Hero (10 page)

"So I made an appointment with him at the paper, told him I had an important tip. I was probably only fifteen at the time— God, I had some balls. I put on my Sunday finest, marched right over to his desk in the newsroom, and sat down. He didn't even bother to look up from his phone call. He put his hand over the receiver and told me he was really busy and that he didn't usually take anonymous tips, especially from kids, and this would have to be quick, and what was it I knew that was so important, anyway. I told him I knew who Captain Victory really was. He hung up the phone and looked at me. Then I pointed at him, sat back in my seat, smiled, and said with utter confidence, 'I knew it.'"

I caught myself smiling at the thought of Dad as a teenager, taking the piss out of some too-busy journalist and figuring out one of the world's great mysteries, just because he believed.

"So I told him either he would take me on as his sidekick and teach me everything he ever knew ..." Dad took another sip of his tea. "Or I'd go to the rival paper with the story."

I choked on my drink. "You blackmailed'him?"

"Basically, yeah."

Dad caught himself smiling at the memory and then suddenly stopped, probably when he began to think about whatever happened to that brave little fifteen-year-old from the Barry Robinson Home for Wayward Boys who knew exactly how to get what he wanted in life and wasn't afraid to go after it.

"Be right back." He headed upstairs, and I heard him rooting around in his closet.

He jogged down the stairs and sat back down on the floor, his costume still laid out in front of him, and handed me a box of old pictures. Mom wasn't the only one with a secret stash.

"He said he'd take me on as his protege on one condition: that one day I'd return the favor and take on my own sidekick."

In my head I could see that secret picture Mom had taken of Captain Victory, Dad, and his sidekick, Right Wing, each of them holding up three fingers for the camera, three generations of heroes.

For as long as I could remember, this period of Dad's life had been a blind spot. He'd never said more than two words about his time as the world's worthiest hero, and I learned very young— after only one spanking, in fact—never to ask. But sure as it was almost sunup, here he was sharing with me the details of his origin. I guess death brings out all sorts of things in people.

I leafed through the pile of pictures, Dad and the Ol' Vic fighting the good fight. Their own rogues' gallery of villains, the serious ones, the ones everyone remembers. Sure, they foiled a major bank robbery attempt here, a jail breakout there, but really they were all about saving the world. It was cool to see Dad smiling in so many of the pictures. It made me wonder if I would look back at old pictures of myself and realize I hadn't smiled very often when I was young.

Dad slipped the shirt part of his costume over his T-shirt and fastened the buttons from bottom to top. He sucked in his gut and looked at himself in the mirror on the wall.

"How do I look?"

The third button down, right above his solar plexus, popped off the shirt, flew across the room, and landed with a splash in his cup of tea.

For a second I didn't know how to react—would this set Dad off? Then, with no warning, we both exploded into a fit of laughter. Dad actually had to kneel down on the floor to catch his breath, he was laughing so hard. It felt good to laugh this way with Dad. Healthy and real.

He reached over for the mug, gulped down its remaining contents, and flashed me a big smile with the button wedged firmly between his teeth. That set me off laughing again, and Dad was chuckling so much—his shoulders bouncing up and down uncontrollably—that he had trouble threading the needle to sew the button back on. I watched him struggle with the needle and thread as he laughed, and my mind flashed to a memory of how Mom used to sew on a button in seconds flat without even taking her eyes off that spot she always seemed to be looking at outside the window.

"Can I ask you a question?"

Dad caught his breath and nodded. "Sure."

"How did you do all those great things? I mean, without superpowers or anything."

I saw a smile creep into the corners of Dad's mouth.

"Well, I worked very, very hard training and preparing. There's no room for error in that line of work, so I was supremely dedicated. And whenever I really needed to step up, I just believed in myself. That was usually all it took. Then I could do whatever I wanted."

I thought for a minute how nice it must be to believe in yourself.

"Hey, Dad." I cleared my throat. "Why do you think I never get sick?"

"That's two questions." The smile that had been forming in the corners of his mouth was gone.

I'd never felt this close to Dad before, and I really wanted to talk about what was on my mind, about all these changes happening inside me.

"I haven't been sick since I was little and had strep that time, not even a cold. It's pretty unusual, isn't it?"

Dad looked down and poked the needle through the hole of the button.

"I don't know, I guess we eat pretty well, and you get a lot of exercise."

"Yeah, but Dad, c'mon, when was the last time you remember me getting a sniffle? You've got to admit it's pretty extraordinary."

He pulled the needle through the thick, stubborn cloth.

"I'm not sure I'd call a kid with a major seizure disorder the picture of perfect health. What are you getting at?" He pinned me with his eyes, his head still.

I wanted to tell him everything. I wanted to tell him about that guy at the basketball game and how he looked at me so strangely, how it made me feel so weird, how my hands burned when I put them on his leg, and then how he suddenly wasn't hurt anymore. How I thought I had the seizures under control, because they're just a by-product of these new powers, and guess what, I just had my first real rescue on this bus, well, sort of my first rescue, and then I met the League, and they invited me to tryiout. Your own son, can you believe it? I wanted to tell him that I'd found Mom's old pictures.

"Why did Mom leave?"

Even before I finished asking, I knew it was a question my father wouldn't answer.

Dad looked back down at his button. He inhaled deeply, sighed, and rubbed his weary eyes with the nub of his hand. He looked down at the melted flesh where his fingers used to be and pretended to check his watch.

"We should get some sleep."

And just like that the walls were back up. I sat perfectly still and watched Dad collect the beer cans, then I took the mug and put it in the sink. Dad tossed the cans in the recycling bin and told me to leave the dishes, he'd wash them tomorrow.

I crawled into bed, and the sheets felt cool and smooth. I didn't bother closing the shades because I wanted to look at the moon for a while and turn my mind off.

I was drifting off when my door creaked open. Dad poked his head inside.

"I don't want you to worry, Thorn. You'll find the right girl to settle down with one day, and you'll make it work. You won't make the same mistakes I did."

Then he gently closed the door, careful not to make a noise, and I didn't hear the floorboards as he crept off to bed. I turned over and faced the window with my eyes wide open in the moonlight.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I WOKE UP EARLY, a whole hour before my alarm. School was out, but I still got up early. I had butterflies in my stomach about going to the League tryouts. I bolted upright in my bed with one overwhelming thought: what was I supposed to wear? I shook my head. What a girl. Even so, first impressions are everything, and I didn't really know what was appropriate for this kind of thing. Do you wear a costume? Something so you're ready to fight and go through some combat training drills if that's what they ask you to do? Or maybe it's more like a job interview, where you wear your nicest clothes to show respect for the others who are higher up on the totem pole.

After a quick shower I laid out two separate outfits on my bed. First my coat, tie, and khakis, my one nice outfit for all respectable occasions—weddings, funerals, or school pictures. Next to it, I spread out my old wet suit, which I hadn't used since last summer, when I decided that although riding a wave was pretty fun, fighting fifty punks named Laird all day for the same dinky set of waves wasn't all it was cracked up to be. The wet suit might be put to better use fighting crime instead.

I zipped up the wet suit and stared at myself in the mirror. It looked enough like a costume to pass. I glanced at my bed-sheets, and instantly decided there was no way I'd wear a cape. Dad had always told me that unless you know how to move with a cape, they just get in the way. More often than not, he said, they were the tip-off of a real amateur, and the last thing I wanted was for everyone at tryouts to think I was an amateur. I looked at myself standing there in my wet suit, my basketball high-tops on my feet. I chucked the high-tops in the back of my closet and put on my black army boots instead. They looked tougher and they didn't stand out as much as the white sneakers.

Then I had a minor panic attack. What if everyone else wore respectable clothes? Would they think who the hell does this clown think he is, the Silver Surfer? I nearly pulled my left arm out of joint trying to get my white oxford shirt over the wet suit. As long as I didn't breathe too much, I was able to button up the shirt and put on my tie. My arms sort of stuck out, propped up by the cushionlike effect of the wet suit underneath. I looked at myself in the mirror.

Not bad.

I heard the door close downstairs and I looked out the window and spied Dad, impeccably dressed in his old uniform, as he walked out onto the front porch. It was so early that the paperboy was pulling up to our driveway on his dirt bike. The kid took one look at my fathet and did a double take, like he was trying to figure out if today was Halloween or not. With his good hand, Dad took the newspaper out of the dumbstruck kid's pouch, and with a gentle flick of his wrist, casually tossed it over his shoulder so that it landed perfectly square on the front doormat of our porch. Dad pulled the car keys out of his utility belt, climbed into his old Camaro, fired it up, and slowly pulled out of the driveway. The paper boy didn't move a muscle until Dad's car had disappeared down the street.

I wandered into Dad's closet and pulled an old sport coat from the back rung. It was dark and caked with dust, but it fit nicely over my wet suit, so I wiped it down and put it on. Downstairs I grabbed my backpack, shoved a piece of toast in my mouth, and saw a note Dad had left for me on the front hall table.

Thorn, gone to the funeral. Good luck at the game today. Sorry I won't be able to make it.    —Dad

I had told him I had an away game this afternoon a couple hours' drive across state. Under normal circumstances he would have picked out the lie with just one or two questions, like for instance, Hey, what's the name of the school? But in his state all he could do was apologize for not being able to make the trip. The toast felt funny in my stomach; it didn't mix well with the guilt.

The bus is the slowest mode of transportation ever. It dumped me off downtown about half an hour late, so I ran to the park. When I finally got there, the memorial service was already halfway over. The park was overflowing with people, most of them either weeping or trying to get a look at the celebrities in the front row. I'd never seen so many people in one place in my life, and it was weird to see them overcome with emotion for someone who was a complete stranger. I nudged my way past a candlelight vigil and a large family whose mother was passing out sandwiches to all the kids from a giant igloo cooler. Then I nearly tripped over an elderly woman in a wheel¬chair, who apologized for getting in my way.

"He saved me during the Disastro Attack of '63. Picked me up and scooted me right out of the path of that death ray, he did." She nodded like of course I would remember the incident, like my scrapbook was filled with her clippings, and I smiled back politely before I climbed past her through the crowd.

Silence spread throughout the masses, and I saw all heads turn up and look to the sky. The League descended from the clouds and landed on the stage. Justice hovered up to the microphone to deliver the eulogy, and I heard a female fan's distant scream from the outer reaches of the crowd, over by the Porta Potties.

"We love you, Uberman!"

A cool trickle made its way down my forehead, and my eye stung with the salt of sweat. The wet suit was boiling hot underneath the sport coat. I wiped my brow with the sleeve of Dad's old jacket and tried to listen, but the reverb was so bad on the sound system, only the closest few hundred people could actually hear Justice.

There was an endless train of testimonials from people who all thought they were more famous than the next. A few ex-presidents who'd kept in the public eye mostly as guests on cable news shows, some old movie stars, a couple of young journalists who waxed on about Victory's legacy, with words like "resonate" and "zeitgeist." All I could think about was how I never remembered seeing a single one of these people anywhere near that dank nursing home whenever Dad and I visited the old-timer.

My nostrils filled with a familiar smell, and my eyes scanned the grounds for the gardenias. The smell always reminded me of my mom, since they were her favorite flower. I didn't see gardenias anywhere nearby, but I knew they must be there.

I looked at my watch and suddenly I was worried about getting a head start on the crowd. I didn't want to be late for tryouts. Plus, I needed a Gatorade. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and turned to leave, when I spotted my father crouched behind a lighting crew, where he'd managed to steal a spot near the stage. He knelt on one knee, and his eyes looked heavy as he listened intently to each speaker. He didn't see me.

The slew of celebrity mourners streamed off the stage after the service, and I lost sight of Dad in the crowd. I was nervous that he'd bump into me and ask why I wasn't at my game. I wiped more sweat off my forehead and contemplated making a run for it, but my eyes caught a glimpse of Uberman, still up onstage with the rest of the League as they paid respects to family and friends of the deceased hero. I'd never seen Uberman with such a look of genuine sadness on his face. He tightly hugged a girl who I assumed to be one of Captain Victory's attractive great-grandnieces, and she cried into his chest, right in the spot where I'd always imagined my head would rest at night when he and I drifted off to sleep together in our beach house, with our golden retriever puppy nestled peacefully at our feet.