Whole ride back to the cities, I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Couldn’t help but notice that C was sitting by herself, staring out the window, while her clique was hanging out across the aisle. Did I mention that the retreat “school unity” theme completely failed? It did. Except for me and C, anyway, but I don’t think that’s because of their awesome programming and high-priced education consultants.
By the time we pulled into the school parking lot, I decided that I had to say something, if only to smooth the way for a long year of whatever this training was supposed to be. So while Chelsea was pulling out her bags from under the bus (and she looked awful, like she had been too upset to sleep or put on makeup or even to copy whatever style got popular in the last 5 minutes), I went up and said hi. And she said hi, but before I could try to say anything else she was all like “oh look, there’s my sister, gotta go!” and ran away.
By the next day I decided that somebody had to deal with this—and it looked like that somebody was me (as usual! sux that I can’t put this stuff down on a college application!), so I emailed and got her to agree to meet the next Monday morning at her place when nobody else was around. I got the feeling that C was pretty upset by the whole thing, so I tried to cut her some slack. It was a lot to take in.
When I came over on Monday she wanted me to park in her garage so she could hide the fact that I was visiting. I couldn’t figure out if this was superpower secret or Deena’s-a-loser secret, but I went with it. Inside, C was really nervous. We went to her room and sat down on her bed and started talking.
It turns out that both of us had been thinking a lot about the really awesome experience in the woods and wondering if we could get something like that going again. I had tried a little in the backyard, and so had she, but we were both pretty sure that we could get better results if we worked together. So we sat on C’s bed and I tried talking her thru it like Mr. P had, but she was still so nervous and she didn’t really do more than make a little mist gather around her head.
Then it was my turn, and after a couple of minutes I could feel the wind swirling around me. It felt so cool and refreshing, and I tried to make it stronger so that I could feel more of it. C asked me to stop, only it felt so good and she never knew what she was talking about anyway, so I kept it up. I sort of heard the rustling sound and the clanging when a couple of her posters tore and her desk lamp fell over, but I wasn’t really paying attention.
And then C yelled, “That’s enough!” and the next thing I knew I was soaking wet, like someone had poured a barrel of water over my head. I gasped and wiped my eyes and there was Chelsea still sitting in front of me, only now her eyes were dark with little starpoints in them and she had a look on her face like she was afraid she had just killed someone or something.
So I yell “What the hell is your problem?,” sort of spitting out water at the same time, and Chelsea just bursts into tears. It’s hard to be mad at someone who’s crying, especially when she keeps repeating how sorry she is.
C let me use her shower and borrow some clean clothes. While I was in the bathroom she tossed her blankets and my stuff in the wash and made us a couple lattes from her really fancy coffee machine. Then she invited me into the living room to talk, and for the first time we actually, really did. We talked, and we got to know each other a little.
I knew that Chelsea had lived in NYC until she was 6, but what I didn’t realize was that her family had left just after the Fireshield Siege. And not only that, but C went to 1st grade in the school that the Fireshield Maestro decided to make into his HQ. And her sister was in the 4th grade class that was trapped in the building and terrorized for 2 days. So you can probably understand that C had some pretty big hang-ups about supers, and all of a sudden having all of these powers freaked her out more than I could imagine. She cried some more, and I tried to talk her down and convince her of some of the good stuff about the situation.
Because sure, supers since the Great Awakening had caused all sorts of trouble, but the Waking Guard had been helping the world in secret for millennia—so how could what we were doing possibly be bad? (Remember, this was back before we had met any other Waking Guardians.) Pretty soon C&I were both happy again, and talking about what an awesome rush it was when we could get into the groove. We agreed to meet again sometime soon.
That was the Monday before Labor Day Weekend. Remember, you and Mom were visiting the Isaacs that weekend, and said I could have a friend over and stay at the cabin? It seemed like a great chance to really figure out this stuff before school started (and in a place where a little more rain wouldn’t hurt anything), so I invited Chelsea and the Petrovskis over for the w-end. (You always tell me it’s a good idea to get to know who my teachers are independent of school, right Daddy?)
That weekend was exhausting, but it was awesome. From still-dark-early in the morning until late, C&I practiced calling out the wind and the rain and controlling them (with very mixed results). We also learned about some other advantages of being appointed Waking Guardians. We realized that we could move faster and hear better and had all kinds of other little talents that we hadn’t noticed in the past week. Sometimes we would sit and concentrate for hours until our brains were oatmeal, and other times we would run around in the woods until we were ready to fall over. I can’t remember ever sleeping as good as that weekend. Mr. and Mrs. P said that we were doing a great job. They had a lot to teach us, even tho they couldn’t draw on any super powers anymore. (Since they passed them off to us, they weren’t able to use them anymore. I mentioned that, right?)
Then school started, and even tho it was still pretty great, it wasn’t the same. We started getting to school early (like 7, even 6:30 some days) and staying after for a couple hours, basically every day, for more practice time. And that’s on top of other extracurriculars that we were trying to keep up, not to mention homework and friends. I think we both kind of lost track of homework and friends in the shuffle. But Mr. and Mrs. P were really serious about the training, and C&I understood that being in the Waking Guard was now the most important thing we’d be doing with our lives, so we did our best.
…BTW, being a superhero is nothing like how they make it out to be in S Magazine.
