Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  Emma couldn’t tell herself she’d be back. To stick around and be loyal now would betray every reason she’d given herself for dropping Taylor as a friend. Taylor had been a wet blanket, a loser. Sophia was no better, now.

  It was ironic, but Sophia had proven herself to be more prey than predator, in the very philosophy she’d espoused.

  ■

  “Hey dad?”

  Her dad turned his head to acknowledge her, while keeping his eyes on the road. “What is it?”

  “Mind making a detour? I wouldn’t mind seeing Taylor’s house.”

  “I thought you weren’t friends anymore.”

  Emma shook her head. “I’m… trying to put it all into perspective. It’s really changed, and it’s easiest to get my head around the changes if I can look at the familiar places, and her house is pretty familiar.”

  “Sure. If nobody else minds?”

  There were no objections from her mom or sister.

  The city had always had its highs and lows, its peaks and valleys, but it seemed it was an even starker contrast now. She’d commented, once, that for any one house, she could find three things wrong with it. It had been flipped around, in its own way. For every ten houses, there was one ruin, a dilapidated structure or pile of wreckage. For every ten stretches of road that were intact, there was one that a car couldn’t pass over.

  They turned off Lord Street, onto the street that Taylor’s house was on.

  As they approached, Emma could see Taylor helping her dad unload a box from what looked to be a new or newly washed car. He said something and she laughed.

  The casual display of emotion was startling. It was equally startling when, in the moment Emma’s dad slowed the car down, Taylor’s head turned, her eyes falling on them, her head and upper body turning to follow them as they passed.

  She didn’t even resemble the person Emma had known way back then, not the girl who’d approached her house after coming back from camp, and not the girl who’d been drenched in juice. The lines of her cheekbones and chin were more defined, her skin baked to a light tan by the sun, her long black curls grown a touch wild by long exposure to wind. Light muscles stood out on her arms as she held a box, her dad standing back to direct.

  Even her clothes. She wasn’t hiding under a hood and long sleeves. A trace of her stomach was exposed between the bottom of her yellow tank top and the top of her jeans. The frayed cuffs were rolled up at the bottom, around new running shoes, and neither Taylor nor her dad seemed to be paying any attention to the knife that was sheathed at her back.

  It surprised Emma, all the little clues coming together to point to one fact; that Taylor had stayed. She’d stayed, and she’d come out of it okay. Judging by the new car, the shoes and her clothes, the Heberts were doing better for money than they had been the last time Emma had run into either of them. Were they early beneficiaries of Brockton Bay’s upswing in fortune?

  It unsettled her, and she had a hard time putting her finger on why.

  It didn’t hit her until they’d reached their new house, a recollection of something Sophia had said.

  On this violent, brutish little planet of ours, it’s the survivors who wind up the strongest ones of all.

  Arc 20: Chrysalis

  20.01

  I stepped out of the shower, but I didn’t dry off. It was hot out, and the cold beads of moisture on my skin offered something of a reprieve. I felt acutely aware of the breeze blowing into the room, as it traced frigid lines against my body. My hair was wet, plastered to my neck, shoulders and back, and water ran down from the individual locks of hair in thin streams.

  More than anything, the cool sensation of the wet hair on my head was a contrast to the workings inside my skull. It wasn’t even seven in the morning, and in purely mental terms, I was hitting the ground running. Had to.

  I leaned over the sink, letting the droplets fall from my eyelashes and run down my face.

  I reached out, and my toothbrush found its way to my hand, as much as my hand found it. The toothpaste was much the same, maneuvered to my hand by a dozen threads and twice that many insects. I took two minutes brushing, another minute to use some mouthwash, and then stood straight, stretching. My skin felt tight, contracted by the temperature.

  Like the act of rubbing one’s stomach while patting their head, I was moving out of sync. I held out one hand for the hairbrush, closed my fingers around it, then set to tugging the plastic bristles through the tangles and knots, slow, strong, deliberate movements, a patient, calming exercise.

  My mind? I was watching, studying, sensing and experiencing ten thousand things at once, an engine going full-bore. I could follow my dad as he moved through the house, picked work clothes out of his closet, threw away a sock and its matching pair. I watched every entryway into the house, the windows and doors, tracked the movements of the neighbors, and our neighbor’s neighbors. With fleas, I could track the movements of the neighbor’s outdoor cat, a surprisingly violent creature with a sizable body count of local frogs and mice, many killed purely for sport.

  I could track each of these details for roughly a thousand feet around me, to the point that I was aware of every person and every piece of terrain in the area. There were bugs crawling inside walls and the dark corners of houses all up and down the street, and I had only to pay attention for a moment to grasp the layout of each house and home. I could feel the worms crawling through the earth, the ants navigating the surface, struggling but surviving in the humid heat of the outdoors. I could feel the maggots that were devouring one of the cat’s abandoned victims, the ants working to collect the food before descending into their labyrinthine hive.

  And I thought of my own hive, of jobs that needed doing and positions that needed filling, of threats and threat assessment. I was prioritizing, knowing it would be impossible to do every job in the time I had. I had to check in with everyone, to look after the individual groups, get more information on construction and finances, to make sure everything was running smoothly. Each and every task could potentially be interrupted at a moment’s notice, so I had to ensure I had people at hand that I could delegate to in a pinch.

  It was a lot to take in, a jumble of half-formed thoughts that I only considered for moments at a time before categorizing them, making or postponing a decision. There were too many I wouldn’t be able to address yet. Tasks that I needed eyes on, people I needed to talk to for information.

  I toweled my hair dry, brushed it again, had the bugs clean up the silk strands that littered the bathroom, and then wrapped a towel around myself to venture to my bedroom and get dressed.

  By the time my dad descended to the ground floor, I was already halfway done preparing breakfast, standing by the stove with my damp hair tied back into a loose ponytail, wearing a strapless top and loose-fitting, lightweight cargo pants.

  Preparing breakfast was another of those routine activities, rubbing my stomach. I was still patting my head, thinking of how to address one sensitive issue. When my dad entered the scene, though, I made a deliberate attempt to break from that mode of thinking, to shift mental gears.

  “You’re going to school wearing that?” my dad asked.

  “I’m going running like this,” I replied.

  “In this heat? Take some water with you.”

  I pointed at the kitchen table, where I’d set two water bottles by the salt and pepper shakers.

  “Good.”

  “Crepe?” I asked. “And fruit salad? We have some left over from last night.”

  “Please.”

  I slid the crepe out of the frying pan and onto a plate, then handed it to him. I dropped some butter on the pan, poured more batter on, and then tilted it until the batter was spread thin over the surface.

  “You’re usually out the door by now, and back fairly late.”

  “Trying to do my part,” I said. “And I wanted to talk.”

  “Okay. I like talking,” he said. “Unless this isn’t the kind of conve
rsation we look forward to?”

  He made a face as he eased himself down into his chair. He’s still not completely recovered. I admitted, “It isn’t.”

  “Ah,” he said. His expression was placid, his eyes watching me carefully.

  “I was thinking… I don’t think I’ll go back to school.” I turned my eyes to the crepe. I poked the spatula at the corner to verify it was more solid, lifted it, then flipped the thing over.

  I could hear him pouring orange juice. Flies hidden on ledges and on a shelf between cookbooks could see the vague movement as he raised the glass to his lips and drank before he spoke. “It’s a month and a half of classes. Everyone will be catching up, not just you. We couldn’t ask for better circumstances. A new environment, new people, a new dynamic. You’re different.”

  “I am,” I said. I slid the crepe onto a plate. I didn’t use the fruit salad, but instead went straight for the blueberries I’d defrosted, adding a spoonful of cream. I rolled it up, spooned some fruit salad onto the side of the plate, collected my mug of tea by the side of the stove and then sat down opposite my dad.

  He looked so old. Two serious sets of injuries, one he hadn’t fully recovered from, and a measure of stress that I was partially responsible for, all adding up to artificial years. I felt a pang of fondness mixed with regret.

  “If I asked you to, would you?” he asked. “Hypothetically.”

  “If you did, I would,” I admitted. “But it’s not where I want to be right now.”

  He nodded, taking a bite. A dribble of fruit juice ran down from the corner of his mouth, and he thumbed it away. I reached for a roll of paper towels, tore one off and handed it to him.

  “Thank you,” he said. It wasn’t a response to my statement.

  If he asked, I’d find a way. Work things out. Reprioritize, filter out the nonessential tasks, shift things around. Everything would take longer, there would be issues in countless areas, more things I couldn’t do and people I couldn’t protect. But I’d do it.

  “What will you do instead?”

  “What I’ve been doing. I’ll work,” I said. “There’s cleanup work, still. It pays pretty well, all things considered.”

  “It’s not easy,” he said.

  “I’m tough,” I said, flexing an arm. I had some muscle, but it looked pretty sad on my thin arm. I let my arm drop. “At least it’s not all heavy lifting.”

  “But it wears you out. I won’t say it’s bad work, we both know how many hundreds of people I’ve worked with who are employed along those lines. I’ve been employed along those lines. But you’re smart. Your mom and I both expected you to go on to college. The idea that you might never graduate high school never crossed our minds.”

  Bringing Mom into it. I sighed. “I will graduate. I promise. But I can wait a year, study online.”

  “Why? Why put things off and study for half a year to a year, when you could pass tenth grade in two months?” He didn’t sound angry or upset, only confused.

  Prioritizing, weighing every action against the costs involved. Spending most of my day at school, everything else takes a back seat.

  “Like you said, I’m different than the person I was,” I replied.

  He looked up at me, met my eyes, and I could feel my blood run cold. That searching, studying look…

  He knows?

  “You are,” he said, simply. Not a confirmation of my fears, not dismissing them either. It was only an admission of what we both knew as truth.

  “If you want me to go, you can tell me to go. I will. You’re my dad. You can tell me to do something, and I have to do it.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “We both know that’s not true.”

  I took another bite of my crepe instead of replying.

  “Being a parent, there’s always that niggling fear, that notion that maybe one day your child will realize you’re not all-knowing, not all-powerful. That they don’t really have to do anything you say. But you spend years growing up together, parent and child, as a parent you get accustomed to acting like you’re in power, believing it as much as your daughter does. For some, for most, that confidence gets worn down after the child hits adolescence, and the parent changes from being one of the most important figures in their child’s life to being an embarrassment.”

  “You were never embarrassing to me,” I said.

  “I know,” he said. “But that makes it harder, doesn’t it? For all those other parents, it’s a transition, a transformation, as their children gradually test their authority and discover how very fragile a thing it is. For me? I didn’t have nearly enough time to get used to it. One night, one conversation, and you decided I didn’t have any say in your life anymore.”

  “You do,” I said, feeling alarmed, in a way I couldn’t articulate. “I want you to have a say. I’m saying you can set curfews or demand that I go to school, and I will. I might complain or argue, but I’ll listen. I’ll let you have a say.”

  He reached across the kitchen table, taking my hand. He pulled it towards him, and I let him stretch my arm out straight. He bent over and kissed the fingers.

  His voice was quiet, “I hope that, if and when you ever have a child of your own, you never have to hear them say anything like that.”

  He released my hand, and I withdrew it.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to go to school?” He asked.

  I nodded.

  “It’s your decision,” he said. “Yours, not mine. Where would you work?”

  “The Boardwalk,” I said. “It’s close, it’s good pay, good food, and it’s safe.”

  “A little more directly involved with the local supervillain-in-power than I’d recommend for any employees of mine that were looking for a job,” my dad replied.

  I didn’t have a response to that. I ate the last bite of my crepe.

  “Will you still be there at lunchtime?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll meet you. Things are busy, things are good, but I’d like to set aside a block of time. We can pick up lunch, or I’ll bring something. How’s that?”

  It was awkward on a dozen different levels. Even staying here caused me any number of problems. It removed me from a place I needed to be, it made for awkward transitions between my civilian and costumed life, and every conversation with my father stressed me out, left me wondering if he could guess. Or maybe when I stepped in the door, I might find out that the local heroes had recognized me, using one of the mutant clones that had been running around, or any number of other possibilities. My dad waiting to ambush me with the fact that he’d received a telling phone call, like he had when I’d skipped school, only he’d be backed up by superheroes.

  The last big conversation in that vein had done irreparable damage. Enough that I found myself checking my house and making sure there wasn’t an ambush waiting for me on the other side. On my dad’s side of things, well, we’d just discussed that in some depth. Our relationship wasn’t any better for it.

  Taking time away from everything else I had to do, to eat lunch, to fill in the details and arrange things so my dad didn’t discover I was bending the truth yet again? To have another awkward conversation?

  I was willing. “I’d really like that.”

  He smiled.

  I grabbed the notepad by the phone that we usually used for writing down numbers and put down my cell number. “Call me when you’re coming around, so we can find each other.”

  “Your cell phone?”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked sad for a brief moment, then perked up a little, “I suppose you need it if you’re going to stay in touch with the others.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I should go. I want to get a light run in and maybe catch up with some people before I start working.”

  “Take care of yourself. I’ll be in touch around eleven or eleven thirty.”

  I nodded. I gathered a billfold with some ID and cash, a fresh tube of pepper spray, and then a sheathed knife fr
om the backpack that hung by the back door. It wasn’t my good knife: I wouldn’t be able to explain how I had a knife of that kind of quality. This one was serviceable for self-defense, the kind that was currently being worn by countless people around the city.

  I glanced at my dad, but he seemed to be going out of his way to avoid looking as I did everything necessary to prepare myself for venturing out into the city.

  Was it him suppressing his worry for my well-being, or were my doubts on target? Did he suspect, and simply not want to know for sure?

  I couldn’t ask, couldn’t hint or try to get clarification, not without potentially seeding the idea in his mind, or prompting him to give me an answer I didn’t want to hear.

  I stepped outside, and the hot air was like a physical barrier. I’d known it, had anticipated it with the knowledge my bugs provided me, but there wasn’t anything quite like that first faceful of eighty-five degree weather, so humid it went straight through both skin and clothing.

  The second I was out of sight of the house, I had my phone out. I re-checked the messages that had come in last night and this morning. Twenty in total.

  Charlotte:

  I know its already pretty late, not a big deal, but was wondering if u wanted to go out and grab ice cream? terrys craving some. we can grab jelly beans and a chocolate for my brother on our way back.

  Charlotte:

  eric stopped by. no drama. you should say hi while he’s around.

  Forrest:

  saw Eric 2nite. shuld say hi.

  Forrest:

  n/m Char already sent you msg.

  Charlotte:

  taking my little brother to school today. if I dont see u, have a good day, will see u tonite.

  All code. Mostly code, anyways. The names dropped were a shorthand for specific kinds of situations and people. ‘Eric’ was trouble. ‘Little brother’ meant the kids Charlotte was looking after. ‘Terry’ was the catch-all term for people in my territory.

  There were two for me, as well. ‘u’ and ‘you’, as odd as it sounded.