Story Excerpt: Where There's Hope

 Hi darlins!

Why yes, there should be story today! But you know who celebrated birthday parties over the weekend and whose daughter had no school and then a late start? This lady! So as time has compressed and vanished in some tricksy way, today I'm posting the beginning of my upcoming release "Where There's Hope" (yep, it's a Panopolis book) for your entertainment instead of Chelen City.

Or maybe I'm just evil and drawing out the suspense a little more. Muahahahaaaaaa..... ;)

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Where There’s Hope

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CS3LJ9V3/

Chapter One

 

“Boo!” Jamie Fletcher put his cereal bowl in the kitchen sink, then looked around for his roommate. “Boo, c’mon, we’re going to be late!”

No one appeared. Jamie sighed and grabbed the loose-knit gray sweater off the back of his chair, throwing it on over his T-shirt even though it was already in the seventies outside. “Boo, come on.” He wasn’t about to be late today, not his first day back at work after over three months out. He’d gotten regular updates, of course, all the pictures and videos he could ask for, but it wasn’t the same as being there.

He looked in the living room, pausing to glance under the squeaky leather sofa. Nothing. He checked the bedroom, where Boo often liked to go have a nap after breakfast. Nothing. He checked the bathroom and the front entrance, but no Boo. That only left one option.

Jamie stepped through his back door into the fresh morning air, inhaling deeply as the scents of honeysuckle and half a dozen varieties of peony greeted him. It was going to be a gorgeous day, definitely a good one for spending lots of time outside … but if he didn’t get Boo moving, they’d both be in trouble. “Boo?” He patted his knees softly, making the low whistling sound that Boo was trained to key in on outdoors. “Boooooo …”

He checked the vegetable garden, running his fingertips over the tops of the tomato plants, so heavy with fruit they looked like they’d fainted. “I’ll get you all some cages,” he promised them with a wince. Honestly, the whole garden was a little … much this year. Corn stalks ten feet tall? Summer squash that could be mistaken for pumpkins? Definitely no-no’s. Jamie was grateful that his garden was shielded from his neighbors by a convenient stand of trees, cradled in the bend in the Onyx River his home was snugged up against, because otherwise he’d have some serious explaining to do for any nosy looky-loos.

Jamie’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his back pocket, checked the message, and bit his lower lip. “Boo, c’mon, or Laurel will call in the cavalry!” It wasn’t like Boo to be so reluctant to come to him … unless …

Jamie turned and jogged to the far corner of his backyard, where an elegant white oak tree cast a leafy shadow over a patch of wild strawberries. At the very edge of that patch, right up next to the fence where the washed-out morning light almost didn’t illuminate him, was—

“Boo!” Jamie knelt down next to his massive French Lop rabbit and laid a hand on the bunny’s head, trying to catch his breath. “Ugh.” He closed his eyes for a moment, spitting a throatful of saliva to the side. Gradually, the sensation of nausea waned, and when Jamie opened his eyes again, Boo had stopped chewing on tiny, bright-red strawberries and instead had both paws propped up on his knees.

“Hey, Boo.” Jamie laughed weakly, then reached out and picked up the enormous fifteen-pound rabbit. “Oh my god, what else have you been eating? How can you be this big?” Boo didn’t deign to reply, just twitching his nose before mouthing at the end of Jamie’s sleeve. “No, this isn’t for you. We’ve got to go.” He pressed to his feet and leaned against the fence until he was sure he could make it inside, then headed for the back door.

“It’s our first day back,” he murmured, bending his head to press a smooch to the space between Boo’s ears as he locked the back door, grabbed his messenger bag, then headed out to the front as fast as he could manage. He locked up, then turned to his bike. It was new, an electric version of his old racer, the sort of thing he could pedal without exhausting himself.

Jamie hated that his first thought when seeing it had been I want to burn this fucking thing.

Now, three months into dealing with his new reality, Jamie was a little more sanguine about his circumstances. The e-bike was a tool to get him where he needed to go, and he was grateful for it. Not that he’d ever tell Makena just how grateful.

He put his messenger bag into the right saddlebag, then put Boo into the special carrying cage Don had designed for the other saddlebag. Jamie put on his helmet and mounted the bike. He flipped up the kickstand, thumbed on the throttle, and with a quiet murmur of, “Here we go,” he headed off to work.

The day care was hopping by the time Jamie got there, right in the middle of the eight thirty rush. Ugh, timing. He was barely able to lock his bike up before a horde of preschoolers descended upon him, all of them shrieking with joy.

“Boo!”

“Boo Bunny is back!”

“Mommy, it’s Boo! Boo is back!”

“Yay, Boo is here!”

“Hi, Mr. Jamie,” one of the more mature four-year-olds added as he also sidled in closer to greet Boo.

“Hi, Thor.” Thor. What a name for a kid whose head barely came past Jamie’s waist. Oh, well—maybe he’d grow into it. “Hi, everybody!” he greeted the rest of them, quickly pulling his bag over his shoulder before grabbing Boo’s carrying cage. “It’s so nice to see you all again!”

“You too!” a little girl—Hollyhock, Jamie remembered, one of the more interesting flower names in the bunch—said with a beaming smile. She had curly reddish-blonde hair and a gap between her front teeth. “I missed you and Boo, Mr. Jamie.”

“We missed you too, Holly.” He let her in for a hug, then gave her and the other kids another minute to squeal about Boo before he broke free of the diminutive crowd and made his way to the side entrance. Just a few more feet, and he’d be able to dart in through the kitchen and—

“Mr. Fletcher.”

Jamie groaned inside as he turned to face the head of the Parent Council, Beth Mohar. She was a scientist working at the nearby research lab with twins in the Toddlers class, and she was also a die-hard conservative who was constantly trying to add new restrictions to Sunny Day Preschool’s official code of conduct. Most recently, she’d tried to ban teachers from wearing Crocs, saying that they were unprofessional. Luckily, after the school’s director gave her a hands-on demonstration of the difference between getting vomit out of Crocs versus a pair of sneakers, she’d changed her tune.

“I see you’re back.”

“Yes,” Jamie said after a moment of waiting for her to follow up on that. “I am.”

“Are you sure that’s wise? Considering everything you’ve”—she pursed her lips— “been through lately?”

“My doctor cleared me to come back to work,” Jamie said firmly. “And I’m very happy to be here again.”

“And I’m delighted for you, I’m sure, but.” She sighed and crossed her arms. “I don’t think green is your color, shall we say. Perhaps a brown wig would be better. Less likely to confuse the children.”

Jamie reached up and touched one of his long green locks, fighting off a bout of self-consciousness. “Well,” he said, as determinedly cheerful as he could be, “there’s nothing in the dress code about the shades of hair we’re allowed to have, and given everything I’ve been through lately, I thought it would be nice to carry my favorite color with me when I come to work.” He smiled brightly. “Of course, if you’d like to make an official complaint about it, you’re welcome to, but I don’t think me having green hair confused any of the children in any way back there.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Mrs. Mohar said snippily. “Green hair is practically a political statement these days after what happened to Flourish.”

“I sincerely doubt the four-year-olds in my class know much about politics, or care for that matter,” Jamie replied. “I’ve got to go in now. Have a nice day, Mrs. Mohar.” Jamie let himself in with his badge, then shut the door right in his nemesis’s frowning face.

“Beth getcha?” Obed asked from where he was pulling a tray of pumpkin bread out of the oven.

“I barely escaped with my hair intact,” Jamie said, grinning. “It’s good to see you again.”

“You too.” They shook hands warmly, then Obed pointed at a tray piled up with precut, precooled squares of pumpkin bread. “These are ready for your class if you want to take them with you.”

“Sure, I can do that.” Jamie set Boo’s cage down, shifted his messenger bag around to his back, picked up the tray, then grabbed up Boo again. His right arm was starting to ache from holding her up, but he was almost to his classroom. “Thanks, Obed.”

“Glad you’re back, Jamie!” Obed called out after him as he headed down the hall.

One minute and a few near stumbles later, Jamie was back in his familiar Pre-K classroom for the first time in a quarter of a year.

All of the kids were outside on the playground, so Jamie took a second to sit down in the empty classroom and just breathe for a moment as he rested and took in the changes. When he’d left, spring had barely begun—now summer was in full swing, and the decorations had changed with the times. Gone were the cutouts of flowers and plants he’d helped the kids build, gone were the paper-mache trees and the pipe-cleaner butterflies and bees they’d created together.

Now the whole room had been done up like a construction site, with finger-painted digging machines and earth movers, and every table had baskets full of different shapes for the kids to play with. Jamie sighed, then shrugged it off. The only thing that never changes is that changes never stop. At least he’d get to be part of it all again from here on out.

Boo started scratching on the door of his carrying cage. “Right, right,” Jamie said. He hung up his messenger bag, got out Boo’s leash, clipped it on, then grabbed the tray of treats and headed toward the playground.

To his surprise, Jamie wasn’t greeted by a group of screaming, running children, climbing and horsing around. Instead, he came out to see the kids in two neat lines right in front of the picnic tables, with his co-teacher, Pippa, and the school’s director, Laurel, standing beside them. Each kid held a tissue-paper flower, obviously made by them sometime earlier, and as soon as they saw him, they all began to sing.

“Good morning, good morning, good morniiiiing, our friend!

Good morning, our friend.

Good morning, our friend.

Good morning, good morning, good morniiiiing, our friend!

Good morning, our dear frieeeeeeend.”

“Good morning, Mr. Jamie, and welcome back!” Pippa called out, and the kids finally broke ranks and ran over—carefully, because it might have been months, but they remembered how to be careful around Boo—to give him hugs and the flowers they’d made for him.

“I’ll take those,” Laurel said, relieving him of the tray so he could use both arms to hug the kids back. Jamie felt himself tear up as little hands patted his shoulders and high-pitched voices competed to ask if he was all better now.

“I’m much better,” he promised, finally leading the pack of kids over to the picnic tables. Laurel had already distributed the pumpkin squares, so it wasn’t hard to get everyone sitting down and munching on a snack. “And I’m so happy to be back, because Boo and I missed you so much!” he went on, lifting one of Boo’s paws up in a wave. The kids giggled. “Thank you for the beautiful cards you made me, and for these lovely flowers!” He gathered them into a bouquet and clasped them to his chest. “I’ll treasure them.”

He would too. He had the perfect vase for them, and they would look awesome on the side table in his living room.

Chris, the little boy on his right, leaned his head against Jamie’s arm. “It’s okay to cry, but please don’t cry too much,” he told Jamie. “We can do deep breaths together.”

Jamie burst out laughing as we wiped his eyes with the end of his sleeve. “That’s a great idea, buddy. Let’s all do some deep breaths together during snack time.” He picked up a piece of pumpkin bread. “After we’re done eating, though, right?”

“Right!”

Right. Jamie bit down, and the warm chewiness of the bread burst across his tongue in a way that made him wish he still had taste buds. At least he could smell the bread, smell the richness and the faint spice of it, and feel the heft of it in his hand. This had been his favorite class treat when he’d worked here before. It hurt, that he wasn’t able to taste it now, but its charms weren’t completely lost on him either.

Like so many things in his life these days, the little he could glean from it now would have to be enough.

Chapter Two

 

Jamie’s first day back ended up mostly consisting of sitting in the petting corner and reintroducing the kids to Boo, one by one, and he found he was fine with that. He was getting stronger every day, able to go about his daily activities for longer periods of time before needing a break, but it was still hard. And the kids, as much as he loved them and as happy as he was to be back, were a lot to handle.

He could sit, though, and he could remind them how to pet Boo, what his favorite treats were, and when they were allowed to give him one, and show them Boo’s new trick: fetch. Jamie had spent far too many hours teaching his rabbit to run after the bright-yellow ball and scootch it back to him not to share it now, and it was an instant hit.

It wasn’t until nap time that he finally got a chance to go outside and chat with his co-teacher for a moment. Their class of kids was the oldest at Sunny Day Preschool, and not all of them napped anymore, but the ones who preferred to play knew to do it quietly. Laurel came back in to watch over the kids so Jamie and Pippa could spend part of their break together.

“You’re looking really lovely, Jamie, really healthy,” Pippa told him earnestly, her small hands clasped in the edge of her flannel shirt. Pippa was English, originally from Dorset, and she’d come over to the States to seek fame on Broadway. She was so small that she’d kept getting cast as a child, though, and after a decade of that, she married another actor, quit the professional circuit, and moved from New York to Oregon to open up a small community theater.

Their theater had been wiped out two years ago in a fight between Thunderbolt and Oshun. The insurance money hadn’t been enough for a complete rebuild, so now they had a partially outdoor theater that put on performances in spring and summer only, and Pippa covered the extra expenses with this job.

The two of them worked well together despite being different generations, nationalities, and genders. Jamie was grateful she made coming back here even better for him. “Thanks, Pip. You too.”

“Oh, pish.” She waved a hand. “I’m not the one recovering from cancer! They’ve still got you doing the chemo, I take it?” Pippa curled a finger around one of her own gray-brown locks and tugged.

“Yeah,” Jamie said. “Hopefully, only for a few more months, though.”

“Oh, what a relief. The children have been absolutely wild about getting you back, you know.” She smiled at him. “And Boo, of course.”

“Mostly Boo, I know,” Jamie joked. “Don’t worry, I can take coming in second-best to Boo.”

“Well, you know how children tend to latch on to—oh, my.” Pippa abruptly stood up from where she was sitting at the picnic table. “Oh. Oh, dear.”

“What is it?” Jamie asked, standing up with her. He looked where she was shakily pointing, and— “Shit.”

“Language, dear,” Pippa said, but her voice was wavering with fear. “Oh, no. Not him.”

Not him. Jamie stared at the figure in the distance, hundreds of feet in the air, trailing a steady stream of black dust.

Blight. He was the most powerful supervillain in the northern half of the West Coast, a man who’d seemingly made it his mission to terrorize every town between here and Portland into submission.

Of course, being a big, bad supervillain meant going up against the most powerful superheroes that the US had to offer, outside of the ones who wouldn’t leave the chaos of Panopolis. In this case—

“I can see Oshun’s waterspout coming,” Jamie said in relief. “They must be near the river.”

“Oh, thank god,” Pippa said, one hand pressed to her chest. “Still, I’ve got to go tell Laurel there’s a sighting so we can start getting our precautions in place. Will you stay out here and relay information, dear?”

“Of course,” Jamie said, grateful that she didn’t seem to notice how badly his own hands were shaking. “I’ve got it, go ahead.” She went, and then it was just him, alone on the playground, staring at the cloud of black dust and the pillar of water preparing to clash in the distance. He stared, heart beating so hard he could hear it, and thought about—

“Flourish!” Blight’s voice boomed across the lot that separated them. “There’s nowhere for you to run this time!”

“I wouldn’t run anyhow!” Blight was a serious opponent, but Flourish was confident he could handle him. It would be harder with nothing but blacktop between them, but he had to protect the people evacuating from the office behind him until backup arrived.

“Yet you do.” Blight somehow had a way of projecting like he was speaking straight inside your head. “No matter how often I call for you to face me, you never come. But now,”—the mouth of his skull-like head twisted with satisfaction— “now I finally have you all to myself.”

For the first time, Flourish began to feel uneasy. “What do you want with me?”

“Want?” Blight floated a bit closer, and the blacktop cracked and crumbled in his wake. “Want? I want …” He held out a hand, and a jet of black dust streamed right for Flourish. “I want to make you suffer!”

Jamie swallowed through a tight throat, feeling light-headed. Suffer … oh, how he had. How he still was.

He didn’t know what he’d done to be chosen as Blight’s nemesis, but the supervillain had consistently come after him ever since he came here a year ago. They’d tussled all over the place, but Jamie—as Flourish, whose powers of growth were legendary—had been able to meet his destructive power head-on and come out still standing.

Not last time, though.

Not even close.

He hugged his middle with both hands and watched as Blight and Oshun clashed in the skies. After Flourish, Oshun was the best superhero to face Blight—water was one of the few things his ability couldn’t really affect. Decomposing water was just vapor, after all, and Oshun was really good at keeping a shield around her when facing him. He, in turn, was good at dodging her water strikes and evaporating the tendrils that came close to dousing him.

Where are the others? Supremo and Speedman ought to know better than to leave Oshun to tackle a supervillain on her own. It was a pact they’d made after Jamie was taken out—no one went up against a major power on their own. Maybe he just couldn’t see them because they couldn’t fly …

The thick black cloud of dust and sunlit stream of water warred in the sky, horrifyingly beautiful, obscuring the people hovering within them. Jamie hugged his waist tighter, not able to move, barely able to breathe. If Blight got Oshun … if he was able to break through her defenses and hurt her, Jamie didn’t know what he’d do.

A low rumble on the edge of Jamie’s hearing that had previously been ignorable was suddenly palpable, something he felt rattle from his feet all the way up through his head. As he watched, an enormous wave rose up out of the Onyx River below them and smashed straight into Blight. It subsumed the darkness, completely submerged it, and when the water dissipated a moment later—

Blight was nowhere to be seen.

“Jamie!” Pippa called out from the door, hanging onto the frame with one white-knuckled hand. “What’s happening? Are they coming this way?”

“No,” he said, too softly. He cleared his throat. “No, they’re—I think it’s over. Oshun knocked Blight out of the sky.”

“What? Really?” She tentatively walked out onto the playground and looked at the empty sky. “Oh, thank the stars! I was so worried we’d lose another hero after what happened to poor Flourish.”

“Me, too,” Jamie said numbly.

“I know that hit you hard,” Pippa said, her voice sympathetic even as she beamed with relief. “But the hair is a lovely tribute to him, you know. A kind way to remember him, in case …”

Jamie heard very well what she wasn’t saying. In case he never comes back. No one knew if the superhero known as Flourish was even alive, apart from Jamie and a few other select people in the community, and the thought of a comeback right now might as well be as far away as Neverland for all of Jamie’s chances of reaching it any time soon.

“I really do think it’s over,” Jamie said. “But I’ll stay out here for another few minutes just to make sure, okay?”

“All right, luv.” She headed back inside, and as soon as she was out of sight, Jamie pulled out his phone. Texting was a no-no at work unless he was on break, but technically he still was on break right now, and he simply had to know what was going on.

Are you okay? he texted Makena. He waited … waited … shit, she probably didn’t even have her phone on her right now, of course she was in costume, of course she was—

I’m fine.

Oh, thank god. Jamie let out a huge sigh of relief, all of a sudden exhausted as the tension he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying flowed out of him like water. He took a moment to just breathe, then texted back, What happened to Blight?

A few seconds later, he got the disconcerting reply, Not sure. Haven’t found him yet.

Crap. Had he run? Was he hiding in some of the forest around that subdivision? That meant the police would have to go in with dogs, and that would be terribly dangerous for them, and Makena would have to go with them, and she’d probably be up all night—

I think he hit the water.

Hit … the water? Did that mean he …

Do you think he drowned? Jamie held his breath as he waited for her to answer.

Not sure. Text you when I know more.

That was a clear sign-off for now, which—it had been kind of her to bother answering at all when she was in the middle of a search mission. Thank you, he wrote back, then replaced his phone in his pocket and walked, slowly, toward the classroom.

Blight was down. Blight had lost against Oshun, and he might have fallen into the water. He might be dead right now, drowned, sunk to the bottom of the river from the weight of whatever armor he wore. Or he might be prowling around wherever he could find cover, wounded and snarling and—

Jamie stopped and shut his eyes, remembering the last time he’d seen Blight. The only parts of his face that had been visible were his mouth and his eyes, and his mouth had been spitting insults, but his eyes, light blue or gray, Jamie hadn’t been able to tell the color, but the emotion within them …

They’d been anguished.

Sadness gripped him so hard he almost tripped over his own faltering feet. Get over yourself, you’re at work, he thought sternly. There was no time right now for any kind of sad or painful reminiscence. He had kids to take care of.

Jamie squared his shoulders and walked back into the classroom, a smile firmly on his face. Nobody here needed to know anything other than the fact that Oshun had won the day, and they were all safe.

Safe. Thank god, they were all safe.