Super (7 page)

“Like back at the creek?”

Eric nodded.

“Eric …”

“No! Don’t say it, Daniel. Don’t even think it.”

“Come on!” said Daniel. “
Your
flight and
your
strength go missing just as I become super-strong and start to fly!”

“No. You’re not like him. You are not the Shroud!”

“Look, I’m not saying I am, but—”

“Just forget it, Daniel. Get the idea that your powers and my problem are somehow connected out of your head. You’re becoming a Super because you
deserve
to be, Daniel. You are not becoming Herman Plunkett. And whatever’s going on with me, we’ll fix it. I’m already feeling better. I’ve probably just got the super-flu or something stupid like that.”

Reluctantly, Daniel nodded. He didn’t believe him, but he was too tired to argue anymore and too exhausted to think clearly. But he remembered that night not so long ago
when he’d woken up in a cave in the Old Quarry, to discover Eric unconscious and the Shroud whispering offers in the dark. Offers of power. He’d said no to them all. He’d said no then.

“Another thing,” said Eric. “Though I can’t wait to see Mollie’s face when you fly past her window, let’s not tell the others just yet, okay? You and me can figure this out together, but I don’t want to worry them.”

“Okay. But if it gets worse …”

“If it gets worse, then we’ll talk.”

Eric helped Daniel dust himself off as best he could. But Daniel’s hair was still in a tangle, and he looked like he’d been belly-crawling through the forest.

“I think we’ll walk the rest of the way, what do you say?” Eric said.

Daniel nodded, and the two friends headed for the lights of Elm Lane and the Corrigan home.

“That dinner offer still stand?” Eric asked.

“Of course,” said Daniel. “We need to celebrate with some really terrible food.”

Eric chuckled, and then the two walked in silence past the now-glowing streetlights. But all the way home, Daniel imagined that he could hear whispers in the dark.

T
hat night the dream returned. After dinner, and a groggy goodbye to Eric, Daniel barely made it back to his room, where he fell asleep without even taking off his clothes. He was back in the Old Quarry, fighting the Shroud. As before, he wrestled with Herman Plunkett, struggling to tear the meteorite pendant from the old man’s throat. Again, as his fingers closed around it, they burned away like butter against a hot stove. The details were all the same, like a recording of a dream rather than the actual thing. The same up to the end, when suddenly the Shroud disguise melted away, revealing the weak old man beneath. Herman was pleading with Daniel, begging him for something—mercy? But Daniel
didn’t listen. He stood over his fallen enemy and held up his ruined right hand. The flesh was gone, but in its place was a hand made all of green fire.

Daniel woke up clutching his hand tightly to his chest. He quickly counted the fingers to make sure they were all there. He lay there for a few moments, staring at the ceiling while he worked out the phantom pains from his hand, and he noticed something odd. Normally he woke up looking at the sunlit window, but this time he was staring up at the bookshelf, which was clear on the other side of the room. As he rubbed the sleep from his sticky eyes, the rest of the room came into focus.

He was on the floor. He’d been sleeping on the hard wooden floor at the base of the bookshelf, but he had absolutely no memory of how he’d gotten there. The ache in his fingers was gone, only to be replaced by a very real crick in his neck and a stabbing pain in his lower back—at some point he’d apparently rolled atop a piece of H.M.S.
Nelson
.

The bed was wrinkled, but the covers were undisturbed, and nothing else in the room seemed to be out of place. So without a better explanation, Daniel must’ve been sleepwalking. He’d never done that before, but then, recently he’d been doing a lot of things he’d never done before.

He could fly, for one thing. Or at least, he had flown. He’d had the power yesterday. He’d soared as high as any Super dared go.

But where had the power come from? Was Eric right when he said that Daniel was finally a Super, or was there
another, darker explanation? In his dream he’d stood over Herman, his hand made of emerald flame.
Witch Fire …

Daniel sat up and tried to rub some warmth back into his bare arms. The mornings were getting cooler, and autumn would come early this year. But there was a chill in Daniel’s bones that had nothing to do with the changing seasons. He stood in front of the bookshelf and flexed his fingers as he looked down once more at his bare hand. He didn’t wear a watch and he owned only one ring, a ring he’d never worn.

Reaching up to the topmost shelf, Daniel retrieved a very special book. It was a hardcover, a very old edition of
The Final Problem
, with a black-ink-and-gold-embossed illustration on the front showing Sherlock Holmes battling his arch-nemesis, Moriarty, over the Reichenbach Falls. The book was unusually light for its size because Daniel himself had hollowed out the inside pages to make room for a small ring of polished black rock. He flipped the book open to the hollowed-out middle and looked at the ring. The ugly circle of black rock looked like it had been carved out of coal, but Daniel knew better. It had been a gift from Herman Plunkett himself, who’d told Daniel that he’d crafted it from the very same meteorite that gave Plunkett his power-stealing Shroud abilities. The old villain had intended it for Daniel to use as his protégé.

Daniel had never worn it, but he hadn’t destroyed it either. He hadn’t tossed it into the deepest bottom of Tangle Creek or buried it far off in the remote woods. But worse
than that, he hadn’t told anyone about it. He’d kept it here on his bookshelf, a secret. He’d convinced himself that this was the safest place for it, that he was keeping it out of the wrong hands. But safe from whom? His friends?

There had been several times over the last few months when he’d come close to telling the Supers about the ring, but each time he’d chickened out at the last minute. He’d had it for so long now, and to tell them would be admitting that he’d kept something from them, something that could turn into a threat to all of them. The longer he went without telling, the guiltier he felt. The guiltier he felt, the harder it was to tell his friends the truth. He was stuck.

He set the book down on his desk and stared at the ring inside. When it caught the sunlight from a certain angle, it took on a kind of greenish, oily sheen. Daniel remembered the emerald fire that had burned from the Shroud’s pendant; he remembered the green flame that had consumed his hand in his dream the night before.

His subconscious was not subtle. And his subconscious was probably right. The ring was dangerous, and he should just destroy it now. He should take a hammer to it until it was just so much dust. But what if Eric was right and Daniel was a Super now too? Herman Plunkett had said that Daniel’s own grandmother had lost both her powers and her memories by merely touching a piece of that meteor stone. The slightest touch and she’d been changed forever. Made less.

And last night Daniel had flown.

Now the ring held a different kind of fear for him. It was like a venomous snake in a basket, and to get rid of it you might have to risk being bit.

Daniel’s hand fell away. He closed the book’s cover, leaving the black ring in its hiding place, untouched. And there it would stay, for the time being at least.

Daniel stood and stretched. Other than the stiff neck and aching back, he didn’t feel any different today than any other day. He certainly didn’t feel more powerful. But then last night he’d been aware of the power only when he’d actually been using it—he hadn’t felt super-strong until he’d found himself holding a thousand pounds of tree above his head. He hadn’t known he could fly until he actually flew. What should he do now? Should he test himself again, try lifting something heavy? But what could he lift …?

“Hey, Georgie!” Daniel called. Daniel’s room was in the attic at the top of the house, but his little brother slept downstairs, in what was once the nursery but now had to be carefully referred to as the “big-boy room.” Normally, if Daniel so much as whispered in the direction of his door, Georgie would come running.

But today there was no answer. As Daniel went down the attic steps, he caught voices drifting up from the kitchen downstairs. Everyone must already be at breakfast—they’d let him sleep in. Perfect. Daniel didn’t want his nosy little brother around to see what he was about to attempt.

Inside Georgie’s room was a piece of Corrigan family history in the form of a cherrywood dresser. It was squat
and thick, barely coming up to Daniel’s chest, and it had been used as a diaper-changing table by Daniel’s gram. She’d used it to change Daniel’s mother when she’d been just a baby. Gram had kept it here in this house for years, always intending to pass it on as a keepsake, but there was one problem—it was too heavy. It was a monster of craftsmanship, but it was also so solid, no one dared move it from its spot. In fact, Georgie’s room had become Georgie’s room simply because that changing table was already in there, and it wasn’t going anywhere. From now on, it came with the house. People came to the changing table; the changing table did not come to them.

Listening at the top of the stairwell, he could hear the clink of plates being cleared, which signaled his family was finishing up breakfast. It was now or never.

“All right,” he said, sizing up the dresser. “It’s just you and me!”

Daniel wrapped his arms around the dresser’s edge. His skinny limbs certainly didn’t look any more muscly, but then, to look at Eric you’d never know that he could lift a car over his head and not break a sweat. At least, not usually.

Daniel gave the dresser a tug. Then a shove. He grunted. He pushed and he pulled, and for a moment he thought he felt something give, but it was just his knees popping. After a short time of useless struggle, he gave up.

Had yesterday been just a fluke? By some weird quirk of Noble’s Green super-physics, had he been given powers just to see them fade away again? Daniel looked out Georgie’s
window. His little brother’s bedroom overlooked the front yard. It didn’t have the same breathtaking view of Mount Noble that Daniel’s attic room had, but above the trees he could still get a look at the clear morning sky.

He peered up at the blue sliver in Georgie’s window and remembered what it was like to be up there, alone with the wind. He needed to know. He needed to see if he could still …

“Fly! Fly! Georgie fly!”

Georgie came into the room wearing nothing but his pajama shirt, a hat made from a brown paper bag, and a bath-towel cape. Daniel’s little brother disdained pants.

“Charge!” shouted Georgie with his arms outstretched as he ran straight at Daniel. Daniel caught his little brother and, in one fluid motion, spun him around. Georgie exploded in giggles.

“Fly! Georgie fly!”

Daniel twirled his brother in three complete circles before letting him collapse at his feet.

“More! More, Daniel, more!” Georgie was so dizzy, he couldn’t even wobble himself up to sitting, but he still wanted to go again.

“Not now, Georgie. My arms are tired.”

“Mooooore!” Georgie pumped his legs in the air, kicking at something that wasn’t there, but Daniel wasn’t in the mood.

“Georgie, I can’t, okay? I’m not strong enough!”

“Everything all right in here?” Daniel’s mother appeared
in the doorway holding a bagel and a glass of orange juice. She frowned when she saw Georgie doing bicycle kicks on the floor. “Uh-oh. Is Georgie counting down?”

Counting down
was Corrigan family code for when their youngest was near toddler-meltdown. It was a signal to drop everything and secure any and all loose objects. Georgie’s tantrums were forces of nature.

Daniel looked askance at his brother, but Georgie just blew him a raspberry in return and giggled.

“No,” said Daniel. “False alarm.”

“Well, I’m glad to see you’re finally awake,” said his mother. “Georgie needs to get dressed, and you need to grab a bite to eat. I told Eric that you could take a bagel and juice with you.”

“Eric?”

No sooner had Daniel said his name than his friend stepped into view. He was smiling at them behind a mouthful of bagel and cream cheese.

“Sorry about the surprise visit,” Eric said, “but I wanted to get an early start.”

“A start on what?” asked Daniel.

“Superheroing 101!”

“You boys and your games,” said Daniel’s mother as she began stripping Georgie out of his bath-towel cape and paper-bag hat. “Just be home for lunch.”

“Superheroing 101?” asked Daniel as the two of them climbed the steps to his room, out of earshot of his mother.

Eric smiled as he shrugged. “I flew over here this morning. Powers are back to full. How are you feeling?”

Daniel thought about the changing table. Solid. The unmovable object.

“Nothing. Looks like I’m back to my ordinary, measly self.”

“Well, let’s put it to the test. I wanna figure out what’s going on.” Eric pointed to Daniel’s feet. “Put on a pair of clean socks and grab your shoes. Class is in session!”

The morning chill gave way as the sun appeared above the trees. It was going to be a warm day after all, maybe one of the last of the season. The sky was all clear blue, but the air down on the ground was hazy and still sticky with western Pennsylvania humidity, even this early in the morning. They hiked out into the neighboring woods until they reached a small clearing. The weeds were waist high in places, and Daniel’s jeans kept getting snagged on sticker bushes. But it was private.

“Okay,” said Eric. “First things first. Fly. But this time, go slow!”

“I can’t go at all!” said Daniel. “I told you, I don’t have any powers!”

“Did you have any powers yesterday morning?”

“No.”

“But you did by the end of the day. So we need to test it, to be sure. It’s called the scientific method. You see, I know that because I go to a fine public school—”