“I never said I wasn’t him.” His back faced me and the wind blew stronger, but I could still hear the tortured croak in his voice. “This Isaac guy.”
I joined him at the fence. “You never said you were either.”
“Touché,” Iron Phantom grumbled.
“So who are you, then?” I asked. “Behind the mask?”
My fingers twitched toward his face. I didn’t stand a chance. His lightning-fast reflexes caught both of my hands, pressing them tightly between his own.
“Don’t you dare, Abigail. Wow, would you look at the time?” He glanced at his wrist, but he wasn’t wearing a watch. He probably told time using the position of the moon or something bizarre and had no need for one. “We both need to get out of here.” Iron Phantom held on to my hand as he pulled me from the park.
“We?” I couldn’t imagine he would take me anywhere significant. He was far too secretive.
“Well, I’m not leaving you alone, and I need to get back to my house for The Big Bang Theory.”
My steps faltered as the super tugged me down the dirt road toward my house. I wasn’t sure which part of his sentence surprised me more—that he lived in a house or that he actually had time to watch television.
“You live in a house?” I bumped his shoulder jokingly with my own. “Not in some secret supervillain lair?”
Iron Phantom bumped me back, though he misjudged his strength and unfortunately sent me tripping toward the ground. He steadied me with an arm around my waist, and we continued toward my house. Tall maple trees on both sides of the road blocked out the glow from the moon, and when he spoke again, it appeared his voice came from the depths of the shadows themselves.
“Ha. Ha. Ha. Not amusing. Tonight’s the episode where they go to a superhero costume contest. I don’t know why, but something about it really strikes a chord with me.”
I snorted in a very unladylike fashion and carefully stepped over a ditch in the road. “You don’t say. You know, I tried to partake in your ‘secret mission’ today.” I held up little air quotes around the words. “I couldn’t find anything about city hall’s mysterious microchips. Sorry.”
He sighed. “That’s okay. I don’t have much to go on either.” He kicked a rock, and it soared off the road, landing in the underbrush. “I guess we’ll just have to try harder.”
I shook my head in amusement. I was about as useful to him as a parka in the Caribbean, and I was still waiting for him to figure that out. “So if they aren’t tracking devices, then what do you think is wrong with them?” I asked. “You must have suspicions, right?”
“I do,” he said. “But I never said they weren’t trackers.”
“Seriously? Can’t you give a straight answer to anything?”
“I can, but…” He paused, scratching his chin. “I’d rather not right now. I … I just have my reasons. That’s all.”
I tried not to let it show how much that saddened me. I didn’t like secrets, but lately I’d found myself entangled in more and more of them. Dealing with Iron Phantom was exactly like dealing with my dad and Connor. Either I needed to keep the information I knew to myself, or I wasn’t trusted enough to keep the information at all.
“Hey.” He reached out an index finger to poke me on the nose. “Don’t look so sulky, Abigail. It’s just for now.” I wondered if he was serious or just being kind.
We walked the next few minutes in silence. I could feel Iron Phantom glance at the side of my face every so often, but I never looked back to him. Other than “Are you Isaac Jackson?” I didn’t know what else to say. Except his favorite color (green), his favorite television show (The Big Bang Theory), and his special skills in teleportation, healing, and telepathy, I didn’t know much about him. Though, I couldn’t blame him for keeping quiet. Supers were never very forthcoming.
I wished he would tell me who he was. I could keep a secret. I’d kept Connor’s for years. But I could never tell Iron Phantom that. Apparently the relatives of supers aren’t very forthcoming either.
So where did that leave us?
“Okay, question.” He broke the silence, plucking a fallen leaf from his shoulder and tossing it to the ground. “If you were a super, which one would you be?”
I pretended to ponder his inquiry, hand on my chin, eyes scrunched up in mock thought. “Well, definitely not the Burning Babe,” I said, thinking of one of Philadelphia’s finest. “Could you imagine dealing with all that fire power? She destroys her clothes at least twice a week. That would suck.”
He snickered. “All right, fair enough, fair enough. Red Comet?”
I pushed him away, catching him off guard and causing him to stumble. One point for Abby! “No. No. No. No way. That would suck even worse!” Thinking of stepping into my brother’s bright red spandex for a day made my gag reflex twitch.
He held his palms up in surrender. “Sorry! I really thought all the girls were into him, my mistake. Okay, what about … Iron Phantom?”
We had reached the edge of my driveway. Towering pine trees blocked my house from the road, but I leaned against the mailbox, casually crossing my arms over my chest while I eyed the super before me.
“That would suck worst of all,” I said.
Iron Phantom threw a hand over his chest, tilting his head to the sky. “You wound me.” He leaned toward me, his voice sly. “Maybe I should have masqueraded as a jock instead of a super. I might have been better liked.”
I hummed in thought and edged closer, wondering if he had terrible hat hair under that cowl. “I’m not really into jocks either. Try a member of the drama club maybe.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Iron Phantom tugged on the sleeve of his sweatshirt, which I was still wearing. “Keep it.” He grinned. “It looks better on you anyway.”
He disappeared into the breeze, and I slumped against the post of the mailbox.
CHAPTER NINE
I crouched behind the table, my knobby knees unsteady against the hard linoleum. My chest shook. Everywhere screaming. Sobbing. Pleading. A gunshot into the ceiling. Silence.
I couldn’t move. If I moved, I would die. The men reached for my mother, pulled her to her feet, dragged her to the front of the bank, spoke in a loud guttural growl. If they didn’t get the money, she would be the first they would kill.
A siren echoed through the city. They wouldn’t get here in time.
“No!” I ducked out from under the safety of my table. “Please! Let her go! Please!”
The man holding the gun to my mother’s head grinned. His teeth were yellow and crooked. He pulled the black mask from his head.
“Abigail.”
The killer’s green eyes narrowed. He aimed the gun at my heart.
My mother screamed for me to run, but no words came from her mouth. The lobby of the bank slowly melted away. The three of us stood in an empty room with white walls. My mother, the killer, and me. I wouldn’t run.
“Abigail.”
He pushed the barrel of the gun into the back of my mother’s head. I felt the pain against my own. A cold, hard circle at the top of my spine. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe.
“Abigail.”
His finger tightened on the trigger.
“Say good-bye.”
My mother’s blond hair hung limp around her face. Tears dripped down her cheeks. His finger moved, quick like lightning.
Red.
Pain.
Screams.
“Good-bye.”
Black.
“Abigail!”
I jolted, thrashing in my covers, my breathing ragged. I could still feel the pain at the base of my skull, still hear the screaming, the echo of the gunshot.
I jumped again when I noticed the figure next to my bed. The moonlight streaming in from the window silhouetted his body as he leaned over me. His eyes peeked through the holes of his black mask, so similar to the killer in the dream. I lunged for his face.
The man shushed me, pinning my arms to my sid
es. I thrashed a few seconds more, my legs intertwining with my sheets and trapping my body. I tried to head-butt the stranger away, and he cursed, his voice eerily familiar.
“Jesus, Abigail, it’s okay. You’re okay. I’m here. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
The shock of the nightmare receded, and the masked man hesitantly released my arms. I reached past him, flipping on my lamp with trembling fingers. Bright light flooded the bedroom. We both groaned and shut our eyes against the glare.
“Why are you here?”
Iron Phantom ignored me. “What were you dreaming about?”
I cracked my eyelids open, then immediately shut them. Beside me, the light clicked off, and the room was dark once more.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Didn’t look like nothing. You can tell me, you know.”
I didn’t know exactly when I decided to tell him—if it was before or after he knelt beside my bed, resting his chin on the edge of my mattress. I didn’t know why I decided to tell him either. Maybe because behind his black mask he could be anyone I wanted him to be. A friend, a partner, a confidant. I took comfort in that.
“Fine. It was my mom. The day she was murdered.”
I expected him to pause, to dish out some profound advice I didn’t ask for or to change the subject as quickly as possible. Because that’s what most people did when faced with murder—they either faked sincerity or they refused to talk at all.
What I didn’t expect was for him to ask without missing a beat, “You were there?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t imagine how bad the dreams would be if I actually witnessed my mom’s death. “But that doesn’t keep me from having night terrors about it.”
“Night terrors.” His distaste for the term indicated he was all too familiar with the disorder. “Yeah, I used to have those. And I was an insomniac for a year after…”
“After what?”
He gulped and whispered, “After my parents died.”
I wanted to reach for his hand lying so close to mine on the mattress and tell him it was okay. But I would never be dumb enough to tell him that. Dead parents weren’t okay. So I said something slightly less stupid than it’s okay. I said, “I’m sorry.”
I knew from personal experience that I’m sorry didn’t cut it either. It’s just another thing to say. Another thing to fill the awkward void of silence that death creates.
“Do you still have insomnia?” I asked.
“No. But I still get nightmares from time to time. I don’t think they’ll ever go away.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. I had wanted to find out something personal about Iron Phantom, but dead parents and insomnia weren’t what I had in mind. Sure we had stuff in common, but I wanted him to tell me something pleasant about himself, something to take me away from the sudden bouts of depression that arrived after dark.
“Hey,” he said suddenly. “It’ll get better. I promise.” The smile he wore mirrored Connor or my dad when they tried to look calm in the midst of catastrophe. His lips quirked upward, but the light didn’t quite reach his eyes. I had seen that smile enough over the years to know it was likely a lie.
I scooted up in bed, away from him. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Iron Phantom.” That was the first time I called him Iron Phantom to his face. Although the name sounded weird hanging in the air instead of tucked safely in the corners of my mind, the last thing I expected was for him to laugh.
“What?” I felt more self-conscious than usual around him.
“It’s just funny to hear you call me that, Abigail.”
“Well, I don’t know your real name.…”
“Don’t you?”
“Oh, cut the crap,” I scoffed. “I’m not really in the mood to play your mind games.”
Iron Phantom was silent, watching me. I tried to go back to sleep but felt his gaze burning a hole in my head. When I opened my eyes, he was still kneeling next to me, green irises staring through his mask.
“C’mon.” He patted my shoulder, which for the record is probably the least sensual place you can pat somebody. Not that I wanted him to be sensual … at night … in my bedroom … but just saying. “Let’s go somewhere. It’ll make you feel better.”
* * *
If I had known our nighttime excursion would involve teleporting to the Great Unknown, I wouldn’t have agreed. But by the time he dropped the bomb, after I got dressed in the hoodie he lent me yesterday and a pair of jeans, I couldn’t back out.
“Just trust me.” He held out a hand and I skeptically placed my palm on top of his. This was stupid. So, so stupid. And reckless. Very reckless of me to trust a guy whose name I didn’t even know. But I had stitched him up, and he gave me his sweatshirt and woke me from a night terror. We had bonded … right?
“So where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” That seemed to be every superhero’s favorite phrase.
“Will this hurt?” Shockingly enough, I had never teleported before. My ears still popped every time I went up in an airplane, let alone disappeared into a cloud of mist. I wanted to be certain Iron Phantom would get me to wherever and back in one piece.
The super shook his head. “It tickles a bit in your stomach, and it might make you dizzy the first time, but it’s harmless.”
“Is teleporting difficult? I mean, you’re good at it, right?”
“It’s hard to learn at first. One time I overshot my destination and ended up on the Great Wall of China—”
My fingernails dug into his forearm. “Wait, you did what?”
“Yeah, no, I’m good at it now.” He rolled his eyes. “Relax. I was only eleven at the time, cut a guy a bit of slack. You ready?”
Oh, crap. It was happening this soon? “No, wait, I don’t think I—”
“Yeah, I think you’re ready.”
And then the ground dropped out from under me.
My stomach followed suit.
Akin to pulling a plug free from a drain, we raced like water into the abyss. I couldn’t see a thing. The silence filling the void around us was deafening, like being trapped inside an invisible bubble. Teleporting was different than flying with my brother. With Connor, I always feared for my life as he raced through the air. The g-forces stretched my lips, and the wind flapped my cheeks. But right now, I just felt woozy—like my insides turned to jelly and were squeezed through a narrow straw. My skull felt tight against my brain. I resisted the urge to throw up, knowing if I did it would likely get sucked right back inside me.
But as quickly as it began, it stopped.
“How was that?” he asked once my world stopped spinning.
Even with my feet planted firmly on the earth, I still felt like we were moving through the air. “Ugh. I think I need a moment.”
“Don’t take too long.” His hand brushed over the small of my back, and I felt an entirely new type of jitters unrelated to teleportation. “You don’t want to miss out.”
When my stomach finally settled, I glanced up to see where he had brought me. We stood in a large field. Tufts of green poked around the tips of my sneakers, and the faint trace of white paint lined the grass. A large red barn with rusted doors reflected in a pond at the bottom of the hill. Somewhere nearby, a goose honked. Though it was dark, I could still pick out the shapes of gargantuan trees lining the road that curled around the edge of the property.
“Is this a soccer field or something?” I noticed the goalposts looming out of the shadows. I kicked some of the flaky paint off a patch of dead grass on the sideline.
“Sometimes it’s a soccer field,” he corrected me. “Other times it’s just where I come to think.”
Warning me to be careful of potential goose droppings and holes in the field, Iron Phantom led me past the barn to a tree at the pond’s edge. It was old and gnarled, chunks taken out where people carved their initials or professed love for one another. Things like Jamie hearts Chris or RJ + MB. 2gether 4ever! I wondered if they really were
“2gether 4ever,” or if their lack of grammatical skills ruined their relationship.
“So this is it.” He smiled, patting the bark happily. “My thinking tree.”
“Do you bring all the girls out here?”
He rolled his eyes, and we both plopped down at the base of the trunk. I tried to adjust my position so I wasn’t sitting directly on top of a root, but that caused me to topple sideways, my head coming to rest dangerously close to his—right in the crook between his neck and shoulder. I jerked away immediately.
Iron Phantom pretended not to notice. He tossed a small pebble into the pond, where it landed with a plink before sinking, ripples spreading across the surface.
“No, Abigail, you’re the privileged one.” He searched the ground, collecting more stones. “I mean, you did a pretty impressive job of cleaning up my shoulder for me. I think that alone deserves special access to the thinking tree.”
He handed me a pebble, and we tried to see who could throw the farthest. His just barely reached the center of the pond. Mine made it about three feet farther.
“Did you let me win? It’s lame to let someone win.”
“I can assure you, Bazooka, letting people win isn’t something that’s ever on my radar.” He wound up and threw another pebble. It soared across the water, landing on the opposite shoreline. I took another one from his outstretched hand, but it only reached three-fourths of the way across the pond before dropping with a tiny splash.
“See?” Iron Phantom grinned.
I pushed a piece of hair out of my eyes. “How do you know I didn’t let you win to spare your feelings?”
“Did you?”
“I’ll never tell,” I said with a shrug. I hadn’t, of course, but if he could keep all his secrets locked up tight, then so could I.
“You’re something else.” Iron Phantom leaned his head back against the tree, watching the leaves rustle in the breeze. “So … I think you should tell me a story.”
“A story?” I wasn’t very good with those. I could act them out, sure, as long as someone else wrote the lines. Making one up from scratch was something I could never quite figure out.
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