by Kelly Oram
Tony’s rage dissipated in an instant. For all of his faults, the guy really did care about me. He sat down next to me on the couch and took my hand into his. “Of course you will. I’ve seen your notebook. You probably know more about yourself than most people do, because you’ve spent the last six months paying attention.”
That wasn’t the same thing. “Maybe I’ll know I like pistachio ice cream and old horror flicks, but I’ll never know my real name. I’ll never know my birthday. I’ll never know who my parents are or if I have brothers and sisters.”
My hand went to my neck, as it always did when I thought about my past. I pulled the little charm I always wore from around my neck and examined it for the millionth time. The necklace was, oddly, made of copper. The charm was cut in the shape of a sun and had a strange hole in the middle. I couldn’t figure out what it was for, but I could tell that it had a purpose.
The necklace itself was a mystery. I’d been wearing it when Tony found me after the explosion. I asked him about it, but he didn’t know what it was. When I asked him where I got it, his answer then had been that I’d worn it as long as he’d known me—since before the scientists had captured me.
Tony ground his teeth. His voice was strained as he fought to keep control of his temper. “Forget the past. It sucks that you’ll never know those things, but you need to get over it. Going to see that doctor was stupid. I hope, at least, you can let it go now. Move on. You’re April O’Neil now. You need to accept that.”
He may as well have slapped me. He was probably right, but he didn’t have to be such a jerk about it.
Too angry to speak, I left him alone on the couch and went to sit at the computer. As I turned the machine on and clicked open the Internet, Tony let out a hard breath. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to figure out who I am. If you’re going to be a jerk, then I’ll do it by myself.”
“What are you going to do? Post your picture on Facebook and start asking people if they know you?”
“If I have to!” I snapped.
“Visticorp would find you in two seconds.”
It was times like these that I wished my eyes shot actual lasers from the retinas. I didn’t have that superpower, but I still tried to develop it right then. When his head didn’t explode, I turned back to the screen. “For your information, I’m going to use my necklace.”
“What do you mean? It’s just a necklace.”
“The design is too odd. It’s unique. It has to be a custom piece. Perhaps a jeweler could tell me who made it, or at least point me in the right direction.”
As I googled custom jewelers in the closest city to our house, which happened to be Las Vegas, Tony scoffed. “Good luck with that. I wouldn’t get your hopes up too high.”
The lights flickered as my control on my temper snapped. “Well, it’s not like you’ve been any help. How could I not be on any missing persons database? You’re supposed to be a computer genius. How could you not find anything? Someone has to be missing me.”
Tony stuck his hands in his hair and yanked. “I told you, you were so little when you came to Visticorp. There wasn’t much I could do. I never knew your real name, either; just the number they assigned you. I can’t do a whole lot with Subject 4281 in missing persons databases. But why does it matter so much? We have a good life now. We have each other, and we’re safe. Why do you need anything more than that?”
He was really asking a different question. He wanted to know why I needed more than him. He was frustrated that he wasn’t enough to make me happy, that he wasn’t family enough for me.
I tried to relax, reminding myself that this was a hard situation for him, too. “Yeah, we’re safe, but hiding out in the middle of the desert, never leaving the house, isn’t a life.”
“We leave,” Tony said defensively. “We’ve visited all the national parks in the country, and we go to the Grand Canyon all the time.”
Not the same thing.
The house we lived in was located in Middle-of-Nowhere, Nevada. It was over a hundred miles from any human life in any direction. There wasn’t even a road that ran to it. The only way you could find it was with GPS coordinates.
The outside was designed to blend into the landscape around it. It was dirt-brown and dusty-looking. It was depressing on the outside, but on the inside it was a cozy, welcoming home with all the conveniences modern technology could give you. It wasn’t a bad place to live, but when it was just the two of us, well, the company became a bit stifling at times.
We lived here in complete seclusion. For the first three months after the explosion, we never ventured out of the house once. We lived off the supplies in the house and never left. Ever. Tony told me it was because we couldn’t take the chance of getting caught. He said Visticorp would be scouring the globe for us, using high tech satellites and stuff. We had to disappear completely so that Visticorp would be certain we were dead. I understood, but I didn’t do well cooped up inside.
After about three months, Tony finally relented and we started leaving to go for the occasional walk in the desert to practice controlling my powers, or to visit some national parks. But we were completely sequestered from the world, never seeing another soul besides each other. Tony was a sweet guy most of the time, but not nice enough for me to want to spend the rest of my life with only him.
“It’s been six months,” I said. “I can’t live like this anymore.”
Tony’s face fell, and he collapsed onto the couch. “I’m doing the best that I can, April. I just want us to be safe. You don’t remember what it was like being a prisoner of Visticorp, but I do. If they found you, they would…I can’t let them have you. I love you too much.”
“I’m sorry.” I joined him on the couch, my heart pounding with guilt. “You know I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me. And you know I care about you.” I picked up his hand and squeezed it in apology. “You’re my family. But I need more than this life we have.”
Tony met my gaze with a pleading expression, squeezing my hand back tightly. “So let me give you more. Please, April. I could make you happy if you would just give me the chance.”
My guilt quadrupled.
Swallowing hard, I looked down at the ring on my finger and tried not to let the tears burning behind my eyes fall. Tony and I had been engaged before the explosion. I called it off when I couldn’t remember him, but I still tried to make things work between us. He used to be crazy patient with me, but the more time passed without our relationship going back to the way it was before the accident, the more frustrated he got. I couldn’t really blame him, but I couldn’t give him what he wanted, either.
I don’t love Tony the way he loves me. I spent the past six months trying to fall for him because I didn’t want to hurt him, but I just don’t want him that way. I care about him. I kiss him on occasion because I feel guilty for letting him down, and I let him call me his girlfriend, but we’re not really a couple. I’m never going to love him. He’s my friend, my family, but nothing more.
I started twisting the ring as he waited for an answer. I should have taken it off the day of the explosion. Wearing it probably gave Tony false hope, but I just couldn’t let it go. The fact that I had the ring meant that at some point I’d accepted him. At some point I’d wanted to be his wife. I must have loved him. I thought maybe if I got my memories back, my feelings would change. Now that I knew that was never going to happen, the best thing to do was get the inevitable over with.
With a sigh, I slipped the ring off my finger. “Tony, my memories aren’t coming back. All this time I’ve been hoping, but it’s not going to happen, so I think it’s time to stop pretending our relationship has a future.”
Tony’s head snapped up in horror. The panic in his expression twisted my gut. I didn’t want to hurt him like this. After staring at me in shock for a moment, he began furiously shaking his head. “No, April. Don’t say that.”
He took my face in his hands. His
voice shook as he said, “I love you so much. You know that, right?”
“I know,” I promised, “but I don’t love you like that.”
He sucked in a breath and continued to argue. “You’ll learn to love me. Just give it more time. Let’s take things to the next level. We can make it work.”
He pressed his lips to mine in a frantic, desperate kiss. He was trying so hard to convince me, trying to send some of his love into me with the kiss. I felt nothing but guilt and sorrow.
I pushed him back as gently as I could. Pain flashed across his face. Jumping to his feet, he backed away from me while fighting an internal battle against panic, fear, and devastation. Seeing his agony made my eyes well up. “I’m sorry, Tony. I tried so hard, but I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep forcing myself to be with you. Face it…” I held out the ring to him, all of my hope deflated. “Whatever relationship we had is as gone as my memory. It’s not coming back. This relationship is only hurting us both, and I can’t do it anymore.”
Tony glared at the ring in my hand as if he loathed it. “I don’t want that stupid thing. You keep it. I can’t stand to look at it.” He turned his head as though he meant his words literally.
“Okay.” I didn’t know what else to say. I’d just broken his heart.
After I tucked the ring into my pocket, Tony looked at my naked finger and finally accepted that this was happening. He stood and began pacing the room. Once he reached the front door, he whirled around and the lamp sitting on the end table beside the couch went flying, shattering into pieces.
I sighed. Tony likes to use his telekinesis to make his temper tantrums more dramatic. Super annoying. Calling him on it would make me a hypocrite, though, because I do the same thing a lot of the time. I can’t help it. Flickering lights and glowing eyes just make anger look so much cooler.
Actually, I might be a bit of a drama queen, but I haven’t broken down and added that to the list in my notebook yet. Somehow, I don’t think a real drama queen would ever admit that she is one.
I needed some air. When I rose to my feet and headed for the door, Tony stopped me. “Where are you going?”
“For a walk. I think we both need some space for a while.”
Tony’s eyes widened in disbelief, and then he glared at me in a way he never had before. “Why don’t you just leave, then? Go live on your own if you hate living with me so much.”
I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to get mad at him, didn’t want to start a fight. I understood that he was hurting, and I knew it was my fault. “You know I don’t hate you. You’re the only family I have. I don’t want to leave you; I just want us to stop pretending we’re a couple. I want us to be friends.”
“I don’t want to be your friend, April. I want more than that. I want to be your everything.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t give you that.”
Fire flared in Tony’s eyes. “Then I don’t want anything from you.”
I flinched, startled by his hatred. Yeah, I was breaking his heart—I’d basically been breaking it for six months now—but I was still hurt by his anger. He was being selfish. He was hurting, but so was I. I had feelings too, and it was as if he didn’t care about them. He just wanted what he wanted and thought it was all my fault that he couldn’t have it.
I folded my arms and had to work to keep my emotions in check so I wouldn’t send out a burst of electricity and short-circuit the house. “I’m not doing this on purpose. I’m not trying to hurt you.”
Tony glared at me one more time, then turned his back on me. “Just go.”
“Fine.” Big baby. “If that’s what you want.”
I used my superspeed to pack up a couple suitcases and, in under a minute, was back standing in front of him, ready to separate my life from his. Tony looked at my bags and scoffed in disgust. “You’re going to regret this.” He sneered. “You’ll never survive on your own. You have nothing in this world except for me.”
I reared back. His words, laced with real hatred, hurt so much because they were true. I had nothing. I depended on Tony completely. I let him dictate my life because I knew nothing else. My tears started flowing freely again, and I finally managed to match the angry look on his face with one of my own. “You can be such a jerk sometimes, Tony. I don’t understand how I ever loved you.”
I slammed the door on my way out with a little too much force and heard the frame splinter. I didn’t care. I had to get out of there.
I was now officially no one from nowhere who had nobody. Talk about depressing. To keep my mind off of my dismal situation and the hurt Tony had caused me, I focused all my thoughts on the one thing I had left—my necklace. Plan B was everything now. I needed to see what jewelers could tell me about my necklace, and see if I could figure out who made it.
I decided to go to Las Vegas because it was the city where the Visticorp labs had been. I knew I probably wasn’t from there. Tony was from Italy and managed to end up in the same lab as me, so I knew I could have come from anywhere in the world, but I didn’t have a better place to go, and it was closest.
I was excited because I’d never been to Las Vegas. I’d never been anywhere public, thanks to Tony. My body buzzed with energy as I reached the infamous Strip, but as amazing and fun as it looked, I only lasted a couple minutes before I had to leave. It was sensory overload.
Aside from being able to manipulate electricity, I have a whole laundry list of other superhuman abilities. All of my physical senses are amped up—sight, sound, smell, taste, strength, speed, and agility. Basically, I’m somewhere in between Captain America and Superman with a whole lot of Elektra.
Having powers is awesome, but sometimes they can overwhelm me. I can’t ever completely shut them off, even though I spent the last six months with Tony learning to control them. It didn’t help that I’d been so secluded out in the desert all this time. I wasn’t used to the world coming at me in epic proportions.
I was a good four miles away from the main strip before I was far enough from the noise to make the pounding in my head stop. It wasn’t the best part of town, but I found a motel that smelled decent enough to stay in. I appreciated the dinginess of the motel when I noticed the guy behind the counter. My unusual looks would fit right in with his tattoos and facial piercings.
At the sound of my entrance, he droned out a welcome in a bored voice without taking his eyes off the small television he was watching behind his desk. “The rate’s thirty-nine dollars a night, we don’t rent by the hour, it’s a hundred-dollar deposit if you’re paying cash, and no pets, no exceptions.”
“What about the lice and roaches already living in the rooms? You going to charge me for those?”
The quip earned me a smirk from the guy. “Those are on the house.” Finally glancing in my direction, his head jerked back and his eyes widened as he took a moment to look me up and down. After admiring my body long enough for me to have to clear my throat, his gaze finally made it back to my face. He zeroed in on my eyes and then leaned over the counter to get a better look. “Whoa. Killer contacts.”
I wasn’t about to explain that they were natural as I slid my ID and credit card toward him. “Need to take a picture, Sparky?”
I got another smirk. With a shake of his head, he took my ID and started typing into his computer. “Just the one night?”
“For starters.”
He nodded to this, then squinted at my driver’s license. My hair in the picture on my ID was jet black and my eyes were green. I guess that’s what I’d looked like before the explosion. “Wicked. I can see why you go for the Chelsea’s Angel look. When your hair was black, you could have been her clone.” His eyes flicked up to my face again. “I like the green, though. It makes a statement.”
I laughed. I’m sure this guy was all about making statements with his looks. “Who’s Chelsea’s Angel?”
The guy froze in the process of handing me back my ID and credit card. “For real? You don’t know who Chelsea’s Ang
el is?” When I shook my head, he sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Have you been living under a rock in the middle of nowhere?”
“Yes,” I snapped. “Literally.”
My anger deflated quickly. It wasn’t this guy’s fault I was a freak. Amnesia was a lot more awful than simply not knowing my past. It also left me socially inept and made me feel like an idiot all the time. “Want to fill me in, or just keep staring at me like I’m a freak?”
He flushed in embarrassment. “Sorry. It’s just…she’s so…everyone knows who she was. She’s so famous they’re making a TV show about her. Plus, you have the eyes, and you’re wearing the necklace.”
My hand flew to the charm on my neck. “You recognize this?”
The guy looked at me as if I were insane, and pointed to a small souvenir rack. Among all the postcards, Las Vegas shot glasses, and cacti, there was a whole stack of necklaces that looked exactly like mine. They were cheap plastic knockoffs, but they were exactly like my necklace. I picked one up and examined the little charm. “What’s this in the middle? Does it light up?”
The guy shook his head in bewilderment. “I can’t believe you’ve never seen one of these before. Yeah, it lights up just like Chelsea’s Angel’s did. Though, they say hers didn’t need batteries. She lit it up with her power. How cool is that?”
I gulped. Power? That could light up a lightbulb? That was certainly something I could do. “So…who was she?”
“She was a superhero.”
I laughed, relieved. For a minute I’d been so sure he was talking about me. “No way.” I may not have known much pop culture yet, but I definitely knew my comics. Tony was the biggest comic book junkie on the planet. (Hello, he named himself after Tony Stark.) “My ex is a comic book freak. I know my Marvel and DC characters well, and there is no hero called Chelsea’s Angel.”
The guy shook his head, but his eyes lit up. “Chelsea’s Angel wasn’t from a comic book. She was a real superhero. She was strong and fast and could shoot lightning from the palms of her hands.”
