Chapter 34

After halftime during the football game on Friday, Callum and I quickly put on warm clothing and hung up our band uniforms. The two of us didn’t typically stay for the rest of the game, especially since neither of us completely understood what the game was even about, but Keisha figured that going to the game would be a good way to relieve some stress before our team made their debut tomorrow and F.E.R.R.E.T. ultimately attacked us. Plus, we’d be supporting Becky and Trayvon since they were still involved with the game until it ended.

Needless to say, this wasn’t any of our scenes, and yet, we were going there willingly.

As long as we had our band shirts, we would get into the game for free, so I put my baggy jacket on and pulled my hair back into a ponytail, doublechecking that the logo on my band shirt would be seen as Callum walked out of the guy’s bathroom wearing a baggy pair of joggers and a just as baggy grey jacket. He looked me up and down, smirking a bit. "You trying to look pretty for your boyfriend?"

"You realize how demeaning that sounds, right?" I asked as we started walking out of the school building and towards the football field. "Can’t a girl just look clean and well dressed for themselves?"

"God, Anna, I was just teasing you."

"I know. I just like giving you a hard time." I said, smirking at Callum.

Callum sighed heavily. "Keisha is saving us a seat, right?"

"She should be." I said, shrugging. Erika, Keisha, and Braylen were all sitting in the student section when the band went there to play stand tunes. They should be saving us a spot so that we can all sit together. However, since this was our homecoming game and we were playing our across town rivals, the stands were packed. It was lucky that they even got a seat for them, much less us.

"Well, it might take a whole team save us a seat with this crowd." Callum said as we wormed our way into the stadium.

As soon as we got into the crowded stadium, people swarming in front of us, I looked over at Callum, practically yelling to even be heard. "Do you want me to get you any food?"

Callum raised an eyebrow. "Did you not eat before coming here?"

"Well, since the girls are gonna get ready at Becky’s house since it’s close to the place The Super Awards are gonna be, I helped Becky gather the dresses since she’s keeping them at her house for the night. Since I also had to feed Koda, pack a bag for Erika’s since her parents are taking us there tomorrow and I’m just spending the night, and grab Koda and I’s briefcases, I had to deal with that, and by the time we got everything to Becky’s house for tomorrow, she was due back at the school. The cheerleaders had some sandwiches, but because I’m not a cheerleader, I didn’t get anything. I long for food, Callum. I have hunger."

Callum laughed, shaking his head with derision. "If you could get me a sugary drink, I would be much appreciative."

"Sugar. Got it." I said, flashing Callum a thumbs as I started moving into the line for the snackbar. "Text me what line we’re sitting at."

"Got it!" Callum said as he walked further into the crowd. I instantly lost him.

I stood by myself in line, patiently waiting until I could get to the front. I dug into my phone case where I kept a spare twenty dollar bill for emergencies when I heard someone laugh behind me. "I see you still do that stupid thing with the dollar bill."

I didn’t even have to turn around to know who it was. I felt my body tense up, but given the fact that my jacket was extremely baggy, I doubted that she noticed my unease. "What do you want Zelena?"

"Have you made a decision?" She asked, her voice taking on a deadly edge. She sounded just as tense as I felt.

"Yes, I have." I said, keeping my gaze locked on whoever was in front of me.

Zelena was silent for a moment. "And?"

"I think you know me pretty well to know my answer to that."

Zelena seemed to sigh a breath of relief. "Oh, thank God you aren’t going to be there tomorrow."

"No, I’m going to be there."

I could practically feel Zelena’s negative energy behind me. "I thought you were smarter than this, Anneliese."

"If you really thought I was just going to sit idly in the corner after you said that you were going to hurt my friends and family, you were sorely mistaken." I said, still not bothering to turn around to look at her. "It doesn’t have to be like this, Zelena. You guys don’t have to listen to Herbstreit."

That seemed to surprise her. "You know who Sewage is?"

"I’m a lot smarter than I look, Zelena. All it took was a little digging into the villain files at the Treatorian Collective to figure out that Alessandro Sherbertit was Alexander Herbstreit."

"Anna, if you do this, you are going to get hurt."

"And if I don’t, then so many other people are going to get hurt."

"Why can’t you just listen to me for once? I am trying to save your life right now!"

"By threatening to hurt the people who I’ll fight for? Seems counterintuitive if you ask me."

Zelena was silent for a minute. "I’m doing it to give people like us a chance to fight, Anna. It’s not fair that the grownups who have been in control for ages are the only ones allowed to fight."

"That’s why Y.A.K.S. exists. Y.A.K.S. is being developed by the heroes to give kids like us that chance!" I argued back. "You don’t have to go the route of vigilante justice to get what you want. Don’t think I don’t know what you’ve been doing to the city. Erika blamed me for that once she found out about my powers."

"Why do you hang around her anyway?"

"I don’t know, maybe because she’s my friend and your little organization targeted her and tried to kill her?"

"It’s sad that that’s the only way we could get our message across, but-"

"But nothing! There are much more peaceful ways to go about things instead of resorting to murder!"

"You know, I’m beginning to think that you like her more than you liked me."

"She’s a lot better of a friend then you ever were to me."

Zelena paused again. We were still half of the way to the front desk. After a second, Zelena sighed. "What happened to us?"

"What do you mean?"

"We used to be good friends. What happened?"

"Well, you calling me a disgrace to my family and saying that I’m a horrible person during our fight caused some real damage." I said passive aggressively as a couple of the lightbulbs in the overhead lights bursted. As people whispered around us, I started taking deep breaths in an attempt to calm myself down.

"You said some pretty nasty stuff about me too, so don’t-"

"I’m not, Zelena, and that’s your problem. You keep trying to cover up your past mistakes by making new ones. I’ve accepted that I’ve made mistakes in the past. I’m trying to make up for them. You aren’t. And you will never understand why that’s wrong."

"Why do you side with them on everything? You barely know them."

"Because they actually support me."

"Really? Even when they were freaking out and avoiding you after they found out about your mind thing?" Zelena asked hotly. "And yes, I know about that."

"And I know how you know about it, so who has the real information here?" I asked angrily, more bulbs across the field breaking.

"You are playing for the wrong side-"

"No, you are, and you’re too far in to see that this path is extremely self destructive. You’re going to fail to destroy the superheroes if I have anything to do about it. The rules exist for a reason, and what you’re doing is going to destroy our society for good."

Zelena seemed to pause for a moment. "I don’t regret it."

"What?"

"I don’t regret what happened that night at the party. You both deserved to get shot. At first, I was sad, but now, I can’t say I’m too upset that it was you instead of her." And with those final words, Zelena stormed out of the stadium. As I turned my head slightly to watch her leave, I staggered back a step. The party where Erika almost died. The gun. I thought back to that night. At the time, I had been so focused on the bullet that I didn’t even care who was under the hood. Now, thinking back on it, I remembered short black hair and peircing blue eyes peeking out of the red jacket hood. Zelena was the one who tried to kill Erika. I tried to look calmer on the outside than I actually was on the inside as I approached the mom taking orders.

"Oh no!" One of the band moms said in the snack booth. I turned my attention to the booth and saw that all of the lights had gone out. "Barb, the power went out! We aren’t going to be able to keep anything cold or hot for much longer!"

"Oh great..." Barb, the plump colorguard mom at the cashier said exhaustedly as she looked up at me. "If you want something warm or cold, honey, you’re gonna have to order it now."

Realizing that I was the reason for the power outage, I slowly moved my hand to the poweroutlet at the side of the building the snack booth was at, hoping to jump start the place back to life. "Do you guys have any Dr. Pepper left?"

"I don’t know..." Barb said, turning away. As soon as she wasn’t looking, I sent a jolt of energy into the outlet. The lights quickly turned back on, powering everything up. "Well, at least the power’s back."

"How’d that happen?" The sole band dad in the snack booth asked. "I didn’t mess with anything. Nicole, did you mess with anything?"

"No, but at least it’s back." A skinny blonde woman who I assumed was Nicole responded.

"Well… Nicole, Jack, do we have any Dr. Pepper left?"

"Uh… One bottle." The band dad said, holding it up in the air.

"We do have some left, honey." Barb said happily, turning her attention back to me.

"Great! I’ll take one Dr. Pepper and one Chick-Fil-A sandwich."

"One Chick, one Dr." Barb said, looking at my shirt. "You didn’t eat beforehand?"

"One of my friends is a cheerleader and she was driving me up here after we gathered our group’s Homecoming stuff. By the time we got everything, it was time for her to report to the school."

"I get it. Homecoming is a big deal around here."

"You got that right."

"So that’ll be seven dollars."

I slid my twenty dollar bill to her. "Can you break a twenty?"

"Of course we can!" Barb said, taking my twenty and handing me thirteen dollars back. "You’ll get that food over at that next window."

"Thank you." I said much happier than I currently felt as another band mom handed me what I bought. Holding my sandwich and Callum’s soda in one hand, I checked my phone and saw his text messages. He knew that something was up, not that I’m all that surprised. I was taking out my anger on those poor, innocent overhead lights. I’m honestly surprised that nobody came down to make sure I was okay.

Callum Kent 9:43 PM

We’re on the 45 towards Salt.

Callum Kent 9:56 PM

Hey… Is everything okay? We keep seeing lightbulbs explode on

the field and we’re assuming that you’re the one doing it based on the fact that your emotions tend to make electric stuff do that when you get angry enough.

Knowing I was going to have to face the music at some point, I started walking towards Salt, which is what the band kids called the giant salt depository that overlooked the practice field that was right next to the football field. Until Callum actually bothered to explain what it was, I called it Pepper because the panneling on the outside made the building look like a mound of pepper with windows. As soon as I climbed the bleachers to where Callum, Keisha, Erika, and Braylen were sitting, I held out the bottle to Callum. "Hope Dr. Pepper is okay."

"Yeah. It’s fine." Callum said, taking the drink. "Not what I would usually drink, but it has a lot of sugar in it. Should keep me awake for a while."

"Everything okay, Anna?" Keisha asked as I sat down next to Braylen and got my sandwich out of the small bag it was in.

"Yeah. Why wouldn’t everything be okay?"

"Well… The lights-"

"Yeah, I know."

Braylen put his arm around my shoulders protectively. "That doesn’t matter, okay? You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. Let’s just figure out the game since I don’t quite understand American Football."

"Neither do I, dude." Callum said honestly.

We watched the rest of the game, throwing playful enough banter around about where the ball neded to go to. Braylen kept his arm around me reassuringly the entire time. I wouldn’t even meet Erika’s eyes when she tried to talk to me in her calm and soothing voice about how neither of us understood what the heck was going on.

By the time the game was done, more and more lightbulbs had accidentally exploded, making the crowd talk in puzzled whispers the entire time. As everyone flooded the stadium, we all hung back to wait for Trayvon and Becky. Braylen and I stuck to the back of the group. He seemed like he was having a hard time of not saying something about the current situation. Eventually, I took a deep breath, avoiding his gaze. "If you want to say something, just go ahead and say it."

"What happened?" Braylen asked cautiously. "I normally wouldn’t press for info, but you’ve kinda been making lightbulbs explode the entire second half of the game."

"Zelena-"

"I’m going to stop you right there. We’ve been through this. It doesn’t matter what she-"

"I remember who tried to kill Erika. I don't know how she did it, I guess she had the gun in that damn red jacket she changed into to, but that doesn't matter. I remember who did it."

That got Braylen to shut up in a hurry. He seemed to catch on rather quickly, his eyes widening in disbelief. "No..."

"She said that I deserved to get shot."

"Now, Ann-"

"She said that she didn’t regret working for the bad guys and that both Erika and I deserved to get shot. She said that she wasn’t upset that it was me instead of her anymore-"

"It’s okay." Braylen said, quickly pulling me into a hug, my face turned into the inside of his shoulder. He didn’t say anything, he just put one of his hands on my head to keep me buried inside his peppermint smelling shirt.

I heard Becky walk up first. She seemed hesitant at first. "Braylen, what-"

"Zelena."

"Braylen, I know that we’ve all had unpleasant thoughts about her, but do you really-"

"She’s the one who did it."

"... Did what?"

"She tried to kill Erika."

"Well, does she-"

"No. Why do you think-"

"Where did An-"

"Snack booth line."

"Fuck!" Becky cursed, then I felt a hand on my shoulder. "Anna, are you okay?"

"I’m fine." I said weakly, forcing Braylen to let me go.

Becky smiled at me just as weakly. "You don’t look fine."

"I have to be."

"But Anna, you don-"

"I know. Trust me, I know."

"Hey guys..." Trayvon asked cautiously as he approached us. "What was up with the lightbulb show?"

"I’ll text it to you later." Becky said as Erika came running over to us.

"Hey," Erika said gently. "My moms are here to pick us up, but if you don-"

I didn’t let Erika finish her sentence. I just rushed forward and hugged her tightly, failing to hold back my tears as they stained her dark green sweater. I knew I shouldn’t feel that sad about the whole thing, I knew I shouldn’t, but hearing Zelena say that I deserved to get shot just made my brain shut down despite how much I was trying to hide it. Once the tears, which I didn’t even realize I was holding back, started flowing, I just couldn’t stop. My sobs seemed to fill the once crowded stadium, causing Callum and Keisha to turn back around and come back to the group. Erika spoke over my shoulder. "What am I missing here?"

"She remembered who tried to kill you." Becky said as gently as she could manage, practically shivering in her skimpy cheer uniform.

"She did?" Erika asked, surprised. "How?"

"The person who did it told her that you both deserved to get shot and that she wasn’t upset that it was Anna instead of you when she went to go get food." Braylen summed up.

Trayvon seemed to catch on rather quickly. "You have got to be fucking kidding me!"

Erika gently pulled me away from her, her eyes starting to tear up as she smiled at me sadly. "Who said that?"

"The person who tried to kill you."

"And who was that?"

"My… My ex..."

I didn’t have to say anymore. Erika quickly forced me back into the hug as she looked at Braylen sternly. "We’re gonna make that bitch pay."

"Erika, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but-"

"No. It’s one thing to actually shoot a gun and hope that it hits the target instead of someone who was your best friend, but it’s a completely different thing to tell your ex best friend that she deserved to get shot."

Even with my teary eyes, I could see the Callum shaped blob stagger back. "Zelena said that to you in line?"

I nodded, hugging Erika tighter. Keisha shook her head in dismay. "That bitch has crossed a line."

"I think we all just need to take a breather and think about this rationally, okay?" Becky said quickly. "It’s late, we’re tired and stressed out, our rational thinker is clearly extremely emotional right now, we just need to decompress until we’re all at a good mental state to talk about this calmly and not make death threats. Threatening to kill Zelena is just making us as bad as F.E.R.R.E.T."

"Becky’s right." Callum said sadly. "Erika, make sure she gets to the car safely, okay?"

"Come on, Anna." Erika said, grabbing my hand as I released myself from my hug. She looked over at Becky. "Can you-"

"I was already planning on it." Becky said, following us out to Erika’s moms van.

Yukiko was in the driver’s seat, concern growing on her face. "Erika, what’s-"

"The person who tried to kill me is Anna’s ex-best friend and she told Anna that she deserved to get shot. She kept her emotions bottled up during the game to the point where she was accidentally exploding lightbulbs." Erika explained quickly as we both climbed in, Becky handing me my belongings.

"I’ll see you guys tomorrow." Becky said as I closed the door.

"And I may have caused the snack booth to lose power right after I found out." I admitted sheepishly.

"We don’t have enough ice cream at home to deal with this emotional trauma." Emily realized as Yukiko drover out of the school parking lot. She clapped her hands together. "Tag team! I’ll watch the girls and talk things through with them while you go on a late night ice cream run."

"Sounds like a plan."

"I’m sorry." I whispered just loud enough for Erika to hear.

"For what?" She whispered back.

"Maybe if I tried harder with Zelena last year, maybe if I-"

"This is not on you." Erika said sternly. "Zelena made her choice a long time ago. If you had continued to be friend with her, then you’d be doing something you’d regret. You becoming my friend is the best thing that has ever happened to me because you were one of the first people in a long time to even stand up for me. This whole situation is not your fault, and if you don’t stop thinking like that, I am going to beat you with a pillow. My big green one."

"She said that I deserved it. That we both deserved it."

"Well, I’ll tell you, she’s the one that deserves it right now."

"Erika, we don’t want people to get shot." Yukiko chided.

"Sorry Mom."

"In any case, Erika’s right, Anneliese." Emily said, looking at me from the rearview mirror. "This is not your fault. You saved Erika’s life because of her horrible decision. If she said that you deserved to either watch your friend die or die yourself, then she was never a real friend in the first place."

"My application to be your best friend still stands." Erika said happily, gripping my hand. "And the two of us will figure this out together."

I nodded, trying to muster up a smile despite the fact that I felt exhausted. "It doesn’t matter where we are right now or who thinks we need to leave Earth or whatever. As long as we’re in this together."

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