Miss Marvelous: The Pit Fall

My math teacher dropped my marked math quiz onto my desk, with a big fat zero on the top left corner of the page, in red ink.

“Another failed quiz. This is the third quiz you’ve failed in this class, Vanessa. You need to do better if you want to pass”.

I met the teacher’s dark brown eyes with mine.

“Yes, Mr. Cook”.

The teacher glanced at me one more time, before he continued to hand out the marked quizzes.

It’s not that I’m not good at math, I’m decent at it; but I’ve been distracted by my foster dad’s sudden death so much that I can’t focus on my schoolwork.

As I watched Mr. Cook teach the class about graphing linear relations, the sound of his voice slowly faded away as I shifted my gaze to the hand sanitizer on his desk, zoning out into my own world.

I had him in my arms before he died, before I revealed to him who I really was. Before he was impaled by the black lamp post pole.

“Well done, good and faithful servant” echoed Joe’s last words in my head.

“Continue to-“.

“--you know, Vanessa?” asked my math teacher, shifting his gaze to my neutral gaze at the back of the classroom.

I instantly snapped out of my zoning out and moved my attention back towards my teacher.

I stared at the equation up on the smart board, next to a four-quadrant graph with lines drawn right through it.

How did he graph those equations? I thought, before I said I didn’t know the answer.

Without hesitation, Mr. Cook asked another student, and they gave him the right answer.

For the rest of the period, I tried my hardest not to zone out again from the lame lesson. All day I struggled to focus and do my schoolwork.

In dance class, I fell multiple times, even though my teacher was teaching us the basic jazz steps, like the jazz square and the kick ball change.

Then in American history, the class was given a two-page booklet on the Civil Rights Movement with twelve questions to answer and I only got the first two done during that seventy-five-minute period.

Thankfully in science class, Mr.Cashol knew what I was going through, and he gave me an extra week to work on my food chain assignment, since it was due today.

When I arrived at my uncle’s house after school, I dropped my school bag by my bedroom door and again collapsed onto my air mattress bed, sinking into the black, thick comforter.

I let out a sigh as I laid there, with my hands and feet dangling over the edges, wishing that I didn’t have a lot of schoolwork to do.

Just the thought of it was giving me a migraine.

While my brain was stressing out, my acute hearing picked up a strange noise coming from outside, just a block away from my uncle’s house.

Groaning, I got up to my feet, threw on my hero costume, and slid the window open, before sluggishly shapeshifting into a harpy eagle and flew out.

When I was approaching the area I heard the noise, I gradually glided down to the sidewalk and shapeshifted back into my human form, before I proceeded further.

Up ahead, was a traffic collision. Many vehicles were blocking the middle of the street, preventing other vehicles from passing.

However, the cars and trucks didn’t look damaged or broken down at all; It seems like a bunch of people got into their vehicles and just parked them in the middle of the road.

I kept walking towards the blob of cars and trucks until I was standing in front of the roadblock.

The weird part is that there were no passengers or drivers in any of the parked vehicles. Across the street from me, were a few police officers standing on the sidewalk staring at the traffic jam figuring out what to do, just like me.

I have a few options, I thought, trying to think over the annoying, loud constant honking of impatient drivers that sat in their cars lined up in both lanes.

I could shapeshift into an animal that can lift up those cars to clear the road or I could try to use the bracelet to-.

Before I could finish my thought, all the vehicles that were clumped together suddenly roared to life (on their own) and started driving in all different directions.

As soon as the cars and trucks started driving into and through things, citizens began to flee from the area in terror.

One of those vehicles slammed hard into me, catching me off guard and sending me flying into a round garbage can.

I ended up landing in it, with only my bottom getting stuck inside while my limbs and my head were just outside of the bin.

If I didn’t put my hands up and created a shield in front of me before the impact, I would have for sure have gotten severely injured.

But with a few wiggles, I hopped out of the garbage can and was ready to take on the self-driving vehicles.

The first vehicle I targeted was a black SUV ford explorer, that was driving straight towards the Manhattan Grand Theatre, where hundreds of people were watching CATS: The Musical live on stage.

Using my powers, I shapeshifted into a tall male moose and galloped down the street, until I was right in front of the front doors to the theatre.

I lowered my heavy antlers down low enough to be in line with the blinding light of the car headlights and charged ruthlessly forward, headbutting into the speeding vehicle.

The force of the impact caused the tips of my antlers to pierce through the front of the car, stabbing into some of the most important mechanical parts that any car needs to function properly.

The car engine died, and it stopped moving, before I wiggled my antlers loose and located my next target.

Further down the street, I spotted a black minivan chasing a large group of pedestrians down the sidewalk, that was across from me. Acting quickly, I galloped after the van, until I got close enough to touch it.

Then I shapeshifted back into my human form except for my arms, I turned them into black octopus tentacles and thrusted them forward, wrapping and latching them onto the speeding vehicle.

I dug my feet into the ground as I pulled back hard on it to stop the van. Unfortunately, the car only stopped for a few seconds, before it started to go again. As I was slowly dragging it back towards me again, another self-driving vehicle noticed this and began racing towards me from my left side.

I caught sight of this and gripping onto the van tighter, I lifted the black minivan off of the cement sidewalk and used it as a shield. The other vehicle was going too fast to stop in time and collided into the van.

Then suddenly a white Tesla rammed into me from behind, pushing me out onto the middle of the road, making me lose my grip on the van.

I crashed down onto the smooth black pavement as I transformed my octopus tentacles back into my regular arms and hands, to brace myself for the impact. I felt too tired to get up. I tried to stand up, but my arms were trembling under my own weight and gave way, letting my aching body collapse.

With bleeding cuts on my face and thick blood oozing out of my nose, I looked up ahead of me and saw a self-driving vehicle getting closer and closer. The last thing I saw was the license plate that said ‘THBLCKSAL’ before I blacked out.