The World Is a Crazy Place 

 So, I don't know what I'm going to do with the second chapter, so I'm going to skip over that part for now. Expected me to post the story in order? Nope. Tough luck. So, here is the third chapter, after only just finished writing it yesterday. I like it a lot. I would even post the fourth chapter.... but I don't have it done yet. Enjoy the third chapter! Talk to again soon! Or rather, type to you again soon...

Chapter Three
The day went by as normal, hard to remember other than the boring blandness I received every day. You know when you get home and your parents ask you, “What did you do today?” and then you think about it and reply, “I have no idea.” It was one of those days.
    When I got home, my dad was in the living room, watching TV, which was strange. Usually he’s downstairs until dinnertime. But then I saw it was playing the news.
    “Look at what happened last night,” he said.
    “Last night, this footage was caught on a security camera inside the coffee shop Chapters, downtown,” said a reporter. To be honest, there wasn’t much too see. The camera had been covered up by something, maybe a newspaper blown by the wind. But this was inside the coffee shop, where would the wind have come from, I wondered?
    “According to witnesses, a seemingly ordinary teenager girl actually conducted electricity. But she wasn’t being electrocuted by an outside force, folks. She created the electricity, causing mass confusion. People flooded into the street, terrified of getting electrocuted themselves. Police and the fire department became involved, but not before she escaped from the scene. The one question they all want answered is: Does this teen have superpowers?”
    Superpowers? Was this person trying to outdo my “Savior” performances by showing off? Who was she?
    “Descriptions of the girl have been varied, but a few have agreed that the girl had red hair. This, unfortunately, is not enough information to get an identification, but the police are working their hardest to get this under control.”
    They showed the security footage again, and I noticed a corner of the newspaper fly up for a second, just a second, and I caught a glimpse of someone’s feet. They were wearing red Converse High Tops.
    Red hair… red High Tops… could it be Katherine? I knew it was a long stretch, but just maybe, maybe she needed help. I could help her… probably. There were always people chasing after her, although last night had been the first where they wrote a news story about it. I had always wondered why they chased her so much, but it never really made it on my list of stuff to do. What did make it on the list: Save Katherine, don’t get killed, don’t get too hurt, make sure no one figured out who I was, get sleep, make it to school, don’t look too suspicious. All that plus trying to have some sort of social life was about all I could take. At some point, I knew I’d be able to have more time to myself, but that time just wasn’t here yet.
    But here was something, something where the clues converged, made sense, and without me having to go out of my way to get the details. Here was something that had just fallen in my lap, and I wasn’t going to ignore it.
    “Well, I’m going back to the lab,” said Dad. “Call if you need anything.”
    “Actually,” I said, “I was going to change, and then go out for a bit. Don’t worry, I’ll be home for dinner.”
    “Well, okay then,” replied Dad. He didn’t really know how to argue, which pretty much worked out for both of us. “See you later.”
    “Yup,” I said. I’m not really one for conversation. I went into my room and changed into more casual clothes, stuffing my “Savior” costume in my backpack, just in case, and then went for a stroll down to Katherine’s house. 
     And then I officially started to freak out. What would I say? What if I screwed up? Would she let me in? Would I have to reveal my secret? Would she reveal hers? Was she even the one I saw on TV, or was I just overreacting? Or was I just going insane? Was I so desperate to speak to her again that I’d made up this fantasy? Why had Dad been upstairs in the first place, watching the news? He never used to watch the news, and now he watches it twice in one day.... that had to mean something.
    This was a lot of questions, and I think they warranted a little freaking out. I finally made it to her house, and to keep myself from chickening out, I walked right up to her door and knocked, trying not to think. What if she wasn’t the one who opened the door? But I answered that question myself: her parents were almost always at work. And she was an only child. So either she answered the door or no one did.
    The door creaked open.
    “Hello?” asked a small, feminine voice. Katherine peeked out from behind the door. When she saw it was me, she pulled open the door, and, obviously not knowing how to act, slouched against the door frame. “Oh,” she said, her voice dramatically deepened to its natural state. “Jason. What do you want?”
    “Um,” I said. Honestly, I hadn’t thought up a plan, which was pretty stupid. But, I told myself, at least I’d had the courage to come up to her house at all. I needed a story, so I said the only thing that came to mind: “I kind of need some help on today’s math homework?”
    Katherine smiled, not a happy smile, more like an I’ve-got-you-cornered smile. “First of all, we are not in the same math class. Second, you are too smart to be having trouble. Third, I am completely useless in that field, hence the different math classes. So you didn’t come over because you need help with your homework. But please, come in anyway. It’s not like I have a social life or anything.”
    All of that was true, except the last part. She actually had tons of awesome friends. She just liked being moody around me. I never really figured out why, but I had always thought that it was because she was truly moody and she didn’t consider it worth the effort to try to hide her moody self from me. I was after all, a child in her eyes. For now.
    I came into the main living room, took my shoes off, and set my backpack on the floor. “Mind if I use the bathroom?”
    “Go ahead,” she replied. I walked off into the hallway to find the bathroom.
    When I came back into the living room, I saw something that I had never expected from Katherine.
    Okay, scratch that, I should have seen it coming. She had opened up my backpack and pulled out the only thing it contained: my “Savior” disguise. The look on Katherine’s face was confusion combined with disgust.
    “What the heck do you call this?” she demanded, holding up the dark cloak and mask, then shoving it in my face. Unprepared, I sort of left it just fall to the ground, where it continued to stay or the rest of the conversation.         Folding her arms, she shouted, “Is this some kind of trick? A sick joke? Do you like playing dress-up just so you can escape the boring droll of life? Well, let me tell you: real life is boring. Some of us learn to deal with it.”
    “That’s not why I have that. I have that because I’m him. I don’t play dress-up; I become someone else, someone willing to do what Jason Silver can’t. I become a man. And let me tell you, I don’t think the Jason part of me ever will grow up. But he can.
    “But what do you have to say about this ‘us’, about how ‘we’ have to learn to deal with the reality of life? Because last time I checked, your life has been pretty interesting these past couple years. Anything but boring.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, razor sharp, waiting like a cheetah getting ready to pounce. But what would there be to pounce on? She was cornered ad didn’t even realize it.
    “You know exactly what I mean,” I said, putting that “Superhero Twinkle” in my eye. It took me forever to perfect it. But it was wasted. Katherine didn’t even care anymore.
     “Do you really expect me to believe that you’re the Savior?” she snarled at me.
    “No,” I said. “That’s why I never said anything. But you do have to believe me: I am the ‘Savior’. Although that’s a terrible name, I can’t think up anything better.”
    “Why should I believe you?” she retorted. She had so much spunk. That’s one thing I’ve always liked about her. I wish I had that kind of internal drive. I mean, I did, but hers seemed to come out of nowhere. My drive to continue came from years of depression and failure, from losses and so much more. What had she lost? Oh, suddenly it seemed like she had so much to learn, as if I was suddenly an adult and she the child. This made me smile. If only…
    That smile completely confused her. Back on track, I reminded myself. Sometimes I can get really off track. I straightened out my face, looking serious again.
    “Because I think I might’ve figured out one of your secrets,” I replied. “Plus,” I added, “listen to this,” and I switched to my superhero voice, which was much deeper and more convincing than my normal voice, which had also taken lots of practice. Sounding like a man when you aren’t one quite yet is difficult. I began to recite: “What are you doing out this late? You know it’s past super villain curfew, right? Don’t worry—“
    “Stop!” shouted Katherine. “What are you doing?” This was the reaction I had been looking for. She was facing the truth when she very clearly didn’t want to. But there were the facts, and now she was finding that ignoring the truths of the world can be so difficult… You know, from my perspective, it seemed like she was the one who needed to accept reality.
    “I’m saying the stuff I said that night,” I replied. “You didn’t tell the press or anyone my exact words, right?”
    She gave me this hard look that could turn Medusa to stone. “So what’s this ‘secret’ you think you’ve uncovered?”
    “Chapters,” I said, and that’s all I needed to say. She immediately looked like Medusa had turned her to stone.
    “Wha— what’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, confidence dashed. I had obviously jumped to the right conclusions.
    “Chapters,” I repeated. “It’s that little coffee shop, where last night, a couple hours before that guy tried to attack you, you were—“
    She was holding her head now, eyes squeezed shut, like she was trying to block out the world. Maybe she was.
    “Stop it!!” she shouted at me. “STOP IT!” She was shaking her head, quickly now, faster and faster, even though I had stopped when she had asked me to. “Why did you come here?” she demanded, whipping her head back up to glare at me some more.
    “I thought you might need help,” I explained. “That didn’t look like an attack. At least, you weren’t the one attacking. What exactly happened?”
    “Why do you care?” She threw a look of hate and confusion and frustration and utter exhaustion at me. So many emotions… how had I learned how to identify them all, distinguish them from the mix? Now that I thought about it, a realized I had taught myself to see them, in the victims, in the criminals, in the people I encountered in the night. Emotions are everywhere, and always visible. You just have to know how to see them.
    “I care because, like I just said, you look like you need help. I care because you’re scared. I’m not doing this because you need saving, or that the world needs saving from you. I’m doing this because no one was there to help me when I needed it,” I said. “And trust me, it was hell.”