Balancer

Free Balancer by Patrick Wong Page A

Book: Balancer by Patrick Wong Read Free Book Online
Authors: Patrick Wong
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Paranormal
wakes!”
    Grinning, Amy tiptoes up to Nicole’s bed and throws back the covers.
    “Morning!” she squeals.
    Nicole sits up, sees the camera and, looking mortified, lets out a brief scream. She grabs the covers, hurls them over herself and returns to being a mound of duvet again.
    “Amy! No!” Nicole’s pleas are muffled.
    “I can’t hear you!” Amy tugs at the duvet, but Nicole isn’t budging. “Nix, come out and talk! Don’t you have anything to say to your adoring fans?”
    The mound does not reply.
    “Nix, come on! You’re totally the town superhero! Your followers await your words!”
    No reply, but a foot emerges and tries to locate Amy’s leg, aiming to kick.
    “Aha! The superfoot!” Amy’s hand hovers over Nicole’s kicking foot. “Wait for it …” She grabs for the foot.
    A squeal comes from under the mound as Amy tickles Nicole’s foot. The foot swiftly goes under the duvet again, and Nicole curls up into a ball.
    Amy puts the camera on herself. “It looks like Nicole has retreated into her Blanket of Solitude to recharge her superpowers. But I wanted to let y’all know that Nicole is appearing on prime-time TV this weekend. Go, Nix!”
    Amy cheers and presses a button. Cartoon letters flash up on the screen.
    Go SuperNix! Go SuperNix!
    Behind her, Nicole lowers the duvet, revealing a face deliberately obscured by a mask of her thick brown hair.
    “Ah, SuperNix, you’re in your ordinary teenager disguise, I see.”
    “Amy!” Nicole growls from under her hair. Her hand shoots out and grabs the camera.
    Abruptly, the screen fades to purple, with scrawled letters:
    Peace Out! Ames & Nix xxx

Alien Invasions
    It was a warm Friday evening, and Ben was in his room, laptop on and music blaring. A bowl of spaghetti was getting cold on the desk beside him as he scrolled down a Web page that explained all about how the FBI had refuted spontaneous combustion as the cause of the Lake Fairfax animal deaths. The idea of an animal’s body fat acting like wax in a candle made Ben lose his appetite. Not that he needed much help for that.
    His mom had hastily cobbled together “guilt pasta” — as Ben liked to refer to it — before going out for dinner with her new boyfriend. Her special hamburger meat/tomato sauce had been Ben’s favorite when he was seven, and it became the cure-all for scrapes and fights and bad tests at school. His mom whipped it up whenever she saw he was sad or suffering some kind of meltdown. Honestly, it didn’t really work anymore — it hadn’t since his dad had left when he was twelve. But he hadn’t the heart to tell her.
    The music ended, and the warm breeze filtered in sounds of the other kids in his neighborhood as they left their houses and headed out for the evening. He listened enviously to the chatter and the slamming of doors as car engines revved and friends gathered for an exciting night ahead.
    Ben’s sister was at their next-door neighbor’s party, to which Ben had been invited. He could hear the laughter now that his music had stopped, and he planned to head over after he finished up here. He still had a little more work to do, and he wanted to follow up on one more idea before he reached out to Nicole. He inhaled sharply at the thought of what he was going to have to do, but knew he was right this time.
    He pressed Genius on his streaming music app, starting another hour’s worth of music, and twirled in a forkful of tepid dinner. Flicking back to AmesAndNix.com , he found there had been no new updates since first thing that morning, when he’d been highly amused to see Amy surprising a sleepy and understandably grumpy Nicole. Nicole had once more gone up in his estimation, if that were possible. She was still modest about everything that had happened — not like Amy, who Ben suspected would happily talk herself up about the slightest thing.
    He figured Nicole was feeling pretty uncomfortable about being suddenly so popular at school, so it was

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