Hero (31 page)

"How'd Dad do it?" I waited for an answer. "Mom?"

"Sorry, honey, I was just thinking. I've been wondering the best way to tell you this part. Bear with me, okay?" I heard her take a long drag of her cigarette. "When you can turn invisible, you learn that nothing is as it appears.

"Right Wing had the bright idea of holding a celebration for his promotion at his adoptive parents' farm in Kansas, so that people could see that even heroes from another quadrant of the universe have parents just like everyone else. He could always come up with a masterstroke of public relations in a pinch, and he was still a little uncomfortable that some viewed him as an alien."

Mom ripped up two floorboards in one swift yank and continued. "We followed the balloons on the signposts and turned down dirt road after dirt road until we finally came to the farm. We drove under a welcome banner to park in the field. Your father grabbed my hand and we began the long walk down the path to the farm where Right Wing's parents had adopted and raised him, ever since he'd crash-landed on our planet so many years ago.

"Your father picked a handful of wildflowers for me along the way—he loved to do goofy stuff like that—and he opened the gate to the front yard for me. I had no idea what was waiting for us inside.

"After we'd devoured a pig on a spit and mounds of potato salad, we settled down for cake, and washed it down with that God-awful punch made out of ginger ale and sherbet. Captain Victory got up on a platform and thanked Ma and Pa Wing for welcoming us to their modest dwelling for such a momentous occasion. That little town had never seen so much press, but there they were, right on the farm, ready for the big announcement.

"So Captain Victory introduced your father, who gave a very moving speech about his sidekick, the plucky young Right Wing, who'd been training hard and developing a whole new host of superpowers that had manifested themselves once the kid had reached adulthood. 'At his age,' Hal said, 'most of us are just starting to shave. But this kid has to orbit the planet at least once a day for the sun to recharge his battery.' The crowd laughed. Corny jokes were the hallmark of most League events. At this point, I was almost asleep in my chair. 'Ladies and gentlemen, we proudly introduce to you our newest full-fledged member, Justice.'

"And Right Wing flew onto the stage as Justice, and I woke up. He nearly took my breath away. I couldn't believe what I saw. The boy who'd been bugging your father for so long, interrupting our time together, well, he'd grown up. And out.

His muscles bulged out of his new uniform, a more modern look than the rest of the League. And he was the only one who didn't wear a mask, so you could see just how handsome a face he'd grown into. He wasn't a boy anymore; he was a man.

"The press went wild, snapping picture after picture. Justice looked truly spectacular. I remember your father and Captain Victory standing on the side of the platform with beaming smiles on their faces. They were proud of their new hero, a product of three generations of training, and here the press was eating it up.

'"Before I give you a demonstration of my full, new array of powers,' Justice announced. 'I'd like to bring someone back to the front. Hal?'

"He drew your father next to him and put his arm around his mentor's shoulders. 'This, my friends, is the greatest hero on the planet. All my life I've dreamed of being half the hero he is. I just wanted to say thank you, Hal, from the bottom of my heart. I owe it all to you.'

"The crowd applauded. I, of course, stood up from my seat and whistled. I thought it was a sweet gesture from Justice, especially considering how strained things had been between him and your dad since I'd entered the picture.

"Justice glanced out at me and looked quickly away. 'I'd like to give my mentor back the floor.' Then he ducked offstage.

"Your father stepped up to the microphone and said, 'Thank you, Justice, I know you'll make us all proud. To shift gears a minute, I'd like to point out a very special woman in the audience tonight. Lila?' Your father craned his neck. 'Has anyone seen Lila?'

"That got a laugh from the audience. Even Warrior Woman chuckled.

"Well, yes, I'd turned invisible. I still used to do that whenever I felt the least bit embarrassed, and suddenly all eyes were on me, so what'd you expect me to do?

"When I returned to view, my cheeks were beet-red.

"'Lila, would you please join me onstage?'

"And that's when the pictures started snapping. Your father reached for my hand, but the paparazzi were focused on their newest hero, Justice. Whispers spread throughout the audience like wildfire. I didn't need superhearing to know what they were saying. They thought I'd been brought up onstage because I was the faithful girlfriend."

"So what's wrong with that?" I asked.

"Because they thought I was the faithful girlfriend"—she took a full swig of her drink—"of Justice.

"Before I knew it, the press had descended on us; they were up out of their chairs, and we were mobbed. Let's get one of you with your arm around her! How about a kiss, you two! I held my hand up, I said no, but nothing seemed to work. Justice pulled me over and whispered in my ear. 'Don't worry, Lila. Just go with it. Give 'em what they want, and they'll be gone in an instant.'

"I stood there, dumbstruck at the attention. I searched for your father through the glare of the lights. I thought I saw him disappear behind the refreshments table, and that's when the money shot happened."

"The money shot?" I'm not sure I wanted to know the rest of this story.

"He kissed me. Justice planted a big one on my lips. It took me by total surprise—I wouldn't lie about that—and I just closed my eyes and went with it. The crowd went nuts. Cameras flashed like crazy. I knew immediately I'd made a terrible mistake.

"And when it was all over, and the crowd had cleared out, I finally saw your father by the punch bowl. I ran over to him as fast as I could; he was uncharacteristically silent. Although he was never prone to outbursts—as you know, inbmsts are more his speed."

She sure got that part right.

"He said he needed some air. I told him I'd come with him, but he said he wanted to walk alone."

"And you let him go?" I asked.

"Of course not." Mom yanked up another board and winged it aside for emphasis. "I said lift with your legs, sweetheart, not your back.

"You'll discover one day, Thorn, if you haven't discovered it already, there's one thing we do when people tell us no. It's in our blood."

"What's that?"

A bottle of water appeared in the air in front of me. I downed all of it in one full gulp.

"We do it anyway." Then a hand towel floated toward me and wiped the sweat off my forehead.

"They didn't call me Invisible Lass for nothing. I followed your father for the rest of the day, and he had no idea.

"He walked around back, where Captain Victory tried to calm him down. I listened to the Captain defend me. That I couldn't possibly have known that Justice was going to plant one on me. But he knew as well as your father there was one thing I hadn't done."

"What was that?" I wanted to know.

"Turn invisible," she replied.

"He left Captain Victory and walked down to the river. I'd been following about thirty feet behind, but when he stopped to watch the current, I gathered my courage and decided to reveal myself to him. I moved toward him, confidently, and then I saw him reach into his pocket. What he did next made me stop dead in my tracks.

"He pulled out a modest but elegant diamond engagement ring. He held it to his heart, then balled it up in his fist and launched it into the river. He watched as the current carried off the small ripple of water.

"He turned around to leave, but by that time I'd disappeared again. Your father spent the rest of the day alone, wandering around the fields and woods. Finally, hours later, as evening was about to fall, he came across an enormous crater. It was probably the one left after Justice's escape pod crash-landed into earth all those years ago. He stood on the lip of the crater and looked down as far as he could, and then he began the long climb down to see how far it would go.

"He said it took at least two hours before he could finally make it to the bottom. At the very bottom, he spotted something."

I looked up from the floorboards, interested in what came next. We'd pulled up enough boards now that the room was glowing bright.

"It was a spark of purple, a beam of color shining through the darkness. He reached down and tried to grab the light, and when he stood back up he found the most peculiar rock in his hand. He said he could barely exhale because he was so taken with the rock's beauty.

"He sat it in the gravel and watched its purple glow for a long time, long enough for the sun to drop in the sky, and he thought about what to do with his life. He"'made a lot of decisions that day, some I didn't find out about until much later."

I didn't want to leave a mess, so I began stacking the discarded floorboards.

"Don't worry about those," Mom said, and ripped up another one.

"He didn't tell me about what he'd found that day. After we got home he took the precious stone to every geologist he could find, but none of them could identify it.

"It was about that time that your father stopped talking. Eventually he took an official leave of absence from the League, which wasn't all that uncommon for our rotating roster. He said he needed space, and I respected that. But what bothered me the most was that he didn't take calls and he wouldn't answer his door. He wouldn't even talk to me."

"How'd you get him to come out?" I asked. We'd kept yanking up the floorboards, and we had a quite a collection of them. I felt like I was a little boy again, and Mom had laid out the Concentration cards on the floor and I was trying to remember where all the pairs were. We plucked the boards up, pair by pair, until eventually there were only a few left.

"He showed up at school one morning. There was a knock on the door while I was teaching fractions, and when I opened it, there was your father, kneeling on one knee, dressed in a clean, pressed suit, a bouquet of daisies he'd picked in one hand, and a small jewel box in the other.

"I opened the box. In it was a beautifully carved ring with the most curious glowing purple gem mounted on top. A perfect circle of violet radiation. The kids in the class oohed and aahed. Your father explained he'd found a stone that no expert had been able to identify. He said that it was the only thing worthy of giving me, that I was as unique as the stone itself, perfect and beautiful and bright and special, and he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me."

I laid the crowbar on the crystal floor and couldn't help but smile. This was what every child wanted to hear. That they were born of a perfect love, a perfect union.

We were coming to the end of the floorboards.

"Your father had spent that month holed up in his apartment carving two matching wedding rings out of that strange, beautiful stone. He was so damn proud of those things that he could barely wait for us to put them on. We got married at city hall the next afternoon."

"I didn't know Dad could do something like that."

Mom chuckled.

"Your father can do just about anything when he puts his mind to it, powers or no powers."

Her comment should have sounded like a compliment, but somehow it didn't.

"When he explored the crater and discovered that rock, that sparkle of indigo, he said it gave him the one thing he needed most of all: hope. Hope that we could make a new life together. Hope that our love for each other would be enough.

"Later, when I looked down at the ring on my finger, the stone sometimes felt so heavy that I could barely lift my hand. It can be an awful responsibility when you're someone's only hope. But that part didn't come until later, when your father came to this very site." She attacked the last floorboard with extra vigor and pitched it across the floor. "Here we are."

The light was blinding, and I had to cover my eyes until they adjusted. We stood on a bright, smooth crystal floor, and as I stared beneath me, the crystal seemed to continue down for miles.

"They'll tell you the monster flew back to whatever crab nebula it crawled out of, but don't believe a word of it. That's what they want you to think. Because if people knew that that thing was still here, no matter what state it's in, if people knew the danger . . .

"Here's what really happened, Thorn. When there was no other option left, with the entire world at stake, your father plunged his hand into the creature's heart. They called those things Planet Eaters for a reason, you know—he really didn't have a choice. There wasn't time to wait for the rest of the League to show up. Your father had been first to respond to the crisis. Despite his lack of superspeed, he was always vigilant that way. It was a last-ditch effort at saving the world. Blowing up a few buildings is a lot better than an exploding planet, but people aren't very interested in simple arithmetic when there's blame to assign. Sometimes what you choose to do in a crisis can change your whole life in a single instant." I now knew a little bit about what that meant. I missed my dad right then.

"When your father's fist struck the Planet Eater's heart, something happened. Maybe it was your dad's hand, maybe it was the ring on his finger, nobody knows. But we all know the result. Somehow your father's fist fused with the creature's core seconds before it was about to achieve meltdown and consume our planet, and this was the result. Instead of incinerating the planet, the creature instantly crystallized into a dazzling rock that extends to, well, you know what? No one's ever been able to figure out just how far down it goes. Or, fortunately, how to reactivate it. This crystal is that creature, frozen in time. It was about to destroy our planet, and your father stopped it."

She narrowed her eyes and peered deep into the crystal.

"There was a high price, though. The shock of that creature turning into crystal emitted such force, almost everything in the immediate vicinity was obliterated. The Wilson Tower vaporized. So many died."