“How do you transform?”
He shrugged. “I slide down a chute.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Peter shook his head. “I wish I were.”
“Ah. Okay. I guess it’s better than—you know—something real hokey like—like Sailor Moon or whatever.”
“Um—I think that’s pretty much where I’m headed,” Peter said, his voice shrinking. “I’ll be doing that flashy, hokey transformation process eventually.”
Oh, that I’d got to see. “What’s the chute for, anyway?”
“Our way out of our headquarters.” Peter’s eyes narrowed. “Eric, haven’t you learned anything from Batman?”
I rolled my eyes. “Up until a couple of months ago, I didn’t even know that superheroes existed. Give me a break. So you got transport or something? Like Batman?”
“Sure—my brother’s Turbo Wonder.”
“Huh?”
“Trent’s got a bike—humungous and totally tricked out. You should see it.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “He flies. He doesn’t need a bike or a car or a yacht.”
“Trent likes gadgets. It’s out of my hands. Besides, the Turbo Wonder doesn’t have wheels, and it kicks ass zipping through the city like a hovercraft—only on air.”
I scratched my head. “But—how come we’ve never heard of this super bike thing before?”
“Trent’s careful to park it somewhere safe. Then we go on foot from there no matter how many times I tell him how useless it is to go half-ass on that bike. I mean, think about it. It’s either we use it all the way or just leave it behind, right? He won’t listen, though. He might be Mr. Perfect, but he’s also a bit obsessive-compulsive. If that thing got scratched, kiss your ass goodbye. I think the bike’s due for a maintenance or something. We might not be using it for a couple of days.”
“It must be a bitch keeping it in top shape.”
“We’ve got special mechanics for it. Trent does, anyway.”
I stared long and hard at him, my emotions shifting from confusion to irritation to shock and then to amusement. Laughter bubbled in my throat, and I couldn’t hold it back. I exploded, my whole body shaking while I clamped my mouth with one hand to avoid being heard by the rest of the household, never mind that I was well beyond their hearing. Peter snickered, his composure exquisite. I could swear he’d matured twenty years since he’d first kissed me. The old Peter might make himself known every so often, but all in all, this new version had slowly taken over, and bit by bit, he was assuming his proper place in every possible way. His transformation was marvelous to see though it kept me a bit unsettled and very much weirded out about myself. With all the changes happening to Peter, I didn’t know if I had it in my power to catch up with him.
“I’m sorry I can’t tell you more,” he said. “It’s not my place to do it. I promise you’ll know all you want to know when you come over to hang with the—family. God, we sound like the mafia, don’t we?” He smiled crookedly.
“It’s okay. I think I understand. This is just all unexpected, and—well—I’ve never been in love with a superhero before.” In love. Yes, it looked like I was.
Suddenly the soot-and-grime-laced, dreary world of Vintage City felt so warm and fuzzy and smelled of chocolate in boxes, not of garbage and rank pools of water. Julie Andrews, knock yourself out on your Austrian hills.
Peter reached out and gave a few strands of my bangs a light tug.
“You’re lucky, Eric. You only needed to come out once,” he said. He regarded me for one more moment before turning and leaping off. I could barely make out his silhouette as he flew in a graceful arc into the night.
His final words were lightly spoken, but they hurt like hell.
Chapter 21
I was up early the following morning, shocking my mom. I set the table and puttered around the kitchen, asking if there was anything else other than dumping the garbage she needed me to do. She almost fainted in front of the stove.
“What’s wrong, honey?” she asked after taking several deep, calming breaths.
“Nothing. Just thought I’d help out around here.”
“Okay. What happened in school?”
“Nothing! Come on, Mom…”
She stared at me with narrowed eyes, sizing me up, working hard at digging past the angelic aura. “Eric…” she growled.
I threw up my hands. “Mom, I’m only trying to be helpful. What the heck?”
She sighed, turning her attention back to the griddle, which was now giving off gray—almost industrial—columns of smoke. “Something’s up,” she replied, pouring pancake batter onto the discolored non-stick surface. “I can smell teen fear a mile away, you know.”
“Okay, well—if I don’t even bother offering help in the morning from now on, don’t get on my case about it. I tried, and I got nothing for it,” I groused, sitting down at the table. “Nothing but insults, anyway.”
Mom snickered. “Honey, all kidding aside, I know something’s up.” She flipped the pancakes over, and I listened to them sizzle.
I glanced at the clock. It was six-thirty. Dad and Liz wouldn’t be moving around until nearly seven. Calming myself with idle finger-tapping against the table, I asked, “Mom, how hard was it for you to take to my being, you know, gay?”
All movement at the stove stopped. Then Mom looked over her shoulder and regarded me, wide-eyed. “What brought this on?”
“Nothing,” I stammered. “Okay, I had a talk with a friend—last night—and the subject came up.”
She nodded and turned back to her cooking, scooping up the pancakes and piling them on a large platter. “It was—pretty difficult, I’ll admit. I can’t find the words to describe the feelings that came with your announcement. They were…” She paused and was silent for several seconds.
“Mom, it’s okay. You don’t need to say anything more about it. I’m sorry if I’m opening old wounds.”
“No, no, it’s not old wounds, Eric. I guess—I guess they’re more like fears. Yes, that’s it. Fears.” She turned and walked to the table and set the pancakes down. Stepping back, she fixed me with a thoughtful, almost sad gaze. “If anything overwhelmed me and your dad at that moment, it was fear. We were afraid for you. I’m talking being sick to our stomachs kind of terror. Your safety out there, Eric; we can’t always protect you. We sure can’t keep you from living your life, but we also know that we can’t keep the world from hurting you because of who you are.” She nodded, raising her brows. “We’ll always love you, but we can only guarantee so much.”
I swallowed and fidgeted in my seat. “Yeah. I understand. Thanks, Mom. Really—thank you. Other kids have gotten it worse from their families.”
“I know.” She sighed and waved both hands to end the conversation. “I—I don’t want to think about those poor kids right now. It only makes me want to destroy something.”
I smiled in spite of myself and watched her carry on with the breakfast preparations. My thoughts flew back to my conversation with Peter the previous evening. I owed him much more than an apology. I knew that. I realized it even before he left my room, yet I did nothing. My pathetic, lame inaction embarrassed me, and I didn’t need hindsight to know that. The worst thing here? It would be my dumbass hypocrisy, shunning Peter and Althea for being different, while looking for reassurances from my mom over my sexuality. Was I really sixteen years old or ten?
“Mom?”
“Uh-huh?”
“I won’t be having dinner here. Tonight, I mean.”
“Uh-huh…”
“I, uh, I’ll be out on a date.”
The bustling stopped for the second time. Mom leaned against the counter, crossing her arms on her chest, and leveled me with another look of shock. “Okay. Lay it on me, Eric.”
The heat that burned my face was agony. “I’m going out with Peter. It’s our first date. You know, movie and dinner—that sort of thing.”
“I see. When did you guys start gett
ing serious?”
“I don’t know—a few weeks ago. I can’t remember. It was pretty gradual-like, you know?” I watched her watch me, and in the impromptu stare-down challenge, I lost. In a humbler voice, I added, “Nothing’s happened, Mom. We’ve only been hanging out in school. You can ask Althea if you don’t believe me.”
She nodded. “I believe you. What time are you leaving?”
“I don’t know. I have to ask him out first.”
The look of shock turned to one of—for lack of a better term, WTFness.
“You haven’t asked him? Eric, what makes you think he’ll say yes to a spur-of-the-moment thing? You’re talking about the Barlow boy, right? Isn’t his family a bit—you know—uptight?”
“He’ll say yes,” I replied, my voice crazy firm.
“Oh, really?”
I grinned at her and nodded. Mom pinched her mouth into a thin line, shook her head, and carried on with her work. “Be back home by ten if you’re going out to a movie. Not one minute later.”
“Okay.” I paused, waited. Then I drummed my fingers on the table. Then I shifted my weight on my chair. Then I swept my gaze around the kitchen, looking for absolutely nothing. Then I made soft clucking sounds with my tongue against the roof of my mouth.
“All right, Eric, what else do you want?” Mom sighed while cooking eggs.
“Can I have some date money? Like, thirty bucks?”
“Don’t kid yourself. Fifteen.”
“Twenty-five?”
“Eighteen.”
“Twenty-three?”
“Twenty.”
“Uh—twenty and an extension of my curfew?”
“Twenty. Don’t push your luck, kid.”
“All right. Thanks, Mom.” God, that was humiliating.
If anything made me resent the fact I continued to be forbidden from finding part-time work for my own spending money, it would be that. My first ever date, and I had to haggle with my mom for pocket cash. Ouch.
Too bad I didn’t challenge her to a bet and win extra money that way. Peter said yes when I asked him, the crime-ridden streets of Vintage City be damned. I was probably setting him up for some major trouble with his family and his superhero, super-perfect brother, but seeing the look on his face when I asked him out made me totally blind to pretty much everything.
Putting it into words would be a superhero feat if I were to be so corny about my references. We stood in front of his locker in silence for a longish moment while the rest of Renaissance High just bypassed us in a buzzing swarm. Peter stared at me with a look of shock, disbelief, amusement, and concern. He followed this up by pressing a hand against my forehead as though feeling for a fever.
I narrowed my eyes. With my glasses, my bangs, and his hand in the way, I was sure my glare pretty much lost its kick, but what the hell.
“So what—is that a yes or a no?” I asked.
“What do you think?” he asked, a grin slowly forming. He kept his hand on my forehead.
When Althea hurried past us, she said something like “You won’t be able to feel anything solid under that skull, Peter!”
I toyed with the idea of rigging my computer with a super virus and cajoling Althea into possessing it. That oughta learn her.
It was tough making the call, forcing Peter to choose between me and his family, but hell with it. We waited a long time for that. In the end, once we stepped outside, he gave me one more mini-speech about going to hell in a hand basket before crushing me in an embrace and a kiss that felt as though he’d just vacuumed my tonsils out.
Then he bounded off to his car so he could head home, disappoint the family, and prepare for something—well—normal—to do. I rode my bike home, wheezing and bruised, hoping he hadn’t broken any of my ribs.
It was modern romance all the way. We went dutch and watched The Curse of Count Chocula at the Elms Theater. It was a double-bill with Ssssssss!, but we knew our junk film limits. We laughed ourselves sick over the movie later at Sahib Indian Restaurant. Peter didn’t get into trouble for ditching his super-brother that evening. Yep, even heroes needed a break from being good guys sometimes, and it was nice to see his family come around to that. They surprised and impressed me that evening—so much so I was beginning to look forward to meeting them.
Chapter 22
It had been a week since our talk and our date, but Peter hadn’t said anything yet about that agreed-upon dinner-or-lunch-date with his family. Then again, the streets of Vintage City had been very sprightly as well.
“The last few nights have been busy,” he murmured against my ear while I grappled with him on the back seat of his car. That was a ginormous improvement from the boy’s room on the third floor, but we still had to be extremely careful with our final parking spot. We were always—always—way outside the city borders, tucked away in some uncharted corner of a natural preserve or something like that. Trees were our best friends.
Then again, I guess being attacked by thugs or bigots wouldn’t have been much of a problem for us. Peter told me that, regardless of his appearance, he still had his powers.
That day following our first kiss, when he slammed me against the wall of the third floor landing—that was only a faint indication of his real strength. It was too bad, really, that other gay kids didn’t enjoy the benefit of the same kind of protection from their boyfriends or girlfriends. I hoped—really hoped—if there were other people out there who’d yet to come into their powers, some of them were queer.
“No rush. I’m not going anywhere,” I whispered back, tangling my fingers in his hair and ending the conversation with an eager kiss. Yes, absolutely no rush at all. I’d always wondered how two teenagers of identical height—five-foot-ten and still growing, could squeeze themselves in the back seat of Peter’s car. Then again, teenage hormones were pretty potent and worked like natural superpowers.
Anything was possible once turned on.
I also made a mental note to have a gentle talk with Peter about controlling his superpowers whenever we were being intimate. Small bruises up and down my arms and torso were multiplying like Tribbles. I didn’t want my family to ask questions.
I should add that much gratitude was extended to Mr. and Mrs. Barlow for allowing Peter a bit of leeway when it came to normal teenage stuff. They knew about us, finally, and though I’d hate to be a fly on the wall when they discovered their beloved younger son was involved with some blue-streaked kid from the lower end of the economic scale, I still appreciated their acceptance.
Althea became Peter’s protégée, in a manner of speaking. Once I’d gotten over the freakish nature of her powers, I slowly inched my way back to her side, and the three of us would spend an occasional hour in the library, with Althea “hooked up” to the computer and using her home computer for hacking practice. Peter and I would flank her, with Peter coaxing and soothing her whenever she began to panic for whatever reason. As for me, I stood guard and made sure no one noticed anything, you know, totally creepy.
“I’ll bet you she’s got a collection of porn stashed away in her hard drive,” I said.
Not as much as you, she retorted in white text across the screen. I’ve seen your collection.
I nearly choked on my own spit. Peter glanced over her head to level me with a look I couldn’t read.
“You’ve got a collection? How’d you manage to get past all those parental controls?”
“What parental controls?”
“Okay, never mind.” He gave me that I’m-watching-you sidelong look before turning his attention back to Althea.
“I don’t have porn stashed away anywhere, Peter. Althea just likes watching me squirm.”
Too bad you’re not into furries, Eric. That would’ve made my evening in your computer a lot more interesting. The only furry things I found there were dust bunnies you’ve been collecting in your folders. How about clearing your files every once in a while and saving your poor C drive some grief? Besides, the visual pulses they caus
e are kind of freaky.
“Shut up, Horace.” Freaky? Look who was talking.
There was a time when Peter and I were invited for lunch at her home, and we spent a glorious Saturday being fussed over by Mrs. Horace before taking over the computer for more “exercises” for Althea, who was coming into her powers pretty impressively. As Peter noted, she was made for this. She reveled in her abilities, and she often stayed up late just mastering them.
Sometimes she’d fire off several emails to both me and Peter, listing all the things she’d managed to accomplish, even analyzing certain “bugs” in the “system.”
“I think she’ll make a pretty formidable ally,” Peter said with a grin as we both read her newest message from one of the Jumping Bean’s computers.
“Have you and your family thought of recruiting her? I mean, you’ve got Trent, who’s sort of like the main brawn of the group. Then there’s you, who’s got speed and strength. Althea can be the brains.”
Peter nodded, sipping his latte. “I’ve mentioned the same thing to my parents, but they’ve been pretty elusive about it. I pulled Althea aside a couple of days ago and asked for her opinion about forming some kind of group. She likes the idea. Right now I’m waiting for Mrs. Horace’s opinions about Althea’s abilities.”
“Opinions?” I frowned at the screen. “You mean she doesn’t know about Althea yet?”
“I don’t think so, but I’ve told Althea that she needs to talk to her mom about it. She said she’ll do it, but it’s been tough getting around to, you know…”
“Coming out to her parent,” I finished, meeting his gaze. Peter’s smile turned rueful.
“Yeah.”
* * * *
As the story always went in comic books, the good guy and the bad guy squared off until the day hell froze over. The Trill’s henchmen were caught a few more times for different offenses that ranged from petty to nearly-almost-threatening. They were locked away as though for good, but time and again, someone helped them escape. Radios were now being strictly controlled in Vintage City. They were even banned outright in some places—like the police station.
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