“Stop!”
“Doctor Life? How can it be?”
Doctor Life stands on one side of a big open field. Opposite him, the evil telepath is just about to run into the forest. Doctor Life calls to him. The evil telepath turns, startled.
“How did you escape my psychic trap?”
Ignoring his question, Doctor Life advances toward the telepath.
"You killed my family, my friends, everyone I ever cared for," he calls out angrily.
In the blink of an eye, Doctor Life appears before the evil telepath and grabs him by the throat. The telepath gasps and struggles to break free. A brilliant aura surrounds Doctor Life. He accelerates time and the evil telepath disintegrates to dust and is blown away!
Jeff lowered the comic book and smiled up at me, as if to suggest that he’d somehow aided Doctor Life in this latest exciting exploit.
“Oh,” he added, “in this one, D.L. turns back time and moves the planet back to its original orbit!”
“The time thing I understand,” I said, clearing a spot on the desk and setting down a plate of sugar cookies I’d smuggled from the party in the living room, “but, if Doctor Life is supposed to be the master of time, how does he move the planet?”
Dropping the comic, Jeff stared at me with utter disbelief. “Scott, Doctor Life is the master of time and space!” He guided his wheelchair over to the desk and grabbed a cookie.
“Okay,” I said, holding up my hands in surrender. There was no sense in arguing with him. Jeff was the authority on all things comic-related. “I’m surprised to see you up here. You’re avoiding everyone too? You usually love these parties.”
“I don’t think anyone will even notice our absence.”
Laughter erupted from the living room. Obviously, we missed another good story. No great loss; we’d heard all of our parents’ stories anyway.
“Besides, if one more person asks me what I’m going to do with my life after high school, I’ll flip out! ‘Well, Mr. Thomas, I just want to concentrate on my music.’” Jeff started singing in a gruff, old country singer voice, “Darlin’, I just peed your name in the snow.”
Usually, I enjoyed holiday parties too—people singing off-key, stories about the “good ole days,” the holiday food. Jeff was right, though. With graduation approaching, there’d been too much talk about our futures.
“I know what you mean,” I told him. “I applied to a couple of colleges. What more do people want from me? The other day, both my parents gave me the career talk.”
This time, Jeff actually set the comic book down. “Aw, man. Both of them? That’s brutal. What did they say?”
I laughed. “They each have a different opinion about what I should be doing with my life.”
My mom had raised me alone since I was ten, when my folks divorced. She’d always been supportive of what she called my “extra-curricular” activities; you know, music, drawing, creative writing, all that artistic stuff. When it came to my future, though, she didn’t consider art to be a path to success.
“Scott, you can do anything, if you put your mind to it,” she said to me, “but, do yourself a favor. I know how much you like doing creative things, but, I want you to be successful. Do something with your life. Be a doctor, a lawyer or a business man. Something stable. Something that contributes to society. You don’t want to end up like your father, do you?”
After their divorce, my dad moved to New Calvert City and I’d see him from time to time. He was an artist, a sculptor. Since I was little, everyone had talked about how talented he is. I, on the other hand, have always been an artistic hack. It was always my dad’s dream to be a sculptor. He pursued it with a passion. You have to admire that. It’s probably because of him that I’m even interested in the arts. I used to sit and watch him while he worked. Occasionally, he’d sculpt a bust of me. He always kept those, I guess as a reminder of me. “Find your passion, Scott” he’d told me during our weekly phone conversation. “Follow your heart.”
“Honestly, I can’t imagine living like either of my parents.” I told Jeff. “I’m certainly not as talented as my father. My mom, though, is always going on about how much she hates her job and the people she works with. Can you imagine having to spend your entire life doing a job that you hate? I don’t want that.”
Jeff looked at me as if he were about to say something profound that would be the answer to all of life’s questions. “Dude, remember what I showed you the day we met?”
I met Jeff when we were ten years old, five years before his accident. We talked for a bit at school, played on the swings and, after school, I followed him home. In his backyard, we found a metal can with an unknown liquid in it. Jeff sniffed it, found it to be good, struck a match, and then dropped the match in the can. There was a small explosion. Nothing big, mind you. Our faces had been too close to the can and our hair got a little singed. At that moment, I knew this guy was crazy and I liked it. “You mean the exploding can thing?”
Jeff searched his memory. “Oh, wait.” He shrugged. “Never mind. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Thanks. You’re a big help.”
“I know what you want to do with your life.” He started rummaging through one of his long boxes filled with comic books. After a brief search, he triumphantly pulled out the first issue of Armored Man in its protective sleeve and held it up. “You want to be like billionaire industrialist playboy, Kirk Davidson, and use your vast wealth to create an amazing super suit. Check it out!” He started flipping through the pages.
“Armored Man is very cool,” I said, “but, Kirk Davidson wasn’t born with money. He worked to become the man he is. Maybe you’re on the right track, though. I could get a degree in, I don’t know, engineering or something.”Jeff nodded. “That’s cool. There are worse things to do with your life, I guess.”
“Engineering sounds more like your thing, though,” I said.
“Actually,” Jeff said. “I’ve been thinking about studying robotics.”
“Awesome!” I said. Then, I adopted my mad scientist voice, “You’ll be one step closer to your dream of creating a fleet of giant robots to destroy the world!”
“Muhahaha!”
“See, you’ve got a plan! When I think about my career, though, I’m afraid I have to agree with Dad. I want to ‘find my muse.’”
“Well, good luck with that,” he said chuckling. “I just want to be independently wealthy.”
“Mom is going to see if she can get me a job at the hardware store for the summer. She says it’ll help me develop business ethics and put hair on my chest or something. She’s already trying to plan my future.”
“Sounds exciting.” Jeff’s face was now buried in the Armored Man comic. “I’m going to do a little as possible this summer.” He looked up briefly. “Mom will probably have something to say about that, I’m sure.”
“Get a job at the hardware store too. We can work together.” He looked out from behind the comic book, raised an eyebrow and flashed me his you-can’t-be-serious look.
“Just a suggestion,” I said. “It would be fun to work together.”
“We would make it fun, yes. They’d probably come up with some stupid job for the kid in the wheelchair, too—it makes the company look good. The work part is what I’m trying to avoid.
“I hear ya,” I said, nodding my head.
“I promise you,” he said, “when I’m rich and famous, I’ll hire you just so we can hang out together.’
“You’ll hire me as what exactly? Your personal assistant? Your manservant?”
“Or, something,” he said. “I’ll find something interesting for you. How about Chief Comic Reader?”
“Vice President in Charge of Video Game Testing?”
“No, wait, I’ve got it!” Jeff cleared his throat and then proclaimed, “Executive Troublemaker.”
“That sounds like it should be your job,” I said.
“Maybe. Look, we’ve got several months until the summer anyway. That’s plenty of goof-off time. Just tell your mom you’ll take the job. Maybe by the time summer rolls around, she’ll have forgotten all about it.”
“Not likely. Ugh! Okay,” I sighed, “it’ll make her happy. As soon as a greater opportunity comes along, though, I’m out of there!”
A loud noise drew us the window. A moving van came up the street towards us, clanking as it drove over each little bump.
“Why would anyone move here?” Jeff asked.
“Especially at this time of year?” I added.
Okay, Coreyville wasn’t such a bad place to live. There were historical homes, friendly people. At this time of year, there was light, fluffy snow outside. It looked like a painting. But, Coreyville was just a little place in a big, big world. There had to be more for me out there.
The moving van clanked loudly again as it passed in front of the house. We glanced out the window again. That was the first time I saw Katie.