In My Daydreams

Instead of doing something with Haley on Friday night, I found myself flying through the air with Rachel toward the Rocket’s first ever intentional TV interview — or if not the Rocket’s first, my first as the Rocket.

Rachel let go of my shoulder as I pointed myself upright, stopping the rockets for a moment, but then making the rocketpack start a new burn, slowing my descent.

Below me I could see the parking lot where I’d fought Man-machine — until his heart attack, anyway.

It looked a lot like it had that night, half full of cars, and darkness. (more…)

Standing at the podium, Principal Williams stopped the ceremony.

He held up his hands. “Everyone please be quiet, and stay where you are. We’ve called an ambulance, and they will need the aisles to be clear.”

Not everybody listened. Sean pushed his way out between the aisles of folding chairs, ran across the field, up one of the short stairways, and into the bleachers, joining his family.

I couldn’t blame him for that. (more…)

One of the men in protective gear — the one I’d guessed might be Ray — pulled a gun, and pointed it at Sean.

Julie stopped talking to Shannon and Camille, and shouted, “Freeze!” (more…)

I didn’t stop trying to fix the arm, but a worse week to try than my last week of high school ever would be hard to imagine.

I didn’t get back to working on things on Monday night because the whole family got talking. With Grandpa and Grandma Klein visiting from Minnesota, that happened easily. Grandpa had taught cultural anthropology at the University of Minnesota, worked for the U.N. in the 1960’s, and had friends all over the world. (more…)

I scanned the radio for news reports. Police band could tell me what was going on now, but not what had happened.

I called up the GPS. The Baymont Inn wasn’t far away. I decided I could do a flyby without too much trouble. I probably wouldn’t even get seen, which was good, because if I got into a one on one fight with Prime’s people, I might not survive it. (more…)

So you’d think that after having all Friday to work on it, I would have had the arm completely ready to go. Unfortunately projects that are even marginally complicated don’t go like that. What happens is that you put things together, discover a problem, take them apart and put them together again. After that, you attach them to the suit for the first time, discover another thing you’ve done wrong, take it apart, and put it together again.

It was maddening, but I found it fun at the same time. (more…)

Hardwick pushed back his chair, and stood up behind the desk. “Don’t threaten me, George. Ray’s got nothing to offer me that I can’t buy.”

Small flickers of electricity arced between the fingers of his left hand.

Mr. Drucker said, “Yeah? Good, but I wasn’t threatening. I came here to tell you what would happen if you side with these people instead of our kids. I’ll see you at the next meeting.”

He touched his hand back on the beam, and the metal flowed back into position, slightly more shiny in the spots Mr. Drucker had melted.

Then he left. (more…)

The idea of helping me skip school amused Rachel as much as I thought it might.

It amused her enough to wake up at seven instead of nine, and pretend to be Mom. The school bought it. One of the nice things about not being the kind of guy who gets in trouble regularly is that the staff doesn’t recognize your mother’s voice. (more…)

After they hung up, I sat back and thought about it. If I were going to skip, when and how would I do it? I wasn’t going to be able to get my parents to write a note. The block only prevented my parents from recognizing what was doing, or stopping me from doing it.

I decided I’d skip tomorrow. Maybe Rachel could call the office and pretend to be Mom? She’d probably get a kick out of it. (more…)

“You’re missing something though,” Vaughn said. “You’ve got to  remember that  Uncle Russ is still Lucas’ dad. They don’t always get along, but I can’t imagine Lucas totally working against him. The guy you’d want for something like that is Sean. He wouldn’t care about ignoring against his parents at all, and with Sean you’d get Dayton and Jody for sure.”

I was about to say something, but Haley spoke first. “But if they do it, Ray and his whole team will kill everybody. That’s what they always do to supers. Everybody knows that.” (more…)