I wished I could have filled my voice with the same level of venom and seething disgust his held, but I couldn’t reach anything except a monotone.
It was a fact of life.
The sky is blue. The grass is green.
My mother is dead.
Iron Phantom’s eyes widened a fraction, but he managed to contain himself. “My condolences,” he muttered. “I know how it feels.”
And then he vanished.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I’m contemplating writing anti–Red Comet fan fiction. Thoughts?” Sarah asked as we headed toward the auditorium for our first Hall of Horrors rehearsal. I couldn’t form any cohesive thoughts about stories featuring my brother. My mind was occupied with the nervous anticipation of building a quality show from the ground up, as well as the not-so-villainous super who paid me a visit the other night.
“I guess it’s an okay idea.” I shrugged, pulling open the auditorium door. The drone of twenty chattering cast members met my ears, and a few goose bumps rose on my forearms. “Any story about my brother is bound to suck, though. No offense.”
“None taken. I can’t believe he’s really—you know. It just seems so insane. Like, it makes you wonder who the rest of the supers are.”
“Yeah, it really does.” I snorted, thinking about Iron Phantom lying on my bedspread. I may have told Sarah all about Connor’s abilities, but I hadn’t breathed a word of my connection with Iron Phantom to anybody.
I walked backward down the narrow aisles, continuing our conversation while we made our way to our seats. “So what would anti–Red Comet fan fiction feature exactly?”
“Mostly jabs at his emasculating spandex. I haven’t thought that far.”
“Sarah, you are a girl after my own—”
I meant to say girl after my own heart, but my shoe caught the carpet at the exact moment I was about to end my sentence. As a result, I crossed heart with everyone’s favorite curse word, fuck. And so, on the first day of rehearsal, in front of the entire cast, I screeched “FART” while I plunged to my doom.
I was about to drown in an abyss of embarrassment when two hands appeared out of nowhere and wrapped around my waist. My equilibrium was in the middle of that not-so-pleasant experience where your stomach feels like it just dropped out your butt, when I noticed my rescuer. His dark hair flopped across his forehead while he stared at me, a little slack-jawed. I tried, unsuccessfully, to ignore the snickers of my castmates while he pulled me to my feet.
“Hey, Isaac.” My breath came out as one long pant while the remaining adrenaline worked through my body.
“Are you okay, Abigail?” This close, I could finally get a good look at him. The hard lines of his jaw and his pale milky skin resembled someone else I’d encountered recently. But would a supervillain wear a pair of ripped jeans and a Pac-Man T-shirt? I had no clue.
“I’m fine, thanks.” I grinned what I hoped was an award-winning smile and not a grimace of I-Think-You-Might-Be-a-Dangerous-Supervillain.
“Good.” Isaac nodded and glanced at his watch. “Let’s get this show on the road, then.”
* * *
My near-death experience before rehearsal was an omen. The first run-through of Hall of Horrors was a disaster.
I spent at least an hour tripping over Isaac’s ginormous feet—not to mention the props and the slick wooden floor of the stage—but my suckage wasn’t the worst of it. A junior girl in the chorus started a conga line (for what reason I was unsure) and sprained her ankle, Rylan blew a fuse while operating the stage lights, leaving us stranded in the dark for ten minutes while we called the janitor to fix it, and Isaac spent half the rehearsal alternating between texting and playing games on his cell phone. Then he shouted at Mrs. Miller when she shook her Director’s Stick in his face. The stick was a long, gnarled tree branch Mrs. Miller doused in holy water, then shoved in our faces. It was only used when our cast performed so horribly we needed extra help from “the big man upstairs”—and she didn’t mean Principal Davis. When Mrs. Miller used the stick on Isaac, he told her he had an emergency and sprinted from the auditorium.
Sarah offered to sing Isaac’s parts in his absence, which made rehearsal that much worse. She was my best friend, but she sang herself hoarse in five minutes, sneezed when she came too close to the prop flowers covering the stage, and stepped on my toes while we learned choreography. By the time Sarah accidentally hip-checked me across the stage and headfirst into both Courtney McGuire and the giant papier-mâché crocodile in a moat around the castle, Mrs. Miller decided to call it a day. At least, I think that’s what she said. She was sobbing rather loudly, so it was difficult to tell.
“That is so not what happens on Glee,” Sarah groaned as we walked outside toward the parking lot. I was busy obsessively checking my arms and legs for bruises. Already a rather large green one had manifested around my elbow. It held a striking resemblance to the Statue of Liberty.
“Hollywood is misleading. It’s the reason why people think musical rehearsals are magical places where everyone gets along and superheroes are charming and always get the girl in the end.”
“Speaking of superheroes…” Sarah led me to her car parked near the curb. “I just hung up some new Fish Boy posters. Want to see?”
“Not particularly, but you’re driving me home, so I guess I don’t really have a choice.”
“That’s the spirit!” She opened the passenger door for me and I slumped inside. Like most other things Sarah owned, the interior of her car was plastered with posters of my brother. She taped them to the doors, dashboard, even the ceiling. Most were Photoshopped to include Sarah hanging from Connor’s back as he flew through Morriston, but I noticed that a few had been replaced by Fish Boy doing the backstroke in the river.
“This one took me five hours.” Sarah pointed to a drawing of Fish Boy kicking his flippers. “It was so hard to get the shading right on his scales.”
“Mmm-hmm…” But another photo hanging from her rearview mirror had caught my attention. Sarah, Connor, and me at the summer festival last August. He had his long arms wrapped around our shoulders, and we grinned manically while Sarah reached out to snap the photo. I’d forgotten all about that day. Right after we took that picture, Connor had to rush off to save someone from a burning semitruck.
Sarah was still admiring her posters as she started the car, a small smile on her face. Her red hair covered her eyes, so she couldn’t see me watching. We had been best friends for years, ever since she repeatedly pulled my ponytail in the lunch line in fifth grade, but I’d always assumed she would hate me if she ever found out about Connor’s superpowers. Sarah and I shared everything, but I had lied to her about her celebrity crush’s true identity for three years. If I were in her position, I would hate me. But Sarah always had been more forgiving than me.
“Hey, Sarah?”
“Yeah?”
I gulped. Ever since my mom died, feelings and honesty were hard for me to admit to anyone other than Connor. But I owed them to her. “I’m really glad you know the truth.”
She smiled. The top row of her teeth was perfectly straight and the bottom slightly crooked.
“Me too.”
* * *
I could always tell when Connor was home by the way the house smelled like salsa. When Sarah and I stepped in the kitchen, my brother was pacing in front of the microwave, wearing his super suit and stuffing his face with tortilla chips.
“Wow, okay.” Sarah nudged me with her elbow. “I know I said I was writing anti–Red Comet fan fiction, but this is still really cool.”
Connor crunched the chip bag in his fist as soon as the microwave beeped. “Abby, you will not believe what just happened,” he snapped, pulling a burrito from the microwave and taking a massive bite. Pieces of ground meat rained down on the counter.
“You forgot to buy sour cream?” I asked.
“You realized tacos are better than burritos?” Sarah chimed in.
Rolling his
eyes, Connor took another bite. “Oh, please. Everyone knows the burrito is the thicker, manlier, sexier cousin to the taco. No one wants the skimpy, crusty hard-shell taco when you can have the juicy, succulent burrito. It’s the obvious choice.”
“So then what’s the problem?” I pulled out a pitcher of lemonade and filled glasses for me and Sarah.
“What’s the problem?” Connor shouted through another bite of his burrito. “The problem is that lousy Iron Phantom keeps trying to kill people!”
I froze. I didn’t even realize I was overflowing my glass until Sarah grabbed a handful of napkins and started mopping up the lemonade I’d spilled all over the counter.
“What do you mean? What happened now?”
Connor finished his burrito in two more bites, licking the salsa off his gloves. “Well, it started off as a great day. I was floating under a cumulus cloud, throwing birdseed at pigeons and listening to ‘I’ll Make a Man Out of You’ from Mulan—”
“You’re a Disney fan?” Sarah asked.
“Who isn’t?” Connor shot back. He pulled out another burrito from a fast-food bag on the kitchen table and popped it in the microwave. “Anyway, I was listening to music when I felt my good old sixth sense for danger, and I just barely made it over to Adventure Land in time to save two ten-year-olds from meeting their doom on the Loop-da-Loo.”
Ah, the Loop-da-Loo. The roller coaster perfectly mimicked what it was like to soar around Morriston with Connor after he chugged an energy drink—you strap yourself in, regret almost every life decision you’ve ever made as you’re launched out of the gate to an altitude higher than most birds dare to fly, then swear like a sailor as you plummet toward the ground through a slew of corkscrews, zero-gravity rolls, and something that Connor lovingly referred to as “the pretzel knot,” positive you’re about to die a gruesome, bloody death, before screeching into the station, massively shaken but also kind of contemplating doing it again. Zero to one-fifty and then back again all in under a minute.
“Their car disconnected from the train as soon as it launched and then made a ninety-degree drop back into the station,” Connor continued. “The hydraulics malfunctioned and everything. It was pretty awful.”
“And you think Iron Phantom did it?” I asked. Part of me didn’t want to believe it was true. I trusted my brother … but did anyone even see Iron Phantom near the roller coaster?
“Abby, I don’t think,” Connor said, slamming his fist on the counter. “I know. The guy is a master villain; I’m pretty certain he can figure out how to break an amusement park ride. We should just be glad no one died.” Grabbing his snack, Connor left the room.
“What do you think?” I asked Sarah once we were alone.
She eyed Connor’s fast-food bag, abandoned on the table. “I think … that there’s one burrito left and I’m going to eat it before your brother does.”
Shaking my head, I ushered her toward the microwave. “Give me half and I promise I won’t tell him.”
* * *
The next day at school was filled with speculations over whether or not Iron Phantom was responsible for the Loop-da-Loo mishap. According to the media, he was a thief, an arsonist, even skilled at attempted homicide. His one publicized moment of good with the homeless man had been officially eclipsed. Everyone in the city was convinced he did it—the news anchors, my father, my brother, the lady who served the mystery meat in the school cafeteria, even Sarah. Clearly no one other than a supervillain could be the cause of a broken amusement park ride.
Everyone believed Iron Phantom was to blame. Everyone, it seemed, except me and one other student.
“I’m calling bullshit on the whole Loop-da-Loo thing,” Isaac grunted from behind me in the lunch line. He elbowed his way between two freshmen to stand next to me, and we peered through the grease-stained glass separating the students from the lunch ladies and their heaps of mushy food. Isaac’s lip curled upward at today’s special: Potato Salad Surprise. The “surprise” was likely last week’s fish tacos … or the hopes and dreams of former Morriston High School students.
“What about the Loop-da-Loo?” I narrowed my eyes at Isaac, trying to figure out if he was who I thought he might be. He certainly was tall enough, broad enough.
Isaac and I gagged as a cafeteria worker unceremoniously plopped a spoonful of potato salad on my plate. Isaac reached for an apple instead, groaning when he noticed it was bruised. He kept it anyway, polishing it on his shirt before moving forward in line and pushing my hand away when I tried to give my money to the cashier. He tossed five dollars at the woman, covering us both, and tugged me by the elbow to a nearby table. Sarah was already seated there, pulling a container of pasta salad from her bag. She glanced at Isaac when we sat down, one of her eyebrows raised in a silent question. I shrugged. I had no clue why Isaac decided to sit with us. Usually he ate alone and only spoke to us during rehearsal.
“I know I never lived in a city with supers before,” Isaac began, taking a large bite from his apple, “but it seems kind of dumb to blame everything bad that happens around here on just one dude. I mean, do you really think that Iron Phantom guy managed to sneak into the park and break a roller coaster without anyone noticing? That’s impossible.”
“Well, he can teleport,” I said.
Isaac laughed, scooting closer. He bumped his shoulder against mine, and a prickle of heat rolled down my arm. “That’s not what I asked,” he said. “I don’t care if he can teleport to Australia and back, there’s no way he set a building on fire, flooded the subway, and almost killed two kids at an amusement park. I mean, how would a guy find time to take a piss if he’s planning that much destruction? I’m just saying, Abigail.”
I glanced over to Sarah. A forkful of noodles was suspended in midair on the way to her mouth. So far, eating with Isaac proved to be much more eventful than our usually silent lunches.
I speared a chunk of potato salad. A piece of gray fuzz protruded from my fork. I dropped the fork to my plate with a clatter.
“I don’t think Iron Phantom did anything yesterday,” I said.
One of Sarah’s noodles fell from her mouth, landing on her sweater. “Abby, seriously?”
“And what about that Red Comet guy?” Isaac continued. “Why does he get to save the day all the time? Let someone else get a turn, you know?”
“Oh, puh-lease!” Sarah enunciated her syllables like a prepubescent girl whenever she got angry. “Red Comet saves people because he’s an amazing superhero, right, Abby?” My best friend was in complete Red Comet Protection Mode, the sassy attitude she adopted every time one of our classmates jokingly told her that her favorite super might really be a wrinkly old man under that suit.
“Abby?” Sarah nudged me and I jerked in my chair. I was busy thinking about Isaac’s voice and if it could be disguised to sound like Iron Phantom’s. I was also curious as to why Isaac suddenly seemed to be pro–Iron Phantom and anti–Red Comet.
“Oh! R-right, yeah,” I stuttered, looking at Isaac. His eyes were really green, but were they the right shade of green? A bright, electric green that looked more like spring grass and less like pine needles? “Red Comet is a great superhero,” I finally muttered.
“Whatever.” Isaac sighed and pushed away from the table, throwing his apple core over his shoulder. It landed in the trash without him even looking. “At least you don’t believe only one guy is responsible for all the crime that goes on around here. It’s like the rest of the city is brainwashed or something. See you guys in rehearsal,” Isaac called over his shoulder, practically plowing through half the student body in his haste to leave the cafeteria.
* * *
I sat in the library later that afternoon, memories of Iron Phantom’s irritation slicing through me as I recalled our last conversation. There was no way he had been faking. No one was that good of an actor. Not even me.
He swore he wasn’t to blame for the subway flood. I didn’t want to admit it, but I believed him. There was no pro
of otherwise—for the subway or for the roller coaster. Yes, Iron Phantom was annoying, I’d give him that. And aloof. But after he came to me, broken and bleeding, and asked for nothing except for me to help him, something changed. For a moment, right before he got angry with me, Morriston’s big bad villain seemed just like anyone else. Nervous and a little unsure of himself. He was a super, but if you took away his powers, he was every bit as human as I was.
Whether he knew it or not, Iron Phantom had guilted me into researching Morriston’s mysterious microchips. Not an easy thing to do with the amount of information he’d given me. The chips had nothing in them. He’d literally given me nothing to work with. How considerate.
Iron Phantom had overestimated my abilities. This wasn’t the kind of thing I could just look up online, and he’d deliberately told me not to ask my dad. Not like that would have made a difference. Every time I asked about Dad’s job, he’d just say, “Politics, Abby,” in a gruff voice that reminded me of a pissed off bear. Vague to the tenth power.
“How am I supposed to research nothing? It’s like walking into a black hole.” I slapped my hand on the desk, rattling the keyboard. “He’s so stupid.”
“Trust me, hurting the computer doesn’t make it work any faster.”
The voice came from the row of monitors in front of me. I stood up to look over the partition and found Rylan typing frantically at a homework assignment.
“What are you working on?” I asked.
“Schoolwork,” he muttered. His fingers dashed across the keys. Clack-clack-clack-clack. “That’s what people usually do in the library.”
“You don’t say. What an astute observation.” I rubbed my forehead, slouching in my chair. All I’d gained from this library trip was a headache from looking at the glow of the screen for far too long.
Clack-clack-clack-clack.
I poked at the keyboard with my middle finger. The screen flickered, but it didn’t do anything particularly exciting—like give me all the answers I was looking for. It wasn’t a genie, unfortunately.
The Supervillain and Me Page 8
