Hero

by Perry Moore

  Next came a battery of questions, rapid-fire. Where was I that night when it happened? Why was I with him? How was I so sure of the time? Could someone else vouch for my whereabouts? That last one threw me a little. As if my word alone weren't good enough. Simon would be able to confirm it, and I told them so. Dark Hero would probably be able to confirm it, too, but I thought it wasn't such a hot idea to bring him up right then.

  Uberman stepped forward from a wall of Jell-O cartons.

  "Is it true, Thorn?"

  He spread out his arms as if he were ready to embrace a new explanation, anything but this truth right in front of them. He wore disappointment like he did every other emotion, handsome and strong. I wanted to revoke what I'd said somehow, say anything else to please him.

  But I was done with lying. I was scared about the future, but it felt nice to breathe. I nodded and folded my hands in my lap and stared down at the floor.

  I waited in the pantry for nearly four hours while the League questioned the rest of my squad. I was looking around at the bright-colored packages of processed foods when it finally struck me that I'd been imprisoned. I didn't like that thought at all. This wasn't the high-tech containment chamber on the third level designed by Brainzoid and the Machine-Meister, I had to remind myself. These were just cans of SpaghettiOs, not walls of deadly laser beams. My legs were crossed because I'd had to take a leak for the last half hour and I didn't want to get up. I think I was afraid that I'd find out some hero had been posted outside the door to keep watch over me, to make sure I didn't run. I didn't want to be reminded that they'd lost that much faith in me, so I rocked back and forth and tried as hard as I could not to think of waterfalls.

  What I did think about was that my confession was probably all over the news by now, already whittled down to a perfect ten-second sound bite. I wondered if the news had reached Dad at the factory. They had a TV in the cafeteria, something his union had fought for that summer they were on srrike. I wasn't naive enough to believe he had any friends at work, but I wondered if maybe one guy respected him enough to pull him aside to explain that his son was all over the news.

  It was more likely, however, that he'd notice the entire floor whispering and looking at him. At first he'd check to make sure his fly wasn't open. Then he'd take his meal break alone, as always, and eat the turkey sandwich he'd made for himself in our kitchen that morning, and he'd glance up at the news while chewing, because damned if that face on CNN didn't look exactly like his son's. A few jerks at a nearby table would snicker at him as he stood up and watched the news, open-jawed.

  The door ro the pantry opened, and the first-string Leaguers streamed back in. I'd never seen Uberman look tired, but now there were bags under his eyes.

  "The press is finally gone." He leaned against the doorway. "I did the best I could with them," he said, and then looked at me. "Given the circumstances."

  Warrior Woman gave me the eye. "Your teammates could neither confirm nor deny," she said. "And what about your missing teammate? Miss Scarlett—where did you take her this morning, and where is she now?"

  God, not this again. That was Scarlett's business, and I wasn't about to get into it. Warrior Woman saw me roll my eyes.

  "You'll have to ask her," I said.

  Warrior Woman turned red. "You will not make a mockery of this. I asked you a question!" She started for me, and I was sure she was going to pick me up by the neck and shake the answer out of me.

  Suddenly, a pair of feet poked through the ceiling above us. Justice phased through the floor and floated down between us, calmly, quietly.

  "That will do," he said.

  Warrior Woman backed off. Justice studied me for a while, deciding what to say. He circled the room again and again, and I thought about how much he reminded me of Dad. Any second now he could explode.

  But then he helped me to my feet and walked me out of the room.

  "How long have we kept you waiting in here?"

  Justice floated beside me as I walked down the hall. He asked that I accept his apology on behalf of the team for keeping me holed up in the pantry like a criminal. He explained that even though they'd been defenders of the galaxy for more than twenty-five years now, they still encountered a few situations that weren't in the manual. I told him I understood.

  I kept waiting for his disapproval, but it never materialized.

  "I'm sorry if you feel judged, Thorn. I wouldn't do that to you."

  He surprised me. I'd been sure he'd kick me out, right then and there. I'd figured he'd put the right spin on it, but I'd know it was because the League didn't know what to do with me anymore. I'd made them . . . uncomfortable.

  His feet touched the ground and he walked alongside me. "I know what it's like for people to distrust you because of your differences, Thorn. That happens when you're from outer space, too."

  I thought about us sipping ginger ale that night we stared out into the stars as he longed for his home world.

  "Of course, your revelation today does raise an interesting question. If Ssnake didn't do it," Justice said, "then who did?"

  In those hours I'd sat in that pantry and worried about my future, the thought hadn't even crossed my mind.

  "Where has your father been lately?" he asked.

  What did he mean by that? Was he worried about my fathers reaction? Or was there something more he was searching for?

  "I'm sorry to raise the question about your father's whereabouts. I know you two will have enough to talk about after today." He placed his hand on my shoulder.

  "I understand what it's like to be different." He stared out the window at the stars in the sky.

  Maybe his time on our planet had opened his mind. Maybe I'd been the one who misjudged him.

  I knew I couldn't stay inside the League headquarters forever. I'd made a decision up at the podium today that would affect the rest of my life, and there was no point in hiding from it any longer.

  "Can I go home?" I asked.

  I found Ruth and Larry smoking cigarettes in the parking lot beside her car. Larry coughed on his.

  "Where's Golden Boy?" I asked.

  Ruth shrugged. "I think he went looking for Scarlett."

  An awkward moment ensued as we stood in a huddle.

  "You just had to say something, didn't you?" Larry finally said. Then he sighed. "I'm sorry. You did the right thing, I know. It's just that—" He kicked Ruth's tire. "We were so close this time, I could taste it!" Ruth and I stayed quiet. We let him have his outburst, recognized the need to vent. "We were so close, you know?"

  I knew.

  Larry said to call if I needed anything. He didn't seem to care about which team I was batting for. It made me feel that much worse that I'd robbed the guy who'd always been the poor sickly kid his first chance of being a real hero.

  "Here, this'll help you sleep." He slipped a Xanax in my palm when he shook my hand good-bye.

  Ruth offered me a ride home, but I told her I was going to take the bus. I needed to be alone for a while. I needed to think about what was coming next.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  IF DAD HADN'T FOUND out while he was at work, he'd certainly figured it out when he got home. With our ratty old scrub brush and a dented metal pail, he was trying to wash the spray paint off the garage door. So far he'd only managed to blur the letter F in FAGGOT. Smudged, it looked more like an "E." A minivan drove by our house and I pictured the kid in the backseat: "Mommy, what's an 'Eaggot?"

  Dad stopped scrubbing as soon as I walked up the driveway, but he didn't turn around. I stood behind him for a long while. What was I supposed to say?

  A lump caught in my throat every time I tried to say even a word. I knew this wouldn't be easy, but I wasn't prepared for what he did next.

  He stood up with the bucket, swung it above his head, and slammed it into the driveway with such force that the metal pail shattered into bits.

  He walked inside, both his good and bad hands shaking. I noticed a deep
cut on his good hand. I couldn't tell if it was from the pail shattering, or maybe he'd cut it at work, fixing a faulty gear or crank, or maybe I didn't want to know where the gash came from.

  He couldn't even look at me.

  My chest felt hollow. I didn't think I could ever feel worse.

  I looked down at my shirt, stained with the sudsy paint lather sprayed from the bucket. I gave Dad a few minutes and then I crept inside, careful not to make a noise.

  All I could think about in that moment was to get clean. I took my stained shirt off in the laundry room and dropped it in the washing machine with Dad's foreman uniform. He hadn't run it yet, so I filled a cup with dry detergent. I looked in the washing machine and was puzzled by what I saw.

  I pulled out his uniform and took a closer look. It was perfectly clean.

  I stared at the tiny pebbles of detergent caught in the crisp folds of the uniform and wondered why he was going to such great lengths to make me think he'd been wearing it. And the cut on his hand—it would have been a common enough injury when he was working the lines, but not now that he was a foreman. He was lying to me about something.

  I remembered what Justice had asked me, and I stared at

  the uniform for an answer.

  Where has your father been lately?

  * * *

  Ruth called and offered me the couch at her place, and I would have been happy to accept the invitation. Dad hadn't exactly left suitcases in my room as a hint, but obviously he would be happier not to see me for a while. Still, I turned down her offer. I told Ruth I wasn't going to run. I was done with hiding who I was—that was the old me.

  I lay on my bed and fought off the urge to cry. I watched the moon move above the horizon and thought long and hard about what my life would be like from now on. Anyone I'd meet would know me from the news—would know my biggest secret. It would taint everything, from going to school, to picking up food at the grocery store, to getting a job. I'd experienced a taste of the public's disdain from watching Dad over the years, but I had a feeling that wouldn't hold a candle to being the target of contempt myself.

  Finally I willed myself to head for the attic to get my suitcase. Maybe I wasn't as brave as I thought. Maybe Mom had the right idea about running away, after all. I walked down the hall, and I was certain Dad would be able to hear me move across the floorboards. His door was closed, his light off. I stopped in front of the door and raised my hand to knock.

  I wanted to talk to him so bad, to hear him tell me it was all going to be okay, that he knew what it was like to have everyone think so poorly of you, but that life goes on, and there are good things ahead. I wanted him to split a beer with me and talk about it. It was probably way too soon, but he had to know his son was suffering, that I needed him more than anything else.

  Against my better judgment, I knocked. I waited a beat and held my ear to the space at the bottom of the door. With one ear on the fuzzy carpet, I listened. I felt cool air from the fan against my ear as it poured out from the other side. A couple of seconds went by, and I told myself he was probably just thinking about the right thing to say. Then a minute went by, and still no response. I thought maybe I'd knocked too lightly, maybe he hadn't heard it, so I knocked again. Nothing.

  Still no response. Hell, maybe he wasn't even in there. I could have checked the driveway for his car, but I didn't. Instead I reached up and yanked the cord dangling from the ceiling and pulled down the stairs to the attic. I climbed up the rickety wooden steps, the springs groaning under my weight. I grabbed a dusty suitcase.

  Back in my room I unzipped the suitcase on my bed and started to pack. I stuffed my socks in the corners of the case, a space-saving technique Dad had taught me. Suddenly I felt cold and dug around for a sweatshirt to put on. Then I realized that the window was wide open. This struck me as strange because I was almost positive that I hadn't opened it.

  The air from outside was chilly and fresh. I took a deep breath and it smelled good, like the garden my mom used to keep. It reminded me of helping her pick weeds in the summers.

  The gardenia bush was Mom's favorite, and she taught me to take special care of it. On warm summer days, I still had vivid memories of lying on the carpet in the family room, the fresh-cut gardenias floating in tiny glass bowls of water, their scent wafting into my nostrils. The smell always made me sleepy, at peace, and some days Dad would come home from work and stop short of tripping over me in a deep sleep on the floor.

  The first time I'd been old enough to save enough money from doing chores around the house and yard, I bought my mother a special birthday gift, a vial of drugstore perfume, gardenia scented. Mom unwrapped the lumpy paper, delighted at what she saw. (I think Dad had given her a waffle iron that year.) She hugged me and wrapped her pinky around mine, our secret shake. She sprayed a thin mist into the air and stepped through it. She'd worn only that brand ever since.

  "Thorn?"

  I turned around and thought I was imagining things. Maybe I'd finally lost it. I'd been through so much that day, it wouldn't have been such a stretch to start hallucinating. I couldn't remember when I'd last had something to eat or drink.

  I turned back to the suitcase and began laying my underwear in neatly stacked piles.

  "Thorn?" the voice called again.

  This time I knew I wasn't hallucinating. I felt her hand on my cheek. I knew that voice. And I knew the smell of that perfume.

  "Mom?"

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  WHAT A BABY, I kept thinking to myself, but I didn't really care. I couldn't stop crying. Mom held on to me tight, and I kept my eyes closed, my head resting on her shoulder as I sobbed quietly. She stroked my hair and kept telling me in soothing tones that everything would be okay.

  If I'd been thinking straight, I would have launched into the hundreds of questions I had always planned to ask in the event I ever saw her again. The questions suddenly seemed silly and stupid, and the only thing that mattered was that I felt her right there in front of me.

  Even if I couldn't see her.

  "Mom." I caught my breath. "Can't you, you know, turn it off for a minute?"

  I felt Mom pull away, and I heard the floorboards creak over by the window. I saw a spark by the floorboards, and then I watched a match light itself in the air. The tiny flame met with a cigarette floating beside it. I saw a stream of smoke coming out of where her mouth would be, but I still couldn't see her.

  "I missed you," she said.

  There was something sad about the way she said it.

  "I found the pictures," I said, proud of my discovery. I wondered if it was possible to hear someone smile.

  "I know," she said, and another stream of smoke shot down, this time I figured through her nostrils. "I've been watching you."

  Of course she knew. Mothers know everything. But it did make me wonder exactly how she knew. I remembered the night Justice had told me he'd known Mom, that she'd been a crucial member of the League's espionage squad. She probably knew lots of things. She'd probably seen me on the news.

  "How long have you been watching me?"

  "Don't worry about that right now, it's not important." She said it quickly, like she'd been ready for the question and had no intention of giving me the real answer.

  "Mom?" There were so many things to ask, but I started with one question. "Where have you been?"

  I heard the distinct sound of ice cubes clank and tinkle against a glass. Then I turned and saw a glass filled with brown liquid floating in the air. I sniffed and noticed the faint aroma of Scotch and soda on top of the gardenias and cigarette smoke.

  I think Mom saw me sniff at the air. An old electric fan floated out of the closet, perched itself on the window ledge,plugged itself into the socket, and clicked on to blow the smoke out the window.

  "Promise me one thing, Thom," she said. Then I felt her heavy breath on my neck as she whispered the one thing. "Promise you won't judge me."

  I thought about that for a while and d
ecided she was right. She had her reasons for leaving, and even if they didn't sound great to me, I shouldn't judge her. Hard as it was to put into practice, that much I'd learned.

  "Dad's asleep," I said. "You want me to wake him up?" I walked over to the door to go get him.

  "No, no, no," she said. "Don't do that."

  I stopped with my fingers on the doorknob. I turned around and faced the open window, the fan whirring on its ledge.

  "Why did you leave?"

  Okay, maybe I wasn't done with the questions yet.

  Mom didn't say anything right away. This was a question I was sure she had expected, so I knew she must have had some sort of answer rehearsed. Why the hesitation? Was she cooking up something else? Was she considering telling me from her heart, not from a scripted explanation?

  "Meet me tomorrow," she said, "at the Wilson Memorial."

  A glass of water floated into my hand, and I saw the pill Larry had given me resting on the windowsill. How long, exactly, had she been following me?

  Then I felt a kiss on my cheek, and just like that, the fan clicked off and I knew the time to ask questions was over. She was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE NEXT MORNING I put on a baseball cap and pulled it down to eye level before I got on the bus. The last place on earth I wanted to be recognized was at the Wilson Memorial.

  Especially after what I'd found when I stepped out of the front door. Our yard had been rolled. Long streamers of toilet paper dipped and swayed in the breeze, which made our tree look like a synthetic weeping willow. I was in such a hurry that I stepped on the morning paper, which turned out to have a big ol' picture of me on the front page making my confession. In a small corner was an old, extremely unattractive picture of my father. It was shot lit from below, giving him the sinister look of a kid shining a flashlight under his chin while telling a ghost story.