Sidekick

by Auralee Wallace

  I didn’t know what to say. Ryder…a child? I knew it was stupid. She was an adult, so she had to have been a child at some point, but I had never thought of her that way. Finally, I gathered myself together enough to ask, “What happened? I saw the apartment. It looked like it was hit by a rocket.”

  He nodded his agreement.

  “What? That can’t be right. Who just has rockets lying around to blow up superheroes?”

  He held my gaze in his own. “I believe you know already know the answer, child.”

  Of course I did.

  “Why?” My throat tightened. “Why would my father want to hurt Ryder?”

  “I have my suspicions, but they are only suspicions,” he said.

  I shook my head and stared at the pattern of the soft carpet beneath me. “I can’t believe this is happening. How did he know where to find her?”

  “This, I do not know.”

  My father had incredible resources at his disposal, but Ryder was just as capable. I truly believed she could not be found unless she wanted to be found. Not even Bart could do it. I was the only one who knew where she was, and I hadn’t told anyone…

  But I had.

  Jenny.

  “Oh God.” I put my hand to my mouth. “It’s my fault.”

  I said the words but disbelief was rolling through me in sickening waves. She couldn’t have. Jenny would never betray me. It was impossible. But somewhere deep down I knew the truth. Things weren’t the same between Jenny and me. I had hurt her. Now I knew how much.

  Choden brought my hand gently down from my mouth and placed it onto my lap.

  “You do not carry the weight of your father’s actions unless you chose to.”

  “But you don’t understand. I told someone. I told—”

  I stopped talking. He smiled in a way that told me he already knew.

  “Now, when we began this talk, I asked you a question. Are you ready to answer?”

  I stared at him shaking my head. It was all too much.

  “Perhaps we should see Ryder,” he said rising to his feet in one fluid motion. He waved for me to follow him. “Come.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I followed Choden out of the main room to a corridor. I had initially thought the entire space was a loft, but I soon found myself walking through a maze of teak hallways. Finally, we came to a door. Choden reached out to turn the handle.

  “Wait!” I said suddenly. “I can’t do this.”

  Up until now, everything had felt so right…but Ryder had been in charge. I knew as soon as I saw beyond that door everything would change.

  “It will be alright,” he said taking my hand, and then I was in the room.

  All thoughts stopped as I took in the sight.

  The floor swayed beneath me. Choden grabbed my elbow.

  I mumbled something. I wasn’t even sure what it was.

  Choden bent to bring his ear closer to my mouth.

  “She should be in a hospital,” I whispered.

  He patted my hand.

  “She would not want that,” he replied quietly. “Indira has long understood sacrifice. She would not want the city to fear. She would not want its villains to sense weakness.”

  “But…she needs help.”

  Ryder lay on a bed in front of a wall of windows. Thin off-white drapes floated above her in the breeze. My eyes moved over the bandages swaddling her body. Even her face was covered, leaving only her right eye exposed.

  The little skin I could see glared at me…mottled, scorched.

  “The burns were quite extensive. I have given her a medicine to help her sleep. She needs time to heal.”

  “But the scarring,” I said stumbling over my words. “You can’t do that her. She needs skin grafts. Hospitals can do amazing things.”

  Choden smiled. “That would not be one of Indira’s concerns.”

  We were to blame. My father and I. This was our fault.

  Not Jenny though. She had just been mad at me. Hurt. She couldn’t have known what would happen.

  “Will she be okay?”

  He exhaled slowly. “In time, I believe so. Yes.” The words should have brought me relief, but they didn’t.

  “You see now,” Choden said.

  My heart thudded painfully in my chest. “See what?”

  “Destiny is calling for you.”

  I took a step back towards the hallway. “I don’t see that at all.”

  “Indira has spoken of you often since you met.”

  “Well, then she’s told you that I’m a complete screw-up looking to her to save me from my wretched life.”

  His gentle expression didn’t change. “She told me that you wanted to help fight against those who cause harm.”

  “Yeah, help! Like carry her golf clubs around the course.” I shook my head. “I wanted to be her apprentice…not fly solo.”

  He smiled again.

  “I don’t like at all what you seem to be suggesting.” I spun on my heel. I needed to get out. I did not want to see Ryder like this.

  She didn’t want the city to panic? Well, what about me? I was panicking.

  I walked quickly towards the elevator.

  Choden’s soft voice called after me, “You would not be alone. I would help you…train you.”

  “Don’t you see?” I said near shouting. “Ryder can jump from a building to a helicopter and she was nearly killed! You think I can help? Please.”

  “Indira believes in you.”

  “I don’t know why. I’m the reason she’s in that bed,” I said pointing wildly back at the room. “Once again, Bremy St. James thinks only of herself, and somebody else gets hurt.”

  Familiar pain swept through me.

  This was the story of my life.

  I never meant to hurt people, but that didn’t stop it from happening. I was the common denominator.

  “Indira chose you,” Choden said unfazed by my outburst.

  “She did not,” I snapped back shaking my head. “She knew who my father was. She knew there was connection between him and the Sultana. She was tolerating me to get information. And I don’t blame her. Good on her! How could she have known that disaster follows me everywhere?”

  “Yes, Indira knew who you were—who your father was—but she saw you. A great evil is about to be unleashed upon this city. Perhaps when you have had some time to sit with what has happened, you will see that it is you who is being called to fight.” He looked at me with so much sympathy I thought I might scream. “Everything that has happened has led you to this moment. To fight it would be to fight against all of the powers that be. The call is for you.”

  “Call someone else! The universe has got it all wrong. Bremy St. James is not a superhero. Bremy St. James sleeps beside a toilet!”

  “Do you think Indira was born believing she was a hero? Does anyone think this way? Let me ask, if not you, child, then who? Whose responsibility is it to help?

  I stared at him, my hands outstretched, eyes incredulous. I tried to find the right thing to say—the thing that would make him understand—but this was obviously going nowhere. I needed to leave.

  I spun and pounded the elevator button.

  “I will be here waiting for you, child,” he said calmly. “We should start your training in the morning.”

  “Sure thing, Crazy Pants,” I mumbled under my breath.

  The elevator doors glided open. I quickly moved to step inside, catching the lip of the door with my shoe. I stumbled.

  I turned to face him holding my palms up. “See?”

  “Perhaps we will begin with balance and appropriate footwear.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Perhaps we will begin with balance and appropriate footwear I grumbled the entire way back to my apartment. Honestly, who did he think he was? And how did he know what the universe wanted?

  As far as I could tell, the powers that be were sending me a very clear message.

  Stay out of it. Stay out of everyth
ing.

  I had given it a good shot, and look what had happened. I nearly killed the city’s best hope against my father. So really, which one of us was misreading signs?

  I continued to grumble my way up the stairs to my apartment and in the door. I saw my cell phone blinking on the bed.

  I never would have forgotten it in the past. Who was I?

  I clicked new messages, put the phone on speaker, and tossed it back on the bed. I then turned to look at myself in the mirror. I had a date tonight, and I needed to face the horror on my head. Sure, there were very loud Ryder thoughts banging on the door of my consciousness, but I had decided, definitively, that I would ignore them. I was focused on the here and now, not on the what stupid bald wise men thought the universe wanted. Nope, from now on, I was a living in the moment.

  Little Bremy, a cheerful accented voice called out from my phone. Mr. Pushkin. God, living in the moment sucked.

  I hope you are working very hard. You don’t have much time left. How many days till end of month? I learned rhyme in English school. Thirty days hath September, April, May…never mind, I check my calendar. You should too because—

  Oh goodie, threat time.

  —because if you don’t have my twelve hundred dollars, then it will cost you the arm and leg. See? I learned new English expression, and I thought of you, little Bremy. Okay. Have nice day!

  I swore at my phone, wishing I could teach Mr. Pushkin a few new expressions.

  God dammit! My life so sucked. Twelve hundred dollars! Where was I going to get twelve hundred dollars? I wasn’t even close to working off the last thousand I owed Mr. Raj. And I certainly wasn’t about to ask him for more. I could already feel the tug of the Pink Beaver’s black hole, and it felt as awful as it sounded.

  Maybe I could ask Pierce if he knew of any job openings.

  Nah, I didn’t want him to see me as a damsel in distress. I had been taken care of my entire life. It was time to take care of myself.

  No, I would just have to keep moving forward. I would go out with Pierce for dinner, have a good time, go to work, try not to let anything touch me directly on the skin, and then figure all of this out tomorrow.

  I could still feel the Ryder thoughts pushing on my consciousness, but I pushed right back. I was officially starting my new life…again. And this time, it would not include my father or Ryder. I was my own person now.

  A nice normal person…with hair that looked like a sign of the apocalypse.

  ***

  As I walked down the sidewalk towards my date, I couldn’t help but think that in a perfect world, I would be twirling, right now, in a flirty dress, singing show tunes.

  Instead, I felt like I was about to pound the final nail in the coffin of my fledging relationship.

  I had tried to fix my hair.

  I really had.

  I used all of the conditioner I owned before moving on to petroleum jelly. But nothing would smooth away the static electricity crackling above my head.

  After that, I worked on the color. I went so far as to trace each strand with magic marker, but that only proved, once and for all, that things can always get worse.

  I had been left with only one alternative.

  When I walked into the secondhand shop, my eyes immediately zoned in on my still unsold jacket. It was just hanging there on a rack, so lonely, so afraid.

  “Are you going to buy that, lady?” a young male voice asked.

  I looked over to a smaller, pimplier, version of the store’s owner. I hadn’t even realized I was rubbing the sleeve of the jacket against my cheek. I lowered the cuff slowly. I had done my best to console her. I needed to move on. And I wasn’t even going to ask to see my bracelet. I was already a mess. Time to focus.

  “I need a hat.”

  “Boy, I’ll say.”

  “None of that lip, young man,” I scolded wagging my finger.

  He held his palms up in surrender. “I’d love to help you lady, but we’re kind of low on hats at the moment.”

  “You must have something.”

  “Well, there’s this,” he said reaching over to a mannequin, plucking a hat off its head. “But I’m not sure it’s going to help you.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  The boy shrugged.

  “How much?” I asked, willing the tears away.

  I forked over my last five bucks and left the shop.

  I tried to convince myself that it would be okay—that maybe I could even bring such a hat back into fashion—but the looks from a few passerbys told me it was far from okay.

  It didn’t matter. It had to be done.

  Aside from hiding the hideousness of my hair, the hat would also serve as a disguise. Pierce was one smart cookie—one hot, muscular smart cookie that I wanted to dip in milk and then—focus Bremy. He would figure everything out if he saw my hair. It was pretty…distinctive. He would then know, without a doubt, I had a connection to Ryder. Then he would want to know my true identity.

  I sadly shuffled my way down the street.

  I tried to tell myself that I was lying to keep Pierce off my father’s radar, but that wasn’t the whole story. If I had been anyone’s daughter other than the Mr. Atticus St. James, it might have been okay. But I wasn’t anyone else’s daughter. Pierce knew I was lying, but not about that.

  There was no way around it, what I was doing was unforgivable, but I wasn’t ready to let Pierce go. I knew I should. It was wrong. But I couldn’t do it.

  Maybe, subconsciously, that was the point of my new headgear—relationship suicide by hat.

  I sighed and hurried on.

  Suddenly I noticed one of those street cameras designed to catch traffic violations turn in my direction. It was the second one to do that.

  Bart.

  I stopped and looked up at the camera. He was probably loving this. I mouthed something too offensive to be said out loud then carried on.

  By the time I made it to the restaurant, I was ten minutes late. I stopped in front of the door and put my hand on the handle.

  I could do this.

  I stepped into the harsh glare of bluish-white lights beaming from underneath the glossy tabletops. Luckily, I spotted Pierce right away, at a table in the back. The restaurant’s glow, which made me feel like a troll cowering from daylight, illuminated him like a god. I took a step towards him but was stopped almost instantly.

  “Miss, please, can I call someone for you?” a man asked. “There is a shelter—”

  I put my hand up to the host’s frantic face.

  “I know. Believe me. I know,” I said firmly. “But you don’t want to push me on this.”

  He started to speak again, but I cut him off.

  “If I can wear this hat in public without disintegrating into a puddle of shame, just think of the scene I could cause if you don’t let me walk over to my date.”

  “Your date is here?”

  I pointed to Pierce.

  The prim-looking man sighed.

  “I am going to let you in. But only because the horror you are about to inflict on that poor man might be enough to convince him to play for the other team,” he said, moving his hand delicately to his chest.

  “Fair enough.”

  I resumed my walk, desperately ignoring the wave of heads turning in my direction.

  Pierce suddenly looked up.

  Oh, what a handsome display of emotions crossed his face. Confusion was the primary, but there was also a smidge of shock, the barest whiff of fear, and underneath—bless his sweet heart—something, maybe, like happiness.

  My cheeks flamed as I sat down across from him.

  I couldn’t meet his eyes. I just couldn’t.

  “Brenda?”

  “No. Don’t. Don’t say it.”

  “Don’t say what?”

  “Oh you know what.” I couldn’t hide the sorrow from my voice.

  “You mean the hat?”

  “Of course, I mean the hat!” I said snapp
ing my eyes to his. “Don’t pretend you don’t see it.”

  He tilted his head. “I’m confused. You started by telling me not to say anything.”

  “Perhaps it would better if you did. I can’t bear it.”

  “Okay…Brenda, why are you wearing a dirty silk turban with a plastic crystal?”

  “Is the why really important?” I asked, dejected. “The question is what are you going to do about it?”

  “What am I going to do about it?” he asked. “Is it alive? Should I kill it?”

  “No! I mean, don’t you want to run out of here screaming? Is a girl who wears a hat like this really the type of woman you want to have dinner with?”

  “Brenda, if the cutout picture of a credit card glued to a piece of cardboard didn’t scare me off, do you really think a hat will?”

  He reached across the table for my hand. “Besides it’s actually kind of…well…it’s definitely… Okay, there’s nothing I can say to make that hat any better. But you’re beautiful. And it’s one of the things I like best about you.”

  “The hat?”

  “No,” he said with the broad smile. “It’s the fact that I never know what you’re going to do next.”

  Oh…sigh. I placed my right hand over on my heart, mirroring the maître d’ eavesdropping beside Pierce. I gave him a smug smile. He retreated, scowling.

  I shouldn’t have been happy, but I was. I really, really was.

  I couldn’t lose Pierce…especially not because of my dad.

  I picked up my glass of water and took a sip. I would tell him the truth…tonight…just as soon as he got over the shock of my turban, and I’d had a glass of wine.

  I put my water down and picked up my menu. “Well, with that out of the way,” I said cheerily, “how was your day?”

  “It was actually pretty interesting,” he said taking his own sip of water. Goose bumps covered my arms. The sight of his lips touching anything made me tingle. “The bombing at the opera house opened the door for St. James Industries to start trial runs at the penitentiary. Angry rich people always tend to get projects green-lighted. But I have to tell you, I think more is going on behind the scenes.”

  All of my happy tingles morphed to scary spider trails as realization dawned all over me.