Chapter Sixteen: Ain't No Rest For...

When I came to Starlight City, I expected fights. I expected grit, darkness, and well? Picture this: me standing on a rooftop as the rain whips up my sexy black hair and police sirens wail in the background. But this? The thrift store suit, the gel in my hair, and my sudden (often) realizations that I'd rather roll around in a bed of nails than smile at one more mom and offer a"Supers are abominations, am I right?" This, this is not a picture I want pictured.

The first week, I copy my dad's approach to the whole jamming-rhetoric-down-the-throats-of-the-sweet-and-unsuspecting thing , the one he told me over and over about at all those sad Christmases we had in the empty living room. When he was young and handsome, he said, he'd slick down his hair with bear grease and knock on every door in his district. It would take him weeks. Housewives and stay-at-home dads would invite him in for afternoon coffee or freshly-baked pie. And at their own tables, he'd sweep them off their feet with his swooping speeches and pretty rhetoric.

With my hair slicked back and my thrift store tie as unwrinkled as I can hand-iron it, I go a-knocking.

"Hi, would you like to learn more about the super menace—"

And as soon as the words leave my mouth I get a door slammed in my face so hard it whooshes back my hair. Hair that was already plaster-stiff from gel. After that, I start getting, well--you call it desperate, I call it creative.

Fliers.

So I should've taken graphic design in high school.  And maybe another English class, come to think of it, but that's beside the point.

On a warm night, let's say a Tuesday, Galaxy catches me with masking tape in my mouth and six poorly designed fliers stuck to my hands. All I hear are a couple of cuss words and get a slight cuff on the ear, and just like that, a crowd forms around me and my the telephone pole.

(by crowd I mean mob)

On a cooler night, on a let's say Wednesday, I'm back at the manor house. The one with the vortex that leads to hell inside.

"I'm sorry!" I shout to a dark, trippy void. "I'm sorry, I should've worked harder. I--I--"

"Such a disappointment. If something..." The dark trippy void flashed red, and the  voice shook the ground beneath me. Disappointment. The word has followed me from my home and it probably won't leave until I die. "...radical doesn't happen by Saturday, I think you should be disposed of. Yes?"

"Yes,"  a thousand voices answered from everyone around me. I clutched my ears and fell. Up, up, up, my body went weightless in  the void while I was holding my breath, trying not to break as all the shards of color and sound buried down into my skin.  Trying not to scream. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, shut it!"

You can call it what you want, I'll call it brave. And strong. And other good words.

(So what if I'm becoming a worse liar.)

Thursday: I'm a puddle on Gideon's floor. My throat is raw, and my insides feel like they're missing. Like they're scooped out and laying there on the carpet all around me. I'm screwed, and I know it. But instead if crying, I just look up at Gideon. He's sweeping the kitchen, his shoulders sagged and his head hung. Another long shift, I know, because he smells like gourmet coffee and sweat.

"Uuuugh," I say to get his attention, "aaaaaaagh." I roll over so my face is stuffed full of carpet. It smells good, like fresh linen and the remnants of vanilla candle. The boy can clean.

"Work? What is it this time, 'classified?'"

That's what I've been telling him. Classified this, classified that. I hear the soft pad of his footsteps and I look up at his face.

Whenever I read about black eyes, I hear them described as shifty. Beady. But his are so big, so clear, I can see my scowling face reflected back in them. Everything about him is like that, soft and trusting. His perfect skin, his quiet smile. His voice, which doesn't sound manly at all. It sounds lighter than mine, and he's got two years on me. And for the first time, I'm baffled by how to make people like me, love me, because when it comes to 'lovable boys next door,' he's the real deal and I'm the cheap knockoff.  "Help me."

He sighs, long and heavy, but he's already kneeling in front of me. "That bad?"

"How do I make something everyone hates into something they really like?"

Gideon snorts. "Like me? You know, when I was a sophomore I got shoved in lockers. Embarrassed, humiliated." He pauses to lick his lips, his head tipped hard to the side. His expression makes him look like someone, something, a lot sweeter and softer than your average guy. Reminds me of Chip, and I wince. "Hell, I got jumped once."

"You?" That anyone would hurt him makes my blood hot. Then I think of Chip. "Why?"

A flash of a smirk, but I see the way his brow furrows. The way his shoulders tense. The frown, the pain, it's there, but it's not in his expression. It's in those black eyes. "Not your average kid, I guess."

"So what did you do?"

"I...well." He lays down beside me, stretching and yawning. I want him to put his hand on my back, trace my shoulder blades like he sometimes does to drown out the pain.  But instead, his hands curl up into twitching fists. Damn it. "I kind of lost myself, I lost my friends, my family."

"Oh." A familiar story. I had wondered where his parents went, why he never talked about them. And he wastes no time to fill me in.

"I took my grandpa's old ranch--It's the only thing we have left him. I spent my summers out there, riding the horses." He grins, but the grin fades into something harsh.  "Speaking the old language, sharing dinner with all the cousins and uncles and aunts I never knew I had, all thirty-something of them. It's out past the edge of the city, and I-I destroyed it." He looks at me, and suddenly I see bags under those pretty eyes I hadn't before. "Max," he says, and I hear those two extra years. Suddenly I see the man and not the pretty, fragile thing I always imagine him as. "Whatever you do, don't lose your soul. There's something likable in you, something good. You don't need to do something you don't want to to get popular. It's not worth it."

"Parties," I say, and he flinches. "You hosted parties? That's a good idea."

"Max, no, Jesus. Kid. Buy like a ton of Instagram ads and make a YouTube channel, 'ooooh, I'm hip and cool, buy my secret garbage'." He's talking so fast and flailing his hands that I turn over so I don't have to look at his anxious little dance. When he speaks, words burst out of him in one long garbly gush. "But don't do what I did.  You do it right and someone's flying out a window, your family thinks you deserve to get hunted down because you're a devil child and your superpowers are just proof, and your favorite saint is pissed because you shattered his very expensive garden shrine with a passed-out linebacker. Also, jail."

But he's already given me an idea, and with every passing moment, the idea gathers and gathers in my head. Like a snowball, it tumbles back and forth, growing bigger and bigger with each roll. "Fine," I say, "no parties."

He touches my back and I let out a sound that I don't think I've made before. A sigh. A happy sigh.

"You could do a podcast, that's what all the kids are into these days. Talk about being an emo and sing a little, then talk about the Secret Thing. They'll eat it up with a spoon." The faster he talks the tighter he digs his fingers into my back, and I decide I like his touch. Like melted gold sinking into my muscle, all hot and heavy, excuse the phrasing, and it makes me yawn. "But you gotta be good. I work long hours for little pay, but I do honest work and I make a ways for myself, by myself, and I'm proud of that. How many kids my age can say the same?"

"You win." I let my eyes fall shut. I like the way sleep finds me this time, no nightmares, no death grip of impending doom clutching at my chest. "I'll get myself a podcast."

"Good," he says, patting me on the shoulder. It's such a cheesy gesture, it makes me feel lighter. Like you could tie balloons to my chest and I'd float away. "Stay good, emo kid."

"Mmhmm." I was never good, you poor, defenseless, (kind of pathetic, really) thing. That's the retort that swishes in my mouth like a handful of nails. "I will," I say, because he's given me an idea that's far from honest, but plenty of work.

Time to make a new kind of flier.

***

Galaxy slips through the window of her best friend's apartment, tosses her helment on the floor, and tries very hard not to vomit when she finds her friend/lover/ex (it's complicated) passed out on the floor. Again. This is the fifth time she's found him like this, all sprawled out and prone. "Gatsby." She jabs her toe in to his side. He's slim and small, white hair pasted to the back of his neck, his head capped with two raised stubs that make him look like he has amputated devil horns. His body is oily and covered sweat, he's surrounded by poorly written essays, and she thinks he might have a new tattoo on his forearm. Or maybe it's a scar. "Hon, pain in the ass, are you good?"

He darts upright with a squeaky sound that's not entirely human. When she looks at the beautiful mess in front of her she thinks of the boy. If the boy saw, the angry super-hating one she keeps running into, the word 'abomination' wouldn't be very far from his mouth at all. "Well hello," he says with a dip of the head. "Lovely lady."

"Cut it, Gats." Her gauntlet goes flying across the room. "Are you drinking again or are you just getting worse?"

He throws a hand up in the air, "Worse. I can't seem to stay awake very long, my voice has been pitching in and out." He looks at his hands. Then the smirk comes out and her heart drops, because his teeth look much sharper than they did last night, and his eyes are glowing black slits in blue blue blue marble. Not very human, not very human at all. "I just drink to forget I'm, you know, dying."

"You're not--"

"Well, when they figure out a cure to someone fusing my genetics with an animal's, then I'll have hope." He smiles at her. "Til then, I'm dying. Speaking of which, you wanna go out with me tonight? As Angel would say, I'm dying to go out with you."

I live with psychopaths. "You're a fucking psychopath. I'll hunt down every scientist, I'll make them fix--"

"Go out with me. Please?" He holds a flier up to her nose. It's bright yellow, almost completely empty except for BOOZE & BAD IDEAS', along with an address in the middle of the page. "Cops'll swarm it, but we can escape to some meadow somewhere. It's in the country, we could take a walk in the moonlight. So romantic." One of the stubs up-top his head flickers. "You need a break. I miss you, you work too much. You and Angel both."

Enter her best friend, Angelos Fibbs, son of a world-renowned supervillain. Another abomination, whether it be the lopsided angel wings, the dark telekinetic powers that twist him into another person, or his trainwreck of a name. 'Angelos Monsoon Bellanova Fibbs,' also known in the supervillain community, as, unfortunately, Lucifer. To her, he's just her Angel. Precious and soft. He flings the door open, tosses his backpack on the ground and stumbles straight for the kitchen.

"Angel?"

"Hmm?" He's already rummaging through the fridge. Fresh arugula and spinach go flying onto his cutting board. The only eighteen-year-old she knows who owns a cutting board, that's Angel. "It's tostadas night. I'm making tostadas."

"Ang, there's vomit on your shirt."

"Poor Lucy." He never even looks at it. The crisp white shirt Galaxy helped him pick out in the morning is now covered in snot, paint, and definitely vomit. His hair is in a fluffy braid, and his eyes swim in dark circles. "And Ray came down with a fever, and Ellie, I don't know what's up with that child, man, she was gonna bite every kid in that place. Ugh." He tosses his head back and gives Gal the tiniest smile. "Could I skip the crime-fighting tonight? I got lesson-planning to do, and tostadas."

"How old are your kids again?" Gats asks. He's still clutching the flier.

Angel looks at his hands. "Erm, one--"

"One, Jesus!" Gatsby tosses the flier. "Shake your keys in their face then, go have fun with your girlfriend or go boozing with us tonight."

"They're late one, early two. It's a very important age for learning!"

"Mmhmm." Gatsby smirks, and then he yawns. If she weren't super, maybe Galaxy would've missed the flash of panic in his eyes that tiny yawn brings on. She wants to save him, but she's not sure she can. What a predicament, to be a superhero who can't save her own love. She grits her jaw.

"I'm a preschool teacher." The knife comes out and whirls around in Angel's fingers. "Don't make me fight you, I'll win."

"Do you think, if that place knew who you were, who you really were, they'd have hired you?" Gatsby stalks around the living room, a room that you'd think of when imagining an eighteen-year-old's apartment. Except cleaner. A coffee table and several Walmart pull-out couches, with a fruit bowl thrust somewhere for added flourish. "Nah, they'd be scared of you. 'Oh, is that a super holding our children?' Is he gonna contaminate my precious bundle of joy with superism—not that there's anything wrong with being a super of course,' and oh he must be a villain! I don't trust him!"

Angel's eyes shift to the side. His left blazes purple under his colored contact lens. For a second it flickers so brightly that Gal makes out the flashing violet sparks swimming inside it. "Yeah, well, that's just kind of how it is. I'm doing my best."

"Gatsby," Galaxy warns.

"And I know you are." Gats' voice thrums from his chest, flowing like something soft and a little enticing. That's how he gets them. And by them, more specifically, her. "But ditch 'em for tonight. Party with us! Party!" He scampers into the tiny kitchen and slams the flier on the counter. Angel's blazing eye studies it while the plain one focuses on the cutting board. He studies that flier for a very long minute.

"I'll do it." He sighs. "Just 'cause I miss you. Are you feeling okay, buddy?"

Galaxy listens to the conversation, but only with half her head. The flier makes her think of the angry super-hating boy who probably should've taken a graphic design. Trouble. Suddenly, she gets a sinking feeling in her stomach.

BAD IDEAS.

"This isn't gonna be good," she says.

But Gats and Angel aren't listening, already they're laughing and talking so loudly their voices echo off the apartment walls. Chatty, happy squaws. She looks at the boys, two songbirds singing in a dirty cage, and her heart drops.

"This is a trap." Her, her friends, her people, hunted like animals. She curls her fists.

Someone's going to get hurt tonight, and it won't be Galaxy.