Campus Saga: Superpower Teen novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Monday

In the dining hall the lineman who threw the first punch swings again, Wesley wakes a second power, and the whole room films it; then Kendra texts that she is sorry.

By Monday the video of me tied to the statue had nine million views.

I watched it once on my roommate's laptop at breakfast.

It was worse than I remembered.

I turned the sound off after ten seconds.

The comments were cruel and funny and endless.

Then there was a second video, posted at midnight, with a very different title.

"DISHWASHER IS A BILLIONAIRE???"

Four million views already, and the comments had changed their tune.

My roommate pushed the laptop shut. "Do you want me to come with you?"

"To class?"

"To anywhere."

"I'm going to eat lunch in the dining hall like a normal person."

"You own a freight company."

"I'm going to eat lunch in the dining hall like a normal person who owns a freight company."

The lawyer had wanted to send a car, a bodyguard and a new wardrobe.

I took the car as far as the edge of campus and walked in on my own two feet, in my gray hoodie.

The ring sat on my right hand.

I had slept four hours the night before and woken up starving.

I hadn't tried to use the ring since Friday night.

Everyone stared when I walked through the dining hall doors.

It wasn't the stare from Friday.

Some of them looked embarrassed. A few looked angry that I had done them the favor of becoming rich.

I got in the pasta line and nobody laughed.

A girl behind me whispered, "Is that him?"

"That's him."

The person who laughed was standing at the end of the line.

He was a huge guy with a neck as wide as his head, in a Whitlock lacrosse hoodie.

I knew him now as the one who had held my arms behind my back.

He came toward me with a tray in one hand and a grin I could feel from ten feet away.

"Hey, Billionaire," he said. "Hey, everybody, the billionaire's here."

A few people laughed nervously.

"I'm just getting lunch," I said.

"You owe us an apology."

"For what?"

"For making Brock look bad on the news."

The room had gone quiet.

Forty phones came out of forty pockets.

I almost laughed at how fast it happened.

"Walk away," I said.

"Make me."

He dropped his tray and swung.

I saw it coming.

His fist came toward my face, and the heat from the ring flared up my arm.

Everything slowed down.

Not all the way, the way it does in movies.

It was more like the world had dropped to half speed and I was still moving at full.

His fist took a very long time to reach me.

I tilted my head an inch, and it passed my ear.

I put my left hand around his wrist as gently as I could.

Then I turned his arm over, stepped behind his knee and lowered him to the floor face-first.

It took one second.

To everyone else it looked like I had vanished and appeared behind him.

He lay on the tile with his arm up his back, blinking.

I knelt beside him and let go.

Nobody had made a sound.

"You held my arms on Friday," I said quietly.

"Get off me, man."

"I told them I'd remember every face. I remembered yours first."

I stood up and brushed off my knees.

A girl in the front of the crowd let her phone drift down.

Then someone started clapping.

One person, then five, then the whole line.

It wasn't joy. It was the sound of a room deciding which side to be on.

The lineman got to his feet with his face the color of a brick.

"Brock's going to hear about this."

"I hope he does."

I picked up a tray, filled a plate with pasta and sat down at a table in the center of the room.

My hands were steady, but my stomach had started eating itself.

The ring wanted food.

I ate that plate, and a second, and then a third, while the room slowly started to talk again.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

My roommate had made me carry it, the new one the lawyer had given me.

An unknown number, and fewer than ten people had it.

"Wesley, it's Kendra. I'm so sorry about Friday. I've been sick about it."

"Please come to the house tonight so I can apologize to your face. Eight o'clock. Please."

I looked at the screen.

I could feel the ring warm against my finger.

I typed back:

"Fine."

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