Hopefuls (Book 1): The Private Life of Jane Maxwell

by Jenn Gott

  Jane raised an eyebrow. She studied her mother in fragments, like smaller pieces of a larger panel: the slightest flinch, tactfully suppressed; the dart of Mrs. Maxwell’s eyes as she glanced at Jane and then away again just as quickly; her hand, resting on Cal’s as she gave him a pat of thanks, which also served as an excuse to pluck his grip from her shoulder.

  “I appreciate that, Cal, thank you,” Mrs. Maxwell said. Her words were warm, but her tone was formal and dismissive, as if she was speaking to an aide who’d brought her ill news. Jane watched the space open up between them like an ellipsis as Mrs. Maxwell stepped away.

  * * *

  They spent the next day training. Jane barely saw her family—here and there, usually as she was coming up to the kitchen for glass after glass of cool water, or ice packs as Jane nursed first one injury and then another. Allison watched as Jane passed her in the hall; Jane reeked of sweat, dripping as she sidled past Allison, a bottled water gripped against Jane’s neck as if it was an old land-line telephone receiver.

  “God, Jane,” Allison sneered. “Is this really the time to be worrying about a marathon?”

  “It’s for charity,” Jane said. She plucked the water bottle free and twisted off the cap, downing nearly half of it in one gulp. Not because she was particularly thirsty, but more in the hope that it would provide a long enough gap that she could leave Allison behind.

  As cover stories go, it wasn’t bad: that Jane and a few of her friends were scheduled to participate in the Grand City Marathon as a group, raising money to help fund research for a rare form of children’s cancer. Training in the city under these circumstances would be impossible, what with the press hunting Jane down to see how she was handling the kidnapping of her father, so they’d retreated here, for some peace and privacy. The story settled well enough with the press, but it was clearly not doing its job for Allison. Jane was grateful that she had her glasses off to train, so that she couldn’t study the glower of Allison’s face in detail.

  “Don’t worry about Allie,” Cal said to her a few minutes later. Back in the secret subbasement, Jane had tried expressing her concern. Cal raised his arms into a block posture. “Again.”

  “It’s just—” Jane started, but then she yelped as a burst of wind and color blasted past her. Despite the fact that Devin was hitting her with “merely” the softest Nerf bat sold, physics still left Jane with some nasty bruises from his flyby swipes. “Hey! I wasn’t ready yet!”

  “Did I say that we would always wait until you were ready?” Cal asked. “UltraViolet won’t.”

  “That’s different,” Jane said.

  Cal snorted. “How?”

  But Jane had no particular answer to this, so she kept her mouth shut.

  As much as she hated to admit it, Cal’s teaching methods did seem to be working. No, it wouldn’t turn her into Captain Lumen overnight, but nothing would achieve that. Their goals were nowhere near so lofty as that. The plan, as the rest of the Heroes explained it, was merely for Jane to display enough of Captain Lumen’s abilities to not be detected immediately as a fraud. On the side, it would be nice if she knew enough self-defense techniques not to be completely helpless in a fight, though the Heroes assured her that they would be doing the primary work of keeping her safe.

  “And if you can’t?” Jane asked, the morning after they’d arrived. They had only been working for an hour, and already Jane was covered in sweat, every muscle in her body aching.

  Amy shrugged. “You’ll be okay,” she said. “I promise.”

  Somehow, despite everything, that did actually help.

  Training had continued. Jane tried to take solace in Amy’s encouragement, but as time wore on, the power of her words had grown thin. By the time night rolled around, and they entered the final countdown to the morning, Jane’s confidence had been pummeled out of her.

  They knocked off early that evening, to let Jane’s body recuperate, and because there was very little to be done by that point. If she hadn’t learned enough yet . . .

  Jane tried not to think about that.

  She tried not to think about anything.

  Not her powers. Not this other life she might have had, if circumstances were different. Not her mother, or her father, or the alternate version of her father. Not her would-be sister, whose narrowed glares and sullen silences bored holes straight through Jane every time their paths crossed. Not Clair, or Amy. Not the rest of the Heroes.

  It was a lot to avoid thinking, and the effort of it was almost more challenging than the training had been. Jane ate a huge dinner, took a long shower. Laid down in bed early, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling, and tried to quiet her mind.

  It wasn’t working. What if none of it was working? What if Jane’s powers failed her at the critical time, or the Heroes looked away at the wrong moment? What if, for all their efforts, the plan wasn’t going to work anyway, even if everything went perfectly—what if, after everything, UltraViolet was just too smart, too powerful, too evil to be stopped? Jane knew nothing about her, after all, none of them did. Doctor Demolition had given up only the woman’s assumed name, and the Heroes were convinced this was all he knew.

  Oh, if only Jane had written more about this woman. But even that was a silly regret, because it’s not like Jane’s stories controlled this universe. They just . . . happened to be right, more often than not.

  Kind of a disturbing amount, really. If Jane stopped to think about it.

  Which she totally wasn’t. Because she wasn’t thinking about any of this.

  Nope.

  Not at all.

  Jane sighed. She sat up, squinting at her phone. It was nearly two o’clock, long after she was supposed to be asleep, but fuck it. Jane pulled on an extra sweatshirt from her closet—a crisp Sutton University logo emblazoned over her chest—slipped on her glasses, and toed down the main staircase.

  Low light flickered from one of the living rooms, the telltale sign of a TV. That would do. Jane hadn’t even realized until presented with the possibility of some company, just how badly she didn’t want to be alone.

  She entered the room, but hesitated on the threshold when she spotted Allison’s hair peeking over the top of the couch. Maybe this really wasn’t the best person to be spending time with, only . . . dammit, Jane was tired of avoiding her.

  “You’re still up,” Jane said.

  Allison turned, raising herself up just enough to peer behind her. “So are you.”

  Jane inched farther into the room. How did you do this sort of thing, with a sister? All that Jane had to go on were movies and books, comics and television: two people up late, sharing a hot chocolate or something while they bared their secret confessions.

  Somehow, that didn’t seem likely to happen here.

  Allison was curled sideways on the couch, feet tucked under a heap of blanket, head propped up on her hand. Her other hand held her phone loosely in her grip, thumb scrolling down what looked like Facebook. She watched the screen as if she didn’t really see it, as if it didn’t matter. Across the way, a TV was on mute, some news anchor talking soundlessly out of the frame. Jane glanced at a clock in the corner of the TV, a countdown to UltraViolet’s deadline superimposed over the corner of the news anchor’s desk. 15:22:31, 30, 29 . . .

  Jane’s stomach twisted.

  Allison looked up. “He’s trending,” she said, flashing her phone at Jane. “Our father’s life has become a hashtag.”

  “Captain Lumen will save him,” Jane said. She tried to sound more confident than she felt, tried to remember the surety that their mother had spoken with the day before.

  Allison snorted. “Yeah, okay.” She went back to looking at her phone, her back to Jane. After a moment, though, she threw it down onto the area rug. “God, how can you just believe that?” she asked as she sat up. The blanket tumbled down to the floor with her feet, and Allison kicked it off with irritation.

  Jane started as she realized that Allison wasn’t just asking rhetori
cally. Allison had turned, and was glaring over the back of the couch at Jane, as if she was personally responsible for what was happening to her father.

  Which she kind of was, Jane supposed—not that Allison knew that.

  Jane shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s better than giving up, though, isn’t it?”

  “It’s called being realistic, Jane. The Heroes’ track record hasn’t exactly been stellar lately. What makes you think that our father is even going to make it to UltraViolet’s deadline? And why push it so close, anyway? I mean, if the Heroes were planning to do something, why don’t they just do it?”

  “I don’t know,” Jane said again. She edged around the couch, perching on the armrest.

  Allison wasn’t looking at her anymore. She stared at her own knees, her lips drawn in as if she was trying to hold herself together, and suddenly Jane’s heart was aching. Because one thing was clear: even if Jane had beefs with her father, and even if this world’s Jane followed suit . . . Allison clearly didn’t. In the dark, half-lit by the TV, she looked like nothing so much as a little girl missing her daddy.

  Jane reached out, gripping Allison’s hand. “Maybe you’re right,” Jane said, “maybe . . . maybe there’s nothing they can do. But I can promise you, Allison, and I know this for sure: they’re going to try their absolute hardest. And if it is at all within their capability . . . they’ll bring your father back to you. I promise.”

  Allison gave a messy snort. “You can’t promise something like that,” she said as she looked up. Her eyes settled on Jane, the faintest trace of hope dancing somewhere around the edges. “But . . . thanks anyway.”

  A new day dawns.

  They left early, packing into Cal’s SUV and trekking back to the city before the rest of the household was awake. Even Juanita still hadn’t come in yet, and so breakfast consisted of cold cereal and weak coffee, because no one could figure out how to properly work the top-end coffee machine.

  Jane just kept breathing: in through the nose, out through the mouth. She watched the morning pass with an artist’s eye, laying it out as if this was just another issue of Hopefuls. Bleary eyes and hands wrapped tightly around travel mugs, jangled keys, the vistas from their trip here, now in reverse: the ferry, the main island, cow country, highways. The city, looming in the distance, a gray haze shrouding the taller skyscrapers from view.

  They returned to the primary headquarters, long enough to suit up and move out. That was the plan, anyway, though Jane was finding the reality of it, like so much else, much more complicated than she’d ever expected it to be. Several hours after waking up, she stood in the middle of Captain Lumen’s room, bits and pieces of clothes scattered to the high winds around her. Jane had her glasses off as she dressed, which helped; she was trying not to look at the room too much, because it was both familiar and not, because the version that she’d always drawn had been for Cal, and this one was distinctly . . . hers, in a way that was hard to put her finger on, but impossible to ignore.

  A knock sounded at her door.

  “Jane? Are you okay in there?”

  Jane let out a yelp of frustration. The suit was halfway on, more or less, although a loop was snagged somehow around Jane’s elbow. It pinned her arm against her, as if she was wearing a sling.

  This looked so much easier in the drawings. Jane had sketched this suit a million times, both on her own body and then modified to fit Cal in the QZero versions, yet somehow she was stymied when faced with the actual thing. What, Jane asked herself, had compelled her double to design it with so many parts? A base layer to whisk away sweat, which wrapped around her stomach but still showed off her boobs (Why? Jane could not say); an armored piece that she was currently struggling with, so tight that her arms were getting tangled up; a short jacket, just over her chest, that zipped diagonally. To say nothing of the skintight pants, which Jane wasn’t even sure her ass was going to fit into. All this, and Jane hadn’t even started trying to work up the nerve to put in contacts—her fear of touching her own eyes made that a whole other hurdle to overcome.

  “Jane?”

  She went over to the door, hiding behind it as she peeked through the gap. Amy, slightly blurry in the hallway, was already dressed: trench coat, mask, fedora, blood-red lipstick. Fingerless gloves, although that was normal for this Clair-not-Clair. Jane reached out, yanking Amy inside.

  “Don’t laugh,” Jane said, as she shut the door behind them. Then she stood back, motioning at her half-completed ensemble. Well, thirds-completed. A quarter, at any rate.

  Dammit, she was useless at this.

  Amy bit down on a giggle at the last second. Her shoulders had already lurched, her lips starting to curl. Her white teeth were shocking against the red of her lipstick. “Okay,” Amy said. “Okay, let’s get this sorted out properly, shall we?”

  Jane twisted so that Amy could unhook a strap from her elbow. “Don’t tell the others.”

  Amy made a zipping motion in front of her face. “Mum’s the word. Right, I need you to lift your arm a bit—there we go.”

  “What was I thinking when I made this?” Jane asked with a groan.

  Amy shrugged. “You said it was badass.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not exactly going to be ‘badass’ when I don’t even show up in time because I’m stuck in my costume.”

  “Uniform,” Amy said. She glanced at Jane, then smiled. “Nobody on the team liked the word ‘costume.’ They said it made it sound like they were playing at being heroes.”

  “Huh. I didn’t know that.”

  “Turn,” Amy said, and Jane did as she was instructed. Amy tugged at a portion of Jane’s uniform, trying to straighten it out. “I guess there are bound to be some things about our lives that didn’t make it into your comic.”

  “I guess . . .”

  Jane supposed that this should be embarrassing—having Amy dress her, standing half-naked in the same room as the doppelgänger of her dead wife—but it wasn’t. She couldn’t decide if it was because Amy wasn’t enough like Clair for it to matter, or if she was so much like Clair that asking for her help was instinctive. She couldn’t decide if she needed to decide.

  Amy sighed. “Okay, you know what, I can’t fix this. Arms up. We’re starting over.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Jane raised her arms. Amy yanked the armor up, and Jane slithered down. She popped out the bottom, already breathing a sigh of relief—the thing was so tight that Jane couldn’t even imagine how it was going to feel to try to fight in it. She stood back up, pushing away several stray bits of hair that had come loose from her ponytail.

  “It helps if you loosen this part first,” Amy was saying. Her attention was on the armor, where Jane spotted a row of lacing, like you’d find on a corset, running up the sides.

  “Ah,” Jane said. “See, I never drew it like that.”

  Amy nodded. She hooked the lacing piece by piece with her finger, pulling it open. “It’s amazing that you got as many details right as you did.” Amy glanced toward Jane. “I wouldn’t have thought—” she started, but a double-take cut her off.

  Jane looked down, following Amy’s line of sight. At first she flushed, and went to cross her arms over the neon-yellow bra that now felt less “whimsical” and more “tacky” than it had when she’d bought it—but Amy wasn’t staring at her chest, or the garish piece of underwear covering it. Instead, Amy reached out, stopping herself only inches from the chain hanging around Jane’s neck.

  “What’s this?” Amy asked, though her voice was so small that she had to know the answer already.

  Jane’s fingers found Clair’s ring without being told. They wrapped protectively around the metal, and only then did Amy look away, abashed.

  The ring was identical to Jane’s. Clair had wanted her body donated to scientific research; there was nothing for Jane to bury. They’d given her the ring in a plastic bag with the rest of Clair’s possessions. Jane had gone immediately to a department store to buy a chain, and now she wore it n
ext to her heart. It wasn’t hard to guess that it used to belong to Clair, and it was only just now occurring to Jane that Amy probably hadn’t known that Clair was dead.

  “I’m sorry,” Amy said. She was turned away from Jane, still holding the pieces of Jane’s uniform in her hands.

  “I know.”

  “How did she—? No, never mind. I shouldn’t ask.”

  “You can ask,” Jane said, “though it’s not a complicated story. It was a car accident.”

  Amy turned back. Though her face was partially obscured by the mask and the hat, it wasn’t difficult to read the grief and pity splashed across her features. Jane had seen the look so many times, over the last year and a half, that she would recognize it anywhere, even if it wasn’t on the face that she knew best in all the world. “I’m so sorry,” Amy said again.

  “Yeah.” Jane shrugged. “This is where I’m supposed to say that it’s okay. Then you offer up some platitude, and I act like I agree with it.” She stepped aside, and sat on the edge of the bed. She held Clair’s ring, still tight in her fist, against her heart. “Do you want to know the truth?” Jane asked, looking up at Amy. “It’s not okay. I don’t think that it’s ever going to be okay, and I wish, just once, that someone could accept that, instead of telling me that time will make it better. How can time make it better, when the only thing that could make it better would be if something could give me my Clair back?”

  Jane’s voice cracked as grief struck thick and fast. A knife to the chest. Jane ducked her head, embarrassed, as tears cut hot tracks down her cheeks.

  She hadn’t meant to say that. She knew her role as a widow. Oh, sure, everybody has sympathy—for about six months. For six months, you can get away with crying at random, with your face twisting up in agony when a song comes on, with needing a moment to step away and collect yourself. But after that, well . . . people start sighing. This again? their faces say, even if their words are: “No, of course, of course, I understand completely.” People start shuffling away uncomfortably. They start saying phrases like “meet new people,” and “don’t you think you should get out of the house a little?” A weeping widow at six weeks is an object of sympathy, their grief allowing you to feel better about your own life. At six months, she’s an uncomfortable reminder of the frailty of life, the wreckage that death can leave behind in its wake. At a year and a half? She becomes, at best, a burden.