by TJ Klune
Seth scowled at him. “I don’t like it when you say that. You’re not crazy. You’re fine the way you are.”
His mom had told him the same thing. And now that she was gone, it was Seth who understood him more than anyone else in the world, had seen through the tornado of words that was Nick Bell, even when they were just kids. Yeah, other kids had given Nick crap for being all over the place, but Seth had been overweight and gotten it almost as bad. Nick was too young then to understand the idea of cruelty, but he knew people could be mean, even if they couldn’t really explain why they were doing so.
It’d gotten easier when Gibby came along. And the other kids had grown up too; what had once been bullying became indifference, and Nick and his friends essentially faded into the background. They still got shit every now and then, but if Nick had his way, they wouldn’t have to worry about anything like that again. No one would mess with them if he was an Extraordinary.
“Maybe that’s my superpower,” Nick said, trying to dispel the annoyance on Seth’s face. “Maybe because my brain is wired different, it’ll lead to ESP or the ability to explode things with my mind. I’m probably already at the next stage of human evolution, which means that I’m better than almost everyone else.”
The look on Seth’s face faded, though not as much as Nick would have liked. “You are better than everyone else.”
Nick’s hands were really clammy today. He wiped them on his jeans. “I’m glad you see that. It makes our friendship easier when you can recognize how awesome I am.”
Nick was almost proud of how quickly things became awkward. He didn’t think it’d ever happened this fast before.
He coughed and waved at the board. “So, ideas!”
Seth looked back at Nick’s creation. “You don’t have Pyro Storm up there.”
“Well, yeah. He’s not a hero. He’s a villain. I don’t want to become a villain. I don’t know how to laugh maniacally or do something nefarious. I’m far too pure. The only reason I have someone like the American Patriot up there is to remind me of how not to be.”
“But you always talk about how muscular Pyro Storm is.”
Nick was scandalized. “I do not.”
“Uh, you realize I beta read for you, right? You talk about his thighs all the time.”
“That’s because his costume accentuates his assets,” Nick said, moving until he stood next to Seth in front of the board. “But you can look nice and still be a douchebag. They’re not mutually exclusive.”
“Like Owen.”
“Exactly.”
“But you still—”
Nick slapped a hand over Seth’s mouth. “We shouldn’t talk about it if we don’t have to. Consider it a lapse in judgment that’ll never happen again.”
Seth arched an eyebrow at him.
And since Nick was fluent in Seth eyebrow-speak, he said, “I’m serious. Never again. I don’t care how good he looks in those red pants he owns. Been there, done that.”
Seth shoved Nick’s hand away. “Those pants aren’t that great.”
“Yeah, try saying that again when you’re staring at him from behind—why are we even talking about this?”
Seth scowled at him. “Because he flirts with you all the time, and sometimes you look at him like you don’t know if you want to punch him or kiss him.”
“Again, not mutually exclusive. But he broke up with me, remember? And it wasn’t like we were ever really dating to begin with. We were … I don’t know. Make-out buddies, or whatever.” Nick winced. “Wow. That makes me sound easy.”
“I know. We were all there to witness it.”
Nick shoved Seth. “Don’t be weird. Just because you haven’t kissed anyone—”
“What makes you think I haven’t?”
“—doesn’t mean you get … to … tell—wait, what?”
“What makes you think I haven’t kissed anyone?” Seth repeated.
Call it, Doctor. Time of death: 1:37 in the afternoon. Cause? Seth Gray. A strange, twisted knot in Nick’s chest began to tighten, his hands still sweaty. Rationally, Nick knew that it was possible that Seth could have someone who wanted to kiss him. And if he really thought about it, of course people should want to kiss Seth. He was funny and smart, and when he smiled, it was like literal sunshine. He could recite pi to the 126th digit, owned a bonsai tree that he’d managed to keep alive for seven years, once climbed a fire escape to rescue a trapped cat near the park, and when Nick was sick with the flu a few years back, Seth had brought him his homework, medicine, and the latest issues of Marvel’s attempt at an event series that was supposed to change the face of the world but in actuality had made Captain America look like a Hydra agent, which made Nick’s illness worse until he was convinced he was going to die.
Add in the fact that Seth wore bow ties and ascots, so yes, someone would want to kiss him.
In fact, who wouldn’t?
Well shit. What the hell was he supposed to say now? He went with the first thing that popped into his head. “Oh. That’s … nice.”
Seth shrugged as if he hadn’t just dropped a bomb on him. “I suppose.”
“So … nice.”
Seth squinted at him. “You okay?”
Nick nodded furiously. “Fine. Great. Wonderful.”
“Good. So, idea board?”
Focus. Focus. Don’t think about Seth’s— “Um. Right. So. Idea board. I’ll … talk about it. Because that’s the thing to do. Right now. With you. And I—okay, I can’t do this. Who did you kiss?”
Seth patted Nick’s arm. “I don’t kiss and tell.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
That terrible thought struck Nick once again. “Do you have a secret girlfriend and/or boyfriend?”
“No, Nicky. I don’t have a secret girlfriend and/or boyfriend. I already told you that.”
Nick stepped closer, staring at his friend. He leaned forward until their faces were inches apart. Seth’s breath smelled like toothpaste. Nick’s probably smelled like pepperoni, which, in retrospect, probably wasn’t the best thing to be breathing on someone, but there wasn’t time to worry about that now.
Seth didn’t move away. His eyes widened a little. He licked his lips. He had nice lips. Really nice. Nick didn’t know why he hadn’t noticed that before.
Nick whispered, “Then who did you—”
“Your dad told me the door needed to be kept open,” Gibby said from behind them. “I laughed at him, but now I see why.”
Nick screamed as he jumped, almost falling to the floor.
“I didn’t know his voice could go that high,” Jazz said, looking over Gibby’s shoulder. “He could be a diva. Or make a living doing impressions of a cat getting strangled.”
“I don’t think that’s a thing.”
“Anything is a thing if you want it to be,” Jazz said, pushing past her girlfriend and into Nick’s room. “My grandma told me that. And she married into nineteen million dollars, outlived her husband who cheated on her with a badminton instructor named Edward, and then turned it into thirty million.”
Gibby sighed. “I’ll never understand that kind of money.”
“Neither does she,” Jazz said. “Which is why she’s given half of it away to save the whales. She really does like the whales.”
“Speaking of whales,” Gibby said, eyeing Seth and Nick deviously. “Moby-Dick and all that.”
Nick blinked. “What are you talking about? That book was terrible. I’ve never read it, but I did see the Chris Hemsworth movie that was based on it, and even he couldn’t make me care.”
“Seth?” Gibby asked sweetly. Well, sweetly for her, which meant it wasn’t that sweet.
“Shut up,” he mumbled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Uh-huh.”
Nick didn’t know what Gibby was doing now, but it was distracting, and he couldn’t have that. “Did you bring me what I asked you for?”
Jazz sat on
the edge of Nick’s bed, putting her Coach purse on her lap. “Well, here’s the thing. I found one in the backyard shed where the landscapers keep the tools. I got dirt on my forehead. It was wonderful. I felt like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. And in the back, I saw a gigantic web. Like, the biggest I’d ever seen.”
Nick shuddered at the thought.
“Ah,” Jazz said, watching him. “Now I know why you couldn’t get one by yourself. I didn’t know you were scared of spiders.”
“I’m not scared of them,” Nick retorted. “I would just rather they didn’t exist near me at any point in my life.”
“Spiders are good for the ecosystem,” she said, and Nick wondered why anyone would think she wasn’t smart. “They eat the bad bugs.” She reached a hand into her purse.
“I’m with Nick on this one,” Gibby said, taking a step back. “I don’t want that thing near me.”
“Why did you have Jazz bring you a spider?” Seth asked.
“Because I need it,” Nick replied. “It’s Phase One of Operation Turn Nick into an Extraordinary and—”
“You really need to come up with a better name,” Gibby muttered, studying the idea board. “And would you look at that. Shadow Star’s picture, front and center. How interesting. Wouldn’t you say that’s interesting, Seth? Shadow Star, being front and center?”
Seth glared at her. “I have no opinion about it one way or another.”
Gibby snorted. “Are you sure about that? Because if I were you, I’d—”
Jazz pulled a specimen jar out of her purse. “Okay, but you all rudely interrupted my story and didn’t let me finish. That’s not nice. There was the gigantic spiderweb, but—”
“Got it!” Nick crowed, snatching the plastic jar out of Jazz’s hand. The thing inside that was most certainly not a spider scrabbled along the side of the jar, and Nick almost shrieked and threw it across the room. Somehow, he was able to call upon all his bravery at once and resisted. Instead, he set it down on his desk next to the idea board and backed away slowly.
“What is that?” he asked, and his voice wasn’t high-pitched, no matter what anyone might say otherwise.
“If I can finish, maybe you’ll find out,” Jazz said, mouth twisted down. “As I was saying, I didn’t see a spider, but I did see something else. It was caught in the web, and it was struggling. I felt really bad about it, so I saved it from the web like Indy saved himself from having his heart ripped out of his chest.” She frowned. “Can you believe that movie is only rated PG?”
“That’s because other than R, another rating didn’t exist,” Seth said. “That movie was partly the reason they came up with—”
“What is it?” Nick said, shoving Gibby toward the jar. “I think it hissed at me.”
Gibby glared at him before taking a step toward his desk. “It’s … It’s a … It’s a…”
“Cricket,” Jazz said. “Obviously. What are you going to do with it?” She had a tiny compact mirror out and was puckering her lips at her reflection.
Nick stared at her. “You brought me a cricket.”
She closed the compact. “At great risk to my life. I don’t think you sound very grateful.”
Nick remembered the way the jock’s fingers had bent awkwardly and said, “No, no. I am. I don’t know if it’ll work with a cricket. I don’t even know what a cricket does.”
“We don’t even know what you’re trying to do,” Seth pointed out.
Ah! Nick’s moment to shine! “Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive spider, right?” he said excitedly. He couldn’t wait for the forthcoming praise to be lavished upon him. “As shown by the fact that they’ve rebooted the movies four hundred times—he’s in Oscorp and breaks off from the convenient tour group and gets bitten on the hand by a spider that’s a part of unsanctioned experiments. Which, if you think about it, potentially opens up the multibillion-dollar company to a lawsuit in addition to turning Peter Parker into a superhero, but I digress. Also, I feel bad for Andrew Garfield. He was a good Spider-Man trapped in terrible movies. Sure, the new guy is good, but poor Andrew. His hair is so curly.”
“I’m not going to like this, am I?” Seth muttered.
“No, because you’re going to love it. Now, I don’t have access to radioactive isotopes. I don’t even know where you can get them. I tried looking online, but apparently you can’t just buy them whenever you want. I should mention that I’ve probably been flagged for that search by the CIA or the NSA, but we’ll worry about that later.”
“I can’t wait,” Gibby said dryly. “The idea of you having anything radioactive should be reason enough for its limited access.”
Nick ignored her. “So, I thought, what can I possibly do to get myself a radioactive spider? Then I figured it out.” He paused for dramatic effect. “I’ll nuke it in the microwave.”
He waited for thunderous applause.
He got thunderous silence.
Maybe they hadn’t understood. “The spider. It’ll go into the microwave. For science.”
“What,” Gibby said flatly.
“Microwaves use RF radiation,” Nick explained patiently. “And that’s a form of electromagnetic radiation. Which is radiation. Right? And so when the spider is exposed to the radiation, it will become radioactive and bite me, and I will become a Spider-Man rip-off. And I promise up front I’ll avoid the weird emo-dancing Tobey Maguire tragedy that made no sense. I don’t even know how to dance, so we should be good there.”
More silence.
He understood that it was complex. People had a hard time understanding the way his brain worked. Most days, he was on a completely different level, though he tried not to think that way too much because that made him sound like a conceited dick, and he really wasn’t.
So he gave them time to process, because he was a good friend.
Jazz spoke first. “Okay. I can see it. Problem. It’s not a spider. It’s a cricket.”
Nick tried not to glare at her. “And whose fault is that?”
She shrugged. “Maybe next time say thank you when someone gives you something.”
“Thank you for not getting me what I asked for.”
“You’re welcome. So, you won’t be Spider-Man. You’ll be Cricket-Man. And your superpower will be rubbing your legs together to make noise late at night when everyone is trying to sleep to remind them you exist and are very annoying.”
“Yes,” Gibby breathed. “Yes to this. Yes to all of it. Oh my god, yes. This is so stupid. I can’t wait. White people are freaky.”
Nick closed his eyes and took a deep breath. One part of the article on idea boards told him that people might not initially grasp the concept, and that he needed to be patient. Great ideas were often born of frustration, which was a feeling he knew well. When he’d calmed himself down with a breathing exercise he’d also found on Cosmo (in addition to finding out sixteen ways to please a man that involved things he was not prepared to read), he opened his eyes. “I appreciate your support,” he said evenly. “Does anyone else know what crickets are good for?”
“They eat plants and sometimes meat,” Gibby said, though it sounded like she was struggling not to laugh. “And that chirping sound is used to scare away other males, and to find a mate.” She grinned smugly at Seth. “I wonder what would happen if Nick chirped with his legs.”
“This is the dumbest conversation we’ve ever had,” Seth muttered.
“They can jump really high,” Nick said, trying to find a way to salvage this debacle. “So, my superpower could be that I jump over things.” It wasn’t ideal, but he could work with that. Leap tall buildings in a single bound? Completely original.
“And your chirping could be a supersonic sound wave that knocks people through walls,” Jazz said, eyes wide. “Once you landed from jumping really high, you could lie down in front of the bad guys and rub your legs at them.”
Gibby cackled, her arms clutched around her middle.
“Okay,” Nick said, pushing
through his annoyance. “This isn’t so bad. Mostly. Next step. I would be Cricket-Man. And since I’ll be shipped with Shadow Star, we need to discuss our ship name.” That was the part he cared about the most.
“CricketStar,” Gibby wheezed, bending over.
“ShadowCricket,” Nick decided, because Gibby was the worst. “It’s … okay. I mean, sure, it could be better, but still. It sounds like—Gibby, I swear to god if you don’t stop laughing, I probably won’t do anything about it, but I could.”
Gibby continued to laugh, because everyone knew Nick’s threats were empty, no matter how much he bared his teeth.
“So, let me get this straight,” Seth said. “You want to take this cricket and put it into the microwave. You want to nuke the cricket and then have it bite you.”
“Yes,” Nick said, grateful he had a best friend like Seth who understood him. “That’s exactly what I want to do. Thank you, Seth, for being the way you are. It’s truly—”
Seth sighed. “Nicky, I don’t know why I need to explain to you how many things are wrong with that.”
Nick frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“First, crickets don’t bite people.”
“Wrong,” Jazz said, looking down at her phone. “According to this website on crickets called CricketsAreCool.com, it’s rare, but they do.” She wrinkled her nose. “Though apparently they carry a significant number of diseases. But it’s okay! None of them are fatal to humans. If anything, maybe that will be a part of your superpowers. In addition to shock-wave legs, you’ll be able to make people moderately ill.”
Gibby lay on the bed, tears streaming down her face as she rocked back and forth.
“Second,” Seth said through gritted teeth, “if you put a bug in the microwave, it’ll die.”