Random stories

I was a conundrum for my school. I had every right to be there and I had no right.

Genetically, I was predisposed to mutating the right kind of gene in early adolescence that grants a kid entry into Mysterium. That is to say, I had the required superpower gene. My Mom, only wanting the best for me, wanting whatever my ability was to be nurtured to its maximum potential, kissed me goodbye when I was ten and sent me to Mysterium. There’s no where better for a kid with an ability. And in fact, there’s no where else at all.

Okay, maybe Mom didn’t want the best for me, exactly. See, I had four siblings — each with perfectly normal genetics, whatever normal means. Mom worked two jobs. Only two of us kids even remembered our Dad. What I’m saying, but not doing a very good job of saying, is that life was hard for Mom, so me getting a scholarship to a place of privilege, where all my meals and sleeping arrangements are taken care of and paid for, maybe it was something of a relief to her. I can’t blame her for that.

If you were a bird looking down on Mysterium, you’d see the school is shaped like a knocked-over question mark: mammoth hallways — liminal corrodors, as they call them — making up the curved spine, stairs descending to classrooms every so often, and the occasional stairway ascending to the dorms on the second layer. The question mark lies on a granite and limestone island of a similar shape, on which waves foolishly hurl themselves at before breaking into pieces.

The number of nights I lay awake in bed listening to those waves destroying themselves on the rocks and imagining myself doing the same…

I’m sorry. Too depressing, too soon. Actually, my first year there was pretty fun. At that point, year one, not many kids had developed their ability. We were called Pupas by the older kids — like pupils, but more so because we were that late stage before we became butterflies.

Me and Katie were best friends that year. You might know Katie, actually — she controls the weather over Arizona these days, wringing out what little moisture there is in the atmosphere, sending out cooling gusts to outdoor labourers, all that good stuff. Well back then, just like me, she didn’t have a power. We were just two nervous kids trying to avoid the attention of anyone older than us. We’d spend long evenings together in a snug, guessing what abilities we thought the other would develop.

“I think you’ll be able to start fires,” I said. “You’ll be able to burn stuff down.”

She winced, unimpressed.

”In a good way,” I added. Although burning anything was the good way in my mind. “Like, uh, controlled fires.“

She frowned. ”Controlled?”

”There are some bushes and trees that need to be burnt in order to grow again,” I said — athough it turned out she’d mostly put out wildfires in the years to come.

“Oh.” She parted her long fringe and smiled. “I like that. Helping nature.”

”What about me? What do you think I’ll get?’

“I think you’ll help people too,” she said. “I think… Mm… I think you’ll be able to calm people.”

“That’s lame.”

“You always make me feel calmer.“ She titled her head and her smile shrank away shyly. “Abd I don’t think it’s lame.”

When I went to bed that night, I started to think calming people wasn’t so lame either.

​

Three years passed and me and Katie now talked a lot less often. The problem was, I was still in year one. You couldn’t graduate to year two it until your powers came out. One more year and she’d be out on assignments and I’d still be stewing.

It wasn’t that she’d abandoned me. If only she had. But out of a sense of charity, she’d still come see me some evenings. Bring a packet of cards. Would puff up a little white cloud over my glass and refill my water, and then I’d look so miserably jealous and only be able to respond in a syllable or two.

”Sorry,” she’d say.

”It’s okay. But really, you don’t need to be here with me,” I’d say.

”I like being with you. You relax me. I feel at ease with you.”

”I’m glad I’m good for something.”

We stopped meeting at some point. I’d stopped turning up, so then, fed up of waiting, she stopped turning up.

Around that time the kids, even the new kids in year one, began calling me — and only me — Pupa. The only one at school to be called it.

This was around the time I’d listen to the waves and imagine myself breaking on the rocks. This is when I felt most alone on the island.

“Can’t you do a test?” I asked the nurse. “Figure out why it’s not happened yet? Then figure out a way to help it get going?”

But there was nothing they could do. Time, is all they’d say. It needs time.

​

In my fourth year, a professor suggested I started going out on exercises with the older classes. Because that’s where I should be, really, and it might be good for me. Might even encourage my ‘internal youth’ — meaning my ability that had not yet matured.

”But, of course, your capacity will be as a sidekick,” the professor explained. “It’ll be good experience for them, and it’ll be fine experience for you.”

​

The exercises were what you’d expect, to start with. Two teams using their powers to try to capture the flag, or subdue the other team members in a non-violent manner.

The team I was assigned to would, without fail, complain they were stuck with me: eyes would roll, someone would say they’ve already lost. And it was true: what could I offer? I tried comic relief, to lighten the mood, crack jokes. I had little else.

“You think when we’re out risking our lives, we need a sidekick telling bad jokes?” said a big unnaturally muscled guy. “No, what we need you to do is get as far away from us as possible. Understand? Stay out of our way.”

Katie opened a cloud over his head and soaked him.

”Don’t listen to him,” Katie said. But I had listened to him, and he was right.

”I’m done,” I said. “I’m done with all of this. I’m embarrassing myself here. Stuck in year one. Pupa forever. Getting in everyone’s way.”

”You’re never in the way.”

”He’s always in the way,” said the soaked kid, squeezing his tee dry.

“There. I’m always in the way. I’m done.”

​

I never did develop a power. I left Mysterium and returned to my family. My Mom was thrilled to have me back, but I remember thinking she probably resented having to pay to feed me when I had it all for free.

I doubt I was right, that she did think that. It’s just how I felt.

I went to a regular school and tried to block out the waste of years at Mysterium.

I could never block it all out though. Not Katie and how nice she’d been to me. Of what she’d said to me. Of what could have been.

​

It was a little over a decade later before I saw Katie again. She was in Montana helping out with a monster cyclone. But the fact that she’d booked in with me while there was pure coincidence.

When she walked into my office and saw me, her mouth dropped, then closed. Her sweetness had matured into a beauty that the television never did justice.

”Katie?” I said, as surprised as she was. She’d given an alias to my secretary — they all tend to. “Well, it’s been a long time.”

”You’re… you’re a therapist now?”

I nodded. “I give therapy to people with abilities. The things they go through to try to protect people… Terrible. Well, you know all about it. I suspect that’s why you’re here.”

”What on earth made you want to help us? We were horrible to you.”

”You never were,” I said. “You were always kind, even when I was an ass.”

”You were never an ass.”

”Come on…”

”Okay, sometimes. Sometimes you were an ass. A big one sometimes. Stubborn, too.”

I told her about my life since, about the kid she’d soaked long ago on my behalf, and how he was a regular client now.

“So your ability really is to calm people,” she said.

”It’s an ability I’m still working on.”

She beamed brightly, as if she‘d stolen the sun and was shining it just for us in that one moment.

After a long silence — a very comfortable shared silence — I said, “I think it’s been long enough. Shall we finally we get started?”

---

Submitted by Rupertfroggington on Sun, Jan 15, 2023 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

Everyone knows a supernatural high schooler needs a silly normal sidekick to go on adventures with them. But as the only “normal” kid in a school full of superheroes, wizards, vampires, etc. you’ve finally had enough being everyone’s comic relief.