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Next morning they held a meeting to discuss their position.
The tape had offered so much hope but delivered nothing.
It was interesting to speculate who had turned it off
and then on again but Sue's enthusiasm for the investigation
was on the wane. It was clearly an inside job and it
would be hard, even for her, to get any more information.
It wasn't as if she could just ask people.
They sat in silence trying to decide what to do next.
James thoughts quickly wandered. There was a perpetual
hint of sadness to Sue, he thought. It showed around
her eyes. It was as if life had never turned out as
she hoped. He had often felt the same way, never understanding,
until he found fulfillment, that something was wrong.
In England he usually didn't find the things he wanted.
He had lived from day to day, haphazardly seeking happiness.
He remembered waking up, perhaps five years old, just
before the malaise took hold, feeling lucky to be alive.
There were toys to be bought, friends to be made, games
to be played. But the toys were seldom as good as the
pictures on the box, friendships had a habit of going
sour, and games always frustrated him because he knew
instinctively that he was not going to win. He was an
avid spectator but a very poor player. This was not
how life was supposed to be.
For reasons he could no longer recall, his burning
desire at the time had been to understand chemistry.
He desperately wanted a bedroom filled with test tubes
and bottles of sulfuric acid. He never got them. When
the opportunity finally arrived, many years later in
high school, he found chemistry boring at first, then
mystifying. He had been seduced by the romance.
Instead he played with electricity, his parents agreeing
that batteries were safer than naked flames. By the
time he was 11 years old he had built all manner of
gadgets from a growing collection of resistors, capacitors
and transistors. He learned a lot but still he came
away disappointed. He dreamed of computers with flashing
lights. Instead, before him, he saw untidy circuits
that had no real purpose and often didn't work at all.
The gap between what he could achieve and what he wanted
to achieve was unthinkably wide.
It forced him to reevaluate. The lesson was clear.
Don't expect too much.
The years passed but the disappointment never seemed
to stop. At work, when he finally made it as a manager,
he was appalled to find himself left to his own devices
with neither guidance nor support. He barely knew what
his goals were unless he failed to meet them.
He thought he could imagine what Sue must have been
through. From an early age she would have recognized
her own abilities, and that she was good at school.
She must have hoped for so much yet now she could barely
afford food and shelter.
It was Kath who broke the silence. "Coffee?"
"Thanks" James replied. He pulled out some
bills.
Kath knew the drill. "Coffee and Danish?"
she asked Sue.
"Yes please." She gave a happy smile.
"How can you eat so much? Your metabolism must
be incredible!"
"Oh, you'd be amazed," said Sue, truthfully.
As Kath closed the door they exchanged grins.
"When did you discover what you can do?"
James asked. There was still so much about her that
he didn't know but it was amazing how quickly he'd learned
to take her skills for granted.
"Invisibility," she began. "I was seven.
Flying came when I was ten."
It was almost anticlimactic, the simple way she said
it. "What? You just found out you could do it?"
"Yep. No radioactive spider. Nothing."
He laughed.
"Did you ever tell anyone?"
"No. My sister always thought something strange
was happening but she never found out."
"What about parents or boyfriends?"
"Parents, no. And there haven't been many boyfriends."
"You have a sister? You never mentioned that."
"Heidi teaches. She's at the University of Cambridge."
"In England?"
Sue nodded. "She's the smart one in the family."
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