I looked up at my audience and raised my hands, both to acknowledge their applause and to wave them back. I was pumped now. I wanted to try it again.
I walked back to my starting point and counted the number of steps I would take to the take-off point. I pictured a different approach and takeoff. I braced myself and started breathing as fast and as hard as I could. When I had worked up all the adrenaline I could muster and my blood was boiling with it, I let out a high scream and took off running. This time I paced my approach and timed it so I was going as fast as possible one step before take-off. I took a little hop up to the line and planted both legs and went down to a half-squat before jumping forward with my arms extended. It was the classic superheroine takeoff. All I needed was the cape snapping behind me. I kept my head down between my arms and my legs straight to make myself as aerodynamic as possible. Only when I felt myself dropping on the far end of the arc did I pull my arms down and into a tuck. I somersaulted in as tight a ball as I could and waited as long as I dared before snapping out and reaching for the ground with my toes. My timing was perfect. I landed on both feet and jogged away.
I slowed to a walk; turned around and headed back. My cheering section was running down to meet me. Jim and Neeka arrived first with Brute beside them.
"Where's my mark?" I asked. Neither answered. They just pounded me on the back and kept saying, "That was great! That was fantastic!"
When Bud and Bambi came up we all walked back to my landing point for the second measured jump. While Neeka stood on the mark, Jim pulled the end of the tape back to the last line. The tape ran out just as he reached it. That made the total distance over sixty-five feet.
Everyone hugged me and kissed me. Even Brute tried to get in on the act.
Neeka said, "Sam, that wasn't a jump, that was flying."
Bambi hugged me, and said, "That was wonderful! That was amazing!"
I pulled back from her embrace and said, "I can do better."
"I don't doubt that for a second, honey. But right now you need to run inside and get cleaned up for dinner. I thought I would do something simple for a change, so I made fried chicken and it was much harder than I thought it would be."
"So, you have some more respect for the Colonel now, hunh?" I was ready to duck, but she just smiled at my sarky question.
Neeka ran off to eat with her mother and the rest of us went back inside, except Brute. He seemed disappointed that all his people were together and he could not be with them, but he settled down by the door to keep watch without too much whining.
I went to my room to take a quick shower. On the way, I stripped and dropped my workout clothes down the laundry chute in the hall. I was heading into my bathroom when I noticed that I could see our homemade athletic field from my window. As I looked down on the spot where I had demolished all existing records for the long jump, I thought about how my name would never be in the record books and how my athletic accomplishments would be limited to the boundary of that yard. It made me think about how different I was, not only from the person I had been a few weeks earlier but now from the rest of humanity.
I thought about how my choices in life would be constrained by my abilities. It was ironic that, now that I had something to brag about, I was more aware than ever how publicity could ruin my life and the lives of my family and friends. Celebrity was something I had daydreamed about before. Now that I had it in my grasp, I realized that it was much better left a dream.
I thought about how my costume, with its capacity for concealment, would be a fitting analogy for my life — hiding in plain sight, like a chameleon. I even began to regret the allies I had made in Sheriff Foster and Mr. Morton, useful though they would be to my career. The more people who knew my secret, the greater my risk of eventual exposure.
It was all a matter of risk. Strangely, the obvious risks to my life and limbs did not bother me as much as the risk of being labeled a freak or an oddity and spending the rest of my life trying to hide, like a roach on a kitchen floor when the light went on.
In the corner of the room next to the window was an antique full-length mirror on a stand. I turned and looked at my reflection in it. I saw a short girl with very large breasts, a narrow waist, boyish butt, trim but muscular legs, and a golden all-over tan. I did not look like a champion athlete or a crime-fighting superhero. I put my shoulders back, tightened my stomach, tweaked my nipples to make them stand out, and posed with one hand on a hip, one knee bent and my toes pointed. I thought I looked great. I had no problem with being admired, not for my body or my mind, but I had no desire to live my life under a microscope, either figuratively or literally. If I had to make compromises, if I had to hide my light under the proverbial bushel, if I had to play the Dumb Blonde part that Bambi suggested was my natural cover, although I still wasn't convinced that a Smart Blonde cover wouldn't work as well, then I would do it. I decided that as long as I made the choice with my eyes open and my head up, then I could accept the consequences of my choice with no regrets.