Telling Cass

He told her everything the next afternoon, sitting on the bench by the old canal, not far from the bridge where he had met Marcus, which felt appropriate in a way he could not quite explain.

He told her about the flowerpot and the click and the ten seconds. He told her about the two weeks of testing and the notebook. He told her about the tiredness and the rules he had worked out and the nineteen activations and the seven times it had not activated and what those had needed instead.

He told her about the bridge. He had not told anyone about that night yet and it came out more slowly than the rest, and Cass listened to all of it without saying anything, which was one of her best qualities.

When he finished she was quiet for a moment.

Then she said: "Nineteen times. In three months."

"Yes," he said.

"And you did all of that alone," she said.

"Yes."

"That must have been quite heavy," she said.

He looked at the canal. "It was," he said. "A bit."

Cass opened the bag of snacks she had brought and put it between them on the bench, which was her way of signalling that this was a normal conversation between two normal people who happened to be discussing something unusual, and that was fine.

"What do you want to do with it?" she asked. "Going forward."

"Keep doing what I am doing," he said. "I do not think I have a choice about the activations, they just happen. But the other times. The times when it is not that kind of situation. I want to be better at those. I want to notice them more and respond better."

"You were pretty good on the bridge," Cass said.

"I was terrified on the bridge," he said.

"Yes," she said. "And you stayed anyway. That is what matters."

He thought about that.

"Do you want help?" Cass asked. "I am not going to suddenly develop a superpower to match yours, I think. But I can notice things too. And I can be there for the bits that are not ten seconds."

Eli looked at her. She was eating a biscuit and looking at the canal with the calm and practical expression she used when she was being serious without making a big thing of it.

"Yes," he said. "I would like that."

"Good," she said. "Then that is what we will do."

They sat on the bench by the canal for another hour, talking about other things, normal things, school and the weekend and a film they both wanted to see. The city moved around them, ordinary and full of people, each one carrying their own weight of things, most of it invisible from the outside.

Eli felt the particular lightness of having put something down that you have been carrying for a while.

He still did not think of himself as a superhero. The word felt too large and too costumed for what was actually happening. Superheroes wore capes and stopped bank robberies. He was a twelve-year-old boy who got ten seconds back sometimes and occasionally said the right thing to a stranger on a bridge.

But he thought that whatever he was, he was slightly better at it now than he had been an hour ago.

That felt like enough for today.

He finished his biscuit and watched a narrowboat move slowly along the canal, its windows lit orange from inside, someone visible through the glass moving around in what looked like a small warm kitchen.

***The End***