Ten seconds above estimate. Good pace, she told herself. Just focus. The edge was right there, all she had to do was to immediately turn, push off the wall and head straight back with the same level of focus. She kept her head down, underwater, repeating the same movements she's studied for years until she could sense the edge again.
"Time!" Coach Arteta yelled as Riley Truman reached the end of the pool and moved her wet hair out of her face. "One minute and fifteen, forty-two. Very impressive."
"Thanks" Riley replied, breathing deeply as she was climbing out of the pool. Coach handed her a towel to dry off.
"Keep improving that pace and you'll make regionals." She said and noted her time down on her clipboard. "You got another one in you?"
"I think I'm happy for now," Riley answered. "Ten seconds under is a pretty solid improvement."
"You just gotta keep at it, Truman."
By the time Riley Truman had showered and changed, it was already dark outside. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a first-generation iPod - a hand-me-down from her father, but she used it nonetheless. It had her favourite songs on, and they were all meticulously organised into play lists that matched her mood. On the way from the school to the bus stop, she was too exhausted from swim class to care, so she just selected a random one. The Beatles started playing, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Absent-mindedly, she started bobbing her head along to the music as she waited for the bus.
The bus ride home was over faster it usually felt, probably on account of the dopamines from the swim lesson. She got off at Glendrive Road, right next to Sutro Tower, and walked the last few steps to her home. Her father wasn't home, as she'd come to expect. She stepped into her room, dropped her gym bag into the corner and threw herself on her bed. She'd still have to do maths homework, but it could wait until later.
Her bedroom was really the only place that her father didn't put under constant video surveillance. He was obsessed with knowing about any minute, tiny detail that changed - working for some clandestine government agency had something to do with that, Riley was sure. In the simplest of terms, it meant she couldn't leave the house without anyone noticing. The windows, needless to say, were outfitted with sensors too.
She kept her earbuds in and closed her eyes. The music wasn't very loud, so she could easily nap through that, and after a day like today, she was wiped.
When she woke up, the lights were still on, but not as bright as the sun shining into her room from the window. Groggily, she peeled herself out of bed, rubbing her eyes until she could see stars. How long has she been out?
Her gaze fell on her iPod, which under normal circumstances also doubled as an alarm clock, but clearly she had forgotten to properly put it on the charging cradle. She pressed the button to turn it on. The battery was nearly dead, but that didn't bother her nearly as much as the other piece of information on the screen - It was 8:28 AM.
Shit. Shit. That was not nearly enough time to shower, get dressed, have breakfast. She'd have to skip at least two of those, then rush out the door, and she'd still be late for homeroom. Annoyed, and frustrated at her own carelessness, she accepted her reality: She'd have to teleport again.
Thankfully, her dad was already out, back at the bureau or the institute or the secret underground lair or whatever. If she hid outside the camera's field of view, she'd manage. Just about.
She grabbed her bag, slung it around her shoulder and hopped out the door, ran immediately behind the building, out of view of the doorbell camera. Then, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and focused. She needed to get to school. Glen Park High School. A ways away from Twin Peaks, but not far enough to not see Sutro Tower peeking through behind the buildings. The corner of Bosworth and Lippard Street, behind the large oak tree nobody ever paid attention to.
A warm light engulfed her, shooting straight up into the sky, accompanied by a slight tug. In less than two seconds, it was gone again. Riley opened her eyes, now standing behind the tree, on the corner of Bosworth and Lippard.
Not enough time to make it to class, though.
Either her teacher didn't notice that she was late to homeroom, or she didn't care. In any case, she'd successfully snuck her way into school. She wasn't a particularly enthusiastic student, but she got by. She took a seat behind one of her classmates - a girl with long brown hair, her name was Abigail if memory served, and pretended to pay attention.
Nothing was interesting to her except for gym class, but that was only twice a week, and Wednesday wasn't one of those days. Nobody talked to her, nobody even took notice of her. Ever since she moved from Iowa a year ago, nobody had paid much attention to her.
Despite being intensely bored for the entire day, and getting chewed out for not doing her homework, all Riley could think about at the end of the day was to come back home, and fall into bed. This time, with her alarm clock plugged in.
When the bell rang, Riley quickly stuffed her things in her bag, thinking about going to the pool regardless. If she teleported, she'd be at home in a few seconds, and she could grab her gym bag and return to school within the minute.
Behind the tree on the street corner wouldn't fly. The food truck was there now, and people were waiting in line all the way to the tree. Everyone would see her.
She figured that, at that time, surely no one would be behind the annex. Only the seniors came here to smoke on occasion, and by now all of them were home, or at their part time jobs, or whatever else seniors tended to do.
Riley rounded the corner of the annex. The unshaded concrete lot wasn't completely empty, though. Another student stood behind a Honda, back turned to Riley.
In fact, Riley recognised her. It was Abigail from homeroom, someone she didn't know anything about. Abigail just stood there, motionless, until a flash of warm light shot from the ground up into the sky, leaving only an empty spot behind where Abigail had been standing.
She had teleported.
Forget getting home quickly. Riley needed to process what was happening. Her entire world was shifting right under her. She wasn't a freak. She wasn't alone, she was not the only person with superpowers.
She turned on her aging computer - a hand-me-down from her dad's workplace, and one that they had neglected to take the asset tag sticker off of. Riley kept it on there, just to remind her of what she was dealing with. USGS, United States Government Secrets, and the painfully trite slogan of science for a changing world. It was changing, all right.
She connected to the internet, waiting for the search page to build up piece by piece. When it was ready, she didn't even know what to search for. Superheroes real? That search didn't turn up anything except forum posts of nerds bickering about comic books and who'd win a fight between two heroes from different worlds. Nothing interesting, nothing that answered her questions.
Riley had to change her strategy. She started looking for news, local news, from small towns. Nothing in San Francisco - far too much was happening in the town at any given point. But the smaller news outlets in the smaller towns around SF might have something. Surely, if Riley and Abigail went to the same school, there must've been other... superpowered people in the Bay Area.
None of the local news sites had anything on the topic. If her dad was involved at all, he'd probably made them scrub any news on supernatural occurrences personally. Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Marin and Daly City had nothing. It was only when Riley read the Berkeley Local Reporter, a tiny press on the other side of the Bay, that she found anything of use. A report of a teen, a boy who went to Van Buren High School, who saved a man from getting hit by a car on a busy intersection.
Witnesses claimed he "moved impossibly fast", but the report suggests that this might be exaggeration on the part of the witnesses. An eyewitness video was attached, recorded with a blurry cell phone camera. The boy, barely visible on the low resolution footage, sped across the intersection, grabbing hold of the careless man about to be hit by a speeding SUV, safely getting him off the road. The footage was bad, grainy, hard to read - but enough proof for Riley. This was real. She had to find him.
There was a knock on her door. Panic shot into Riley's veins, and she scrambled to switch off the monitor before her dad entered her room, without waiting for her to answer.
"Riley," Allen Truman said, having just come home from work. His USGS badge was still hanging off of his shirt pocket.
"I... really wish you didn't just come in whenever you wanted."
Her father ignored her quip. "You wanna go out for dinner?" Dinner. Riley had just discovered something that rocked the very foundation of her worldview, and her dad wanted to go out for dinner.
"I... don't think so." Riley said and grabbed her jacket. "I have to go."
"Go? You just came back from school."
"I gotta meet with some of my classmates. For a group project." By now, Riley was quite skilled at lying and coming up with things that would keep her father at bay.
"Shame. Do you want me to... bring takeout?"
"I... might be a while." Riley said and left her room.
"Be safe out there, all right? And don't stay too long," he said with what sounded like real concern in his voice. Of course, he didn't know that Riley could literally get herself out of any sticky situation, just by thinking about it.
Riley got off of the Red Line train at Berkeley. She didn't know how to find the kid from the article, but she was determined to at least try. Something pushed her, and she let herself wander the streets, guided only by the sense that she was on the right track.
At this hour, Van Buren High School was obviously closed already. She somehow expected him to be there, like she was being pulled towards the correct place. Sure enough, she walked onto campus, completely alone and ignored by the rest of Berkeley. Behind the school, on the cinder track was a boy, crouched on the blocks. He pushed himself off, and managed to run the entire four hundred metre track in less than two seconds.
Riley jogged over to him, her hands held up as to signal that she wasn't intending to scare him. He looked at over at her, and dashed until he was only a few inches away from her. Riley flinched.
"What do you want?" He asked, short on breath, sweaty, and his eyes red from crying. He couldn't have been much older than Riley, maybe a few months.
"I'm- not here to hurt you," Riley tried to defuse the situation.
"I doubt you could if you tried. What did you see?"
"I saw you outpacing a fighter jet without even trying." The boy sighed.
"You didn't. That was your imagination."
"You don't have to lie to me." Riley stepped back. "Your secret is safe with me."
"Why should I trust you? I don't even know you."
"I'm Riley. I'm from across the bay. Twin Peaks. I-"
"So what are you doing in Berkeley? You looking for me?"
No need to lie. She could let her guard down, for the first time there was someone like her. "Yes. I was. Because I'm like you."
"You're nothing like me. Nobody is anything like me."
"I can prove it. Look over there." She stepped back, realising how strange it felt to use her power while someone was watching her, but nonetheless. She looked over to the spot on the other side of the track, closed her eyes and imagined what she would see if she was standing there. The boy would be on the other side, the tree would be right next to her, and the white line on the ground marking lane six would be right in front of her. Then, a familiar tug upward, the grey she saw in her closed eyes turned a warm red briefly, and she opened them again. She was standing where she expected, more or less.
She walked back to the boy, who couldn't believe what she just did, standing there, aghast, shocked even.
"Believe me now?"
"That's insane." He said, but collected himself quickly. "Fine. I'm Derek. Are there any others like us?"
Riley nodded. "I think so."
"You think so?"
"There's a girl at my school that can teleport, too. I saw her. Abigail." Riley said. "But she doesn't know I know."
"Keep it that way." Derek said and retied his running shoes. "The less people know the better. You never know who also knows about us."
"The Berkeley Local Reporter, for starters. And if they do, my dad will know too."
"What?"
"You saved someone from being hit by a car. The Berkeley Local Reporter ran a story. It's online."
"Shit. That's not good. And what's that about your dad?"
Riley swallowed. "I have reason to believe he's a secret agent hunting people with superpowers."
"You're screwing with me." Derek said. Despite just having her power demonstrated for him, he still didn't really believe Riley. She could hardly fault him for that.
"I wish I was."
"Okay." He nodded and thought for a second. "I'm out of here." He turned to leave, but Riley grabbed him by his shoulder.
"Wait. We can figure this out. We'll talk to Abigail, stick together-"
"Riley. If you're right, the world is about to get a lot more complicated. Not just for us, but for everyone. I don't plan on being around when your dad comes to put me in superhero prison." He wiped a tear out of his eye. "Thanks for warning me."
Before the words had even reached Riley, Derek was gone. He was gone so fast Riley couldn't even see where he ran off to - he might as well have teleported.
Not wanting to spend the hour on the train back to SF again, she decided to teleport, this time to the foot of Sutro Tower. She knew a spot where nobody ever was, around the back of an electrical junction box. When she arrived, Riley sat down on the ground, letting her emotions wash over her.
For once, she hadn't been alone, had found someone who was at least a little bit like her, and they immediately ran away. Because of her. Because of what she represented, what she meant. Danger.
Tears ran down her cheeks. There wasn't anything she could do - even superpowers weren't enough to keep everyone from turning their back on her. Nobody cared about her at school, nobody had cared about her back home in Iowa, and nobody cared about her here.
Her eyes red from crying, she came home, the hood of her jacket pulled up so that her dad wouldn't notice that she'd been crying. She slipped past the door, up the stairs to her room, threw her jacket in the corner and hid under her blanket, sniffling, crying herself to sleep. At least the next day, she'd have a new person to make hate her forever.
The early morning October air was cold, but Riley couldn't care less. She was waiting, sitting on the curb of the parking lot behind the annex, at 6:30 in the morning. If Abigail was going to teleport here, she'd have to do it some time in the next hour.
Minutes passed, slowly. Every second Riley sat there and stared at the spot where Abigail had vanished the day before was agonising. What if she didn't show? What if she was out sick today? What if Riley had been imagining it all?
Riley was so focused on the spot on the concrete that she didn't even notice when her album finished and she was listening to nothing on her earbuds. Her mind was racing. How would she talk to Abigail once she showed up? Just from where she was sitting, it would be obvious what she was doing. Should she be doing this at all? Should she just talk to Abigail over lunch? Should-
A pillar of bright white light, so cold it was almost light blue, blasted from somewhere in the sky down onto the parking lot, almost blinding Riley. She blinked a couple of times to get the stars out of her eyes, and looked at Abigail Louden.