to get between Chuck Norris and Chuck Norris.”

I laughed. “Well, can Chuck Norris do this?”

Eager to test my limits, I walked over to the right side of the car, bent my knees, grabbed the bottom of it and lifted. The tingling energy surged through my arms. The car groaned as I raised it up to my chest, two wheels in the air. I propped it up with one hand, reached under with my other hand and hoisted up the left side of the vehicle, causing all four wheels to become airborne. The metal bent around my fingers as I slowly lifted the car above my head, sand falling off the tires.

Sarah blew a soft whistle behind me. “Whoa…”

I picked up a car! And it didn’t even seem that heavy to me! It was like holding a large, fold-up table over my head—bulky, but light. I gently placed the car back on the ground with a satisfying thud and dusted off my hands.

“Forget Chuck Norris,” my sister said. “You're more like—”

“Orion!” I said.

She tilted her head and frowned. “What’s with you and that mythological giant anyway?”

“No idea, but there’s obviously something connected between my powers, that blue stone, and the Orion constellation. I have no idea how or why, but the correlation is definitely there.”

“Well, at least now we know what your superhero identity should be.”

“Superhero? Remember, I still haven’t agreed to any superhero-ing. I don’t want to be a vigilante!”

“I know. I know. I was just saying, if you were a superhero… Orion would be an awesome name.”

I didn’t disagree with that. And I wouldn’t admit that the idea of being a super hero sounded thrilling. I just didn’t want to be a criminal in order to be a hero. The comic books fantasized it too much. Plus, even being a hero sounded like a really big deal. I’m no hero, I thought.

“I need to keep practicing,” I told her. “Not so I can be some super hero, but so I can get better at controlling my powers and keeping them a secret. I don’t want anyone to know besides you and Zack.”

Sarah looked disappointed. “Not even your girlfriend Angela?”

“She’s not my girlfriend! And no, not even her. She might pressure me into vigilantism too.”

My little sister put a hand on her hip and glared at me. “You’re being ridiculous, Michael! Just a few days ago we discovered that super powers are real! What are the chances that the one person lucky enough to get those powers was my over-obedient brother who won’t even use them to do any good in the world?”

I glared back at her. “I am doing good… by not doing anything bad. Now step back—”

“—by doing nothing.”

“—I’m going to practice running again. Let’s see how long it takes me to run to Red Rock and back.”

“That’s like two miles from here! I don’t want to wait around all night for you.”

“You won’t.” I leaned forward to take my first step just as the world slowed down around me. It wasn’t like time slowed down, more like my senses sharpened so much that I could take in more in less time. I started what I thought would be a light jog, but once my legs started pumping, they naturally went several times faster than expected, and in less than a second, I was at the end of the clearing. I slowed to a stop, but it took longer than I thought, and I stumbled into a bush.

“Whoa,” I muttered. “Gotta work on stopping.” I scrambled out of the bush and faced the hill where Red Rock was located, took a deep breath, shook my hands, and broke into a run again. The wind hit me hard as I pushed forward; I had to squint my eyes because of it. I sprinted around bushes and cacti in a blur.

I’m getting the hang of this! I thought. A long row of bushes blocked my path in front of me. Instead of speeding around them, I jumped, hurtling them easily, and kept on running. This is awesome! Scary and dangerous, but awesome! I never thought I would ever enjoy running this much!

I reached the top of a small hill, skid to a stop, and glanced behind me. After the dust cloud dispersed, I could see the Verde Ranch clearing in the distance. I love that I can see in the dark, I thought. But I can’t see Sarah; she’s too far away. I think I ran about a half mile stretch in what… a couple seconds? I was running fast! Much faster than a car could drive. Maybe even faster than a plane. I wonder if I could break the sound barrier if I pushed myself.

I looked toward Red Rock and scanned out my off-road path to get there. I felt the tingling surge through my legs as I leaned forward into a sprint, squinting my eyes. I might need some goggles.

I grinned from ear to ear as I ran through the dark desert. My legs didn’t burn at all yet, maybe eventually they would—like after a hundred miles! I’m never going to use the car again!

Suddenly a sharp, agonizing pain twisted in my gut. I started to slow down, gasping. My vision went fuzzy and a terrible, excruciating pain wracked my whole body all at once—like the sharp pain from a migraine, but everywhere. I screamed in pain, shocked by how instantaneous this had hit me. Where had it come from? I tried to stop running but lost my balance and careened off a small cliff and fell into a dry wash, the rocks tearing into my flesh as I rolled to a stop—my powers no longer protected my skin.

I lay there on my back, trying to catch my breath, going into shock. The tingling feeling had vanished, and in its place was a vortex in my gut, like a black hole sapping my life away, killing me slowly. My vision blurred, and then everything went black.