Devious Origins
Page 24
CHAPTER 18
The rest of the night was comparatively uneventful. We eventually returned to the game table and dove into a seven player Munchkin marathon. It was fun, but I couldn't seem to immerse myself as fully as before. My mind kept wandering to thoughts of global conspiracies and criminal masterminds and dangers that your average college student should have no part of. Dee seemed to notice my distracted behavior and cast a slightly concerned look my direction, silently asking what was wrong. I just smiled and shrugged, trying to indicate that everything was fine.
We wrapped up the last hand near midnight, said our goodbyes to each other, and headed our separate ways. Dee walked with me to the bus stop.
"Spill it, Barry... what's bugging you?" she asked.
"Oh nothing really, just..." I wasn't sure how to express my concerns… how totally in over our heads I feared we were. "It's all a bit much, don't you think?" I finally said.
"Well, yes, it is. But the really big problems don't fix themselves. That's why people like us have to step up."
"People like us? Like what... superheroes? Dee, maybe you really are a superhero. Hell, the things you've done... I don't know what to think. I just know I'm not a hero, super or otherwise. It's just too much, I think."
Dee was silent for a while. I sat there, looking at her, wishing my supposed empathic powers could tell me what she was thinking. But all I got from her was a feeling of concern, which was likely just body language, or maybe even just my imagination.
My thoughts spun back to the grocery store, to the events in the parking lot. I thought about telling Dee, but I hesitated. Maybe I feared it would just feed her superhero complex. Or maybe I just feared finding out what it really meant. Whatever the reason, I remained silent until Dee spoke again.
"I haven't really been fair to you, have I Barry," she stated. "I mean, I just dragged you into all this without ever asking if you were OK with it."
"I'm an adult," I assured her, "I made my own decisions. I could have left any time."
"You still could," she said quietly.
There it was. The exit. The escape hatch I had contemplated taking so many times. And Dee was holding the door open for me. I took a deep breath before answering.
"I'm not going anywhere," I promised, and I realized I meant it. "I'm just not sure how much help I can really be."
Dee took my hand, squeezed it, and smiled. "I wish you had half as much confidence in yourself as I have in you," she said. I didn't know how to respond to that. Dee seemed to collect her thoughts. She took a breath, and continued. "You know, it wasn't just chance, us meeting at the Union," she said. "There were other... candidates. None measured up. I chose you for a reason, and I haven't regretted it."
That admission stunned me. I had always assumed our first meeting in the student union was a chance encounter, that all the subsequent misadventures were just ripples spreading out from that first random stone in the pond. I began to wrestle with the ramifications, what it meant to the nature of Dee's hero delusion and my place in it. I began groping for words, searching for a response. Searching for questions. Before I could find them, my bus rolled up.
"You should go," she said, "the next bus is in half an hour."
I just nodded and let my hand slip from hers, then climbed onto the bus. Lost in thought, I barely remembered to show the driver my student bus pass. I took a seat, and immediately turned to the window.
Dee was already on her skateboard, receding into the distance.