The Ables Page 6

  “Yeah, it’s an NPZ,” said Henry, who I had not even realized was present. In the heat of the moment, I’d stopped paying attention to some of the subtle things my ears would usually key in on.

  “What?” That was the only coherent thought I could find at the moment. I was still trying to figure out how a kid with a cane and a kid with a wheelchair scared off two ninth-graders.

  “The school,” Henry stated in his trademark blunt fashion, “is a no power zone. There’s a blocker somewhere around here. Nobody can use their powers in this place.”

  “Those jerks were just messing with you,” Bentley explained. “They do it every year to a new kid—at least that’s what my brother said. They think it’s hilarious. They find some seventh-grader they think they can fool and then prank them into trying to use their powers. Then they laugh at them. It’s pretty cruel, I think. And positively Cro-Magnon.”

  I was still a bit confused but was slowing catching up. The cafeteria was returning to its normal volume levels as everyone lost interest in the possible blind-kid fight. “Why would they do that?” It seemed unnecessarily evil to go so far in a lie just to get a chuckle.

  “They’re just mean. It’s what older kids do, I guess,” Bentley offered, not reassuringly. “I’m sorry we didn’t get here sooner, but the lunch line was pretty long today.”

  “Wait a minute,” I objected. “How in the world did you two manage to scare them off?” I was dying to know.

  “Oh … I keep forgetting you can’t see,” Henry stated. My, he is blunt, isn’t he? But at least he was honest; you had to give him that. “Donnie’s with us.”

  I heard Bentley’s cane as he propped it up against the table and sat down next to me. “Everyone’s afraid of Donnie; isn’t that right, Donnie?”

  I don’t think Donnie gave Bentley any reaction, but he did sit down across from me, and I felt the table rock from his mammoth frame.

  “I don’t understand,” I confessed. “Why would they be scared off by a guy who doesn’t even know what his power is—no offense, Donnie.” He again said nothing, so I simply hoped he had not taken offense, if he’d even heard and understood me.

  “That’s even scarier,” Henry said like it was a fact. “Don’t you think? I mean, if you were facing off with a super villain, would you rather know for a fact that they could fly—in which case you could plan for that power and incorporate it into your attack—or not have any idea what danger you might be facing?”

  “Besides,” added Bentley, “whatever his powers are, he’s definitely super strong. Even regular humans with Down syndrome are strong. That’s what my brother says. Those two wieners would run from Donnie even if he didn’t have any powers at all. I know you haven’t seen him, really, but Donnie’s a giant. He’s, like, six feet tall. He’s bigger than most of the teachers here.”

  As if I needed more reasons to be wary of Donnie.

  But he had basically just saved my bacon, whether he knew it or not. So I decided to cut him some slack while still keeping in the back of my mind the notion that he could crush me like a bug.

  “How come Donnie was even with you?” I inquired.

  “Oh, we can’t get him to leave us alone, actually,” Henry corrected me. “He followed me and Bentley all the way here from class. Then he followed us through the lunch line. Then he sat down next to us to eat. And when we saw you were in trouble, I guess he just followed us then, too. It’s like he’s stalking us.”

  Bentley had a simpler explanation. “I think he’s just lonely and wants to find some friends.”

  “Or that,” Henry conceded.

  “Well,” I offered meekly, “thanks, you guys. Really. I really appreciate it. I still can’t believe I fell for that crap!” I was mad at myself for being so naïve.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. They’ll find someone else to pick on, I’m sure.” Bentley seemed so calm, so mature, for someone my age. It was like he had an extra dose of wisdom or something.

  Henry piped up. “The odds of running into them much during school are pretty slim, actually, since we’re in our own classroom all day.”

  “Except that I have to share a lunch period with them every day for the rest of the year, Henry!” I was agitated, but I was also surprised that that bit of logic had escaped our little know-it-all friend. “How am I supposed to deal with that, huh?”

  Henry didn’t have a chance to answer. “Easy.” It was Bentley, smiling broadly. “Just make sure you sit with us. Or, perhaps, more importantly, make sure you sit with Donnie.”

  Donnie grunted slightly, just enough to make me wonder if he was paying more attention than I had assumed. Everyone smiled and chuckled at Donnie’s possible contribution to the discussion.

  “See,” Bentley noted, “Donnie’s got your back. And if he doesn’t, we do.”

  “Great,” I said sarcastically. “A blind guy, a cripple, and a kid with tremors. God help the punk that tries to mess with us.”

  “Hey, how come you stopped wearing your Personal Navigator?” Henry asked.

  Bentley perked up. “Personal Navigator?”

  “Yeah, they give ‘em to all the blind students, I think,” Henry replied. Then I heard his voice turn back in my direction. “So why’d you quit wearing it?”

  “Well,” I explained, “I tried using it to find the cafeteria, but that thing’s useless in a hallway crowded with people.”

  “Oh,” Henry said dejectedly, “that’s a bummer.”

  “That voice just kept shouting about obstructions. Honestly, it’s a great little idea for a gadget, but it’s not terribly practical in my brief experience.”

  “Don’t worry,” Henry said, “we’ll show you the way back to class.”

  “Thanks,” I said, meaning it.

  “So, you’re not going to use it?” Bentley asked cautiously.

  “I can’t see why I would. A couple more days and I’ll know my way around this place, no problem. Plus, it’s only programmed to work in the school, so it’s pretty much useless to me.”

  “Do you mind if I have it?”

  It seemed a little odd, but after thinking about it a moment, I didn’t really have any objection to consider. “Sure,” I said, fishing into my pocket to retrieve the device. “What do you want with it?” I turned my hand over and placed it in Bentley’s open palm.

  “Oh, Arthur Stansbury—the inventor—is kind of a hero of mine,” he said dismissively. “I just want to tinker around with it.” Then, as though that needed more explanation, he added, “I like to tinker with stuff.”

  Chapter 5: Superhero Studies

  School went pretty smoothly the next couple weeks. I had one more encounter with Chad and Steve, a brief one—they caught me sitting alone again while my classmates were still in the serving line, so they started yapping at me again about my super strong powers. But as soon as Donnie and the boys appeared, they scrammed. I made a mental note to never get on Donnie’s bad side, because without him, I would be royally screwed.

  Turned out that Chad was the son of the head of the board—the governing body for custodians—which meant that he got in exactly zero trouble for our little cafeteria incident. Even in the superhero world, people with powerful connections get a leg up. I probably would have been sour about it if I wasn’t distracted by my own new group of pals.

  Henry, Bentley, and I were becoming inseparable. We ate lunch together every day and had hit it off right from the start. James Gregory—the other blind kid from our class—had become a pretty regular addition to our lunchtime crew as well. The poor guy had been so worried about finding his way around on that first day that he’d eaten all by himself in the classroom. But now he was with us.

  I have to admit, the actual schoolwork in this place was pretty awesome. Not the first half of the day, “the boring half,” as I referred to it. That was math and English and the rest of the usual subjects. History was pretty cool, though, I suppose.

  The truly awesome part about school kic
ked in after lunch when we had Superhero Studies, which I simply called “the greatest class ever invented.” As you might suspect, this class had my complete attention—for instance, I learned that there are documents far older than the Bible that talk about men with special abilities and powers. Each day held some amazing revelation like that, sometimes several. It was as though school officials had taken a random polling sample to determine what the students wanted to learn and then just turned those survey answers into the curriculum.

  Every Friday, for the last hour of the day, Mrs. Crouch would hold a superhero Q&A. Anything we wanted to ask about powers or heroes or villains. And for the most part, she answered every question.

  During the first Friday Q&A, I had been content to simply listen. I got so caught up in hearing her answers to the other kids’ questions, I didn’t even ask one of my own. I just gaped in wonder and soaked it all in. But on the second time around, I was a bit more comfortable in the environment and more familiar with the teachers and students in the room. I wasn’t going to stay on the sidelines again.

  After some exceedingly boring questions about superhero politics from Bentley—God love him, no one could get more excited about mundane things than Bentley—Freddie managed to get Mrs. Crouch switched over to the subject of how NPZs work. I pictured a giant futuristic generator harnessing electromagnetic energy, but it turns out they’re a lot less complicated than that. NPZs are caused by empowered people called blockers. The power that blockers have is to block out all powers within a certain area and range.

  “What’s the range?” No surprise that the question came from me since I spent most of my life acutely aware of distances and ranges.

  “Well, Mr. Sallinger, it’s different for everyone. Most powers vary slightly in their strength from hero to hero. You might ultimately be able to move larger or heavier objects with your telekinesis than your father, for instance. And it’s the same with blocking. Most blockers project an NPZ that’s roughly round in perimeter shape and maybe fifty to one hundred yards wide. Typically, they have to be pretty close to the area they want to block.”

  Henry piped up. “So you’re telling me that there’s a person sitting in a room somewhere in this building and that this person is creating the NPZ for the entire school?” He didn’t sound much like he believed her, but I had quickly learned that Henry just always sounded that way. Know-it-alls are always skeptical of new information because they operate on the assumption that there is no information that is new to them.

  “There is, Mr. Gardner,” Mrs. Crouch responded, leaving out much of the added detail we’d all expected.

  “Does that mean they never leave the school?” James wondered aloud. He was turning out to be a very sensible and levelheaded guy, even if he was a little too wrapped up in his teleporting business for a seventh-grader. “Or does it mean that the school’s not an NPZ at night?”

  “The no-powers condition is dependent on this person’s presence, and the school is still a no power zone at night, Mr. Gregory. He or she is a permanent resident here. It’s a sacrifice, one made in order to provide security and protection for you and your fellow students and your families.”

  “So it’s like the memory dude out in the real world?” This time it was Freddie again, who, judging by his tone, was quite impressed with himself for knowing about the memory dude. I must confess it was news to me, and I wanted to learn more.

  “Yes, exactly, Mr. Wheeler.” Mrs. Crouch appeared to be finished speaking on the subject of the memory dude, which simply wasn’t going to work for me.

  “Wait,” I began. “What memory dude?” My father had made mention of some special memory-related powers that helped keep superheroes flying under the radar—sometimes literally—of the American public. But I wasn’t sure if that was related to what Freddie was talking about or not.

  Fred either assumed I had directed my question at him, or he just didn’t care, because he answered before Mrs. Crouch could. “There’s this guy that uses his powers to keep us hidden from the real world. You know, so they don’t find out superheroes exist.”

  “Custodians, Mr. Wheeler, and that is correct. Paul Weatherby is his name, and he is probably the most powerful custodian among us. His mind is capable of perpetually shielding other heroes from the public. And that’s how many of your parents stay safe and hidden from view.”

  This concept didn’t make sense to me. And since we only had an hour a week to ask anything we wanted, I wasn’t going to stop digging. “How does it work?”

  “Well, Mr. Sallinger, the nature of what we do out in the real world—fighting crime and fighting other empowered individuals who have less-than-selfless motives—dictate that it often will take place in public … out in front of anyone who happens to see it. Mr. Weatherby is able to keep them from …” she paused, searching for her words, “remembering what they see.” Then, as if sensing my lingering confusion, she added, “If custodians go zipping through the air in Manhattan, people are going to see them. Or if they slam a villain up against the Sears Tower, people are going to see it. But even though they see what’s happening, the memory fades almost immediately, leaving a fuzzy, hazy shadow in its place. And that shadow is the end result of Mr. Weatherby’s abilities. It’s like the memory is never allowed to form or be stored by the brain in the first place, making it impossible to recall. Without him, we’d be placed in greater danger from the spotlight that comes naturally with what we do out there.”

  My mind always raced to the worst-case scenarios in life. “How many people like Paul Weatherby are there?” I was worried about my own memories. Could it be that I had been a witness to some amazing display of powers but had forgotten all about it due to some memory-hacker like this guy?

  Mrs. Crouch’s demeanor changed slightly for just a hair of a second, and then she regained her composure. Most of the sighted kids probably didn’t even notice it, but I could always tell with things like this. She didn’t want to keep going down this road. “He is the only one.”

  There was a murmur in the room, which she quickly sought to quell.

  “He is the only one strong enough, I should say. There are others with similar powers but at only a fraction of the range—able to blanket a small building, for example—but not the entire earth. None of the others are nearly strong enough to disguise all the heroes like he does. Throughout our history, there have been many with the more powerful version of this gift, but they always came from the same genealogy—the same family. Mr. Weatherby is simply the last of his line, and there is no one left for him to pass his power on to.”

  “Couldn’t he just have kids?” Henry announced his plan as though it was the most obvious thing in the universe. He could have added the word “duh” at the end, and it would have fit the tone perfectly.

  Another pause from Mrs. Crouch. “He had children once, Mr. Gardner. But they were killed.”

  The room went silent, and I now understood her apparent reluctance. The story she’d been asked to tell had a sad ending. Bentley didn’t let the sober atmosphere disrupt his learning, though. “And when he dies?”

  It was a question that didn’t really need an answer, though we all hoped the obvious one was wrong. Mrs. Crouch, however, confirmed our fears. “Our actions and our cities will no longer be hidden.”

  For several beats, no one said a thing. Mrs. Crouch finally spoke again. “Let’s call it a day on that subject, kids, and move on to something else. Surely someone else has a question about a different subject.”

  “What about Believers?” I blurted out, not waiting even a second for another kid to beat me to the punch. I knew this question would be a bit of a curveball, but I didn’t care. I’d heard of the Believers twice since learning of my powers, both times merely overhearing the conversations of upperclassmen during lunch or in the hallway. They made the Believers sound like boogeymen, which made me want to learn more about them pronto.

  “Believers,” she simply repeated back at me, like sh
e was weighing her response. “Well, Mr. Sallinger, I’d like to know if you’d be willing to tell me a little bit more about why you’re asking. Where you heard the term, that sort of thing. I’ll answer your question, but I’d like to know what you know first.”

  “Well…” I began in my usual manner, “I’ve just heard other kids in school talking about them a couple times, is all.”

  Mrs. Crouch let out a long, deep breath. It struck me that I’d probably ruined her plans to lighten the mood when I simply changed one awkward subject for another. “A very long time ago …” she said haltingly, “before biblical times …” Another pause, though I couldn’t tell if she was trying to choose her words carefully or was just being dramatic. “There is a story of an empowered man who had all the powers and abilities in one. He could fly and had super strength; every power you’ve ever heard of, this man supposedly had. In the more modern texts, he’s called Elben. In some of our oldest historical records, he’s referred to only as ‘the one who can do all.’” Another huge pause ensued.

  “Elben was the leader of the Haladites, an ancient army of evil that spread over two-thirds of the earth before they were defeated. The Haladites were the first group on record to attempt to use their powers collectively for selfish gain—sort of the godfathers of organized crime and modern super-villains. Together their combined powers overwhelmed the protectors of that era, who were unprepared for such a concentrated effort.”

  “How were they defeated?” Freddie asked.

  “By perhaps the most famous group of custodians in history, an outfit known as the Ables. The Ables were the first group of custodians to band together for the good of the world, and of course, only did so in response to the rampaging Haladites. They were, quite literally, the only good-hearted six custodians left standing in the wake of Elben’s march across Europe. In one of the most famous battles in our secret history, the Ables leveraged cunning and quick thinking to trick the Haladites into thinking their numbers were much larger than they really were.”