Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen Read Free

she like me? Did Tony blab to anybody else? Who? What? When? Where? How? Aagghh! I’m going nutso! Now I have to tell her how I really feel, maybe this week.
    * This is in reference to Tony’s aquatic powers.
    ** Tuyen, being a telepath, knew everything, but he was a nice guy and very calm and collected for his age. I think his immigrant background helped him: he’d been trying to pass as a normal Canadian kid since he got off the boat from Vietnam when he was five.
    Wednesday, November 16, 1983
    It’s been quite a while since I wrote last, but here’s a quick rundown: at the Halloween Dance I very nearly broke down, but Stephen helped me out.
    I’ve been having a hard time controlling my transformations into the Grizzly. It often happens in the mornings, when I’m fighting with my bratty youngest brother to get him out the door. My parents both work, so I’m responsible for the morning routine. I can’t talk to my parents about it: they just tell me I have to get my act together, since we can’t afford to be constantly buying me new clothes. We talk about our powers in Religion and Special Studies class, but it’s usually about not using them or making sure no one knows we have them. Most weeks recently have been the same. On Saturdays, I head to the comics shop in Bridgeland, then go downtown to the library or the 8th Avenue Mall or the Devonian Gardens. On Sundays, it’s church, where I sing in the choir, and chores and babysitting.
    The rest of the time, there’s school. That first dance wasn’t bad. Miss Mind and Maiden Might from 9X asked me to dance with them and their friends, and one of the girls in class taught me the Time Warp.
    And then there was the Halloween Dance. It had a ‘50s theme: for example, skirts with construction-paper poodles. I didn’t have a costume, but I did have a mission. “The Chantal Syndrome” was all about a girl I liked in grade 7, who was really friendly and sweet with me until I told her my feelings and she turned ice-cold. I didn’t want this to happen with Shel. I still hadn’t seen her with a boyfriend, and we’d once run into each other downtown as superheroes, chasing a guy called the Green Dragon through Chinatown. Her bracelets gave her power blasts, so she called herself Blast, but I thought Quanta was a better name, and she adopted it. I thought that, if Grizzly and Quanta made a pretty good team, so could Patrick and Michelle. I really built it up in my mind.
    Notre Dame has two gyms: Danger Gym is in a separate building across the street, but the normal gym is on the second floor of the school, where we have our assemblies and air bands and dances. I spotted Michelle as soon as I walked in. She was with the other girls from our class; the guys were all clustered together further down, with Miss Mind and the 9X girls across the dance floor on the other side.
    I spent quite a while not dancing and chatting with Tuyen and Robert. Rob was starting to find the idea of being a real superhero very cool, mostly because you could beat people up if they were bad guys. I was sort of trying to ignore him and talk to him at the same time, to distract myself while I was doing reconnaissance on Michelle. I had decided that I was going to tell Michelle how I felt. But I had to wait for just the right moment. I had to be sure that she wasn’t dancing with anyone else.
    Finally, I decided to make my move. To keep myself calm, I hummed under my breath. I went over to where she was sitting, with Beth and the twins. She was gorgeous when she was laughing. I’d never known anyone more beautiful to me. She looked up at me and smiled. And I asked her to dance.
    She kind of hiccupped a laugh and shot a wide-eyed look at Beth, who shot back a sideways You’re on your own— I told you this would happen glance. Then she and the twins gave Michelle some space. Beth was a precog, so I guess she had told Michelle what would happen, because Michelle’s reaction looked like she’d