Harker, year 0.5, Acceptance, Colby

“Colby!” the woman yelled from the porch. “Dinner’s ready!”

He lobbed the bale of hay to the loft with a hand.

“Hey,” the girl there exclaimed. “Watch where you throw those things. You almost floored me with this one.”

He smirked as his sister grabbed the bale with both hands and hefted it into place.

“Dinner,” he said.

“I heard. I’m not deaf, you know. Just throw me the last one and well go.”

With a shrug, he picked it up, backed so he could see the top of the stacked bales, and lobbed it at an empty spot. It landed there, crooked.

She looked from it to him. “Just why did you need my help?”

“Bored?”

She snorted as she shouldered it into place. “You. Bored? You can entertain yourself lying in the field, looking at the sky.”

“Lonely?”

“If you stepped off the ranch once in a while, you wouldn’t be so.” She climbed down. “You know Dad isn’t going to mind if you let us do the heavy lifting once in a while.”

He motioned to the tractor, which he’d had to move so they could throw the bales to the loft.

“Not that heavy, dumbass.”

He raised it, making sure of his footing, and slowly turned, avoiding his sister and keeping his momentum from building up. Being able to pick up can carry three tons came with a few drawbacks, he’d discovered, growing up. Chief among them being momentum. The faster he moved something heavy, the tougher it was to stop moving it.

It had something to do with physics. Conservation of this and that. Herbert had explained it a few times, but Colby’s thing was his strength, not his smarts. He let his brother talk, because like every Rowling, he loved to do that. But Colby didn’t try to understand.

He closed the barn door behind him and Jambalaya and escorted her to the house. The torrent of people there could be heard a hundred feet away, all talking at the same time.

The only thing entering the house did was increase the volume, as Jambalaya joined in, sitting next to Mich and Alice. In utter chaos, they were greeted as if they were long-lost family, gone for years, instead of an afternoon working the field with more of the others present.

The Rowling Ranch was a sprawling enterprise that needed half a dozen of the families to keep moving. And today, his mother had decided everyone was eating at her house. His aunt was seated on the counter, plate in hand, with her youngest next to her. His brother was walking and talking on his phone, drumstick in hand, taking bites between arguing with someone from the John Deer company. This meant he was back on his ‘my tractors are too old’ thing. Dad was going to have to talk him down again before he was talked into taking a loan the family couldn’t afford.

Being the largest ranching family in Texas didn’t come with as much wealth as people not involved in the industry thought. The entirety of their worth was in the land, livestock, and equipment. The meager profits they made were carefully controlled by his father, so they wouldn’t end up having to sell for overextending themselves.

His father smiled and nodded at him as Colby took the plate his mother handed him while talking to her sister-in-law. A full chicken, de-boned, covered in green beans and corn. His appetite was proportional to his strength, his mother loved to say. He leaned his muscular frame against one of the few free spots on the wall and ate.

“Col!” Jefferson yelled over the conversations. “You got mail today!”

He looked to his father, talking with Agnes, then his mother, now in a conversation with Janice. He wouldn’t get information from them, and none of his siblings would take time in their busy schedules to notice the mail had come in, let alone to whom it was addressed.

At eight, Jefferson was still officially in school, so he had a little free time between that and the chores he could handle.

His brother crossed the kitchen waving the letter, and Colby placed the plate on the corner of the table before wiping his hands. The white envelope had an official-looking stamp in the upper left corner. Harker Academy, out of Pennsylvania. Curiosity made him rip it open and read through it.

He frowned.

This was an acceptance letter for him to attend that school. No, to attend something about heroes that took place there. Classes on how to be a superhero, of all things. He waited until his father looked in his direction and raised the letter, along with an eyebrow.

“Someone from that school called about two months ago. I figured it would be good for you.”

“What?” Colby exclaimed, and everyone fell silent.

“They heard about last March, and they think you’d be a good candidate for their program.”

March had been when they’d gone to Houston to negotiate starting prices for the next auction. A bunch of people had decided that a hundred ranchers in one place meant a lot of money they could get their hands on. Of course, those idiots didn’t keep in mind that no ranger left home without at least one rifle in their possession, so they found themselves in a shooting match. They had a couple of parahumans, a strong woman and an energy blaster, but they were nowhere near strong enough to take him on.

By the time it was over, the news was there and, as much as Colby tried to vanish in the crowd, the ranchers made sure his part in the melee didn’t go unmentioned. Like throwing a pickup was that big of a deal.

“Why?” he asked, trying not to let the hurt sound. Why was his father sending him away? The ranch was everything to a Rowling.

“You kidding?” Kyle said. “Imagine it, you, a superhero.”

For a second, Colby wondered how his cousin knew about this when he hadn’t. Then remembered which family he was part of, and the real mystery was how Colby hadn’t heard about it before now.

The threat from the Rowling elder had to have been epic to keep anyone from even whispering about it in his presence.

Rowlings couldn’t keep secrets. Everyone in the state knew that.

Except, it seemed, they could.

“The ranch,” he said.

“It’s not going anywhere, Son.”

He couldn’t form the words to express how much he wasn’t a hero, super or otherwise. He was a rancher, like every Rowling. His strength and toughness just made him more valuable. He could deal with rambunctious bulls and not have to worry about getting hurt.

“The ranch ran before you, Col,” Bridgette said, smiling to soften the statement. “We’ll feel your absence, but we’ll survive until you come back.”

“And you’ll visit, right?” Jefferson looked at their dad. “He’s going to visit, right, Dad?”

“Of course. He’ll be here for the holidays. For the summer.”

And that resolved the situation for his family, and conversations started up.

How exciting for Colby to go to a school for superheroes. How it had to be the first one, because otherwise, they’d have heard about it before, right? And was it because of Jacksonville? Of course, it was. These days, everything about parahumans was because of Jacksonville.

Somehow, Colby was seated at the table, food forgotten, rereading the letter.

He wished he felt the excitement they did.

A four-year course. He’d just finished high school the previous spring.

The first rule was that he couldn’t tell anyone he had power. How was he supposed to do that? He never thought about his strength. If something needed doing, he did it. That it be milking one of the cows, knocking sense into a bull, or raising a tractor when the repair lift broke. His strength was part of him. He hadn’t thought about hiding it when the ranchers were attacked. He could have pulled out Magnus and shot like the others, but his strength had been the needed response because of those two parahumans. So it was what he’d used.

What kind of school for parahumans started by saying he couldn’t use his strength when it could help? His father was in conversation with Elizabeth. Probably about how her new husband needed to get used to handling a gun, even if he was from up north. He couldn’t be a proper Rowling if he couldn’t shoot a can off a post.

Even Jeff could do that at his age.

What was the school going to say about Magnus?

No, he decided.

Once dinner was over, he was locking himself and his father in his office and he was getting him to see reason. He was needed at the ranch. Not halfway across the country.