Campus Saga: Superpower Teen novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Ring

In a hotel suite Wesley puts on his great-uncle's ring, bends a steel box in his hand, and learns the man running the company is the father of the boy who filmed him.

The lawyer's driver took us off campus before Brock could find his voice.

I sat in the back of a black sedan in a stranger's suit jacket and wet boxers.

My roommate had come pushing out of the crowd at the last second and climbed in beside me.

"I'm not leaving you alone with a guy in a gray suit," he told the lawyer.

The lawyer almost smiled. "That seems wise."

We stopped at our dorm first.

My roommate ran upstairs and came down with my backpack, my other pair of jeans and my spare glasses.

I put the jeans on in the back seat while the lawyer looked politely out the window.

The hotel was in downtown Columbus, forty minutes away.

They gave us a suite on the top floor with a view of the river and a bathroom bigger than our dorm room.

My roommate walked in a slow circle with his mouth open.

"There's a second bathroom," he whispered. "There's a second bathroom, Wes."

"Shut up," I said.

The lawyer set his briefcase on the dining table and opened it.

"Mr. Gilligan, I'll be direct, because it has been a long night for you."

"Please call me Wesley."

"Wesley. Josiah Lowry was your late mother's uncle."

"My mother never mentioned an uncle."

"They quarreled before you were born. He never forgave himself for it."

He took out an envelope with my name on the front in shaky blue ink.

"He watched you from a distance. He knew about your father. He knew about your mother, and he was too late to help her."

My throat closed.

I took the envelope and didn't open it.

"I need you to read it tonight," the lawyer said. "And I need you to open this one with your own hands."

He set a small steel box on the table.

It was the size of a deck of cards, with a lock on the front.

He turned the key and lifted the lid.

Inside, on gray velvet, lay a ring.

It was a plain band of dull gray metal with a black stone as flat as a coin.

It looked like something you'd find in a drawer.

"It was his for fifty years," the lawyer said. "He wanted you to have it."

I opened the letter first.

My great-uncle's handwriting was shaky, but I could read every word.

"Wesley. I'm sorry I'm a stranger. I'm an old man who waited too long. The company is yours, and so is the ring.

"Put the ring on. Don't be afraid of it. It will wake slowly, and it will not wake for anyone who isn't my blood.

"You will be tired when you use it. Eat when you are tired.

"Don't trust anyone at the tower who smiles too easily. J.L."

I read it twice.

My roommate read it over my shoulder and whispered, "That's a lot of weird."

I picked up the ring.

It was heavier than it looked, and it was warm.

I slid it onto my right hand, and it was too big for every finger.

Then the metal shrank, quietly, and settled against my ring finger like it had been made there.

A heat went up my arm to my shoulder.

It was a sharp heat.

I gasped and gripped the edge of the table.

The wood bent.

I felt it give under my fingers.

My roommate said, "Wes. Your hand."

I looked down.

A dent the shape of my fingers sat in the edge of an oak table.

The heat faded.

I felt more awake than I had ever been in my life.

I picked up the little steel box without thinking.

It folded in my fist.

I opened my hand and a crumpled gray ball sat in my palm.

Nobody spoke.

The lawyer had taken one step back, his hand on his chest.

"He told me it was true," he said softly. "I thought he was an old man who wanted to believe in something."

"It makes you strong?" my roommate said.

"It will do more than that. He never told me what."

I sat down hard in a chair, and my knees were shaking.

I was starving.

The lawyer ordered room service for six people and watched me eat a whole tray of fries without a word.

Somewhere in the middle of the second burger, I started to laugh.

I laughed until I cried, and my roommate sat on the arm of my chair and let me.

When I finally stopped, I wiped my face.

"The boy who tied me to that statue," I said. "Brock. He's on the lacrosse team."

"Yes."

"I want to know everything about the company. Who runs it?"

The lawyer straightened his tie.

"Josiah's second in command has been acting chairman for the last six weeks, since his illness. His name is Gordon Merrick."

My roommate looked up.

"Merrick," he said. "As in Brock Merrick?"

The lawyer nodded slowly.

"Gordon Merrick is his father," he said.

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