Dreams of the Golden Age

by Carrie Vaughn

  Sitting at the table next to Arthur, across from her children, Celia regarded the pleasant chaos of her life, which suddenly seemed fragile.

  The food arrived, stir-fried pork with an amazing array of vegetables and perfectly seasoned noodles, and everyone oohed and ahhed, then debated the merits of chopsticks, the skills required to use them, and commenced eating.

  Conversation started innocuously enough with the perennial topic of school, and Bethy went off for five minutes about math and thinking about trying out for the school play and the stupidity of book reports because it was all just opinion anyway, and she finally took another bite of food, which slowed her down. Anna stared at her plate, industriously paying attention to her bites and not much else. She didn’t even roll her eyes at Bethy’s monologue, like usual. Teia and Lew were back in school, she reported. They didn’t know why they’d been taken out in the first place. Their mother was having a midlife crisis or something, was Teia’s opinion.

  Everyone else reported on the state of their lives. Celia made what she hoped was an unassuming comment about too many meetings, hoping to avoid an interrogation. She did, and talk moved on.

  Then Robbie said, “How about the news lately? That new super team? Looks like we might finally have that second Olympiad we’ve been waiting for.”

  Suzanne lamented, “Oh, yes, that photo. They all look so young. We were never that young, were we?”

  Robbie snorted. “Everybody looks young to me these days.”

  They’re Anna’s age, Celia thought, clamping her jaw shut so she wouldn’t speak. They’re Anna’s friends. Children. What would he say if it were Anna under one of those masks? She glanced at her elder daughter, who was staring at her plate, but her fork was still.

  Celia’s father, Warren West, the legendary Captain Olympus, had wanted more than anything for Celia to follow in his footsteps and become a superpowered hero. He hadn’t gotten that. What would he think of his granddaughter following in his footsteps? Celia couldn’t even guess. She was so young.

  Arthur, eternally serene, said, “The real test will be if they stick around, or if they quit after a year when they realize how tough the job is.”

  “They do seem to be more enamored of the publicity than is really good for them, don’t they?” Suzanne said.

  “I don’t know,” Robbie said, spearing noodles with a fork. “There’s something about these guys. I think they may be in it for the long haul. They have some real hard-core powers. They aren’t going to sit on the sidelines. And you know that anonymous tip that took down Scarzen? I think that might have been them, too.”

  Celia realized the awful, ironic truth: In his retirement, since he was no longer able to live the vigilante lifestyle himself, Robbie had become a superhero groupie.

  She said, as gently as she could manage, “What you really want is to sit them down and dispense advice, isn’t it?”

  “If I thought they’d actually listen to an old man like me. But no, the books are out there, let them read up on me if they want advice. It’s all on paper.”

  “You think they can do it?” Anna asked, after her long and pointed silence. “I mean, do you really think they can be like the Olympiad?”

  “I really think they’re crazy,” Robbie said. “But then again, we were crazy.” He chuckled like it was a good thing. “I’m looking forward to seeing what they do, that’s for sure.”

  “It’ll certainly be interesting,” Suzanne added.

  “Can we talk about something else?” Anna said. “This … it’s just sensationalism.”

  “Sometimes I think that’s the point,” Robbie replied.

  “Anna’s mad because she wishes she had superpowers,” Bethy observed.

  “No, you’re the one who wants powers,” Anna shot back, more a reflexive argument than one that made sense.

  “Girls,” Celia said in a warning tone that was rapidly losing its effectiveness. Soon, they’d stop listening to her entirely, and wouldn’t that be a fun day?

  “It’s not even about the powers, isn’t that what you’re always saying?” Anna looked straight at Celia, a challenge or a warning. “It’s about doing good whether or not you have powers. Right?”

  “Exactly,” Celia said, but without confidence, worried where this was going to go next.

  Robbie shrugged. “It’s still the superpowers that make Commerce City what it is. It’s part of your family heritage.”

  “See?” Bethy proclaimed.

  Celia glared at Robbie, with a curl to her lip. “I don’t know. Not having them is a pretty big part of their heritage, too.”

  “Can we please talk about something else?” Anna pleaded. She propped her head on her hand and was looking a bit green.

  “God, you’re so touchy,” Bethy shot back, and Anna rounded on her.

  “Girls,” Arthur said softly, and wonder of wonders, they shut up. Celia was pretty sure he wasn’t even using his powers on them. But when he looked at them, like he was looking through them, they were very aware that he was likely seeing more than they wanted him to. It would shut anyone up.

  They focused quietly on their plates.

  “I have dessert,” Suzanne said brightly, making her way to the kitchen. The old defense mechanism, not a bit rusty.

  “I’m not really hungry. Thanks for dinner, Grandma,” Anna said, then shoved away from the table to stomp off, not looking back.

  Celia was relieved that no one called after her. That left them all a little bit of dignity, at least. Anna was in a mood, pleading with her wouldn’t change it. She remembered what it was like, wanting nothing more than to be left alone. She wondered if the others remembered.

  The fruit and sherbet tasted as wonderful as expected, but they were all distracted, and conversation stumbled. Bethy finished only half of hers before fleeing, claiming a mountain of homework. Then, oddly, Celia felt like the kid at the table. The evening ended quickly after that. Robbie said enthusiastic thank-yous and made farewells. Arthur walked with him to the elevators, leaving Celia to help her mother clear up.

  Suzanne, who usually bustled through the kitchen cleaning up after meals, was slow to start. She sat straight in her chair, in her place at the head of the table, gazing over the remains of the meal. Mostly successful, despite the moodiness of teenage girls. But tonight, Suzanne seemed sad.

  “Mom?”

  “I miss your father,” she said.

  Celia started crying. She couldn’t help it. All day long, all the reasons she’d had to cry and hadn’t, not once. She was saving it up, she told herself. She’d cry later. But then her mother said exactly what she’d been thinking and it all came out, tears streaming, her swallowing her own breaths to try to keep from making noise.

  “Oh, honey, shh.” And just like that Suzanne came to her and held her tight, and Celia clung back. She almost told her mother everything. But she just cried until they pulled apart, and Suzanne smoothed back her hair and kissed her forehead, and they cleared away the dishes. Everything back to normal.

  TEN

  WHEN Robbie insisted that Teia and her bunch had been the ones to tip off the cops about the drug dealer, Anna nearly screamed. Everything after that, she deserved a medal for self-restraint. Turned out she did care about publicity. Or at least recognition. Who knew? But she kept her mouth shut. She could lead the secret double life of a superhero vigilante, just watch her.

  She practiced. She looked for Mayor Edleston after watching videos of his speeches and reading articles about him from the last campaign. Found him, but only when he was where she expected him to be—City Hall or the mayor’s mansion, for example. She attempted to track down various celebrities and found she could really do it only when she knew what part of the city they were going to be in anyway. She tried to hunt them down after only looking at a picture, but that didn’t work—she actually had to know something about them, which meant trolling celebrity gossip websites. It was a frustrating handicap. And she gave herself a headache. />
  She’d started searching missing children websites and reports. She hadn’t yet gotten enough information to be able to find them. But she kept trying, because if she could save just one kid she’d at least feel useful. Most of the stories just made her sad.

  The next day, superteen trio made the news again, stopping a gang fight outside a convenience store late the previous night. Five guys with knives and lead pipes about to pound each other into goo, and they’d been stunned and frozen in place—obviously the calling cards of Lady Snow and Blaster. The official police statement repeated well-worn phrases about not condoning vigilante justice, even as they took the gang members into custody. The tabloids and hero groupie websites were rapturous: “Commerce City’s New Ice-Cold Supers Are Red-Hot!” The accompanying pictures were stills from black-and-white security footage, and the darling among those showed Stormbringer and Blaster high-fiving while Lady Snow looked on proudly, hands on hips. Anna could have gagged.

  The trio had gotten a name, as well: the Trinity. The Super Attention Whores would have worked just as well.

  Anna wasn’t ready to give up, but she and Teddy needed another plan. Another mission. So what if they didn’t get credit. They did this because it needed to be done, not because they wanted attention. They just had to keep going until people realized that there was another, subtler, more mysterious team at work in the city.

  At school that day, Anna avoided Teia. The car pulled along the drive, and Anna knew Teia and the others were hanging out by the front steps like usual, probably grinning and ready to brag. Anna wasn’t up for it, so she asked Tom to continue on to the middle school. She would walk back.

  “I need the exercise,” she explained. A really lame excuse, but she didn’t care.

  “I’ll just nag you for five more minutes,” Bethy said. “Who are you avoiding?”

  “I’m not avoiding anyone.”

  “Liar.”

  Tom looked at them both in the rearview mirror. He never yelled at them when they fought, like Mom and Dad and Grandma did. Which meant they actually fought less in the car than anywhere else.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Anna said finally. Amazingly, Bethy didn’t respond. At the middle school, they both piled out of the car and Anna started the trek back to the other side of the campus.

  “Anna,” Bethy said, and Anna hesitated. “Is something wrong?”

  “No,” Anna said and kept going.

  * * *

  Her power was absolutely useful for avoiding people, and she made it all the way to first period without seeing anyone she’d have to talk to for more than a hello. She waited until lunch to track down Teddy, dragging him off to a table way in the back of the lunchroom to talk. From the far side of the room, Teia might have looked at her and laughed at one point. Whatever. For years, they’d eaten lunch together. They were supposed to be a team. Their separation now was an ache that Anna tried to ignore.

  “We have to do something else,” Anna said. “A follow-up. We have to build up some momentum.” Like the Terrible Trio, she thought. Not that this was a competition or anything.

  “I’ve got some ideas,” Teddy said, eager. “This spy thing, it’s working, I think. I mean, it will work. It’s a good idea. It worked with Scarzen, we can make it work again, if we have good intel.” He nodded sagely, obviously pleased with his use of the vocabulary. “We study police reports, right? The most wanted lists, things like that. We could go after some of those guys. Maybe not catch them—we’re not really good at catching people, I’m guessing. But even if all we do is collect evidence for the cops, it’ll help.”

  “It’s not enough,” Anna said. “We can’t just keep sneaking into buildings and hope we grab the right thing, then hope the police actually do something with it. You know that Scarzen is out on bail already? Everything we went through and he’s not even in jail. You’d probably be better off joining the Threesome of Doom.”

  “But I want to work with you,” he said, stretching his hand on the table, like he stopped himself from reaching out to her. “But we have to do more.” Because that was the whole point, to do something with the powers they had. “You want to feel like we’re really doing something—let’s try a patrol tonight. A real patrol. Just to see what happens.”

  “So you can get beat up again?”

  “I’ve gotten better,” he said, frowning. “Let’s try, just once.”

  He was so eager, she couldn’t say no. That floppy hair, that innocent smile. So straight and tall he might have been a figure on a recruiting poster. I want you. “You’re such a Boy Scout,” she said. He blushed.

  They made a plan to meet that night. Just to see.

  Anna had math class with Sam in the afternoon. She wasn’t prepared to face his sneer and whatever so-called witty insults he came up with. So she moved to the front of the class while he went to the back, bent her head, and frowned in anticipation. Ten minutes into class, she glanced back to see him with his head down on his desk, asleep. The glamorous life of the costumed superhero—there it was, right there. She was absolutely gleeful, in a petty, vengeful way, that he was so tired. But she also felt sorry for him. Just a little.

  The teacher hadn’t noticed yet, mostly because he was facing the chalkboard, writing and explaining. Quietly, Anna tore a page from her notebook, crumpled it up, took aim, and threw. Didn’t quite make it—the projectile bounced on his desk instead of hitting him directly. But he started awake anyway, blinking sleepily. She noticed the shadows under his reddened eyes. He looked around, saw the paper and her staring back at him. Figured it out, pressed his lips into a chagrined pout. She turned back to the front before the teacher noticed.

  * * *

  They met at the fountain in City Park and made plans from there.

  Teia and the others—Anna refused to call them the Trinity, whatever the newspapers said—were also out and about that night. They were in the harbor district, though, and Anna made sure they would all stay carefully out of each other’s way. She wondered how Sam was coping, how many ultra-energy drinks he’d downed in order to be able to function tonight.

  She’d had a cup of coffee from the shop around the corner from West Plaza.

  Midnight at the fountain, they masked up and started a circuit that tracked around the park’s perimeter and pushed into neighboring cross streets. At the wilder corners of the park, it was easy to imagine that the place turned into a forest at night, oak and maple trees sending skeletal canopies across bike paths, surrounding buildings giving the impression that they were trapped in a canyon, traveling toward an unseen exit point. The chill on Anna’s skin came from more than the winter air. Her breath fogged.

  They didn’t speak. They both looked around as if searching, but Anna didn’t see anything but rocks, trees, lawn, benches, skate park, duck pond. Only what was supposed to be there. When shrubbery rustled, it was always an animal, not a hideous criminal who’d decided the lilac bushes were a great hideout. Her mind wandered. She should probably be in better shape for this. If they were going to be spending a lot of time running around the city on foot, they probably ought to work out in the meantime. And keep up with school, and continue pretending that absolutely nothing was out of the ordinary. Right.

  They circled back around to the fountain after a couple of hours. Nothing had happened, not even on the bad side of the park. Not a single crime in progress or any nefarious goings-on. All they saw were some harmless street people and a stray dog. Teddy suggested that maybe they could catch the dog and leave it at an animal shelter where it could get help, but when they tried to go after it, it ran out of sight. They couldn’t even heroically save a stray dog.

  They had a scare at one point. When they reached the west edge of the park, a police car turned the corner and cruised right along the sidewalk where they walked. They froze, and the car’s spotlight turned on and swung over them.

  The cop definitely spotted them. The light hesitated for a second, and they stood like i
diots, staring back at it. But the light passed on, and Anna was able to see into the car well enough to spot the cop talking into his radio. The next thing he’d do was come after them, tell them to stop, question them, maybe even arrest them. Well, arrest her, since Teddy could use his powers to escape. But the cop didn’t stop the car and continued down the street and out of sight.

  Anna’s knees went to jelly and she almost had to sit down.

  “That was close,” Teddy said, heaving a nervous breath. “Do you think he saw us?”

  Yeah, Anna knew they’d been spotted. But they weren’t important enough to do anything about. Figured.

  Walking patrol didn’t provide any more opportunities for immediate action than searching crime-ridden neighborhoods for evidence did.

  “Maybe that wasn’t such a great idea after all,” Teddy said, finally breaking the silence. His voice seemed loud. “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, it wasn’t a total waste. It proved I need to take up running or something to get in shape. Is it too late to join the Elmwood track team?”

  “Maybe we can try again tomorrow,” Teddy said.

  “Maybe.”

  The routine of getting home was well practiced. She took the late bus, got off to walk the last couple of blocks. Before reaching home, though, she stopped, her gaze gone suddenly fuzzy. A presence intruded on her awareness. Someone familiar but not family. She hadn’t been looking for him, he wasn’t a part of her everyday awareness, so she noticed only when he got close. Right before he sailed out of the sky, almost on top of her, and fell to a three-point landing a few yards away. She didn’t flinch.

  “Eliot,” she said. He was wearing his mask and costume tonight. “Were you following me?” She flushed, all her embarrassment at their last encounter rushing back.

  “I spotted you at the park, sure.” Didn’t seem at all apologetic. She’d been so focused on Teia and the others, and looking for bad guys, she hadn’t thought to look for him. All he had to do was track the bus from the air. If he’d followed her all the way home, that would have been a disaster.