My Queer Superpower

Chapter Four

School let out and I raced to my car. My final period was Health, which was the class closest to the gym and the second closest to the door past it, out into the parking lot. That meant I was always in great position to leave before the lot got crowded with cars vying for the sole exit. The desk next to the door was my sprinting starting blocks and I hardly ever lost.

However, I was never quite fast enough to avoid stares from those wary of my driving. They waited around in the lot to enter their cars with bated breath while I backed my rear bumper-less and heavily rusted, white Honda Civic into the aisle. I would've sworn everyone thought I had epilepsy instead of a lazy eye.

There was one time, just once, when I had an eye spasm behind the wheel, but I stomped the brake immediately. Blake Dabner, Juice's right hand man and co-tormentor to me, rear ended me—hence the lack of a bumper. The gray spire had disappeared right away, but he was intent on not letting me live down the incident.

He should've thanked me.

I liked to believe I had avoided something far worse that day and if the insurance adjuster was to be trusted, our beefy varsity fullback had been entirely at fault, not me. As an added bonus, Blake spilled a Thermos of hot soup on his lap. He wasn't hurt, but I suppose I shouldn't have taken the slightest bit of pleasure in it. Faith thought it was hilarious when she found out, but to be fair, they had history. More on that later.

Low and behold, I made it out of the school parking lot in what was left of my Honda. Chaos was allowed to ensue on my parting. Had I owned more self-esteem, I would've seen the clear advantage I held from their conduct, but as it stood, I saw only the insult.

I cringed when I thought about the spiteful coordination it must've taken to observe a daily armistice on lot clearing until Mad-Eye Rudy was safely off the lot. I breathed an impressively long and deep sigh that reeled back into a yawn to exorcise the worst of my negativity. Despite living in the rural town of Solon, Iowa, where the community was as diverse as a bowl of Lucky Charms after I'd carefully picked out the hearts, stars and every last marshmallow, it was uncharacteristically progressive and forward thinking. This was likely owing to its proximity to the university, my destination for work.

Iowa City was a twenty minute countryside drive over old, bumpy roads that wound around Lake MacBride. The view of the shimmering lake as the sun's ray's reflected off the water was easily the best part of the drive, though I often thought about jumping off one of the bridges that connected the roads.

I wasn't suicidal.

It was one of the fears I had wanted to conquer when I was younger. Bridge jumping into the water was illegal, but a rite of passage nonetheless. The ones around the lake looked nearly identical in height to the abandoned rail bridge my classmates used to jump. I never made the jump and I didn't know if I regretted that, but in the safety of my Honda, it didn't seem that big of a feat.

It's sort of strange how distance can separate a person from the things they feared most, how bullies I never stood up to seemed so much smaller tucked away in the back of my thoughts. I wondered if Juice, no Jerome, was going to let me save him.

I chewed on that idea for awhile, well after I had made it past city limits. I had nothing better to do. The traffic was awful for no reason. The problem wasn't the roads or the population. Everyone simply drove like they had nowhere to be.

Aside from the University itself, the city was barren of attractions or places of interest. As I neared my destination, I wondered what type of occupation would've best suited my sad excuse of a superpower. I decided I should've sought a job overlooking the city. Since it lacked skyscrapers, a post as a water tower repair man would've had to suffice or perhaps, as a curator at the Old Capital Museum.

It was the tallest building on campus. It was a stone structure, an example of faux Greek architecture or at least early settlers' best approximation of faux. It stood tall in the center of campus and had a golden domed cupola on top.

Thinking about how inconvenient it would've been to get down from the cupola made me content with my job down the hill from it at the University Library. I absolutely loved working there, but it had nothing to do with books and everything to do with what one might expect from a young man with a mad-eye.

In this way, I was a slave to my nature, I suppose. On my best behavior, one could call it youthful curiosity or an abatement of billowing lust brewing within a horny teen, but I didn't need anyone to cover for me.
I knew what I was.

I parked Miley—my car's name, after it had lost its bumper—in a 'pay hourly' side lot and sprinted for the rear entrance. It was such a pain that the dreadful amalgamation of glass, red brick and steel hadn't been given a single side entrance. I clutched my stomach to stave off a cramp as I ran the length of the building, but gave up as soon as I saw the entrance.

The football field worth of concrete between me and those heavily tinted, revolving doors put things into perspective. So what? I was going to be late. I wasn't being chased by starving cougars. I walked the rest of the way, but pretended to run once I made it inside. I comically heaved my arms up and down as I hung a sharp left toward the main desk where I knew I'd find Martha.

She worked on a rotation like any other supervisor, but I only had shifts during hers. Since she hired me on a total fluke, I was her responsibility. My hiring was the result of my superpower shining through at what had easily been its finest hour prior to saving Juice Williams. Whether or not she believed in superpowers or mine, specifically, was irrelevant. I had undeniably saved her life.