She's Behind The Mask

Chapter 16 - Glimpse

"Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen."

- Anaxagoras

"Sasha", I start, cringing inside at calling my teacher by her first name. "Do I know anyone else here?"

"Yes, you do, one person." She tells me, "I might not tell you who it is yet though, they might not want you to know before they tell you first."

I nod in understanding, but she doesn't get the opportunity to ask them for permission first as I freeze in shock at the person in front of me.

"Lucas?"

He looks at me in shock, his eyes flicking between me and Mrs Smith, looking to her for answers. "What's she doing here?" He asks with disbelief. His face merged into shock as he realises and asks, "She has powers!?"

"Yes Lucas, Kaylee is here because she is Golden Ghost, the super going around the city being a hero. I was hoping to have her join Super Secretive." She tells him, then continues before he can speak, "it would help us keep control of the supers while expanding our idea of letting supers go public while being in costumes as to stay anonymous. And it benefits Kaylee, giving her a place to learn and train, and be around people who can help her understand her powers more."

Lucas looks at me, thinking about what Mrs Smith said, and then smiling. He sticks his hand out to shake as if we're meeting for the first time. I take his hand and he tells me, "Welcome to Super Secretive, you'll be a great person to have with us." I note how official it sounds, so unlike the Lucas I know. He shuffles in the awkward atmosphere. "Sasha do I really have to say that to every new person to SS I meet. It's so awkward, me and Kaylee already know each other", he whines like a child to Mrs Smith.

She laughs and pats him on the head. "Why don't you take Kaylee and show her around a bit more?" She waves energetically as we walk away, me following behind Lucas as he leads me around a corner.

I look at him and notice he is no longer wearing his gloves. "Where did your gloves go?" I ask him with curiosity.

He stays silent for a while, choosing his words. "I don't need them here", he finally says. I look at him, wishing I could read his mind. Maybe the reason I can't is because he has powers, but then again, I could read the minds of all the other people with powers that I met.

"What can you do?" I ask him, "As in powers." I then clarify. He looks at his hands and thinks before responding.

"I can control and create electricity; I also have night vision." He tells me, "What about you?"

I don't reply to his question but instead say, "You don't have any type of mind power?"

He looks at me with confusion before answering, "No, why?"

"Oh nothing", I say. "I have telekinesis, telepathy and flight."

"Oh, that's cool, so you can just hear what people are thinking all the time?"

I look at him for a second. "Yeah, but I've trained myself, so I don't hear them all the time. When I first got powers all the voices were a bit overwhelming." I tell him. "There's someone I can't read the mind of though."

"Oh really, that's funny." He says, "Who is it?"

"Oh, just someone", I state. "Where are we going now?" I ask him, changing the topic before I tell him it's him who I can't read the mind of. I wonder if he's just playing around and actually knows it's him, but I decide not to let my mind ponder on it for long.

"I'll show you the cafeteria, you're probably hungry." He says, "I heard they brought you in hurt last night, after fighting a guy who had fire abilities?" He says the last bit like a question, unsure if what he heard was right.

"Yup, he wasn't a very nice guy", I say with a laugh, then I freeze. "Did you just say last night? You did didn't you. Oh my goodness what am I going to tell mum, she's probably been wondering where I am all night. Wait what's the time? We have school."

Lucas puts his hand on my back before I can freak out anymore. "Don't worry Kaylee, it's six in the morning you'll be ready for school and we'll figure something out to tell your mum. You can just say you stayed at mine if you really want, as long as your mum doesn't care about you staying at a boys house." He says, but before I can reply he adds, "But then again, saying you stayed at a boys house is probably going to get you into less trouble than saying you got into a fight and had to get healed by a super, and that you're a super too, going out at night all by yourself to fight bad guys."

I look at him and say, "I'll just tell her I went to yours to do homework and it got late and I fell asleep."

"Or that works fine." He says with a laugh.

"Why are you here so early though?" I ask him.

"Oh... ya know, free food." He says with an awkward laugh, obviously not really wanting to talk about it.

I ring my mum, making up the excuse. She's angry at me for not telling her where I was but glad that I'm not hurt. Lucas leads me to the cafeteria, and we line up for food. We make our way to a table and eat in comfortable silence. I start thinking about how I can't read his mind and my facial expression morphs into one of concentration. If only I could see into that brain.

Lucas notices it and looks back at me with confusion. He then waves his hand in my face; I look at him once more and go back to eating. "What were you doing?" He laughs.

"Oh nothing", I reply, "just thinking about how I never knew about any of this."

"Yeah", he says. "I couldn't imagine a place like this until I moved back here."

"Back?", I ask. "You've lived here before?"

"Yeah, when I was younger", he tells me. "I moved back after... Never mind why I moved back, but yeah I lived here, I was really close with Aiden."

"Oh right", I say, not pushing as to why he moved back. I look at him once more and for one second, I hear a glimpse of a thought. For one second, he must've let his barrier go down, and that glimpse left me with more questions than before.