Chapter 5: That was a short lived dream
The weekend came and went. Thurston and Fatima texted back and forth about possible recruits. Poaching from the other Houses was probably going to stir up some trouble so they were stuck with waiting for a new Power to manifest.
Monday morning though, Thurston saw Fatima talking to a guy that looked like a collection of trailer park resident stereotypes had incarnated and put on a school uniform. She was stiff. Rigid really. Seeing her like that put Thurston on edge. Fatima always stood with excellent posture, but here she seemed cornered in the middle of a hallway. She looked alone in a crowd.
When Thurston got close enough he heard her "... ven't been a thing for more than a year. I'm leaving the House."
Despite his appearance, Bret Casey had a voice as deep as a rich man's pockets and as smooth as top shelf baby food, "Fine, fine. But you still have to go through the exit ceremony."
"Don't be absurd" Fatima scoffed, "what good does that do anyone?"
"Rules are rules, babe." Bret reached for the lapel of her uniform jacket and she recoiled.
Thurston lost it. Anyone with a shred of humanity has a good reason to abhor domestic violence, some people have personal reasons. Thurston was of the latter category and let that motivate him as he bolted forward and grabbed Bret by the wrist, "Excuse me."
The young man in front of him just smiled, retracted his hand and looked at Fatima over Thurston's shoulder, "So this is him, huh? Call me Beef, guy. Everyone does" and he patted Thurston's arm. "Remember, Fatty, this afternoon."
"What the f-" Thurston was cut off.
"Let it go Thurston, we have something more important to do this second." Fatima grabbed him by the arm and dragged him back outside.
"Take off your shirt" she urged and Thurston wasn't entirely uncomfortable with the notion.
"Isn't this a little public?" his tone was passably flirty and he made a show of unbuttoning the shirt.
"What are you doing? That thing might blow up any second." Fatima's urgency was something Thurston was now entirely uncomfortable with.
"What?!" He shrugged out of the thing with one motion and tossed it on the lawn. It suddenly disappeared like a piece of flash paper.
"Small miracles, right?" Fatima tried shining a light on the bright side.
Thurston stood shirtless in front of her with a definite case of the grump, "What do I do now? I can't go back in like this."
Fatima retrieved her gym class polo shirt from her bag and handed it to him, "Put this on."
Thurston took the white polo shirt and started to slide it over his head. He was by no means a strapping young man but Fatima was half a foot shorter than him. The shirt strained at every seam and every movement exposed his belly button, "This is not the best solution..."
"It is a solution. I'll see you after school." Suddenly they were looking in each other's eyes and there was a split second when their relationship moved into a higher energy state, the quantum flux lasted less than a second but the superpositional state of will they/won't they settled back into just friends and they looked away,
"Gotcha," and Thurston walked into the school with hunched shoulders, struggling not to draw attention to himself. Little chance of that when the bell rang, meaning he was late.
Then the morning announcements began, "All Students will report to the auditorium at 9am for a mandatory assembly to address the actions of Marcus Cooper and... Thurston Shadwick." There was more but it was all lost on Thurston as every eye turned to him and whispers rolled over him like a swarm of vermin.