"They investigate weird things, prove it isn't real or that someone faked the event?" she guessed. "Have you ever worked with them?"
"We've considered it, but two things stopped us. First, they live in Neighborlee. It's a small town that looks after its own, and those two have worked with the Neighborlee Children's Home for years. We couldn't take the chance they would recognize any of our students. And second...well, they're very good investigators. Almost unnaturally gifted. We couldn't take the chance they would discover the truth."
"Reggie, we don't even know the truth. Not the whole truth."
"Sometimes I wonder if we really want to know. What if the pessimists are right and we were dumped here because we're failures? The rejects from the superhero factory?" He settled back down in his chair. "I'm too old to find out I've been wasting my time."
"You and Demetrius kept us from losing our minds and feeling like isolated freaks," Jane hurried to say, while reaching out to catch hold of his hand, just as he had held her hand through her angsty teen years. "We all needed you desperately, and you gave us a home and a hiding place before we even realized we needed it and you."
"Maybe it's time for the next generation to take up the baton and change the race." He winced. "Bad metaphor?"
"Depends. Are you assigning me to investigate the Zephyrs, find out if they have any theories, if they're getting close to suspecting the truth?"
"It will keep you busy until you decide what you want to do." He chuckled. "And until the Council finally bestirs our lazy behinds and figures out what we need to do next."
"What about my quitting Fendersburg?"
"I'm going to go out on a limb and give you permission. If Demetrius and the others disagree, they'll have to deal with me." He chuckled when she nearly leaped on him and hugged him hard and tight for many long moments.
* * * *
Jane was only slightly disappointed when she started making calls the next day and discovered that Charlie and Rainbow Zephyr were heading out of town on a research trip that would take them at least six months. She found it interesting they were heading for the Bermuda Triangle. Maybe their leaving town would work in her favor. She could go to Northeast Ohio, learn her way around the area, and establish herself. When she approached them on their return to the area, they wouldn't have any reason to suspect that she was anything but a fan of their work, who had discovered they lived in the area and wanted to learn more.
At least, that was the plan. She had a lot of plans to make. Jane liked the feeling of anticipation as she made lists and prioritized the chores and steps necessary to change her life.
Chapter Five
Katie came to see her several days later, arriving with a three-story leap from the street, a muffled boom and a wall of air that ruffled the curtains of Jane's open balcony door. She paused, the brilliant Sunday afternoon light spilling over her shoulders wavering a little as the natural force field that enveloped her aggravated the photons.
"Writing the story of your life?" the spike-haired platinum blonde asked. She gestured at the drifts of crumpled paper all around Jane's chair in her tiny living room.
"Resignation letter."
"How can you resign? You're self-employed." She snorted and settled down on the floor and reached for the closest crumple.
"Things quiet in Metropolis?" Jane snatched the paper away and twisted her wrist, forming a momentary whirlwind that clumped all the papers together into a lump slightly denser than coal.
"Deadly." Katie grinned and held out her arms, shaking them so her multiple silver rings flashed and her charm bracelets jangled. She currently lived in Fredonia, Kansas, just because it was equidistant to all the places she needed to travel to in her duties of carrying messages, She joked about having to put up with the Marx Brothers, when she didn't call the town Metropolis and joke about looking for Superman.
Jane knew there was no Superman, except in lonely dreams late at night, and comic books. Her life (and the lives of her Gifted friends) was no comic book. She had long ago faced the fact that all the Gifted men she had ever met claimed they were super-powered in the romance department, but none of them ever had the super personality to charm her past the first date, let alone first base. She needed to get out of the hero business if she was ever going to find a real man. One worth running all the bases for. One worth making that home run for—and staying home.
Every orphan dreamed of home, and super-powered orphans wanted one more than most.
She wasn't ever going to find that home, or that man, in Fendersburg.
"If only there really were a Metropolis." Katie sighed, and that mischievous light flashed in her eyes. "Do you know how easy life would be for us if such a place existed?"
"One: there is a Metropolis, in Illinois. And two: no, I have no idea."
"In all the comic books, the villains are all polite enough to live in one city. They don't bother the rest of the country."
Jane snorted. That theory was ridiculous. Still, she felt better already. Katie was one of her few close friends among the ranks of Gifted. She fully understood why Jane refused to use the label "superheroes." It always sounded so grandiose and arrogant, to her ears. Maybe if she had a little bit of grandiose and arrogant in her makeup, it would be easier to write this resignation letter.
The whole task had felt so easy, so simple, when she got up that morning. Then when she finally sat down to put pen to paper, the bitterness and a sense of shame started to creep over her. She wondered if she would sound as spoiled and temper tantrum inclined to the people of Fendersburg as her first ten rejected letters felt to her.
"So, what are you doing? Really."
"Like I said, I'm resigning. I'm going to deliver a letter first thing tomorrow morning to the Fendersburg Trumpet, announcing that the Ghost is retiring and everybody will just have to look both ways before crossing the street and get their own brats out of trees and the police will have to get out of their patrol cars for more than coffee breaks."
"Wow," Katie whispered. She went perfectly still, not a charm jangling, not a platinum strand waving. That showed the depths of how Jane's declaration startled her. She was constantly on the move, more than earning her nom de guerre of Sonic. "You think they'll let you get away with it?"
"Do you really think I care what the lazy twits of Fendersburg think or want?" Jane jammed her pen straight through her much-depleted notebook.
"Not them. The Old Poops," Katie said, shifting to a whisper.
Jane snorted. She tried not to, but a grin cracked her face. She met Katie's dancing gaze and the two of them slouched, giggling, the rebellious laughter of children who had mocked their pompous elders. Underneath that laughter, she sensed a vein of nervousness in her friend. Jane knew it wasn't nice, but she wanted to milk the moment for everything she could get, griping-wise, before she revealed the truth.
"Tough. I have every right to a life of my own. Getting kicked by snot-nosed brats and yelled at by irresponsible mothers and hit on by libidinous morons isn't part of that life. After all I've done for them, don't I deserve some respect, some free time, some normality? Nobody even bothers to say thanks. Is it so hard?"
"What we need to do is get to the people who write the comic books and have them insert some lessons on proper superhero etiquette in their stories."
"The dweebs in Fendersburg don't have high enough IQs to read comic books." She sighed, feeling tired. The joke had definitely fallen flat. "You know, I never signed a contract with Fendersburg. And do I really need to ask permission from the Old Poops? I mean, think about it, what they did to our lives. They just showed up one day and dragged me out of the orphanage, away from my friends, from a housemother I really did like, made me the youngest student in an echoing private school for freaks, and shoved a bunch of rules down my throat. The only reason I stuck around through college was because I was just like everybody else, with no money, relatives or future."
"We had each other." Katie held out her hand,
thumb sticking straight up in the air. They shook, pressing their thumbs together, sealing the oath they had made within two weeks of meeting in the Sanctum. "We always will."
"I'm not turning my back on you, just on...being different. I want to fit in. I want to go where people ignore me in a nice way." She snorted, realizing just how stupid that sounded once she spoke the wish out loud. "Dumb, huh?"
"I know exactly what you mean. Maybe you'll find Superman, sans the cape and blue underwear."
"No. Supie needs the cape—it covers his huge butt." They shared another sigh and mischievous chuckle. "Anyway, Reggie knows."
"Uh huh. You're not the rebel I thought you were."
"Well, he gave me permission without going to the Council or even talking with Demetrius. They could still say no. I haven't heard anything, so either they agreed or they haven't met yet." Jane thumped the table. "Doesn't matter. I'm leaving. As soon as I get this letter written, anyway. I mean, yes, they trained me and gave me a foundation to start from, but I think my years of indentured servitude in Fendersburg have paid back all they invested in me."
"Hope they think so, too. What's the game plan?"
"Write the letter, deliver it to tomorrow's editorial meeting, in a way guaranteed to make plenty of witnesses. Then sit back and watch life go on without me." Jane closed her eyes and smiled, imagining the utter bliss of the freedom to ignore every cry of dismay and pretend she was ordinary and oblivious.
"You're going to stay here in town and just watch everybody make a mess of their lives without you?" Katie's mouth dropped open and she sat perfectly still for twenty-four seconds; a new record.
"No. I'm going to move away after about a month. I know everybody thinks the Ghost is a man, but I still have to cover my tracks. With my luck, if I announced I was leaving town and vanished the next day, the light would finally dawn and somebody would link the Ghost's disappearance—ha!—with my leaving town." She opened her eyes and shrugged. "With my luck, someone would think I'm the Ghost's girlfriend, the real reason he's leaving town, and then I'd never have any peace. Believe it or not, some of the people here know how to use the Internet. They'd track me down, no matter how far away I went."
"Where are you going?"
"Back to Neighborlee, where they found me."
"That's in the middle of nowhere. Greenhouses, railroad tracks and farmland. Why?"
"Well, I was thinking of settling nearby, but something Reggie said got me thinking about finding a place where I not only belonged, but was wanted. It's a starting place, and as close to roots as I'll ever get."
Jane stood up and snapped her fingers, and then held out her hands in baseball catcher pose. The cookie jar obligingly zipped across the room and into her hands. She sat down and took the surfer figure off the wave, which obligingly let out a roaring sound like the ocean. Then she related to Katie everything that had happened in the last few weeks since her visit to Neighborlee, and what she and Reginald had discussed on her last visit.
* * * *
"Reginald, we have a problem." Demetrius stomped into the library and slapped the Fendersburg Trumpet down on the three-foot-high stack of suburban newspapers in front of the other man. Wisps of smoke curled up from the blackened edges of the pages that had burned away until the page he wanted was uppermost.
"Hmm, can't imagine what would happen in Fendersburg that would upset you like that," Reginald murmured around the lip of his bottle of Perrier. He put the bottle down, fumbling it at the last minute, so he had to mentally nudge it away from the edge of the table. "Janie does an admirable job dealing with those poster children for involuntary sterilization."
"I warned you the quiet ones would ultimately cause us grief, didn't I?"
Reginald cocked his shaggy gray head to one side and studied his old friend for a few moments. Their many pupils through the years had never learned to stand up under his searching regard, always growing restless in less than a minute. Gazing at a suspected troublemaker or rebel had often wrung a confession, without the painful application of telepathy to read the short-term memory and emotions. Demetrius, though, was immune. He simply stood and fumed, little wreaths of smoke emerging from his ears in rhythm with his sighing breaths.
"Now, let's see what trouble has found the little gal," he muttered and reached for the paper.
"You sentimental old fool." Demetrius snatched the paper out from under his hands and stepped back, holding the paper up to the light slanting through the skylight. "'To the people of Fendersburg, a warning,'" he read slowly, mouthing the words as if they were a foreign language. "'From now on, you're responsible for the messes you get into. Just like when you moved away from home, you didn't expect your mother to keep doing your laundry and picking up your socks. You learned to clean up after yourself. Over the last few years, you've become lazy. Maybe part of that is my fault. Well, folks, that ends today.'"
"Hmm. She sounds a little peeved. It takes a lot to irritate her," Reginald muttered. He grinned when Demetrius glared at him and rattled the paper. "Sorry, old boy. Do go on."
"'Stop wasting time debating whether or not the Ghost exists. You won't see evidence of my work from this day forward.'" He paused, eyes widening, took a deep breath and plunged on. "'No more flying you to a job interview when your car died because you couldn't be bothered to put gas in the tank. No more pulling children out of trees because their parents can't be bothered to keep them on a leash. No more finding lost pets and pulling your fat out of the frying pan because you couldn't be bothered to pay attention to the weather or lock your door when you left the house or turn off the iron or the stove or a thousand other problems that could have been avoided. Problems that normal, responsible adults handle every day without thinking about it twice.
"'You've gotten lazy, Fendersburg. You think that since the Ghost is here, why should you act like adults? Why should you look both ways before you cross the street? Why should you pay attention to the expiration dates? The Ghost will cure you of food poisoning and fly you to the hospital. Don't deny it. I've overheard enough people saying things just like that, when their smarter friends asked why they took stupid risks. "Oh, well," you've said with a shrug, "if something goes wrong, the Ghost will rescue me."'"
Demetrius paused for a few moments, taking deep, hissing breaths through his nose.
Reginald reached out as if to take the paper from him.
He glared, rustled the paper, took another step backwards and continued.
"'Well, folks, those days are over. The Ghost is gone. Good-bye. I quit. I'm leaving town as of today. You're on your own. Grow up. The baby-sitter has left the building.'"
Reginald burst out laughing, the sound somewhere between a donkey's bray and rough, deep barking. He shuddered so hard he nearly tumbled out of his throne-like easy chair.
"How can you laugh?" Demetrius wailed with all the snootery of an English butler. "The ridiculous child has just betrayed everything we taught her."
"No she hasn't!" Reginald slapped his knee and hooted until he lost his breath. "She picked up those lazy bums by their collars and shook them hard. She warned them, didn't she? Put them on the alert that they're responsible for their own lives again. Good girl."
"Yes, but the way she said it—" Demetrius folded the paper into a small bundle and slammed it down onto the table. He finally allowed himself to drop down into his chair. All the starch went out of him. "No dignity. Even if those ungrateful wretches in Fendersburg have no dignity, as our student, entrusted with her superhuman powers, Jane should show some dignity."
"They deserved it. We've both been in Fendersburg, Dem. You said it yourself. The people don't have the common sense of a rock. Like Janie said, they're lazy. Give them a few weeks of burning their fingers and stubbing their toes and they'll realize how good they had it. If the day comes that she agrees to go back on duty, they'll appreciate her." He snorted. The sound was half a growl. "If she ever goes back. I would never ask her. You should have heard her, the l
ast time she was here. No, we have other jobs for that clever girl to handle."
Some color returned to Demetrius' square face. "The last time she was here? What haven't you told me?" He slapped at Reginald's hand when he tried to snatch up the paper, which had burst into flames. "Stop that, you silly old fart!"
"The intervention gene is pretty strong in that girl," Reginald said as he slapped the paper on the table to put out the flames that had been ignited by Demetrius' indignation. "She needs work to do. Respectable work. Something worthwhile to sink her teeth into, something to engage the mind. I'd worry about her if after a few weeks of watching those idiots get into trouble, she gives up and goes back to rescuing them."
"What did you talk about the last time she was here? I assume I wasn't here."
"No, you weren't." He fumbled with the smoking paper, searching the bottom of the page. "There has to be more to it than that. How sure are they the Ghost wrote the letter?"
"There was a little forward piece saying it was delivered by an arm coming through the wall during an editorial meeting, and dropping the envelope on the senior editor's desk." Demetrius' face unthawed enough for a grudging smile. "The girl has style, I must admit."
"That's my girl. Being quiet doesn't mean she's a wimp. Clever, too, letting those dolts think she's a man. Helps her disguise."
"Hmm, yes, and sometimes I think that's part of the problem." Demetrius toyed with the paper, folding and unfolding it while his frown grew deeper. "I must admit, I'm glad she took the initiative to quit, even if she didn't ask us."
Hero Blues Page 7