Chapter 10 - A Mental Journey Through the Academy

Art by SplatteredInkJet

A few days later, I entered the castle after work, and when I followed Percy and Vanessa up to the break room, Ellen stopped me. "Carmen needs to do a few tests on you," she told me.

"Can this wait?" I asked. "I at least want to eat dinner first."

"I understand, but I also want my nephew back," Ellen said. "Dinner won't be for another hour or two, so Carmen will have plenty of time to do whatever tests she needs to."

I sighed and reluctantly headed into the lab. When I arrived, Carmen smiled and greeted me. "What tests are you going to do?" I asked.

Carmen gave me a long response, but I didn't understand a word of it. It was nothing but scientific jargon, and despite my years at the Academy, science still wasn't my strongest subject. "It won't hurt," Carmen said after she was done explaining, as if that was what I was worried about.

Nevertheless, I lay down on the lab table and stared up at the fluorescent lights. Almost immediately, I was transported back in time to my time at the Academy. This time, however, I remembered the feeling of grass beneath my feet and the hot summer sun beating down on a group of teenage superheroes.

For some reason, Sanjana had decided to temporarily place me in a flying class, despite the fact that I couldn't fly. As the scrawniest kid in the class, I already felt out of place, but my lack of powers only made it worse.

The instructor was a tall woman with large muscles who referred to herself as The Gladiator, even when she wasn't saving the world. All of us were seated in front of her as she conducted her class in the Academy's courtyard. "Class, let's review the procedures for takeoff," The Gladiator said. "If I wanted to fly, how would I get started?" Harper, who was thankfully in my class, raised her hand, and The Gladiator called on her.

"You want to get a running start, and then slowly lean forward and allow your powers to do the work," Harper explained.

"That's correct, Harper, but you must maintain control over your powers," The Gladiator said. "Does anyone know what you should do if you begin to lose control?"

"Call for help!" one of the boys in the class exclaimed.

"That's correct, Julian, but raise your hand next time," The Gladiator said. "Are you all ready to give it a try?"

The rest of the class nodded eagerly, but I wasn't ready. The other students started to form a line, and one by one, they took off. I found a place at the back of the line and took a few deep breaths as I watched the bravest students run for a few seconds and then blast up into the sky.

Harper was near the front of the line. Like everyone else, she started sprinting, and her run soon turned into a hover. However, she had trouble getting too far off of the ground. The Gladiator gave her a few tips, and eventually, she took off and circled around the courtyard.

When it was my turn, nearly everyone else in the class was circling around the Academy building from far above the courtyard. I could barely see a few of my classmates through the clouds. I ran across the courtyard, but nothing happened. When I leaned forward, the surge of power that Harper had described to me didn't come. I turned around and ran the other direction, but I still couldn't take off like the other students had. Even though the Gladiator gave me a few tips, even she eventually gave up on me. "Jay, stand off to the side," she said. "We'll work on your takeoffs another day. Camille, why don't you give it a try?"

By the end of class, everyone else was flying around, while I was stuck on the ground. The Gladiator took off to catch up to them and teach them how to land properly, but I couldn't participate. As I watched each student land, I worried about my own powers. I was pretty sure that I couldn't fly, but what if I didn't have any powers at all? At this rate, it certainly seemed like I was powerless.

I headed back inside, but by the time I reached the door, three of my classmates were blocking it. "Can I please go back inside?" I asked politely.

"What do you think?" one of boys in front of me said as his arms folded over his chest.

"You're the powerless one, aren't you?" the girl next to him said.

"I bet I could pick you up and throw you all the way into Canada if I wanted to," the third kid said with a chuckle.

All of a sudden, Harper appeared next to me. "Where did you come from?" I asked, but she didn't give me a response.

"Edward, you'd better leave Jay alone, or I'll pick you up and throw you all the way into Canada," Harper said.

"You don't mean that," Edward said.

"Are you sure about that?" Harper asked. That was when Harper's skin turned scaly, and her hands morphed into claws. When she was done transforming, a massive dinosaur stood in her place. Harper roared, and my classmates screamed and ran inside.

Harper transformed back into her normal self, and for a moment, I couldn't speak. I was too in awe of what I had just seen. Harper just smiled, showing off her multi-colored braces.

"That was amazing," I said when I finally regained my ability to speak. "Thank you for that."

"You're welcome," Harper said. "They had no right to mess with you like that. Clearly Julian, Camille, and Edward forgot that they couldn't take off on the first try either. I remember that Julian couldn't fly at all until his fourth lesson with The Gladiator."

From that moment on, Harper became one of my only close friends at the Academy. A few weeks later, having concluded that I was in fact unable to fly, Sanjana transferred me out of Flying and into Water-Based Power Training. The frequent field trips to the Pacific Ocean were nice, but I missed having Harper in my class. However, I shared math and social studies with Harper, so I still saw her every day. By the end of the month, we were sitting together at lunch for every meal, and I had a small collection of horse drawings from Harper.

Along with my classes, there were tests on the Research Floor with Dr. Rosenberg. Most days, the tests were fairly innocuous, since there wasn't much that Dr. Rosenberg could do without knowing what powers I had. Almost all of his experiments focused around figuring out what my powers were, but no matter what he did, it never seemed like he made any progress.

"You're lucky," Harper told me one day in the cafeteria. "You should see the sort of things that he does to me."

"What does he do to you?" I asked.

"Earlier today, he found a way to disable my flight ability," Harper explained. "Then, he made me transform into a bird, but I couldn't fly. I know that you can't fly or shapeshift, so you won't understand this, but being a flightless bird is miserable."

"I could imagine that it is," I said.

"Jay, what will your codename be when you finally become a superhero?" Harper asked. It was a common enough question at the Academy - everyone expected that they would graduate and choose a codename someday - but I hadn't given it much thought.

"I don't know yet," I admitted. "I'm not sure that I can choose one without knowing my powers."

"That's understandable," Harper said. "I'm going to be Starling. A starling was the first form that I figured out how to transform into consistently, and it's still one of my favorites."

"It's a cool name," I said.

"Thanks, Jay," Harper said. "Speaking of the Research Floor, have you met Dr. Rosenberg's new assistant yet?"

"Yes," I said. Dr. Rosenberg's assistant was a non-superpowered boy who was only a few years older than I was, and having him there was always a good sign. Dr. Rosenberg couldn't conduct any particularly brutal experiments while his assistant was around. "I've already forgotten his name though."

"I think it's Declan, although I could be wrong," Harper said. "Maybe it's Dylan or Dallon or something. You know, Dallon Weekes is super cute..."

"Harper, can you please focus?" I asked.

"I'll try," Harper said. "What do you think of him?"

"He's okay," I said.

"I agree," Harper said.

One of Harper's friends from her Shapeshifting class sat next to her. "Are you guys talking about the Research Floor?" Olivia asked. Harper nodded, and Olivia said, "I heard a story about a kid who has three powers."

"Really?" Harper said. Having two powers was rare at the Academy, but having three powers was unheard of.

"Really," Olivia said. "He lives in Solitary Confinement because the Academy doesn't want anyone to know that he exists."

"That's crazy," Harper said. "I thought that Solitary Confinement was just for the delinquents to keep them from running away and becoming supervillains."

"That's what I thought too," I said.

"Me too, but the Academy thinks that if anyone knows that we have a student with three powers, then the supervillains will come and try to take him out before he becomes too powerful," Olivia said.

Harper laughed and then said, "That can't really be true. Right Jay?"

I nodded, but Olivia said, "I think he's real. Apparently Camille saw him on the Research Floor once."

"Camille also said that there's a bunch of snakes living under the Academy," Harper said. "I wouldn't believe a word that she says."

"She was probably lying about that, but that doesn't mean that she didn't meet the kid with three powers," Olivia said.

Harper and Olivia continued to argue while I ate my lunch. At the Academy, it was nearly impossible to distinguish rumors from the truth, so I suspected that I would never know for sure whether there was a student with three powers living in Solitary Confinement.

The following weekend, I decided to go home for the first time since my arrival at the Academy. Although I was angry at Dad for sending me to the Academy in the first place, I also missed him. Before my arrival at the Academy, I had never been away from him for more than a few days, and it had already been over a month since I had last seen him.

I asked Sanjana about visiting my dad, and she must have given me directions back home. To this day, I still can't remember how I got home, or how I returned to the Academy. Harper explained to me later that the Academy erases its students' memories of traveling to or from the main Academy complex until they turn eighteen for safety reasons, but I still felt a little unsettled when I arrived at my old house, unsure of how I had arrived there.

I knocked on the door, and Dad opened it for me and let me in. "Hi Jay," he said, smiling. "It's good to see you."

"It's nice to see you too," I said.

"How have things been going at the Academy?" Dad asked.

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. What could I say? I could describe the classes that I was taking, the Research Floor, or the new friends that I had made, but nothing I could say would make him understand what the Academy was like. "Everything's fine," I said.

Dad nodded gravely and then said, "That's nice to hear. Just try to cooperate with the Academy, Jay. It's good for you."

"I have been cooperating," I said.

"Excellent," Dad said. He picked up a newspaper and looked through it, while I went back to my bedroom. When I got there, it was clear that Dad hadn't touched it. Every detail was in place, just the way I liked it, but for the first place, the room didn't feel like my own. I wasn't particularly fond of the cramped dorm room that I was stuck in at the Academy, but that felt more like home.

I stayed home for the remainder of the weekend. For the most part, Dad left me alone as I rode my bike around the neighborhood and visited a few of my friends. However, they didn't feel like my friends anymore. Only a month had passed, but there were too many memories that we didn't share. If I tried to tell them about the Academy, their reactions would have ranged from fear to envy to disbelief. The Academy wasn't worth talking about, but there was nothing else to talk about. Every conversation I had eventually fizzled out.

After that weekend, I didn't come home again. Even though I was still convinced that I was powerless, I was beginning to feel like I had more in common with the other superheroes in training at the Academy than anyone back home.

The months seemed to fly by. I was shuffled from class to class, and no matter how much time passed, it still seemed like I didn't have any powers. Even Sanjana began to question whether or not she had made a mistake in bringing me to the Academy. As the summer turned into fall and then winter and then spring, Harper Knight and the Academy were the only real constants in my life.

Harper's fourteenth birthday was on April 13th, and I knew that I needed to do something special for her. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, but I was certain that we needed to celebrate. The night before her birthday, I finally came up with an idea.

There was a boy named Dean who lived across the hall from me. I didn't know him too well, but I did know that he could heat up any object. "It's a terrible power," he had once told me. "Pretty much all I can do is give people burns. I can't even set a proper fire."

That night, I knocked on Dean's door. "Hey Dean," I said. "Can I ask you for a favor?"

"What is it, Jay?" Dean asked.

"It's Harper's birthday tomorrow, and I want to bake her a cake," I said. "Would you be able to help me bake it?"

"I could probably do that, but where are you going to get the ingredients?" Dean said.

"There have to be some basic ingredients in the cafeteria," I said.

"Alright, but if we get in trouble for this, it's all your fault," Dean said.

The two of us went downstairs and carefully entered the cafeteria. Thankfully, nobody was there. "It's a shame that neither of us can turn invisible," Dean said. "That would be a way better power than heating things up."

"Dean, be quiet," I whispered.

It took us a little while, but we found each of the ingredients that we needed. With our arms bulging with butter, flour, and eggs, along with bowls and pans, we made our way back to Dean's dorm room. I mixed the ingredients together and then poured everything into a pan, while Dean used his powers to bake the cake in seconds. Once Dean was finished, I frosted the cake and wrote "Happy Birthday Harper" on the top. My handwriting wasn't fantastic, but it's the thought that counts.

The next day was mostly uneventful. I attended each of my classes, including a class on time travel, Sanjana's latest attempt to discover my powers. At dinner, however, I wished Harper a happy birthday and gave her the cake that Dean and I had made.

When she saw it, Harper grinned and said, "Jay! This is possibly the nicest thing that anyone's ever done for me." She got up and gave me a hug, and then added, "This was so sweet of you. Thank you."

"You're welcome," I said. Harper took a slice of cake for herself and then offered one to me. "I'm not that hungry," I told her even as my stomach growled. I had already sampled the batter and the frosting - the cake itself was Harper's gift.

"Oh, come on," Harper insisted. "You deserve a slice of cake."

"Fine," I said. I took a bite of cake, and I could see why Harper enjoyed it so much. The cake had turned out well.

Harper and I spent most of the rest of that day talking, laughing, and eating plenty of cake. Dean stopped by our table at one point to take a slice of cake, but for the most part, it was just Harper and I.

Out of all of the days that I spent at the Academy, that one was possibly my favorite.

The bright fluorescent lights hit me again, and I realized where I was. I wasn't at the Academy at all - I was still in Carmen's lab. "Carmen?" I asked. "Are you almost done?"

"I've been done for the last ten minutes," Carmen said. "You were the one who zoned out on the lab table."

"Sorry," I said. "I've noticed that I tend to do that. I think it's a coping mechanism of some sort left over from the Academy."

"That makes sense," Carmen said. "I've heard that the Academy isn't the most pleasant place to be. I would never hurt you though."

I looked back at Carmen, and for once, her smile seemed genuine. I decided that I could trust her, even if I couldn't trust the Academy's scientists. As I finished speaking with Carmen and then left the laboratory, I told myself that everything would turn out fine. This wouldn't end like my stay at the Academy.