THREE: LIKE A SUPERPOWER

"C'MON BOYS!" Karen Wheeler's voice rang down the stairs the morning of November 7th. "Breakfast!"

The boys were already up and getting ready for school, rushing up the stairs at the mention of food. Daniel, who never bothered to brush his unruly curls, looked like he just rolled out of bed (to be fair, he did), but he was wide awake. Although he and Mike had fallen asleep rather quickly, both pressed against each other, they woke up with their legs piled on top of each other. They laughed it off, but Daniel's heart fluttered nonetheless.

"Daniel!" Karen said in a scolding tone as soon as they reached the ground floor, "Your hair is a mess!"

"He looks fine," Mike defended, taking a seat at the table. Daniel settled in on the extra chair they placed next to the Wheeler boy, in between him and his baby sister. Nancy came down too, dressed and ready to go as she sat down at the table.

"Hey, Daniel!" she greeted. She always seemed to be a little kinder to him on account of her being somewhat friends with Heather. "Morning, loser." That statement was directed towards Mike, who's only response was to stick his tongue out. Karen defused the situation by placing scrambled eggs down in front of everyone at the table.

"Dig in."

Daniel's mom was never around to make breakfast. She left for work around five in the morning, way before her children woke up, and their dad was still on a business trip for another month. They never addressed it, but everyone in the house knew "business trip" was code for rendezvous with his mistresses. No one liked to talk about. Heather and his mother thought Daniel didn't know, that he was too young to figure it out, yet he still knew. That was why he found himself at Mike's house most nights when his dad was actually home. Then their house was filled with yelling and accusations and no love. He didn't like to think about it.

Everyone at the table went to town on breakfast, scarfing it down like they hadn't eaten in days. Karen laughed endearingly, ruffling the boys' hair. The moment was ruined when the harsh ringing of the phone.

"That's disgusting," Nancy pointed out as he drowned his breakfast in syrup. Although Daniel secretly agreed, he let out nothing more than a giggle.

"You're disgusting," was Mike's oh so genius retort.

With a dopey grin, he dumped syrup onto Nancy's plate, earning the response of, "What the hell, Mike?"

"Hey!" Mike's dad, Ted, spoke up in an attempt to pull back the kids. Daniel wished his mornings could be like this all the time.

Most of the time, it was Heather yelling from downstairs that his ass needed to be out of bed or he was walking to school or it was him sprinting down the stairs and forgetting his lunch or something like that. He never got a moment to breathe at home. The Wheelers' house was his home away from home. Mike was his home away from home. Whenever he walked into the house, it just felt warm. It felt like a family lived there, not four strangers. Heather was the only family member Daniel actually got along with. Not that his mother wasn't amazing, she was just never around. With their dad up in the air with another woman by his side, she worked twice as hard to support them. She partnered with a law firm up in Boise with a friend from college, but she had to work twice as hard to get the credit and pay she deserved as a woman of color. Daniel pretended not to understand the prejudices his family faced, but he knew he was the lucky one. He hated that he was the lucky one.

Karen hung up the phone and quickly silenced Nancy and Mike's arguing. She sighed, looking at Daniel sweetly, "Why can't all my children be like you?"

"Hey!" Nancy and Mike said in unison, both glaring at each other once they realized they spoke at the same time.

Daniel shrugged and laughed, "Guess not everyone can win the lottery."

"Guess not everyone can win the lottery," Mike mocked, not being able to hold the serious face for long. Once he turned and looked at the boy next to him they both burst into little giggles. There had never been a time when one of them was mean to the other and actually meant it. It was just common sense to assume the other was joking now. There was never a time they were mean to each other. The thought of ever saying something or doing something to intentionally hurt Mike was unfathomable to Daniel. He didn't want to imagine something so terrible like that.

Karen laughed softly, "Alright, now you three get your butts to school!"

"Thank you for breakfast, Misses Wheeler," Daniel said with a smile, wiping any remnants of food off of his face and placing his plate in the sink obediently.

"Oh please," she scoffed, "You've known me long enough to call me Karen."

"Dan," Mike whined, tugging the boy towards the front door, "Stop flirting with my mom!"

"I second that!" Nancy spoke from the table, looking bored and slightly disgusted.

Daniel laughed, "I can't help it that the ladies just love me!"

Mike just squinted at him, pulling him by the backpack out front and over to his bike. Mike hopped on, Daniel on the back like second nature. The ride to school passed by quickly, the wind rustling Daniel's curls as if they couldn't get any worse. They caught up with Lucas and Dustin along the way, all pulling up to school at the same time. There was one bike missing from the rack, though, Will's.

"That's weird," Mike noticed, looking around the schoolyard, "I don't see him."

Lucas shook his head, "I'm telling you, his mom's right. He probably just went to class early again."

"Yeah, he's always paranoid Gursky's gonna give him another pop quiz," Dustin cut in with a small chuckle.

"Wouldn't his bike still be here, though?" Daniel asked, brows furrowed in confusion as the four boys walked towards the school building. It was a bright day for November, the sun warm on Daniel's skin. He liked the sun. Maybe he'd move to California someday.

"Who knows? Maybe Jonathan drove him," Mike shrugged. The curly-haired boy was about to respond when an annoying voice interrupted the conversation.

"Step right up, ladies and gentlemen!" Troy called out, walking over to the boys with his cronies by his side, "Step right up and get your tickets for the freak show!" The four boys visibly tensed but didn't say anything. "Who do you think would make more money in a freak show? Midnight, Frogface, Toothless, or Fairy Godmother?"

His friend sighed, pretending to actually put thought into this, with a lisp, he said, "I'd go with Toothless."

"Asswipe," Daniel muttered under his breath with a roll of the eyes. He hated that these assholes thought they ran the place just because they knew how to make a fist. Everyone must know that these boys were going to end up as nothing more than gas station attendants handing kids cigarettes way past their bedtimes. They would never amount to anything, but right now they were on top of the world.

They miraculously didn't hear Daniel's statement or at least didn't respond to it since all the response he got was a chuckle from Mike and a glare from Troy.

"I told you a million times, my teeth are coming in!" Dustin argued, "it's called cleidocranial dysplasia."

The boy continued to mock Dustin, "I told you a million times!"

"Do the arm thing," Troy commanded.

"Do it, freak!" his useless crony added for no particular reason other than to be annoying as hell and sound completely ignorant.

Dustin sighed, but dropped his bag and jacket and made his bones crack. The three boys were unphased, but Troy groaned and recoiled as if the noise had physically pained him. "God, it gets me every time!" Troy said as they finally walked away.

"God, they're some of the stupidest people I think I've ever met," Daniel remarked as soon as they were out of earshot, "What do they even get out of this?"

"Who knows what goes on inside the brain of a rat?" Lucas said with a chuckle, earning laughed from the rest of the group. "Assholes."

"I think it's kinda cool," Mike reassured Dustin, who was grabbing his stuff off of the ground, "It's like you have superpowers or something!" Daniel thought it was sweet that the boy wanted to make sure his friends were okay even though he had been picked on, too. Mike seemed to try to think of others first, Daniel noticed, it was one of the things he liked about Mike. Well, there were a lot of things he liked about Mike, but that one stood out. "Like Mr. Fantastic!"

"Yeah, except I can't fight evil with it," Dustin sighed, sounding resigned and annoyed.

"Whatever," Daniel added, "Let's just get to class. We're way smarter than them anyway."

"You know it!" Lucas said with a smile, high-fiving Daniel.

( note! )

daniel's friendship w/ the other boys is important too and i will remind y'all of that 24/7