We sent everybody a yellow and changed into our costumes.
Haley left in her grandfather’s car. Cassie left on her father’s motorcycle. I left after both of them because changing into the Rocket suit takes time.
I flew out of the tunnel that opens over the lake, flipped over in the air, and aimed in the direction of the warehouse, listening to police band radio over my helmet.
Continue reading Hysteria: Part 5
We didn’t break into the house, though we did think about it.
“No,” Daniel said. “We don’t have any justification for it. Sean’s mom and little sister are home anyway, and they don’t know anything.”
We left and went home.
* * *
I ended up going through the whole story with Lee after practice. It wasn’t an official team practice. I happened to know that he was going to be at the studio and rode there after school.
Continue reading Hysteria: Part 4
By the time we got there, there were four of us. Vaughn met us in the air. Jaclyn met us at the house.
The house didn’t stick out normally. A white, two story house in a subdivision full of modern, two story homes of almost exactly the same design (basically a rectangle), it didn’t have much of a chance of looking ominous. The lawn had been mowed, the bushes clipped. The trees still looked bare of leaves, but, if the rest of the yard was any indication, not because the owner had neglected anything.
Tonight the house stuck out. The front door hung by two of the three hinges. The windows in its upper half had been shattered. Its metal body bent inward.
Continue reading Hysteria: Part 3
Outside of shock, I didn’t have much of a reaction.
When I hung up, I turned to Daniel, who had undoubtedly been listening to both sides of the conversation, and asked, “So now what?”
“We go to the hospital. This is going to be big.”
Continue reading Hysteria: Part 2
The next day we stepped out of school and into a media circus.
Sometime between last night and that afternoon, the reporter’s story had been taken up by the Associated Press and a video of Keith’s transformation had gone viral. Reporters stood at the bottom of the steps. Vans with satellite uplinks parked alongside the sidewalk. Photographers and cameramen stood waiting.
Continue reading Hysteria: Part 1
I couldn’t think of a person I’d least like to hear say those words, but it didn’t really matter what I thought.
Sean, still limping a little, but off the crutches he’d been using since our fight, pushed through the crowd. The fact that Dayton, Sean’s much larger friend, walked with him undoubtedly helped with the pushing.
Ignoring Vaughn, he said, “So what do I do?”
“Just hold out your arm.” Keith put drips of each liquid on Sean’s forearm.
Continue reading Chemistry: Part 6
“Well… Where are you meeting?”
Keith said, “Nowhere much. The school parking lot. It’ll be quick.”
He grinned at me. “I’ve a majorly cool demonstration of what I found out.”
I wanted to ask him about it, but he must have read that off my face.
He started walking down the hall toward at the stairs. “Come on, let’s go. I’ll show you when I show everyone else.”
Continue reading Chemistry: Part 5
Even though my life didn’t get immediately stranger as a result, the “national discussion” of the problem got heated. Some people hailed the unnamed leaker as a hero standing up against the potential for government tyranny. Other people described the person as a traitor who had endangered national security out of misguided idealism.
Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats had a consistent party line.
Continue reading Chemistry: Part 4
I was about to explain when the news scanner program started beeping at me. I sent the results to the big screen on the wall.
Titles of articles that linked to websites cascaded down half the screen. The other half showed pictures of ongoing news stories on all major networks. I clicked through them, staying just long enough to get the gist of how each one was reporting the story.
Continue reading Chemistry: Part 3
How do you respond to that? Saying, “How cool. Would you mind showing me your grandfather’s lair?” seemed a little off somehow. The question I really wanted to know the answer to, “So are you planning to build a new set of armor and hunt down the Rocket in revenge?” didn’t seem quite like the right thing to say either.
Keith and Courtney didn’t share my hesitation.
“So they’re just giving you his stuff?” Keith talked loudly enough that people at the tables around us looked in his direction.
Continue reading Chemistry: Part 2