The Last Hero (Book 1): Ultra (4 page)

I
knew
I was probably a little over-ambitious when I planned on not being noticed at school after yesterday’s fake-shit embarrassment.

When I felt something hit the back of my head as I sat in the middle of the geography classroom, I knew it’d be a long time before attention turned from me.

It was two o’clock, and the day was dragging like hell. It was sunny outside as summer progressed, which made me just want to get out into that sunlight more than anything. New York was funny like that. Winter was ridiculously cold, and then spring and summer came out of nowhere, bringing along droves of tourists, making every single classroom eternally sweaty.

I pulled against the front of my shirt and watched the clock as Mrs. Porter droned on and on about erosion and the ice caps and global warming and blah blah blah.

The sooner this day was over, the better.

I didn’t want to look around, but I knew from the occasional sniggers and whispers that they were directed at me. I was the news of the day, it turned out. Everyone who didn’t know about fake-shit-gate now
did
know, and there were variations of the story going round, like me running back to the toilets with poop trailing down my leg, me getting ready to kick the football only to squirt out a poop—yeah, a lot of poop related variants. Perhaps my favorite imaginative story was the one where apparently, I was pooping in the same loo as Mr. Preacher, my history teacher. That there was something weird going on between us. Even though Mr. Preacher’s only link to this whole thing was Mike Beacon making an impression of his damned voice.

I wanted to dismiss the rumors. To expose them for their ridiculousness.

But I wasn’t the kind of guy who stood up to people, so I had to just make do with laying as low as I possibly could and laughing off as best as I could.

I looked at the floor beside me. Saw there was a crumpled up note. That must’ve been what hit the side of my head. I could see some of Mike Beacon’s friends at that side of the classroom, so I knew it must be something they’d done.

Unsure of whether to keep on ignoring them or not, I decided to reach down and pick the note up. I opened it.

I wished I hadn’t.

It was a rather detailed, imaginative drawing of me, believe it or not. I was crouching down over a toilet, questionable substances squeezing out of my backside. Tears poured out of my eyes in a cartoonish manner.

A speech bubble: “I’ve got the squirts, sir! I’ve got the squirts!”

The weirdest part of all was the sketch of Mr. Preacher standing in front of me, his you-know-what in his hands. He sure looked like he was enjoying himself.

I heard the sniggers again and knew what Mike Beacon’s friends were trying to do. They were spreading the rumors about Mr. Preacher, about me going crying to him, even though that wasn’t what happened. I wanted to glare back at them. Truth be told, I hadn’t slept too well. Never did sleep too well when something went down with my parents. I’d spent ’til late just sitting beside my dad in the living room, waiting for him to come around and apologize to Mom.

When they finally went to bed at 2.a.m., I closed my eyes and disappeared into a four-hour sleep. A restless one at that.

“Kyle? Are you with us?”

Mrs. Porter. Shit.

“Um, I—”

“I hope it’s global warming you’re thinking so deeply about, young man,” she said, in that sarcastic drone. She was a short woman, quite plump, with thick-rimmed glasses atop her bulbous nose.

I felt my cheeks getting warmer. Mrs. Porter wasn’t the kind to take any prisoners. “Yeah. I was just, erm… I was thinking about how warm it is. For—for early summer. Whether that has anything to do with… with global, um, warming.”

I heard a few sniggers around the class. Mrs. Porter narrowed her eyes. “Oh, that’s interesting. ’Cause we finished talking about global warming a good half hour ago.”

Shit. A Porter trap. A Porter trap I’d fallen right into.

“Sorry, miss,” I said.

“Oh, don’t apologize to me. Apologize to your classmates for holding up their lesson.”

I nodded.

When I realized Mrs. Porter wasn’t adding anything to her demands, I realized she was serious.

“Go on,” she said. “Turn around to each and every one of your classmates, look them in the eyes and say sorry.”

“Miss, I—”

“What’s up, Kyle?” someone at the back of the class said. “Need another poop?”

The class filled with laughter. I felt my face heating up. I didn’t know what to say or what to do, just that I wanted out of here.

“Stand up,” Mrs. Porter said. “Look into each and every one of your classmates’ eyes and say sorry.”

“But I—”

“Just do it, Kyle.”

I gritted my teeth. My heart pounded. I didn’t want to do this. I just wanted to get out of this mess, one way or another. This was a nightmare. This was hell. I didn’t think I could sink any lower than I already had. Evidently, I was wrong.

I pulled back my chair. Better to just get it over and done with.

I looked around at my classmates. Looked at each and every one of them. I saw them trying to hold in their laughter. Saw some of them staring at me like I was weird.

And then I saw Ellicia.

Her glasses were at the edge of her desk so I could see right into her eyes. Weird how different someone looked when they didn’t have their glasses on. Ellicia looked amazing either way.

She wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t laughing. She was just looking at me differently to all the others. And I figured that was okay. If Ellicia was looking at me like she was, then nothing else mattered. Sure, she had to find what happened yesterday hilarious, but as long as she didn’t mock me right now, everything was fine.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “For—”

“Zip your fly up, Kyle, for hell’s sakes!”

I heard the voice from the back of the class. From Harry Walker, one of Mike Beacon’s best friends. And then I heard the class around him erupt into laughter.

No. I’d zipped my flies up. This was a joke. It had to be a…

When I looked down at the front of my pants, I saw it wasn’t a joke.

My flies were unzipped.

My red, stripy boxer shorts were on show.

I listened to the chorus of laughter and felt my face burning to melting point. I looked around at everyone. Saw each and every one of them laughing, and I wished right then I could go full Carrie on them.

But when I saw Ellicia smiling, trying to hold back the laughter, a new feeling sparked inside me.

I felt upset. Like someone had converted my embarrassment into madness, into anger.

And then I felt a tingling sensation shoot up my body.

I squeezed my hands together.

Gritted my teeth.

And then I heard the blast.

The laughter disappeared. It turned into screams. A few yelps of shock.

I felt a breeze hit my face. My heart still pounded. I didn’t know what’d happened.

Not until I looked to my right and saw the windows had smashed.

“Everybody outside!” Mrs. Porter shouted. She rushed over to the alarm and hit it. And I could sense the fear in the air. The panic. Gun crime was just something that happened in the modern world. The windows had smashed. Someone was here. Someone was on our campus. Something was happening.

I watched my classmates rush past me and felt like they were moving in slow motion, like everything around me was unfolding in slow motion.

I heard their screams, smelled their sweat, but I couldn’t take my attention away from that moment.

That moment I’d felt the tingling in my body.

The upset.

The anger.

The moment I’d squeezed my fists together and heard the windows smash.

But more than anything, I couldn’t focus on anything but the windows.

The glass wasn’t inside the classroom.

The windows had smashed from the inside.

“Come on, Kyle,” Mrs. Porter said. She put a hand on my back. “We’ll deal with you later.”

I stood still for a few seconds. Listened to the alarm ring through the school, the panic spread like wildfire to more of the classrooms.

And then I took a deep breath and followed the rest of the crowd out of the class, out of the school.

I didn’t think much else about the incident in the classroom for the rest of the day. Mostly because I was just relieved to be able to leave school early.

It felt a bit surreal. Like something… weird had happened to me, sure. I felt a bit strange.

But nowhere near as strange as I was about to feel.

Nowhere as strange as what was ahead.

W
hen Damon told
me he was taking me somewhere to forget about the problems of the last two days, a soccer game was
not
what I was expecting.

“It’ll be fun,” Damon said, as we walked towards the Yankee Stadium to see New York City FC. The floodlights were bright. I could see other people walking towards the stadium entrance, hear the crowd inside with all their noise and… well, racket that I didn’t enjoy, and wanted to steer far away from. The smell of dingy hotdog stands was strong in the air, making me want to hurl.

“How in any way, shape or form do you think I’d find this fun?”

“It’s football,” Damon said, grinning. He chewed down on some pink cotton candy. He was wearing a New York Yankees shirt that looked way too small for his bulbous belly, and his hair was swept back behind his ears in a way that I’d never seen him attempt before. “It’s what manly men do.”

“No,” I said, trying to keep my cool, as impossible as that was. “This is
soccer
. It’s not football.”

“Football and soccer are the same things, right?”

“No. No, they aren’t. Not unless you’re British.”

“I’m not British.”

“Then this isn’t a football game we’re going to.”

The realization clicked on Damon’s face. His eyes widened. “Oh. So this… this
isn’t
football?”

I shook my head and sighed. I wasn’t in the mood for dicking around right now. “We shouldn’t be here. We should… we should just go back.”

Damon smacked my back. “No chance.” He pushed me forward so I edged towards the turnstiles faster than I’d have liked.

“Damon, please—”

“Coming through!” Damon said. People glared at me as Damon nudged me past them. I tried to fight free of Damon, to run away from him, but before I knew it, I was at the turnstiles, the security guy glaring at me and asking for my ticket.

“Still want to back out?” Damon asked, a piece of cotton candy dangling from his chin.

I sighed. “I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”

We pushed our way inside the stadium. Truth be told, it was a lot more crowded than I thought soccer matches got. Soccer was kind of like football’s weak cousin here in the States. It was big in Europe, and the rest of the world, but from what I gathered from… well, the people around me and online who had a moderate interest in sport, soccer was dull. Which I found hard to accept seeing as I couldn’t think of anything duller than football.

We stepped out into the seating area. The field was massive and very green. The people around me all sipping their beers, eating their fast food… they just looked different to me right off the bat. Like they were supposed to be here; like they were comfortable here.

“Where we sat?” I asked Damon.

Damon shrugged. “I dunno.”

“Well, why don’t you have a look at the tickets and figure it out from there?”

Damon flipped his ticket over. Squinted at it, still chewing down on cotton candy, some of it trailing down the side of his mouth. “Row 35. Seat 122. So that should be…”

Both of us looked over to where we were supposed to be sitting.

For a moment, I was relieved to see those two empty seats. I just wanted to sit down and turn the attention from myself. I could feel people looking at me, probably judging me already.

But then I saw who was in the seat next to the empty ones.

Ellicia.

“We’re leaving.”

“What? Kyle? Hey, Kyle!”

I started to turn around and walk away when I felt Damon’s hand grab my arm, pull me back. It drew a few dodgy glances from some of the spectators around us. A steward narrowed his eyes, paid close attention. Just what I needed. Another way to humiliate myself right in front of Ellicia.

“What you think you’re doing?” Damon asked.

“Ellicia’s there.”

“And?”

“And? I can’t be next to Ellicia. Not after the last few days. I just want… however the hell many minutes away from the school types. Not this.”

“But man, I thought you’d like—”

“I’m catching the subway home,” I said, as much as the thought of doing that alone terrified me. “I’ll see you at… Wait. You thought I’d like what?”

Damon lowered his head. He cleared his throat. “I found out Ellicia was going. Heard a few of her friends talking about it.”

I felt anger tingling inside. “You—”

“Hear me out, man. I’m just… I just thought it’d be good for you. Spend some time with the girl of your dreams.”

I laughed. “The girl of my dreams? Dreams is the key word there, Damon. I don’t stand a chance with her. Not one chance.”

“She thinks you’re cool, man,” Damon said. “Just give her a chance.”

“Me give her a chance? You’re not getting what I’m saying. She thinks I’m hilarious.”

“That’s not a bad thing.”

“No, I mean the bad kind of hilarious.”

“And how the hell did you come to that conclusion?”

“She laughed at me in geography.”

“Oh,” Damon said. He scratched his head. “Yeah, that is kind of decisive. Sorry. Feel free to leave.”

I couldn’t believe right then that my own best friend had done this to me. He knew how much of a wuss I was when it came to girls—and when it came to anything, for that matter. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to trust him again.

But then again, I knew he only had my best intentions at heart. As much of a daft move as it was, he gave a damn about my best interests, and this only went to show it.

“Damon, I’m sorry. I appreciate this. Really. But I can’t be here.”

Damon shook his head. “You’re gonna be like this your whole life if you aren’t careful.”

I let out a sigh. “And that’s my problem to deal with—”

“Kyle?”

The voice wasn’t Damon’s. It wasn’t anybody’s nearby.

In fact, it wasn’t even a male voice.

It was a female.

Ellicia.

Damon stepped aside. Ellicia was leaning across the empty seats. Her dark hair glistened in the spark of the floodlights. Her smile lit me up inside.

“Wow. It actually is you!”

I felt my face redden. I scratched the back of my neck, which tickled. I could feel myself getting warm. “Yeah. Hi.” It was about as much as I could manage.

We stood there for a few seconds. Ellicia frowned. I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know where to go.

The most remarkable thing about all this?

Ellicia was acting… nice.

“Well, are you sitting or are you standing?”

“Oh,” I said. I looked at Damon, who raised his eyebrows, then back towards Ellicia. “Well, didn’t want to take my chances. Thought I’d better stay close to the restrooms.”

I knew the joke—or
attempt
at a joke—was awful and awkward and all kinds of self-deprecating horrible right away.

But something else strange happened.

Ellicia started to laugh.

I felt myself easing as she laughed. As she actually genuinely laughed at my joke. And I started to wonder if maybe sitting next to her and watching the game wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

So I did it. I swallowed my nerves, fought every urge inside telling me to run away far away from here, and I walked down the row and sat beside Ellicia.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever been this close to her. Funny when you’re close to someone. You notice things you didn’t even know existed when you were far away. A little gap between the teeth. A little freckle under the eye. The smell of sweet perfume.

Hell, more than anything, I noticed just how much more beautiful Ellicia actually was than I’d realized.

I didn’t think that was possible. But it was.

And I was sat next to her.

And she was smiling at me.

This was not a dream.

I didn’t say anything for a while. I listened to the loudspeaker announce the teams and stood up to clap. That’s when Ellicia leaned over.

“Never knew you were into soccer,” she said.

Shit. Shit. What was the cool thing to say?

“Yeah,” I said. “Pretty big fan.”

“Oh yeah? Who’s your favorite player?”

Shitting shit.

I scanned my limited sports knowledge for the name of any random player.

“Um, Andy Murray, probably.”

Ellicia burst out laughing. Her friend, who I recognized as Sally from school, did too.

“What?” I asked, feeling totally uneasy about what I’d just said. “You… you not like him?”

“Oh, I like Andy Murray,” Ellicia said. “Just I didn’t know he was such a big soccer player, being one of the best tennis players in the world, of course.”

If a hole opened up in the earth right now, I’d happily plunge myself right into it.

“It’s okay,” Ellicia said, nudging my arm. “Everybody’s gotta start somewhere.”

It took me a little longer to realize what’d just occurred. Not only had I just made a complete and utter fool of myself in front of Ellicia; she’d let me off the hook. Again.

Nothing of the like had ever happened to me before.

I genuinely didn’t know what to do, what to say, what to
think
.

Something else weird happened. We small talked. We chatted. Ellicia asked what my plans were for the summer. She asked me about my plans when I finally graduated from high school, and when I told her I was planning on taking a few months in paid work experience at a local law firm before moving on to college, I was relieved to hear she was staying local too, her heart set on Columbia.

And then the weirdest weird of all happened.

“Are you going to the party, then?”

Funnily enough, I hadn’t really thought much about the end of year party. I’d never been to a single one, and I’d never had any plans to go. I mean, why would I go? I was a loser. I wasn’t likely to be going with anyone. And I’d be even funnier and even more notable by my lack of a companion.

I dreamed of going to the party with Ellicia. But that wasn’t happening.

And now here she was, asking me about the party.

I wanted to say yes. I wanted to tell her that I was going and that she was coming with me. I wanted to hold her in my arms while the crowd cheered and press my lips against hers.

But of course, what did I do?

“Nah. I’m not going.”

I felt Damon smack me in the ribs and tried to keep my cool.

Ellicia lowered her head, turned her gorgeous blue eyes away from mine. “Oh. Oh, well… well, that’s a shame.”

Idiot. She’s disappointed. She’s actually disappointed.

I couldn’t end it like this. I could tell her the truth.

She was disappointed I wasn’t going to the party.

The girl of my dreams was disappointed I wasn’t going to the party, and I was letting her be disappointed.

“Actually—”

The crowd lifted from their seats. I took an elbow to the chin, from Ellicia, which made my head spin.

Ellicia laughed as the crowd, Damon included, roared around me, celebrating a goal. She grabbed my arm. Pulled me up. Smiled and laughed. “Sorry,” she said, grinning after the knock to the mouth.

I found myself looking back at her as she kept her hand on my arm.

I found myself looking into her eyes and smiling.

I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her right then that I was going to the party. Because I could feel it. I could feel the warmth in my chest. I could feel that sensation that they always tell you about in movies. The sensation where you just
know
someone is interested.

I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t think I’d ever been as happy as I was at this moment right now.

And then I heard a few blasts, a few screams, and saw a man with a rifle firing into the crowd.

Just meters away.