The Ables

Jeremy Scott

Description

Youtube Star Author: Narrator behind the incredibly popular CinemaSins channel that is home to the series' "Everything Wrong With..." "Conversations With Myself About Movies," "Movie Recipes" and "What's the Damage." The channel's motto is "No movie is without sin" and it has earned more than 8 million subscribers

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Not Your Average Super Hero Series: Superpowers, superheroes and superhero school sounds like a dream to 12-year-old Phillip, until he is placed in a class for disabled students at superhero high because he is blind. The Ables is more than a tale of good and evil as the heroes learn to overcome bullies, betrayal and their individual disabilities while saving humanity!

Illustrations and New Material:

The new edition of The Ables will include 4 comic-strip style illustrations and newly edited material, appealing to new readers and old fans alike.

Sujets

• Imaginaire
• Young Adult
• Inspirational
• Science Fiction
• Young Adult Fiction
• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• 5175 Ables
• Superpower (disambiguation)
• Disability
• Jeremy Scott
• Contemporary
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 11 juin 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781684423385
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

THE
ABLES
T URNER P UBLISHING C OMPANY
Nashville, Tennessee
www.turnerpublishing.com
T HE A BLES
Copyright 2019 Jeremy Scott
All rights reserved
This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher .
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously .
Cover design: Callie Lawson
Book design: Karen Sheets de Gracia
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Upon Request
9781684423378 Hardcover
9781684423361 Paperback
9781684423385 eBook
P RINTED IN THE U NITED S TATES OF A MERICA
19 20 21 22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
THE
ABLES
J EREMY S COTT
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
PART 1: SUMMER
1 THE TALK
2 A NEW WORLD
3 HIGH SCHOOL
4 LUNCH
5 SUPERHERO STUDIES
6 THE SUPERSIM
7 EXPOSED
PART 2: FALL
8 THE GUESTHOUSE
9 THE SICK DAY
10 IN REVERSE
11 THE HEARING
12 COMPETITION
13 BOOK THIEF
14 THE LIBRARY
15 HALLOWEEN
16 FIRE
PART 3: WINTER
17 MOVING ON
18 THE BREAK-IN
19 APOLOGIES
20 HAPPY HOLIDAYS
21 SPILLING THE BEANS
22 THE BOOK
23 THE SECOND SUPERSIM
24 CONSEQUENCES
PART 4: SPRING
25 REBELS
26 THE BULLY
27 THE FINAL SUPERSIM
28 RESCUE PARTY
29 SHOWDOWN
30 THE REAL PLAN
31 REUNION
32 THE UNEXPECTED HERO
33 SUMMER
PROLOGUE
Those of you with sight are going to have to bear with me, at least for a while. There s only so much a blind person can give you in the way of visual detail. To be clear, I didn t even see much of what I m about to tell you. Thankfully, with a story like this one, there are plenty of nonvisual details to go around.
Even though my eyes don t work-they never have-I ve been a witness to some pretty fantastic things. Some horrible, some wonderful.
There s another world tucked right inside the world you know. You ve seen only flashes of it, enough to get some conspiracy theories going, but not enough to serve as hard evidence. It is a world where amazing things are done every day by ordinary-looking people.
And I m going to show it to you.
There are some secrets you just don t tell, and this story is full of them. The truth is about to come out soon enough anyway, and it won t be very long at all before the whole world can see what has been hidden for centuries.
For a good portion of this tale, you ll have to rely on the information I gleaned through nonvisual means as well as the eyewitness accounts of my friends. Don t worry; I ll do my best to compensate for my lack of vision with my other four senses.
I ve been doing that all my life. You d be surprised what I can tell about a person or a thing just by listening, smelling, or touching. Open your mind to the possibilities, and maybe you ll see some interesting things along the way as well.
I used to be just like you-reading stories about regular people doing incredible things. Then I found myself smack in the middle of such a story. I learned a few things about myself through the experience and about others. Things that might be helpful to someone like you, someone about to find their world turned upside down, as mine was.
So if you believe in the unbelievable, as I have a feeling you do, read on.
PART 1
SUMMER
1
THE TALK
I was twelve years old when my father had the talk with me, and it was the single greatest moment of my life. It didn t start out too well, but it turned around pretty quickly. To say that it was a turning point for me personally would be an understatement of the highest order.
Twelve is a bit old for the talk. I had picked up most of what I figured I would ever need to know just by listening to other people. Honestly, I had long since congratulated myself on being one of the lucky few whose parents didn t feel the need to sit down and explain where babies come from. Surely that talk would have come before now . I thought I was free and clear.
I suspected something was up almost as soon as Dad said word one.
Son
There were exactly three levels of seriousness in the talks my father would have with my brother and me while we were growing up: Somewhat Serious, Normal Serious, and Super Serious. Each variety had its own tip-off word, right at the start of his first sentence. If he opened with our nickname-Phil for me and Pat for my brother-it was a Somewhat Serious chat. Which meant we didn t have to stop what we were doing and turn our heads in his direction so long as we actually heard what he said and successfully repeated it back to him.
Lectures opening with our full first names, or first and last names together, were of the Normal Serious variety. Stop what you re doing, and turn and listen. There s probably some new rule you have to follow after this conversation is completed. This variety almost always has the lingering potential to escalate, so tread carefully.
Speeches that started with son -well, you can only hold on for dear life. Either you ve screwed up in spectacular fashion and are about to receive the punishment of a lifetime or you re moving to another state. Or someone died. Also, the length of the pause between the word son and the rest of the lesson was directly proportional to the severity of the impending matter. In my entire life, my father had started exactly five conversations with me in this manner. It was the one trick he pulled out for only the most devastating announcements.
Son he said.
I was reading a book- Moby-Dick , because the classics were the easiest to find in braille, though we d also managed to find a handful of braille comic books over the years. Almost instantly, I felt my stomach drop. Dad had walked into the room somewhat casually from the sound of it, hands in the pockets of his suit pants; he always wore dress pants, always , without exception. He was just standing there, I guess, hanging out for a few moments before dropping the bomb.
Let s go for a drive. What do you say?
I said what any twelve-year-old would say in response to the most loaded question in the universe, Um, sure okay. I guess. I didn t know what I was in for, but I was pretty sure I wasn t going to enjoy it.
Great, he said, in somewhat of a forced manner. I ll get the keys.
As he turned and went for his keys, my mind raced. If someone had died, he would have been acting more upset. There was definitely something strange about his demeanor, but it wasn t sadness. Nervousness, maybe? He was acting weird, for sure. But not your grandma s dead weird. Plus, my grandma was already dead-all my grandparents were.
We weren t moving to a new city again, because we d only just gotten here. Our family had been residents of Freepoint for exactly five weeks.
A horrifying thought hit me as I mentally ticked off any and every possible reason for the upcoming chat of doom: I was about to have to endure the talk. After flying through several other ideas, nothing else seemed to hold any weight at all except for this theory. Dad and I had never had the talk. And he was nervous!
As the reality of my fate set in, I basically wanted to die. I would rather have had to endure a thousand days of being grounded than listen to my father talk to me about sex. I imagined it would be awful, and I was certain it would be far worse than I could imagine.
As we reached the door that led from the kitchen to the garage, my mother and little brother came into the room from the hallway. Without saying a word, my mother reached out and squeezed my shoulder, and I could tell she was smiling at me. Oh crap , I thought, this really is the talk.
Get off the counter! she screamed at Patrick, her hand still on my upper arm. Mom had mastered the art of yelling at one child while talking to the other about something completely different.
I love you, she said softly. Patrick, I m going to count to three, she warned sharply without turning her head. She had also mastered the art of seeing things peripherally, sometimes even demonstrating the ability to know about things that were going on in completely different rooms.
Mom released my shoulder and turned to scramble after Patrick. Dad and I turned and headed into the garage. I could still hear her shouting at him as we climbed into the SUV.
Patrick was eleven going on four. The older he got, the more hyperactive he became. He was born just fifteen months after I was, and even without having had a sex talk from my parents, I knew that meant they hadn t wasted any time. Some days, our proximity in age made Pat and I inseparable best friends. Other days, his boundless energy and my lack of sight made us both more interested in avoiding each other.
Once Dad and I were on the road, I started to feel sick. I knew I was in for an emotionally scarring experience, so I figured it would be best to get it over with as soon as possible. So where we goin , Dad? I asked. I had tried to act casual, but I wasn t remotely convincing.
Well, do you remember Mr. Charles? he asked.
I pondered the name. The old man you keep inviting over for dinner? There was this super-old guy who d been over to the house once or twice since we d moved to Freepoint. He seemed nice enough, I suppose, but terribly quiet. Some nights he didn t say a word. I often wondered what he and Dad even had in common. I guess maybe he reminded my father of his own father, who had died before I was born. Either way, the old man creeped me out.
That s the one, Dad said. He actually seemed impressed that I knew who he was talking about. Well, Mr. Charles has a farm just outside of town a ways, and I thought we d go take a walk around the place.
We re going to take a walk at a farm? I blurted out before I could really stop myself, my own skepticism hanging noticeably in the air.
Uh-huh.
Defeated-and still nauseous-I punched the button to ch