Chapter 8 - Conversation, College Applications, and Cooking Hummus

Art by YinYangMyriad 

That weekend, I slept late, and when I finally did wake up, I decided that I should head to Ellen's castle right away. I wanted to see Percy and Vanessa right away, and I wasn't sure if Carmen needed me for anything. I got ready to leave, but when I started making breakfast, Dad came up to me. It seemed that he had different ideas on how I should be spending my weekend.

"I don't like that you're running around with all of those supervillains," Dad said. "It's nice that one of them got you a job, but those are real criminals that you're dealing with. That Lady Quake destroyed much of downtown San Urbano with that earthquake a few days ago."

"I know, Dad," I said. He had a point. There were superhumans out there who were truly evil. Sometimes, it was hard to tell which supervillains were merely normal people who the media had labeled as evil, and which ones were actually murderers and thieves. I suspected that my newfound friends lay somewhere in the middle.

"Maybe you shouldn't be over there quite so often," Dad suggested. "You do need to work on your college applications, after all."

There was no way to explain the situation with Terry to my dad, so I said, "I can work on my college applications at the castle. I'll just bring my laptop."

Dad sighed and then asked, "What are you making for breakfast, Jay?"

"Scrambled eggs," I answered as I continued to cook the eggs. "They're almost done."

My dad sat down at the table, and I placed some eggs on both his plate and mine. I sat down across from him and tried my best to focus on the food. "So can I go over to the castle?" I asked, bringing us back to our original topic.

"I suppose so," Dad said.

"Can I please borrow the car so I can get there?" I asked.

"Yes," Dad said. He pulled out a copy of the San Urbano Times and began to read it, while I devoured my eggs. We sat in awkward silence until I finished my breakfast and headed out the door.

Just as I was leaving the house, I passed by a small, framed picture. It had always been hanging there, and most of the time, I didn't pay much attention to it. However, as I looked at my father's relaxed smile highlighting his brown, almond-shaped eyes and my mother's laugh as she looked towards the camera and held me in her arms, I thought about the family that I had once had. The photo must have been taken shortly before my mother died - I was just two years old when that happened. I didn't remember Mom, but that picture was evidence that things must have been different when she was alive. I knew that Dad missed her.

I thought that my superpowers came from my mom's side of the family, if only because none of Dad's relatives had powers, and I wasn't sure whether or not that was a good thing. If I had gotten to know my mother or any of her relatives, perhaps I would have known how to control my powers better, but there was no use in thinking too hard about that. Mom was dead, and I had never gotten to know her family.

I walked past the photo and headed out to Dad's car. I then got in the car and drove to Ellen's castle, but I made sure to bring my laptop with me so I could do what Dad had asked me to do. When I got there, I parked near the gates and knocked on the door. The castle was still a little bit intimidating, but I had stopped being so scared of it. The souls around the castle, however, still troubled me, despite the fact that I had put them there. Their cries of pain always struck a chord in my heart.

This time, Percy opened the door. "Hi Jay," he said. "Ellen's at a meeting with the Bash Brothers and the Chessmaster, and Vanessa's going out for lunch with her parents, so I'm the only one here right now. Do you want to hear about my plan to change all of the clocks in the city so that they're all exactly forty two minutes off?"

"That just sounds kind of inconvenient," I said.

"That's exactly what Vanessa said," Percy said. "I think it's a good idea."

"What would that accomplish anyways?" I asked.

"I don't know," Percy said.

"Listen, my dad told me that I have to work on my college applications, so I'll talk to you later," I said.

"You're a superhuman," Percy said. "Why are you even bothering with college?"

"First of all, my dad really thinks that I should go to college, regardless of whether I have superpowers," I said. "Second, the Academy's not paying me like they do with their superheroes. I need to make an honest living."

"You could just be a full time villain and steal whatever money you need," Percy suggested. "That's what I'm doing after Ellen retires. Well, now that I think about it, I could make use of my powers in plenty of other careers. I think I'd make a good personal trainer." He cleared his throat and then said, "Jay, get down on the ground and do twenty push ups."

I tried to resist, but it was no use. I started doing the twenty push ups that Percy had told me to do, while Percy smiled and said, "See? I'd be so good at that."

When I was done, I stood up again and asked, "Was there any point in making me do that?"

"Not really," Percy said. "I just wanted to show off my powers." For a moment, I wished that I had powers that were worthy of showing off in the first place. "I'll let you work on your college applications, but let me know when you're done."

I nodded and entered one of the break rooms. I crashed onto the couch, pulled out my laptop, and began to work. However, the ideas just weren't flowing. I couldn't exactly tell colleges about my powers, even though they practically defined my identity, or my experiences at the Academy, even though those were the most important experiences in my life so far. Colleges loved essays about kids who had been rescued by superheroes, or how hard it was to send a superpowered sibling or friend off to the Academy, but they didn't want supervillains applying to their schools. It was something that I had to hide at all costs.

After a few hours of typing a few paragraphs and then immediately deleting them, only to start again, I put away my laptop and hung out in the break room with Percy. Several hours of video games and arguing over whether A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back was a better movie let me distract myself from my college applications.

Around five o'clock, I started to get hungry again. Percy was munching on some Red Vines, but as usual, he didn't seem to be sharing, so I headed towards the kitchen. A whole team of chefs were busy preparing dinner. "What are you making?" I asked.

"We're making hummus as an appetizer, and then there's an eggplant dish for dinner," a woman explained to me.

"That sounds delicious," I said.

"Thanks," the woman said. "I'm Dina, by the way, and I'm the head chef. What's your name?" I introduced myself, and she asked, "Would you like to help?"

"Sure," I said.

"You can help me make the hummus," Dina said. "It's a recipe that I learned from my mother as a little girl."

"I wish that my parents had some recipes to teach me," I said as Dina put all of the ingredients in the food processor. "My dad doesn't really cook, but I did learn a few things from my grandmother. She has some recipes that her parents brought with them when they came here from Japan."

"That's pretty cool, Jay," Dina said.

"Thanks," I said. "Are you making anything for dessert?"

"I'm not sure yet," Dina said.

"I can always make a few chocolate chip cookies," I suggested.

Dina thought about it for a few minutes and then said, "That's not a bad idea. Let's give it a try." She turned off the food processor and tasted the hummus. "I think it needs more lemon juice," she said.

She gave me a spoonful of hummus, and I tasted the appetizer. "You're right," I said. "It definitely needs more lemon juice."

Dina added more lemon juice to the hummus and then mixed it again. Meanwhile, I started getting out everything that I needed for the cookies. Thankfully, a few of the other cooks were able to help me out. Making the dough was a soothing ritual. My mind wandered as my hands mixed up the dough and then placed tiny balls of dough in neat rows on the cookie sheet. By the time I was finally done, it was time to start serving dinner.

I headed out to the dining room where Percy was seated between Ellen and Vanessa, who had apparently returned to the castle while I was busy making cookies. I sat next to Vanessa and immediately started eating the hummus that was in front of me. Dina had clearly done an amazing job with it. I wolfed down the pita bread and hummus, while Percy, Vanessa, and Ellen chatted about their day.

"I've been meaning to ask you something, Ellen," I said after I was done.

"What is it, Jay?" Ellen asked.

"Did you really kill the Gladiator?" I asked.

"Yes, but it's easily the worst decision that I ever made," Ellen said. "I may have killed the Gladiator, but as soon as I did, his daughter made her own version of his costume and showed up at my base, wanting to avenge her father."

"What happened next?" Percy asked.

"I think I might have heard this story already," Vanessa commented.

"I haven't," Percy said. "Keep going, Ellen."

"We had a long battle, and although I lived to tell the tale, my first base was completely destroyed," Ellen said. "I had to live in my parents' basement until I saved up enough money to build this castle."

"That's crazy," Percy said.

Ellen nodded and then said, "Let this be a lesson to you three. Killing individual superheroes won't solve anything. It's the Academy that's the problem. Superheroes are victims of the system, just like we are, and none of them deserve death just because they happen to conform to the Academy's ideals instead of rebelling against them."

"Percy, maybe that means that you shouldn't be so focused on Captain Fedora," Vanessa said.

"I never said that," Ellen said.

"Captain Fedora's my arch-enemy," Percy said. "I'm not planning to kill him. That would take all of the fun away from it."

"You are planning something though," Vanessa said. Percy shrugged, and Vanessa said, "Whatever. I'll be busy taking down the Academy while you're off changing all of the clocks in the city."

"You said that like it's a bad thing," Percy said.

"It's a ridiculous plan," Vanessa said.

"I think it's brilliant," Percy said.

"Can you two please stop arguing?" I asked.

"That sounded exactly like something Terry would say," Vanessa said.

"I still miss him," Ellen said.

"Me too," Vanessa said.

"I hope that Carmen figures something out soon," Percy said. "When she gives Terry his soul back, I'm going to tell him all of the great puns that I came up with that have to do with getting your soul stolen. Do you want to hear one?"

"Absolutely not," Vanessa said.

All of a sudden, I wanted to leave the table and return home. It was my fault that Terry wasn't at the table, chatting with his aunt and two of his closest friends. I didn't know Terry well, but we did have a little bit of shared history, and I deeply regretted stealing his soul, even if it was something that wasn't exactly under my control.

One of the cooks brought us a plate of cookies, and Vanessa and Percy each immediately grabbed one. "These are delicious," Percy said after he took a bite. "Dina really outdid herself on these."

"Actually, I made those," I said.

"They're incredible, Jay," Percy said.

Despite the positive response to my cooking, I still felt hopelessly awkward at the dinner table. No matter how hard I tried, I wasn't really a part of Ellen's supervillain family.

After dinner, I told Percy and Vanessa that I had to go home to work on my college applications. "I don't get it," Percy said. "Why can't you stay here and work on them?"

"Leave Jay alone, Percy," Vanessa said.

I waved goodbye to Percy, Vanessa, and Ellen and then got into Dad's car and drove home. I turned up the volume on the radio, letting all of my worries wash away when one of my favorite songs came on. It had been a long day, and although I hadn't made nearly enough progress on my college applications, I was glad that I was finally returning home.