Super Nobody (Alphas and Omegas Book 1) (14 page)

He was about to let himself breathe again
when he heard a voice.

“I'm telling you I thought I heard
something.”

A radio hissed, and a far away voice said,
“All right. Check it out.”

The beam of a flashlight jiggled down the
hallway, around the corner that led to the shop and band/orchestra
wing. Michael threw himself into the next classroom door space. It
was a recessed space of about two feet, enough to hide him
completely. After that though, there was nothing else. If the
policeman came all the way down here, that was it. He would be
done.

The flashlight beam danced around a little
bit, before the policeman swore. Then he whistled.

“Dispatch, you seen the state of this place?
That kid tore a three foot gap in the hall here, over.”

The radio crackled again. “Erikson, get your
kiester outside right now. No more inventing burglars just so you
can take the nickel tour, over.”

“I'm not through with my sweep, over,”
Erikson said.

“That's an order. Get outside before I report
you, over.”

Erikson grumbled, but copied that, and
followed with an over-and-out. The flashlight swung away and
disappeared.

Michael waited five minutes before he slid
down the wall and exhaled loudly. He was shaking so badly he could
barely get to his feet, and even though he knew Erikson was gone,
he was still as quiet as he could be with the latch, and the
door.

Charlotte's locker smelled like her. He
hadn't realized how badly he missed that smell until now. It wasn't
anything he could identify, but he liked it. It felt cozy,
friendly, and really nice. There were bad things in the world, but
with this smell, you could make believe there weren't any. The rest
of the locker was kept neatly, not like his own paper-filled trash
heap, where his books were difficult to spot on the best of
days.

The note was right there, on the bottom.
Yes!

He picked it up and made his way back down to
the crack where he'd gone in. He paused there, in the band room,
and tried to peek out. Unfortunately, Erikson must have moved his
car, because the headlights were shining right at the crack he was
hiding in.

“Crud,” he whispered.

His other option was the door, but he felt
like there would be some sort of alarm going off. Then he
remembered that the power was turned off. Still, if Erikson was
paying attention, and he probably was, he would spot Michael the
moment the door moved.

There was only one option: he had to wait. He
sat down in a patch of moonlight and started reading.

It was wrong. He knew it from the word
'hello'. The words, though he could barely make them out in the
weak light, weren't from Charlotte. They just said the same things:
music, twins weren't doing anything exciting, mom said yo and she
was being home-schooled. Her mom was afraid of the Actives popping
up around LADCEMS, and didn't want any of her children near that
place.

First of all, Michael thought he understood
Mrs. Sulzsko pretty well, and she wasn't the type of woman to shy
away from anything. In fact, she probably would have been excited
to get Trent to pose, flicking electricity all over the place, in
order to paint him. And the twins were nothing but a handful. One
was always crawling down the stairs into the basement, somehow
getting past the safety fence while the other was trying to give
the cat a bath. The last line of this letter from Charlotte went
take care of yourself, Mikey, and be careful.
It's
getting dangerous at school these days.

Charlotte would never, ever in her life write
or say anything of the sort.

And the strangest thing was that a phantom
image of someone came immediately to mind, sitting at the antique
writing desk in his study, the roll top kind you could pulled the
cover down. He was looking over the letter Charlotte had put in
Michael's bag with his tongue sticking out of his mouth, glancing
back and forth. The man was his grandfather.

Michael wasn't old enough to think he knew
everything. That would probably happen in eighth grade. His mother
was always warning him about thinking he knew everything. But he
did know some things. He knew what chicken tasted like, what his
fingers felt like when he rubbed them together. He knew that by
closing his eyes and pressing on his eyelids he could make himself
see stars and weird checkerboard patterns. He knew the smell of
apple pie in the oven, after school.

And somehow he knew, without knowing how, he
just knew that Grandpa had written the letter and copied
Charlotte's signature there. It wasn't like watching a movie, where
you know what you're seeing isn't true. And it wasn't like looking
in a photograph, which can be doctored up and enhanced. It was
true.

And more than that, there had been another
letter from Charlotte, maybe the real one, on the desk. He hadn't
had the time to read it, but it was there. That meant Grandpa found
the note in Michael's bag somehow, understood what it meant, and
opened Charlotte's locker. Then he went through the trouble of
reading Charlotte's real letter, and forging another one. He was
just lucky that Michael hadn't gotten to the real letter, because
he was more determined than ever to see Charlotte. The thought of
his grandfather keeping things from him gave him a nasty
headache.

Michael looked up as soon as he noticed the
headlights dim and the car head out of the parking lot.

“Yes!” he said, and hopped to his feet. A few
minutes later he was on his bike and pedaling toward home, where
his parents were ready to kill him.

The lawn was sparkling green, with a twinkly
layer of morning frost on it, and the leaves burned bright red and
orange and gold in the slanting morning rays. The paper boy would
roll by in the mid afternoon, waving and smiling and saying hi to
people. Him. Michael the paper boy. In the evening, you could see
through those same leaves, and the place took on that apple cider
tinted smell. Kids were still playing in the streets until the dull
orange lamps clicked on. This wasn’t the sort of place where people
would flat out lie to their kids.

His parents were keeping secrets, Grandpa had
stolen something meant for him, and he felt that Mr. Springfield
and his grandfather were keeping close tabs on him. Close tabs was
only inches away from spying. He'd read enough books to know what
'keeping tabs' meant.

He had to admit the possibility that there
was somebody spying on him, an Active maybe. The town was full of
them, and as crazy as it seemed, they could have put someone on
him, like a tail. He knew he was being paranoid, but they could
spare an Active to be a wilderness survival teacher at the high
school. Maybe they could spare an Active to follow him around and
make sure he didn't find out what they didn't want him to know,
like someone invisible or someone who could leave their body or
something.

There was nothing personal about keeping
things from his parents, but he was a teenager and they were
adults. Twelve years old was a teenager in his book. He couldn't
just tell them things. It was a law of nature.

It was also a fact that adults were nosy and
occasionally cleaned up your room for you when they felt it wasn't
up to their insane standards. Or they would root through your
backpack and tell you that there was an important school paper in
there, they knew it! When that happened, if you had a secret note
from your best friend, the situation wasn't going to go well.

He crept up the stairs to their enclosed
porch and pulled both notes from his pockets. He had several
enormous, inky newspaper carriers, the kind with two deep pouches
and one hole for your head. He'd retired one of them, after he
found a gaping hole in the corner with a trail of newspapers
fluttering on the sidewalk behind him. He stuffed Charlotte's notes
there, careful to put them in the corner where the hole wasn't.

As soon as he turned around, his mother
jerked open the front door, and the screaming started. She had the
tablet in hand, which meant she was probably on the phone to
Grandpa, the police, and the president of the United States by
now.

“Michael Edward Washington, you get in this
house right now!” she shouted. “What were you thinking, leaving the
hospital without calling me or your father first? And sneaking into
the garage. Honestly Michael, what has gotten into your head? Did
you leave it back at the hospital? Well, what are you standing
there for, get in here!”

He noticed his father towering just behind
her, a frown pasted on his face. It wasn't a sympathetic frown
either.

He didn't bother telling her that she was in
the way. He just ducked and tried not to push through her as he
went inside. He also didn't bother to head up to his room. That
would have been like tying on a pair of hundred pound shoes and
jumping off a pier. He just went in and sat down on the chair, so
his parents could take the couch and team up on him. This was
standard procedure when he was in trouble.

“Answer your mother,” Michael Sr. said. They
talked about each other in the third person while they were giving
him the treatment.

“I had to get out...and think,” he said. He
knew exactly how lame it sounded.

“Wait, clear this up for me, because you must
think I'm pretty dense,” his mother said. She was pinching the
bridge of her nose, which meant nuclear meltdown was only seconds
away. “To think, you need to walk home in the dark, sneak quietly
around the house, unlock the garage moving around like a sloth, and
lift your bike over all those vines and bushes behind the garage.
Then you need to pedal your little kiester God knows where in the
dark, where anyone can hit you, or walk up and kidnap you and we
would have no clue where you were? Is that what was running through
your mind, because I have to say, Michael, I didn't think I did
such a terrible job raising you.”

“Either that or you're lying,” his father
said quietly.

He thought furiously. He couldn't tell them
he went rooting around a half-destroyed school for a note that made
him think everyone in the world was keeping things from him. No, he
needed to improvise.

“I...I wanted to see Charlotte.”

Now she was up off the couch and pacing. “I
knew it! I just knew it.”

“And do you think showing up at her door in
the middle of the night was a good idea?” his dad didn't stop
staring at him, and he wouldn't raise his voice. Michael was hoping
maybe he would start shouting. This calm and collected thing was
giving him the creeps.

“Uh...when I got there I thought about that.
So I didn't go up and knock.”

“Did lightning strike your brain, because
that was the smartest thing you did all night.”

“I'm sorry...I know you guys didn't want me
going to see her.”

“Yes, well...” his father said. He locked
eyes with Susanna, and it was like they were reading each others'
minds. A very intense conversation seemed to pass through the air
right in front of his face, and he wanted to reach out and grab it.
He wanted to jump right up and scream at them.

“Michael,” his mother sighed. She suddenly
sounded very tired. “I didn't want to talk to you about this, but
Charlotte's not well. You know she's always been a
bit...strange.”

“Susie?” his father said. “What-”

“Shush,” she said. “Charlotte's in a special
hospital now.”

“You mean...she's crazy?” Her note didn't
seem crazy. Okay, there was a code in the first note, and the
second one didn't sound like her. But his grandfather at the
writing desk...

“I mean she needs help, and the hospital will
help her the way she needs.”

“Susie,” his father said in a warning tone.
Like she was standing too close to a cliff's edge, peering over,
like she couldn't see the cracks under her feet or that she was
about to fall.

“I don't understand,” he said.

“I know honey,” she told him. “You've been
through a lot lately. That Millickie boy, and then Jared McClaren,
and that Packard girl. We didn't want to throw this on your back as
well. It's a pretty terrible thing to have to deal with, especially
for a twelve year old.”

“I'm twelve and a half,” he protested weakly.
Charlotte couldn't be crazy. Couldn't be...right? Grandpa was at
his writing desk, in his vision.

Oh man. Maybe he was going crazy too. Having
'visions'.

“I don't want to think about it,” his mother
said. “And I'm much older than you.”

“Practically a million years old,” his father
said.

“Michael Edward, you are not helping.”

“Yes dear.”

“I tell you what, sweetie,” she said. “I'm
only going to ask you one thing, but I'm going to ask you once
we've bought you something nice.”

Something nice? Michael knew he was too old
for this, so what was going on? He tried to decipher what was going
on with his parents by reading his mother’s face, but he wasn’t any
good at it. And yeah, he might be twelve and a half, but he still
enjoyed a new something from the store now and again. He didn’t
like to admit it, but there were still interesting things in the
toy aisle.

“Not clothes?”

“You name it, I'll buy it for you. And maybe
we can write Charlotte a letter later. I'm sure she'll get it, and
I'm sure she'll write you something in return.”

“Susie, you can't-”

“Shut your mouth Michael,” Susanna Washington
said sweetly, and Michael watched while his father's mouth slammed
shut. He had his hands clasped in his lap so tight the knuckles
were turning white. Michael wondered what he was missing, but there
were all sorts of things his parents did he didn't understand.
After a while he just learned to try to ignore them.