Hero Types

Chapter 6

"Your book reports are due today."
That, Kit was sure, was the sound of her impending doom. Ms. Bernard stopped in front of her desk, fingernails tapping expectantly.
"Um..." She swallowed. "I—I don't have it."
"Where is it?"
She mumbled something about getting it in next class. Ms. Bernard pursed her lips and moved down the line to further enact her reckoning.
Kit could barely keep herself awake for the rest of class. Every few minutes she would catch herself nodding off and sit up with a jolt. She was glad that she had been too tired to wear makeup: she needed to rub her eyes.
She would blink and adjust her chair and stare at the board full of literature quotes and paragraphical analyzations, and her mind would drift back to the night before.
It had been two weeks since the incident in the bank. Howe and Lucas had been frequenting news reports and police station cork-boards, and there remained no new word on the mysterious man with the headlamp. Three more refrigerators had gone missing, and Kit had spent long hours mapping out and gathering information on the occurrences, convinced that it was all somehow connected.
Mardie was showing no signs of regaining her powers.
The night before had been a welcome, if not taxing, break from the head-banging frustration of a dead-end manhunt. She and Jersey had gone after and apprehended the Jaguar, dropping her off outside the City Prison in chains at 4 am. and speeding away with covered up license plates.
She had grabbed that morning's paper on her way to school, and it now sat rolled up in her bag. They had made page three:

Jaguar apprehended, Midnight Ghost and Reflecto-Girl at work again!

And then, underneath that:

Jewelry store robbed blind!
Sunder's and Co. Jewelers were broken into last night at approximately 12 am. Officials say nothing was broken, and the alarms were intact. The cash register has purportedly been emptied of $200. No jewels are reported missing at this time.

Kit could think of only one person who would go through the trouble of seamlessly breaking into a jewelry store only to grab some cash and ditch. Mickey was definitely keeping himself busy.
BRRING!
Kit hooked her bag out of her shoulder and waited for the group to funnel through the door.
"Kit."
Her stomach sank. She turned around.
"Come here for a second."
She trudged up to Ms. Bernard's desk. Her teacher laced her fingers and regarded her, a furrow on her brow.
"How are you doing?"
Kit was beginning to think she needed to get her whole face botoxed. Maybe it would stop her from looking apparently troubled.
"I'm doing good."
She waited. Ms. Bernard said nothing. Kit glanced at the clock. It was just morning, break, but she really needed to pee.
"Hold on." She looked back down. Ms. Bernard sighed.
"I'm trying to understand. I've been trying to understand for years. You're smart, Kit."
"I promise I'll get the report in," she said.
"It's not the report, I know you'll get it in."
Kit swallowed. "Am I failing?"
"No." Ms. Bernard held up her hands in a helpless gesture. "You're passing, just like you pass every year. It just makes me sad to see you scraping by like this. Do you know what you want to do after high school? Have you thought about your future at all?"
Kit shuffled her feet and looked at the door. "Um...I will. Sorry."
"I just want to understand."
"Um...sorry," she said again. She rubbed her eyes. "I guess I've been...tired."
"For four years?"
"Um...yeah. Sorry. I'll write the report for tomorrow," she said, hurrying out of the room.
She had gym after break. She hated gym anyway, but she hated it most in the morning.
Bridget and the girls had teamed up for volleyball, so she scurried over, fixing her sports bra.
"Hi, Kit," Juli said.
Bridget smiled. Her eyes darted to another group. "Um...sorry, you're kind of late. We already have five."
"I think they're missing one."
"I—yeah."
Kit was grouped with the outcasts. That was the clique she had struggled for years not to be included in. She already had a hard enough time. If she gave up and let herself be pushed into that group, the torment would never cease.
This was the group with the stoner, the severely obese redhead guy, the girl who always smelled like B.O., and the other one who had way too many tattoos for a seventeen-year-old. They weren't interested in volleyball.
Kit tried her best. She ran around her team and hit as many balls as she could, but even the group of misfits would eye her and sneer. You're trying too hard, their nose wrinkles said. She was trying too hard to fit in with the popular crowd, and they didn't like it, so they tried to get away from her. She was trying so hard not to fall to the bottom of the pecking order that the people at the bottom of the pecking order thought she was a loser.
She didn't cry in the shower, but she wanted to.
It was luck that brought her something to take her mind off those things, at least for a while, that afternoon. They filed into the Calc and she took out her worksheets and made sure they were finished, and she heard Mrs. Baker talking to the Home-Ec teacher next door.
"...on the floor. Ice cream in puddles. The lock had been jimmied."
"Did you report it?"
"Sure I did, but I doubt they'll find anything. It's just really weird."
"No kidding. Maybe someone just really needed a fridge?"
Kit caught the train home.
"How was—"
"Good!" She threw her bag on the table and ran up the stairs. She threw herself into her chair, opened her laptop, and glared at the map she'd made.
There was no way that it was all just a coincidence. She was determined to figure out how it was all connected.
Maybe the man with the headlamp hadn't been behind the refrigerator robberies. Maybe he had only been involved with them somehow. What didn't fit is why he would suddenly decide to rob a bank, especially one so far out of his usual scope.
Kit could only do so much research. It was like building a wall and constantly running out of stone, and so having to wait and search until more showed up and she could keep going.
And she still had that book report to write.