Hopefuls (Book 1): The Private Life of Jane Maxwell

by Jenn Gott

  Jane’s stomach did a backflip. The camera moved along him, letting the audience take in the thick sweat that stuck his clothes against his body, the subtle tremble that never seemed to stop, the way that his hands (also turning green, albeit slower) kept clenching and unclenching. When the camera finally reached his face, he looked so ill that it was hard to even recognize him, especially since his was not the face that Jane had been expecting. She’d assumed that the mayor here would be the same as the one on “her” world: a portly little man with a habit of blinking far too often for Jane’s taste, and half-moon glasses like he was some kind of wizard. She hadn’t voted for him, and hadn’t been terribly concerned to learn about the hostage situation.

  But his wasn’t the face that she saw, struggling for breath, his lips blue and purple as they whispered something over and over to himself like a silent prayer. Instead, she saw one that she knew as well as her own reflection. She did, after all, have his nose.

  The face was her father’s.

  The camera turned abruptly away now, UltraViolet once again filling the frame.

  “Your precious mayor has until five o’clock Thursday evening before the antidote can no longer be administered in time. However, I’ve already distributed my virus in a diluted form around the rest of the city—I’d guess that the rest of you have about a week before people start dying.” UltraViolet leaned in. Her lips, painted purple, curled into a smirk that sent a wave of panic straight down Jane’s spine. “The choice is yours, Captain Lumen. You’ve always said that you’ll do anything to save this city . . . I wonder if you mean it.”

  “Your father wants to come to the wedding,” Jane’s mother said. It was five years before Jane was fired from QZero—the opposite end of the spectrum, in fact, because Jane had just gotten her job the week before. Things could not have been going better for Jane: she’d been hired to work on the team for one of QZero’s older franchises, a set of characters going back to the forties, storylines that were old and stale and musty, but Jane had ideas. She was putting together a sample issue, in her spare time, of a new cast of heroes. A new voice in the industry.

  It was a Saturday, and Jane was home working, until her mother called. Jane was not at all happy to be pulled aside from it, and especially not for the hell of dress shopping with her mother, but her mother had insisted.

  “Why do you want my opinion?” Jane had asked over the phone. “You have better taste than I do.”

  “Because it’s your wedding.”

  “But it’s your dress.”

  “You know, most brides are happy to choose the dresses that will be in their wedding photos for the next sixty years.”

  “Most brides don’t have a co-bride that they can foist all that girly crap off onto,” Jane said. “Why don’t you wait until tomorrow? Clair will be available then.”

  “I don’t want Clair’s opinion, darling, I want yours. You’re my daughter. Humor me, just this once, will you?”

  Jane put her pencil down, and pinched the bridge of her nose. Her glasses slid up her face, as she reached underneath them to rub at her eyes. “All right, all right. When do you want to go?”

  “I’m outside now. Look out the window.”

  Sure enough: Jane turned, pushing the sheer curtain beside her out of the way. On the street below, her mother’s familiar black town car glinted like a beetle in the sunshine.

  Forty-five long and grueling minutes later, Jane was slumped in a padded chair that looked like something from a Victorian grandmother’s parlor, while her mother stepped out from behind a curtain in a gown fit for walking down the red carpet.

  “Too much,” Jane said, but a salesgirl was already whirling up to stand beside Jane’s mother.

  “Oh, Ms. Holloway, how gorgeous!” the salesgirl gushed. She had her tape measure out already, as if this was all much more important than it really was, and there was not a second to waste.

  Jane’s mother took a middle approach: she regarded herself carefully in the three-way mirror beside Jane’s chair, ready to be pleased, but not yet convinced. As she turned this way and that, raising and lowering her arms to see how the dress “moved,” she dropped the bomb. She wasn’t even looking at Jane. “Your father wants to come to the wedding.”

  Jane snorted. “Good. It’ll hurt that much more when he can’t.”

  Jane’s mother clucked her tongue. “Jane. You know that he has no objections to your lifestyle, don’t you?” She turned to the salesgirl, who was hovering just behind her with a slightly confused expression. “My daughter is a lesbian.”

  “Mom!”

  “What?” Jane’s mother shrugged. “I’m proud of you—every part of you. So is your father.”

  “Oh, it’s fine,” the salesgirl said hurriedly. She gave a broad smile to Jane, like they were suddenly best friends. “Congratulations on the ruling.”

  “Thanks,” Jane muttered. As if she had anything to do with the state congress’s decision to allow gay marriage, as if she hadn’t already been living with Clair since forever. Jane was looking forward to the legal benefits they’d now share, of course, but the way that other people reacted to it . . .

  Jane’s mother, in particular, had been beaming since the vote went through. You’d think that she was the one to be recognized as equal under the law, from the joy that filled her voice whenever she spoke of it.

  “There, you see?” her mother said now. “It’s normal now.”

  Jane rolled her eyes. She wasn’t going to argue, especially not in public, in front of a salesgirl that she didn’t know at all, though Jane could think of a hundred arguments that she could make to that naïve assessment of society.

  “So if that’s what’s holding you back from asking him to come—”

  “I’m going to pretend that you didn’t just suggest that his potential bigotry is the only reason I wouldn’t want him there,” Jane said.

  “You have to forgive him sometime, Janie.”

  “Since when?”

  “You know what, you’re right,” Jane’s mother said, apropos of nothing, “this dress is a bit much. Let’s try the blue Sophia that I was looking at earlier, shall we?”

  The salesgirl nodded. She turned and all but dashed out of the room with the eagerness of a puppy.

  Jane leaned back in her chair. High above her, broad windows let in light to bounce off a sloped white ceiling. The room was too warm for March, and Jane was dressed for the bitter winds that had been lingering in the city all week.

  “He’s trying,” Jane’s mother said. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t stepped back through the curtains yet. “You have to at least give him that.”

  “I don’t have to do anything.”

  “Sweetie, people get divorced. That’s life.”

  This was exactly the sort of zen-minded thinking that Jane had come to expect from her mother. In the six months immediately following the divorce, she’d been just as bitter and angry as Jane had been, even going so far as to file the papers to change her name back as soon as Mr. Maxwell moved out—but then, in the span of three weeks, she’d gotten a therapist, a life coach, and a yoga instructor, and ever since then she walked around talking about life giving you what you needed, following your courage, and espousing the value of kale-and-protein smoothies at every opportunity.

  It’s not that Jane didn’t appreciate her mother’s position. If anything, she had more reason to feel spurned than Jane did. But it wasn’t just her father’s poor timing—walking out at the start of Jane’s senior year of high school, putting her college fund into a financial tug of war. It wasn’t just that he’d announced his decision the day after Jane and Clair had finally come clean about the nature of their relationship to both of their families—something that they agonized over for nearly two whole years before finally building up the courage to do it. It wasn’t just the fact that he’d cheated on Jane’s mother. It wasn’t just the move to the heart of the city, abandoning his career as a family lawyer in a small suburb
and going full-corporate for a mega-firm that protected CEOs from having to pay taxes. That was enough to keep Jane bitter for a year, maybe two. After a while, Jane had simmered down. Her mother was doing well. Jane’s college fund was fully funded. Maybe it was time, Clair had urged her, to reach out. Try to make a connection.

  So Jane had gone to his firm, hoping to surprise him for lunch. Only to be denied an appointment because, in the snippy words of his receptionist, “Mr. Maxwell doesn’t have children. I would know.”

  He’d sent Jane a text after that—a text!—that read only: Sry 2 have missed u. Mayb call 1st nxt time?

  Jane didn’t respond, and he didn’t follow up.

  “You’re really going to hold that against him forever?” her mother asked her now, still standing there in the too-much dress. Jane hadn’t spoken, but her mother had always been good at sussing out her thoughts. She used to claim, when Jane was little, that this was her superpower: that she would always know what Jane was thinking.

  “He’s not invited,” Jane said.

  “And what am I supposed to tell him, when he asks me why not?”

  Jane stood up from the stiff, Victorian-grandmother chair. She collected her coat from where she’d draped it over the back. “Tell him that if he doesn’t have children, then I clearly don’t have a father to invite,” Jane said. The salesgirl swept back into the room, carrying a pale-blue number draped over both of her arms. Jane fingered the gossamer overlay. The dress had an empire waist and reminded Jane of the sixties, for reasons that she couldn’t quite place. It would look gorgeous on her mother, with her corn-silk blond hair and dimpled cheeks still bright with the false youth of an expensive beauty regime. It would make her look like a hippie, her arms raised high, waving a sign with Make Love, Not War written in cheap paint. Jane’s mother had been both too young and too responsible to have ever actually been a part of that lifestyle, but Jane liked the idea of it.

  “I like this one,” Jane said, as she dropped the fabric and moved toward the door. “Wear it with flowers in your hair.”

  Jane’s mother frowned. “Flowers?”

  Jane shrugged. “You wanted my opinion, I gave you my opinion. That dress. Flowers. Do it or don’t, it’s up to you. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Jane said, “I have a comic to finish.”

  * * *

  The force of Jane’s indifference surprised even her.

  She just sat there for a moment, looking at Cal’s phone. The video had frozen on the last frame, UltraViolet blurred half in and half out of existence. A circular Replay button blocked most of her head from view. Jane could still see a bit of her father in the background behind her, the outline of a prone figure as captured through the mist of UltraViolet’s disappearing form.

  Was it just that this wasn’t really her father, when you got down to it? It had been years since Jane had ever wished her real father active harm, after all, and she imagined that if the situation was happening on her own world, that she would feel at least some concern for his well-being. She hoped that she would, anyway. She didn’t like to think of herself as heartless.

  “So . . . that’s it?” Jane asked after a moment. “You want to just hand me over to be slaughtered by this woman?”

  “No,” Amy said, while Cal offered, “There’s no guarantee that she wants Captain Lumen’s death.”

  “Oh, that’s a comfort,” Jane said. “Thanks a lot, Cal.”

  Cal winced. “That’s not what I meant. Of course we’re not going to hand you over. We wouldn’t hand over our Jane, and we’re not handing over you. But do you see why we need you, now? Whatever we decide to do to counter UltraViolet’s scheme, it’s not going to work unless we have a Captain Lumen to distract her.”

  “Wait, so you don’t even have a plan yet?”

  “No, there’s a plan,” Cal said quickly. He nodded, with great confidence.

  Too much confidence.

  Amy, meanwhile, raised an eyebrow.

  It was all Jane needed to know. She pulled her glasses off, massaging her brow.

  There was too much to process, too many emotional bombs exploding all around her. The mere shock of what they were telling her at all—that she was in a parallel universe, that her comics were somehow real—would have been enough to warrant a week off to hide in bed and eat gallons of black raspberry ice cream. But now: Clair/Amy, and her father who wasn’t her father, and a city already laced with poison. A threat from a supervillain that Jane didn’t even really know or understand yet. The weight of it all, pressing down on her shoulders.

  She couldn’t do it.

  That was the simple truth. Whatever, exactly, this team of heroes wanted from her, whatever role they would ultimately expect her to play . . . Jane couldn’t. She wrote about heroes; she was not one herself. She had never wanted to be. Even as the teenage versions of themselves sat around in Keisha’s basement or sprawled in the grass beside Devin’s above-ground pool, tracing out maps and listing stats and abilities, teasing each other about their chosen superpowers and arguing about the various strengths and implications of each, Jane had never wanted that imagined life. Not really. The idea of being powerful and glorious held a certain appeal, of course it did, but that was the beauty of art and comics and games: they allowed Jane to step into those roles for as long as she felt comfortable there, to revel in the fantasy of it without actually risking her personal safety; and then, they allowed her to leave.

  When she put her glasses back on, she made herself look at Cal, not Amy. She could handle his disappointment, his judgment. “And if I refuse?”

  A muscle twitched along Cal’s temple. In the comics, this was a sign that he was stressed, and when he got stressed, there was the potential that his superpowers—that Captain Lumen’s superpowers—might prove harder to control. Jane had written it this way to give the character some flaws, and it had helped a plot point of an early issue. But in this reality, he was just Cal—no superpowers, not that Jane knew of, anyway—and his irritation was insubstantial and nonthreatening. It blew across Jane’s awareness as nothing more than a hot breeze.

  Before he could answer, however, an alarm started blaring. Jane saw a panel of Cal looking up, his expectant face bathed in red light from strips that had blinked on near the ceiling.

  And then Captain Lumen sprang into action.

  Or that’s how it would be in the actual comics, anyway. Jane forcibly reminded herself that Cal was not Captain Lumen here, though it was hard to accept it as he leapt to his feet, his stance wide and commanding, his perfect blond hair catching the red warning lights.

  The doors to the elevator slid open; Tony was back, Devin and Keisha in tow. Free of his mask, Devin’s hair sprang out from his head in a proud ’fro, a symbol of his mixed heritage. He ran his hand through it now, nervously tugging at the base of his curls. Keisha, the only alternate version that Jane hadn’t met yet, took her in with barely a glance. She looked a lot like the Keisha in Jane’s own world, her dancer’s muscles taut and toned, though her skin was at least two shades deeper brown. Also, her hair was longer, twisted and bunned at the back of her head, and her pumps, jeans, and blue silk blouse were far more conservative than Keisha’s usual vibrant style.

  It still felt unreal. Despite the panic, and all physical and sensory evidence to the contrary, it still felt more like some bizarre dream than an actual sequence of actual events, and as such, at times it was hard for Jane to concentrate on the seriousness of what was unfolding around her.

  Like another Shadow Raptor attack.

  Jane’s attention snapped back fully at the mention of these beasts. Lingering fear crawled up her skin as Keisha and Devin and Tony presented the facts: an attack on Wilson Labs, at least two dozen Shadow Raptors swarming the building. GCPD had been dispatched, but—

  “They’ll never be able to fend off that kind of attack!” Cal snapped. “What’s Captain Daniels thinking? He has to pull them out of there!”

  Tony snorted. “Yeah, you want to try te
lling him that?”

  Cal shook his head. He and the rest of the team were already moving, already packing themselves into the sleek white elevator. Jane stood in the middle of the lounge, gawping, nothing but the fish to keep her company as she watched these real-life versions of the same familiar heroes. It seemed for a moment as if Jane had been forgotten (even Amy was absorbed in formulating their plan of attack), until at last Cal glanced up, just as the elevator doors were beginning to close. He stuck his hand out, halting them for a moment.

  “Jane,” he said, and everyone that was chattering around him fell silent and looked out. A flash of panic coursed through Jane, convinced that he was going to ask her to come with them, to fight side by side. But all that he said was, “Stay here.” He let the doors fall shut before Jane could answer.

  Jane tried to tell herself that she didn’t feel small and insignificant, standing in their wake in the empty lounge. She hugged herself to keep from shaking as all the panic and shock swept over her again. She did not want to go with them, no, that much was true—but neither did she relish the idea of being the one to stay behind. This was not her comics; she could not control the fight that they were about to enter, could not guarantee their safe return. Cal, Devin, Tony, Marie, Keisha—Clair. Not-Clair, but . . . Clair. Jane’s stomach twisted up. She should have argued with them, should have begged them not to go, but even as she felt this, she knew it would have been a futile exercise.

  She turned, heading back to the hallway that she’d come in from. There was nothing that she could do to change their minds, no way to protect them, no—but she’d be damned if she just sat around waiting for news of their return. Jane knew this building: every inch of it, every detail, every security measure.