June wanted to laugh, but she was tired enough that forced laughter could turn around on her. She didn’t need any more slip-ups.
He was watching her intently, but Maks was quiet, for once. He had to choose his words carefully, since he could only manage so many of them at a time. It wasn’t easy to force them through his clenched teeth.
“So...the beautiful Miss Bliss says you guys camped out all night,” he mumbled, a weird hopefulness in his hesitance.
“I’ve never been camping. Had to cross that one off my bucket list sooner or later, so I seized the day.”
That was a crap answer, and she knew it. She was just so good at deflecting, she did it without even trying anymore.
June picked at her chipped nail polish, dusting her lap with tiny ruby-sparkle scales. She made herself try again.
“Hey, uh. Look. I’m glad, too. In case you were wondering. Jenny tries, but she’s too nice to out-fab me. You’re my only diva equal here, so, like...don’t turn down the sparkle. Because in this case, de-sparkling is letting the terrorists win.”
She could tell that he was itching to grin at her, but he couldn’t.
“So I’m your diva equal?”
“No small feat, but don’t let it get to your head,” she said, scooting her chair closer to his cot. “Now, here’s the deal. You need to take your painkillers. How do you want this to go down? Because I think we’re at a point where I don’t have to tell you that there is an easy way and a hard way.”
“Well...s’not like I can run away this time,” he pointed out, probably in a way that was supposed to be funny. The fact that Maks wouldn’t be able to go right back to swinging around like his usual self bothered her more than she was willing to let on. Defying the laws of gravity— as well as noise level laws— was what made him him.
“You could still outrun me,” she said, not joining him in the pity party kiddie pool. She handed him the paper cup with the liquid painkillers and a straw, giving him a let’s-not-play-this-game glare. “I don’t get from point A to point B gracefully.”
Maks clumsily took the paper cup from her. It took two shaky attempts before he got the straw in his mouth.
“You ran last night.’
“Yes. And it was terrible. And if you tell anyone about that, we will be having words.”
There should have been a joke there. A follow-up on his end, a parry to her sarcastic thrust of a threat. She quipped, and then he quipped, and it ended up an endless circle of him doing mental gymnastics to dance around her creative verbal attempts on his life.
But Maks was like a bulb on the blink. He flickered on and off, and it was more off than on. When he looked up at her— seriously, worriedly— there wasn’t a speck of blue in his eyes. They looked weirdly dull when they were plain hazel.
“Hey. Speaking of, uh...you don’t want me to tell him what you told me to say, right? I’m guessing, but I...just to make sure.”
The truth was, Maks had never used his powers to start a heart before. The grand total of his relevant experience had been during the King Khan incident, and he’d only stopped the tiger’s heart. He hadn’t gotten it pumping again.
June had known that. He’d hissed it at her between his clenched teeth, but she’d told him that he could do it. More than that, she’d told him to say that he could do it.
So yes. June had told him to lie. Someone’s life had been on the line, and she’d told him to lie, and she knew that Ernest would be scandalized by it on principle. He saw the Right Thing as a black and white issue with a set of rules that governed the Right Way to do the Right Thing. He wouldn’t condone lying, especially in a situation like their doomed Night Game.
But it’d all worked out. Ernest didn’t need to know that dice had been rolled. That was how the government worked, right?
It kind of felt good to be told that she’d saved lives. It was the truth, but it sounded special when it came from him. It’d sounded like he was proud of her. That was new, and that was nice, and she wanted to hold onto it for a little while. What Ernest didn’t know didn’t make her Old June.
“I wouldn’t have told you to do it if I hadn’t known that you could,” June said defensively. “And she didn’t have time to discuss whether or not it was the most ethically sound decision. The day was saved. It’s not even worth discussing.”
“S’okay,” Maks said, weakly worming his fingertips against her forearm in what she assumed was supposed to be a calming gesture. It was just pitiful. “I trusted you.”
“Right. Exactly. It worked. We move on, we fight another day, rah-rah-rah, etcetera.”
Maks gave her an attempt at a smile, though it had to have hurt like hell. It was endearingly crooked and feeble, but it fell short of its desired effect. Instead of being cheery, it just showed his bloody mouth and all of the silver tightly lacing his teeth together.
But it had to hurt to smile like that, and he was doing it for her benefit, so June smiled back.
“I got you wrong. Said you were the tiger lady, right?” He traced loops in the air with his fingertips, his slurring getting more pronounced. “‘Cause of the fire and the tigers and the...”
It looked like someone’s painkillers were kicking in. He relaxed, his head lolling to the side against the pillow.
“The fire and the tigers are kind of my schtick, yeah,” June agreed magnanimously.
“It’s your shtick, but...you ran that show. No firepower needed.” Maks jabbed a finger at her, though is wandered a little to the right instead of pointing straight at her face. “You, my friend, are the ringmaster.”
“The Ringmaster, huh?”
“Boom.” His eyes flickered with celebratory fireworks, bright again. “Moniker’d.”
Moniker’d? Besides not being a word, that wasn’t a thing. That wasn’t how monikers worked. It was a lengthy process, requiring paperwork and approval and legal crap like that. The new students had a grace period to figure out their moniker. Most of them, like Maks, had been aware of their posterpowers for long enough that they’d chosen names for themselves at an early age.
June was picky, so she wasn’t about to nail herself down to a name that she would get sick of within two weeks. Ernest was always trying to help her think of a moniker, but most of his suggestions ended with June disowning him for the rest of the afternoon. She didn’t want anything that sounded dumb. She didn’t want anything that was obvious, like Fiery Lady of the Flames (a suggestion so lame, June had announced that Ernest was no longer allowed to name anything. Ever. Not even inanimate objects).
But the ringmaster was both the stylistic director of the Big Top as well as the boss running the big picture of the show. It fit.
“I know I’m going to regret saying this— in fact, I’m regretting it as I’m saying it— but I think I might actually kind of like that. Somewhat. Maybe. I’ll focus group it,” June told him, gently tugging at a handful of his tangled curls. He looked like a woolly black sheep that had been lost in the wilderness. He’d be finding foliage in his hair for weeks, probably. “That said, I’m not going to choose Ringmaster as my moniker out of pity for you, because pity monikers aren’t even a thing.”
“No, you’re gonna choose it ‘cause I’m a genius, and it’s genius, and you’re welcome.”
Underneath the swelling and bruising, the bendy-and-broken dork was beaming at her. He’d burned through his reserves, so he didn’t have much sparkle to spare, but she could tell that he was smiling. It just was more in his eyes and less with his mouth, for once.
“You’re doing entirely too much talking for a dude with a broken jaw, genius,” June said, plucking a twig out of his tangled hair. “So here’s the deal. I’m going to put on a nice, cheerful face to the nurse, and I’m going to charm her into letting me know if you rest like a good boy. Should I hear that you’re doing dumb things, I will release the bees.”
She leaned over Maks, the tip of her nose hovering just over his. God, his eyes were crazy-intense up close
.
“Yes, Maksim. Flaming bees. Flaming bees feel no pain. Flaming bees know no mercy.” June kissed his forehead, leaving a faint lipstick smirch. She’d never gotten around to washing off her makeup the day before. “And they will find you. So get some beauty sleep. You desperately need it.”
°
Ernest had planned to go straight home, but he couldn’t. He’d gotten close enough to hear his aunts’ voices— Aunt Sofia, Aunt Roxy, and Auntie Amira, too— and he’d known that he wasn’t in any shape to see all of them at once. There’d be too many questions, and Ernest didn’t have enough answers. His emotions were splattered all over the place, so he didn’t need to be grilled on top of it all.
So Ernest kept on walking. He went into the forest behind their cabin, following the trail that he and his father had beaten down over the years. For the most part, the Commander had seen to Ernest’s training himself. He’d needed to. It would have been too easy for him to hurt baseliners and normal posters before he got the hang of using restraint. He’d always been stronger than an average kid. One of his first memories was successfully lifting up his father. He’d been five. The older he got, the stronger he got, it seemed.
The Wright training spot was secluded, deep enough into the middle of nowhere that they felt comfortable letting loose. Ernest had to learn the full spectrum of his abilities, not just how to hold them back. Their training ground looked like it’d been bombed, when in reality, it’d just seen the Wrights through a decade of rough-housing.
He liked to think that generally, he was good at keeping a hold of his temper. He had to be. If Ernest threw fits the way Mal did, he’d bring down the whole forum. If he didn’t want to make messes worse, he had to be calm and patient and, above all, careful.
But when he thought about Maks in the hospital bed, looking down at his cast without a single flicker of light in his eyes, Ernest didn’t know what to do with the emotions that rushed up to fill his chest. He got angry, first and foremost, because the attack had been nothing but meanness. His anger burnt out quickly, and shame rose up from the ashes, scalding him all the way up.
Maks wouldn’t be able to eat real food or talk normally or use his right arm for the next six to eight weeks. The tremendous unfairness of it all frustrated Ernest to tears.
But since he was out away from anyone that he could hurt, he didn’t shove everything down and paste a smile over the top of it. Ernest let himself get angry. He gave in, letting the turbulence boil up until he felt like he’d just explode if he didn’t let go.
Doubling up his fist, he punched a tree hard enough to shatter through the trunk. It uprooted with a groan that was almost human. The weight of the tree made it fall like it was in slow motion. Chunks of wood and pine needles tore at his clothing, knocking his glasses off one ear. Ernest scrambled to save them, sneezing automatically at the cloud of pollen the felled tree kicked up.
His heart was beating hard, and he couldn’t tell if he wanted to cry, or if he wanted to yell and punch through the whole darn forest. He sneezed again. Well, if his allergies were going to act up, he’d admit defeat and default to his first option.
He reached for the handkerchief he usually kept in his back pocket, then remembered that he’d used it as part of Maks’ field splint.
Poor Maks had tried so hard to put up a tough front. By his definition, toughness meant laughing in the face of death, so he’d joked that he’d have to start up a collection of his handkerchiefs if this kept up.
Ernest sniffed. Why was Maks such a trouble magnet? It just didn’t seem fair. He was so skinny and small and flimsy. People— normal people— were so fragile. He forgot how different he was until accidents reminded him of how tough he was by comparison. It was a cruel joke, as far as Ernest was concerned. He was all but immune to blunt force trauma, but the people he cared about could be reduced to tissue paper and pulp with a few good hits. Why would God give him powers if he couldn’t use them to absorb the abuse that people like Maks just didn’t deserve?
“Hanky?” His father offered, holding out a clean linen square. It was one of his nice ones, with his Commander insignia embroidered on one corner, but Ernest was too drippy and miserable to turn it down.
Ernest took it gratefully, blowing his nose. He hadn’t heard his dad’s approach, but he wasn’t surprised to see him. There were only a few places that were safe for them to be when they were feeling all mixed up, so he’d known where he’d be. It didn’t take a great detective to figure out that Ernest wasn’t taking the Night Games disaster well.
“Feel better?”
“No. I feel a little worse,” Ernest admitted, putting his glasses back on straight. “I forgot to check for nests and critters before I punched down the tree.”
His dad gave the short swath of destruction a knowing look.
“Bad day, huh.”
Ernest just nodded. That was about the shape of it. It’d been a bad day, and it wasn’t even noon yet. He wiped his eyes on the corner of the hanky,
“How about we get some breakfast in you? I made pancakes.”
“Really?”
Ernest couldn’t remember the last time his dad had made breakfast. His birthday, maybe, and that’d been months back. The idea that he’d had pancakes waiting for him back home— and that he’d stomped on by, too intent on wallowing— made his throat itch worse than the pollen. Pancakes got rubbery if they cooled for too long. He’d ruined breakfast, probably.
“Your aunts thought you might be hungry. And, well. I’ve been worried about you, kiddo.”
“So there’s more pancakes waiting back home than even you and I can eat?” Ernest guessed, giving his dad a small grin. He knew exactly where he’d picked up most of his stress habits.
“Feel free to invite your friends over for breakfast. All of them.” His father shook his head, sighing. “God only knows how we’ll get rid of the leftovers if you don’t.”
“Roz never turns down your pancakes, and neither does June,” Ernest said, taking off his glasses and cleaning them on the hem of his shirt. All it did was smear the pollen film around a little, but it gave him an excuse not to look at his dad. “But I don’t know if Mal will have an appetite, and Maks— Maks is on liquids for a coupla months.”
“It’s tough, isn’t it? It’s tough when you have to pick up the pieces after your friends have gotten knocked around. I remember the first time the ol’ bird got clipped,” the Commander said, sitting down on the log. Ernest settled in next to him. Whenever he called the late Mr. Underwood the ol’ bird, he was feeling sentimental. “We were fourteen. He got shot, and it was all my fault. I’d never seen so much blood before. I cried until I was half sick.”
That was some kind of fond memory. It said more about their rough-and-tumble early years than his father would ever say straight out. People were always more interested in discussing his first partner, the Rook, but John Wright had been a vigilante once upon a time, too.
“You cried?”
“Oh, pints,” the Commander said, rubbing his chin. “I was a damn mess. It ate me up raw, ‘cause all I could think about was how unfair it all was.”
“Yes! Exactly! I wish I could just be like, hey, universe! Aim for me instead!” Ernest sighed explosively. “But it doesn’t work that way, so my bulletproof hide is spared.”
“I admire them for it. They’ve got so much to lose, but they still fight.” His dad smiled absently at the dapple of midmorning sun pushing in through the branches above them. “From what Rosario told me, you picked a hell of a fighter for a partner, son.”
If there had been one good thing to come of the mess— just a flicker of a silver lining— it had been something else to watch June step up and take the reins. She hadn’t even hesitated. The second that Mal had jumped off the end of the dock, she’d told Ernest to turn on his mask and use the specialty gadgets to track down Ofelia and Cindy. He shuddered to think what would have happened had he been forced to dish out orders.
“J
une took point, just like Auntie Amira. She thinks fast.”
“She’s a firecracker,” his father said, with a small, fond smile. “I wasn’t sure about her at first, but I guess it just goes to show that you’ve got a real sense about you when it comes to people. And good lord, does she ever remind me of your mother.”
His dad brought up his mom even less frequently than he talked about Corbin. It was a red letter day when he told him stories about his beautiful, glamorous mother.
“Really?”
“I’d never met a girl who could command a room like my Glory.” Rubbing the back of his neck, he chuckled. “And Gloria wasn’t much older than June when I met her, now that I think about it. Heaven help me, I threw reason out the window when it came to her.”
Ernest thought about how often June got her way, in spite of his feeble protests. She made him smile, even when he didn’t feel up to smiling at all.
“If there’s one thing Gloria and Amira have taught me, it’s that it’s okay to let someone else steer the ship. I’m still the captain of the crew, but the Queen has always known which direction we’re going. Can you imagine me leading a team without her?”
Ernest tried. He honestly couldn’t. His father always stood tall, but he never stood alone.
“I’ve got a feeling that one of these days, we’re not going to be able to imagine you leading a team without June by your side.” The Commander stood, patting his shoulder. “Just try to get her to simmer down a little once in a while. If you can. I realize that’s a tall order.”
“I can try,” Ernest said, smiling.
°
Twelve hours before the end, a man comes to the Crow’s Nest to make one last deal with the Rook.
(No, he didn’t. There was no man, no deal. He was dreaming, again— the uncontrollable card house that was reshuffled and rebuilt every time he collapsed. That was what dreams were, he’d read. Nothing but the brain shuffling though unrelated stimuli. This was nothing. This meant nothing.)
The Posterchildren: Origins Page 28