by TJ Klune
“Yeah,” Nick said. “I know. Cool. Why don’t you live with your mom and dad?”
“They died,” the boy said, dipping his plastic spoon into the pudding cup. “When a train crashed. I was with them, but I don’t remember.”
And since Nicholas Bell was six years old, he didn’t understand the concept of death. It was too big for him to grasp, so he said, “Oh. Was it a big train?”
The boy shrugged. “Maybe. Probably the biggest train.”
That was enough to confirm it for Nick. “We should be best friends. Forever.”
The boy looked at him, spoon hanging from his mouth. “Forever?” he said through a mouthful of pudding.
Nick nodded solemnly. “Forever.”
And from that point on, he never left Seth’s side.
* * *
Here he was, ten years later, vexed by his ex-sort-of-boyfriend, chasing after his best friend after they’d argued over Nick’s Extraordinaries obsession, an ache in his chest that he couldn’t quite explain. He didn’t like it when Seth was upset, he never had. It didn’t happen very often, but when it did, Nick felt like hunting down and killing whatever caused it. Nick decided a long time ago that Seth needed to be protected at all costs. He wore bow ties and loafers and could recite the Greek alphabet backwards, and there was no one like him in the world.
He should’ve punched Owen before he left, even if Nick wasn’t exactly sure what they’d been arguing about. He thought it was about Pyro Storm being a villain. And yes, that was true, but he was a cool villain. He was Shadow Star’s archnemesis, which meant he had to be respected. Both of them had appeared suddenly out of nowhere shortly after … well, After. There had been other Extraordinaries Before, but they’d been nothing compared to Shadow Star and Pyro Storm. Even if Cap and the mayor thought they were a menace—in fact, all Extraordinaries were a menace, according to Cap—no one could deny how cool they were. If they tried, they were wrong. Period.
Still, he should have done more. Seth deserved as much.
Seth was at his locker when Nick found him, banging his head against it repeatedly, muttering, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” Nick reached up and put his hand between Seth’s forehead and the locker, so when Seth tried to hit it again, he met a bony hand instead.
“Hey,” Nick said. “Do you want me to kill him? Because I will.” He was very serious about this. He’d learned how on the internet before Dad had tightened the parental controls. He just needed to find some sharks.
Seth sighed. “No. Then you’d go to jail. I’d visit you, but it wouldn’t be the same.”
“Probably. But then I could get a teardrop tattoo and be all badass. That might be worth it.” Nick frowned. “Unless there was a big guy named Enormous Gregory who wanted me to keep my hand in his pocket at all times. I don’t know if I could do that.”
Seth stared at him. “Your brain.”
“I know, right? It’s—whatever. It’s what the Concentra’s for.” Nick looked away, tapping his fingers against the locker, quietly hating that he always needed to be moving.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Seth said, and Nick felt even worse for not sticking up for him. He needed to be a better friend. Seth always had his back, no matter what. Nick should’ve done the same.
“Maybe,” Nick mumbled. “Takes some getting used to. I feel a little whacked out, you know? But the doctor says that’s normal, and it’ll even out eventually, kind of like with the ones I had to take before. Except they won’t make me a cracked-out zombie like last year.”
“Good,” Seth said, and Nick could hear the smile in his voice. He glanced at Seth, still a little startled they were eye level. “I thought I was going to have to take out Cracked-Out Zombie Nick with a headshot.”
“It’s the only way to kill ’em,” Nick agreed.
“I’m glad your brain is okay.”
Nick was absurdly touched. “Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “You can’t let Owen get to you, man. He wants to get under your skin.”
Seth’s smile faded slowly. “I know. It’s part of his charm.”
Nick rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t call it charm.”
“You sure fell for it, though.” And then Seth immediately blanched, as if he couldn’t believe those words had come out of his mouth.
“Dude,” Nick breathed reverently. “That was hardcore. I’m impressed. Holy crap.”
Seth rubbed the back of his neck. “I didn’t mean—”
“Yeah, you totally did. You can’t take it back now. That’d be weak.”
“O … kay?”
Nick nodded. “Also, that was kind of mean. And maybe my feelings are hurt.”
“The truth often does that.”
“Okay. Like. Who are you? I mean, I’m sorry and everything, because you’re right. I should have said more. But also, what have you done with my best friend? Oh my god, are you Bizarro Seth? Like Batzarro the World’s Worst Detective? If you are, tell me now, so I can figure out how to get normal Seth back. I mean, it’s cool if you’re Bizarro Seth, but I really like my Seth the way he is.”
Seth squeaked.
Nick squinted at him. “Uh—you okay?”
Seth nodded furiously, his face red. “Y-yeah. I’m cool. Cool, cool, cool.”
“Good.”
“I’m not Bizarro Seth.”
Nick’s eyes narrowed. “That sounds like something Bizarro Seth would say.”
Seth took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I promise. I’m … your Seth.”
Nick grinned and put his arm around Seth’s shoulders. “Fantastic. I believe you. What were we talking about again? I can’t remember.”
Seth shrugged, but he looked better, which was the only thing Nick cared about. “It doesn’t matter. It’s all good now.”
Nick felt Seth’s arm wrap around his waist and give him a brief side hug, and all was right again with the world. “You’ve got AP History next, right? My class is right next to yours. Let’s walk and talk. I’ve got some ideas for how Nate Belen will be saved that I wanted to run by you. You got a few minutes?”
Seth did.
Maybe today hadn’t turned out so bad after all.
* * *
It was pouring down rain when Nick was finally released from the prison known as after-school detention.
“Dammit,” he mumbled to himself, staring out the front doors of the school. He could hear shouts and the squeak of sneakers on the gym floor down the hall, and a sharp blast of a whistle, but other than that, only the rain.
He hadn’t even thought to check the forecast this morning. He’d been too distracted by wishing Rebecca Firestone would cease to exist.
The train station was a few blocks away, which meant Nick was going to get wet. He hated getting wet.
He closed his eyes tightly and thought as hard as he could for the rain to stop, just in case he’d somehow developed Extraordinary powers while in detention and could now control the weather.
He opened his eyes.
It was still raining.
He could wait it out, but according to the weather app on his phone, it was going to rain for at least two more hours, and he didn’t want to be at the school any longer than he had to be. He made the decision that since he was a man, he could stand getting his hair and socks wet.
He pushed open the door.
His hand was immediately soaked.
And it was cold.
He closed the door again.
Nick was about to slide to the floor to wait it out when he heard his name called from behind him. He turned to see Gibby walking down the hall, hand raised in his direction.
“Oh, thank god,” he said. “I thought I was going to die here. You’ve got an umbrella, right? Wait, what are you still doing here?”
Gibby punched him in the shoulder. He didn’t almost fall down, no matter how it looked. “Jazz had cheerleading practice. I was watching to critique her performance later.”
Nick rubbed his shoulder
as he grimaced. “You were perving on her from the stands and got kicked out again, didn’t you.”
Gibby shrugged. “She looks hot in the uniform. I’m allowed to stare. There also might have been some gloating since the football team was running drills in the gym.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“I’m dating the cheerleading captain. I’m allowed to be.”
“So gross,” Nick muttered. “Can we leave now? This place is sucking out my soul, and I don’t want to be here until I’m required to come back tomorrow. And hearing reminders from you that I’ll be alone forever isn’t helping.”
“I can’t believe—you know what? Nope. I said I’d stay out of it, and I’m going to. I don’t know how the patriarchy ever succeeded. You’re all so stupid.”
“Stay out of what?” Nick asked, confused. “Did Owen say something to you? I swear to god, I’m going to punch him in the pancreas. I don’t—”
“I’ll leave you here without a second thought.”
Nick believed her. Gibby was a woman of her word. “Shutting up now.”
“I don’t think that’s actually possible.”
Nick sighed. “Yeah, I don’t have a neurotypical brain. I’m lucky that everything I say is awesome and I have a couple of people who actually like me.”
“Barely,” she said, though Nick could see her fighting a smile. “Let’s blow this Popsicle stand, daddio.”
And like a couple of cool cats, they did exactly that.
* * *
The train was delayed.
“Why?” Nick asked, looking toward the ceiling of the station. The tile was dirty, and something that looked like it’d once been a hot dog was hanging from one of the grates over the fluorescent lights. “What did I ever do to you? Aside from all those things I did?”
“Looks like it’s a problem farther down the track,” Gibby said, frowning down at her phone. “Says it’ll be twenty minutes. Which in Nova City Transportation Authority speech means they have no idea what’s wrong, something’s probably on fire, and it could be up to an hour.”
It had definitely once been a hot dog. Nick could see dried mustard and everything. “My socks are wet.”
“Yeah. Your life is a tragedy in four acts. Want to wait or do you wanna hoof it down to Market Street and get on the Silver Line?”
“That’s eight blocks!”
“I’m aware.”
“In the rain.”
“Your powers of observation are your greatest skill.”
He didn’t know why someone had thrown their half-eaten hot dog into the light. It was one of the millions of stories that happened in Nova City every day that he’d never get to hear. “My socks are wet,” he said again.
“So you’ve said. Make up your mind, Nicky.”
It was stifling down in the station. People were milling around angrily, everyone staring at their phones with similar scowls on their faces.
Nick hated crowds.
And honestly, the hot dog was perturbing him more than he cared to admit.
“Fine,” he said, knowing he sounded grumpy but unable to do much about it. “If we have to.”
Gibby wasn’t the type of person to deal with his crap. It was one of the reasons he liked her so much. She rolled her eyes at him, letting him know exactly what she thought about him, and then grabbed him by the arm and pulled him toward the stairs.
But when they reached street level, she made sure to stand close so they could both be under the umbrella.
* * *
Nick and Seth had been ten when Lola Gibson quite literally punched her way into their lives.
It’d been two against four, and Nick was positive the on-duty teacher looked the other way right when they’d been cornered. Seth shoved Nick behind him, the top of his head barely to Nick’s chin, like he thought he’d be able to protect him from the beating they were about to get.
Granted, Nick probably deserved it, given that his mouth moved before his brain managed to convey it was a bad idea to laugh obnoxiously when David Carlucci swung at the tetherball and missed, falling face-first into the metal pole.
David Carlucci and his goons were sixth graders, which meant that Nicky was going to die.
But then Seth was there, standing in front of him, all four foot ten of him, like he thought he’d be able to stop them from getting their asses beat.
And right when Nick was about to open his mouth again, there’d been a flash of black braided hair, heralding the arrival of Lola Gibson, some girl Nick and Seth were peripherally aware of but had had no contact with previously. She stood in front of Seth, hands on her hips, wearing jeans and a hoodie with a skull and crossbones on the back.
David Carlucci told her to move. Lola Gibson responded by punching him in the mouth, splitting his lip. David Carlucci recoiled before snarling, eyes narrowed as he started toward them again.
Lola Gibson opened her mouth and screamed, which, at the time, became the loudest sound Nick had ever heard. He was suitably impressed as David Carlucci and his goons took a step back. Nick, never able to keep his mouth shut for long, was about to tell them off when a teacher came running over.
Lola Gibson burst into tears, sobbing that these boys were trying to hurt her and her friends, and she was just a little girl, and they were trying to hit a girl, and—
David Carlucci and his gang of prepubescent misfits were led away on a one-way trip toward the vice principal’s office where Nick was convinced they’d be drawn and quartered for their crimes against humanity.
As soon as they were out of earshot, Lola Gibson immediately stopped crying.
“I like you,” Nick told her seriously. “I’ve never said that to a girl before.”
Lola Gibson narrowed her eyes at him. “I will hit you just as hard.”
“I take it back.”
“Good.”
“Your tie is blue,” she said to Seth.
“Thank you,” Seth mumbled, because he didn’t do very well with new people.
And that was how Nick and Seth met Lola Gibson.
She never left after that. Even when she went to high school before them, she still hung out with them almost every day after school and on weekends.
It was the summer between Nick and Seth’s freshman and sophomore year that she shaved her head and demanded they call her Gibby. Since Nick and Seth liked their faces in the shape they were in, and because they respected their friend, she was Gibby.
People didn’t get their friend group, not that Nick really cared. He didn’t understand most of them, so it was fair. They were the queers of Centennial High (and though they weren’t the only ones, they were the most visible). They were the nutjobs, the weirdos. Seth was too smart. Nick was too loud. Gibby was too butch, and Jazz had once been like everyone else before Gibby had put her lesbian magic all over her and taken her to the dark side. Or at least that was what Jazz had heard one day in the girl’s bathroom. Gibby had laughed so hard that she cried, something Nick and Seth had never seen before, and were amazed by.
Then came Owen and … well. The less said about that the better, seeing as how the Great Romance of Nick and Owen was a by-product of Owen’s arrival, and no one wanted to relive those days. Though Nick hadn’t said it out loud, he wondered if Owen had put his lesbian magic all over Nick. That seemed to be the only explanation as to why Nick would have let Owen touch his nipple that one time.
They weren’t popular, but that didn’t matter. He loved his people very much.
* * *
“It’s not as hard as she’s making it out to be,” Gibby said. They were huddled close underneath the umbrella. “I know she’s worried, but why can’t she believe me when I tell her that everything is going to be okay?”
Nick shrugged. “You’re graduating. Going on to bigger and better things and leaving us all behind. I mean, I get what you’re saying, but I can see where she’s coming from too.”
“I care about her. A lot.”
�
�I know.” It was touching, though Nick would never say that to Gibby’s face because she’d never let him hear the end of it. “And she knows it too. But you have to admit, she’s got a point. Things change. And you’re young.”
She scowled. “I hate it when that’s the excuse. That me being in a relationship at seventeen isn’t the same as having a relationship when I’m older. Plenty of people marry the person they dated in high school.”
Nick nearly tripped. “You want to marry—”
“Oh my god, no. That’s not what I meant. I’m saying that being young doesn’t mean we’re stupid.”
“What happens when you turn eighteen and she’s still underage? What if her parents try and give you crap for that?”
Gibby rolled her eyes. “It’s fine. Her parents like me. And my parents think she’s—and I quote—‘the bee’s knees.’ Whatever the hell that means.”
Nick frowned. “I don’t understand hippies.”
“No one does.”
“Especially when they’re also accountants.”
“It’s confounding in ways I don’t even want to think about. We were the only Black people at every commune we visited. We were weirdly treated like royalty.”
“Can I give you some advice? Not about the royalty thing. I’m too white to ever give you advice about that. About Jazz.”
Gibby stared at him while they waited at an intersection for the light to change. “You? You want to give me advice?”
“I feel like I should be offended, but I don’t quite know why.”
“Oh, you should be. This’ll be good. Lay it on me, Bell. Give me advice.”
Nick thought for a moment. Then, “Respect her fears. You may think they’re unfounded, but they’re still what she’s feeling, and that’s valid. Reassure her if that’s what you want. And if you don’t, make sure she knows you still care about her, but it’s better to end it now than further down the road when it would hurt more.”
“That … wasn’t bad,” Gibby said, sounding begrudgingly impressed. “Where did you come up with that?”
“I’m very self-aware,” Nick said smugly. “I see everyth— Ow, who put this freaking fire hydrant here?” He glared down at it as he rubbed his knee.