Heroine Worship

by Sarah Kuhn

  “Annie . . .” He blew out a frustrated breath and took the paper from me, adding it to the stack and shoving the whole thing off to the side. He studied me for a moment, wheels turning, like he wasn’t sure where to start. I stared back, defiant, like: Well? Answers, please?

  Aveda Jupiter is accustomed to getting answers out of people.

  I won the stare-off and he finally heaved an even bigger sigh and slumped back in his chair. “I was thinking of going back to get my master’s. In social work.”

  I gaped it him. “But . . . why?”

  He gave me an amused look. “Is it so unthinkable that I’d want to do something other than be at your and Evie’s beck and call for the rest of my life?”

  I shook my head, feeling stung. “That’s not what I . . . I mean, that’s not how I see it.”

  “Gah.” He ran a hand over his face and leaned so far back in his chair he nearly tipped over. He looked exhausted. “I’m sorry. That came out mean. I guess, like everyone, I’m wrung out. After today.” He studied me again and I felt myself wanting to squirm under the steadiness of his gaze. Now that intensity in his eyes wasn’t a mere flash; it was right there on the surface, and it wasn’t going away. It was disconcerting, but it also made my heart beat faster. It felt like I was getting a rare, private glimpse at the real Scott and that, like me, there was a part of himself he kept secret from everyone else, a hidden, deep down piece that only emerged when he was at his most vulnerable. It was like seeing someone totally naked. And I desperately wanted to see more of it, even though I knew that would likely bring Annie Chang rushing to the surface.

  “Look,” I finally said. “We said we were trying to be friends, right?” Even though we’ve definitely been doing things that are perhaps . . . beyond the scope of that. I brushed the thought aside. “And friends sometimes talk about things.” At least, that’s what I’d always heard. I really only talked about “things” with Evie. And even then, not everything.

  “I guess before I joined the team earlier this year, we hadn’t talked in a while,” he said slowly. “Not since . . .”

  Not since that night he kissed me. And I pushed him away.

  “Anyway.” He toyed with the edges of the papers. “Before that, I’d been volunteering at one of the foster care centers my mom works with—they have an afterschool program where the kids get to try out different activities, and I taught them a few surfing basics. I ended up sticking around for some of the other programs, helping them with their homework, stuff like that. And I really liked it. It made me feel like I was actually, I dunno, doing something. Something useful. Being my own kind of superhero.”

  I flashed back to that day in sixth grade: his chest puffed out, his face red. Ready to take down those jerky “Lazy Lunch-Lady Lynne” kids. Ready to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. Even though he couldn’t really protect himself, either.

  “Evie didn’t tell me you were doing that,” I said. “I had no idea.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t tell her. I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t tell Evie, though. You two have always been so . . . close.” Even though I hadn’t been trying to, I automatically put a weird, suggestive emphasis on “close.”

  He gave me a look.

  “I’m sorry,” I said hastily. “I don’t know why I do that. Well, I do . . . sort of. I have a hard time. Letting things go. Even though you guys hooking up on prom night isn’t something for me to let go, it’s not like I’m, I don’t know, Nate, or . . . or . . .”

  God. I sounded stuttery and unsure, flailing around for the right words like a drowning woman in search of a life preserver. I took a deep breath, composed myself, and told my Annie Chang side to shut up, please.

  “I didn’t tell anyone,” he repeated. He gave me that unnervingly steady look again. “Sometimes you and Evie are so caught up in your own world, the world that’s just the two of you and all your issues, there isn’t a lot of room for anything else. Or anyone else.”

  I couldn’t really argue with that.

  “We’re working on our co-dependency problems,” I said, trying to make my tone light. “Anyway. You’re thinking about going back to school. But it seems like instead of doing things to put that into motion, you’re mostly staring really intensely at the application. What’s the hold-up?”

  “I’m not sure what I want anymore,” he said, his eyes rolling upward to explore the ceiling. “When we all got our powers back in the day, I was like, this is it, we’re finally gonna be superheroes. Invincible. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and defend the downtrodden. And some of us did. You did.” He gave me a gentle smile and I tried to ignore the way my face heated, the flush creeping up the back of my neck. “But the spells I was able to do were so weak. Inconsequential. I don’t know why I even thought I could be a superhero, the first time I realized I had any kind of power, I—”

  He cut himself off, a faint blush suffusing his cheeks.

  “What?” I said, unable to suppress my curiosity. “You know, I’ve never actually heard your origin story.”

  “I . . . it’s not that interesting,” he said, in that hasty way that indicated it was actually totally interesting. “One day, I was wondering what it would be like to look like someone else. What my life would be like, if . . . people would react differently to me.”

  I nodded, even as my brow crinkled in confusion. We’d gotten our powers when we were eighteen—he’d already gone through his pipsqueak-to-heartthrob makeover. Most people seemed to react to him just fine, to put it mildly.

  “I was thinking really hard about this, apparently,” he said with a wry smile. “And I felt something brush against my mind. I realized later it was that Otherworld magic—that I was gaining access to it for the first time. And then I glanced in the mirror and I looked like someone else.”

  “Your first glamour!” I exclaimed. “Who did you look like?”

  “It’s not important—”

  “It so is! This is a crucial part of your origin story! Who did Scott Cameron—bona fide high school hottie, excellent specimen of teenage malehood—want to be?”

  “I looked like . . . the guy in that comic book you like. Figure Five or something?”

  “Figure Four?” I squeaked. Figure Four was Battle Angel Alita’s love interest, a square-jawed, kind-hearted hunk of a man whose image I’d tended to linger over even when I was flipping through pages I’d read a zillion times. Scott hadn’t really been into the manga, though, so why had he—oh. Oh.

  “Yeah,” Scott said quickly. “After that, I realized I could access and manipulate those magics brushing against my mind to do small things. The glamours. The love tokens. It was cool at first, especially when I realized I could use these dopey little spells to make a living—Mom and I never had much, so it seemed impractical not to use my power for that. But I never felt like I was actually making a difference in the world.”

  I nodded—more just to show I was listening than in agreement. I knew Scott had made decent money for a while selling love tokens online. I’d thought it was a means to an end, a way to support himself while he indulged in the things he really enjoyed, like surfing and, uh . . . well. I wasn’t sure what else he enjoyed, other than being a goofball, stretching in a distractingly sexy way, and standing up for people even when it wasn’t necessarily in his best interest to do so.

  It was odd that I’d known him for so long and apparently didn’t know him well at all.

  Except I felt like I did. Like I knew him better than I knew anyone—other than Evie, of course. I couldn’t explain why. It had something to do with seeing him at what I knew were his truest moments—those rare flashes of intensity. The pure rage when the kids had made fun of his mom. The way he was looking at me now, exhausted and stripped of all barriers, unable to cover up with a joke.

  “Then we got
our power level-ups,” he continued. “And now . . .”

  “Now you’ve got major magic,” I said. “You can heal injuries and shit. Like my ankle. Or that little girl’s arm at the bakery. You can help people in an even more concrete way than the master’s in social work would allow.”

  “That’s how I should feel.” His eyes wandered to the blank application. “But instead I feel like some kind of choice has been taken away. I shouldn’t want this anymore.” He tapped the application. “But some part of me still does, even though it seems like a waste of this level-up gift I’ve been given. So. I don’t know. Every time I start to think about it, I can’t figure out what I actually want. I just feel confused all the time.”

  I gnawed on my lower lip and resisted the urge to blurt out that I felt exactly the same way. That ever since everything had changed—with my injury, with Evie, with the power level-up, with feeling useless and unneeded and cropped out of every single metaphorical photo, with the months of unwanted leisure and everything in between—I hadn’t been able to figure anything out. Not one damn thing. And that every time I thought I’d set myself on the right path, the map changed.

  “For most of my life, I feel like I’ve pinned my hopes on some dumb fantasy that could never be true,” he said. “Like back in school, when I tried to take down those kids who were being little shits about my mom. I honestly thought the sheer force of my anger would allow me to totally kick their asses.” He gave me a sheepish look. “Or when we got our powers, and I thought I was going to be a real superhero. Or . . .”

  His gaze lingered on me and I felt my face flush again. I wondered if he was thinking of that time he’d kissed me and I’d dashed that fantasy.

  He stared at the application again, as if willing it to divulge all the answers. “I don’t know which is which. What’s the fantasy? And what’s real? I still want to help people, but I don’t know the best way. I don’t know if going after something I feel like I still want, but shouldn’t, is selfish. And I feel like I really should have all this shit figured out by now.” He met my eyes and his expression was so open and earnest, so shot through with that naked vulnerability, my breath caught. “Do you ever feel that way?”

  So many responses were on the tip of my tongue.

  Yes, of course.

  Yes, all the time.

  I mean . . . not so much in the past, but now? I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what’s real. Or who I am.

  But I couldn’t seem to let any of these words escape. They took me back to that stuttery, unsure place I loathed so much—the Annie Chang place. The place I was trying like hell to escape.

  So instead I schooled my features into my best Aveda Jupiter look of detached sympathy and said: “No, not really. The power level-up has given me everything I’ve ever wanted.”

  His eyes clouded over, and I got the sense that, once again, I had somehow Hurricane Annie-ed all over the place. Perhaps there was nothing I could do about that. Perhaps that was a necessary step on my path to full mojo reclaiming. And hey, I’d actually managed to be in a room alone with him for more than five minutes without trying to kiss him, pounce on him, or inappropriately eat cake with him.

  “Well!” I said, making my voice overly bright. “I guess I’ll go check on Evie. Let me know when Nate and Bea get back.”

  As I marched upstairs, I tried to congratulate myself on maintaining strength during what could have become a vulnerable moment. Instead of breaking down and crying all over him like I had with Evie, I’d kept my cool.

  Resist temptation—check!

  Make crucial progress on your mojo-reclaiming mission—check!

  Avoid kissing someone you shouldn’t be kissing—check, check, check!

  I should have felt empowered. Instead I felt thoroughly, inexplicably miserable.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  AFTER WE DECIDED to follow the clothes, the clothes decided to make things difficult.

  Evie’s dress was just a dress, no supernatural energy lurking in its delicate chiffon folds. We weren’t sure when, exactly, the puppy had escaped, but Bea was hard at work on improving the trap, trying to add some kind of element that would keep it good and locked in next time. In the meantime, we destroyed what was left of Evie’s dress—just in case.

  I was still determined to follow something, so the next day I called Shruti and explained our theory about the puppy demon figuring out how to use Evie’s wedding dress to attack her.

  “Where do we go from here? What, in your expert opinion, is the most useful line of clothes-related investigation?” I asked. I was holed up in my bedroom, phone jammed against my ear.

  “Hmm,” Shruti said. “Well, even though we don’t know where the puppy’s gone, we can look into the origin of Evie’s dress, see if that tells us anything.”

  “It didn’t have a label.” I allowed my eyes to wander to a small cobweb in the corner of the ceiling and resisted the urge to claw my way up the wall and untangle it. “I thought maybe it was vintage.”

  “All dresses originate somewhere,” Shruti said. “But that one actually looked like a modern design to me. Remember how I said it resembled a Marcus Wong?”

  “I assume Marcus Wong is a wedding wear designer I know nothing about?”

  “A San Francisco–based wedding wear designer,” Shruti crowed. “I think we should pay a visit to his show room. Like fashion detectives.”

  “Fashion detectives?” I couldn’t help but laugh. “Imagine that on a business card.”

  “We should totally get those made,” Shruti said.

  “And even if he knows nothing about Evie’s dress, at least we’ll be in a place with a ton of wedding gowns and a ton of brides,” I said, warming to the idea. “Maybe we’ll get some clues as to where the puppy is likely to strike next.”

  “I’ll text over the address,” Shruti said. “Meet you there at two?”

  “Affirmative, fashion detective,” I said, and hung up.

  I decided Shruti and I should undertake this particular mission ourselves. Evie was still resting after her ordeal, and if Marcus Wong and his dresses were connected to our puppy in any way, I didn’t want to spook him by crashing his show room with a whole entourage of people.

  Located on a tiny, crooked street in an up and coming neighborhood, Marcus’s bridal show room was a fascinating mix of flash and class. It was also the only “fancy” business on the block, which was otherwise populated with crumbling empty storefronts and hole-in-the-wall liquor marts. Marcus’s sign—giant red letters that screamed WONG in a style that resembled graffiti—made the whole enterprise stand out even more. His window display, meanwhile, depicted wedding dress–clad mannequins engaging in what appeared to be some kind of blood sport: they all wore elaborate antler headdresses and had slashes of red smeared across their faces and on their hands. And they were posed as if menacing each other. Like wild animals.

  “What’s the deal with this guy?” I asked Shruti, gesturing to the window. “I know the bridal tent was basically a war zone, but I thought the designer show rooms liked to keep the veneer of refinement going.”

  “Marcus prides himself on designing for the alternative bride,” Shruti said. Today she was wearing her hair in Princess Leia–style buns and had donned a chic peachy-pink vintage trench coat in honor of our fashion detectiving. “He was a performance artist in his youth, and believes weddings are the purest form of performance, best expressed through the gown.”

  I studied the gowns in the window. Once you got past the rather alarming display, they were quite beautiful, and they did have that swooping, exaggerated mermaid shape that made Evie’s dress stand out.

  “All right, fashion detective,” I said. “Let’s move in.”

  We entered the shop, and I did a double take. The place was packed. It wasn’t quite the savage chaos of the bridal tent, but there was a defini
te buzz in the air as brides-to-be pawed through the racks of dresses and inspected the various mannequins on display.

  “Ladies, ladies!” A slender, pinched-looking Asian man clad in all black waved his hands in the air, looking fretful. His voice was soft and lilting and punctuated with a slight French accent. “Please. Stop touching everything! You must have an appointment to browse our stock and even then, it is only to be taken off the rack by a certified Marcus Wong consultant.”

  “Is that Marcus?” I asked Shruti.

  “No,” she said. “That’s his assistant, Franz. Marcus only appears at the end of each consultation to give his blessing to the dress purchase. Or to not give it.”

  “Marcus can nix a potential buyer?” I shook my head. “If Evie’s dress was his, how did it end up somewhere as accessible to the masses as the bridal tent?”

  “An excellent question for the fashion detectives to ask,” Shruti said. “Ah! There he is.” She gestured toward the opposite side of the room, where a wizened elderly stump of a man in a schlubby gray t-shirt, sweats, and flip-flops had emerged from the back. He looked like he’d be more at home dropping acid and dispensing loopy wisdom on Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue than designing high-end wedding finery. Marcus studied a woman wearing one of his spectacular mermaid creations, his eyes narrowing in appraisal. She looked back at him anxiously, twisting her hands together, awaiting his approval.

  “That’s Marcus?” I said. “I was expecting someone more . . .”

  “Youthful? Hip?” Shruti said. “Appearances can be deceiving. Marcus is as avant-garde as it gets.”

  Marcus studied the blond, petite bride-to-be. I realized I recognized her as one of the brides from the Market tent. I guess she hadn’t found anything there. Or if she had, she’d lost it in the puppy demon chaos. Finally, Marcus gave her a small, curt nod. She let out a scream of joy, clapped her hands together, and lunged at him, arms outstretched for a hug. Franz immediately stepped in front of Marcus and shook his head at her.