Hero by Perry Moore

picture of perfect health. What are you getting at?" He pinned me with his eyes, his head still.
    I wanted to tell him everything. I wanted to tell him about that guy at the basketball game and how he looked at me so strangely, how it made me feel so weird, how my hands burned when I put them on his leg, and then how he suddenly wasn't hurt anymore. How I thought I had the seizures under control, because they're just a by-product of these new powers, and guess what, I just had my first real rescue on this bus, well, sort of my first rescue, and then I met the League, and they invited me to tryiout. Your own son, can you believe it? I wanted to tell him that I'd found Mom's old pictures.
    "Why did Mom leave?"
    Even before I finished asking, I knew it was a question my father wouldn't answer.
    Dad looked back down at his button. He inhaled deeply, sighed, and rubbed his weary eyes with the nub of his hand. He looked down at the melted flesh where his fingers used to be and pretended to check his watch.
    "We should get some sleep."
    And just like that the walls were back up. I sat perfectly still and watched Dad collect the beer cans, then I took the mug and put it in the sink. Dad tossed the cans in the recycling bin and told me to leave the dishes, he'd wash them tomorrow.
    I crawled into bed, and the sheets felt cool and smooth. I didn't bother closing the shades because I wanted to look at the moon for a while and turn my mind off.
    I was drifting off when my door creaked open. Dad poked his head inside.
    "I don't want you to worry, Thorn. You'll find the right girl to settle down with one day, and you'll make it work. You won't make the same mistakes I did."
    Then he gently closed the door, careful not to make a noise, and I didn't hear the floorboards as he crept off to bed. I turned over and faced the window with my eyes wide open in the moonlight.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    I WOKE UP EARLY, a whole hour before my alarm. School was out, but I still got up early. I had butterflies in my stomach about going to the League tryouts. I bolted upright in my bed with one overwhelming thought: what was I supposed to wear? I shook my head. What a girl. Even so, first impressions are everything, and I didn't really know what was appropriate for this kind of thing. Do you wear a costume? Something so you're ready to fight and go through some combat training drills if that's what they ask you to do? Or maybe it's more like a job interview, where you wear your nicest clothes to show respect for the others who are higher up on the totem pole.
    After a quick shower I laid out two separate outfits on my bed. First my coat, tie, and khakis, my one nice outfit for all respectable occasions—weddings, funerals, or school pictures. Next to it, I spread out my old wet suit, which I hadn't used since last summer, when I decided that although riding a wave was pretty fun, fighting fifty punks named Laird all day for the same dinky set of waves wasn't all it was cracked up to be. The wet suit might be put to better use fighting crime instead.
    I zipped up the wet suit and stared at myself in the mirror. It looked enough like a costume to pass. I glanced at my bed-sheets, and instantly decided there was no way I'd wear a cape. Dad had always told me that unless you know how to move with a cape, they just get in the way. More often than not, he said, they were the tip-off of a real amateur, and the last thing I wanted was for everyone at tryouts to think I was an amateur. I looked at myself standing there in my wet suit, my basketball high-tops on my feet. I chucked the high-tops in the back of my closet and put on my black army boots instead. They looked tougher and they didn't stand out as much as the white sneakers.
    Then I had a minor panic attack. What if everyone else wore respectable clothes? Would they think who the hell does this clown think he is, the Silver Surfer? I nearly pulled my left arm out of joint trying to get my white oxford shirt over