Average Joe and the Extraordinaires (16 page)

Dahlila:
“Yeah, well, what choice do I have?  There’s nothing else to do here.  Besides,
I have to stay in tip-top shape for all these threats that seem to be creeping
up.”

Mod:
“Whatever you’re doing, it’s working for you.  You look amazing.  None of the
girls in my school look even half as good as you.”

Dahlila
abruptly stopped jumping and looked very annoyed.  Her brows furrowed and her
eyes were full of venom.  She stomped over to Mod and looked down at him.

Dahlila:
“You think I do this for that?  That’s not why I train so hard.  I’m not some
little girl trying to pretty herself up for some snot-nosed brat.  I do this to
get strong so I can survive.  Survival is all that matters in this world.”

Mod: “I’m
— I mean I didn’t — sorry, I mean.  I didn’t mean for it to come out that way.”

Joe: “I’d
just drop it.  She’s pretty scary when you think about it.  I wouldn’t want to
anger her anymore.”

Mod:
“Yeah, I — um … noted.”

Dahlila
looked at Joe, stunned.

Dahlila:
“Really Joe?  Is that what you think of me?”

She
smiled at him and Joe was reminded of how cute he thought she was when he first
met her.  Her features were almost angelic.  She didn’t smile much, but when
she did it was one of the cutest smiles he had ever seen.  Then she punched him
in the arm and all of that went away.  The punch was playful, but it still shot
pain through Joe’s arm and left it tender.  Mod cringed when he saw the hit. 
Now she was more demon than angel.  When she saw him wince, she cupped her
hands over her mouth and laughed loudly.

Joe: “Ow,
ow, ow, ow, ouch!”

Dahlila:
“Oh my God!  Was that too hard?  I’m so sorry.”

Joe:
“I’ll say it again.  Remind me not to piss you off.”

She
laughed again, and this time Joe did too, through the pain.

Joe:
“Where’s Melissa, by the way?”

Dahlila:
“She’s up at the top, either reading or drawing or looking out at the town.”

Joe: “Oh,
I see.  Well I brought dinner for us all.  A premade meal from the grocery
store.”

Dahlila:
“Cool.  Melissa might be a little disappointed though.  She planned on cooking
tonight, and wouldn’t shut up about it either.”

Joe:
“Well, I’ll just sit it all over there and go up to see her.”

Joe
walked to the kitchen and put the bag of snacks and food on the counter.  He
heard foreign sounds around him and felt something vibrating nearby in the
typically still kitchen.  He investigated and tracked the vibrations to the
refrigerator.  He opened it and saw chicken, bacon, eggs, broccoli, lettuce,
grapes, celery, carrots, apples, strawberries, fish, bottled water, and juice. 
What surprised Joe the most about all this was that everything was cold.

Joe:
“When did this fridge start working?”

Dahlila:
“The day after you left it started working.  Everything started working.  We
make sure to conserve as much as possible though, which is why you never see
the lights on.”

Joe: “The
stove works too?”

Dahlila:
“Yes.”

Mod: “I
wonder who’s footing the bill?”

Joe: “Me
too.”

Suddenly
the tower didn’t seem so abandoned, but Joe had never seen anyone come or go
here in his many years of visiting.  Though he was startled by this new
development, he was overall glad that the girls had all they needed to survive
for a while.

He
climbed the winding tower steps to the clock faces with Mod following close
behind.  For some reason he climbed quite quickly, and by the time he reached
the top he and Mod were out of breath.

Mod: “Why
the heck were you in such a hurry?”

Joe: “I
have no clue, just a burst of energy I guess.”

Joe
looked around and spied a pile of artwork on the table.  He rifled through the
strangely detailed crayon drawings.  There was one drawing, a portrait really,
of Melissa but with longer hair.  On another drawing there were three little
Melissas, each with a different hairstyle, but none matched Melissa’s own short
hair.  On the third picture were the three Melissas and an older-looking man
with wrinkles on his cheeks and forehead.  He shared some of their features and
shared their color for his skin.

There was
another picture of that same man by himself and smiling.  Under that, Joe found
one of himself smiling and flexing his two-dimensional biceps.  They were all
really good pictures, despite being rendered in crayon.  He was really
impressed with the one of himself that looked strangely heroic, like a
superhero almost.

Mod:
“This kid can really draw!”

Joe
nodded his head and looked up for Melissa.

Joe:
“Melissa!”

Mod
tapped Joe’s shoulder and pointed at a piece of paper, a small note near the
pictures.  Joe picked up and read the neatly written note.

If you’re
looking for me, friend, then you’ll have to try again.  I won’t be easy to spot
because right now I’m somewhere you’re not.

Melissa
Grant

He put
down the note and looked around the room.

Mod: “She
can’t be serious.”

Joe:
“Melissa, we don’t have time for this.”

Silence
hung in the air.

Joe: “Okay,
fine, but don’t cry when we find you.  We know this tower better than the back
of our own hands.  You won’t be able to trick us for long.”

Only more
silence answered Joe.

Joe:
“Fine, if that’s how you want it.”

Joe and
Mod looked at one another and nodded.  They had silently agreed to split up and
search the two sides of the clock tower.  Mod took the east side and Joe was
stuck with the west side.  Unfortunately for her, there weren’t many places she
could hide.  They got the obvious places out of the way first, like under the
stairs and in the sleeping bag.   That left up near the clock faces, around the
clock’s gears, or way up near the roof.  Joe decided to search the clock’s
gears to see if he could find her there.  He found her smiling and crouched
between two giant gear shafts that rotated slowly.

Joe: “You
know this isn’t safe, right?”

She
laughed then crawled out of the tiny space.

Melissa:
“I was okay.  I heard you coming and couldn’t believe you found me so fast.”

Joe: “I
told you that I knew this place like the back of my hand.  Come on, let’s go
get Mod.  I brought us all some dinner.”

Melissa:
“Aww, but I want to cook for you all!”

The
little girl seemed to be pouting, but when Joe looked closer he noticed that
she was suppressing a grin.

Chapter
28

The
Conference Call

Joe had
awoken to a brusque phone call from Borland very early in the morning.

Borland:
“Be ready for my call tonight.  Clear your schedule, we have a meetup.  Stay
tuned for details.  Ya get that?”

Joe:
“Yeah—”

The line
went dead before Joe could say anything else.  He buried his head in his
pillows and lay back down with his phone on the nightstand next to his bed.  He
fell asleep again for a few hours and woke up at ten twenty-seven in the
morning.  He moped around for a few hours, not quite sure what to do with
himself.  His parents weren’t home and everyone else but Mod was at school or
work.  He was bored, and nearly left to go to the Malington’s house.  He stopped
once he remembered Patrias’ Zero Tolerance plan, and opted to do something more
productive with his day.

After
checking his emails and various social media websites, Joe grabbed his backpack
from upstairs and the rest of his books from his car, and decided to spend the
day studying.  He set up shop at the kitchen table and went to work.

His
English scores were bad and getting worse, as a thick stack of papers he pulled
out attested to.  Somehow he had managed to get better scores in Spanish, not
that he was any good at that either.  Worst of all were his pre-calc grades,
and that was mainly because he didn’t know what the heck was going on in the
class anyway.  Somehow the F he got seemed too generous.  He had at least
managed to squeak out a C so far in speech, and C’s and D’s in just about
everything else.  Heck, he even got an A in weight training where the only
prerequisite was that he showed up.  But pre-calc was a language more foreign
than Spanish, and Joe thought he’d never understand it.

His
problems with English came from all the rules he had to employ while writing. 
His teacher, Mrs. Lane, graded hard for improper use of grammar, spelling, and
punctuation.  Joe had already had trouble reading through all the books, and
struggled to make sense of the subjects she had them write about.  It seemed
you’d have to be an English professor to get an A in her class, so Joe just shot
for improving his D to a C for now.

He took
notes on his current book,
A Clockwork Orange
, which Mrs. Lane, who was
also a Psychology major, constantly raved about.  He couldn’t make heads or
tails of it.  The main character, Alex, seemed like more of a bad guy than
anything else.  Joe never liked to root for the bad guy, so he didn’t see the
point in reading this book.  All the same, he forced himself to take notes on
it.  After a few hours, he noted that the good guys seemed to be more twisted
than Alex himself.

He found
himself hungry and stopped his studies to grab himself some lunch.  He enjoyed
some of his mom’s leftover lasagna that had the little pepperonis in it, and a
soft buttery bread roll.  He washed it down with some ice cold cola.  He
belched all the way back to his room, where he lay down for a bit until he
found his resolve to study again.  Next up was pre-calc, but he gave that up
after twenty minutes of reading through the sections.  He couldn’t understand
any of it on his own.  He instead opted to focus on Spanish.  He had never done
particularly well in any of his Spanish classes, but he did have a familiarity
with it.  He had taken it since middle school, and managed to get at least C’s
in it by the end of every term he had it.  All he had to do now was maintain
that C, but the lessons were getting much harder.

The last
thing he opted to study was history, because he saw no point in studying for speech
and found it impossible to study for weight training.  He couldn’t keep his
eyes awake while reading his history book, so he played games on his computer
instead, and tried to study again an hour later.  He didn’t like staying cooped
in the house all day because he found that it made him sleepier.  Studying
didn’t help matters.

Joe shut
his books and walked up the stairs to his room.  He was done with academics for
the day, and coincidently so was his girlfriend.  School had let out about an
hour and a half earlier.  Most likely she’d be at home.  He shut his door
behind him and dialed her number.  The phone rang a few times and finally she
picked up.

Kate:
“Hey, hold on a sec…”

It
sounded like she was in motion, possibly cleaning, or just walking really fast.

Kate:
“Hello, sorry ‘bout that!”

Joe: “You
sound tired. Long day?”

Kate:
“You don’t know the half of it.  Everyone picked today to be annoying.”

She
sighed loudly, her frustration apparent.  Joe giggled knowing there was a story
behind it.  He began to fish for details.

Kate:
“You’re over there giggling?  I’m glad you find my annoyance so funny.”

Joe: “Not
at all.  So who annoyed you?”

Kate:
“For one, Mod.  He decided he wasn’t ready to tell our parents that he was
suspended.  Not only has he not told them, but he also made
me
promise
not to tell them.  The idiot thinks he can keep a five day suspension under
wraps from our parents.  Whatever hair-brained scheme he had planned was
swatted away when Patrias called and talked to our parents, saying — pretending,
really — that he was concerned about Mod.  He told them about the fight, the
suspension, and blamed the whole thing on you.”

Joe:
“What!?”

Joe was
heated.  He hit the only thing nearby that was safe to hit, his mattress, in
frustration.

Kate:
“Yeah, I know!  What a liar!  On top of all that, Mod decided to stay out all
day, so when I got back my parents decided to grill me about it.  They wanted
to know where Mod was, and when I told them that I honestly didn’t know they
got all pissy with me, like I was supposed to be his guardian and hold his hand
at all times.  I had to remind them that I was the one that got him out of
those messes, helped him clean himself up, and took him to the hospital.  They
shut their mouths after that.”

Joe: “I
don’t know what Patrias is trying to pull by blaming this all on me, but it’s
totally not true.  What’s his problem?”

Kate: “He
thinks you’re a delinquent.  He told me as much at school today.  He told me
that you’re a bad influence and gave me the whole rotten apple speech, as if a
principal could change who a girl decides to spend her time with.”

Joe: “He
hates me and I can’t figure out why.  I’ve never done anything to him or been a
bad kid.”

Kate: “I
don’t know, love, but even my parents are starting in on it.  They want us to
slow down.”

Joe
remained silent.  He didn’t know what to say to that.

Kate:
“Love?”

Joe: “I’m
still here … what should we do?”

Kate:
“Absolutely nothing.  There’s no reason to change a thing.  You are a wonderful
person and my parents are idiots for forgetting that.”

Joe
couldn’t help but smile.

Joe:
“Thanks, Kate.  You really know how to say just what I need to hear.  I love
you.”

Kate: “I
know.  I love you too, lunkhead.”

Joe
laughed.

Joe: “I
guess that’s my new nickname. Yours will be sugar-lips.”

Kate:
“Eww!  No!  Don’t ever say that around my parents.”

Joe: “I’m
steering clear of your parents for a while, so I can call you that, unless you
prefer honey-smacks.”

Kate:
“Call me either of those and I’m putting you on crutches, then taking those
crutches and beating you with them.”

Joe
winced.  He marveled his girlfriend’s penchant for violence with a mixture of
amusement and fear.

Joe:
“Okay, fine, pookie-bear, but the main reason I called was because I was
feeling a little nostalgic.  I wanted to see if you wanted to go to the
movies.  Friday they’re showing
Ghosts, Goblins, and Girlfriends
.”

There was
a tinge of excitement in Kate’s voice.

Kate:
“How’d you know I wanted to see that?”

Joe: “I
don’t know, a movie with zombies, ghosts, goblins, fairies, and a weird love
story just all seemed to scream ‘Kate.’”

She
laughed on the other end.

Kate:
“You know me too well.”

Joe:
“Like no other.  I wanted to see it at the drive-in like we used to when I
first got my car.”

Kate: “Oh,
wow, really … like when we first started going there by ourselves…”

Joe began
to think back on those times, and all of a sudden felt a rush of heat travel to
his face.

Joe:
“You’re blushing, aren’t you?”

Kate:
“No!  Get your mind out of the gutter, lunkhead!  Unlike you, I plan to
actually watch this movie.”

Joe: “So
it’s a date then?”

Kate:
“I’ll have to think about it.  You have a reputation as a troublemaker, you
know.”

Joe: “The
only trouble I know is the good kind…”

************

Borland’s
call came later than Joe had expected.  He had just started on another chapter
of
A Clockwork Orange
when he received the call.  Borland’s voice came
through sounding husky.

Borland:
“Tonight.  Your hangout spot.  Back alley.  You’ll see the girl first, whatever
she looks like.  I’ll show last.”

Hangout
spot?  Did he mean the clock tower?  If so, that was too close for Joe’s
liking.  He didn’t want Borland to accidently discover Melissa and Dahlila, at
least until they were ready.

Joe: “I
don’t know about that.  Do we have to meet up there?”

Borland:
“Not up for debate.  We do this now.  Start making your way there.”

Joe:
“Where are we going after?”

Borland:
“No time to explain.”

Click.

Joe
grabbed his car keys, a thin jacket, a pen and a notebook, then made his way
outside.  His parents, who had taken his suspension surprisingly well, asked
him where he was off to.  He told them that he was going out with friends,
which wasn’t entirely a lie, and after that jumped into his car and started for
the clock tower on Sapton Street.

When he
arrived he saw Liandra partially sitting but mostly leaning against her
motorcycle.  She was in her normal form tonight.  Her hair, long, dark, and
voluminous, was unruly and covered most of her face.  When Joe approached she
swept it to the side.  He greeted her with a wave.

Joe: “No
special appearance tonight?”

Liandra:
“This isn’t special enough for you.  I made myself all pretty for you and you
don’t even appreciate it.”

Joe
blushed and struggled to comprehend what she had said.

Joe:
“What!?”

Linadra:
“Relax.  It was a joke.”

Joe made
a strange contorted face and smiled awkwardly.

Joe:
“Yeah, hehe, I knew it.  That’s why I also … was … joking.”

Liandra
shook her head.

Joe: “Why
does Borland want us to gather here?”

She
shrugged.

Liandra:
“I honestly couldn’t tell you.  He’s overly cautious, that’s for sure.  He
doesn’t want to meet anywhere we’ve already met.”

Joe: “But
of all the places.  Do you think he knows?”

Liandra: “I
don’t know.  I have no clue what goes on in Borland’s head.”

Joe: “You
know where we’re going next?”

She
shrugged.

Liandra:
“You’ll have to ask Borland.”

They
stood in silence for a while after that.

Liandra:
“Your normal life has gotten a lot tougher since the stadium, hasn’t it?”

Joe
didn’t feel like lying to her, so he nodded his head.

Liandra:
“Fame is sometimes cruel.  I can see, though, that these tests have made you
sturdier, stronger even.  That makes me feel a little less guilty about getting
you involved in all this.”

Joe: “I
volunteered myself.  No need to feel guilty.”

He saw
her mouth tighten and she looked down to her side, then quickly back at him.

Liandra:
“Not exactly.  You were ‘inspired’ by me.  It’s a passive crafte, one of mental
domination.  I cannot control it and I cannot dictate what it does and how
others react to it.  I’m lucky that it rarely affects anything, but, when it
does, those who are affected usually do bold deeds, mostly in my favor.  Deeds
they wouldn’t have the courage to do elsewise.”

Joe:
“Seriously!?”

Liandra:
“That is the most likely reason you jumped in so recklessly to help me at the
stadium.  Since I can’t control this, when it does occur I typically use it to
my advantage.  To that end, I ended up using you to accomplish my goals, and
I’m sorry for that.  I’m sorry for all the damage I have caused in your life.”

Joe
closed his eyes and shook his head.

Joe: “No,
it’s okay.  It’s a bummer to learn that I didn’t really do any of that on my
own.”