Hero (19 page)

I filed the archives back on the shelf. I'd been going through old articles and pictures since I got there.

I'd come home from the rec center to a dark house, because Dad was working late again. I'd run a glass of water under the faucet and noticed the kitchen sink was grainy and dry. Neither of us had been home long enough to use it for days. I felt the weight of silence bearing down on me, and I kept hearing Goran repeat the word "girlfriend" in my head. I had to get out of there, and I went to the one place where I felt at least a little bit at home—the League library.

Each member of every tryout squad was required to take a test on League history. If you could read, you could pass it. But I'd taken a real interest in the League's history and pored over the archives every chance I got. A sea of glorious victories from World War II. Parades. Trickster villains defeated either by wits or through their own folly. Throngs of adoring fans. Newspaper photos of the team in poses that promised better lives ahead for all of us. I would spend hours alone with the books, my only company the hum of the air conditioner. I hadn't seen much about my mother yet. Saw plenty of my father. Very little about the tragedy, no mention of his disgrace. His status was merely listed as inactive, which I guess was a step up from revoked.

Warrior Woman apparently didn't trust me to leave on my own. She waited by the door with her trigger finger on the light switch.

She smiled as I walked out the door, and I thought she was going to say something kind.

"Maybe you should spend more time learning how to use your powers instead."

Everyone's a critic.

*  *  *

I walked down the corridor to the locker room to get my dirty clothes. Even Typhoid Larry said they smelled bad, so I knew it was time for a wash, probably time to keep more than one change of clothes in the locker, too. I held the old clothes to my nose. They smelled sour and stale.

The laundry room and janitor's closet were on the top floor, near the exit to the observation deck. I thought I'd just drop the stuff in the wash before I left, and I could put it in the dryer when I came back the next morning. The hall was slick and clean, and I could hear my boots squeak. When I turned the corner, I saw a light coming from a crack in the door to the observation deck.

I poked my head inside, and the hinges squeaked as the door crept open.

"Come in," Justice said without turning around.

He stood with his back to me, his hands clasped and resting on the small of his back. I could tell his chin was lifted, his face raised to the heavens. A giant plate glass window stretched out in front of him. I hadn't realized the headquarters was this vast. He stared out into space. A giant telescope, something you'd see in a planetarium, stood on the other side of the room, pristine and ready for someone to look through it. I wondered how far away he could see with X-ray vision and a telescope.

"Go ahead and take a look if you want." His body didn't move when he spoke.

I walked over to the telescope, my boots still squishing, and brushed a tiny cobweb away from the lens and looked through it. I probably let out a gasp. I'd never seen space like this before, not on any field trip, not in any sci-fi movie. I stoodthere for I don't know how long, but it must have been a while because the moon had moved across the sky when I finally took a step back.

Justice remained perfectly still the entire time. Suddenly I felt like a big stone that had plopped down into a placid, calm lake, wrecking the smooth surface with a cannonball splash. I took a deep breath and almost gagged. I was still holding my dirty clothes.

"Sorry about the clothes," I said. "They really stink."

"You all smell to me."

I blinked a few times, repeated his line in my head. Did he just say we all smelled to him? He could see what I was thinking.

"I'm not from this universe. The whole planet smells different to me."

Oh. Okay. It's true that he was from another planet.

"You've been doing a good job, Thorn, even at the hospital. You're doing a lot better than you think." He turned to look at me and gave me a gentle smile.

"Your mother would be very proud of you."

Holy shit. I'd almost forgotten.

"You knew my mother."

"A very special woman," he continued, his eyes glued back on the stars. "She served on our stealth squad longer than any other member."

That didn't make sense to me. At least the timing of it didn't. When did she serve? Was she still doing it after she got married? When I was born? Could she have hidden something like that from us? Did Dad know? And what about Dad, why didn't Justice talk about him?

"Do you know—" I had to take a breath to get the whole question out. I wasn't used to asking questions about my mother. "Do you know where she is?"

Justice sighed and rubbed his eyes. Maybe superbeings from other planets got eyestrain just like the rest of us.

"I wish I knew, Thorn." His eyes drifted back toward the universe, and I knew there was something he wasn't telling me. "Do you want a drink?"

"Warrior Woman told me I had to leave."

Justice chuckled. "Warrior Woman's a bitch."

I laughed.

"Well, sometimes. I mean it in a good-hearted way; don't tell her I said that. Our secret." He winked at me, and I nodded.

We sat on the ledge of the terrace, and he handed me a ginger ale.

"Aren't you going to have anything?" I asked. I took a sip and felt the fizzy air tingle in my nostrils.

"I don't need sustenance the same way you do, but if it makes you feel more comfortable ..." He suddenly had a drink in his hand. I hadn't even seen him get it. Superspeed takes a long time to get used to. I didn't know he had that power. I guess there was a lot I still didn't know about him.

"You can go ahead and ask," he said, and looked at my probationary ring. "I can see the question in your mind." Justice took a sip of his drink and pretended to taste it.

"Why don't you and my dad talk anymore?"

Justice stared down into the bubbles of his drink as they rose to the surface and popped.

"That's something you should ask him. I don't want to get between father and son. Family's theWost important thing, you have to respect that."

I nodded and tried to hide my disappointment. Doing the right thing was always a lot easier when you weren't dying to know what really happened.

"I'd give anything to have my family back," Justice said, a sudden confession. He looked up at the sky, and I saw a great sadness tugging at his eyelids. "My whole planet, everything I ever knew, everyone I ever loved, gone, just like that."

We all knew the legend. How his parents had sent him out in a rocket ship the very last minute before the planet exploded, how he'd been found in a crater and taken in by a kind, elderly couple.

"I can't look at the stars without thinking about my home planet." He drifted for a moment in an ocean of memory. "I couldn't get back to that part of the universe even if I wanted to. It would take a force so great ..." He lost himself in the thought, then cut a glance over to me.

"Something else is bothering you." His focus came back to me, and then to my ring. "Want to talk about it?"

I did. I wanted to talk about everything, to tell him all about growing up with this crazy crush on Uberman, about how much I wanted to count in the world, about how bad I wanted to make the League because it was the only thing that really meant anything to me, and about this tall, lean foreign guy I played basketball with every day and how it really bothered me to hear him say the word girlfriend, and I wanted to tell him that my dad really sucked because he was all closed up and walled off, and I could never have a conversation like this with him.

I looked into his face and saw honesty. Justice really wanted to know, and believe it or not, that was good enough for me because it was the first time in a long time I felt like anyone genuinely cared about me.

We sat and sipped our drinks and stared out at the stars and let the silence speak for us.

The moon was even lower in the sky, and I felt much better now, maybe a little high from all the sugar in the ginger ale.

"I guess I should get going," I said, and hopped off the ledge onto the terrace.

Justice nodded and took my glass. I picked up my clothes, and he said, "Your father doesn't know about any of this, does he?"

I stared down at the bundle of dirty clothes in my arms.

"Don't worry." Justice patted me on the shoulder. "I won't tell him, that's up to you."

Our secret.                                          

Dad was setting his alarm to go to sleep when I tiptoed upstairs. I could hear the ancient bleeps of his old digital clock radio, his ten-year anniversary gift from the factory.

"That you, Thom?" he called from the other side of his door.

"G'night, Dad." I kept on going to my room. I closed the door and stretched out on my bed and thought about Justice and our talk. I reached under the mattress and took out the old pictures of Mom.

She smiled back at me in her slick, trim costume, a teen fashion model caught in a coy pose. You'd never know what was really lurking in her mind, behind the magazine smile held up to keep you out. Had she been a part of the League's secret espionage squad even then? Who would ever have suspected that a sweet girl fresh out of teachers college was sneaking around behind your back? I guess it was a good cover.

Then it hit me that there was only one way Mom could have made her cover better: have a kid. Who would suspect a mom? In between running carpools, cutting cookies, scheduling appointments, and returning library books, who'd find the time to be a world-class spy? Was I part of the perfect cover? And why would she leave the note and the pictures for me? Maybe she didn't disappear of her own free will. Maybe she wasn't even alive.

I held the picture to my heart and let the air out of my chest. I couldn't think straight I was so tired, and my eyelids felt heavy. I lifted my head up and looked at the door. Ever so slightly, I heard the soft scraping of Dad's callused feet on the carpet outside in the hallway. He was good, but I was his son. I knew he was on the other side of the door, his hand raised in a fist, deciding whether to knock. I suddenly wondered if he knew I was listening, if he was waiting to see if I wanted to talk, too. I wondered if he knew how much I wanted to grab his melted hand and test my strength and show him what I'd learned to do, and pour all of my power out until his hand healed completely. But we remained on separate sides of the door in silence.

This is how we played the game, neither of us saying a word. A few moments passed and I heard Dad scuffle back to his room and crawl into bed.

* * *

I kicked ass the next day at tryouts.

Justice called all of the groups togethet and announced a competition, an old-fashioned field day with long jumps and egg tosses and hot dog eating contests. They ctanked up the S.T.A., and suddenly we were in the middle of a perfectly manicured field of spring greens and golds.

No one was allowed to use powers, that was the only rule. The object of the game was to have fun, blow off a little steam, foster a little camaraderie.

"Hope you don't screw this up too," Galaxy Girl said to me when we lined up for the fifty-yard dash. Trash talk from a girl with a ring orbiting around her face. Spectrum fired the start gun, and Galaxy Guy stuck out his foot and tried to trip me as I took off. No way was I going to lose to those twin assholes. I leaped over his foot and sprinted like I'd been doing every morning at the rec center with Goran, and when I crossed the finish line, I turned around and saw I was a full two lengths ahead of my nearest opponent, Mr. Mist.

Ruth awarded Galaxy Guy and Girl their ribbons.

"Hey, fourth and fifth place is better than no place at all." She draped the ribbons over their heads, careful to avoid the moons. Galaxy Girl's got hung up on the ring around her head. She yanked it off and tossed it on the ground.

"We're still two hundred points ahead of you, you old bag."

Ruth suddenly doubled over and dropped to the ground.

"Ruth, what is it? Are you okay?!" I ran over to help her up.

"I see . . . I see . . ." Ruth grabbed her temples in pain. "I see the future, and it's a League with no twins."

"Very funny." The Galaxy Twins backed off and headed over to the refreshment table.

Ruth called after them, "If you're really good, I'll let you know which soap star is going to host your Where Are They Now? special!" She scanned the grass around her feet. "Where's my flask?"

Miss Scarlett and Golden Boy showed up for the wheelbarrow races.

"Where have you two been?" Larry asked.

Scarlett smeared cherry lip gloss on her lower lips with a hot-pink applicator. "I had to work late." She smacked her lips.

I called a last-minute substitution during King of the Mountain and had Larry stand in for me. Powers or no powers, we won because nobody wanted to get near him. He sat on top of the hill and looked out at all of the heroes and rested his chin in his hand with an Is-that-all-there-is? look on his face.

By the end of the afternoon we were neck and neck with the Galaxy Twins' team. The day's winner would get a bonus two hundred points, which would put us back squarely in the running with the other teams in the overall tryouts. All we had to do was win the last event.

Warrior Woman marched onto the field with two large banners and announced that the final, deciding event would be Capture the Flag, another game I hadn't played since I was a kid. The Galaxy Twins walked by our team with their flag. Galaxy Girl accidentally-on-purpose hit Scarlett with the end of her flag as she passed. It caught Scarlett right below the ribs.

"Oh, I'm sorry."

Scarlett's eyes went white hot with anger.

Galaxy Girl adjusted the buttons on her custom-designed Gucci costume, taking extra care to show off her trim, bare midriff. Scarlett eyed Galaxy Girl's tight, exposed stomach and wrapped her arms around her own waist. The twins reeked of privilege, expendable incomes, and inheritance—bags under their eyes from too much champagne too late at the clubs, never from a late shift or an early shift. They had a different high-end designer do a new costume for every new moon cycle. Word was they had their own reality series in the works.