“Don’t drop me this time,” Kaitlyn Danvers snarked as she got between two other girls and put her arms around their shoulders. The first time they practiced this, they had dropped her as soon as her feet were off the ground. They argued it was better to drop her then than opposed to when she was up in the air. Kaitlyn still told everyone that they made out in the locker room after practice.
Within seconds, Kaitlyn was up in the air, being held by the other two girls. Then, in synchronization, Kaitlyn jumped as the others pushed and she went up into the air, twirling as she did but instead of falling down, she hovered. The other girl was already back down to Earth and looking up at Kaitlyn with the rest of them. Kaitlyn then opened her eyes, realized she was still in the air, then fell to the ground.
She landed hard and the other girls were afraid she was injured or dead but Kaitlyn easily got up and got in their faces. “What the hell? Why didn’t you catch me?”
“You…You were floating in air. Didn’t you notice that?” they said. “Are you okay? You hit the ground pretty hard.”
“Kaitlyn. Oh, dear. Are you okay?” the coach ran over to her. “Are you hurt? Anything broken?”
“No. I need to new people to throw me into the air and catch me,” she sneered.
“We’ll see. Why don’t we call practice early? Head into the locker room and get washed up.”
In the locker room, Kaitlyn changed from her cheerleading outfit and into her normal clothes. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Annie came up to her. “You landed pretty hard.”
“I’m fine. I didn’t even feel it.”
“That’s even weirder,” Annie said.
“I’m fine,” Kaitlyn said angrily. “If Ashley and Britta had caught me, I wouldn’t have landed hard on the ground.”
“You were floating in mid-air,” Annie said. “That’s why no one was able to catch you.”
“I wasn’t floating. I was just launched too high so it just looked like I was floating.”
“We all know what we saw, Kaitlyn.”
“I wasn’t floating. Now, leave me alone,” Kaitlyn slammed her locker shut causing the row to tip over. Everyone looked at the lockers now on the floor. “I…” Kaitlyn
stammered and then turned and ran away.
Kaitlyn arrived at home where her parents were in the kitchen doing dishes. She assumed they were doing more than doing dishes before the door opened because why were they in the kitchen doing dishes together when they had a dishwasher at five in the afternoon? “Hi, Kaitlyn. How was practice?” Mary, her mother, asked, handing a plate to Harold, her father, to put into the dishwasher.
“My group dropped me,” she scoffed with a mixture of anger and sarcasm as she opened the refrigerator to grab a bottle of tea. “Idiots were paying attention to something else and couldn’t be bothered to catch me.”
“Were you hurt?” Harold asked?
“She’s here and she’s walking so she must be okay,” Mary said.
“Yeah, I’m fine. It didn’t hurt and didn’t feel a thing when I landed,” Kaitlyn said, cracking open her bottle of tea and taking a drink.
Harold and Mary looked at each other. “Do you think…?” Mary asked.
“She’s not paralyzed or dead.”
“Didn’t feel a thing,” Mary shrugged.
“Are you guys having a stroke?” Kaitlyn sneered.
“Think we should tell her?” Mary asked.
“If she wants to know,” Harold turned away from Mary and looked at Kaitlyn. “Kaitlyn, do you want to go somewhere with me tonight?”
“What?”
“You don’t have to,” Mary said. “We just think you need to know and it will explain why you fell from twenty feet in the air and didn’t feel a thing.”
“It was just a fluke. I landed just right or something,” Kaitlyn waved and turned around to leave. “I don’t need to go hang out with my dad to know what happened. I was
there.”
As Kaitlyn left the kitchen, a coffee mug flew across the room and hit her in the head. It shattered on impact and the pieces fell to the floor. “Harold, don’t throw coffee mugs at our daughter,” Mary huffed. “What if our thoughts about her were wrong?”
“What the hell?” Kaitlyn turned back around to look at her parents and then down at the pieces of the coffee mug.
“She’s my girl so I didn’t really think they were wrong,” Harold smiled.
“You threw a coffee cup at me?” Kaitlyn yelled.
“But you barely felt it, right?” Harold asked.
“Yeah.”
“I think you need to come with me tonight.”
Harold and Kaitlyn climbed the stairs to the top of an apartment building downtown. There was an elevator but Harold said it didn’t go up to the top floor. When they got to the top, the stairs ended at a giant steel door. “What are we doing here? What is this?” Kaitlyn asked.
“I needed a place to go—to separate my home life from my other life,” Harold said as he punched in a code and the door opened up. It looked like a laboratory behind the door. It took up the entire top floor. Kaitlyn wondered if the tenants living below knew this was here.
“Other life? Are you a mad scientist?” Kaitlyn joked as she looked around the lab. “What are we going to do tonight, Dad? Try to take over the world?” she giggled.
When she turned back to Harold, he had pulled his shirt open to reveal a blue uniform with a giant gold star on his chest. As he removed the rest of his civilian clothes, he revealed the rest of his blue uniform and flowing yellow cape. “I’m Captain Starman.”
Kaitlyn rolled her eyes. “I knew it.”
“No you didn’t,” Harold argued.
“You are all over the news. I know what my own father looks like even with that stupid mask.”
“Your mom was iffy on the mask, too. Yet she demanded the cape.”
“Capes are cool. Anyway, why are we here?”
“Well, to tell you that I’m a superhero and, based on what you experienced today, you have powers, too.”
“Really?”
“I threw a coffee cup at your head and it shattered but you barely felt it touch you,” Harold said. “And I called your cheerleading coach about your fall today and you were floating in the air before the crashed down to Earth. You can levitate. You can fly.” To show her, Harold levitated a couple feet off the floor.
“I can fly?” Kaitlyn looked at her father and then at her feet. With limited concentration, she was able to levitate just like him. She went higher and then shifted her body so it actually looked like she was flying. “Oh my God, this is amazing. How are you…we…this way?”
“It’s the same old story. Strange visitor from another planet, a part of a space police force assigned to this planet, fell in love with an Earth woman, and had a wonderful little girl,” Harold explained. “We weren’t sure you had powers but always kept that thought in the back of our minds.”
“So what now?” Kaitlyn asked.
A light began flashing on a screen on the large screen against the wall. Harold looked over and frowned. “There’s a robbery in progress at Central National Bank. Want to come with me?”
“Last one there is strange visitor from another planet,” Kaitlyn laughed and quickly flew out the window. Harold, a couple seconds later, followed.
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