Even as he approached from a distance, Katherine could see that Jay blanched when he first saw her. She didn't need to read his mind to know that his reaction was because of the deep frown etched into her features and the aggressive posture she currently had, and way she paced up and down next to the pay phone outside of the mall. She was annoyed for several reasons. While matters weighed heavily on her mind and did affect her mood, she was most immediately aggravated because of the low temperature and late hours for which this meeting had been set. As she stepped back and forth from one leg to another, she watched her breath condense in front of her at regular intervals.
Jay approached. "Hey," he said. He made as if to embrace her, but the look on her face and the eye roll caused him to casually drop his arms back to his sides.
She nodded.
"Nobody else is here yet?" Jay asked. The sooner they got inside, the better.
"No," she said. She looked off into the distance. It had been a long time since all of them had gotten together, since having graduated four and a half years ago they'd all gone mostly their separate ways.
The first person to contact her had been Dunbar, calling long distance from California to tell her about what he'd done with the bear. It went without saying that Katherine had told Dunbar of her own power--causing him to sulk for the perceived notion that his own was somehow diminished--but it put the idea into their heads that they should see who else had been experiencing strange things in their lives recently. Subsequently, she had found out when she'd called Jay to chat, that he'd discovered something strange about himself, too. And so here they stood, waiting to see if their meeting up together would produce answers. It was now a month after she'd been involved with the accident; Katherine had flown back from Georgia, Dunbar from California. The rest of them still lived in Maryland, however scattered they were.
"Want me to go in and reserve a table for everybody?" Jay asked.
Katherine looked at him, long and searching. She was still uncomfortable whenever he used his power around her, but she saw the logic in using it now. After a moment she nodded.
Jay looked around discretely to make sure nobody was paying attention. People had been trickling by in couples or in small groups on their way to the movies, but as it was chilly this late into fall, they mostly rushed by with their heads down, eager to get inside.
Once he'd determined it was relatively clear, he stood very still. The air next to Jay puckered, almost as if a large, Jay-sized bubble was forming next to him. It all happened rapidly; colors began to wash over the bubble's surface, and then the features formed concretely: eyes, nose, and mouth. It looked human and in fact was human; in less that thirty seconds a perfect clone of Jay stood next to the real person. It unnerved Katherine because she was never sure after he'd duplicated himself which was the real Jay.
The new duplicate smiled at Jay and then walked inside to reserve their table.
"So creepy," Katherine complained.
Jay shrugged. "Useful though."
Kath nodded, conceding.
"And," Jay said, "I don't have to feel awkward about reserving the table or sitting by myself. Because it's not me sitting by myself, it's my duplicate." He grinned.
"I wish everybody would hurry up," Katherine said.
Jay nodded. They waited in silence for several minutes. Jay whipped out his phone and began texting others to see where they were, and Katherine continued to step from one leg to the other to warm herself up. Jay got only a few responses, but soon people began to show. Dan, then Travis. Joe and Geoff came together. Dunbar was last to come, striding up with his shoulders hunched together, his hands crammed deep into his pockets. He looked angry, but that's how he always looked. Katherine could tell immediately what he was feeling, anyhow. The sudden discovery of this power of hers had made her even more reserved, since she no longer even had to ask to find out what others were feeling. Or thinking.
The only person missing was Bryant, but Katherine figured she would inform everybody about him later, when they were inside and comfortable.
There was a good deal of talk among friends, but Katherine didn't join in with the banter. Her mind was on other things. Namely, their new powers.
Dunbar came up beside her as they walked into the mall. He punched her in the shoulder, then held up his hand.
"Look, I have your power too," he said, and waved his hand just as the automatic door opened. They passed through it.
"No you don't," Kath sneered. "If you did, then you'd also be able to do this," she said.
As soon as the whole group had walked through the doors, she turned back and with a flick of her hand, slammed the automatic doors shut just as a group of teenagers tried to enter. The first two, a gangly boy and a girl with an unseasonably short skirt smacked the glass, and were then compacted by their friends.
"Jerk," said Dunbar, but Katherine laughed. Dan and Joe, had noticed too and laughed with her.
She shrugged. They left. And as soon as she dropped her hand and trotted towards the restaurant they'd chosen, the doors opened again. They heard the teenagers shout, their voices angry.
As they entered the restaurant, someone gave the name of their reservation. Jay made sure to remain innocuous and on the outskirts of the group, but that didn't stop the hostess from blinking and then saying, "Aw, a twin!"
"Yeah..." said Jay. The two Jays sat down next to each other, each smiling identically.
"Your server will be right with you," said the hostess, smiling at the Jays.
Once she had flounced back to the front of the restaurant, Jay looked around and then touched his double on the shoulder. Just as it had when he'd made the double, the air seemed to pucker. But, unlike when his double-self had formed, the color quickly drained out of the figure and it seemed to deflate until there was nobody sitting beside him. Once he'd reabsorbed his double, Jay shook his head once, blinked, and then returned to normal. He resumed looking down at the menu in an attempt to decide what to order.
"Whoa, that's really crazy," said Joe. Nobody except for Katherine had seen Jay replicate or reabsorb himself.
"It seems to be one step further than limb regeneration, something very common in lizards," said Geoff. He pushed his glasses up on his nose.
"Don't let Geoff get started," Joe cut in, albeit slowly. "He'll talk forever."
"It's interesting," said Geoff, insulted.
"It does take a bit of getting used to," said Jay. "But I want to know what everyone else can do."
Indeed, while they were all aware that they'd developed these mysterious abilities, each person's talent had not been completely displayed for the whole group. Nobody but Geoff knew it yet, but each individual had a suspicion that they were all connected somehow. That's part of the reason they'd agreed to get together, Geoff especially; although Katherine would have preferred the meeting be much earlier than nine-thirty at night in a crowded, dark bar, nobody else had been willing to come out on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. She had given in, mostly out of her desire to have everyone together in one spot. Well, almost everyone.
"Where's Bryant?" Dan asked.
Katherine sighed. "I don't know how many of you heard about that fire in Baltimore a month or two back?"
She knew perfectly well who'd known and who hadn't, but she let them answer in their own good time.
Predictably, Geoff was the only one who had heard of it, since he'd been reading every newspaper he could get a hold of for several weeks now. When Katherine had gotten nothing but blank looks from everyone else, she continued, "Well, basically, Bryant was responsible for burning down his apartment building and murder."
"Oh, you mean that horrible fire near the meat packing plant?" Dan broke in.
"Yeah," said Katherine.
"Oh man," said Jay.
"Right," said Katherine. "Well... he kind of fled the scene and has been running ever since. I only hear from him once a week or so. He only calls from pay phones. Apparently the police have charged him with homicide and arson, among some other things. So that's why he's not here."
There was a brief silence, and then Joe cut in, "So what can you guys do?"
"What can YOU do?" said Dan.
"Regrow my liver," said Joe. He smiled.
Dunbar, Katherine, and Jay laughed. Geoff had already known, but Dan had mostly guessed.
"How did you figure that out?" said Dunbar. He had just flagged the server, and now leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head.
Geoff cut in. "He was binge drinking for a month straight and didn't die."
"What?" Travis laughed.
"It wasn't a month," said Joe.
They fell quiet as the server came and distributed water to them all and then took their orders. Joe ordered an entire pitcher of Miller Lite for himself and asked if anybody wanted another pitcher for the table. When nobody spoke much except to give their order solemnly, the waitress seemed to sense the tension at the table and walked away quickly.
"Right. Two months. Sorry," Geoff said.
"What do you mean 'binge drank?'" said Katherine, calculating.
"Well, one night early on he drank as much of a keg as he possibly could for a hundred bucks," said Geoff. The group gaped at him.
"Obviously he didn't die," Jay said. It wasn't a question.
"He ended up drinking the entire keg. Took a whole night. He came home at seven in the morning as I was going to work, drunk. I took him to the hospital when he told me how much he drank...but they said his liver was fine. That he was fine. A little tired," said Geoff. He shook his head.
"That's awesome," said Dunbar, laughing with his hands splayed over his face.
"Yeah," said Geoff. "So the next month or two he drank whole kegs once or twice a week and still hasn't died."
"Ever feel sick?" said Dan.
"Sometimes," said Joe. "But I always wake up the next morning and feel fine. Like I said, my liver grows back and then I'm great!"
"Good," said Katherine sarcastically. "So if you happen to get shot in your liver you'll live. But anywhere else..."
"Shut up," said Travis.
`“Why would I get shot?” Joe drawled.
"Anyway," said Katherine, "so what else can everyone do, since that was the point of this meeting?"
"I duplicate," said Jay, and smiled.
Dunbar pounded on the table with both of his hands. "I can communicate with animals."
"So you're like an animal?" said Joe.
"I communicated with your mom like an animal last night," said Travis, to nobody in particular.
"ANYway," said Katherine. "Telekinesis and mind reading," she volunteered.
"Travis is gay," said Dan.
"That's not a power, ass," said Katherine, but laughed.
"Okay, I can see far. It helped me set a world record."
Nobody had heard about Dan competing in a national event that had also set a new world record. It wasn't surprising.
They paused when they got to Geoff. He looked around at all of them seriously before saying, "My intelligence quadrupled."
"Wish I had that power," Katherine muttered.
The table fell silent. The waitress had provided their orders, and they began to eat with a normal amount of silence and bad jokes. While Katherine didn’t feel any less uneasy. She tried to bring up the subject of their powers again but nobody seemed interested. Instead they talked about the football game. Katherine didn’t even know what teams had played, but that didn’t stop Jay, Travis, and Dan from arguing animatedly over the results. Katherine tuned them out. She took to covertly spearing food with her fork without using her hands.
Dunbar finally took notice and elbowed her in the side.
“Ow,” she complained. “Jerk.”
“Don’t do that so obviously,” he said.
“Why not?” Katherine asked, but she already knew the answer and agreed with him wholeheartedly.
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice quiet. “I just feel like we should keep this stuff quiet.”
Katherine grinned and pushed the rest of her food around her plate. “Want this?” she asked, pointing to her mangled chicken tenders. Dunbar snatched them off her plate before she could revoke her offer.
“Yeah,” she finally said. “But you mean like… someone’s out to get us? That kind of quiet?”
Dunbar shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Paranoid,” said Katherine, but it worried her that he felt the same way she did. It was a heavy feeling. She didn’t like it. It made her nauseous.
Jay had been listening. “What I want to know,” he said, “is how we all got this way. I mean it’s not just like… a random mutation, right?”
Geoff caught wind of their conversation. Dan, Travis, and Joe still bickered among themselves.
“It actually could be a mutation,” said Geoff, thoughtfully. “Of course, it wouldn’t be random. It could just be the next step in evolution.”
“Nope,” said Dunbar. “Doesn’t make sense. If it did, we would have noticed weird things in our relatives before us. That’s how evolution works. Especially this kind of evolution. And we would have noticed it for a hundred generations back, not just in one leap like this.”
Geoff rolled his eyes. “I know that,” he said. “What if it’s environmental?”
“What could cause mutation in the environment? Have you walked around any nuclear reactors lately?” Katherine snapped.
“No,” said Jay.
“Yes,” said Dunbar.
“I live next to a nuclear reactor,” said Travis.
Geoff fell silent again and began to rub his chin. Joe noticed.
“Uh oh,” said Joe. “He’s thinking again!”
Geoff raised an arm. “I want to figure this out.”
He ignored them for the rest of the dinner, long enough for Joe to order two more pitchers of beer, until Dunbar made him stop so that they didn’t look too conspicuous. Jay flirted with the waitress, got her number, and Katherine frowned at everyone when she didn’t have enough money to pay the bill. “I know you guys have it,” she said. “I know how much is in each of your wallets.” After that, she was given some more rumpled bills. The last was from Travis. His bills were immaculate. Crisp, smooth.
“Hey wait,” she said. “Travis, what’s your power?”
“I already told you,” Travis said.
“No you didn’t,” said Jay. “What is it?”
“I can do your mom. And she likes it. That’s my power.”
They laughed. But that didn’t stop them from prodding at Travis, trying to elicit an answer. Finally, Dunbar turned to Katherine.
“What can Travis do?” he asked her.
Katherine looked at Travis, a keen and penetrating gaze. He looked back, meeting
her eyes steadily. She smiled.
“I’d rather not say.”
“Travis, quit mind-raping her because she likes it,” Dan said. “You might get her pregnant.”
“Gross,” said Katherine. She threw her napkin at Dan. It landed in the remnants of his Miller. He picked it out and drank the dregs anyway.
“If you don’t want to tell us, fine. It must be embarrassing,” said Jay.
“No,” said Katherine. “It’s just illegal.”
“Ooooh!” said Joe. “Really?”
Everyone broke into cajoling him once more. Their voices became a cacophony, overwhelming many of the other restaurant patrons. Finally he held up his hands and said,
“Well if you must know, I figured out I can—”
At that moment, the waitress finally returned with their change and receipt. Travis' voice died. She smiled at them, lingering particularly on Jay, and said, “You all have a good one, okay?”
They demurely agreed and shuffled out without another word. Once they were out in the parking lot though, it wasn’t Travis who broke the silence about his power, but Geoff.
“What is the one thing we have in common?” he asked.
“We’re all men,” said Dan.
“Besides that,” said Dunbar. He ruffled Katherine’s hair when she sighed audibly.
“Stupid question,” Katherine pointed out, “if you’re looking for something that binds us all together. Too broad.”
“Okay, well then how about something more basic. We all like to drink. In fact—”
“Where are you getting this?” Travis asked.
“I studied Joe when he first started… using his power,” said
Geoff. He held his hands out, as if to say, obviously.
“You did?” asked Joe.
They had reached the group of cars they’d taken. As usual, Katherine’s
was no where to be seen. She’d gotten there too early to park with the
group and nobody remembered what kind of car she drove anyway.
“Of course I did. I thought there had to be some kind of medical basis for this,” Geoff said, and once more he was cut off.
“What are you, a doctor?” Dunbar said.
“Super intelligence!” Geoff reminded them, pointing to himself.
“Trust me. If you’d done as many New York Times crosswords and Sudoku
puzzles as I have, you’d be sure too.”
Dunbar sulked. “I can do Sudoku,” he muttered. No one paid attention.
"I took some of Joe's blood even after the hospital did. It was the only
way I could be sure," Geoff said. "Anyway, he had high levels of alcohol
in his blood. I also... spoke to some of the doctors that attended to him while
he was in the hospital. They said that by all accounts he should have died when
he drank that first keg. They didn't understand it."
It was true; Joe had simply forgotten about the blood since he'd come home too drunk the past few months anyway. In truth, Geoff had been working hard. His room was now lined with library books from floor to ceiling, and when he wasn't leisure reading, he was studying Joe's charts and making elaborate time lines. In the middle of their living room now stood a giant white board on an easel; it was full of Geoff's scrawlings: equations, tables, charts, and notes scribbled in the corners. He had also, between long periods of intensive research, discovered a taste for refined red wine, a love of cooking exotic desserts--it was closer to a science with a dash of artistry than mere following directions!-- and had begun to reproduce masterpieces on small square canvasses. He had found his favorite medium so far was oil, and his favorite artist to reproduce was Salvador Dali.
"So?" said Travis.
"So," said Geoff, "what if it's the Miller that gave Joe his powers?"
"That's stupid," said Katherine. She stood a little apart from the group, her hands crossed over her chest.
"What, that Miller caused or powers, or that we have powers?" said Dan.
"Both!" Katherine shouted. "The whole thing is stupid. We shouldn't have powers, let alone stupid ones caused by drinking beer."
"What's wrong with drinking beer?" said Joe.
"Nothing. It just couldn't have caused the mutations or whatever," said Katherine.
"You mean it's unlikely that it caused anything," said Dunbar.
Katherine glared at him. "So nobody cares that it's a ridiculous theory then," she said. "We just assume that's what happened. Period. We all mutated because we drink Miller."
"High Life, actually," said Geoff. "Joe's blood contained a compound I've never seen before. And it was bonded to a molecule of--"
"I don't get it," said Joe.
"Shh," said Dunbar, whose brow was furrowed in concentration.
"Well if you guys don't want to know, then I won't tell you," Geoff said. He'd begun to be annoyed with the constant interruptions of his friends.
"Proceed," said Dunbar.
Geoff looked around for several moments while the group looked on in silence, until he knew it was safe to begin speaking again. Katherine thought to herself that he must be used to this by now, that trying to explain anything in a serious tone of voice to everyone assembled was like trying to get out of quicksand by opening one's fly.
Then he took a slow breath. "We know that the liver breaks down alcohols thanks to an enzyme, alcohol dehydrogenase, and then turns it into acetic acid. Right? So then everything's converted into fats, CO2, or water. Then people who drink a lot develop scarring in their liver and then die. But what if this strange molecule allows you to drink properly, and just keep going? What if it inhibits you from developing this scarring? At least in Joe's case?"
"That doesn't account for the rest of us," Katherine muttered.
"Right, well, there's always the radioactive part that I didn't tell you about," Geoff said again. He blinked several times pointedly at Katherine.
"Radioactive?" yelled Joe. "You never said I was radioactive!"
"Your mom is radioactive," said Dan, who was beginning to get bored. Travis' and Jay's attentions had also drifted; Jay was on his phone texting.
"The whole thing doesn't make sense," said Katherine. "How can you just know these things?" She already knew some of the answers to these questions, or could know them in an instant, but for politeness' sake, stayed out of Geoff's mind. Katherine was about to probe further, annoyed that they still didn't have solid answers, when Dunbar cut her off.
"What's that?" he said, pointing.
A convoy of five black Escalades was making their way towards them, from the outer rim of the parking lot.
"Who, not what?" Katherine said.
"Let's get out of here," Travis said.
Katherine could tell that none of them, including herself, knew just what the Escalades were doing, but the fact that they were now barreling straight down the same row as they were instilled a feeling of dread in all of them. Katherine could feel it, thick. They all began to pile into two cars: Travis with Joe and Geoff in the Mustang, Jay and Dunbar in the Lexus. Katherine started to jog back to her car, but Jay shouted out the window.
"Don't be stupid!" he said. "Get in! There's no time!"
She did, just as the Escalades broke out of their line formation and began to box the three smaller cars in. Jay yanked the wheel and peeled out of the lot. Travis easily evaded them, pulling ahead of Jay, tires spinning. But the two of the lead Cadillacs whipped right around and were pursuing them.
Jay was already on his phone.
"What should we do?" he shouted to Travis. He yanked the wheel to avoid a curb and then straightened out. Travis pulled ahead.
"I don't know."
"Split up!"
So they did, veering in different directions on Route 100. Travis chose first, heading east towards Annapolis. Jay conceded and chose west, back towards Columbia and Ellicott City. With a guarantee from Katherine, he agreed to stick to main roads and quickly exited onto I-95 south. It was going to be a long night, especially with two of the five cars still following them. They assumed the rest of the vehicles had gone after Travis.
"You have to go faster, Jay," Dunbar said. He held onto the door handle tightly, knuckles white.
"But it's my dad's car," Jay said hesitantly.
"Do it Jay, or we'll get caught and something terrible will happen," Katherine shouted from the back seat.
"Why can't you do something?!" Jay shouted at her, frustration on the edge of his voice as he swerved around three cars, drifted over a lane and a half, and jerked them back into the farthest left lane safely. The Cadillac that was trailing them sped up.
"Yeah, do something!' Dunbar shouted, as the car sped up and bumped them. The impact shook the car and would have sent them into the jersey barriers on their left, if it hadn't been for Jay's quick reflexes.
"I can't!" Katherine shrieked.
"You did it before!" Dunbar grabbed her as the other Cadillac came up on their right and smashed into them. Glass broke. The windows. At the same moment, Dunbar lunged to the right. He pushed her down, and the movement shocked her. Her right arm swung out. Katherine felt the heat before she realized what was happening, and at the same time, the Cadillac flew away from them, its wheels off the ground, hitting two other cars in the other lanes. The subsequent accidents forced the other black Escalade off the road; Jay had managed to keep going, the damage to the driver's side of the car minimal.
The distance between the vehicles grew larger. Already the accidents, visible now by only a grey haze of smoke, were growing dimmer. They were still going.
"What the hell was that?" Jay shouted as the wind whipped around them.
Nobody said anything for a while. They drove on into the dark, not heading towards anywhere in particular. Just south.
Finally, Katherine said, "I don't know. Whatever it is though, it can't be good."