Heroine Worship

by Sarah Kuhn

  “People of San Francisco,” I said, making my voice as confident and declarative as possible, “I know the events that transpired at Pussy Queen yesterday must have appeared downright terrifying when viewed on video. And indeed, it was quite the epic battle. But rest assured that I, Aveda Jupiter, and my amazing co-heroine, Evie Tanaka, remain completely dedicated to your safety and well-being—”

  “Evie!” A loud, braying voice from the crowd interrupted my speech. I scanned their faces, looking for the source, and found the towering mountain of a man Evie referred to as “Giant Dude.” I think his real name was George. He had a wide, freckled face, a mop of sandy hair, and sported one of his usual threadbare “Over the Moon for Jupiter” t-shirts. Though he appeared quite genial, his enthusiasm for my various exploits tended to land on the wrong side of overpowering. I sensed Lucy tensing behind me, ready to take him down should he make any sudden moves.

  “Evie!” he repeated. “Have you set a date yet?”

  “What about a dress?” a girl in a tie-dyed smock dress piped up. “Are you going with a local designer?”

  “Back up, first she needs a theme!” someone else cried, voice laced with disdain. “Everything—wardrobe, flowers, decorations—should revolve around that!”

  “Tell us more about the engagement!” a girl near the back shouted. She clapped a hand over her chest and fluttered her eyelashes. “That video was so romantic!”

  “Especially since Nate almost died before he got to propose!” Tie-Dye Dress yelped. “Thank god Evie was there to take down the enemy!”

  I was there too, I thought, my inner voice small and plaintive.

  Argh. My inner voice was sounding way too much like Annie Chang.

  The crowd murmured in agreement, a chorus of adoring coos and “awwws” that swiftly devolved into more shouted questions about weddings, engagements, and if there were any plans for eventual superbabies.

  Evie took a shaky step back, her eyes widening, overwhelmed by the attention.

  “So this is about a video,” Lucy hissed in my ear. “Just not the one we assumed.”

  No, it wasn’t about that video. The one that featured actual world-saving. Maisy had been right: the proposal video was the main course.

  “Come on, give us something!” Giant Dude bellowed. “This is basically as close as San Francisco’s ever gonna get to a royal wedding!”

  “Hells, yeah!” Tie-Dye Dress chimed in.

  “Um . . .” Evie took another step back, her face going pale. She may have grown more confident since becoming a superheroine, but I got the sense that being the center of attention still wasn’t really her thing. Especially when that attention focused on precious pieces of her life she’d rather keep private.

  For a moment, I saw the unsure, pale-faced kindergartner I’d saved from humiliation years ago. We’d been the only two Asian American kids in class, and our parents sent in food for snack time that our peers deemed “weird.” They’d teased me for trying to “burn their faces off” after scalding their over-eager mouths on my mom’s homemade soup dumplings. (Really, it was their own fault for being so greedy and eating too fast. I’d held my head high and told myself their palates were simply not sophisticated enough for authentic Chinese cuisine.)

  A week later, they’d dubbed Evie’s spam musubi “human meat,” bringing her to tears with their little kid cruelty. So I’d stepped in and taken the bullet. I’d crammed every single musubi down my throat, refocusing their attention on me. It had worked and suddenly everything had been all about crazy little Annie Chang. I’d decided back then that I was the stronger one, the one with guts made of steel. Seeing her face so terrified activated my protective streak—the piece of me that felt like it was my duty to save her. That it always would be.

  I reached over and took her hand. It was cold and clammy. I gave her a reassuring squeeze and turned my smile wattage way up.

  “Evie will answer all wedding-related questions in due time,” I said, making my tone firm. “Official media inquiries should go through our press office. Now, Evie, why don’t you hold up that door-knocker of a ring and everyone can take a picture. And then be on their way.” I gave the crowd my best imperious look, indicating they shouldn’t argue.

  Evie gave me a grateful smile and flashed her left hand at the crowd, her ring sparkling in the hazy morning sun. The mob instantly snapped to attention, raising their phones in near unison to capture, tweet, and hashtag the moment.

  “Let’s get inside,” I murmured to Evie and Lucy. “We’ll wait fifteen minutes for all this to disperse, then sneak out the back, just in case there are stragglers.” Our determined march was delayed, but would not be halted entirely. I would make sure of that.

  “Wait!” Evie grabbed my hand again and smiled at me. Her face had relaxed now that people weren’t screaming questions at her. “There is one thing I want to announce.”

  An intrigued murmur shot through the crowd.

  “Are you sure?” I whispered. “We’ve already given them something, now we can go back inside—”

  “My maid of honor!” Evie cried, her voice becoming strong and sure. “My maid of honor is of course . . . Aveda Jupiter!”

  The crowd exploded in cheers. More camera-phones went off. And I just stared at her. I couldn’t quite process what I was feeling, but it was a big mixed-up bag of emotions that took me off the sure path I’d been on, the path to getting us inside, back on our mission.

  Did she really just say . . . ?

  Evie turned to me, beaming, her eyes bright with tears.

  “Annie,” she whispered. “I know I haven’t officially asked you yet, but you’ll do it, right? I want you to be by my side on one of the most important days of my life. I want to be able to look over and catch your eye and giggle because we’re both thinking of the same dopey Heroic Trio quote at the same time. I want . . .” Her voice caught and I realized the tears in her eyes were mirrored in mine.

  “What about Bea?” I murmured. It felt like the dumbest possible thing to say in that moment, but as my brain caught up to the feelings crashing through my heart, I realized I wasn’t sure if this was an impulsive decision brought on by the presence of the crowd and if she was somehow forgetting her sister, who would undoubtedly be really pissed at me later.

  “She’s walking me down the aisle,” Evie said. “You know, since our parents aren’t around.”

  “And Lucy?”

  “I’m officiating, love,” Lucy said, flashing me a rakish grin. “I already have my outfit picked out.”

  “So . . .” The emotions that had been crashing through me came to an abrupt halt, and I felt myself deflating. I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t say what I was actually thinking, which was that Evie had already talked to everyone else about their positions in the wedding. And I’d barely come in third.

  “Of course I’ll do it,” I said, squashing my petty thoughts and forcing my megawatt smile to return. “Of course.”

  As she swept me into a hug and the camera-phones flashed more vigorously, warmth surged through my veins and my smile slowly turned genuine.

  Because suddenly, I realized something.

  This was it. This was what I’d been waiting for.

  A mission.

  This was going to give me the chance to fix everything I’d been struggling with recently. It would give me a new sense of purpose to latch on to. It would offer me the chance to prove that I could be a good friend. And it would help me reclaim the Aveda Jupiter mojo I seemed to have lost in the last few months—leaving Annie Chang behind for good.

  Even if the Pussy Queen portal ended up being a big pit of nothing, and my attempts at building a personal appearance empire never took off and we were about to be resigned to another series of months of non-apocalypse and endless breakfasts, I would have this.

  Because Evie needed me. Of course she did.<
br />
  I felt the plan organizing itself into a neat list in my head, a column with efficient check marks next to each component.

  Identify the solution to all my problems—check!

  Work hard and be awesome—check!

  And through sheer force of will, fix it—check, check, check!

  Well. Check . . . pending.

  Aveda Jupiter might be a diva. But she was also about to be the best fucking maid of honor this world had ever seen.

  After we’d posed for another few rounds of pictures, I bounded back inside and set off for the narrow supply closet next to the downstairs bathroom. I required hairspray to refresh my power ponytail.

  I felt rejuvenated. It was akin to the sensation I’d briefly experienced the day before, when Evie and I had vanquished the energy bolt. But this time, I was determined to make that feeling last. Okay, so maybe this wasn’t exactly the type of heroic mission I’d imagined saving me from boredom. But being the best maid of honor ever—and ensuring that Evie had the best wedding ever—would help me reclaim myself. It would allow me to be the best Aveda Jupiter I knew I could be.

  I seized on the feeling of purpose bubbling through me and practically skipped the remaining steps to the supply closet. Then I flung the door open and froze in place, halting in my steps when I saw who was inside.

  “Oh. Hey,” Scott said. He held up a roll of toilet paper. “I needed this.”

  “Right. Of course. That’s a thing people need,” I said.

  God. What was wrong with us? We sounded like a pair of robots who were just discovering the miracle of human speech.

  We hadn’t really experienced any moments alone since . . . well, since right after Evie and I defeated Shasta. Evie had been badly injured during the battle and passed out for a full day. I’d waited by her bedside. Nate, Bea, and Lucy had all curled around her and fallen asleep, but I couldn’t bring myself to close my eyes for even a second. I’d been told repeatedly she’d be okay, but a small thread of disbelief pulled at me. What if she never woke up? What if I lost the one person who’d always stood by me? What if I never got to tell her—

  I hadn’t been able to finish that thought.

  So I’d just stayed there, awake and alert and shoving that bit of worry down as hard as I could. The only person who’d stayed awake with me was Scott.

  Before I got injured and everything went down with Evie and Shasta and the demon hybrids, Scott and I hadn’t spoken in years. We had a long, tortured history that involved me thinking he was in love with Evie all through high school, him kissing me in our early twenties, me shoving him away because I was convinced he was still in love with Evie, and us getting into a huge fight, which led to the whole not-speaking thing. We’d set aside our differences—sort of—when he’d joined the HQ fold earlier in the year. He’d come to work with us to help Evie. She’d desperately wanted to be free of her fire power and he’d been working on a spell that would pull it out of her and transfer it to me. Things hadn’t quite worked out that way, but the level-up earthquake had given him a boost in his mage abilities. Suddenly he’d been able to heal my ankle on the spot.

  He’d been passed out during our battle against Shasta, so as we sat by Evie’s bedside, he’d asked me to recount it for him over and over again. At some point, I deduced that he actually had a pretty clear picture of what had gone down—he was just asking me so I’d keep talking. So I’d have something else to think about besides how fragile Evie looked, pale and unmoving in her big bed.

  When I’d finally run out of steam, when I just couldn’t repeat the story one more time and silence fell between us, he’d reached over, rested his hand on mine, and said, “She’ll be okay, Annie. And so will you.”

  I’d wanted to luxuriate in the warmth of his fingers, in the way his eyes were open and gentle and looking at me with more affection than they had in years. But instead, I’d felt something shut down inside me. The way I was feeling—the way he seemed to make me feel whenever I let him get too close—took me back to that soft, vulnerable place I was always trying so hard to avoid. The Annie Chang place.

  And I couldn’t go there. Not when I was watching my best friend in the world hover near what looked very much like death’s door. Not when so much of it had been my fault. I’d been the one who had wanted Evie to pose as me, I was the reason she’d been in the situation that had gotten her hurt.

  So I just gave him a small smile and said, “I could use some coffee.”

  He’d squeezed my hand and left to get it.

  Later, as we’d filed out of Evie’s room, his fingertips had brushed against the small of my back. Or at least . . . I thought they had. I wasn’t even sure anymore. But just in case, I’d rushed ahead of him once we made it out into the hall, putting a decent amount of physical distance between us. So he wouldn’t get any ideas.

  After that, I’d thought we were making some tentative steps toward friendship. Friendship with him would be okay. Friendship wouldn’t make me feel so powerless. But instead, in the last month or so, he’d chilled toward me again. He was his warm, joking, laid back self with everyone else, but he responded to me in the stiff, formal way one might speak to their least favorite co-worker. He always seemed to go out of his way to avoid me, and we hadn’t been truly alone together since that night at Evie’s bedside.

  Until now.

  I stood frozen in place, lurking in the closet doorway for a few more seconds. It felt like years.

  Enough of this, I told myself. You just decided you’re about to get your mojo back, you have a mission—and mooning over some guy to the point where you can’t even enter a closet space without freaking out is definitely not in line with that. That’s Annie Chang behavior and you are above it.

  Why was I here again? Oh, right—power ponytail. I straightened my spine and strode forward, keeping my eyes on the prize: in this case, a can of Aquanet gracing the middle shelf near the back. Unfortunately, the closet space was so narrow, it was hard to keep up my purposeful stride. And since he still wasn’t moving, I had to contort my body to wriggle by him.

  And goddammit, he still smelled amazing.

  I twisted myself so I was facing him and attempted to shimmy past. But I was so focused on trying not to inhale his scent that I severely underestimated the amount of wriggle space I had, and bumped against his chest.

  “Oops, sorry!” My face flushed, and I prayed the closet was dark enough that he couldn’t tell. My hand shot out, as if to put space between us. Instead it landed on his chest. And stayed there.

  All right, now my face was basically on fire. I probably looked like I did when I drank too much and got the classic Asian Flush. I felt like I was drugged, like being this close to him reduced me to some kind of feral animal, experiencing every sensation to its fullest, with no logical thought to get in the way.

  I just couldn’t seem to take my hand away. I felt the chest muscles I’d fantasized about all through high school, hard and unyielding underneath the frayed cotton of his t-shirt.

  “Annie?”

  I forced myself to meet his eyes. They were concerned, confused. For the first time in weeks, they held something other than cool distance.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  I swallowed hard. My mouth was suddenly totally dry. This frightened little rabbit, this awkward girl who was felled so quickly by a rush of hormones . . . This wasn’t me. This wasn’t me.

  And I was trying to be me again. I had a mission now and I couldn’t get distracted.

  “Of course,” I said. I yanked my hand away as if I’d touched a stove and managed to wriggle my way over to the hairspray.

  I expected him to take this as a sign that we were done with our conversation and he should move along, but instead he just kept standing there. I felt his eyes boring into my back as I reached for the can.

  “So,” I said briskly, ra
cking my brain for clever things to say that would somehow dissipate the awkwardness of the moment. “I’m the maid of honor. For Evie and Nate’s wedding.”

  “Oh.” His tone was conversational, but strangely flat, as if he didn’t quite know what the correct emotional response was. “That’s great. I’m the best man.”

  “Really?” The word shot out of my mouth before I could hide my disbelief.

  He laughed, and I was dismayed at the rush of warmth I felt in my chest. “Yes. Nate and I have, you know, bonded. I think I finally convinced him I’m not trying to get in Evie’s pants.”

  “Not anymore, anyway.” It spilled out of my mouth before I could stop it. It was a defense, a reaction—a way of making sure he didn’t get under my skin and stay there and turn me into Annie Chang, Hormonal Rabbit. But it sounded snarky and barbed, like I’d been saving up that retort just for him.

  He didn’t respond, and I felt a sudden chill in the air. I tightened my grip on the hairspray, schooled my features into a look of business-like cool, and turned to face him. “I guess we’ll be working together closely on this, then,” I said.

  “I guess so.” His tone was just flat now. No conversational vibe, no unexpected laughter. And his expression matched that.

  “We should throw them an engagement party,” I barreled on. “Let me know what your initial thoughts are, but please remember, my standards are very high, so it may take us some time to work out the absolute best plan.”

  I gave him a brisk nod, then breezed out of the closet, hairspray in hand, head held high. He hadn’t gotten to me and he wasn’t going to. I could handle him.

  Aveda Jupiter could handle anything.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “WHAT DOES THIS button do?”

  “Can I hold it?”

  “Ugh, be careful—Rose is letting us handle very delicate equipment!”

  Lucy burst into giggles after that unintentionally innuendo-laced sentence fell out of my mouth. She cast a sly look at Rose.