Superhero Crash Course

6- Your math skill could have killed you

"Might I remind you, miss Devlin, that your the guest here and you just dumped spaghetti on me for no reason at all." He drawled on lethargically, pressing a call button on his phone, taking his time just to annoy me. It switched to voicemail instantly. "Casey Dunne. Please leave a message." Les held the phone in front of me. "Say something so she knows I'm not kidnapping her beloved niece for ransom."

When I reached up to receive it, he dropped it onto my lap. Typical.

I picked it up, sighing at his immaturity. "Hi, Aunt Casey. This is Jamie. I'll be at the skate rink."

"With Les." He shouted into the phone.

"Yeah, that too. I'll walk home. See you later. Love you."

He extended his hand to receive his phone back but I hold on to it. "You don't need this to drive." I said. "Keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the steering wheel."

I watched the small plastic spring penguin above the speedometer danced. We used to call it Mr. Tuxedo. I reached out and touched its soft fur like I did after every successful attempt in beating Les to shotgun. Mr. Logan would hold his son back and let me win. That annoyed Les a lot. He could sit brooding in the backseat for hours. He hated losing. 

Les was my neighbor for 7 years. He moved out about 4 years ago after his father passed away. He was devastated. I guessed he couldn't handle being in the same surroundings but missing something so precious, or in this case, someone. Home became an empty word to him. Not the home as in brick house with a chimney. The sense of home derived from certain group of people he loves. 

He would still laugh with his friends and smile as bright as before. But those were just the front he put on display so people wouldn't question him too much to the point that he needed to actually open up the box of memory he tended to keep closed forever.

So his smiles were all faked and forced. Much like a smiling mask or a stiff carved one of a marionette.

It was an incident that involved a super, a bad one. From that day on, Les hates all the supers. I could see his point though. That was why the supers being or not being in our city was still debatable. You could have superheroes soaring up the sky to your rescues but you could end up getting killed by super villains too. 

We were playpals, Les and I. His dad was an amazing person. Since my parents were working at our farm in the outskirt of the town, Les's dad played quite a big role in my childhood. Mr. Logan owned a small car parts shop crammed between a Chinese restaurant and a convenient shop. I thought of him being very similar to Harry Potter's professor Lupin. Kind. Gentle. Adventurous. Spontaneous. 

Unfortunately, they both died in the end. He would take me and his son to the skate rink every Wednesday afternoon. There's one in this dull, small town. It's the courtesy of Coldfront. He also taught me soccer and rugby. 

I remembered accidentally hitting Les square in the face with a rugby ball. I thought I broke his nose because he cried like a baby and wouldn't stop. Mr. Logan taught me a valuable life lesson after that incident. You could twist your nose back in place to fix it. At least that was what had been done in Les's case. 

I was relieved I didn't accidentally disfigure his face permanently. I knew the majority of girls at my school thought so too.

His mom stated once at Mr. Logan's funeral that I reminded him too much of the time we had together when his dad was still around. Twelve years old Les didn't know how to cope with his memory so he just distanced himself from the person that gave him flashback every times he looked at. Me. I decided to give him space.