Junior Hero Blues

by J. K. Pendragon

  I sighed, and did my best to throw my voice so that he couldn’t tell where it was coming from. “Yeah, okay, I’m here, but I don’t want you to see me.”

  Rick stopped walking and turned around, so the voice thing must have worked pretty well. I’d have to test that out on bad guys sometime. “What? Javi, where are you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” I was not fine. “Could you just . . . go away for a bit? Until I can get dressed.”

  Rick was silent. He was probably either thinking He’s naked, eyyy! or else Oh my god he threw up all over himself. Gross. I like to think it was the first one, but I’m sure we all know better. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Okay, I’ll meet you outside.”

  “Promise you won’t watch?”

  “Yeah, I promise. I’m not a creep.”

  I didn’t think he was a creep. I mean, he hadn’t been kicked off the football team for peeping or anything. (If anything I was the Peeping Tom, but that was part of the reason I wasn’t on the football team. Yeah, that was the reason.) So probably it was fine. Not that I even minded him seeing me naked, or wouldn’t have if it weren’t for, well, you know. But I listened to him walk to the door and shout “Okay, I’m gone!” and shut it before I jumped down from the ceiling and rushed into my clothes as quickly as I ever had in my life.

  I didn’t bother to put my suit on underneath my clothes. I definitely didn’t feel like fighting crime right now. But I put my contacts back in and set them to brown (if you’re wondering, before I got in touch with the League, I went around wearing cheap colored contacts and sunglasses a lot). I stared at myself in the mirror for a bit, trying to school my face into a casual Oh, I was just hanging out in the shower ceiling, no reason face, and come up with some sort of excuse. Unfortunately, I puked all over myself was actually sounding pretty good. I was mostly just hoping that Rick wouldn’t ask.

  He didn’t. Instead, when I came out into the hallway, he put his hand on my shoulder, all comforting, and leaned in. His hand felt big and strong, and even though I could probably take him in a fight, it made me feel kinda warm and safe. I actually got this, like, rush of emotion at that point, because I hadn’t had a great couple of days, and now here was Rick, all sincere and concerned about me, and it was just really nice.

  “Hey,” he said softly.

  “Hi.” I swallowed. My voice was all stupid and wobbly. “Um . . .”

  “Sorry.” He took his hand away. “I was worried about you. Are you okay, are you sick?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t need to go home early?”

  “Ah.” I pulled away reluctantly. “No, I’ll just rest after school.”

  “How are you getting home?”

  “I’ll walk.” I shrugged. “It’s only a few blocks.”

  “No way.” Rick frowned. “I’ll drive you.”

  I felt kind of guilty for playing sick or whatever, even though I’d said I was fine, but I wasn’t going to turn down a ride from Rick. “Okay.”

  Rick’s phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at it, brow furrowed. “Sorry, I have to take this. But I’ll meet you in the parking lot after school, okay? Don’t walk home.” He answered the phone and jogged off. I stared after him in a daze.

  Then Kendall appeared out of nowhere, nearly bowling me over. “Oh my god, where were you? I was freaking out.”

  “I’m fine.” I watched Rick run away, hunched over and muttering into his phone. “I was showering and then the whole freaking football team came in, so I had to hide in the ceiling.”

  “I thought you’d been kidnapped or something,” said Kendall angrily. “I called the League.”

  “What? Seriously?”

  “Yeah, sorry, I was really worried.”

  “Great.” I turned as Rick rounded a corner and shoved my hands in my pockets, heading for the cafeteria. Kendall followed me.

  “Hey, don’t get mad at me! It’s my job to worry about you. Anyway, you’ll wanna hear what they told me.”

  “I’m not mad at you.” I huffed. This day was getting better and better. “What did they say?”

  “That if you were missing after a couple of days, they had methods in place to locate you.”

  “That’s so vague.”

  “Exactly. So I pressed them about it. Turns out, you have a chip implanted in your butt.”

  “Hey, I know. Don’t talk about my butt!”

  “Uh, you didn’t mind me talking about your butt when you wanted me to design you a supersuit that showed it off.”

  “It did really show it off.” I sighed wistfully.

  “It did,” agreed Kendall. “The crap they have you in now isn’t half as stylish as my original design. At least they kept the color scheme.”

  “Uh-huh. So, what about the chip in my butt? I remember getting it. It’s not something you forget.”

  “What, having something stuck in your butt?”

  We made it to the cafeteria and slipped in, heading to stand in the lunch line behind a group of hipsters.

  “I feel like that was some sort of joke,” I said. “But I’m not getting it. Maybe you could elaborate.”

  “Yeah, maybe you could tell me why you were fine with”—she lowered her voice so as not to be overheard by the girls in front of us—“the League sticking a tracking chip in you.”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged, uncomfortable. “It was just something they did. They gave me like a million other shots too, and I had to sign a bunch of stuff. It’s not like I really had a choice.”

  “Uh-huh. They’re freaking sketchy, you know that?”

  “Yeah, I know.” We stepped up to grab our trays and be presented with whatever delicacies the cafeteria had to offer us today. “But they’re a better alternative than the Organization. I’m not going to not use my powers to help people just because I don’t want a chip in my butt.”

  The only real good thing about the rest of the school day was that I no longer smelled like sewage. Kendall’s soap had done the trick, and I smelled like a preteen girl instead. Definitely superior, although still not ideal. But if Rick noticed that I was making the inside of his SUV smell like candy on the drive home, he didn’t mention it.

  “It’s cool that you can drive,” I said as we pulled out of the school parking lot.

  “Yeah.” Rick sounded pleased. “I learned when I was like thirteen. My family all used to drive out to the lake house, do spins in the gravel pit.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “Definitely. I’m way more responsible with driving now. And I have my license.”

  “Your family has a lake house?”

  Rick must have noticed the hint of jealousy in my voice, because he seemed embarrassed. “My extended family. We share it. It’s not fancy or anything. This one guy has a whole mansion out there, with a swimming pool and everything. What’s the point of that, right?”

  “Maybe he’s afraid of the mutant fish.”

  Rick snorted. “That’s a myth.”

  “Nuh-uh.” I turned in my seat. “I did a science presentation on the weird stuff that happened at the power plant out there. The water’s radioactive.”

  “It is not!” Rick protested. “Look, I swam it in every summer since I was a kid, do you see any mutant gills?”

  “Like you’d show them off.”

  “Actually, that sounds awesome, I totally would.”

  “What if they were, like, somewhere inappropriate?”

  Rick sucked on his teeth. “I don’t know. I’d probably still let people see them. For science.”

  “Right.” I grinned. “For science.”

  “So where exactly do you live?”

  “Oh.” I felt my face fall. Rick was driving this obviously expensive (if sort of old) SUV, and talking about his family’s lake house, for crying out loud, and now he was gonna have to drive down crap street and drop me off in front of my apartment, which might as well just take the opportunity to collapse on top of us. �
�Twenty-second Street? You don’t have to take me all the way there—”

  “It’s on my way to work. I’ll drop you off.” He paused. “I just want to make sure you get home okay.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  We stopped at a red light, and Rick glanced over at me. “Javier. You know if people at school are giving you a hard time—”

  “They’re not.”

  “Well . . .” Rick seemed a bit lost for words. “If they try to. Don’t let it bother you.”

  I looked at him, eyebrows raised. “Easy for you to say. You’re normal.”

  He raised his eyebrows right back. “Are you not normal?”

  A bit of excitement and fear tickled through me. I could tell him right now. Just tell him everything. Except for the fact that was a really, really stupid idea, of course.

  “Well yeah,” I said instead, “sure, but they don’t think so.”

  He put the SUV back in gear and turned down Twenty-second Street. Imagining it how Rick must be seeing it, I noticed things like graffiti, how the buildings were close together, and the places where metal fences were broken and the bricks in the old buildings were chipped. Not that I hadn’t noticed these things before, and I honestly didn’t know why I cared, except that I kind of wanted to impress Rick, or at least not make him feel bad for me. I hated thinking that maybe he was just going out with me because he felt bad for me. But I couldn’t imagine why else he would be.

  “Nothing wrong with not being normal,” said Rick.

  I scoffed. “Maybe if you’re all cool and popular to start with. If you’re not, then, you know. People just think you’re weird. This is me.” I gestured at my apartment. “You can pull over here.”

  “I don’t think you’re weird, Javier.”

  “We-ell.” I grabbed my bag from the floor and opened the door. “You probably don’t know me very well, then. Thanks for the ride.” I did my best to grin at him, and he gave me a halfhearted smile back. I dropped the grin as soon as he pulled away, and I watched him drive off.

  I climbed the stairs slowly, thunking from side to side with each step and contemplating all the ways in which I was a loser who was definitely going to die alone. I had no idea why I was being so standoffish and rude to Rick. If I were him, I’d be running the other way. He was probably driving to work right now and thinking about all the other nice, normal, nonprickly guys he could date instead of me. And I couldn’t even blame him.

  My dad was home, sitting on the couch with the TV on, a newspaper open on the couch beside him, and the motherboard of a computer spread out in pieces on the coffee table. “Hey, Javi!” he said as I hung up my coat. “Plans for tonight?”

  I shrugged. “Just homework.”

  “Did you see that boy again? I’m asking because your mother wants to know.”

  For a moment I wanted to confess how crappy it made me feel that his family had so much more money than mine. Then I came to my senses and realized how awful that would make my dad feel. “Yeah, he’s nice.”

  My dad nodded, and went back to his motherboard. I kicked my shoes off and went to my bedroom, shut the door behind me, and flopped down on the bed.

  The thing is, my parents work crazy hard for everything we have, and they’re pretty fiercely proud of it. For me to feel embarrassed by it almost felt like betraying them. A bit of pride and defiance flared up in me, and for a moment, I was annoyed that Rick had made me feel embarrassed. But then, he hadn’t done it on purpose. It certainly wasn’t his fault that he was rich.

  I huffed and blew a strand of hair out of my face, and then got up to take off the layers of clothes I was wearing, suddenly feeling a bit claustrophobic. I checked that my door was locked before pulling off my T-shirt and examining the now-familiar glowing lines on my body. They branched out from my core, concentrating mostly on my stomach and hips, but trailing up over my shoulders and down my arms as well. I slid my fingers along the lines, and they pulsed as I did so. Below my hips was where I was most embarrassed about. The markings concentrated there, turning me into something I almost didn’t recognize. Something distinctly nonhuman.

  My phone buzzed in my bag, and I jumped, feeling vaguely guilty, and rushed to check it. It was a message from the League, asking if I was available for patrol tonight.

  No, I texted, sitting down on the bed. I have homework.

  You are required to log at least fifteen hours of patrol a week. You have currently logged seven and a half.

  I know.

  It is Thursday.

  I KNOW. I glared at the screen. Fine, but I’ll bring my homework with me.

  Excellent. The posting is for Market and Fifteenth Street. Please review the intersection, and be ready to respond to calls.

  I sighed and got up to get dressed. Are you even human? I texted petulantly. Or am I taking orders from a machine?

  I’m human. My name is Beth.

  Oh. Sorry for snapping at you Beth. I’ve been having a bad day.

  Understandable. Enjoy patrol.

  I told my dad I’d been called into my fake Pizza Hut job, and took the bus down to Fifteenth and Market. Then I changed behind a dumpster and climbed a fire escape. Liberty City has a lot of fire escapes. Apparently they installed a bunch of them in the forties to help superheroes get around. Well, and to help people escape fires, presumably.

  Then I sat up on the roof, reading my chemistry chapters and sort of glancing down at the intersection occasionally. At one point I saw what I thought was a guy trying to mug some chick, but when I went to look closer, they were making out, which I definitely did not need to see. I went back and sat on the edge of the building, reading about electrons and photons. Mostly stuff that, if I was being honest, I already knew. Not that I was, like, a super genius or anything. I just knew some science. It probably didn’t hurt that my dad was a computer whiz either. Anyway, it doesn’t matter when you’re in school. I still had to read the chapters, and they were so . . . freaking . . . boring.

  I ended up lying on my back with my knees hooked over the side of the building, reading my book upside down and paying absolutely no attention to the intersection. That was when I saw the guy.

  He was standing in the window of a tall office building a few blocks away. And not, like, on the floor inside the building, just chilling and glancing out the window. Like, actually on the windowsill, staring down, and not looking very happy about it at all.

  Crap.

  I stood and tossed my book to the side, shoved my phone into one of the pouches on my belt, and raced across the roof, jumping a couple of gaps to get to the building across from the man in the window. He must have noticed me land because his head jerked up. He was a bit too far away to see his expression, but I thought he looked scared.

  “Uh,” I shouted. “Hi. Whatcha doing?”

  I desperately hoped that he was just, like, cleaning . . . or something. Because I had no idea how to deal with someone who was trying to jump. I wondered if the League offered classes on the subject, but it was kind of too late for that now.

  “Nothing!” the guy squeaked. “It’s fine.”

  “You sure?” I leaned over the side of the building. “Maybe you wanna go back inside, it’s not really safe out there.”

  The guy laughed nervously, and glanced back inside the building. And then a low threatening voice said, “Tell him you’re just getting fresh air.”

  “It’s fine,” said the man again. “Just getting . . . f-fresh air—”

  But I’d already jumped across. I was intending to grab the guy and wrap myself around him so that we’d both roll safely in through the window, but then a gloved hand reached out and snagged him around the ankle. In the second before I hit him, the hand pulled him back inside and slammed the window shut in front of me.

  I had just enough time to bring my hands up and send shock waves to break the glass before I crashed through the window and rolled into the room. It took a minute for me to get my bearings, and I noticed the thick green c
arpet underneath me before anything else. Then someone grabbed me by the shoulder and hoisted me painfully up, and I was looking into the masked face of Jimmy Black.

  “You!” I resisted the urge to spit on him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Jimmy sneered at me, and then snapped his fingers at the henchman holding me. The guy let go of my shoulder and aimed a punch to my gut, but I managed to twist out of the way and send him skidding across the room with another shock wave.

  Jimmy looked annoyed. He jerked his head at the second henchman guy, who reached into a cupboard and pulled out a big black safe. He hoisted it onto his shoulders and rushed from the room, and I moved to go after him, but then Jimmy went to the man by the window, and I didn’t want to leave him alone with a civilian. He was a middle-aged guy, balding, business suit, completely innocuous. He was pleading “No, no please, don’t!” as Jimmy grabbed him and lifted him up by the leg, all casually.

  “I will ask you one more time.” He sounded deadly serious. “What is the pass code to the safe?”

  The guy didn’t say anything. Instead he just turned to me, all panicky, and whispered, “Help.”

  Jimmy broke the guy’s leg, twisting it so that it bent backward with a loud crack.

  The guy screamed as Jimmy dropped him. He hit the ground hard, and Jimmy glowered at me as he followed his henchmen out the door. I wanted to go after him, but League rules say to always tend to civilians first, so I went to the guy and knelt beside him, trying to remember the basic first aid stuff I’d been taught.

  He shook his head at me, his face red and teary. “No! Go after them, get back what they took!”

  “What did they take?”

  The guy shook his head again and grabbed his leg. “No time to explain. Go!”

  I didn’t need much convincing. I gave the guy what I hoped was a concerned look, and then I was up and off, running down the hallway after Jimmy Black and his henchmen. They were at the elevator, cool as you please, just stepping in as I tore out the door and into the hallway. Jimmy grinned at me as the doors closed and I ran full tilt into them, my ears ringing from the impact. I gripped the doors with my gloves and managed to pry them open, straining every muscle in my body.