Comics Will Break Your Heart

by Faith Erin Hicks

  “Weldon Warrick,” said Weldon. The officer’s eyebrows climbed his forehead.

  “Weldon … Warrick,” repeated the police officer. His partner glanced sideways at him, uncomprehending.

  Mir froze. An icy hand didn’t so much clutch at her heart as punch it.

  “Yeah,” said Weldon, half smiling. “That Warrick.”

  Warrick Studios, thought Mir. Publisher of the TomorrowMen comics. I just saved the ass of the TomorrowMen heir.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Weldon continued his conversation with the police officer, but Mir couldn’t make out the words. He suddenly seemed both very far away and much too close to her, the warmth of his hand on her shoulder dragging her downward. She took a single, deliberate step to her right, away from Weldon. He glanced in her direction as his hand slipped off her shoulder. Mir ignored him, crouching next to the discarded garden hose, winding it around her arm. She picked up the coiled plastic and walked toward the utility shed, throwing the hose inside.

  Berg was standing at the Emporium of Wonders’ front door, staring at the scene in the parking lot. Mir looked over at her boss, face turned away from Weldon.

  “I was in the middle of calling the police when I heard the siren. They got here fast,” Berg said, shading one hand over his eyes. “Is everything okay?”

  “I think so,” Mir said, still carefully not looking in Weldon’s direction. She turned to squeeze past Berg and caught a glimpse of Weldon, standing in front of the cops as they scribbled furiously in their notepads. He was looking at her, one hand hanging limply by his side, her mother’s painting tucked under his other arm. Their eyes met and he smiled, but his face had swollen and all he managed was a lopsided smirk. Mir ducked her head and stepped back inside the Emporium of Wonders. A queasy feeling was sliding around in the pit of her stomach.

  Mir walked toward the bookshelf she’d been organizing and picked up the remaining stack of comics. The cover of New TomorrowMen volume six was on the top of the pile, Skybound locked in mortal combat with a villainous-looking character Mir didn’t recognize. Mir stared at the cover, the queasiness in her stomach hardening into a clenched fist.

  “Weldon Warrick of Warrick Studios,” she whispered to the battling superheroes. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  * * *

  That evening, Mir called her dad from the store.

  “You don’t have to pick me up from work; I’m going to walk home,” she said.

  “What is this?” Henry said. “My only daughter, my favorite daughter, who always begs for a ride to the place of her employment mere minutes from our home, voluntarily using her legs? I don’t believe it.”

  “You’re so funny,” Mir said, sighing.

  “I am,” said Henry. “I am very funny. When will you be home?”

  “I’m leaving now, so half an hour.”

  “Enjoy your walk,” said Henry. “I will remember this moment. The Moment Miriam Decided to Use Her Own Legs. It will become legend.”

  “Ugh,” Mir said, hanging up. She rolled her eyes at Berg, who was locking up the store. “Dads.”

  “Dads indeed,” said Berg absently.

  Mir had known Berg since she was six years old. Ten years ago, he had long curly hair and grew organic vegetables, which meant when he gave her a carrot from his garden, it didn’t quite look the same as the ones from the grocery store. Five years ago, he cut his hair and decided to open the Emporium of Wonders, where Miriam had worked for the past year.

  “Weird day, huh?” Mir said, waiting for Berg to finish locking the outer door.

  “Lots of excitement,” Berg agreed. “Um…” He paused like he was going to tell her something. Mir waited. Despite the professional haircut, Berg would always look like he should be farming organic carrots, not managing an entertainment store. He still had dreamy hippie eyes and a fumbling way of talking. He always looked out of place amid the filing cabinets and stacks of order forms in the small office at the back of the store. Secretly, Mir worried about him. He’d never seemed like a proper adult to her, even when she was six years old.

  That’s not fair to Berg, Mir chided herself. He might make you wear a work shirt with too-long sleeves, but it’s because of him that your bank account has more than babysitting money in it. So be nice.

  “Never mind. It’s nothing,” Berg said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He had wanted to tell her something, Mir realized, but couldn’t bring himself to do it yet. Berg was kind of a chicken sometimes.

  The Emporium of Wonders was perched at the edge of Sandford’s tiny downtown. Over the last two years, a Starbucks and a high-end sporting apparel store had sprung up nearby, replacing the old hardware store and a convenience store where Miriam had bought candy as a kid. The sporting apparel store sold designer yoga pants and had a window display that exhorted passersby to sweat every day, accompanied by an eight-foot-tall poster of a meditating woman who looked like she’d never sweated in her life. The sports apparel store and its pushy display bugged Mir, but she didn’t mind the Starbucks. Sometimes she and her best friend, Raleigh, would go in and get the cheapest thing possible, a cup of hot water with a tea bag in it, and sit for hours on the creaky faux-leather couches at the back of the café, watching coffee drinkers come and go. The rest of downtown was a mixture of touristy souvenir shops, make-your-own-pottery studios, and local businesses slowly sliding into disrepair.

  As she walked past the apparel store, Mir looked apprehensively at the distance between it and the Emporium of Wonders. Sometimes it felt like the gap between the two stores was narrowing, the yoga pants store intent on conquering the space occupied by its neighbor. Mir frowned at the towering display of the meditating woman and silently vowed to defend her workplace with everything she had. The Emporium of Wonders was a weird retail mishmash, but working there was easy and uncomplicated. Her job was the one thing in Mir’s life that didn’t feel like it was about to shift unexpectedly under her feet, dumping her to the ground.

  Mir gave the yoga pants store one last pointed look and turned down a side street, toward home. Unbidden, Weldon Warrick popped into her head: his crooked nose and gorgeous grin, the way he’d looked at her, baffled but still smiling, as she stepped emphatically away from him in the parking lot.

  “Of all the comic book stores in all the world, Weldon Warrick walks into mine,” Mir muttered. She glanced up hurriedly, almost expecting a smirking Weldon to appear behind her, as though she’d said his name three times in a mirror. She wasn’t sure if the cops had arrested him. She didn’t think so. The three boys who’d nearly pummeled him into applesauce had their car back, so they weren’t complaining. She was probably the only one who knew what he’d done, and she’d chosen not to tell.

  I wish I’d taken my mom’s painting back from him, Mir thought. It deserves better than to be owned by a thief, even one with a gorgeous smile. She shook her head, attempting to clear it of Weldon Warrick.

  Mir’s house was a half hour walk from Sandford’s tiny downtown, at the dead end of a street that declined in niceness the farther she walked down it. The houses at the beginning of the road were brightly painted Nova Scotian historical homes, slowly becoming more and more ramshackle until the road dead-ended on Miriam’s house, the most ramshackle of them all.

  Mir loved her house. She loved the sloping roof and the faded orange paint that her mother liked to touch up with different shades of orange or yellow. She loved the windows with their ancient wooden shutters, the overgrown garden that kept her family in vegetables throughout the summer and autumn, and the wide front porch with its double columns supporting the jutting overhang that always seemed on the verge of collapsing. Mir had lived in the house since she was five years old and could barely remember living anywhere else.

  The floorboards creaked under Mir’s feet as she walked across the porch and slouched into one of the battered wicker chairs by the front door. Sandford’s skyline stretched in front of her, stark against the brightness of the setti
ng sun. The shape of the town was so familiar to Mir: the stubby square buildings, the arch of the bridge over the river that wound into the ocean. A knot of worry started to twist in the pit of Mir’s stomach.

  The front door banged open and Stella stuck her head around the door.

  “Oh,” she said, “you’re here! Your father said you were walking home, even though he’d offered you a ride. I said we should check and make sure you hadn’t been replaced by a pod person.”

  Miriam made a face at her mother.

  “I just wanted to walk—”

  “You never walk,” said Stella.

  “I’ll never walk home again if it means you’ll stop picking on me,” Mir said. “You’re mean. Dad’s mean.”

  Stella smiled. Her clothes were splattered with bright paint. She’d wrapped a bandana, also splattered with paint, around her closely shaved head. When Mir was a little girl she would rub her palms wonderingly against the clipped stubble of her mother’s head, and think about how different Stella was from her friends’ mothers.

  “How was today? How is Berg?”

  “Berg’s okay; today was okay,” Mir said, pulling herself out of the chair. She brushed off the butt of her jeans; the porch chairs were always dusty.

  “Tell Berg we miss him. He hasn’t come to visit in so long.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Mir said. “He’s really busy with the store, that’s probably why he hasn’t come by.”

  Stella swept an arm out for Mir, drawing her into a hug.

  “Come inside. I bet you’re hungry.”

  The kitchen was like the outside of Mir’s parents’ house: slowly sliding toward disrepair, painted with cheerful colors that didn’t quite match. Stella pulled a Saran-wrapped plate of food out of the fridge, placing it on the kitchen table in front of Mir.

  “Want it heated up?”

  “It’s fine,” said Mir, pulling the plastic off the plate. “It still tastes good cold.”

  Stella sat down beside Miriam, leaning forward on the table to watch her daughter eat.

  “You sure you’re okay? You seem a little distant.”

  “I’m sitting right here next to you,” said Mir, around a mouthful of chicken.

  “You know what I mean. Did anything happen at the store today?”

  “No,” Mir lied. “Oh, wait, yes. I sold your painting, the one of Skylark and Skybound standing on that building.”

  Stella looked impressed.

  “Did you? That’s fantastic, thank you.”

  Mir shoved her hand into her jeans pocket and pulled out Weldon Warrick’s money. She dropped the various bills and coins onto the table. They sat there between her and Stella.

  “I’m so glad that one sold. I’m almost out of burnt umber gouache. I can buy a new tube with this,” Stella said, sorting the small pile of cash.

  Mir looked down at her plate. It was one of the half dozen mismatched plates Stella had found at the local Goodwill. This one had small blue, green, and brown foxes running an endless loop around the edge of the plate. There were six foxes, but a crack in the plate had cut one of them in half, the fault line snaking through his fox body.

  “I wish you’d charge more for your paintings,” Mir said softly. Stella’s hand stilled over the small pile of coins she was sorting.

  “Are we going to fight again?” Stella said.

  Mir could remember being very small and sitting on the floor of the studio where Stella painted. The studio was really just the garage in her parents’ backyard, the door wedged shut against winter weather. Stella was kneeling beside her. The two of them were moving paintbrushes in unison across the canvas surface. Their brushstrokes scored a red path across the whiteness of the canvas. Stella was smiling as she painted beside Mir. There were no figures on the canvas, just colors. The painting still hung in Stella’s studio, a remnant of a time when art felt much less complicated to Mir.

  Stella reached out and put her hand on Mir’s. Her fingers were cool against Mir’s wrist. Mir let her; she didn’t really want to fight. She’d been angry all week, but today’s violence at the Emporium of Wonders had made her tired instead. She shook her head.

  “I just want you to know—”

  “I do know,” said Stella. “I don’t want to abandon material things and go back to living in the woods. I think indoor plumbing is a very fine thing. But we have enough that I don’t have to charge more for my paintings. I can keep the art I make just art, rather than something I need to sell to support our family.”

  “Then why sell them at all?” Mir said, annoyed at the whine in her voice.

  “Because art supplies cost, Miriam, and we have enough, but not quite enough.”

  “No, not quite enough,” Mir echoed. Stella’s face tensed, and Mir felt that tension in her mother’s hand.

  “What would be enough for you, Miriam?”

  Mir stared hard at the fragmented fox running around the plate on the table in front of her. Poor fox; he didn’t know his hind end was in the process of being separated from his shoulders. He ran on and on, completely oblivious.

  Mir thought of Weldon Warrick’s smile. He’s the heir to the TomorrowMen fortune. What’s that worth? Royalties from comics and toys and animated shows and bedsheets and a TomorrowMen movie with a two-hundred-million-dollar budget coming out next year. He’s gotta be getting a few bucks from that. Weldon Warrick’s future was paved smooth and endless, no potholes, no bumps in the road. If anyone had enough, it was him.

  “The guy who bought your painting recognized that Skylark and Skybound were wearing their original costumes. He said they were his favorite.”

  Mir felt relief ease Stella’s fingers. Stella knew an olive branch when she saw one.

  “Was he one of those old-school comic collectors? He wasn’t horrible, was he? I respect having an obsessive passion, but collectors can be so nitpicky. You remember that one from a few years ago who had a tantrum because I painted Skylark’s belt purple instead of blue—”

  “No,” Mir interrupted. “It was someone my age.”

  Stella’s elegantly arched eyebrows shot up.

  “Interesting. Who was he?”

  Mir picked up her fork, scraping a few grains of brown rice across her plate.

  “Just some rich kid,” she lied. “I think he was a tourist, maybe off a cruise ship. We talked a bit about the TomorrowMen movie. He said he grew up reading the comics.”

  “Was he cute?” Stella asked, smiling.

  Mir saw Weldon walk jauntily across the Emporium of Wonders’ parking lot, ready for violence. She saw his smile slide across his face. It didn’t quite touch his eyes. The thought of the car-stealing heir to the Warrick Comics empire taking Stella’s meticulously detailed painting of Skylark and Skybound back to his castle was almost unbearable. I should have offered him a refund, done something to try to get him to return it, Mir thought. That painting deserves a better home than what he could give it.

  “Not really my type.” Mir stood up from the table and took her plate to the kitchen sink. “I think he was just passing through town, anyway. I don’t think I’ll see him again.” I hope I’ll never see him again, Mir thought uneasily. Whatever reason he’s in Sandford, it’d better not keep him here longer than the weekend.

  “What an unusual encounter,” said Stella, her nose crinkling as she smiled. The setting sun was shining red through the kitchen window, lighting the soft curve of her head. “If you do see this young man again, sell him another painting. He seems to have good taste.”

  There was a clatter on the porch outside, and Mir’s father and younger brother, Nate, charged through the door. Stella grabbed Nate and kissed him on the top of his head before he had the chance to wriggle free of her grasp. Annoyed, he stomped through the kitchen and into the living room. At twelve, Nate considered himself much too old for mothering.

  “Hi,” said Henry to Stella, and they tangled together affectionately. Stella was a head shorter than Henry, and he wrapped his arms a
round her, resting his bearded chin on top of her shaved head. At the sink, Mir watched her parents out of the corner of her eye: their embrace fit them perfectly into each other like puzzle pieces.

  Arm in arm, Henry and Stella turned toward her, and Miriam looked up at them.

  “Hey, you made it home on your own two legs,” said Henry, smiling. Mir let annoyance and frustration slide off her, and grinned at her father.

  “I know, it’s like some kind of miracle.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Weldon stood in his aunt and uncle’s guest bathroom, staring at his face in the mirror. His eye was nearly swollen shut, the bruise around it beginning to change from angry red to purple. There was a cut on his chin he didn’t even remember getting and his ribs felt like someone was leaning a booted foot against his side. It hurt to take more than a shallow breath.

  “Weldon Warrick,” he said to his reflection in the mirror, “I, David Warrick, your long-suffering father, would like to know: Why do you keep getting yourself into this kind of shit?”

  It wasn’t a great imitation of his dad. Despite spending the past thirty years in California, David Warrick still had a hint of an East Coast Canadian accent, which became more pronounced the angrier he got. Weldon was used to that accent battering furiously at him whenever he screwed up.

  “Don’t you know what I’m dealing with this week?” Weldon said. “Licensing and movie budgets and filming schedules and aliens taking over the world. Don’t you know how much I have on my plate, Weldon?”

  Weldon frowned at the mirror.

  “I, David Warrick, god-king of the TomorrowMen empire, have ten million things to deal with right now, so if you could just sit down and not move or speak or breathe, I’d appreciate that, Weldon.”

  Weldon looked away from his reflection. He stared down at his bare feet, half disappearing into the plush bathroom mat. He looked back up at the mirror, and flashed a slightly crooked but passable version of his usual smile at his reflection. The smile would be back to normal in a few days. It would be like the fight never happened.