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Of course he did. There was no one he trusted more. “Yeah.”
“Good. And you know we’re working on me trusting you again. You’ve done a lot of good lately, Nicky. I’m proud of you. I want you happy above anything else. And I know how you get, sometimes. It’s okay to be that way. But if we can make it better for you, then we should do that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Now, what’s the greatest thing to have happened to anyone that not even the advent of the Industrial Age can compare to?”
“Um,” Nick said, because regardless of what else he was, Nicholas Bell was a terrible liar, and his father was a living, breathing polygraph machine. “Well, you see—”
Nick heard a voice in the background. Then, his dad said, “Dammit. Sorry, kid. Call came in. I’ve got to go.”
And even though Nick knew it was his job, his heart still thumped terribly in his chest. “Okay. Be careful. Text me when it’s done.”
“Will do. Do your homework. Take your pill. I love you, and I’ll see you for breakfast.”
“Love you too.”
And then Dad was gone.
Nick stared at the pill on the counter as the lasagna turned in the microwave.
“I’ll take you,” he told it seriously. “But this is only temporary. You better not get used to it.”
The pill didn’t respond, but Nick didn’t expect it to. If it had, he probably would have run screaming from the house.
The microwave dinged.
Nick picked up the pill and put it in his mouth. He grimaced as he dry-swallowed it. “There,” he mumbled. “Hooray.”
He believed his dad when he’d said all he’d wanted was for Nick to be happy. He really did. It was just—sometimes, Nick’s happiness led to Nick’s excitement which transformed into things becoming a little too much for Nick to handle. It’d been explained to both of them in terms Nick could understand that his body was like a cell phone: the more apps he used and left open, the quicker the battery drained. Or, even worse (because apparently the doctorlivedfor metaphors, the quack) his brain was a Ferrari, built for speed, except it had the brakes of a bicycle.
Nick had always been a little… different. At first, it was chalked up to growing pains. But then there’d been days when focusing had been next to impossible, and his mind had been racing, and he hadn’t been able to sitstill. His parents were told he wasn’tapplying himself,that he wasdisruptiveandalways felt the need to be the center of attention. Nick had been only eight when he’d tearfully told his parents that no, hedidn’twant to be the center of attention at all, because that meant everyone stared at him, and treated him like he was a freak. He didn’t know why he couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to twitch or move all the time, didn’t know why he talked more than he listened, but he wasn’t doing it on purpose.
After he’d been diagnosed with ADHD, things had made so much more sense. His dad had growled that the school should have known better, and there was talk about transferring him somewhere else, but Nick hadbeggedthem to stay. He couldn’t leave all his friends, he told them, though he really only had the one. But theidea of not seeing Seth every day was unbearable, and he wouldn’t allow it.
Before the Concentra, it’d been Adderall used to pump the useless brakes on his Ferrari brain, but Nick hated the way it made him feel. It brought things into razor-sharp focus, and while that wasn’t so bad, it made his headaches worse, and made him feel strangely hollowed out if he missed a dose. And before the Adderall, it’d been some other drug, and beforethat,something else entirely. ADHD was a bitch of a thing, the reality implied in the name. Nick’s attention had a deficit, and he was hyperactively disordered. The Concentra was supposed to be better. The transition had been a bit rough, but Nick had gotten through it. Mostly.
But he understood the cell phone battery metaphor—the bicycle brakes on his Ferrari brain. He really did. There were days when everything felt like it was dialed up to eleven, and he didn’t know how to stop it, no matter how hard he tried. For the most part, he’d accepted that some people were born to be Extraordinaries, and some people were born to be medicated so they didn’t spin out of control. Fair? Not really, but Nick was learning that his brain could do things that others couldn’t. In a way, he had his own superpower, even if it was called a disorder.
He took the lasagna from the microwave, the plate hot in his hands. When his dad had days off, they’d spend time together cooking, making meals for the upcoming weeks that could be frozen and saved for later. Lasagna was Nick’s favorite, his dad made it just right with sausage and spinach and the perfect amount of cheese.
He turned on the tiny TV in the kitchen before going to sit at the table. An afternoon soap was on, a dazzlingly beautiful woman telling a man with an eye patch that she’d had her conjoined twin removed for areason,and he’d have to make a choice, either her or her sister.
“Get your man,” Nick said as he picked up his fork. “Don’t let him walk all over you.”
He had a mouth full of noodles when the conjoined twin love triangle was interrupted mid-scene by Action News, the red graphic shooting across the screen, screamingBREAKING! BREAKING!
The camera focused on evening anchor Steve Davis, who looked as if he’d never met a form of plastic surgery he didn’t want totry at least once. He shuffled the papers in his hands and smiled a perfect smile. “We’re interrupting your regularly scheduled broadcast to bring you something… extraordinary. We go live to Rebecca Firestone, out in the streets of Nova City. Rebecca?”
The screen cut away to Rebecca Firestone, looking as perfectly put together as she had that morning. She was holding an umbrella in one hand and her microphone in the other. “Thanks, Steve,” she said. “New footage this afternoon of a daring rescue. A passerby recorded Nova City’s very own Shadow Star apparently working overtime. Not only did he foil the attempt at the break-in at Burke Tower in the early hours of this morning, but he found the time to help stop an attempted mugging. Action News has this exclusive look at what happened.”
The screen cut to the alley where Nick had been standing only a couple of hours before.
There was Shadow Star kicking ass and taking names, knocking down Mustache Man and Male Pattern Baldness with special guest stars Nick and Gibby standing in the background.
Nick sprayed lasagna all over the table.
“No,” he said, sauce dripping down his chin. “No, no, no.” Because if this was on the news, then that meant there was a chance hisdadwould see this.
