Charlotte Powers 1: Power Down (7 page)

xx48.11.11 / 20:58 / Still Thursday

I had so much fun! C2's parents are LOVELY! (I'm calling her C2 now, it's my special 'friend' name for her, because now we're friends!) (I was going to write 'she still calls me Charlotte' but actually she doesn't, she doesn't call me anything. That's just her funny little way, though!)

Okay, let me start at the beginning. We got off the bus in C2's neighbourhood which was kind of nice but at the same time kind of ... I don't know, 'raggedy'? Not bad, not poor, not like the slums I've seen on TV shows but definitely not the best part of town. Not the worst either, of course. Her house was near the bus stop, the garden is quite overgrown with lots of these wide-leafed flax plants everywhere. Her house is pretty small and the hallways are narrow, but EVERYTHING is narrow out here in the 'real world', it's one of the things I miss most about home (aside from my family of course), our house is REALLY spacious, I never appreciated it before but now I realise just how great it really was. Everything out here is like 'square', there were hardly ANY 'squares' at home, aside from the training room which was a big cube. All of the rooms were circular and there weren't many hallways at all, just rooms leading down or up into other rooms, everything was nice and open and bright and there were windows everywhere looking out on to the blue sky and the green jungle ... okay, now I'm getting really homesick and feel a bit like I'm going to cry, so I'll get back to C2's house. Like I said, it's pretty small and narrow but kind of cute too, it needs new paint (it's a dark brown colour but you can see the old wood underneath where it's flaking off) and the floorboards squeak but inside it feels kind of 'friendly'. That's probably because of C2's parents, who are NOTHING like her. I mean that in the nicest way, of course, she's her and they're them, which is good. Having more than one person like C2 around could get a bit tiring, I think.

Anyway, they were so happy she brought me home with her even though she didn't call first (I asked her about this later and she told me that her mother had once told her that bringing someone home was fine and made no mention of calling, so since then she's always carried the assumption that no call is necessary; classic C2!), and they wanted to know all about me and where I came from—it got a little hairy but I managed to not-quite-lie my way through (I said I was from out of town, which is true). C2's dad is kind of small except not, I mean he looks as if he SHOULD be small but he's almost as tall as she is and if she unstooped she'd be almost six feet, I think. Her mum is really bubbly and bright and friendly and almost never stops talking, she's kind of 'big' and has curly hair and when she smiles it makes you want to smile too.

For dinner, we had meatloaf and mashed potatoes and gravy, it was super-yummy! I've never had meatloaf before, which is weird because it's so simple and easy. Mashed potatoes were also new to me, back home potatoes were really rare and usually Dad grabbed them to make chips out of, we'd never 'waste' them by mashing them, but mashed potatoes are actually delicious! Almost as good as chips, especially with gravy.

There was one weird thing, though. Not about the food, about C2's parents. Um, well, not
weird
, I guess, but worth mentioning in more detail. After she excused herself to go to the toilet, her mum and dad both smiled at me in a strange kind of way, then her dad said:

"It's so good of you to be so understanding about Charlotte's disorder."

Disorder? C2 has a disorder?

"She can be difficult to deal with, we know," C2's mum put in, "and it must be difficult to be her friend sometimes, but we're so happy you're getting along with her."

After that C2 came back from the toilet and things went back to normal. After dinner I helped clean up then C2 and I went to her room to do homework together. Her room is really interesting, she has lots of books and also a proper drawing board, although I didn't see any drawings or anything around. Not even any posters. After we'd done the homework (which was easy-peasy for both of us, she's pretty smart) she kind of got a bit fidgety, so I asked what was wrong.

"Are you bored?" she asked.

"No, I'm having fun!" I said. "I've never been to someone's house before."

"But we're not doing anything interesting," she said. "I don't have any communal activities such as games, and we don't have a television."

"Just talking is fun," I said. "I like getting to know you! Like, have you lived here your whole life?"

"Yes," she said. "I've never been anywhere else."

"Wow. Kind of like me!" I said. "This is the first place I've been outside of my home."

"Where is your home?" she asked.

"Um, somewhere far away." Actually, even if I wanted to tell her, I kind of couldn't. I don't know which country Seclusion is in. If I had the full-strength honesty curse like Mum I'd probably be forced to say 'in a secret base in a volcano in a big huge jungle' but fortunately I don't.

"Why did you choose here?" she asked.

"Um. I kind of didn't," I said. "In a way it was chosen for me, and in another way it was kind of an accident that I came here at all."

"Oh," she said. She thought about this for a while, then nodded like she was satisfied.

"By the way," I said, "I was thinking about our names, how they're the same and everything—"

"I was thinking about that as well," she said, really seriously. "It could cause confusion. You could call me by my last name, Crescent, if you want to."

"Um, that seems a bit formal," I said. "How about a nickname?"

"Nickname," she repeated. "Do you have a suggestion?"

I almost said that I've been mostly calling her Other Charlotte in this journal, but then I thought that she might feel strange that I've been writing about her. So I kind of just blurted out:

"C2? Like Charlotte Two, um, sorry, that kind of makes you seem secondary—"

"That seems fine, if it's okay for you to call me that," she said. "What I mean is, if you'd like to call me that, I wouldn't have any problem with you doing so."

Of course, I don't have any problem with calling her C2. It even kind of sounds like a robot-y kind of name, which suits her, even if she isn't actually one (although I still kind of have some suspicions, Mum and Dad both have more than a few stories about artificial humans). Anyway, it doesn't really matter if she's a robot or not, what matters is that she's my friend, my first REAL friend, and I'm so happy to have someone to talk to about things. About ANYTHING really, I didn't realise just how lonely I was getting until I went to her house for dinner, or how much I missed eating with other people around. I don't know why, but eating by yourself is just so lonely and somehow sad.

Anyway, after we'd chatted a bit more I felt like I should get back here (to my apartment at the school I mean), it gets dark early around here and I thought I should catch the bus, but her father insisted on dropping me off in his adorable little car, it's really old and makes this amazing shaky noise when he's driving it, it kind of feels like it could fall apart at any moment, I love it and had SO much fun riding in it, it was even more fun than riding on the bus. He was a bit surprised that I live at the school by myself, apparently the student apartments are mostly for visiting sports teams (which explains all the spare futons in the cupboard) and they're not usually used for boarders 'these days', I guess in the past there were more students living at the school. He also got a bit weird about my friendship with C2 again.

"It's really very nice of you to make such an effort for Charlotte," he said. "I know it must be difficult."

I didn't say anything except 'it's okay, I really like her', but I was actually thinking something more like 'why would it be difficult? She's a bit weird and maybe comes off as a little creepy but once you get to know her she's really nice and sweet and caring—but you KNOW that, you're her FATHER'. Why is he so weird about her? It's like me being her friend is somehow a drain on me, like she's bad or something. I'm grateful to have her as a friend, REALLY grateful! She's about the only person my age I've met here who's even TALKED to me! (Aside from rotten old Veronica Flux and she REALLY doesn't count.)

Anyway. It's weird but he's still nice, and C2's mum is too, she gave me some leftover meatloaf in a little plastic bag so I could make sandwiches for tomorrow. So thoughtful, I almost cried. Families are GREAT, even other people's families.

So, now it's dark outside and I'm full and feeling happy from going to my friend's house for dinner, so I think I'm going to take a shower and go to bed.

xx48.11.11 / 11:11 / Friday

Sneaking an entry during class. Eleven-eleven eleven-eleven, woo!

xx48.11.11 / 15:17 / Still Friday

No C2 all day! I cannot even EXPRESS how disappointed I am. Instead I got the same old half-empty lunch room and conspicuously uncrowded classrooms. All in all, a dull, disappointing day. AND I feel another headache coming on. My theory is that I'm naturally prone to headaches, but having super-toughness kind of cancelled that out. Of course, now that my powers are gone ... anyway, I actually just had the thought that C2 is probably waiting for her bus to take her home, and it leaves at three twenty-two precisely. If I ran, I could catch her! It's worth trying, right? And good running practice!

xx48.11.13 / 13:23 / Sunday

Just woke up, I pretty much slept through Saturday. I think running after C2 was a mistake because I've been WIPED all weekend. I'm not unfit, am I? I'm SURE I'm not. But actually I was thinking, where does super-strength come from? All powers are a kind of 'aura', that's a basic fact, but when I lost my powers I lost my strength with it—and even before that I could turn it 'on' and 'off', I wasn't super-strong all the time. I never really questioned it, but now I really wonder, shouldn't my muscles and bones still be just as strong as before? But they're not, they're CLEARLY not. Probably Daniel could explain it, or Mum, or even Dad. Maybe it's a kind of energy—related to the whole 'aura' business—that surrounds your body and gives you a 'boost' when you hit something or lift something. Like an invisible, skin-tight power-armour suit that augments your natural ability. I mean, Dad isn't some huge hulking bodybuilder type, he's just a normal-looking guy, kind of maybe a bit taller than average and it's obvious he works out, but you'd never expect him to be able to lift a couch with one hand.

All these questions I should've asked when I had the chance. Although, actually, I shouldn't beat myself up about it TOO much. It's not like I DIDN'T ask questions, when I was little Mum and Dad actually tried to hide from me and my questions. Probably even Daniel isn't as well-versed in superhero mythology and culture as me, and if you want someone to name every superhero OR supervillain who was even SLIGHTLY famous, well, I'm your girl.

Still, why did I never ask where super-strength COMES from? Or super-agility for that matter, although now that I think about it a kind of hazy memory about unconscious manipulation of airflow and friction comes to me. Is it an alteration, at a basic level, of physics itself? Breaking the rules of nature in order to accomplish these superhuman feats? Is it not the punch that is harder and faster and stronger, but simply the
effect
of the punch?

Ugh. I just read back this entry, it doesn't even SOUND like me, where did all this come from? My headache's coming back too, I'm going back to bed. Come get me when I've woken up from this nightmare.

xx48.11.14 / 06:43 / Monday

Feeling surprisingly good this morning, especially considering how out of it I was yesterday. I don't even REMEMBER writing most of Sunday's entry. I thought I wrote something on Saturday, actually, but apparently not, unless I accidentally deleted it in a haze of exhaustion and headache-nausea. Maybe I just forgot to save it, except Opal should've timed-out and auto-saved if that had happened. (Except not, apparently, because I just checked the settings and I don't have auto-save turned on. Well, 'auto-cutoff' it calls it in a typically unuseful way—I love my Opal, I really do, but there are things about it that drive me utterly batty. Anyway, auto-save or auto-cutoff or whatever it is, it's turned on now!)

(Actually just had another little look at the options and now I'm not so sure that 'auto-cutoff' is what I wanted, because there's something called 'time-delimited backup' which wasn't turned on but now is ... kind of want Daniel right now, he's always so useful in this kind of situation, he'd just like fiddle with my Opal for two seconds and then say 'There you go, stupid, all better'. Is it weird to really miss something that drove you MAD at the time?)

Anyway! Today's a new day and I'm definitely feeling good. I actually woke up before the sun came up and had a really good run all around the back fields here, the school is right up against the hills, they're pretty interesting actually, lots of little gullies and mini-valleys formed by erosion, I think they lead all the way to the forest where I 'arrived' here. Maybe I'll take a longer run tomorrow.

Oh, yes, I think I've figured out what my problem has been, with ... what to call it ... physical expenditure of energy? Maybe something like that, anyway, I'm too used to just going all-out from a standing start, with super-agility and super-strength you can do that without even worrying about things like pulled muscles and overexerting yourself. I read some stuff on the local nets this morning about exercise and 'best practice' about running and other physical stuff and it really made sense—I have to 'pace' myself. I can't just run like I used to, I have to warm up first, and I have to remember that I'm NOT going to be able to go as fast as I used to. If I'm powerless then I have to get used to that, and I have to figure out how to best use this normal body of mine. I got Opal to time me this morning, after I'd warmed up, and I can run a hundred metres in just over ten seconds. I checked and that's pretty good for a normal person—a non-powered person, I mean. I should check the gym here too, there might be something for measuring strength. Maybe weights? I never did anything like that, all of my training was 'practical', I mean what's the point of lifting weights when ACTUALLY what you're aiming for is 'taking down bad guys as efficiently as possible'? What I mean is, am I REALLY going to encounter a situation in which lifting a hundred kilos over my head is going to HELP me? Although with that said 'lifting heavy things' IS kind of a useful thing to be able to do, and when I had super-strength I actually COULD lift a hundred kilo chunk of Virtual Fallen Building over my head without too much trouble—but I'm getting away from my point. Um. Hold on a moment while I read back and try to figure out what my point was.

Oh, right, getting used to not having powers. I think I've adjusted pretty well, considering everything. I haven't freaked out, I haven't gone insane, I haven't just curled into a ball and cried (well, not MUCH anyway). I've gotten on with things and I'm making the best of a bad situation.

Anyway, I think maybe I'll do some more exercise now. I've got energy to spare today!