#8: A Night at the Hospital, a Day in the Funny Papers

It was late when the doctor finally spoke to me and Pammy in the waiting room. She told us what Stella had experienced were known as false contractions; she hadn’t gone into labor yet; her membrane hadn’t even ruptured. In other words, her water hadn’t broken. It might still be another seventy-two hours before she went into real labor. The way Stella had been overdoing things lately, this came as no surprise. The stress and strain she’d put herself under to get ahead before she’d have to take time off from school had brought this on, I guessed. Not to mention Trent Phloog reverting to Megaton Man—the father of her child—again, thanks to Secret Agent Preston Percy’s booster shot. Still, the doctor said they wanted to keep her overnight, just in case.

#7: The Mysterious Preston Percy

It was the last Saturday in March, just a few days before Stella was to go into the hospital—to give birth to the love child of Megaton Man—when again Daddy’s pickup rolled into the driveway. I heard the honk from upstairs. Only this time it wasn’t carrying a load of gravel, or Daddy; when I got to the front porch, Avril was letting down the tailgate. There was something big and boxy under the blanket.

#6: Civilian Trent

If Trent Phloog was Megaton Man, or used to be, he’d clearly undergone a radical change of heart. Instead of the cavalier Megahero who had spurned Stella’s pursuit of a relationship back in Megatropolis, he was now a normal, mild-mannered Civilian—and an underemployed autodidact—in Ann Arbor who now wanted desperately to play a part in his baby-mama’s life—any part at all.

#5: Calling Occupants (of Interplanetary Craft)

Pedestrians were already running in the opposite direction, away from Central Park, on the sidewalks and between the traffic that had ground to a halt on Madison Avenue. The cabbie pounded the steering wheel: “There’s no respect for the working man!” He cursed UFOs as well as all Megaheroes.

#4: Spring Break

The spring semester began much as the fall semester had ended, for me at least; I saw little but the insides of libraries and classrooms and study carrels. Except that I now came home to housemates who also knew little but school work. Pammy had new students to grade and Stella had new teachers, and each of us had our respective college work cut out for us. There was little enough time for my housemates to dwell upon the world of Megaheroes they’d left behind in distant Megatropolis, let alone for me to give it much thought.

#3: Me and Sue Caza!

Back in Detroit, Mama James made the usual turkey feast with all the fixings—enough for an army should they drop by to watch football with Daddy. But it was just them and me and my sister Avril—who was still in high school and lived at home—for Thanksgiving.
     “I’m moving out of the dorms,” I announced, right after the blessing. This went over about as well as if I had suddenly revealed some entirely unforeseen sexual orientation.

#2: Need to Know

Even though she claimed to be fed up with mad science and Megaheroics, listening to Stella’s story all afternoon made me feel like even more of a boring non-entity than I did before. But I was sufficiently curious about her past life as the See-Thru Girl I might have trudged north to the second-floor comic book shop to find out more on the subject—I’m such a nerd—even though I knew the Megaheroes in comic books were mostly made up. And this girl—with a body that didn’t stop—was not made up.