Damon Starts the Eighth Grade in THE SECRET CLUB, and Then Things Get Worse

When I was a kid, the coolest thing I could imagine would be to possess a super-power. I wasn't picky. Any power would do: super-strength, super-speed, flight, hurling energy bolts from my hands... heck, even the ability to bounce like a rubber ball would have its uses (well, it did for Bouncing Boy of the Legion of Super-Heroes).

In my first novel, THE POWER CLUB, I tried to tap into that feeling of being a kid and what it would be like to have have a power. Of course, powers come at a cost--in this case, freedom. Society simply can't have kids who teleport or grow to 30 feet tall or create rifts to other dimensions running around without keeping an eye on them. Thus, the kids have to live in the District, where mysterious leaders monitor what they can do.

Another cost? The power you have may not be the coolest or the most useful--at least at first.

Those were the themes I explored in THE POWER CLUB and take a step further in its just-published sequel, THE SECRET CLUB.

Set almost a year after the events of The Power Club, THE SECRET CLUB finds Damon entering the eighth grade--but things are nothing like he expected. Due to the influx of more kids with powers, the District has grown and the eighth grade has been moved to the high school. Instead of being in the top grade at the old school, Damon finds himself in the lowest grade at the new school.

He has to start over with new friends, new teachers, and new dangers lurking around every corner.

On his first day at the new school, he runs afoul of one such danger simply by walking down a hall:

Watch it!”

            Damon heard the warning a split second before he rounded a corner and collided with a wall. But this wall looked like a torso. He bounced back as if he’d landed face first on a trampoline and fell back on his butt. His books, class schedule, map scattered across the floor.

            A chorus of kids burst into laughter. Terrific. First day of school, and I’ve already made a fool of myself. He looked up to see what he had hit.

            The wall was in fact a torso. A towheaded youth towered over him like a mountain. Damon had never seen so many muscles, which rippled through the boy’s arms as if he were a cartoon character. A thin, long face perched atop a massive torso. The boy wore a plain t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up so there was no mistaking that the muscles were his.

            “That’s what you get for not paying attention!” the youth said.

            “I would,” Damon fired back, “but I didn’t expect to run into Mount Kilimanjaro!” He remembered Mount Kilimanjaro from geography class. Using humor might help him recover face.

            The youth’s smug expression turned into a hateful scowl. “I don’t like smart-asses!” he said, as he stomped toward Damon. The floor shook. The boy grabbed Damon and lifted him up over his head. Damon felt a rush of blood as he stared down at other kids, who paused in the hallway to laugh at him.

            He breathed in sharply. He could exhale—but what good would the darkspace do him in this situation? (THE SECRET CLUB, p. 13)

And that would be bad enough if his darkspace--his ability to create a cloud of darkness--didn't keep turning itself off and on at will.

And then things get worse.

What do you do when an old enemy shows up and wants to start a war with ords? Why, you form a Secret Club, of course!

Find out what happens in THE SECRET CLUB, now available on Amazon!

"False Alarm": A Power Club Short Story (Part 5)

[One more scene from the work in progress.]      

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4

       The next day, the officer boarded the bus and briefly glanced at Denise, just as he did most of the other kids.  Denise allowed herself to breathe normally only after she was well away from the district.  There was no vision this time, neither when the officer came aboard nor when the bus passed the chalk white building.  In fact, there was no vision the next day, either.

            But the following Monday, Denise received a shock as she reached her usual seat on the bus.

            “Where’s Sheila?” she called around. Sheila always boarded the bus before Denise. She looked around to see if Sheila had decided to sit somewhere else, but she was nowhere to be found.

            “Where’s Sheila?” she repeated to Billy Underwood, who lived next door to Sheila in one of the lower-income neighborhoods in the district.

            Billy shrugged. “I dunno.  She wasn’t at the bus stop.  Maybe she overslept.”

            “Sheila wouldn’t oversleep.” Denise had stayed over at Sheila’s house several times and knew her friend always rose early--a trait that annoyed Denise because she often liked to sleep late.

            “Maybe she developed a power,” Billy offered with a smirk.

            Denise made a sound of disgust and took her seat.  Billy, as usual, was of no help. Denise knew it was normal for kids to miss school at times, but she couldn’t stop worrying about her friend.  She had a feeling, like sandpaper rubbing against the back of her heart, that Sheila was connected with the vision somehow.

            At recess, Denise found Sheila sitting at a curb at the edge of the playground.      

            “Why weren’t you on the bus today?” she shouted as she ran up to her friend, trying no to let on how worried she’d been.

            Sheila looked as if she hadn’t slept in a week.  “Mom took me to the doctor.  I’ve got a fever.”

            “Why didn’t you stay home?”

            “We can’t afford a sitter.”  Sheila coughed into a tissue.  “Mom said I’ll be all right if I stay away from other kids and don’t strain myself.”  Her voice was barely a croak.

            Denise watched some of the other girls running around the playground.  She longed to join them, but she didn’t want to leave her friend by herself.

            “It’s okay,” Sheila said, apparently guessing what Denise was thinking.  “I’m used to being alone.”

            Denise started to walk off, but something held her back.  It was as if she had some sort of feeling about Sheila.  The sandpaper feeling returned.

            Sheila  croaked, “Why do you keep staring at me?”

            Denise shrugged, figuring that if acting dumb worked for Billy Underwood, it might work for her.

             “Denise, you’re starting to bug me.  Like I said, just leave me alone.”

            “Well, all right,” Denise said in a huff.  She turned and jogged over to join some of the other girls climbing on the monkey bars, but a hacking cough from Sheila jolted Denise’s attention back.  It sounded like a cry for help.

            Sheila sat on the curb as if nothing were wrong and pulled a fresh tissue out of her sweater pocket. 

            Denise stared at her friends fingers and slowly walked back to her.

            “What is it now?” Sheila almost whispered.

            “What’s that on your fingers?”

            Sheila smiled.  “Like it?  My mom painted them last night.”  Sheila splayed her fingers, revealing five painted-on sunflowers.

            “Oh,” Denise said.  She didn’t mean to sound disappointed, but for a moment she expected to see something else.  “I mean, they’re great,” she said, trying to recover quickly.

            If Sheila noticed the awkward compliment, she didn’t let on.  “Mom painted her own nails the same way,” she prattled on.  “Except she painted butterflies instead.”

"False Alarm": A Power Club Short Story (Part 3)

Click here for Part 1.

Click here for Part 2. 

          Denise hated to disturb her father while he was working, but he always seemed to be working, just like her mother. Denise stood in the doorway of the den. It was lit only by the gold and green desk lamp on her father’s desk. In the glow of the lamp, her father sat hunched over his desk, pouring over paperwork. Probably more loan applications, Denise figured, from people who had to move into the district when one of their children developed a power.

            “Daddy?” she said quietly. When he didn’t acknowledge her, she turned to leave.

            “What is it, Neesy?”

            Denise didn’t like it when most people called her “Neesy,” especially not her brother, but when her father used that nickname she’d had since she was a baby, she didn’t mind.

            “Daddy,” she began, hovering in the doorway, half wanting to run, half wanting to stay, “what would you do if you thought something bad was going to happen but wasn’t sure?”

            Gerard Evans leaned back in his banker’s chair and stroked his chin with the earpiece from his reading glasses.  Denise thought the reading glasses made him look much older than he was. “What do you mean?” he asked.

            Denise didn’t know how much she should tell her father about what she had seen on the bus. “What if you thought something bad was going to happen, like say, a building was going to catch fire and a lot of people were going to die?  Would you tell the police?”

            Her father’s eyes narrowed, but not in a way that seemed mean. It was more in a way that suggested he was thinking. To Denise, he always looked kind when he was thinking, and she knew it was because he wanted to help people who came into the bank and needed money. But sometimes, he had told her, he couldn’t give them the money they asked for, and that broke his heart. Denise sensed that his heart was breaking now.

            “Come over here,” he said quietly.

            She approached the front of the desk and stood there, like she imagined customers of the bank would do. After all, her father was vice president, a very important position. But he reached out and guided her over to his side and then turned in his swivel chair and faced her. “Denise, tell me what you think you saw.”

            They had had this conversation before, and it always went badly. First there was the time Denise told her mother she should get the tires on the car checked. A week later, one of the tires went flat. Then there was the time she had stayed up all night studying for a pop quiz in social studies—sure enough, Mrs. Glinton gave a surprise quiz the very next day.

            It was useless to lie to him so she told him everything she had seen on the bus, about the dirty chalk-white building catching fire at night. Denise hadn’t been able to get the image out of her mind all day. It was going to happen. She knew it.

            Gerard Evans leaned forward in his chair. Even at home, he wore the white shirt and dark, striped tie he wore at work, although the tie was loose at the collar. When she was little, Denise used to pull on the tie. Wanting to go back to the way things used to be, she resisted the impulse to do so now.

            “Neesy,” he began, “you know that if you start to develop a power, I’ll have to report it to the district, don’t you?”

            “Yes,” she said, knowing where this conversation was leading.

            “And you know that if you develop a power, that’s the end of going to school outside the district. You’ll have to say goodbye to your friends and go to the same school your brother goes to. Do you want that?”

            Denise frowned and shook her head.

            “Then why do you keep letting on like you can see the future?  Honey, you know that’s not possible. In all the powers the district has catalogued, no one has ever been discovered who can reliably predict the future. No one.”

            She loved it when her father talked this way—using words like “catalogued” and saying no one could reliably predict the future (there had been a few crazy people who tried to get into the district by claiming they could see the future, but they were always found out to be phonies). When her father talked that way to her, Denise felt grown up.

            “But, Daddy,” she said, “it felt so real. I even smelled smoke.”

            “We’ve talked about this before,” her father said. “It’s called Phantom Power Syndrome. Kids whose brothers or sisters have powers sometimes feel left out, so they think they’re developing a power, too. It’s a type of jealousy.”

            “Jealousy?” Denise blurted out. “Daddy, I’m not jealous of Vee. He uses his power to cheat at games. He gets away with things no one ever sees him do. Daddy, I don’t want to live in the district forever. I DON’T WANT A POWER!”

            “Okay, okay.” He had been trying to calm her down while she was speaking, and finally, he managed to shush her by telling her not to wake her mother and brother, who had already turned in.  “Well, if you see any more of these things, you come and tell me, okay?”

            “But what if I’m at school or on the bus, like today?”

            “Then you tell your teacher or the principal or some other authority figure. I’m sure they’ll investigate and everything will be all right.”

            Denise nodded. She knew her father was just telling her this to make her feel at ease, and it worked. If her father believed she didn’t have a power, she didn’t have a power, and that was that.

            “Okay, now go to bed.” He swatted her on the leg as she ran toward the door. She reached the doorway, then paused and looked back at her father, who was already hunched over his paperwork again.

            “Daddy,” she said, her voice feeling hollow as if it were coming from someone else, “I think you should give Mrs. Patillo the loan.”

            Gerard Evans looked up from his paperwork. “Who’s Mrs. Patillo?”

            Denise shrugged and ran out of the room.

***

            The next day, as the school bus approached the dirty chalk-white building, Denise held her breath.  She wondered if the images would return, but they did not.  Denise watched the dirty chalk-white building pass and began to relax.

            Two hours later, she was called to the principal’s office.  When she arrived, her father rose from the chair in front of Mr. Sturgeon’s desk.  His face was pale.

            “Daddy, what’s wrong?  Did something happen to Mom or to Vee?”

            “No, honey,” he said in a reassuring tone.  “They’re fine. But, Neesy, I need you to tell me something.”

            “Okay,” she said, uncertain.

            “Last night in the den, do you remember telling me I should give a loan to someone named Mrs. Patillo?”

            Denise nodded, confused. She didn’t think her father had been paying that much attention.

            “Where did you hear that name?”

            Denise shook her head.  “I must’ve made it up.”

            Her father blinked.  “About an hour ago, a woman came into the bank and requested a loan so she could open a bakery.  She said she’d just moved to the district and her kid—the one with the special power—hadn’t even started school yet.  Neesy, her last name was Patillo.”

            Denise stared at him, not fully understanding—or wanting to understand.

            “Neesy, did you see Mrs. Patillo last night, in the den?”

            Denise shook her head.  “No, it was more like she was whispering to me.  I heard her say—” Denise stopped, realizing where this conversation was going.  “I don’t have a power!  I DON’T HAVE A POWER!”

            Mr. Sturgeon, who had been sitting quietly behind his desk, said, “Maybe you’d better shut the door.”

            Denise thought he was talking to her or her father, but someone behind her shut the door, and, for the first time, Denise became aware of a fourth person in the room.  She turned to see a man she didn’t know.  He had the serious, upright demeanor of a police officer and wore a dark suit with a stylized eagle above the breast. Denise recognized the symbol instantly.

            “Daddy!  You told the district?”  She felt betrayed.

            “Neesy—” He tried to put his arms on her shoulders, but she shook away from him.  “Neesy, if what you saw is true, about the building catching fire, the authorities have to know.  You don’t want people to get hurt, do you?”

            Denise blinked tears and sniffled.  “No.”

            The man from the district leaned forward, hovering just over Denise’s head.  He smelled like cigarettes.  “Denise, you’re a brave little girl for telling your father what you saw. We're going to take you to the District Center so they can run a test on you. It won't hurt."

"False Alarm": A Power Club Short Story (Part 2)

Click here for Part 1. 

 [I'm not quite sure this section is as strong as it needs to be. Feedback is appreciated.]

 

            A police officer boarded the school bus and casually walked up and down the aisle, smiling at each child.  Denise was well used to this practice by now, but it still unnerved her.  It was a daily routine for officers to make sure no children with powers had snuck aboard the bus before it left the district.  Denise didn’t know what would happen if they actually caught a kid with powers, but the idea had never bothered her until now.

            Sheila Torvald, who sat in the seat next to Denise, whispered, “How can they tell if one of us has a power?”

            “Maybe they can’t,” Denise whispered back.  “Maybe they just want us to think they can.”

            “Or maybe they look for kids who have moles in the center of their foreheads," piped Billy Underwood from the seat behind Denise. "That's how you can tell a kid's getting powers."

            “That’s stupid!” Denise shot back.

            “What are you kids whispering about?” said the policeman.  He was now at the front of the bus.  There was no way he could have heard them.  Denise figured he probably had a power, too, like some district police officers did.

            “Nothing!” Sheila, who liked to be in charge, answered for them all.

            The policeman—a handsome man with grey eyes and straight eyebrows—approached them. 

            Denise looked away and pretended she was thinking of something else.

            The policeman turned around, headed back to the front of the bus and announced, “All clear!” to the other border guards outside.  After he left, the bus resumed its trip into the city.

            After the bus passed the border gate, Denise raised a hand to feel her forehead.

            “What are you doing?” Sheila chided her.

            “I think I'm getting a cold,” Denise lied, and quickly rubbed her nose.

***

            “What are you looking at?” Vee said with great annoyance as he looked up from the checker board.

            Denise had been studying her brother’s face, looking for a mole anywhere—between his eyes, on his cheek, under his chin—but she could see no mole, unless it was hidden underneath his bangs.

            “Do me a favor,” she said.  “Do this.”  She shook her head.

            “Why?”

            “Just do it.”

            “MOM!  Denise is telling me what to do again!”

             “Denise, stop telling your brother what to do,” her mother called without looking up from the futon, where she sat pouring over research from work.

            Denise glared at her brother.  He always did what Denise told him to do when Mom wasn’t present. But when she was, he did whatever he pleased.  Denise hated that.

            Vee’s hand blurred over the checkerboard.  The rapid sound of his black checker hitting the board in several spots sounded like tiny guns firing.  When the blurring stopped, three of Denise’s red checkers had been removed from the board.

            “I bet you didn’t see THAT coming!” Vee crowed.

            Denise smiled.  No, she hadn’t.    

***

            “Kids with powers do NOT have moles on their foreheads,” she told Billy Underwood the next day.  “My brother doesn’t.”

            “Neither does my sister,” echoed Sheila Torvald.

            “I didn’t say every kid with a power has a mole,” Billy replied, nonplussed.  “It’s only when they’re getting powers.  My dad says the mole goes away after awhile.” Billy's dad, a dermatologist, should know, he asserted.

            For the second time since yesterday, Denise felt the desire to feel her forehead for a mole.  She had meant to check in the mirror last night or this morning when she was brushing her teeth, but she forgot.  Her failure to predict Vee’s checkers move had put her mind at ease.

            It was silly.  She didn’t have a power and didn’t want one.  As for the mole—Billy was just plain wrong, no matter what his dad had said.

            The bus paused at a stoplight. Denise took the chance to study people the nearby buildings.  One was older than the other buildings, yet it seemed majestic.  Huge, rectangular windows held court over the street,  and the paint of the building—once pristine white, she imagined—had faded to the color of dirty chalk.  It wasn't a good looking building, but Denise found herself drawn to it.

            Suddenly, flames came from nowhere and engulfed the building. The huge picture windows burst, sending glass everywhere.

            Denise jumped as the smell of smoke surrounded her and filtered into the night sky.  Night?  But it’s still morning.  A surge of panic overcame her as she turned to Sheila and Billy, but they continued to chat away, oblivious to what was going on.  No one on the bus acted as if anything was wrong. 

            Denise turned back to the building, but its unbroken picture windows stood there in the morning sun, glaring at her as if she had seen something she wasn’t supposed to see.  There were no flames.