The Vigilante's Handbook (Misfits #1)

Ten: Five Year Plan

"They must have given me too much of the Nothing serum," I told Principal Merriweather the next morning. "I still feel weird." She didn't need to know that the weird feeling came entirely from the memory of my physical and not from normal Nothing serum nausea. Against the doctor's prediction, I had as clear a memory as I possibly could of freezing an entire pool of water without bursting into flame.

The principal was sitting straight backed in her office chair, not even trying to look innocent. She was rocking some growing pit stains and wouldn't meet my eye. "They didn't make a mistake, Anna," she said in the once comforting tone. Now it sounded sinister.

"Can't you just give me one note to get out of class today? I don't want to puke everywhere." Yes, I had been miraculously saved from expulsion, but that didn't mean I wanted to attend class, especially if class meant having my classmates stare.

After spending the better part of the morning in Merriweather's office, I was no close to prying an answer or a note to get out of class out of her. I tried to convince myself my memory of the physical was a fever dream. It didn't make sense no matter how I tried to spin it.

The class I was excused (banned) from was Forrest's fight club. Lucia and I were forbidden to step foot in any fighting rings for the last two weeks of school. Apparently, we couldn't be trusted to "exhibit self control" anymore. Not that any of our peers would want to get near us.

Walking into Tuesday lunch period was a lot like being raised from the dead; no one thought it was going to happen. I felt like a ghost walking along men. But a very visible ghost because everyone's eyes were on me. No, I felt like I had forgotten my pants at home and this was the first moment I realized it.

The eyes of every grade were following me along, some bolder than others. Valentine was among the boldest of the graduating class. She prodded Julien in the side as I passed, but he refused to look up. We had chatted last night for a few hours. The chat had devolved into an argument, one of our first, and then into an awkward silence that stretched on just long enough for us to feel uncomfortable.

How the talk ended accounted for why he wouldn't meet my eyes.

No one else had that excuse.

Valentine eventually gave up on getting Julien's attention in favor of giving me a nasty look. At the same table, Malee wouldn't look at me. Aleksei at least tried to look apologetic for shunning me without looking like he was taking my side. Most of the younger students had heard the story of my delinquency already. If they hadn't, then they were getting told now. "Didn't you hear what Anna Green did?" "Isn't she always doing something?" "Her patch lit up during hand to hand combat." "No!" Their whispers were loud enough to reach my ears.

As if they would be talking about anything else when Paramount Lake's biggest scandal was waiting in the lunch line. One of the perks of showing up fifteen minutes late for the lunch period was not having to wait in line long. But showing up fifteen minutes late on salad bar day meant getting the leftovers.

Since we were training to be superheroes, Paramount Lake kept us on a strictly healthy diet. That meant the salad bar was loaded up with vitamin rich leafy greens, fresh cut veggies, and fruit. Usually. By the time I went through the line, I was left with some limp spinach, matchstick carrots, and mushy tomatoes. The only way to save my lunch was by drowning it in ranch--clearly the healthiest part of my meal. The ultimate school lunch was topped off with a slice of bread and a carton of milk.

I called it the lunch of champions. Not that I felt much like a champion.

After the lunch line came the challenge of finding someone who didn't hate me to sit with. You see, most of my classmates weren't sticklers for following rules--the Moreau twins excluded. That is unless you broke the secret superhero school rules.