Super Nobody (Alphas and Omegas Book 1) by Brent Meske Page A

stress. Most of them start
out around our age. Mostly they just wanted to answer questions.”
And how far those questions went before they couldn't be answered
anymore? He had never heard the term confidentiality agreement
before, but he understood the idea. Somebody had to shut the truth
up, to stop knowledge from coming out.
    “I guess there are only maybe one in a
million, and we might have just seen the only Active in the whole
state.”
    Not likely, Michael thought. Then he wondered
why the school was lying to them.
    “Anyway if we see anybody doing anything
weird, we're supposed to tell a teacher or Samuelson.”
    “Whenever he gets out of the hospital.”
    “Yeah.”
    “What did they mean by weird?”
    She shook her head as they made their way out
of the school and into the fresh April air. “Like somebody jumping
off a building trying to fly. They had some pretty nasty pictures.
This kid in Idaho set himself on fire. Another one jumped in front
of a bus.”
    “Uch,” he said.
    “Yeah. Uch.” She shrugged. “I know they just
want to keep kids from trying something really crazy. Everybody
wants to be special. What they don't get is that everybody already
is special. You make the choice to be special every day. Or you
just do the normal stuff, and you tell people you're bored because
you never try to do anything awesome. You don't need to break
physics to be special.”
    Charlotte had always been pretty cool, but
Michael didn't understand until that point. It was like there was a
sunbeam shining down on her, the way she looked at the world. And
maybe Michael wasn't that dazzling, but he could definitely
recognize brilliance when the chorus of angels was singing right in
front of his face.
    Like Grandpa always said, if it looks like
poop and smells like it, no need to taste it, you've got poop. Only
Charlotte was totally the opposite. She looked, smelled and sounded
like a goddess.
    Oh no.
    Michael couldn't get her out of his head all
that day or the next. He knew something was very wrong by the way
he dreamed that he and Charlotte were flying together, because they
were both Actives. He knew something was terribly wrong when they
came nose to nose, staring soulfully into each others' eyes when he
suddenly woke up.
    Trent had made the world go wrong.
    Grandpa came over to dinner the next night,
which wasn't normal at all. Usually they had dinner together on the
weekends, or whenever his dad came back from being away. This time
it was just his mother, Michael, and Grandpa. He felt the normal
needles from his mother, all the questions about how much homework
he had, what Mr. Wozniak was teaching that day, and how interesting
history was when she was a little girl. To top that off, Grandpa
started in too.
    Was the math giving him trouble? Did any of
the other kids pick on him or look at him funny in the halls, or at
lunch time? Who was his favorite teacher? Did he ever stay after
class and talk to that teacher? What was the science all about?
    He did his best to deflect the questions with
his normal shrug shield and grunt armor, but today he had to go the
extra step of parrying by shoving extra food in his mouth. Then he
had to endure his mother glaring at him when he tried to talk with
his mouth full.
    “Michael Edward Washington Junior!” his
mother finally said. “Will you stop talking with your mouth full of
food. That is enough of that. Now, your grandfather asked you a
question.”
    Grandpa sat back and folded his arms. His
smile wasn't cruel, or triumphant either. Michael thought he was
really just amused. He probably figured out what Michael was trying
to do.
    “You don't want me to eat dinner?” he asked,
and drank some milk to show her just how good he was doing. He'd
even gotten most of his peas down his throat, which was saying
something.
    His mother didn't have much to say to that,
but Grandpa did.
    “Well kiddo, when you grow up a bit, you'll
see that adults like to have a bit of a chat over