Maps And Mazes - CH 3 of Becoming Thuperman

Sandra was always really good with solving puzzles and winning at games. That was the foundation for special powers as a super-heroine. Most eight-year-old girls play with dolls or read fairy tales. When they get older they collect dolls and read romance novels. Sandra always solved puzzles in her spare time whenever she wasn't playing video games. When she went to the bookstore she bought books about beating games and usually a book of puzzles to solve. It didn't matter what kind of puzzles were in the book, it didn't take her more than a few days to solve everything. She was that good.

On the way to the airport, Dad and Mom were talking while the radio played in the background, tuned to a Country station which Dad always listened to. Mom listened to it too, I guess, but she liked eighties pop music more so than Country. To me it all sounded mainly boring. Sandra and I didn't have any musical preferences at that point, I guess.

Sandra's older brother, Spike, whose real name was Lyle - yeah, I thought Spike was a cooler name, too - played drums in a Punk band called Drill. They were supposedly pretty good, as in they actually got paid for playing gigs. He dressed funny and frequently changed his hairdo. Each time he did it usually involved switching between colors not normally found in nature. As his nickname implied, his hair was stiffened with gel into sharp peaks atop his head. Whenever his hair was dark he colored the tips red so it almost looked like he had matches sticking up from his scalp. Definitely, he was not someone normal either, but that was cool, 'cause who was - especially in my world?

Sandra pulled out her wallet from the pocket of her jeans, removing a folded piece of paper from where you're supposed to keep whatever paper money you have - she had six dollars in there too, which was really good for a Wednesday in that her allowance was replenished every Friday. Carefully, she opened the paper and then handed it to me.

"What's this?" I asked.

"What does it look like?"

"Well, it sorta looks like a map."

"It is."

"What's it a map of?"

"I don't know, just something I drew last night."

"This was the project you were working on?"

"Part of it."

"It goes this way? I mean, this is the top?" I asked.

"Yeah, that's north."

I nodded. "None of the dots have names."

"I can't exactly name any of the places until I've been there."

"I don't think that's how it's supposed to work with maps. I kinda think it's supposed to help people find places they've never been. And to do that you have to name the places in advance so if the map is all wrong or it confuses you somehow, you can stop and ask directions."

"What if I don't want to ever go to those places?" she asked.

"They still exist, though."

"Do they?"

"Sure they do," I said. "I've never been to New York City where Dad's going, but it's there."

"Well, because your Dad is flying there."

"Even if he wasn't it would still be there."

She laughed. "Well, that can be your world. This one is mine." She pointed to the map. "So, I can make the rules. That's my first rule, that I make the rules."

"So, you're inventing a whole world and making it up as you go?"

"Well, not yet, just that part of it. I figure that's probably like the size of Bloomington and maybe out into the country a little ways."

"Okay."

"I didn't want to get too large just yet. It's not like I'm ready for anything bigger. I think, the world should be large enough so you don't feel confined but small enough so you don't get lost along the way."

"That makes some sense," I said - it did then and still does.

"So, this is tied to the real world?"

"My world, yes."

"Where are we now, then?"

"Right about here, almost off the edge."

"Okay. So, this is tied to the real world?"

"It sort of is, but it doesn't have to be."

"I kinda like this. I mean, if you don't like where you are, you can just be somewhere else."

"Exactly." She laughed.

I started folding it.

"No, you keep that one. It's yours."

"What about you?"

"I have another one, exactly like it. I made another one on Dad's copier. That's the original, so whatever we discover on that one, we mark it and it will appear on the other one, automatically."

"You think so?"

"Yeah, that's how things work in my world."

"That's cool. We can sort of make-up the world to suit us together, I guess."

"Yeah, I could use your help. That's why I made a copy."

Taking out my own wallet I started to fold up the map.

"No, once you open it, you have to not put it away when you're traveling, otherwise it doesn't work anymore."

"Okay, it's just that's going to be kind of hard to do all the time. Maybe not riding in a car but when I'm on my bike. Anyway, we're probably over the edge by now."

"Well, you have to keep it out until you memorize it."

"I can probably live with that rule." I returned my wallet to my hip pocket, not that there was anything much in it. I'd spent all my allowance before Sunday was over, but I was used to that.

The only thing I had in my wallet was an ID card I carried around ever since the day the police made it for me at school. They did that one day for all the kids who had their parents' permission. An official file was created with my fingerprints and the color or my eyes, hair where I have birthmarks and scars - stuff like that. It was supposed to be so they could find me easier if I got lost. I knew my name, address, phone number, parents' names and all that - the very same information on the ID card. So other than having my finger prints on it, I wasn't sure how it was supposed to help me if I got lost. And if I was lost and all they had left of me was my finger prints, being found wouldn't matter to me much. It wasn't like I needed the ID card. I knew who I was, of course. But it was to show everyone else, I guess.

The way Sandra explained her map, though, it seemed like a much better idea than having an ID card.

"You see, if we ever get lost," she said. "Like we're separated from each other, you just have to head back to the center, right here," she pointed to the center of the map indicating the origin of her world, which was in her bedroom in her house.

"And that works?"

"I haven't tried it yet, but it should, don't you think?"

"Yeah, sure. I mean, why not?"

"My dad always says life's an adventure, so you need to always be prepared to go somewhere else. I think if I'm going on an adventure, I need to have a map so I can find my way back to where I started out."

"Why would anyone want to get back to Normal?"

Sandra laughed at what I said, then I did too, realizing what it meant if someone didn't know I was talking about the city we were from. Then, after she stopped laughing she took my hand. "If we ever get separated, maybe going back to where we started is the best way to find each other."

I nodded. It made a lot of sense to me.

Sandra went on to explain where the idea of the map came from. Her dad told her a story about when he was a kid and the guys he played with on the street where he grew up found a map they all decided must be a treasure map. So they tried to figure out what place the map represented so they could find the buried treasure.

"Did they ever find the treasure."

"No, because they never figured out what the map was."

"See, that's why you need to name the places on a map," I said, feeling it proved my previous point.

"Well that would have been helpful if the person drawing the map wanted a stranger to find the treasure. But it was probably for the map drawer to remember where he buried it."

"Okay, I guess I can see that happening. Does your dad still have the map?"

"No, he said he kept it for a while but it got misplaced in all the moving around his parents did. It wasn't around here anyway. It was when Dad's dad was in the Army and he moved around a lot."

"I see."

Sandra's father, Bud - like the abbreviation for the beer though that was not even close to his given name, Roger - owned a hardware store in town. He was one of those Mr. Fix-it kind of guys. Dad asked him to do favors anytime something broke around the house, which was often enough as our house was pretty old. Usually something would stop working and Dad would attempt to fix it and, in the process, mess it up a lot worse than it was before. He'd call Bud and he'd come over, fix whatever it was and then Dad and Bud would end up on the back porch drinking the aforementioned beers and talking until it was past my bedtime. I'm not sure what they talked about. But sometimes I overheard them mentioning Sandra and me.

Sandra's mom was teacher's aid at the elementary school. She had been since before Sandra and I started school, so usually I called her Mrs. Richardson anyway, even if Sandra called her Betty, though her real name was Elizabeth. Bud and Betty insisted Sandra and Spike call them by their first names. Usually, Sandra did that when she was at home. Most other times she referred to her parents as Dad or Mom.

My parents were more traditional. My dad would have been pissed if I called him Irv or, even worse, Irving - he hated his given name almost as much as I did Wilson. Mom was okay if I called her Lois, but it didn't seem right, if I called my dad, Dad, and my mom, Lois. There's a lot to be said about keeping balance to the things in your life and that just never felt like it was level enough.

Bud had a second life - that's how he referred to it. The garage in their house wasn't the place Betty or Bud parked their vehicles. It was a workshop. Inside there was every tool I could ever imagine ever existing, a lot of things I had no idea what they were for - and still don't. Sandra's dad knew how to use every one of them, though.

With those tools he made things for other people, custom built cabinets, tables, chairs - but not just woodworking stuff. He made other things as well. When I was eight, I was pretty sure Bud was really a wizard in disguise. When I mentioned that to Sandra, she kind of agreed with me, especially after he made a faerie castle for her birthday, somewhere to keep her collection of tiny faerie figurines. It was actually pretty cool looking, like it was another world sitting on a rug on the hardwood floor of her bedroom.

According to Sandra, the center of the map I held in my hand represented the very spot in her bedroom where that faerie castle sat. Knowing Sandra as I did, that made a lot of sense. One of her many personas was Sand, a name she shared with one of her faerie figurines. She said sometimes they traded places and she became a faerie. To me that seemed kind of crazy. Why would you become a faerie and just stand around in a small castle. Sandra said once she traded places, all the faeries, including her, could move around like people normally would. Of course, that only worked when Sandra was in her room alone, so it was hard for me to comment on it further other than to say I believed she believed what she told me.

"So, where do you want to go?" Sandra asked. It came abruptly, jarring me from wherever my daydreaming mind meandered, dragging the rest of me along. I had to think about what we were talking about before.