Heroine Complex

by Sarah Kuhn

  “Whoa,” Lucy said. I’d forgotten she was right behind me. “Hold the flippin’ phone. You have what, now?”

  “What did you think that was, Luce?” I croaked. “Cheap-ass memorabilia doesn’t spontaneously combust like that.”

  “My special collector’s edition life-size replica statue was cheap?” Aveda said. “We’re going to have to speak to the manufacturer about that.”

  “Let’s get back to the matter at hand.” Nate pushed off from the dresser and started pacing the room. “Evie, Aveda said you would explain all of this?”

  He turned to face me, his harsh features morphing into something that resembled concern. On him, it looked really fucking weird.

  The absurdity of the night hit me full force and a hysterical laugh rose in my throat. I squelched it, but the effort forced my breath out in gasps again. I could only choke out a squeak expressing my most primal desire.

  “Off.”

  Nate crossed the room in two strides, wrapped one of his giant hands around my corset ribbons, and yanked. I heard the satin rip and then suddenly, miraculously, the corset was on the floor and I was gulping precious oxygen into my lungs. The flouncy white blouse billowed around my torso. I breathed so deeply I started to get light-headed and felt myself tipping forward.

  “Hey.” Nate grabbed my elbow. My air-deprived brain focused on his hand, warm and solid. I unclenched my fists. I needed to calm down. Where the hell was my Soothing Inner Voice?

  “An explanation would be good, love,” Lucy said gently.

  “Okay,” I said, my breathing slowly returning to normal. “Okay.”

  I removed my elbow from Nate’s grasp and hobbled over to Aveda, perching myself on the foot of her bed. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye, wondering if she’d help me with this explanation. But she was too busy scrolling through her Twitter feed.

  “Incredible,” she murmured. “The pictures of you—er, me—all lit up have already gone viral.”

  So I was on my own then.

  I folded my hands in my lap, focusing on taking deep breaths.

  “It’s like Aveda said,” I began. “I have an insane fire power. That could potentially kill millions.”

  I lowered my eyes to my lap, not wanting to witness the inevitable horror that was surely dawning on their faces.

  “I got it when Aveda and Scott got their powers,” I continued. “Back when the first portal opened. It didn’t seem serious at first. There were a few . . . minor incidents.” I twisted my fingers together, calling up the memories. “I figured out it was tied to moments when I would have these big, crazy bursts of emotion. And so I decided I would just not have those feelings anymore.”

  “You stopped feeling?” Lucy said, her voice skeptical.

  “Sort of.” I still couldn’t look at them. “I mean, I am Asian. We know from emotional repression. It worked out pretty well. Until grad school. And Richard.”

  “Guh, Richard.” Aveda chose that moment to interject. “He was such a . . . dick.”

  “Yes.” Our eyes met and I couldn’t help but exchange a wry smile with her. “I remember that being your pet joke. In any case, he was also my professor slash secret boyfriend in my Gender Archetypes in Modern Cinema class.”

  My eyes drifted to my lap again. I could practically feel Nate and Lucy’s judgmental eyes boring into my bowed head. I powered forward, trying to get through the story.

  “We had a moment over my paper on the female power dynamics in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. One thing led to another and . . . well. Anyway. As it turned out, Aveda was right about his dickishness. He was also boning a whole cross-section of faculty and fellow students on the side. Until the day I caught him and Ms. Clarion, the too-cool-for-school Human Sexuality professor, doing it behind a stack of encyclopedias in the campus library.”

  “Human Sexuality?” Lucy murmured. “Really?”

  I gave her a look.

  “Sorry,” she said. “It’s kind of on the nose.”

  “When I saw them, I felt this stab of rage. More than a stab. Like a full-body feeling. Like I couldn’t see anything else, couldn’t feel anything except this soul-deep throb of pure mad.”

  I clenched my fists in my lap. I didn’t like what came next.

  “Before I knew what was happening, fire was shooting out of my hands and destroying the shelf behind their heads.”

  I uncurled my hands, forcing them to slacken.

  “No one was killed, but . . . but people got hurt. A few of them had to go to the hospital. There was running and screaming and everyone was so terrified . . .” I shook my head, trying to erase the images. “The library burned to the ground. I knew I had to leave school. I had no idea what to do next. I was lost and scared and I showed up on Aveda’s doorstep later that night in hysterics. She calmed me down and she offered to let me work for her.” Recalling that moment, I felt a small rush of warmth. “She saved me.”

  Aveda perked up, smiling benevolently from behind the iPad. “That was before I had actual staff,” she mused. “Evie was my first.”

  “I’ve kept my fire under control since then,” I continued. “There have been little flare-ups, but nothing like that. Nothing for the past three years. I made my life ordered. I never allowed myself to get stressed or upset. Not until tonight.”

  I looked up, searching their faces. Nate’s expression was hooded, revealing nothing. Lucy, on the other hand . . . her eyes were wide and she was trying to hide how unsure she was. I knew that look, but it had never been aimed in my direction before. It was for demons. For girls who blatantly copied her signature fashion. For outsiders.

  “This power,” Nate said, his voice thoughtful, “do you know the exact moment it triggers, once you have this so-called ‘big, crazy burst of emotion’ or—”

  “Oh, no.” I held up a warning finger. “You are not turning me into a science project. We’re going to focus on fixing this situation. Oh, and we’ll need to see if the cleanup crew made it to Whistles post-portal.” I’d been freaking out too hard to even think about checking in with Rose. I had no idea if she’d hung out long enough to witness the craziness. I frowned, a stray thought worming its way through my panic.

  “There was something weird about the demons tonight,” I said.

  “Weird how?” Nate said.

  “It was the way they moved. Or didn’t move.” I shook my head in frustration, trying to put it into words. “They were slow. Lurchy. Bea’s knee was bleeding and they didn’t immediately swarm us.”

  Nate’s brow crinkled. “But they kept moving toward you, yes?”

  “Yes. I mean, they were still obviously attracted to the blood, but they weren’t as fast as they usually are.”

  “Perhaps it had something to do with the composition and weight of the statues they imprinted on,” he said. “If they were moving as a statue might move—”

  “But the demons always move the same way,” I interrupted. “You might not be a aware of that since you’re never on the scene with us, but—”

  “People!” Aveda snapped her fingers. “Let’s not get distracted. We need to discuss our course of action.”

  “Right.” I stood up and folded my hands in front of me, trying to make my tone as brisk and businesslike and personal-assistant-y as possible. “This isn’t so bad. I’ll draft a press release saying that this was a fluke—some kind of power surge—and then we’ll call Mercedes—”

  “No,” Aveda said. “Really, Evie, you’re missing the most obvious plan of attack.”

  “Which is . . . ?”

  “Look!” Aveda shoved the iPad in my face. The screen displayed her Facebook fanpage. She pointed to a new thread of comments.

  “Aveda: You lit a fire under my heart!”

  “Kewl new POWER . . . what else can it do?”

  “That was fierce, Fires
tarter!”

  “You may have gotten the supervillain power of the lot,” Aveda said. “But look what happens when you let loose. We get headlines. And not just on Maisy’s blog.” She smiled at the iPad screen. “I’m getting new Facebook fans from all over the world.”

  She lowered the iPad and scrutinized me for a long, uncomfortable moment. Her eyes took on a ferocious gleam.

  “You have to keep pretending to be me,” she said. “At least until . . .”

  I flapped my hands incredulously. “Until what?”

  “Until I can get my own fire power, of course!” She smiled in a “that settles it” kind of way. “Mayor Mendoza just announced that he’s rescheduled the key to the city ceremony for two months from now, and I figure I’ll definitely be ready to go by then.”

  “You can’t just get one,” I sputtered. “They don’t hand them out like free samples at Costco.”

  “I’m aware that it might not be easy, but I’m sure I can accomplish anything I set my mind to,” Aveda said, steel creeping into her gaze. “It’s just a matter of doing the work.”

  I jerked my head at Nate. “Tell her! Tell her it’s medically impossible to get your own fire power!”

  But he just stared at me. His expression had gone all inscrutable again. I turned back to Aveda.

  “And like I said, I can’t call it up at will! I don’t even know how it works!”

  “You’ll figure it out.”

  “Aveda! This whole me-being-you thing was only supposed to happen one time. You promised—”

  “And things have changed. It’s like Maisy said: this changes everything. Imagine what I could do with a fire power. This could take the Aveda Jupiter brand to a whole new level, which, in the end, means heightened protection for the city and continued employment for all of us.” Aveda reached over and took my hand, her expression turning intense. “I know you can do this. Remember: you’re my Michelle Yeoh. You don’t need tears. You don’t need anything except that incredibly powerful ability you’ve been suppressing for so long.”

  She squeezed my hand, her gaze boring into me. When she’d called me Michelle earlier, it had been earnest, a genuine plea born of desperation. Now it seemed calculating, like she was thinking of what exactly she could say to get me to agree to this insanity.

  “And remember, Evie: I’ve—”

  “—always been there for me. I know.”

  Oh, man, did I know. She was my oldest friend. She was my Heroic Trio compatriot. She had been there when I needed her.

  And she sure as hell knew how to manipulate me.

  After many attempts to dissuade Aveda from going through with her plan, I gave up, changed into one of her spare pairs of sweats, and dragged myself upstairs to check on Bea. My sister was sprawled facedown on the bed, her violet-streaked hair fanning around her head like a rage aura.

  I eased myself onto the bed and smoothed her hair off her face. Her eyes fluttered open. She was drowsy, but in the process of making the turn to sobriety. In sleepiness, she was more like the Bea I remembered from before our parental situation explosion: a girl who hadn’t yet experienced tragedy and was still open to the possibilities life had to offer.

  “Evie,” she murmured, guilt creeping into her eyes. “Did Aveda tell you about . . . ?”

  “Yes. But I’m too tired to punish you right now. And it was half my fault for leaving the liquor cabinet unlocked, so let’s call it even?”

  “Okay.” She pressed her lips together. “But I think I’m coming down with something . . .”

  “You’re going to school. Do this one thing for me so I can feel like I’m not completely ruining your teenage development.”

  “But I’m not feeling . . .” Her eyes slid to the side. After a long pause, a mumbled series of words slipped out of the corner of her mouth. “I got an email. From Dad.”

  Oh.

  “Oh,” I said, unable to think of anything more eloquent.

  Our dad couldn’t cope with his grief, so he took off on a spiritually dubious “vision quest” two months after Mom died. He’d gone back to Oahu, where he was from, for a bit. But after that, he was all over the globe. Once in a while we’d get a sparsely worded postcard or email from an exotic location (“Peace, love, and llamas” from Peru; “Find your inner gladiator” from Rome). As maddening as this was, I always felt a stab of romanticism whenever one of his notes came our way. He loved our mother so much, her death broke him into a million pieces. Now he was a larger-than-life figure who only communicated in single sentences from lands so far away, they seemed imaginary. Nothing would ever bring him back to the real world. Not even us.

  On those rare occasions when he chose to get in touch, it always threw Bea’s world off its axis.

  “What did it say?” I asked.

  “The usual. Something about his new ‘spiritual wellness’ training with someone called ‘Yogini Lara.’ I can’t handle being around people right now, Evie. School is too much.” She let out a dramatic sigh.

  “I know.” I stroked her hair again. “You still have to go to school, but why don’t we hang out tomorrow night? Masses of junk food. All the bad movies you can handle. Just you and me and a cross-section of the city’s best take-out menus.”

  She peered at me through clumpy mascara. “I guess,” she said, doing her best to reinstate her disaffected veneer. “That could be fun. Or whatever.”

  “Okay!” I said, infusing my tone with false cheer. “Get some sleep, then. Looks like we’re staying here tonight.”

  But her eyes were already drifting closed.

  I lay down next to her. My breathing slowed to match hers, uniting us in a rare moment of peace. I had just begun to drift off when I heard the door creak open and footfalls leading someone over to the bed.

  “Evie . . .”

  “Scott,” I murmured. “I told you to go home.”

  “I know,” he said. “But I wanted to see how you were doing. The glamour I gave you—it was for more than what you said it was for. Obviously.”

  “Yes,” I admitted, hoping that would be the end of it.

  Naturally, it wasn’t.

  “Evie.”

  This time his tone had a trace of disapproval to it. Scott’s protective big brother side always came out at the most inconvenient of moments.

  “I’m fine,” I murmured, keeping my eyes shut. “Everything is . . . totally . . . fine . . .”

  I pretended to fall asleep, hoping that would make him leave.

  There was a long pause, then, “We’re not done talking about this.”

  Maybe it would be totally fine, I thought, as I heard the door close behind him. Aveda was currently lit up by a heady rush of social media feedback, but surely she’d see things more clearly in the morning. Surely I could talk her out of this crazy plan. Surely.

  I let my head fall against Bea’s shoulder, our breathing matching up in a perfect rhythm until I finally slept.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IN THE PANTHEON of Comforting Smells, I ranked McDonald’s french fry grease in the top five. Maybe top two, even.

  In seventh grade Aveda and I went on fry runs every Wednesday after school, cramming piles of those golden grease sticks down our throats while gossiping about the latest developments in our social circle (which was mainly just us and Scott). I hadn’t eaten fries since converting to my Lucky Charms-only diet. But I still liked the smell.

  I awoke to that french fry scent, a sleepy smile spreading over my face as the greasy aura invaded my nostrils. Then my eyes snapped open and panic replaced comfort.

  Aveda had banned carbs from HQ, my Lucky Charms arsenal being the one notable exception. Therefore the presence of that smell indicated something was very wrong. And speaking of wrong . . .

  The events of last night came flooding back. My freak-out. The fire. Aveda’s plan.
<
br />   Shit.

  I rolled out of bed. Bea’s side of the mattress was rumpled but empty, which I hoped meant she’d already gone to school. I opened the door to the hallway and looked back and forth, attempting to discern where the mysterious fry smell was coming from.

  “Morning, love!” Lucy bustled down the hall and snagged my arm, pulling me along with her. “Aveda wants to see you.”

  “And I want to see her,” I said, my brain diverting from the fry smell to the speech I was preparing. All I had to do to talk Aveda out of her plan, I reasoned, was play on her vanity. There was only one Aveda Jupiter. Accept no substitutes! Remember Highlander! Etcetera! There was no way I could step into her formidable shoes, and not just because the five-inch heels would send me sprawling. And if we had to call on a lesser hero like Mercedes for a bit . . . well, that would make the public appreciate Aveda Jupiter even more.

  “Luce,” I said, as she dragged me toward the stairs, “you’re very peppy this morning.”

  “Aren’t I always?”

  “Yes, but . . .” I hesitated. “Last night, you seemed kind of scared? Of me?”

  “I was momentarily shocked, but I’m over it. I think your suppressed power is rather cool.” She flashed me a devilish grin. “I’m devising a Total Superheroine Workout Plan for you: running, kickboxing, Pilates. Piloxing. It will be intense.”

  “Intense?” I was pretty sure I’d never exercised. Like, in my life.

  “If we’re going to pull off Aveda’s scheme, we have to get you into tiptop shape,” Lucy said. “Scott’s glamours might help you look the part, but you also need to be able to run up a flight of stairs without losing your breath.” She cast a sidelong glance at me. “And,” she added, worry creeping into her voice, “if we’re going through with this, I need to keep you safe.”

  I couldn’t help but feel touched. Underneath all the bravado and ill-timed flirtations, Lucy was a softie.