Hero by Day

Chapter 2 - Vigilantes aren't that bad

"I have no powers and not nearly enough training, but I'm doing this anyways. Being a super hero is amazing. Everyone should try it."

~ Clinton Barton (Hawkeye)

Well, being a super didn't seem so bad until I arrived in first period pre-calculus.

You see, Eldredge Academy ran a little differently than your average run of the mill American high school.

First off, we had no real sports. I mean – you could technically call our lacrosse team and tennis squad sports, but c'mon. Real American sports involved tough guys tossing a ball around and potentially getting concussions. Lacrosse and tennis are considered the rich man's sport in the public eye, which came to our next premonition.

Eldredge Academy was the most prestigious private school in the city, which was saying a lot because I lived in Washington D.C., where private schools popped up more often than public ones. Because of the high ranking of the school, they required a very high tuition, high enough to where only the very rich and powerful in D.C. could afford it, which also leads to the next problem.

Eldredge Academy was full of sons and daughters of senators and generals and ambassadors and everything in between. The other half of the school were children of high ranking doctors, dentists, and company owners. And after you counted that pool of extremely rich kids who were practically drowning in money and/or connections, you came to the small percentage of the school that was represented by students like me, scholarship kids.

You see, to be able to receive a full-ride scholarship to such a school like Eldredge, you had to have a perfect five point entry essay, a 3.8 grade point average in your last school, an outstanding grade on your entry exam, and much, much more that I can't even fully remember now.

Long story short, you have to be really intelligent to make it in on scholarship.

Now, I wasn't bragging about the fact that I made it in on a full scholarship. In fact, if some of the kids at this school found out that I was a scholarship kid, I would surely fall down the social ladder a couple rungs. The point is, I was no son of a senator or dentist. I was the son of Sharon Lauren Storm, and perhaps the poorest kid in school because of it.

I didn't mean to bash on my mom or anything, but I was just telling the truth. My mom worked as a waitress for a diner across the street from our apartment. She was only able to barely provide for the two of us by the fact that the diner was frequented by powerful people in the government, causing it to be a hotspot for tourism and meetings between power figures.

The only reason we were able to put good food on the table was my salary from Daniel at the comic book store (which included a bit of a bonus because, you know, I put my life in danger everyday as his sidekick).

The social hierarchy at Eldredge was also a bit confusing. Your parents' professions didn't always line up how powerful in the school you were, but it did boost your position on the ladder quite significantly. There were a couple exceptions to the rule, like me.

You see, to my fellow students at Eldredge, I was known as The Oliver Storm. Yeah, I got a capitalized italic 'the' in front of my name. I was, in short, quite popular.

Blonde hair. Icy blue eyes. Chiseled features. I was a hoot with the ladies at school. They thought of me as mysterious and smart, which was actually more attractive than you'd think with the new generation.

But as I walked in that bland Monday, I knew something was off. The students were whispering in hushed voices as Mr. Anderson sat at his desk, reading a book. I noticed the discarded worksheets on the desks and assumed that was what Mr. Anderson wanted us working on, but no one was even looking at them.