The Ables Read online

  The nurse arrived at that moment and was followed almost immediately by my mother—the school had called her pretty quickly, and I guess she just zapped on over from wherever she happened to be at the time. She was a former nursing student herself, and she and the school nurse checked me out. I guess they determined that my neck wasn’t broken because they finally let me stand up.

  Mr. Peterson—who was surprisingly burly—carried me down the hall and then out to my mother’s car. Mom drove me straight to the hospital to get checked out. I had to endure a few tests and a giant machine that the technician said typically made claustrophobic people nervous—I told him that it was hard for me to get too worked up about small spaces since I generally couldn’t see my boundaries in any space. He still gave me a lollipop as a parting gift, and I accepted it, even though I hadn’t really been all that scared.

  After a couple hours at the hospital, the doctor gave me a clean bill of health and a bottle of extra- strength headache medicine. I would have a bump on my head for several days, he said, and he forbade me from going to school for at least one day to recuperate. But otherwise, I was going to be just fine.

  Mom seemed relieved but still a little concerned. I guess that sort of thing comes naturally. We drove for a few minutes before she spoke. “Do you want to talk about what happened?” she asked cautiously.

  The headache pills were a long way off from doing their job, and I was simply not in the mood to talk. “Not really.”

  She stopped at a stop sign and turned left. I knew we were only a mile or so from home just based on the turns she made. “The principal said that the other boy was teasing you and your friends …” she said, trailing off for a second before continuing, “and that you stood up to him, so he punched you.”

  “Yeah,” I said, corroborating Mr. Dempsey’s account of the event.

  “Well, whenever you want to talk about it, I’m here for you. But I just want you to know that I’m proud of you, honey, for standing up to those bullies.” I normally hated it when she called me honey, but really, that was only when other people were around. When it was just the two of us, I secretly liked it.

  It opened me up a tiny bit. “It really hurt,” I said. I wasn’t looking for sympathy but merely stating it as a surprising new fact.

  She chuckled softly with pity. “Oh, Phillip, I bet it did. Do you need to take some of those pills the doctor prescribed?”

  “No, no.” I waved my hand in dismissal. “It doesn’t hurt now. Well, it doesn’t hurt nearly as much now that I took the ones he gave me at the office. I just meant … in general. Getting punched in the stomach hurts a lot more than you’d think it would.”

  “What makes you think I don’t know?” she asked playfully.

  “You’ve been punched in the stomach before?” It was tough to believe at first.

  “Sure I have,” she said, making one last turn onto our street. “And the face and the back and … well, I’ve been punched, kicked, or zapped in just about any place you can think of, son. It’s all a part of the hero’s job.”

  It was a tough visual picture for me to accept. The thought of my mother being punched in the stomach was uncomfortable. Painful, really. I didn’t like it at all. This was my mother. How dare these people assault her? I’d come to grips with the fact that my parents had super powers; in fact, I had seen them on display a number of times. But I hadn’t really spent much time thinking of them as combatants.

  Almost sensing my thoughts, Mom explained, “There’s only one way to avoid being injured on the job as a custodian, Phillip. And that’s to not become one in the first place. There will be bumps and bruises along the way. Granted, they won’t always come from school bullies—and they shouldn’t ever come from school bullies—but they will come.”

  “How do you not die?” I asked. “I mean … I can take a punch to the stomach as a custodian, and now I’ve learned that firsthand. But how do you know the difference in scenarios between a punch in the stomach and a bullet to the head?”

  “Goodness, I don’t like hearing you talk like that. ‘Bullet to the head’: is that from those comic books?” She didn’t leave me any time to answer her before getting back on topic. “You don’t know the difference, Phillip. That’s the point. That’s why you won’t be fighting real crime until you’re in college. It’s a feeling you get—one you learn. And you go on your gut. But you’re never sure.” The car turned into the driveway, and I could hear the automatic garage door opening.

  “I love you. I know I say that a lot,” she added softly, “but you and your brother mean more to me than my own life itself. As your mother, I have to tell you this because it applies to your father and me and you and your brother, pretty much forever.” The car pulled into the garage and came to a stop. “A hero is only a hero because he or she walks into that situation knowing full well they may not walk out. Whether they save the day or die trying, they’re heroes because they make the sacrifice just by showing up.”

  I didn’t respond verbally. And Mom seemed okay with that. It was a pretty heavy speech, after all. She turned off the car, and we went into the house without another word.

  That night, Mom and Dad kept waking me up every hour or so, telling me they loved me and patting my head goodnight. I would learn the next day that they had been instructed to do so by the doctor as a way of making sure I didn’t have a concussion. Apparently, they had to wake me up frequently to make sure that I could still wake up at all, which has a certain backward poetry to it, I think.

  Normally, I would have eavesdropped on their conversation out in the kitchen—and I’m sure they had some interesting words to exchange about their helpless little blind boy—but the headache medicine Mom made me drink before bed also made me sleepy, and that night, I welcomed my dreams.

  Chapter 10: In Reverse

  Bentley and Henry called the house that evening begging my parents to let them stop by and visit me, but my folks had been too concerned with my getting enough rest. But considering that I was headed back to school on Wednesday and that the hearing was that same night, Mom and Dad spoiled me with a rare display of kindness: they let my two friends sleep over on the next night, Tuesday—a school night.

  We had to promise that we wouldn’t use our powers around the house until after Patrick had gone to bed and that we wouldn’t stay up too late. Both seemed like fair compromises to me.

  We laughed and ate pizza—Jack’s again, quickly becoming my favorite pizza ever, and I had lived in New York. Around 8:30 p.m. or so, Mom sent Patrick off to get cleaned up for bed. Not long after that, she and Dad retired to their room, leaving the three of us on our own in the living room. The second they disappeared down the hall, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  I thought they’d never go to bed.

  “I thought they’d never go to bed,” Henry said in relief.

  “I was just thinking that,” I said, acknowledging the coincidence.

  “I know,” he replied, smiling.

  It took a second to realize that he’d just used his powers on me. He had read my thoughts, the little bugger. I was impressed and surprised and offended all at the same time. “Hey,” I said.

  Henry started laughing. “Ha ha, I got you,” he said, proud of himself.

  “I have to be careful what I think when I’m around you. I keep forgetting you can read my mind.”

  “Do me, do me!” Bentley exclaimed excitedly.

  There was a brief silence.

  Then Henry spoke. “Man, that pizza was really good!”

  “You’re right!” And we all laughed some more.

  “Wait, wait … do me again,” I said, having just cooked up something hilarious.

  Another quick pause while I concentrated on a specific thought, and he focused on reading it. He started reciting it before he’d finished it, just as I had hoped. “Henry is a doofus—hey, wait a minute!”

  We all roared with stifled laughter, trying not to make too much noise—no laughter i
s harder to curb than the kind that occurs when you’re supposed to be quiet. “That’s not fair,” Henry cried, chuckling despite himself.

  After much snorting and giggling, we finally calmed down.

  “Hey, Phillip, you know what’s just occurred to me?” Bentley inquired.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve never seen you use your powers.”

  He was right. We’d only had a few “practices” for the SuperSim, and those had ultimately turned into strategy sessions for the hearing.

  Henry hadn’t realized it either. “Oh yeah,” he said. “How could we let it go that long without asking him to show us?”

  “You’re right,” I agreed. “That’s kind of funny.” Most of the time we spent together was in the school, where powers were blocked.

  “Well … show me,” Bentley urged.

  “Okay,” I decided. I stood up off the floor and patted my hands around the couch until I found the remote control. I didn’t watch much television, but I listened to plenty of it and had worked the controller many times. I knew the object well.

  I extended the remote toward Bentley. “Here,” I instructed. “Take this.”

  “Okay,” he said cautiously.

  “Hold it in your hands, with both your palms facing up, with the remote pointing at me.”

  “This is gonna be good,” Henry muttered under his breath excitedly.

  Bentley did as he was told. “Okay, done.”

  “Okay, then.” I stood up and walked over to the far living room wall near where my mother’s crossword chair sat. That put me roughly nine or ten feet away from the guys. “You ready?”

  “Yeah,” Bentley stated.

  “Yeah,” Henry said enthusiastically.

  “Here goes.” I concentrated on the remote control, remembering its shape and the weight of it in my hands. Slowly, I stuck out my right arm, my hand open and facing Bentley. I visualized the object leaping out of his flattened hands and zipping through the air into my own. And then it happened, just as I had willed it to, snapping into my grasp with a loud “smack.” I’d been practicing in my room every day with various objects and had gotten pretty good at this particular trick.

  “Whoa!” Henry declared.

  Bentley seemed equally impressed. “Holy cow, Phillip: that was amazing!”

  “Really?” It seemed sort of old hat to me by now. Like a party trick. If only I was allowed to use it to shut my brother up.

  “Are you kidding me? It’s fantastic! Do it again.”

  I walked over and returned the remote to Bentley and then went back to the wall. It was even easier the second time, and I didn’t have to concentrate nearly as hard. The remote again flew across the room and into my hand.

  Smack.

  “Outstanding!” Henry praised. “That is hands-down one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.”

  “How does it work, Phillip?” Bentley was by far the most inquisitive kid I’d ever known. He always wanted to know more about things, prodding with hows and whys and whens.

  “Well, I guess I just focus on the object and try to picture it doing what I want it to do. And if my focus is good, it just happens.” Then I added, “But I can only do it with objects I’m kind of familiar with.”

  “Why’s that?”

  It was odd to be in the position of teaching Bentley anything. “Because telekinesis requires me to know the general dimensions and weight of an object before I can move it. Sighted people, like my dad, can move things just by looking at them. They can actually see the dimensions with their eyes, and that also gives them an approximate reading on the weight. But since I can’t do that, I usually have to familiarize myself with things by handling them.”

  “Man, that’s too bad,” Henry mourned, not meaning to be rude. “Imagine what you could do if you could see.”

  As usual, I wasn’t offended by his accidental insult. “You’re telling me, Henry,” I agreed, “you’re telling me.”

  “If you had my power, your blindness would barely even be a factor, you know? I don’t really need my eyes at all to do what I do.”

  “I want to know more about how that works, too,” Bentley announced.

  “Well, what do you want to know?” Henry said.

  It was a mistake to be so open-ended with someone like Bentley. “Can you read every thought in a person’s brain or just some of them? Can you do it selectively, person by person, or do you get everyone’s thoughts at once? Can you turn it on and off whenever you want?”

  Henry cut him off before Bentley could go any further. “Okay, okay … one question at a time, Bentley, jeez. Let’s see: I can definitely do it selectively, and I can turn it on or off at will.”

  “Awesome.” I exhaled. It was my turn to be in awe.

  “But I can only read fully-formed thoughts. Like, when you think to yourself in complete sentences. I can’t see or hear fragments or the fleeting beginnings of thoughts that fade quickly away. And I can’t read everything in your mind. Only the current thought or picture.”

  “Picture?” Bentley asked, seeking more information.

  “Yeah, you know … the visual. I can see what another person sees with their eyes or any fully formed thought they express.”

  “That’s kind of amazing,” Bentley admitted.

  “And it’s only in real time, too. I can’t access your memories or anything … unless your fully-formed thought is about a memory, I guess …” Henry trailed off.

  “But how do you actually get that thought or picture? How do you turn it on, so to speak?” His questions could be relentless.

  “I don’t know,” Henry said, trying to find the words to explain it. “It’s sort of like reaching into your brain and plucking out the latest file, I suppose, like a giant mental hand. I just have to concentrate for a moment, like Phillip, and I kind of picture myself reaching into your brain to grab whatever’s there on the forefront of your mind. And then I have it.”

  “But you can see actual pictures? Or just ideas and concepts?”

  “Actual pictures. Tell you what, go around behind the couch where I can’t see you, and look at something … I’ll tell you what it is.”

  Bentley was excited to get a demonstration, and he slowly got up. He stumbled a bit at first but caught himself with the arm of the couch and then sauntered slowly around the sofa. I never knew what to do in those moments when his palsy caused him to trip or stagger; I was usually shocked at first, and by the time I realized I should help him, he was usually already recovered and moving on. He didn’t seem to let it slow him down too much.

  After a few moments he announced, “Okay, I’m ready.”

  It didn’t take long at all for Henry to work his magic. “You’re looking at a framed photograph on the kitchen counter. It has Phillip and Patrick in it, and Patrick is wearing a blue baseball cap. Phillip has on a red shirt and is smiling.”

  “That’s freaking incredible,” Bentley said. “You really do see the same thing I’m looking at!”

  “Yeah,” Henry said, like we shouldn’t have needed any proof, “I told you I could.”

  Bentley returned to his sleeping bag and sat for a moment in silence. It was such an abrupt silence that it was clear his gears were turning, processing this new information about our powers.

  I thought I’d try to fill the silence while he worked it over in his head. “Henry, I wish I could try it too, man, but I’m afraid I don’t have any mental pictures for you to grab.” It was a pretty bad joke, but if James had been there, it would have gotten at least one laugh, I’m sure.

  Suddenly, Bentley spoke up. “Henry, I want to ask you a question.”

  “Okay.”

  “Have you ever tried it in reverse?”

  “What?” Henry didn’t understand, and frankly, neither did I.

  “Have you ever tried to use your power in reverse?”

  “What are you talking about, Bentley? You mean while backing up in a car?”

  “No, H
enry. I’m talking about your powers. You said it’s like reaching your hand into someone’s mind and grabbing the most recent image or thought, right?”

  “Yeah,” Henry answered, still not sure what Bentley was getting at.

  “Then I’m asking if you’ve ever gone in the reverse … tried to reach your hand into someone’s mind and dropping something off instead of picking something up. Have you ever put a thought or a picture into someone’s mind?”

  That statement floored me. It was one of those moments where I realized just how accelerated and advanced Bentley’s mental capacity was compared to mine. Not in a million years would I have thought to wonder if Henry’s power could work backwards. I was pretty bright, but I just didn’t think like that. No one my age did except for Bentley.

  “Well, no, I guess I haven’t. Why?”

  So Bentley explained, with enthusiasm and a growing energy. “Well, every power has a root definition. For Phillip, the most basic way to explain his ability is that he can move things by thinking about it. It’s not that he has to feel it first—that’s just how his disability augments his powers. His root power is the ability to move things. For Penelope, that girl in our class, it’s that she can control the weather. Not that she can create tornados—which she can—or that she can call up thunderstorms—which she can. But simply that she can control weather. She could make it partly cloudy and a pleasant eighty degrees if she wanted to.”

  “I am so lost,” Henry muttered.

  “Me too,” I agreed.

  Bentley didn’t slow down, though. “Now, it may be that your root definition is that you can pull out thoughts from other people’s minds … and that’s it. Only taking. Or,” he said dramatically, “it could be that your root power is simply the ability to reach inside someone’s mind. And whether you take something or leave something is up to you.”

  “Now … we have Phillip, here.” He patted me on the shoulder. “Who, as it turns out, needs sight in order to fully maximize his powers. And we have Henry, who can reach inside people’s minds and do things with images. What would happen, I wonder, if you were to try and reverse your power … to take an image from your own eyes, and drop it into Phillip’s brain?”