by Joe Mosher
Published June 2016
ISBN: 978-1-48357-401-1
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Chapter One
Paige Bender refused to believe she could lose a foot race. Instead, she lost her mind. And her pants.
It wasn’t even supposed to be a race, to begin with. It was just another boring gym class for the Red Cloak School sixth-graders. They were no ordinary kids, and this was no ordinary school. Red Cloak Island was a top-secret campus where the world’s future superheroes came to train. Exercises were more rigorous and more frequent than in most schools, but they could still be monotonous. Everybody had to do a ton of sit-ups and push-ups. Everybody had to climb the rope hanging from the concrete arch on the west side of the Stadium (which was what everyone called the exercise yard.) Everyone had to do all kinds of stuff to pass their physical fitness requirements, and that meant everyone had to run four laps on the quarter-mile track, three times a week.
To keep things organized, the class broke up into groups, with each group performing their exercises in a different order. By chance, today Paige ended up in the same group as Peter Zip. They finished the rope-climb at the same time, hit the track at the same time, and left the starting line at the same time. But within seconds, Peter was way ahead of Paige.
Unacceptable.
Peter Zip was fast. That was his gift, the thing that had earned him his spot at Red Cloak. His muscles contracted at incredible speeds and his reflexes were too swift to measure. Most days, he finished his four laps before the others in his group finished their first. If asked, most of the sixth-graders would have said he was the fastest kid on Red Cloak Island. Most, but not all.
Paige Bender could be fast, too, but in a different way. Her gift was body elasticity. She saw Peter beside her for a moment, then he was gone in a blur of pumping legs. Closing her eyes and concentrating, she doubled the length of her arms and legs, then opened her eyes and took off after him. She couldn’t match his pace step-for-step, but she could eat up twice as much ground with each thump of her feet on the soft brown track. By the time they had reached the end of the first lap, she had nearly caught up.
Peter looked over his shoulder and grinned when he saw her coming. She grinned back. They were almost side-by-side, and it was fun.
They faced forward again, settling into the two outer lanes as they started the second lap. They passed the slower kids in the group, who moved toward the inner edge of the track to stay out of Peter and Paige’s way.
“Go Paige!” called Sidney Raine as they ran past. Sidney was in no hurry whatsoever, holding steady at a rate that could have been called a slow jog or a fast walk, depending on how generous the person describing it wanted to be. She had the power to control wind and weather; she often said that if she wanted to kick up a cloud of dust she could do it without breaking into a full run.
“Go Peter!” called Hunter Maximus from a few steps ahead of Sidney, though whether he actually supported Peter or was just being argumentative was unclear. Like Sidney, he felt no sense of urgency to finish his laps. Hunter could become invisible at will, a gift designed more for stealth than speed.
Just as Paige was about to finally overtake Peter, he leaned forward and increased his pace. He drew ahead again, though not very far.
No problem, Paige thought.
Well … maybe a little bit of a problem. It was a delicate exercise, changing the shape of your body on a dead run. Paige had to visualize each part of her anatomy, balancing the length of each leg to keep them even, stretching the bones and muscles above her knees as well as below to keep ensure her motions stayed fluid. She also stretched her upper body, lengthening her spinal column, biceps and forearms, constantly aware of her shifting center of gravity. She did it in stages, adding half an inch to her right leg while it was up off the ground, then matching the change with her left leg on the next half-step. Little by little, step by step, she added more length to her stride.
Luckily, once she achieved the increased height, she was able to just settle in and run. She didn’t need to remain perpetually focused on her power, the way Hunter had to maintain focus to stay invisible or Sidney needed persistent mental energy to sustain the mini tornadoes she could call forth. Once Paige got to the size she wanted, she stayed that way with no effort, until she decided to change again.
Paige caught up slowly. She and Peter ran side-by-side past the halfway point and into the third lap. It was still fun at this point.
“You can do it!” Hunter called as they passed him a second time. Then in a lower voice he added, “Just don’t expect me to do it, too.”
Sidney clapped as they passed her and shouted, “Faster!”
That was when things started to go wrong.
Urged on by Sidney’s cry, Peter Zip increased his pace still further. His pants made a whirring sound like the call of crickets from the friction of his pistoning legs. Any faster and he might be in danger of starting a fire.
Paige added more length to her legs, left then right, and also lengthened her arms and torso. She was gaining ground again, but not quickly enough, so she added another few inches. Then a few more. She was bent forward, leaning into the direction she was running, so it was hard to tell but she thought she might be close to ten or eleven feet tall now. She was not just behind Peter now but also kind of above him.
But most infuriatingly, still behind him.
Students from all groups were gathering around the track now, watching the unexpected competition. Paige saw them from the corner of her eye but she tried to pay them no attention. She was focused on Peter, who was just a meter or so ahead of her, then even with her, then a meter behind. She wanted to smile as she passed him, but couldn’t afford the extra energy.
Paige’s limbs were as long as she could ever remember making them, but she was starting to have a little trouble running. She was tired, for one thing, and not just from the race; using her powers took a lot of energy. She knew Peter must be getting worn out, as well. The thing about having superpowers was that there was always a price to be paid; being amazing was never quite as easy as it looked.
Another problem was that she was not used to being quite so tall. She was fighting to maintain her balance with each step. It wasn’t quite like running on stilts, but the idea was the same.
Worst of all, her clothes were getting too tight.
Paige wore stretchy, loose-fitting clothes most of the time. Especially on gym days. Today she wore light gray sweatpants that had started the day at ankle length but now looked like shorts. Her matching sweatshirt now also appeared short-sleeved and had ridden up to expose her belly-button (which was definitely against the school dress code.) She had kept her limbs as skinny as possible, adding only length but not girth. Still, her clothes felt like they had shrunken and were becoming constrictive.
Three laps down. One to go. Peter was visibly sweating now, but somehow he managed to put just a little more oomph in his step. Already well past what she had thought was his maximum speed, he managed to add a bit more, then even another bit more, and somehow he was again a meter in front of her.
Unacceptable.
Paige was also at her theoretical maximum, but she wasn’t about to let Peter be the only one who could exceed his personal best. She grew again. Just a little bit. Not enough.
Her pants were really tight now, the elastic waist and cuffs cutting into the flesh of her stomach and thighs.
Peter stayed a meter ahead. Maybe even gained a bit. The tightness of Paige’s clothing was more than a distraction now, it was painful. She couldn’t keep up this pace. She wasn’t going to win.
Absolutely unacceptable.
Something began to build in Paige’s chest, behind her burning lungs and around her thundering heart. It was frustration mixed with anger mixed with desire. She couldn’t lose. She wouldn’t lose. She had never, ever lost a race before. Never. She had never even really been challenged. This was the first time she had ever run against Peter Zip, and she didn’t care that his personal gift was super-speed. She didn’t care if he was faster than a speeding bullet. If anyone had ever asked her (which they had not) she would certainly have said she was faster than a speeding bullet, too.
That feeling built in Paige’s chest, and then it burst out. She screamed. Long and loud. One word: “Nooooooooo!”
Peter looked over his shoulder. Paige looked past him, at the finish line, coming up in a hurry.
There was no way for her to win.
There was no way she would let herself lose.
Summoning every ounce of energy, every smidgen of focus, she channeled all of her will into stretching just another couple of inches. Left leg, then right leg. Arms and torso.
She could hear the blood pumping in her veins, the wind whistling through her hair, the scream still tearing from her throat. She did not hear the savage rip as her pants burst at the seams and fell away from her onto the track.
But she felt suddenly free, suddenly faster than ever. Her long strides carried her forward, past the crowd of her classmates gathered near the track, past Hunter and Sidney who were now just standing and no longer even pretending to run their own laps. She gained on Peter and drew even with him as the finish line loomed only steps away.
Peter was looking sideways at her. Grinning.
Let him grin. She would have the last laugh, because she was now a little ahead of him. Just a little, but a little was enough, because here was the finish line and she crossed it first. She had won. She was faster than the fastest kid on Red Cloak Island, which meant now she was the fastest kid on Red Cloak Island, and she would have the last laugh.
Except she didn’t.
She slowed to a jog, turned and headed back toward the finish line, where her classmates were huddled in a crowd. Peter slowed as well, and fell in beside her.
Mr. Magnificent, the former superhero who was also their gym teacher, pushed his way through the crowd. His ever-present whistle swung from the lanyard around his thickly muscled neck. He held his clipboard in one giant hand and something else in the other. Something lumpy and gray. He didn’t look happy.
“I believe these are yours, Miss Bender,” the teacher said as he tossed the gray lump of cloth to her. He was a huge man, but Paige towered over him at her present height, and he had to lean his head back to look up at her. “Get yourself shrunk down to a normal size and get dressed.”
Only then, as the fog of frustration and momentary insanity cleared from her mind, did Paige realize what he had thrown to her. She looked down, horrified, to find her legs clad only in the pink Spandex bicycle shorts she had – luckily for her – been wearing underneath her sweatpants.
That frustrated, angry feeling that had built up in her chest had been replaced by the elation of victory, but now her joy was being replaced by embarrassment. Realizing she wasn’t going to have the last laugh after all – that she was, in fact, just about the only one not laughing – she decided not to shrink back to sixth-grader size as Mr. Magnificent had ordered. She stayed tall and started running again, away from her classmates, away from the Stadium.
She ran as fast as she could, faster than anyone else could follow, hoping that no one would even try.
It wasn’t even supposed to be a race, to begin with. It was just another boring gym class for the Red Cloak School sixth-graders. They were no ordinary kids, and this was no ordinary school. Red Cloak Island was a top-secret campus where the world’s future superheroes came to train. Exercises were more rigorous and more frequent than in most schools, but they could still be monotonous. Everybody had to do a ton of sit-ups and push-ups. Everybody had to climb the rope hanging from the concrete arch on the west side of the Stadium (which was what everyone called the exercise yard.) Everyone had to do all kinds of stuff to pass their physical fitness requirements, and that meant everyone had to run four laps on the quarter-mile track, three times a week.
To keep things organized, the class broke up into groups, with each group performing their exercises in a different order. By chance, today Paige ended up in the same group as Peter Zip. They finished the rope-climb at the same time, hit the track at the same time, and left the starting line at the same time. But within seconds, Peter was way ahead of Paige.
Unacceptable.
Peter Zip was fast. That was his gift, the thing that had earned him his spot at Red Cloak. His muscles contracted at incredible speeds and his reflexes were too swift to measure. Most days, he finished his four laps before the others in his group finished their first. If asked, most of the sixth-graders would have said he was the fastest kid on Red Cloak Island. Most, but not all.
Paige Bender could be fast, too, but in a different way. Her gift was body elasticity. She saw Peter beside her for a moment, then he was gone in a blur of pumping legs. Closing her eyes and concentrating, she doubled the length of her arms and legs, then opened her eyes and took off after him. She couldn’t match his pace step-for-step, but she could eat up twice as much ground with each thump of her feet on the soft brown track. By the time they had reached the end of the first lap, she had nearly caught up.
Peter looked over his shoulder and grinned when he saw her coming. She grinned back. They were almost side-by-side, and it was fun.
They faced forward again, settling into the two outer lanes as they started the second lap. They passed the slower kids in the group, who moved toward the inner edge of the track to stay out of Peter and Paige’s way.
“Go Paige!” called Sidney Raine as they ran past. Sidney was in no hurry whatsoever, holding steady at a rate that could have been called a slow jog or a fast walk, depending on how generous the person describing it wanted to be. She had the power to control wind and weather; she often said that if she wanted to kick up a cloud of dust she could do it without breaking into a full run.
“Go Peter!” called Hunter Maximus from a few steps ahead of Sidney, though whether he actually supported Peter or was just being argumentative was unclear. Like Sidney, he felt no sense of urgency to finish his laps. Hunter could become invisible at will, a gift designed more for stealth than speed.
Just as Paige was about to finally overtake Peter, he leaned forward and increased his pace. He drew ahead again, though not very far.
No problem, Paige thought.
Well … maybe a little bit of a problem. It was a delicate exercise, changing the shape of your body on a dead run. Paige had to visualize each part of her anatomy, balancing the length of each leg to keep them even, stretching the bones and muscles above her knees as well as below to keep ensure her motions stayed fluid. She also stretched her upper body, lengthening her spinal column, biceps and forearms, constantly aware of her shifting center of gravity. She did it in stages, adding half an inch to her right leg while it was up off the ground, then matching the change with her left leg on the next half-step. Little by little, step by step, she added more length to her stride.
Luckily, once she achieved the increased height, she was able to just settle in and run. She didn’t need to remain perpetually focused on her power, the way Hunter had to maintain focus to stay invisible or Sidney needed persistent mental energy to sustain the mini tornadoes she could call forth. Once Paige got to the size she wanted, she stayed that way with no effort, until she decided to change again.
Paige caught up slowly. She and Peter ran side-by-side past the halfway point and into the third lap. It was still fun at this point.
“You can do it!” Hunter called as they passed him a second time. Then in a lower voice he added, “Just don’t expect me to do it, too.”
Sidney clapped as they passed her and shouted, “Faster!”
That was when things started to go wrong.
Urged on by Sidney’s cry, Peter Zip increased his pace still further. His pants made a whirring sound like the call of crickets from the friction of his pistoning legs. Any faster and he might be in danger of starting a fire.
Paige added more length to her legs, left then right, and also lengthened her arms and torso. She was gaining ground again, but not quickly enough, so she added another few inches. Then a few more. She was bent forward, leaning into the direction she was running, so it was hard to tell but she thought she might be close to ten or eleven feet tall now. She was not just behind Peter now but also kind of above him.
But most infuriatingly, still behind him.
Students from all groups were gathering around the track now, watching the unexpected competition. Paige saw them from the corner of her eye but she tried to pay them no attention. She was focused on Peter, who was just a meter or so ahead of her, then even with her, then a meter behind. She wanted to smile as she passed him, but couldn’t afford the extra energy.
Paige’s limbs were as long as she could ever remember making them, but she was starting to have a little trouble running. She was tired, for one thing, and not just from the race; using her powers took a lot of energy. She knew Peter must be getting worn out, as well. The thing about having superpowers was that there was always a price to be paid; being amazing was never quite as easy as it looked.
Another problem was that she was not used to being quite so tall. She was fighting to maintain her balance with each step. It wasn’t quite like running on stilts, but the idea was the same.
Worst of all, her clothes were getting too tight.
Paige wore stretchy, loose-fitting clothes most of the time. Especially on gym days. Today she wore light gray sweatpants that had started the day at ankle length but now looked like shorts. Her matching sweatshirt now also appeared short-sleeved and had ridden up to expose her belly-button (which was definitely against the school dress code.) She had kept her limbs as skinny as possible, adding only length but not girth. Still, her clothes felt like they had shrunken and were becoming constrictive.
Three laps down. One to go. Peter was visibly sweating now, but somehow he managed to put just a little more oomph in his step. Already well past what she had thought was his maximum speed, he managed to add a bit more, then even another bit more, and somehow he was again a meter in front of her.
Unacceptable.
Paige was also at her theoretical maximum, but she wasn’t about to let Peter be the only one who could exceed his personal best. She grew again. Just a little bit. Not enough.
Her pants were really tight now, the elastic waist and cuffs cutting into the flesh of her stomach and thighs.
Peter stayed a meter ahead. Maybe even gained a bit. The tightness of Paige’s clothing was more than a distraction now, it was painful. She couldn’t keep up this pace. She wasn’t going to win.
Absolutely unacceptable.
Something began to build in Paige’s chest, behind her burning lungs and around her thundering heart. It was frustration mixed with anger mixed with desire. She couldn’t lose. She wouldn’t lose. She had never, ever lost a race before. Never. She had never even really been challenged. This was the first time she had ever run against Peter Zip, and she didn’t care that his personal gift was super-speed. She didn’t care if he was faster than a speeding bullet. If anyone had ever asked her (which they had not) she would certainly have said she was faster than a speeding bullet, too.
That feeling built in Paige’s chest, and then it burst out. She screamed. Long and loud. One word: “Nooooooooo!”
Peter looked over his shoulder. Paige looked past him, at the finish line, coming up in a hurry.
There was no way for her to win.
There was no way she would let herself lose.
Summoning every ounce of energy, every smidgen of focus, she channeled all of her will into stretching just another couple of inches. Left leg, then right leg. Arms and torso.
She could hear the blood pumping in her veins, the wind whistling through her hair, the scream still tearing from her throat. She did not hear the savage rip as her pants burst at the seams and fell away from her onto the track.
But she felt suddenly free, suddenly faster than ever. Her long strides carried her forward, past the crowd of her classmates gathered near the track, past Hunter and Sidney who were now just standing and no longer even pretending to run their own laps. She gained on Peter and drew even with him as the finish line loomed only steps away.
Peter was looking sideways at her. Grinning.
Let him grin. She would have the last laugh, because she was now a little ahead of him. Just a little, but a little was enough, because here was the finish line and she crossed it first. She had won. She was faster than the fastest kid on Red Cloak Island, which meant now she was the fastest kid on Red Cloak Island, and she would have the last laugh.
Except she didn’t.
She slowed to a jog, turned and headed back toward the finish line, where her classmates were huddled in a crowd. Peter slowed as well, and fell in beside her.
Mr. Magnificent, the former superhero who was also their gym teacher, pushed his way through the crowd. His ever-present whistle swung from the lanyard around his thickly muscled neck. He held his clipboard in one giant hand and something else in the other. Something lumpy and gray. He didn’t look happy.
“I believe these are yours, Miss Bender,” the teacher said as he tossed the gray lump of cloth to her. He was a huge man, but Paige towered over him at her present height, and he had to lean his head back to look up at her. “Get yourself shrunk down to a normal size and get dressed.”
Only then, as the fog of frustration and momentary insanity cleared from her mind, did Paige realize what he had thrown to her. She looked down, horrified, to find her legs clad only in the pink Spandex bicycle shorts she had – luckily for her – been wearing underneath her sweatpants.
That frustrated, angry feeling that had built up in her chest had been replaced by the elation of victory, but now her joy was being replaced by embarrassment. Realizing she wasn’t going to have the last laugh after all – that she was, in fact, just about the only one not laughing – she decided not to shrink back to sixth-grader size as Mr. Magnificent had ordered. She stayed tall and started running again, away from her classmates, away from the Stadium.
She ran as fast as she could, faster than anyone else could follow, hoping that no one would even try.
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