"False Alarm": A Power Club Story (Part 4)

Part 1.   

Part 2.

Part 3. 

         The man from the district had lied. The tests did hurt—and there was more than one of them.

           Of course, Denise had gone through most of the tests before when she went to the doctor: Nurses drew her blood, tested her eyes, and even sent her through a machine that scanned her brain. Vee had gone through these tests many times as the district tried to keep track of how his power was growing, and Denise had joked about him: “They can’t scan for your brain because you don’t have a brain.” But this time it was no joke.

            Denise had patiently cooperated with every test, but she couldn’t wait to go back to school or even go home. But a doctor with a thick black mustache and a shaven head came into the waiting room and told Denise there was one more test she had to go through: He wanted to see if she could predict what was going to happen.

            Denise held her father’s hand as they followed the doctor down a long, windowless hallway. The parts of the District Center she had seen so far resembled and ordinary hospital or doctor’s office, but this hallway seemed to go on forever, and Denise got very scared as she passed underneath a row of old-fashioned circular light fixtures that lit the hallway. The metal discs surrounding each light resembled a witches cauldron, and she thought of the story of Hansel and Gretel being tricked into going into a witch’s house so the witch could eat them.  She held her father’s hand tighter.

            The doctor led them into a room which had a large booth in the middle. It resembled one of those booths used by the family doctor to test Denise’s hearing every year.  She began to relax when she saw it, thinking this test wouldn’t be so bad.  The doctor made her sit in a chair in the center of the booth and attached wires to her arms and forehead. Denise felt like a lab animal in one of her mother’s experiments.

            The doctor then turned and whispered something to Denise’s father. He nodded slowly and started to leave the chamber.

            “Where are you going?” she asked, her voice suddenly nervous.

            Gerard Evans turned to face his daughter with an expression that seemed almost sorrowful. “They can’t test you with me in the room, Neesy. It’s going to be all right. I’m just going down the hall to call your mother and tell her how things are going.”

            For some reason, Denise hadn't even thought to ask her father if he had told her mother that he was going to take her back to the district to be tested. But he must have told her. Of course, he had. Suddenly, the idea that Denise’s mother and brother may not even know where she was and that she might not ever see them again entered her mind, and she began to squirm and try to pull the wires off her arms and forehead.

            “I want to go home!” she cried.

            The doctor kneeled at her side and began carefully reattaching the wires. Despite his tough appearance, he had a gentle touch and a soothing voice. “It’s going to be all right,” he said in strong, even voice. “I know this is scary for you, Denise, but it won’t take long and we really do need your help.  If your vision was correct, all those people could be in danger.”

            Denise, in spite of herself, began to calm down a little. “Then just make them leave the building!  Shut the building down!” she argued.

            “We can’t do that, Denise,” the doctor said with a reassuring smile.  “We need to know if your vision was real first.”

            Denise glanced at her father, but Gerard Evans stood in the doorway of the booth, his face drooping and his eyes looking sad and scared. Denise had never seen her father look so helpless before.

***

            “Okay, Denise,” the doctor’s voice boomed over the intercom.  He had moved to a small room to the side of the booth and watched Denise through a glass window.  “A series of images will flash on the screen in front of you.  I want you to tell me what they are going to be before you see them, okay?”

            Denise wanted to call for her father again. Instead, she nodded once.

            “Here’s the first one,” the doctor said.

            Denise concentrated, and an image popped into her mind.  “A cat.”

            The image of a baseball appeared on the screen.

            Denise let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

            “Here’s the second one.”

            Denise pretended to concentrate.  A new image appeared in her mind.  “It’s . . . a balloon.”

            The image of a horse appeared.

            This is easy, she thought.  All she had to do was let her imagination wander and say whatever popped into her head.  Whatever it was, she was bound to be wrong.

            “Here’s the third one,” said the doctor.

            “An airplane.”

            There was a pause. “What kind of airplane?”

            The question threw her. 

            “I don’t know . . . the old kind, with a propeller.”

            The image of a kitten appeared.

***

            “It was a lucky guess,” her father argued with the doctor.

            “Maybe,” the doctor replied in a soft voice, as if he were trying too hard to be polite, “but she did get the kind of airplane right, even though it was the sixth image, not the third.”

            Denise sat in a cold, metal chair by the doctor’s desk while he talked to her father.  She understood more than she let on.  For instance, when the doctor said she had been right forty percent of the time, she knew that was a good sign.  In school, forty percent would be failing.  For the first time in her life, Denise wanted a grade of F.

            The doctor sat back in his chair.  “So, the tests were inconclusive.  I’d like you to bring Denise back for further testing next week.  If she does have an emerging power, it will show up in comparative brain scans.  Meanwhile, if she has any further visions, report them to the district police immediately.”

            Her father’s expression dropped.  “But suppose it was just a false alarm.  The burning building—”

            “Mr. Evans,” the doctor interrupted, “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that failing to report a super-power is a crime.  It can get you and your family in a lot of trouble.”  He then glanced at Denise and looked sorry, as if he had forgotten she was in the room.

            Denise glared at the doctor’s feet.  She had never been so angry before.  The doctor was going to get her dad arrested if he didn’t turn Denise in again! 

            Well, there was one way to solve that problem.  Denise simply wouldn’t tell her dad or anyone else if she had any more visions.

***

            “It was a false alarm,” she told Sheila Torvald on the bus the next day.  Of course, word had gotten around that the district taken Denise to be tested.        

            Billy Underwood leaned over the back of Denise’s seat and stared at her.

            “What are you doing?” she asked.

            “Checking to see if you have a mole,” he answered.

            Suddenly, the kids in front of Denise were on their knees and leaning over the backs of their seats, staring her in the face.  The kids across the aisle were leaning into the aisle as if their faces were magnetically attracted to hers.

            “Get away from me!” she yelled.

            “Denise has a power!” someone whispered.  Someone else said it louder, and then everyone chanted it.

            “Pipe down back there!” Marge, the bus driver, sounded like a tank.  No one ever got out of line on Marge’s bus.  Denise was usually afraid of the large, heavy-set woman, but, for once, she was glad to be on Marge’s bus.  It immediately grew quiet, and the other kids turned around and faced forward.

            The bus stopped at the border checkpoint, as usual, and a policeman boarded to check for kids with powers.

            “You better hide!” Sheila whispered to Denise.

            “Where?” Denise whispered back and immediately wished she hadn’t.  After all, why would she have to hide?

            The policeman boarded the bus and did his usual inspection.  He paused when he reached Denise’s seat and watched her.

            She felt very nervous, though she didn’t know why.  She wanted to look away but found her attention being drawn toward him, almost as if she were being compelled to look against her will.

            —and then she was somewhere else.

            Everything was dark, and there was a terrible smell around her.  She tried to breathe in and gagged.  Smoke.

            Oh no! No! No!  She had been here before.  In one of her “visions”.  No, it’s just a dream.  It’s not real.  She tried to make herself wake up, but she couldn’t.  The smoke was everywhere, and someone nearby screamed.

            She found herself running even though she didn’t want to run.  She was taking strides her young legs couldn’t possibly take.  She found herself running through a room—it looked like an office with desks and computers.  Denise’s hand—no, the woman’s—reached out.  Her fingernails had butterflies on them.  The woman’s hand touched a door—it was very hot.

            —“Hey, Denise!  Wake up!”

             Denise blinked.  Sheila was sitting next to her on the bus, shaking her.

            “What happened?”  Denise asked.

            “You zoned out.   We’re at school now.”

            Denise looked out the window just in time to see the school parking lot roll into view.

            “What about the policeman?  What did he do?”

            Sheila looked confused by the question.  “He just stared at you and left.  I guess that proves you don’t have a power after all.”

"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."