A Hero Story

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Chapter Two

You can learn a lot from watching people. Like the fact that when you vacuum your go back and forth on the same area before moving to the next, or maybe that when you're not the only person in the house it's better to have quiet conversations on the phone rather than large ones. Than, you may also learn that the everyday boy you watch every so often isn't really all that ordinary.

I've always had a fascination with the human race. And so in eighth grade, when I discovered that I could see into the windows on the side of my new neighbors house from my attic window, needless to say, I was thrilled. It was like looking into a dollhouse, the people living there like the plastic sue's and joe's I'd voiced when I was six.

Everyday after school, I'd rush upstairs, throwing aside my homework in order to watch the boy next door -he was in a grade above me- begin his own. His sister sat across from him, fair haired and singing while she added numbers together in her head. Once she'd finished, she'd sit on the couch, her legs folded under herself as her fingers flew across the keys of her cell phone. Their parents usually lulled around the house after they'd gotten home from work, doing various chores. If I watched closely enough, I sometimes saw the sly looks they gave each other when one of the kids asked a question I guessed must've been simple, in order for them to receive such a reaction.

A pink haze seemed to follow the boy around everywhere, but I shrugged it off as maybe some sort of weird lighting in his house, which seemed quite dim from my attic view.

I moved into my attick a few months before I graduated middle school. Not only because I was running out excuses for my extended amount of time spent upsatirs, but it was larger and gave me space to house the old photography tools and camera Sheri had given me when I'd become interested in taking photos in sixth grade.

A girl named Nicole, whose friendship was forced upon me when our parents had become friends at a photography expo in New York City, was standing at the window watching with me the summer day that I actually met the boy who I'd be watching for months by than. We had our faces pressed up against the glass of my window, just the boy and his sister were home, having returned from a swim at the public pool.

"See how all of the cabinets and drawers are closed? Their mother wont leave the room until every single one is shut tight." I thought about my kitchen downstairs, clean but cluttered. "Sheri doesn't care."

Nicole grunted. "My mom either." She didn't bother to look through the window into the kitchen, her sights set on the boy who was changing out of his bathing suit, his curtains open as they often were. I heard Nicole suck in a breath through her teeth, the air she exhaled fogging up the window. "What does he do that's so interesting anyway?"

"What do you mean?" To me, simply watching these people live day to day intrigued me.

"I mean, what does he do that's so special?" She sat back from the window as he walked over to his desk and opened his laptop.

I shrugged. "Not much, but sometimes his sister-" I didn't bring up the fuchsia haze which followed him around. Even if I'd wanted to, Nicole was impatient.

She sat down at the edge of my bed with a big dramatic sigh -which cut me off immediately- "I suppose he's nice to look at." She lay down, staring at the unfinished ceiling. "Can we do something else?"

"Like what?"

She sat up. "I dunno. Let's crank call someone, are you good at acting?"

I shrugged again, still watching the boys sister talk animativelly on the phone while twirling her hair. Just as I was about to turn around, my eyes flicked towards the second story window.

There he was.

Looking. At. My. Window.

Without making eye contact, I promptly pulled my curtains shut, turning to Nicole her was biting her nails, the origin of where exactly she was throwing throwing them: unknown.


Nicole woke me up later that night, gripping my shoulders in her sleep and murmuring fast words I was unable to understand. I tried to pry her hands off, my own hands swiping across my sheets. They were wet.

Disgusted, I tore myself away from her, rolling out of bed. I walked downstairs, rubbing my eyes and retrieving the extra blankets from the cabinets under the coffee table; and returned upstairs.

I set up the blankets on the couch in my bedroom, shivering as a gust of cold night air swept through the window Nicole had requested I leave open. Unlike me, she didn't enjoy the amount of stuffy summer heat that inhabited our home. I walked over to close it, struggling to get the sticky frame to allow me to close it. For all I knew, my window was just a decoration and had never been meant to be opened.

"Are you some sort of stalker?"

I jumped, looking towards the bed. Nicole however, was snoring and mumbling, rolling in the bed she'd soiled. I turned back towards the window and upon looking out, my eyes were met by anothers. I tried to yell out, but a hand muffled my mouth. I leaned farther out the window.

The boy who I'd been watching for months was standing outside my window.

Scratch that.

Floating.

The pink light which surrounded his body was ambient in the dark night.

"Well aren't you going to invite me in so you can explain yourself?" His hand over my mouth released and fell to his side. A shot of he and I kissing flashed through my mind. I'd seen the thought many times, my partner different in each person's imagination, whether it be them or someone I'd never seen before. Either way, I had learned to shrug it off by than.

"Explain myself?" I murmured, should he be the one explaining how the hell he was floating three stories off the ground and watching me through my bedroom window?


"Do you take pictures of me?: he asked later, studying the wall I'd covered entirely with photos I'd taken, couples holding hands in the park, children boarding the school bus, women laughing unison, everyday things that I felt held some sort of magnificent, beautiful meaning.

My face turned red under the shield of the dark night. "No." I'd thought about it, but really he had been the least interesting of his family. He'd seemed to have no quirks or habits, even more boring than some of the toddlers I'd taken interest in in the park. "I, I just watch."

"Are you a pervert? Do you like to watch me undress?" Now he was being disgusting, not understanding my reasoning. I'd seen him dress and undress plenty of time, yet it had never effected or enthralled me in any way.

"No."

We grew silent as Nicole rolled over in bed, groaning.

A few moments passed before I spoke, "You fly or float...or something. How?" I paused, "You're not human."

"I'm just as human as you." He snorted, peeling my favorite photo off the wall. it was a photo of a couple walking towards the movie theater in town with each other's hands in their back pockets. They were two men.

I shook my head. "What are you talking about? I can't fly."

"Well you obviously have the gene, so you've got to be able to do something..."

The gene. Why hadn't I thought about that before? Connected it?

The hero gene.

We learned about it constantly in science class. it was some sort of genetic mutation which has risen from experimental drug use in the 1960's and left a minority of people in future generations with inhuman abilities, much like the ones of super heros in 1950's comic books. Hence the name: the hero gene.

The league was the organization which children idolized, posters, action figures, metal lunch boxes with matching thermoses. It was made up of American citizens who possessed the hero gene. They were broken up into hundreds of quadrants all over the country. They wore the tradition tights and spandex costumes, had secret identities to protect their families, and traveled from state to state, preventing not so good people who possessed the gene from causing havoc. Sure, there were plenty of heros who weren't part of the league, ones who kept their gifts a secret and one's who ran around in tights, pulling people out of burning buildings and stopping trains from driving off broken tracks, but their faces weren't plastered across t-shirts and coloring books. They didn't have stats on a card set, the entire one of which was hidden underneath my bed in an old brown box.

The pink haze which followed my neighbor around...

Everything I'd learned in biology was finally connecting. I had the hero gene, that's why I could see the color around the boy, it was a color all heros unclaimed by the league exhibited to others with the gene. I possessed the gene...my neighbor could see the same color I saw around him. This is why I was caught in people's thought, sucked into daydreams.

I reached out, my hand breaking the haze around his body so that it flooded down my arm, sending a heated feeling through my body.

"You didn't know?" The boy sounded shocked.

I shrugged, "You can fly. It's not like it's something you could have ignored."

I, on the other hand, had somehow managed to ignore the obvious. I was a hero.