The house on Hawthorne smelled like garlic and rain. Pots clicked. The TV murmured from the living room. Mark's laugh drifted in and out like it always did when he was doomscrolling and pretending not to.
Stephen hunched over the kitchen table with his red notebook open. A page of crooked rockets. A scribble of a cape that was definitely not his dad. He shaded the cape darker anyway.
The front door did not open. It swung. Wind nosed the curtains and flipped his notebook to a blank page.
Omni-Man stepped through their hallway.
Not on a screen. Not in a newspaper. In their house. Cape settling. Boots tapping wood.
Stephen's pencil rolled off the table. He did not catch it.
Mark didn't look up. He yawned.
"Hey, Dad."
Debbie didn't turn from the stove.
"You have hands, you know. Knobs exist. Use them."
Nolan shut the door like a man who was trying very hard to remember what to do with hands.
"Sorry. Habit."
Stephen stared. His chest did the opposite of breathing.
'That's… Omni-Man. That's my… that's his…'
Words got stuck somewhere between brain and mouth and decided to be steam instead.
He pointed.
"You—you're—"
Mark finally glanced over, grinning like a raccoon caught with the bread.
"Dad's day job. You missed the memo?"
"You knew?" Stephen squeaked. He hated that it squeaked.
"Everyone knows," Mark said, already back to his phone.
Debbie slid a pan off the burner, voice warm.
"We didn't hide it, sweetheart. You just never asked."
Stephen's finger stayed pointed until it felt dumb doing nothing and folded into a fist instead. Nolan unclipped his cape. The red brushed past the doorframe. It left a tiny smear of soot on the paint that no one else seemed to notice.
Dinner went on because that's what dinner does.
They ate spaghetti. Nolan said something about a tremor near the docks and catching a cargo ship like it was a pop fly. Debbie asked if he could please stop putting his gloves on the counter because oil stains. Mark claimed the last meatball like it was a legal right.
Stephen moved noodles around like they were puzzle pieces. His ears were full of the wrong things. The radiator hum. The traffic two blocks over. His heartbeat hiccupping.
"So," he said, and his voice came out flat to keep it from shaking. "Dad's Omni-Man."
"Yep," Mark said.
"And you go… help people," Stephen told the fork in his hand.
Nolan's eyes flicked up, then softened.
"When I can."
Mark stretched his long legs under the table until his sock bumped Stephen's knee.
"Relax, Short Stack. You're not in trouble."
'I'm ten,' Stephen thought, and then, like a pebble dropped down a long well: 'I'm ten.'
He felt small and very tall at the same time.
After dinner, the house quieted into its usual shapes. TV low. Dishwasher churning. The porch light clicking on. Nolan stood at the sink, scrubbing the edge of his glove like the stain could be convinced to leave by manners.
Stephen drifted to the doorway and pretended he'd always been there.
"Do people ever get scared of you?" he asked.
Nolan didn't turn right away. Water hissed.
"Sometimes," he said finally. "Mostly before they know me."
"Do you get scared?"
A beat. Nolan's mouth tilted.
"Sometimes," he said again, the same shape, and then his hand landed—careful, warm—on Stephen's head. "You don't have to be."
'I already am,' Stephen didn't say. He leaned into the hand like a cat anyway.
Upstairs, his room was a small country with a desk border and a poster flag. He shut the door and the quiet got larger. The red notebook lay open where he'd left it, a blank page like a dare.
He sat. He wrote three words.
Rules for Not Breaking Things.
He stared at them until they looked like someone else's handwriting.
'He's a hero here. He's… good. He tucks me in. He laughs. He taught me how to ride a bike and didn't let go until I asked him to. He…'
Memory lurched. Another life. Another couch. A laptop glow. A rooftop painted in someone else's blood.
His stomach flipped. He pressed his knuckles to his mouth and breathed through it.
"Okay," he whispered, to the page, to the room, to the world. "Okay."
Rule One: Act normal.
Rule Two: Ask questions like you don't know anything.
Rule Three: Don't fly. (He scratched that out and wrote: Don't try to fly.)
Rule Four: No showing off.
Rule Five: If you mess up, stop.
He listened to the house to see if it would argue with him. The pipes creaked like old knees. Mark's footsteps thumped-pause-thumped as he practiced a fake basketball crossover in the hallway because Mark did not know how to be still unless asleep or eating.
Stephen smiled, small and secret.
He clicked off his lamp and slid into bed. Darkness settled. He stared at the ceiling until stars he couldn't see arranged themselves into a pattern he didn't know. Somewhere far off, a siren whined. Closer, a dog barked twice. Closer still, Nolan's weight crossed the floorboards, paused outside Stephen's door, and moved on.
'If it happens here,' Stephen thought, the words round and cold, 'I'll see it sooner. I'll… I'll do better.'
His hands were clenched under the blanket without asking him first. He made them uncurl. He counted his breaths. Four in. Four hold. Four out.
The window was a square of softer dark. He rolled toward it. Rain ticked once, then stopped.
He didn't sleep. Not right away.
When he did, it was because the house kept being a house, and he let it.
_ _ ♛ _ _
Morning had the same light, different gravity. Mark thundered down the stairs in a hoodie he swore he didn't steal from Nolan and a backpack that had lost at least three zippers to the concept of time.
"Don't burn the place down," he told Stephen, already halfway out the door.
"I'm ten," Stephen said, which covered a lot.
Debbie kissed Mark's cheek as he dodged like she'd tagged him with a tracking beacon.
"Text me if you're staying late, okay?"
"Always do," Mark lied with the charisma of someone who absolutely did not always do.
The door shut. Quiet pressed in for a second, and then the kettle began to sing. Debbie handed Stephen a bowl and a box of cereal like a ritual.
"You took last night well," she said, casual.
Stephen watched the loops hit the milk and remembered how fast Nolan had crossed the living room without making a sound.
"I like knowing things," he said.
Debbie's smile made her eyes crinkle.
"You and me both."
He ate, because eating meant normal. He packed his notebook. He tied his shoes. He stood in the doorway and faced the morning like it was a new class he hadn't studied for.
On the porch, the neighbourhood breathed back at him. Wet earth. Someone's dryer vent. A lawn mower coughing awake. The mailman's cart squeaking two streets over. He didn't know he could hear that until he was listening for it.
Rule Six wrote itself in his head as he jogged down the steps.
Listen on purpose.
He didn't try to jump higher than the step. He didn't see how fast he could run to the corner. He walked, small hands in pockets, the way a kid walks who is thinking very hard about not crushing a ladybug he cannot see.
At the end of the block, Mrs. Albright's cat was in the maple tree again, pretending it didn't know how to gravity. Mrs. Albright stood under it with the patience of a saint and a broom.
"Morning, Stephen," she said. "He likes an audience."
Stephen looked up. Yellow eyes in green leaves. A twig snapped. The cat re-evaluated its life choices, then re-committed to them.
"I can get him," Stephen heard himself say, before his brain filled out the form for that sentence.
Mrs. Albright blinked.
"You climb safe, sweetheart."
He put a hand on the trunk. Bark under his palm. Sap smell. He could feel—no, imagine—the pattern of the wood like stacked ropes. He could see—no, guess—where his foot should go.
He climbed slow. Normal. His sneakers squeaked on damp. He didn't jump the last gap. He reached. He let his sleeve catch a claw. The cat made a noise that meant both insult and gratitude. He tucked it against his chest, carefully, carefully, every muscle a thing on a dimmer switch.
Down on the grass, Mrs. Albright clucked over both of them.
"Thank you, hero."
Stephen's ears went hot.
"I'm not—"
"No one is until they are," she said, scratching the cat between its ears.
He walked to school with Rule Seven sitting warm in his ribs.
Small helps count.
_ _ ♛ _ _
That night, Mark leaned in the doorway of Stephen's room, hair damp from a quick shower, smelling like cheap body wash and cafeteria fries.
"So," Mark said. "You freaked out less than I thought you would."
Stephen put his pencil down.
"I saved a cat."
Mark gaped, then laughed, bright and stupid-happy.
"Look at you. Starting small. Next week: squirrels. Next month: raccoons. By Christmas you'll be mayor of the forest."
"Is that a real office?" Stephen asked.
"It is now," Mark said. His grin softened. "Hey. If you ever… I don't know. If you ever want to talk about it. The Dad thing. Or anything."
Stephen looked at his brother, all elbows and noise and heart.
"I know," he said, and meant it.
Mark bumped his shoulder against the doorframe like a punctuation mark.
"Night, Short Stack."
"Night."
When the house went soft again, Stephen opened the red notebook and added one more line, neat and small.
Rule Eight: Be a kid when you can.
He underlined it twice. He let the pencil roll. He listened to the house. He slept.
Tomorrow could be bigger. Tonight was exactly the size it needed to be.
End of Chapter 11
(A/N: Huh? huh? what do you guys think of the new style!!! I like it!)