If Only Every Moment Was Black and White (2 page)

“
Why did you close the door?
” she asked again. Had I been more world-wise, I might have recognized this was the pivotal third and final time she would ask. If her brain decided a fourth asking was needed, she might just scream for help instead.

There I was, thinking I was all set for the best moment of my life, the big Yes from my prospective Prom date. And in her mind, she was seconds away from shrieking. We were most definitely not on the same page.

“What?” I asked. This, by the way, is one of life’s more utilitarian questions. When in doubt, ask “What?”

It gave me a couple of extra seconds. That’s all.

“What’s going on in there?” It was Carrie’s mom, suddenly just outside the door. Before I could stammer out another word, the handle turned and a rather angry-looking Mrs. McGregor opened the door. “Carrie, you know we have a rule that the door stays open,” she said before noticing the look of fear on her daughter’s face. “John, I think it’s time for you to go.”

“Huh?” I said.
But the Prom…?
I thought.

Mrs. McGregor cleared a path out of the room and gestured for me to utilize said path promptly. Follow the lit markers to the exit rows, calmly and orderly, everyone. Your plane has crashed and now you need to get out.

I hung my head. “Yes, Mrs. McGregor. Uh, bye, Carrie.” Humiliated, I felt years tick by as I did the perp walk down the hall, to the stairs, and out the front door.
 

“John,” Carrie’s mom called from behind me as I stepped out onto the front stoop. I turned and gave her a sheepish look. “I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt this time, but I very much expect you to follow our house rules in the future. I know you and Carrie have some more work to do for the science fair, so I expect to see you back soon.” She paused and looked toward her daughter, who had joined her at the front door. “As does Carrie, right?” Carrie nodded.

I was no stranger to stressful situations and even tragedy. My sister Holly’s seizures and subsequent detached state, the whole business with Walter Ivory and how horribly that went down. My dad. Bobby. Sol. God, I hadn’t even thought of Sol in weeks.
 

But this moment. It was low. Low in the way you can only get when moments before you think you’re going to hit a high and then utterly miss. In those weeks while Bobby was away, I had foolishly built up the idea that I could be normal. And that feeling came to a head the moment I was about to ask a girl out for the first time.
 

And failed. Miserably.

Nothing, and I mean
nothing,
could make that moment any worse for me.

Or so I thought.

From above, one of the men working on the roof shouted something. I’m certain that’s the only reason my secret didn’t completely come out that day. It was a little heads-up that let my brain know something was about to happen, even though my body, and its special powers, was way ahead.

I looked up.

Just as a hammer fell off the roof aimed directly at the center of my skull.

“
Holy sh—
,” was all I had time to say. Which is probably a good thing. At that moment, I wasn’t exactly in the good graces of Carrie McGregor and most definitely not those of her mom. Shouting a curse word was unlikely to paint me in a better light.
 

I flinched, just enough so the hammer missed my head. But it tore into my right shoulder, claws first. My shirt ripped wide open.

And my shoulder
sluiced
out of the way, completely avoiding injury.
 

Ladies and gentlemen, albeit unintentional, I give you…
the hammer trick!
With a mocking roll of my eyes, I thought,
I should bow
.

If the walk of shame out of the McGregor house felt like years, this moment was eternity. Two people had just seen evidence of my superpowers. I was standing six feet in front of them, and both of them had been looking right at me.
 

The jig was up.
 

Unless…

After an unnatural pause, something that would never have happened if I’d really been hurt, I dramatically reached over with my left hand, covering the spot where the hammer had hit my right shoulder. And I dove to the grass of their front yard.
 

You ever watch soccer? Or basketball? Especially the pros? Some player barely sideswipes another, and it’s flop city. They need to have acting awards for pro sports, because those guys are serious. Anyway, that’s what went through my mind in that split second that felt like forever: take a dive.

I landed in the soft spring grass and rolled, doubled over and yelling in pain. A pain, of course, that I didn’t feel.

Barely opening my squinting eyes, I tried to sneak a peak. See if they were buying it.
 

I think I got a 10 from one judge. And possibly a 1 from the other.

Mrs. McGregor was rushing to help me, muttering
OhMyGods
as hurried over. As she knelt down beside me, she called back to her daughter. “Call an ambulance.” But Carrie was looking at me really… funny. I don’t know if I can properly describe it. Perhaps the look someone in the audience might give after a magician’s big trick, when something just didn’t feel right. You know, like they saw the trap door close right when the assistant was supposed to disappear. “How bad is it, John?” Mrs. McGregor said, practically nose to nose with me.
 

I faked another grimace. But I knew my act had to end. Things would get worse for me in a hurry if an ambulance showed up and I was unscathed. I started to sit up. “I… dunno, Mrs. McGregor. It… uh, it hurt, but I think I’m okay.”

She pulled away, seemingly unable to believe what I was saying. “John, please. That thing almost hit you in the
head
.”
 

Still clutching my right shoulder, I got up. I kept up the act, making it look like a struggle to stand. And that’s when I noticed Mrs. McGregor’s eyes. They seemed to be… oddly proud of me. As if she was saying,
such a brave boy, trying to look strong in front of my daughter.
Then those eyes flicked to my shoulder, where a large hole had been torn in my shirt. I did my best to cover as much of my unharmed flesh as I could with the other hand. “Thanks for your concern, ma’am, but I’ll just head home.”

“John,” she said, tilting her head. “Your shirt’s ruined.”

“It’s okay, ma’am, I—”

“But you’re not bleeding at all.”

A quick glance told me that Carrie was still in the doorway.
Good
, I thought. Her suspicions, while bad, were actually helping me by stopping her from calling the ambulance. I just had to leave. Get out from under the eyes of Carrie’s mom. I thought very hard about pushing their minds. Carrie and her mom. But dammit, that’s just not how I wanted to go about things with the girl I had hoped would be my first date, maybe first kiss. I just had to get away.

“Everyone okay?” a voice called from the roof. “I’m so sorry. The loop on my tool belt snapped.” The man, dirty and sweating from working with the asphalt shingles, waved one darkened hand to us, giving a weak smile. He was probably thinking of getting sued. Maybe run out of business. Ruined. Carrie’s mom turned to look up at the roofer, as I returned his smile and wave, trying to alleviate his fears.
 

It gave me just enough break to step away cleanly.

“I’ll be fine. I’m just gonna go home, Mrs. McGregor,” I said, turning toward the sidewalk quickly.

“John!” she called behind me.
Please, just let me go
, I thought. “You go straight home and tell your mom. Make sure she looks you over. You’re sure you’re okay?”

I nodded and shambled down the street, as quickly as I could while still pretending to be hurt. I could feel their confused and somewhat stunned eyes on me until I rounded the corner.

* * *
 

I was three blocks over before I stopped with the act. Still, I worried about eyes behind every window of every house. Would someone see me suddenly act normal? What would they think?
 

I looked down at my tattered shirt, trying without success to pull the ripped bits back together in some way that would avoid attention. It was pointless. So I walked the rest of the way home with about a 12-inch hole in my shirt, naked shoulder shining pale in the sunlight.
 

At my house, I hurried inside to my room. And promptly flopped down on my bed, dejected. A failure. No, worse than a failure. If I had merely failed, I would have asked and she would have said no. But I didn’t even get that far. I freaked her out. Freaked her mom out. Then practically advertised that I was truly a freak of nature with the whole accident-that-wasn’t business.
 

That’s what I was.

What I am, still, I suppose.

A freak.

How else could I do the things I could do? Bending unnaturally out of harm’s way with lightning speed. Healing. Unable to be shot, stabbed, burned. Even a little needle prick was impossible. And then there was the whole mind control business. And PK. Psychokinesis. Moving crap with my mind. Yep. Confirmed.

Freak.

Why’d I bother trying to ask Carrie out? A momentary lapse of reason. If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have known better. She was normal, I was a freak. The answer would always be no.

It was as plain as black and white.

No, you freak. No. Don’t even think of asking. Carrie or anyone else. Just stay freaky in your freaky little freak world.
 

I was a little upset with myself.

I knew what I had to do. The only rational, sensible thing I could do. I had to drop out of the science fair. Maybe out of science class, too. Carrie McGregor and her suspicions and knowing stare would have to kill those goldfish all on her own.
 

I went to tell my mom.

* * *

Mom — aka Andrea Black, never Andy, if you recall — looked like the spitting image of a pushover. That was, only if you didn’t know her. She was petite and pretty and stylish and kind. Unless she had a reason to be hard and determined.
 

Which is exactly how she became when I told her I was quitting the science fair.

“John, I’m not sure where this is coming from, but
no
. That is
not
an option,” she said, staring directly into my eyes.

“But, Mom! I
can’t
do it anymore. I just can’t.” I was pretty much whining.

“Explain to me why. Why should I let you drop out? You’d fail science. I can’t let you do it.” She crossed her arms. I’d seen that sign before and knew it would take one seriously persuasive argument to get her to uncross her arms. I hated it when she crossed her arms.

“I just have to quit,” I said. See how persuasive I can be?

Mom barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes. “That’s not good enough, John. You are part of a team. Carrie McGregor is counting on you, too. The answer is definitely no. You’re sticking with the science fair.”

“But—” I stammered.

“But what?”

I inhaled. Then exhaled. Nothing special came to my mind during that breath, so I started the process again. I inhaled.
If I tell her that I can’t talk to Carrie again, she’ll ask why and I’ll have to explain the business in Carrie’s bedroom about the Prom and that would be sooooo embarrassing to tell my mom and then she might talk to Carrie’s mom and find out about the hammer that fell on me and start asking about that and then she might find out about the things I can do and connect those to Sol somehow and WHY DOES THIS STUFF HAVE TO HAPPEN TO ME?
I realized I’d been holding my breath.

I still had no good answer. Not one that wouldn’t bring up questions I didn’t want to answer. I exhaled. For good measure, I inhaled one more time. Nope, no new ideas came to me. Crap.

“Fine,” I said, turning and storming off to my room.

* * *

She was a hundred percent right, of course. Quitting the science fair would make me fail science, might make Carrie fail science. Could that make me fail the entire grade? Have to do it over? Even as a hormonal, conflicted, nerdy teenager, I could see the truth. I had to get over it. Worse, I had to go over to Carrie’s house again. Complete our experiments.
 

But I would be sticking to the bare minimum. No chit chat. Strictly business. Walk in, do the science stuff, flush a few fish corpses, and gone.
 

Our regular check-in day was Wednesday, so the following Wednesday, I walked over to Carrie’s house, heart pounding in my throat.

I went to the front door and raised my hand to knock.

And then stood frozen like that for about 30 years, by my estimate. Okay, it was really more like 30 seconds.

Come on, John. Just knock on the door.
So I did. Three knocks.
 

If Carrie had been standing on the other side of the door with her ear pressed against it, I doubt she would have heard me knock, my effort was so weak.

I huffed a breath and knocked again, this time with some kind of force behind it. I hadn’t even gotten to the third knock when the door opened and I practically rapped my knuckles against Carrie’s forehead.

“John?”

I jumped.
 

“Um, uh, hi, Carrie,” I said.

She looked at me skeptically. “Hi?” She paused, presumably waiting for me to say something else. I didn’t catch the hint. “What’s up?”

“Oh, it’s, um, Wednesday, and, uh, you know…” Things were going smoothly.

She took pity on me. “You’re back to work on the science experiment? Right?”

“Right,” I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. She didn’t say another word, but gestured for me to come in.
 

As I entered, Carrie’s mom stuck her nose over her computer (she worked from home) and gave me a little wave. I think it was meant to say
Hello, John
, but I took it to mean
I’m watching you
.

This time, Carrie let me go first as we walked to her room, making sure she was closest to the door once we entered. I tried to ignore that and sat next to the fish tanks to do our counts and checks.
Strictly business.