Tragic Back Stories Are For Losers
I DIDN’T SPEAK TO GRIFF for two days. I went to and from uni by Uber and ignored his attempts to get in contact. I attended my classes. I tweeted belatedly about the #SuperheroSpill and how Kelly-Anne Luang was going to be the best Catsuit ever. I informed my government contacts that my missing mother might not be currently residing in this dimension.
According to them, this explained a lot.
One afternoon, I got back from my Political Satire in 20th Century Sitcom lecture to find my living room full of hot superheroes.
Oh, and the man still auditioning for the role of my brother.
I gave the group my iciest stare. “Don’t you have other things to do? A new superhero to break in, back at the ranch?”
“The Dark is mentoring the new Catsuit through her first week,” said Astra.
Griff and I made identical strangled coughs at that thought. The Dark did not play well with others. The only reason he was mentoring a newbie was if he wanted to see how fast he could make her cry.
“I can send him a playlist of training montage music,” I suggested.
“You’re not allowed to rickroll The Dark, he would blame me,” said Griff.
I grinned, then remembered that I was pissed off at him. The grin fell off my face. “Is this a planning meeting or an intervention?”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “Do you need an intervention?”
“I need a cookie,” I decided, and headed for the kitchen.
There was a teenage boy sitting at our kitchen island, with textbooks spread out all over. He looked about fifteen—all arms and legs skinny, with thick glasses and the world’s worst haircut.
“Who the hell are you?” I demanded.
He wasn’t bothered by my presence, which made one of us. “I’m Liam. Griff says I can’t work on extra-dimensional mapping strategies until after I’ve done my homework.”
Oh, one of the orphans. Right. I remembered him from graduation.
“Knock yourself out,” I sighed. “Do you want milk and cookies?”
“I’m lactose intolerant, and we’re not allowed products with refined sugar.”
“More for me.”
Which is why I had three chocolate chip cookies crammed into my mouth when Solar followed me into the kitchen, glowing with radiant health, and possibly actual radiation.
“Hi, I’m Joey.”
“Sure. I interviewed you once.”
“Yes, I remember, I wasn’t sure you…” She trailed off. Hello, adorable much? She actually thought I might have forgotten that time I got the exclusive interview with the It Girl of the superhero world? “Sorry we just landed on you like this,” she said.
“That’s Griff for you,” I said bitterly. “If he sees something he thinks he can fix, he won’t ask first. He once took Mum’s Porsche apart because there was a slight rattle in the engine. And that was the day our chauffeur quit.”
Solar—no, Joey, I was going to think of her as Joey, that would help with some of my inner filing problems—tilted her head to one side. “Your problems are not like other people’s problems.”
That was rich coming from someone who once punched a robot dinosaur in the face, but okay.
“Tell me about it,” I said dramatically. “My mother has been kidnapped and/or murdered by an intergalactic space queen. Must be Wednesday.” I couldn’t help digging deeper. This was my family drama, but it was also my job. “You never faced off against Megadethra, did you?” I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear her response. That’s what journalism is all about.
Joey pulled a face. “Definitely not. As everyone keeps telling me, she was Solar’s supervillain. The real Solar. The fact that Megadethra hasn’t invaded our dimension in the last 4 years is further evidence that I’m not the real deal. According to message boards, anyway.”
“Fans are the worst,” I commiserated.
“Aren’t you a fan?” she said slyly.
I wiped cookie crumbs off my chin. “Sure. But my opinions are 100% reasoned, unbiased, and correct.”
“Of course.” Joey gave me a Solar-quality smile that literally glowed. “My friend Willa works for Channel 9. Tina Valentina is her hero. She used to make us watch all her shows, and the clips of the old ones. She convinced her mother to buy her a pantsuit when she was seven.”
All very sweet, but I wasn’t in the mood to hear about someone else who loved my mother. She was my hero first. “How’s the new Catsuit working out?”
“Is this off the record?”
“This is the 21st century, nothing is off the record. I mean, I’m not currently recording this conversation on my phone and uploading it live to my site if knowing that makes you feel better…”
“It’s so weird having three of us. Three women. When I came to the Tower the first time, Astra rode up in the lift with me, gave me all this advice about what it was like being the only girl on the team. But I’ve never actually been the only girl on the team. Now we outnumber the men!”
“To be fair. I think The Dark has enough tragic manpain to count as three blokes.”
Joey snorted at that. “You’re not wrong. I like Kelly Anne. Catsuit, I mean. I need to remember to call her that. But to be honest?”
This was it, my exclusive, the thing no other vlogger would know about the inner thoughts of Baby Solar. Just two Millennials chatting about life and career junk. “Yeah?” I asked, leaning in.
“I thought it was going to be me this time,” Joey confessed. “I was ready, you know? My old friends are grown up and moving on. They have boyfriends, jobs. They know what they want to do with their lives, because they got to finish high school and apply for jobs or uni courses. They got to figure themselves out. I’m a twenty-year-old temp fighting monsters for a living.”
“You might turn out to be a lifer,” I suggested.
Dolly Magazine’s Girlpower Guru of the Year leaned a hip against my kitchen cabinets. Her left arm, the one that tapered at the wrist because she was born without a hand, swung casually back and forth. I’d once watched her punch the tyres off a sentient bus with that wrist. “Sure, except that my contract comes up every six months. I don’t think I’d mind doing this job forever if I knew for sure that was the deal. On the other hand, my mother hasn’t been kidnapped by an intergalactic space queen, so who am I to complain?”
Well, I wasn’t going to say it out loud. “Hey, I get why Astra’s here, and it was cool of you to come along. But why did Griff invite Danni? She’s not a superhero anymore. Hasn’t been for years.”
Joey gave me another of those super cute smiles of hers, eyes gleaming with humour. “Griff says it’s because she’s one of the best strategists he knows. Also she got engaged last month and her fiancé—you know, the bloke who used to be Buckshot? Anyway, he’s been driving her up the wall with wedding details, so she needed the distraction.”
I went back into the room on my best behaviour. A bunch of fricking superheroes were donating their time to plan a rescue mission for my mother. The least I could do was not be a bitch about it.
That lasted about four minutes.
“So we have a list of international superheroes to contact, and a strategy for me to comprehensively sweep the most likely dimensional pockets where Megadethra has been spotted before,” said Danni, who had a laptop open and was building an epic spreadsheet. “What are we missing?”
“We should make sure that we touch base with anyone Tina might have discussed her plans with before she disappeared,” said Astra. She glanced over at me. “Have you been in touch with your Dad lately?”
I froze. Griff, an arm’s length from me, also went very still.
“I don’t have a Dad,” I snapped.
Astra blinked at me. “I thought—”
An Instagram filter of awkwardness laid itsel
f over my living room.
“Does everyone in this room think that Original Recipe Solar is my Dad?” I said loudly.
The three blondes shrugged, and looked embarrassed.
“You mean, he isn’t?” blurted Joey, apparently saying what the others were thinking.
Them and the rest of the world.
I held up a hand, in case any of them thought that further discussion was on the cards right now. “You probably all think I’m a brat, and that I’m overreacting about this, but I’m about to flounce up to my bedroom, and I don’t want you to misunderstand my motives. I literally am doing this so I don’t stab you all in the face.”
And I flounced.
So yeah. I’m pretty sure that Original Recipe Solar is my Dad.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. When a famous celebrity journalist becomes a single mother and refuses to reveal the name of her child’s father, you get a lot of people nosing about with their own theories.
For a couple of years there, everyone was sure I was Russell Crowe’s love child. Then there was the long running speculation on how I was fathered by the boss of Mum’s network (gay), or her former editor at the paper (married, and not skeevy-shagging-his-employees-on-the-side married, but genuine childhood-sweetheart-lovefest married). Even Billy Brett, the best photographer Mum ever worked with, earned a place in the gossip hot seat thanks to some judicious Photoshop and poor journalistic maths. (He was fifteen or so when I was born. Ew.)
It was perhaps inevitable that the longest running, stickiest, hardest-to-avoid rumour of them all, would be that Solar knocked up his Girl Reporter, the woman who made him famous.
You have to understand: when the Machines first arrived, no one really knew what was happening. It was years before the superhero system became public knowledge, when the governments of the world stepped in to control the lotteries and add their own bureaucratic support system.
For the first few years that Solar and the original True Blue Aussie Beaut team of superheroes were fighting crime and saving the day, no one even knew their code names.
Tina Valentina changed everything when she made Solar smile.
And yeah, if it was you, even if you were completely feminist and self-contained and believed that not everyone needed a Mum and a Dad to make a well-rounded family (#LoveWins) but you still kind of secretly wanted a male parent when you were feeling weak and needy, who would you pick?
I bet you half a dollar that if you knew your Mum had been romantically linked with a handsome, well-built literal superhero who’s not only powerful and famous but had a reputation for being the most morally upright superhero in the history of the world, you’d probably fixate on him. Just a tad.
It made sense. Not only because Tina Valentina, Girl Reporter, made Solar smile in 1987. But the secrecy would have a point to it. It’s the cliché of every superhero romance movie ever made: they kept it secret to protect you from his many enemies.
I hate that trope. But if it’s true, then I get it.
I lay on my bed for six minutes, listening to Lemonade through my earbuds, until Griff knocked on my door.
“Hey, Fry.”
“You don’t have to use your soothing voice and conflict resolution training on me, I’m fine,” I grouched as he let himself in, sitting on the end of my bed. “I have a headache and three essays to write. I didn’t expect to be mounting an extra-dimensional search party today. But I’m fine.”
“Sorry for ambushing you,” he said, almost like he meant it.
“Yeah, no you’re not, you have this pathological need to fix things. Tina Valentina’s Mystery Holiday To Nowhere is a thing that needs to be fixed. Your interfering was inevitable.”
“You’ll help, then,” he said.
“I’ve already notified most of Mum’s old friends and asked them to keep an eye out,” I sighed. “I haven’t heard back from Billy Brett yet, I left a voicemail for him. Seems a long bow. He took the photo for your book cover, yeah? I think that’s the last time they were in touch.”
“Sure,” said Griff.
“He’s not my Dad.”
“Billy?”
“Ew, no, not Billy. Obviously he’s not my Dad. But Solar isn’t either. If he was… things would be different. Right?”
“He doesn’t have to be your Dad,” Griff said softly. “He might know something. Tina must have talked to him over the last few years, since he—” was replaced by a teenager, “—retired.” We should check, don’t you think?”
“Fine,” I growled. “Let me just text him on his private number which oh, I don’t have! Because I’ve literally never spoken to him in my life.”
Griff was quiet for a long time. “I have his number,” he admitted.
“Oh,” I said.
This is not my tragic backstory. I had a great childhood. My mother loved me. I never wanted for money or support. I get to make snarky vids for a living, and I don’t have to worry about ad income.
I am #firstworldproblems
I am #whitegirlprivilege
No daddy issues to work through here.
A phone call’s not going to change that.
And yet.
Griff left me alone in my room with his phone, in a supreme act of trust.
Still, if I was in the mood to go on a prank-calling spree of superheroes past and present, it would have an exciting random element to it. Griff is one of those nerds who comes up with cute code names for everyone he calls.
Solar was marked in Griff’s contacts as Captain Obvious.
It rang three times. And then a voice I have only ever heard on TV or the Internet filled my ears. Warm and deep and okay, fatherly, I’m only human.
“Kid. Everything okay?”
For a moment the warm squishy feeling in my stomach thought he was talking to me, until my cynical hindbrain marched in and reminded me I was on some else’s phone.
“This is Friday Valentina,” I said, keeping my voice calm and professional. A freaking miracle.
He paused, and his voice was slightly less warm this time around. “Does Jay need help?” Sun-powered, planet-punching Original Solar was a veteran on the Aussie Beaut super team when Jay Jupiter was called up at the age of 12. I guess he was still a little protective. How sweet.
“He’s fine. This is… personal.”
“I’m afraid I don’t give interviews, Ms Valentina.” He knew who I was. How stupid was I to feel glad that I was on his radar? Of course he knew who I was. I was Tina Valentina’s daughter. Random TV Week readers knew who I was.
“My mother’s missing,” I blurted. “We think she may have gone to another dimension.”
“For a story?” The warmth was back. “Let me guess. The Megadethra interview.”
“Yes.”
“That sounds about right. I’m sure Tina will be fine.”
“You didn’t—know about this? She didn’t speak to you before she left?”
“I’m afraid not. We haven’t spoken in years.”
“Oh.”
“Is there anything else I can help you with?”
He wasn’t Solar. I didn’t even know what name he went by these days. He was Clancy Bunning before he became Solar, but very few superheroes keep the same name when they retire. He was the most famous hero we’d ever had in Australia; stalker-magnet would be putting it mildly.
“Sorry for bothering you,” I said and hung up. Griff was waiting outside my room. “Such a waste of time,” I said, smacking the phone into his hand.
“It would have bugged you,” he said, unapologetic.
“I hate you. You’re right. Whatever.” I pulled out my own phone and scrolled through my recent calls for one of the non-father figures in my life that I had actually met.
Original Solar who?
When I returned to my living roo
m, it was still full of blonde superheroes. “So I just got off the phone with Billy Brett.”
“The award-winning photo-journalist?” said Joey, sounding surprised.
“Yeah, like 95% of people Fry knows are famous,” drawled Griff. “You get used to it.”
“You can shut up, Mr Did Not Complain About Meeting Delta Goodrem and Miranda Otto.” I crossed my arms. “Billy was not surprised at the idea that Mum might have risked extra-dimensional travel to get the Megadethra interview. He remembers her outlining a similar plan on a bar napkin one night.”
Danni made a couple of taps on her keyboard. “So what was he able to tell you about her bar napkin plan?”
“Her plan involved Astra.”
Astra looked up slowly. “Me?”
“The bar napkin was six years ago,” I assured her.
“Oh. Not me.” There had been four Astras in the history of Australian superheroes. She was a Legacy. “Oh, that’s not good.”
“What?” said Joey, innocent lamb that she was. “What’s wrong with the other Astras?”
You Can’t Make An Omelette Without Breaking Dimensions
EVERY ASTRA IS POWERFUL. SHE isn’t just light and sparkles, like you’d think if you picked up one of the half-dozen Barbies based on her design over the last few years. She is serious firepower. She can cut through dimensions, and burn through walls.
She is always the only girl on the team—at least, this was true until Astra IV and Solar II changed the pattern.
Oh, and she always dies in battle.
Sometimes, more than once.
“I never fought alongside an Astra,” mused Griff, like I needed to know that his era ended before the Reign of Astras began. I have an entire bedroom wall dedicated to superhero timelines and fact-sheets. You can’t afford to be sloppy with data when you’re a girl on the Internet.
“You’re so old,” I teased him.
Astra I: first half of 2010. Died fighting ice giants in the outback. Returned three weeks later, trapped in a crystal mirror. Drove all other members of her team crazy with hallucinations, transitioned into supervillain status for three months. Taken down by Solar and The Dark. Redeemed. Died again. Resurrected during a freak lightning storm. Currently the face of Elle McPherson’s new perfume range. Motto: Never Forget Me.
Girl Reporter Page 3