Super

Chapter 16: Closer

Lex looked at the ceiling for a moment as she woke up, waiting for the alarm clock. When it didn't come, she looked over at it and then realized it read after ten. She sat up with a jerk before she remembered what had happened the previous day and relaxed a bit. Still, though, she silently slid her slippers on and headed for the door.

Grabbing her schedule and Casey's as well, she made her way to the bathroom and shut the door before turning the light on. She breathed a sigh as she noticed that their activities for the day began after noon. When she came back out a few moments later, she noticed that Casey had begun to stir. She waved at the other woman, put her finger over her lips as she glanced down at Serena, and handed Casey's schedule to her.

Casey looked at it in the dim light and smiled in relief. When Lex gestured to ask if she could put Serena into her bed, Casey nodded again and moved the other woman as Lex pulled back the covers. Lex tucked her friend in and then walked with Casey to the door.

“Meet downstairs for breakfast in a half-hour?” Casey questioned in a whisper.

Lex nodded as she silently opened the door, and then smiled as she shut it behind her friend.

Much later, after she’d cleaned herself up and had a delicious breakfast of buckwheat pancakes and blueberry syrup with Casey, Lex reluctantly wound her way downstairs to the martial arts studio. She sighed as she opened the door, but forced herself to smile as she saw Mr. Chen there, standing barefoot on the wooden floor, waiting, and nervously cleared her throat.

“Mr. Chen, did you hear what happened yesterday?” she asked, trying not to cringe but uncertain of what he might have been told.

“I understand your team was called to help evacuate an apartment building that had caught fire,” he said, looking her in the eye. “I also hear that you had a lot to do with getting the people out safely.”

Lex ducked her head, feeling her stomach flop and realizing that he probably hadn't been told about what happened with George.

“Well I guess, but I had a fight, too.”

He looked at her in surprise, an eyebrow raised. After a moment, he gracefully sat down on the floor, his legs crossed underneath him, and gestured to the floor in front of him.

“Sit down, Lex. Let's talk about it.”

Nervously, she sat down and then launched into the story of what had happened after she saw George shaking and cursing at Casey, and how she'd reacted. Once Lex had finished, she looked at the floor and her own hands, her fingers threading together and clutching each other. After a few moments of silence, Lex chanced a glance back up and saw Mr. Chen looking calmly at her.

“I see,” he said. “What did you do afterwards?”

“I wasn't sure what to do after I saw that Casey was OK, so we talked to Clara about it, and I apologized and helped George get free.”

“I see,” Mr. Chen repeated, nodding this time. “Well done, Lex.”

She looked at him in disbelief. “But I shouldn't have kicked him over! And, I don't know, I just feel like I went too far overboard in–”

Lex stopped as she saw Mr. Chen raise a hand in the air. “One of the worst things you can do to dampen good intuition is to needlessly doubt your actions after a confrontation. From what I know of the man you faced, I think the course of action you took was one of the few that would have resolved the conflict in as peaceful a manner as possible. Of course you were upset and may have overreacted. That is to be expected when people one cares about are being threatened. However, what you did seems fairly mild and you did your best to put things right afterwards. How could I find anything to criticize in what you did?”

“But I probably should have...I don't know, figured out a way to do it without fighting.” Lex could feel her shoulders slump as she responded.

“Lex, life is a journey where we all learn things in every step we take,” Mr. Chen replied, his tone gentle. “We can all only do our best based on what we know at any given step. I could look back in my life and think about how I would have done things differently if I had the knowledge I have now, as an old man, but the fact is that I could only do my best with all of the tools I had when I was young. You did your best to prevent your friend from being hurt without even injuring the person who threatened her. What more could you have done with the knowledge and expertise you have now? I think you did very well.”

Glancing at him from under her eyebrows, Lex gave him a slightly skeptical look, not quite ready to accept that she wouldn’t be punished. “Really?”

He gave her a mildly reproving stare in return. “I wouldn't say so if I didn't think so.”

She nodded, again looking at her hands. “Thanks, Mr. Chen.”

Lex glanced back up again as Mr. Chen rose to his feet in a single, smooth movement. “All right, let's get to work. We missed enough time yesterday and this morning. Are you ready?”

Lex nodded and smiled, jumping to her feet and readying herself to follow along with Mr. Chen's movements.

And so her days slipped back into their regular schedules and events, with the new addition of Lex asking Riss at least once a week if she'd like to eat with her and Casey. The first new thing happened about a week and a half after the building fire. When Lex came up for lunch that day, she stopped by her room and noticed a package in front of her door. Upon opening it, she found a pair of heavy gloves very similar to the ones included in the uniform she'd worn to the building fire, but they had Velcro at the wrists to fit them and had been connected to one another by heavy-duty strapping, like what would be used for a seatbelt. The box also contained a pair of boots that looked like the uniform boots Lex had worn that day.

With a puzzled frown she took the items out of the box and put on the gloves, finding a strap attached to both sides of each glove that she wound around her arms, crossing once at the elbow, then again near her shoulder in order to lie flat across her back. Spotting some papers in the bottom of the box, Lex reached for them, only to find them stuck to her hand. She waved them around in the air wildly, trying to get the sheets off her, but they still stayed. Finally, taking off one glove, she managed to pull the papers free without ripping them by using a downward and back motion.

At the top of the sheet, Lex noticed a handwritten note.