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..... ;)
***
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.
