by Sophie Bell
Thanks! one of the dolphins responded. All three of them popped their heads above the surface of the water and nodded at the girls.
“Id looks like dey’re smiling ad us!” Scarlet noticed, smiling back.
Do you know what’s up with this stuff in the harbor? Cheri asked. Because who better to ask than the creatures that lived there?
The three dolphins broke into animated chitter-chat.
“What are they saying?” Iris asked as she snapped a few photos.
“They’re not sure,” Cheri translated, straining to understand. “Something about ants, I think? But that can’t be right. Ants don’t swim, or do they?”
Before Cheri could ask them any more questions, each of the pink dolphins sprung out of the water and, one after another, flipped a full circle in the air, then dove down again. Waving good-bye with their fins, they swam off.
“Au revoir!” Cheri called after them. “They had to go: They were late for dinner,” she explained to Scarlet and Iris. After pondering it for a moment more, she added, “I think I’ll call them Sine, Cosine, and Tangent. After the three main functions in trigonometry.”
“Catchy,” Scarlet snarked as she sprang up in relevé to catch a last glimpse.
Cheri waved back until the dolphins were out of sight, while Scarlet spun nervous pirouettes in place, one hand still clutching her nose. Iris had squatted down at the river’s edge again. Floating the wrapper from her blueberry lollipop in the water, she tried to scoop up a thicker sample of the grellowish mold. It was trickier than she would have guessed; each time she got close, the ripples in the water would slosh everything away.
“Umb, Iris?” Scarlet came to a sudden stop in fifth position and tapped Iris on the shoulder with her free hand.
“Give me one second,” Iris said, the stick of her lollipop gripped between her teeth. “I just want to get a good smear of this sludge . . .”
“Um, Iris?” This time it was Cheri trying to get her attention. Stumbling up to the walkway, she took out her smartphone and quickly keyed in a command to release the wheels of her rollerskates. The sand from the riverbank had coated the soles of her sandals. When the wheels popped out of the platform heels, Cheri hurriedly wiped them in the grass.
“We’ve got to analyze this stuff,” Iris was explaining, all her concentration on the lapping water. “Candace can help us—we can use the equipment at the FLab.” Slowly she lifted up the small square of paper, sifting it from side to side like a miner separating grit from gold. “Got it!” she declared, carefully folding up the square and filing it into a pocket of her messenger bag.
“Dat’s guud,” Scarlet said, now actually grabbing her by the collar and dragging her backward to the walkway, too.
“Hey!” Iris laughed, her legs flailing as she tried to get to her feet. “Take it easy, Tiny Hulk. What’s the hurry?”
As she posed the question, she looked up the path and finally saw what the other two Ultra Violets had been staring at.
Racing toward them with the spastic speed of a fish flopping on land, rubbery whiskers slapping like overcooked spaghetti against the shoulders of his hideous Hawaiian shirt, was the gill-necked mutant.
Knots
“SUGARSTICKS!” IRIS SPLUTTERED, THE LOLLIPOP STICK falling from her mouth.
“Time being distance divided by speed”—Cheri swayed back and forth on her skates as she calculated—“I’d estimate that he’ll reach us in, oh, twenty seconds.”
“We should split up!” Iris had already wrestled her robotic wings out of her bag and was scrambling to shake them open. “He must want the gunk sample. He can’t chase all three of us at once, and . . . and fish can’t fly. I hope!”
“Fifteen seconds,” Cheri counted down.
“I’m not gonna bounce till you’re airborne!” Torn between her own fight-or-flight instincts, Scarlet bopped from toe to toe like a boxer.
“No, girls, go!” Iris said, hitching the straps of her wings over her shoulders and fumbling to buckle the harness. “I’m almost ready, I—”
“Ten seconds!” Cheri shouted as Scarlet dropped into a defensive stance and put up her dukes.
“Cover your eyes,” Iris commanded, letting go of the loose cords of her harness and raising one hand to the oncoming monster. An ultraviolet aura burst around her as she blasted a blistering lightbeam at the mutant. It hit him square in the shoulder, burning a hole through his hideous floral shirt and deep-frying the ends of two of his damp barbels. With a gurgly groan, the mutant staggered back.
“That’s better,” Iris muttered, tightening the strap of her harness across her chest, then fidgeting with the click wheel on the control panel.
“Ten seconds again!” Cheri yelped, resuming the countdown. Although his blackened whiskers were affecting his balance, Catfish Face was back on track and lopsidedly barreling toward the girls once more.
Not a second too soon, Iris’s wings hummed to life, spreading wide open, the hundreds of vitanium-crystal scales levering horizontal to catch the wind. Haphazardly she shot above the pavement, still struggling to notch the belt at her waist.
“Ultra Violets, seriously, go!” she cried, her hair whipped upright by the vibrating wings. “Recon at CVUV, okay?”
Seeing that Iris was ready for takeoff, the other two girls agreed.
“Fly safe!” Cheri called to her. As Iris zoomed up and off, she spun a half circle on her skates so that she was facing away from the fast-approaching mutant—and Darth’s tail was aimed right at him.
“Furi,” she instructed her smartphone, “autopilot. Top Speed. Destination: Club Very Ultra Violet.” Just as she shoved off, the little skunk let loose a big poot that sharply reeked of tartar sauce.
Catfish Face wheezed and coughed, his gills stung by the acidic spray. He tried to fan the stinky plumes out of his flat fish eyes with his webbed fingers. And as the greasy mayonnaise smoke cleared, he was greeted by the heel of a small black motorcycle bootie.
Doof! Scarlet had jumped three feet off the ground in sissonne fondu and then swung her left leg in grand battement en l’air to ever so gracefully kickbox the mutant in the mouth. Landing in grand plié, agile as a monkey, she rocketed back up and out of the park with a single, spring-loaded leap.
Not far past the Gazebra’s shingled roof, Iris’s wings began to falter.
Sugarsticks! she thought again. Battery’s probably low, and I didn’t have enough time to solar-power up. Setting the wings to GLIDE, she shut off the engine completely, steering herself like a kite on the wind currents. As she surveyed the aerial view, she spotted Scarlet by her aubergine ponytail, still airborne herself, bounding over the gates and out of the park. Cheri was ahead of her, almost out of sight, speeding on her roller skates. And the fish-faced mutant was exactly where they’d left him, writhing on the pavement.
And I’ve still got the sample of gunk in my bag, she thought triumphantly, tilting one wing to maneuver toward the grassy knoll where Candace had dropped them off not that long ago.
It had been, Iris realized, a long day.
And it was about to get a lot longer.
As she started her descent, she noticed that somebody was sitting on the bench. Our bench, Iris couldn’t help thinking, even though it was a public park and the girls didn’t have any official claim to it. Iris didn’t want to disturb anyone. But she had to land. It was only as she drifted closer that the figure began to take shape. Slouched in his baggy black suit. Head in his hands. Hoverboard motionless at his feet.
SUGARSTICKS! Iris cried inside. But it was too late. She couldn’t change course now. Her feet hit the ground and she stumbled right past Sebastian, her heels plowing skid marks into the grass as she tried to brake to a stop.
At the crest of the hill, Iris came to a standstill. Her heart was pounding so hard she wished that it alone could power her back up and away a
gain. But she knew she had to face Sebastian. It was funny—in a completely unfunny, sort of sickening way: All she had wanted these past few days was to see him, and now that she was about to, it filled her with dread. From the top of her purple head to the tips of her robotic wings. Was he just there by coincidence? Or had he come to the grassy knoll hoping to see her, too?
She paused to dial down the wings, her back to the bench, all the while feeling so strangely that she was both there and not: like she was an actress playing the part of herself. She had no idea how much time was actually passing. Maybe he wouldn’t even be there anymore. Maybe he was never there in the first place. Maybe she’d just dreamed this whole scene.
Maybe.
Slowly she turned. Her lowered wings fluttered behind her in the breeze, the vitanium-crystal scales tinkling as if she were wearing a cape threaded with a thousand tiny chimes. Her purple ringlets—terribly tangled again, she was sure, from the flight—rustled above her shoulders. She could feel the radiation rising through her entire body and bet she was blushing valentines. Bands of light from the full color spectrum began to beam from her fingertips. There was no point trying to hide them.
From the bench, where—not a dream—he’d been all along, Sebastian stared up at her with his liquid black eyes. Under the scrutiny of his gaze, Iris knew the periwinkle blue was draining from hers, leaving only the palest violet behind.
“Hi,” she barely breathed.
“Hey,” he said back.
They stayed like that for what felt like forever, Sebastian seated on the bench, Iris glowing before him.
“I, um,” she grappled for what to say next. “I saw you here in the park the other day. I called out your name. I guess you didn’t hear me?”
Sebastian narrowed his eyes, observing her with the kind of curiosity he might have had for an exotic animal at the zoo. It was as if he were seeing her for the first time. Taking it all in: the purple hair, the sunrise eyes, the rainbow beams, the violet aura.
The urge to wrap herself up in her crystal wings nearly overwhelmed Iris, but somehow she stood tall.
“You’re a superhero,” Sebastian said at last, in that same soft voice she had so missed hearing. It wasn’t quite an accusation. It wasn’t a question, either. But it seemed to demand an answer.
“It . . . it all happened so fast,” she stammered. “Well, not really, it actually started four years ago, but then so fast after that.” She realized she wasn’t making much sense. “I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know yet, I didn’t know . . .” She trailed off. There was so much she hadn’t known—that she still didn’t know. How could she ever begin to explain it all to Sebastian?
“The graffiti on the monorail. Painting your name on the dumpster. Your quote-unquote ‘performance art’ at that girl’s party?” His voice broke as he listed the evidence. He tried to laugh it off, but she could hear the anger underneath his words. It stung her like a slap in the face.
“Sebastian, I’m sorry!” Iris said, fighting to keep the quiver out of her own voice. “Please try to understand—I couldn’t tell you about my powers! I hardly knew you! And there was so much weirdness going on here in Sync City that I was trying to deal with. But I swear, I never meant to lie to you. I was just trying to protect you from all my crazy while I figured everything out.”
“Protect me?” he muttered back, rubbing the palms of his hands up and down on his knees. He attempted to smile, but his lips twisted into something bitter. “I don’t need some girl—I don’t need anyone—to protect me.”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that!” Iris took in a quick breath, blinking furiously to keep her tears at bay. Her mind raced to find the right thing to say.
“Through it all,” she tried once more, “through all the danger and strangeness here, I was so happy whenever I was with you. When we went on our—” Iris caught herself; she wasn’t sure if boys even liked to call them dates. “When we went to the ice-cream café—”
“Yeah, where you fought off a mutant rat!” Sebastian scoffed, remembering it. He shoved the shaggy forelock of black hair out of his eyes, slammed back against the bench, and folded his arms across his chest. “I’m such an idiot for not getting it!”
“No! No, you’re not!” Iris dared to take one step closer. “No one did!” she said, wringing her hands together so that rainbow beams flickered all over the place. “We kept it a secret. We had to! Even now, even though we’ve come out in public, I still don’t think it’s safe, I—” Iris stopped herself again, worried that she’d scare Sebastian away for good if she opened up and told him any more. She felt that same out-of-body sensation as before, of watching herself acting out this drama. A drama desperately in need of a comedic ending.
“You, um, you’re hanging with the Black Swans now?” she asked feebly.
“The who?” Sebastian said flatly.
“Oh, that, that’s what we call them, of course you wouldn’t know that.” Iris fluttered her hands as if she could usher away her comment.
“Great. MORE things I don’t know,” Sebastian replied, raising his eyebrows and flicking his hair back again.
Iris pretended not to notice his sarcasm. “The two boys, uh, Jack and Sid,” she explained, using their actual names for once. “You’re not friends with Malik and Douglas anymore?” She hoped the fact that she’d remembered his hoverboarding buddies would score her some points.
“No, I am!” Sebastian said defensively, the hair falling forward into his eyes. “Those other two guys, that’s—” He paused to inspect his big black suit, as if he’d forgotten what he was wearing. “Never mind, forget it. I guess Sync City is full of supergirls and spies and evil corporations and psycho laboratories, but . . .”
Sebastian stood up. Using way more force than necessary, he stomped the tail end of his hoverboard with one foot to activate it. It buzzed above the grass, waiting for him to hop on.
“Iris, look,” he said, although he was looking away, out past the park to the river. “I thought you were cool and everything, but all this, like, Powerpuff, save-the-world stuff . . .” He shrugged, and in that moment Iris could see the sharp edges of his shoulders through the oversized jacket. More than anything, she wanted to lean her head there, against his chest. Maybe listen to his heartbeat. But he wouldn’t even face her. “I just, you know, I just want to have fun,” he mumbled. “Tag the monorail. Skate.”
“You can still do all that!” Iris gave him the warmest smile she could muster. “And we can still hang out! Let’s, can we, can we just talk? I’ll . . . I’ll tell you whatever I can. About this whole Ultra Violet thing.”
At last Sebastian looked her in the eyes, searching them for what Iris was sure must have been written in big block letters all over her face. He was close enough now that she could see his long black lashes and a shadow of dark hair across his upper lip.
“You’re a superhero,” he said again, more tenderly this time. As if that explained everything.
“Yes,” Iris said, her throat so tight that it came out as a whisper. “I am. But I’m also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him . . . asking him to . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence. A single tear escaped from her beyond-pale eyes.
“Your hair’s all knotty,” he murmured, bending his head down to hers and brushing one of her purple ringlets behind her ear. His fingertips lingered on her cheek for a second.
The second passed.
“I gotta bail,” he announced abruptly, taking a step back and turning around. “I don’t know, I guess . . . whatever,” he tossed over his shoulder. Frozen in place, Iris watched him from behind as he pushed his hair away yet again. But this time he ran the sleeve of his baggy suit jacket across his eyes. “I’ll text you, or I’ll . . . I’ll see you around.”
With that—with Iris staring so blindly at the nape of his neck that it must have only been the tears in her
eyes that kept her from burning his bare skin—Sebastian stepped onto his hoverboard. And skated away.
Drawing Lines
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER YOUR HEART’S BEEN BRUISED? When the hurt you’d feared the most has come true? Where do you go? What do you do?
If you’re Iris Grace Tyler, you go back to Club Very UV, just like you’d promised and just like you’d planned, and you meet up with your two best friends, and you tell them everything: everything that you said and everything that he said and everything you wanted to say but you couldn’t and everything you wanted him to say but he didn’t. And you sob so hard, sometimes into the soft, absorbent fur of a sympathetic skunk, you sob so much that your chest aches and your breath comes out in shallow, stabbing gasps. And your friends offer you gummy bears and chocolate bars but you’ve lost your appetite, even for candy. And they tell you how maybe, just maybe, it’s for the best. That okay, he was cute, but maybe, just maybe, he was also kind of uncool to blow you off not once but twice, to not be more understanding—maybe? And they hug you over and over. But eventually they have to go home, so you climb down the spiral stairs alone, back to your room, where you climb into bed even though it’s barely even dark out yet, and you bury yourself in your blankets. And then you cry again, even though you didn’t think you could cry any more.
And then . . .
The next morning . . .
At the crack of dawn . . .
To the sound of birdsong . . .
You wake up. You open your eyes. And you remember that:
YOU ARE A SUPERHERO.
It’s not just some silly label.
It’s not an excuse.
It’s not a role you play at whim, like childhood dress-up or a costume for Halloween.
No. It’s who you are. A superhero. Strong. Fair. Smart. Brave. All the time. Brokenhearted or not. You’re a superhero and you’ve got a city to protect. So you’d better wash your face, even though your eyes are raw red. And you’d better wash your hair; brush out all the knots. And put on your big girl panties.