Chapter Text
“Guiler! What the hell are you doing?!”
Barry shifted his attention from the quarterback to his gym coach, then back again.
Great, he thought. Another damned deer-in-the-headlights moment. Just great.
He really had very little idea just what he was doing. One moment, Dirk Walker had been taunting him, yet again, about something that was complete horse-crap, yet again, and the next thing he knew, he’d hoisted the jerk up off the floor and pinned him up against the wall with his off hand.
Which was where he was now, feet dangling a foot in the air, heels drumming, eyes wide, and the leather of his probably expensive jacket stretching under the weight of more than two hundred pounds of football player, and audible in the abruptly fallen silence.
“Put him down,” growled the coach.
Barry glared at Dirk. With a snort, he let go and stepped back.
For a moment, Dirk hung in mid-air. Then, faster than anyone could blink, he dropped. He hit the floor with an unnatural thud, overlain by the distinctive snap of bone and a girly wail, the sounds bouncing off the gymnasium walls.
The coach peered at Barry. “Stay here, Guiler.” He turned and barked some commands at several of the other boys, who picked Dirk up off the floor and carried him out toward the school's infirmary.
Ten minutes later, Barry stood in Coach Stafford’s office, sweat trickling down his back. The cat was finally out of the bag, he knew it. And this time, he was going to be carted off to some secret government lab and probed...or something else just as unpleasant.
Stafford leaned on his desk, bulging biceps as big as Barry’s leg. “Guiler,” he said after a long pause that was probably intended to make Barry squirm, “what the hell was that?”
Even if Stafford hadn’t been trying to make Barry squirm, it worked anyway. “Um...uh...” he stammered.
“Stop stammering, man! Just answer the question.”
“He ticked me off...sir.”
Stafford’s eyes narrowed. “He ticked you off,” he repeated. “Well, that much is obvious. Between you, me, and the lamppost, Dirk Walker ticks everyone off. Hell, I think he even ticks himself off.”
Barry snickered.
“Wipe that smile off your face, Guiler!” Stafford snapped. “Walker broke both the tibia and fibula of his left leg. I hope you’ve been paying enough attention in Biology to know where those are. The point is, he’s out for the season.”
“Good,” Barry growled. “Maybe that’ll teach him a lesson.”
“Good? Dammit, Guiler, it’s anything but. A young man broke his leg, and now this school has zero chances for winning the championship, thanks to you.”
“So?”
“I should give you thirty push-ups just for that.”
“Then do it,” Barry snapped. “Because I don’t give a crap about football, or the way this school, and probably every other one, drools all over it, and I don’t give a crap about Dirk fu...”
“That’s enough!” Stafford barked. He stepped around the table to loom over Barry. “Now, we’re going to go back to square one. First, you’re going to tell me how you did that.”
Barry met Stafford’s gaze. At length, he said, “Adrenaline?”
He knew the moment he said it that the coach didn’t buy it. He didn’t even buy it himself. How a fourteen-year-old boy, weighing a hundred and twenty pounds when soaking wet could pick up a guy twice his weight with his off arm strained credulity, even with adrenaline as a factor.
Drugs, maybe? But Coach Stafford, an ex-Marine with a gleeful fondness for burpees and isometric pushups, was bound to know the other signs, and Barry was sure he exhibited none of them. There certainly weren’t many other explanations.
Truth be told, he still had no idea. All he knew was that ever since he’d been abducted by aliens at the age of four, he could lift heavy things and make light things heavier.
At first, he hadn’t even been aware it was being done at all. Not until after his eighth birthday had he realized he’d been doing those things all along. It had been at least a year later when it had dawned on him that he could control it, and another couple of years to learn how. Only recently had he figured out just what “it” was.
The upshot of it all was that he had the power to manipulate gravity. He still had no idea how or why, though he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the aliens had done it to him. Of course, his only evidence was that before the aliens, he’d been normal, and afterward, not so much.
Also of course, there was no way in hell he was ever going to tell anyone. He’d seen enough movies and TV to know that someone, probably multiple someones, would make endless and merciless off-color wise cracks about probing. The thing was, he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t been probed.
God alone knew what had been done to him and how. His best guess was his pituitary gland, but that was just a guess based on some sketchy reading he'd done on some even sketchier experiments done in the sixties. None of that was likely to help his case. Not now, probably not ever.
Contrition, faked in his case, looked like his only option.
“I'm sorry,” he said at length.
“Are you?”
“A little.”
“Well, I'll give you a couple of points for honesty.” Stafford leaned a hand on his desk and peered at Barry for several uncomfortable moments. “Guiler, what am I going to do with you? You're well-behaved most of the time, but when you're not, it's a doozy. Knowing the Walkers, I won't be surprised if they file assault charges. And that's just for this time. From my end, you're the best jumper I've ever seen. You could win multiple gold medals at the Olympics and smash every track-and-field record there is. Pole vault, high jump, long jump, javelin, you name it.
“But that's not going to happen if you get yourself thrown in juvie. And you know why? Because you don't have discipline. And without that, you'll wind up mopping floors or digging ditches. I know you're better than that, but you have to pull it together. And that means not doing things like slamming people up against walls, holding the bench bar on their chests, putting dents in the gym floor, or tampering with the locker room scale.”
“But you're ex-Marine.”
“And you think that means the only thing I know how to do is bash heads? Barry, despite what the general public thinks about the Armed Forces, that's not what it's about. It's at least as important to know when and how not to bash heads.”
“Violence is the only language some people, speak,” Barry protested.
“You're not wrong. But you have to be above that. If you're going to get back at people like Dirk, you have to use your head. Be sneakier about it. Think long-term.”
“Like, becoming his boss and making HIM dig the ditches and mop the floors?”
Stafford smiled. “Exactly like that. Which is another thing that's not going to happen if you wind up in juvie. Now, I'm required to write you up for this. Just so you know it's not personal.”
“What about Dirk?”
“Oh, I have to write him up, too. But he also has a broken leg and possibly a derailed football career. And you, young man, have some decisions to make and some thinking to do. I suggest you do it some time this week. Dismissed.”
Barry had just enough time to run to his locker and collect the books he needed for his homework before sprinting back across campus to the bus. He plopped himself onto a seat three rows back from the front door. The bus started moving almost before he'd sat down.
“Hey, Barry.”
Barry looked over at Jenny Leedy and her enormous green eyes and smiled weakly.
“I heard about what happened to Dirk. That was...something.”
He nodded. It was something, alright.
“Can you teach me how to do that?” she continued.
He shook his head. “Not really, no.”
“What if I...” she let a sly smile finish the sentence for her.
Barry felt the blood rush to his face, heard his pulse pounding in his ears. He opened his mouth, almost closed it again, and said, “I...uh...”
You idiot, he thought, a girl...no, a woman, and a drop-dead gorgeous one with legs that don't quit is throwing herself at you and you're about say no, are you nucking futs?
“Tell you what,” he managed, “how about we do dinner and go from there?”
After a long pause, she nodded. “Okay, sure,” she said.
“Pick you up at your place Friday at six?”
“Okay. You know where I live?”
“Uh...not exactly, no. Somewhere in Meadowmont.”
“I'll be waiting at the corner of Pine Drive and Coyote Road.”
“Great.” He paused. “I...I'll probably have to pick you up on the horse.”
She giggled. “Horse?”
He sighed. “Okay, she's a mule. And she's my uncle's. I'm pretty sure he'll let me use her. Don't have my permit yet, the quadrunner blew a head-gasket last week, and Mom's going to be away for school. So...” He let that dangle.
“That sounds fine, Barry,” she said.
He smiled. Maybe she was trying to use him for something. But every guy had to have a first date some time, right? Maybe he could salvage what was left of the week after all.