Chapter 10
Back to Jordan pov
After I assured Katie that I wouldn’t volunteer for the extremis project, we walked into the building and to the front desk. Waiting for us there was a tall lanky man who had a striking resemblance to Katie. He had the whole scientist get-up as well, a long white lab coat equipped with a pocket protector, and thick chunky glasses that took up a third of his face.
I tilted my head at katie.
“I wear contacts” she said, not needing to ask what I meant.
Spotting us, the man walked over to us and brought out his hand for me to shake.
I looked at his hand and then to my crutches awkwardly.
Seeming to realize the faux pau, he awkwardly cleared his throat and rubbed his hand over his pants.
“Um… sorry. I- ah…”
Katie rolled her eyes, and I tried to keep back a laugh. Trying to help her dad out, Katie motioned between the two of us.
“Jordan, meet dad. Dad, meet Jordan.”
Giving him a smile, I nodded my head. “Nice to meet you Mr. O’Niel, thanks for agreeing to give us a tour of your lab! Katie mentioned what you were working on would help give us some ideas for our LAB at school.”
Her dad smiled and nodded, grateful to change the topic from his awkward greeting.
“Yes! And let me just say jordan-“ he looked over to Katie with a proud face,”thanks for getting Katie into the mechanics lab. I know it’s not her favorite, but I think I’d be great experience and could help improve her project from last year!”
“I agree Mr. O’Neil, her project was great…. But it did lack a certain technical aspect to it.”
The two both turned their heads to Katie who was watching the conversation with slight ire.
“Yeah, yeah” she said in a dismissive voice, “I can just partner with Jordan this year on the project. She’s a genius at that kind of stuff.”
Mr. O’Neil lifted his eyebrows, “oh really! Then you’ll love to see the current project I am working with my team. It combines certain elements of electrical pulses and-“
Listening to Katie’s father, we started to walk behind him as he brought us on a tour of the facility. It wasn’t as big as anything she’d seen when training with the avengers, but the building was clean, and the technology was new.
“Since this building is just a branch facility of the think tank we only have a few projects here, like mine and a few others.”
Surprised to hear this wasn’t the main location, I was interested to hear it was mainly out of California.
“I know that Katie said extremis was being tested here, is that true.”
Giving me the same skeptical look Katie had, he frowned.
“Well, we used to have a small team that my wife worked on. But due to…. Ideological differences, the team disbanded and my wife is now looking for opportunities… elswhere”.
Not willing to ask another question on the sore topic, I followed along the rest of the tour in silence. It wasn’t until we walked past the old extremis lab that I felt something on my back.
Turning my head around, there was…
Nothing?
Noticing I’d stopped moving, Katie called out to me.
“Hey Jordan! What’s up? Is there something wrong?”
Not sure what to say, I just brushed it off. I was just being weird, right?
———————-
After the tour, Katie and her dad offered to take me out to dinner. The sky had grown dark and the air had gotten chilly, so I’d figured it was a little too late for me to go out. I didn’t really have a curfew from my grandparents, but that was really because I’d never really been out this late before… at least before I started training.
Since it was a Sunday night, and the tour had gone longer than I’d expected. I’d probably have to head out soon. The only issue was… I didn’t know how I was getting home. Steve hadn’t said anything else about picking me up so?
I turned to Katie’s dad, “do you mind taking me home if my…. Uncle doesn’t answer? I’m not a huge fan of the subway- if you even took a car that is?”
He nodded, “no worries, I’m not a fan either. Katie and I’ll wait over there so you can take your call.”
The two started to walk to the parking garage, but Katie was stopped in her tracks as she spotted me bringing out my flip phone.
It looked like her eyes bugged out of her head
“Wait… you have a flip phone? What is this? 2008?”
“What's wrong with my phone? It works perfectly fine for what I need it for?”
Katie gave me a ‘yeah right’ look, but it quickly morphed into one that was serious when she realized I wasn’t kidding.
“Wow, your serious. Do you like, not use the internet at all? How do you stay up to date on trends and-“ she stopped herself, “you know what. Nevermind. I forget that you’re YOU sometimes. Of course you’d not have an iPhone. you probably don’t even have a Facebook!”
Before I could ask her what she meant by ‘I forget you’re you’, Katie had already disregarded my question and started walking over to her dad.
“Just make your call, I’ll be over here with my dad”
Choosing to ignore weather she was insulting me or not, I finished typing out Steve’s number into the keypad. After letting the phone ring for a while, the tone went to voicemail.
“Huh…” I said under my breath.
That was weird, I don’t think Steve had ever not answered my call before. Could it be he was on some avenger business?
That didn’t seem right.
He usually left me messages when he wouldn’t be able to pick me up, or if he had to go on an impromptu meeting. If I called and he couldn’t answer, he’d even text me sometimes. He’d never just…. Not answer.
After trying his number a few more times without a response, I decided to just let it be. He’d notice my calls and let me know why he couldn’t contact me. It was fine. He was fine, and I was fine.
Walking over to the O’Niels, I told them I couldn’t get in tougpch with my ride, and we walked to the parking garage together. Luckily, they’d parked on the ground floor, so we didn’t have to deal with the hassle of me waiting at the bottom. A ton of the parking structures in New York didn’t have elevators, and while most people who needed them just used the handicap spots, people who took rides from people who didn’t have handicap stickers often had to wait for their party to get to their can and drive it down to them.
Reaching the doors of their black Buick, Katie held the passenger side door open for me so I could get in.
“Thanks.” I nodded, maneuvering my crutches in a way I could get into the low seated car.
Katie gave me a salute, “No problem!”
After closing my door for me, she got in the back of the car and brought up her gps. “so where are we going? I want to get the eta so I can let my mom know when we’re getting home.”
Her dad nodded,
“Good idea, she’ll probably want us to let her know we’ll be home soon since we didn’t go out to dinner.”
“Just outside Forest hills in queens- not”
“Not too far from delmar’s” he said, laughing. “That’s actually where we are going! Do you happen to live right by Forest park?”
I rose my eyebrows and turned around in my seat to look at Katie.
“Don’t tell me you live in the 502 building….”
Both her and her dad gasped at the building number.
“Second floor?” Katie said hesitantly.
I sighed, glad to know we at least lived on different floors.
“I actually live in a top unit, my grandparents got it rent stabilized YEARS ago, so we’re actually pretty lucky when it comes to space.”
“lucky” Katie sighed, “my room’s a shoebox”
Her dad laughed, “that New York rent prices for yah!”
How was it possible that we hadn’t known how close we were? We could have been hanging out on days I didn’t have training! Could we have passed by each other without knowing?
“Do you take the subway to school in the morning? I’d get not seeing you after school because you have your internship, and I tend to stay after in the library- but how’s it we’ve never seen each other in the morning?”
She nodded, “yeah, I take the subways in the morning. Do you walk? Isn’t that kind of far?”
“It is” I agreed, “but I don’t really understand the subway- plus it’s kind of awkward to be by myself.”
I guestered to my legs, “people tend to stare…”
“Ah” she said in understanding, “I guess I never really thought about it…. I do need the exercise though… how about we walk together?” She looked at me expectantly.
I smiled, “that’d be cool, actually. I can show you my favorite coffee shop on the way. Could we meet outside tomorrow at 8am? That should give us enough time to order and then make our way to school by 9… we might be a little early even?”
I knew Katie was an early riser, but it’s possible she’d want to wait to the last minute…..
“That sounds fine!” She replied, “I’m interested in what place you’ll take me to. I’ve lived here my whole life, so I’ve been to a lot of places… but you already knew that.”
About a week into knowing each other, Katie had insisted on knowing where I was from. Apparently, I had a pretty strong midwestern accent despite not living in Chicago for about 2 years now. Sometimes she’d even mimic my speech so I’d be able to see the difference between myself and her ‘superior’ City accent.
I usually ignored her when she did that though.
“I think the place has been there for a while, so it’s possible you might have been there. It’s called historians coffee, ring a bell?”
Katie rubbed her thumb over her chin, but her dad glanced over at me.
“That’s Franks’s place right? Katie’s older brother goes to university with his niece. He’s a good guy, a little secretive, but he gives out great deals on some pretty rare books.” Mr O’Niel stopped for a second, like he was remembering something.
“Not only that, but he’s known for his hero trading card collection, Katie.”
I sat there in confusion as Katie gasped. Her face lit up like a Christmas tree, and I hadn’t even known that hero’s even had trading cards. I’d thought it was just a sports thing.
I’d claimed to like Superheroes like Katie did, but she was on another level.
“No way!” She yelled, grabbing my hand from the back seat. “We HAVE to go tomorrow. I just NEED to see it!”
She brought out her phone from her pocket, a trading card of Steve on the screen.
“This right here is an original 1940’s captain America trading card.”
Her finger pointed to the shield, the colors in a different order than Jordan had seen on his shield.
“I got this one from a thrift store about a few months ago… actually I think it was the day before the attack on New York.”
I listened to her as she went on,
“The special thing about this one is that it was a misprint- see the colors on the shield? There’s only about 50 in existence, and it’s worth well over $500. I bet if that guy is the real deal, I could make some great money.”
I nodded-fascinated. I’d recognized the shield being off, like she’d said, but the fact that it was so valuable? Insane.
“So you really want to sell it? Why wouldn’t you keep it” I wondered.
“Well, I do think it’s really cool- I’m more of a poster and pin collector if anything, but I do follow pretty much all super hero collectibles. It's a fast way to make a buck, flipping stuff that nerds go crazy for.”
Her dad cleared his throat to get our attention. I’d been so engrossed in what Katie was saying, that I’d totally not realized we’d made our way to our building.
“As much as I Love hearing Katie finally being able to get to talk to a friend about hero’s, I’ll have to cut you guys off here.”
He gave Katie a look, “YOU, missy, have put off your homework to last possible moment, and I’m not having your teacher complain about you getting your work done a minute before class again.”
I laughed again as Katie grumbled, remembering Friday when she’d written the free response question we’d had due for class 5 minutes prior. She’d gotten an 85%, not bad for an AP class, but miss Johnson had complained loudly in front of the class about her handwriting.
“C’mon” her dad said, getting out of the car. “You’ve got work to do.”
Theatrically sliding out of the car, Katie got out and opened the door for me.
“Do you need a hand?” She asked me, and gestured to how low the car was. “I can pull you up. It didn’t exactly look easy when you sat.”
I didn’t really need the help, but I appreciated the gesture.
“Sure” I reached out my hand, and suddenly got yanked up by Katie. She must have miscalculated my weight, as she’d pulled me a little to strong.
“Ope” I said, grabbing her shoulder for support and using the other arm to grab my crutches still in the seat.
“You’re lighter than you look” she shrugged helping me balance.
Not knowing whether to take that as a compliment, I just threw it right back at her.
“Well you’re stronger than you look”
Laughing together, we made our way into the building and said our goodbyes. I’d been a good day, one of the best I’d had in a while.