Okay, weird kid, you’re a Princess Bride fan. Point in your favor, but you’re still ooging me out.
The bell rings, signaling that it’s time to hustle to my first class: English, which I can handle no problem. Native tongue and all that.
The weird kid is right behind me. “Hi,” he says, keeping pace with me. “I’m Matt.”
“I’m Carrie,” I say politely but distractedly. My attention is on the placards screwed to the off-white walls listing the room numbers. They’re huge, like the school was designed by people who publish large-print books for old people.
“So I heard. I think we’re going to be good friends, you and me.”
“Oh?” I say. And it’s you and I. See? Good at English.
“Yeah. We have stuff in common.”
“We do?”
“Oh yeah. What lunch do you have?”
Oh God, is he hitting on me? “I’m not sure, I—”
He snatches right out of my hand, right out of my hand as I’m trying to read it, the printout listing my schedule. He reads it, hands it back. “First lunch. That’s the good one. The food is still hot. It’s terrible, but still hot. That’s my lunch too. See? That is totally a sign we’re going to be buddies.”
“It could also be coincidence,” I say, a chill creeping into my voice. This kid, Matt, is sliding from weird to jerk in record time.
“Nah. It’s fate. It’s meant to happen.”
“We’ll see,” I say as we reach the Twilight Zone. I wait for him to go first because no matter which way he goes, even if it’s the corridor I need, I want to go a different way and put some distance between us.
“We shall,” he says, and off he goes, and it’s not the direction I’m heading.
I think.
Aw, crap. I’m lost.
***
Thankfully, the teachers understand the idiosyncrasies of their building and are forgiving of new students who get lost in the Twilight Zone. My classmates? Not so much. There’s very deliberate snickering as I enter my English class three minutes late.
I recognize a few faces from my homeroom but the rest are complete strangers, so I get to go through the grand judgment routine once again. The teacher, Mr. Abell, declares that today will be an in-class discussion about the effect of modern technology on communication. From that debate he’ll select a few topic sentences, and from those we’ll choose one and write a one thousand-word essay. He gets the ball rolling and says, with unmasked disdain, that instant messaging and texting are creating a generation that is less capable of clearly communicating ideas. Ah, technophobia, alive and well in my elders.
Mr. Abell waits for someone to respond and I’m disappointed to see no one is raising a hand. This is an advanced English class; the kids here are supposed to be the ones who want to learn. What gives, people?
Oh, well. I was hoping for an excuse to blow a few preconceived notions out of the water, so here I go.
“Yes...Carrie, was it?”
“If you’d stated that the shorthand younger people use when IMing or texting was undermining literacy, I’d agree.” I stand, because I want to create a little bit of a spectacle. “But I think because things like Twitter and text messages limit the number of characters you can utilize per entry, it’s forced users to be more efficient. Sure, OMG and LOL and FTW look like gibberish to some people, but they communicate full ideas, and if you know the lingo, you can have complete and coherent conversations.”
Mr. Abell looks at me. The other kids look at me. Their minds, they have been blown.
Yes, I am a brainiac. That, I will boast about. I’m smart and I own it. I haven’t always, but...
All right, enough teasing, I’ll explain. When I was little I was a “cute kid,” which is the best an unabashed tomboy can hope for. Around middle school I discovered that God saw fit to equip me with Option Package Three-B: blonde, boobs, booty. People started calling me a “pretty girl,” but I didn’t buy into it until the other adolescent pretty girls decided I was one of them, and then I got swept into the Cult of Blossoming Hotties. By the time I entered freshman year of high school, I was a full-fledged vapid bimbo. A lot of the things I liked to do, I stopped doing. A lot of the people I liked to hang out with, I abandoned. Schoolwork? Neglected. Intelligence? Sublimated. Personality? Replaced. I sloughed off my old life because almost none of it fit in my newly adopted stereotype—and what did I get in return for it all? Not sympathy, that’s for sure. When my parents dropped their bombshell, I was actually chastised for daring to kill the group buzz with all my, quote, “stupid whining” about my broken heart.
My parents’ divorce took up the whole summer. My divorce from my so-called friends was instantaneous.
I truly hate and regret that entire chapter of my life. I used to think my parents’ divorce was God punishing me for so completely turning my back on everything I was and everyone in my old (and, I say with the benefit of hindsight, much better and happier) life. I know now that’s not true. Their divorce was not some kind of karmic payback for my time as a selfish bitch.
Still, if any one thing good came out of my mom and dad splitting, it was that I finally got my head screwed on straight again. That, and I found the alien that gave me my powers, and I swear I will tell you about that soon.
(Side note: did you know that out of all the known superhumans in the United States, fourteen of them claim to have received their powers through extraterrestrial intervention or technology? That’s what Wikipedia says, so take it with a grain of salt, but who knew that aliens coming to Earth was such a common occurrence?)
Anyway, I have officially outed myself as a smart girl. I can’t tell who, aside from Mr. Abell, is impressed by this, but I don’t care. I was overly concerned with what people thought of me once, and I’m not letting it happen again. No way.
“Very interesting perspective on the matter, Carrie, thank you,” Mr. Abell says, and I sit down. A guy two rows ahead of me turns around in his seat, long enough to give me the stink-eye and let me know he doesn’t appreciate me raising the bar for the rest of the class like that.
Tough.
High school lunchrooms take everything bad about high school and concentrate it. Tables become exclusive members-only clubs, and God help you if you try to enter without an invitation.
So here I am, wandering around a lunch room big enough to hold a football game in, tray of steaming hot meat-based slop and soggy vegetables in hand, searching in vain for a vacant seat and some friendly faces. A guy sitting at a table of jocks and cheerleaders waves me over and I am filled with guarded hope.
(I’m guessing that it’s a jock/cheerleader table based on the fact a couple of the guys are built like refrigerators. You see, unlike high schools as portrayed on TV, jocks and cheerleaders do not constantly wear their uniforms during the school day. I mean, come on.)
“Need a seat, baby?” says the kid who waved at me, and it’s loathe at first sight. Baby? Really? He slaps his thigh. “Right here. Nice and comfy.”
I can’t help myself. “No thanks. Looks a little too small for my tastes.”
That earns me a round of “Burn!” from the rest of the table and a wounded look from my would-be suitor. What’s it going to be? Try to turn it around and win me over, or call me a lesbian and be done with it? I’ll never know because an arm wraps around my shoulder and guides me away. It’s that Matt character, and right now I don’t know whether to thank him or knee him in the groin. Maybe one then the other.
“Good for you. Angus and his cronies are so far beneath you,” Matt declares. “You know the old saying ‘high school is the best time of your life’? Yeah, that was invented for people like them. They’re all going to peak in senior year and spend the rest of their lives wishing they could travel back in time so they could pretend they mattered again.”
I try to shrug off his hand without spilling my tray full of chum, which is congealing fast. “Do you also know the old saying ‘personal space’?”
“What one?” I have no idea what he’s talking about. “I’m going to find my own seat, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Your call, but if you change your mind?” He gestures at a corner table that is almost empty, the only one in the cafeteria that is not shoulder-to-shoulder full. Three kids are sitting there, two girls and a guy. There’s a distinct air of segregation around them. It’s the Freak Table.
“I’ll keep it in mind,” I lie.
By the time I force myself into a vacant seat at a table of students who do not once speak to me or acknowledge my presence, my lunch is cool to the touch. And yet, as I choke it down, I cannot imagine how heat would have improved it.
The rest of the day is neither uphill nor down. I drift half-aware through French and US history before I catch a second wind heading into my web design class. Figure it can’t hurt to know that stuff. I’ve heard a lot of jobs like their people to be web-savvy, but I’m not interested in becoming a web designer. I can’t really say what I’m interested in becoming, but no big whoop. I’m only sixteen (practically); I’m supposed to be aimless.
The less said about math the better. We are and shall ever remain the bitterest of enemies.
The final bell rings and I’m giddy with a sense of relief at the end of another school day, a reaction that is ingrained in every American teenager. Final analysis: I’ve had better days, but I’ve sure had worse days too.
Although I may have to amend that, because guess who slides up next to me as I stand out in front of the school, scanning the main driveway for my bus home?
“Hey,” Matt says. It’s not officially fall yet, the leaves are still a healthy green and the weather remains on the warm side, but he’s wearing a black trench coat, which does absolutely nothing to make him less creepy. “It’s been brought to my attention that my overtures might have come off as stalkery. Do you think I’m being stalkery?”
“Yes.”
“Huh.” He shrugs. “Anyway, I’m going to meet up with my friends at the Carnivore’s Cave for burgers, and you should come with. You’ll like them. My friends, not the burgers. No, that’s not true, you’ll like the burgers.”
“If they’re anything like you, I doubt it. Your friends, not the burgers,” I say, the last of my patience slipping away. “You know, at first I thought you were just totally lacking in any social skills, but now I think you’re flat-out obnoxious and I would love it if you’d leave me alone.”
“I prefer to think of myself as direct and refreshingly honest.”
“You’re not. You’re annoying, so please, go away and let me find my bus in peace.”
“You mean that bus?” I whip around as the last of the big yellow convoy rolls out. “So, burgers?”
“You jerk! Look what—you just—
GGNNNNGGH!” I can’t think straight. I can’t speak. Urge to kill rising. Don’t incinerate him. Don’t incinerate him. Don’t incinerate him. I finally manage to blurt out, “Now I have to walk home thanks to you!”
And in the middle of my dramatic storm-off, Matt the grinning idiot says something that stops me dead.
“You could just fly home.”
THREE
Matt is giving me this very neutral look, like he hasn’t said anything shocking or scandalous, but there was something in his voice...
Fear surges up my throat like bile. I push it down, force my voice to stay level. “Yeah, I’ll just whip out my jetpack and off I go.”
“You don’t need a jetpack, Rocketeer.” He takes a step toward me. I fight the urge to run. He draws closer, close enough to speak into my ear without anyone else hearing. “Word of advice: a lot of kids use the woods behind the school as a shortcut or to grab a smoke before class. I’m not a smoker.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I know it’s a lame dodge as I say it. So does Matt; he rolls his eyes at me. “What do you want? What? What? You want to, you going to, what, blackmail me?”
Matt’s jaw drops. “Blackmail—what? No!” he says, utterly scandalized. “No, I’m not—” He looks around, leans in again. “I’m like you.”
“Like me?”
“A super-hero,” he says in a near whisper.
He’s crazy. He has to be.
“I’m not a super-hero.”
“Okay, superhuman. Point is, I have powers too.”
Crazy.
“Yeah? What can you do?”
He grins, like he’s been waiting for me to ask. “Follow me.”
He trots off. I follow. I have to.
We circle wide around the school, cutting across a vast lawn that has no sports-related purpose, and stop at a thicket of trees edging the property. We’re far enough away that no one can see what we’re doing and I think, foolishly, that he could stab me right here and no one would be able to tell who did what to whom.
“Ready to see something cool?” he says, reaching into his coat pockets. My hands tingle and itch. It’s not from nerves. He pulls out two white gloves. They’re puffy and have only three fingers plus the thumb—they’re Mickey Mouse gloves. He slides them on and wiggles his three fingers at me and I’m sure I’ve been set up for some kind of sick joke.
“What’s your favorite soda?” he asks.
I’ve gone this far. “Cream soda. The good stuff that comes in a glass bottle.”
Matt reaches into his coat, like he’s reaching for a knife tucked in his belt, or a gun under his arm. My hands are burning up. He shows me a bottle filled with a caramel-brown liquid, dots of condensation rolling down the glass. I take it. It’s ice-cold.
“Favorite candy bar?”
“Uhh...don’t really have a favorite. Anything with dark chocolate?”
His hand ducks behind the flap of his coat and comes out with one of those little chocolate squares wrapped in colorful foil. The wrapper proclaims 70 percent cacao content.
“So,” I say, looking at the items, “you’re, what, the Amazing Vending Machine Man?”
Matt winces. Obviously, this display has not impressed me like he’d hoped. “Um…you like sports at all?”
“Ice hockey.”
My answer amuses him. “Not what I expected. You have layers. I like that,” he says as he pulls a hockey stick out of his coat.
My mouth falls open. The soda and the chocolate—the chances he’d have exactly what I asked for pocketed somewhere on him are astronomical, but at least they would fit in his coat. A hockey stick, however...
“How did you...?”
“Walk with me.”
And I do, because dammit, now I’m curious.
It takes us twenty minutes before we reach the edge of the center of town. Main Street begins (or ends, depending on which way you’re traveling) at a town green, a wedge-shaped patch of grass with a towering flagpole in the center, and eases into your standard quaint New England street lined with buildings with businesses on the ground floors and apartments above. Traffic crawls along at reasonable speeds. People my age normally find towns like this boring and can’t wait to leave. Me, I find it comforting. I could live here.
That I can think that, that I could so easily consider somewhere else my home, ignites a flash of anger. It must show, because Matt asks me if I’m okay.
“Yeah. Fine,” I say. “You were saying about your granddad?”
“Yeah, right,” he says, jumping right back into his story. “He died maybe a year and a half ago, and we went to his house to go through all his stuff. I went up to the attic, mostly because I couldn’t stand to see Mom crying again, started rooting around, and I found a lockbox that had the gloves in it, along with an old diary. Turns out, Granddad was a super-hero back in the day.”
>
“They had super-heroes way back then?”
“Apparently, but I think back then they were called ‘mystery men’ or something like that. Sounds old-timey, doesn’t it? Who are these amazing crimebusting mystery men?” he says in a nasal voice, in imitation of an old newsreel voiceover.
I finally crack a smile. Okay, maybe Matt’s not a jerk. Maybe.
“Anyway, Pops used to run around in a pinstripe suit and a cloak and a fedora and a mask calling himself Joe Mysterio. The diary, it was, like, his journal of all his adventures.” Matt wrinkles his nose. “Mm, maybe adventures is too strong a word. He busted some hold-up men, nabbed a car thief once, helped take down a loan shark who got off on having people’s legs broken.”
“That was probably a big deal at that time,” I say encouragingly, even though it does sound tame. “Does he say where the gloves came from?”
“No. I think the journal I found was volume two because it began halfway through a story. I didn’t find another one, so, no idea where they came from.”
“Or how they work?”
“Nope. I know my hands can’t be visible when I think of whatever it is I want to create. It’s like when Bugs Bunny reaches off-screen to grab a mallet to bash Elmer Fudd over the head.” He says this with a barely concealed giddiness that tells me he thoroughly enjoys being a living cartoon character. “But I can’t tell you where the stuff comes from or why my hands have to be hidden. It’s a mystery for the ages.”
I’m a little afraid to ask the next question. “You said you’re a super-hero?”
His face scrunches. “That was a small exaggeration,” he admits. “It’s more accurate to say I’m an aspiring super-hero. But I’m off to a good start. The robot that trashed the coffee shop a couple of weeks back?” He points to himself.
“You stopped it?” I say. Color me doubtful, but Matt doesn’t look like he could stop a charging schnauzer.
Action Figures - Issue One: Secret Origins Page 2