I ended up at the mall, operating purely on autopilot as I walked through the food court and stood in line at the froyo stand. Sugar. I needed a ton of it, and then when I was done, I would get some more. And I would completely forget about superheroes and boys with emerald-green eyes and lips that tasted like the chocolate bar he’d left on my pillow and—
Oh my God, I needed to stop. Less thinking, more eating.
I ordered a large chocolate fudge in a waffle cup (because even the most broken of hearts will mend when eating fudge) and grabbed a handful of napkins from the dispenser. As I was looking for an open spot to sit, a hand shot out of nowhere, sending a pile of napkins fluttering to the ground.
“Sorry!” Rylan called to the girl working behind the counter. She rolled her eyes and continued making a milk shake for the next customer.
Rylan dabbed at a spot on his shirt. “Crap. This is going to stain.”
“What is it?” I leaned close, noticing a bright blue blotch on his plaid shirt.
Rylan jumped, like he hadn’t even noticed me. “Blue raspberry slushie.” He gave me a nervous smile, and I noticed the blue staining his teeth. “What’s yours?”
“Chocolate fudge.”
He nodded, crinkling his napkin in his fist. “Why do all girls like chocolate?”
“Um … because it’s chocolate.”
Rylan laughed. “Fair enough.” He spotted an empty booth across the food court, and we headed toward it in an unspoken agreement. Rylan slurped at his drink while I prodded at my ice cream with my spoon.
“You look a little glum,” Rylan said.
“Glum?” I looked across the table at him. He swished his drink around in his mouth before swallowing. “Do people still say ‘glum’?”
He shrugged. “I do. Now spill.”
I thought about it for a second. Telling him wouldn’t hurt.
I stabbed my ice cream with my spoon, putting a deep crater right in the middle. “I got stood up.”
Rylan’s eyebrows shot up. “By who?”
“Just by … someone.”
“Does he have a name? I hope you know his name.”
Rage burned through my cheeks. I almost cut it loose, making Rylan the target of my white-hot frustration, but the only thing holding me back was the fear that I would drive him away. Being alone right now, stuck with only my thoughts for company, would be torture.
I watched him watch me for a moment. Rylan was so sweet. He never would have left me sitting in the coffee shop without an explanation.
I smashed my spoon farther into my melted frozen yogurt. “Isaac.” I muttered his name like it was something rotten. “Isaac stood me up.”
Or maybe he didn’t. Who cared anymore?
Rylan bit the end of his straw. “Oh man, I really don’t want to tell you what I’m thinking right now.”
I sat up straight. “No, please. Tell me. On second thought, tell me everything you’ve ever thought. Ever.” I leaned toward him.
Rylan grimaced. The blue was gone from his teeth. “Abby, I don’t want to be mean, but have you ever noticed that Isaac kind of only cares about Isaac?”
“He’s an … acquired taste,” I countered, thinking more of Iron Phantom than Isaac Jackson.
Rylan took another sip from his drink. “Abby, Isaac is … well…” He shook his head. “Anyone who would stand you up is an idiot.”
“Thanks.”
“My pleasure.” He pushed back his chair with a screech. “And on that note, I’m going to make you feel better.”
“How? Where are you going?”
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Well, first I’m going to the bathroom, but after that, I’m going to make you feel better. Promise.”
“How?” I asked again, but he was already weaving through the crowd to the restrooms.
“If one more person ever tries to be cryptic with me again, I swear…,” I muttered, stirring my spoon in my cup. I wasn’t particularly hungry anymore.
After throwing away my ice cream, I glanced at my watch. Rylan was taking such a long time that I wondered if something had happened. Like if he fell in the toilet. Or maybe he got held up. I shivered just thinking about gentle Rylan with a gun to his back. With the amount of crime in Morriston, I wouldn’t be shocked.
I’d just stood to check on him when the sound of a gong cut through the air. I glanced around the food court, looking at the ceiling. Around me, other shoppers were doing the same. A loud ticktock was coming from the speakers instead of the usual oldies music the Morriston Mall favored. The noise reminded me of the large grandfather clock in the entryway at home. When that thing chimed, the whole house heard it.
Goose bumps prickled my forearms. In the same way the supers always knew when danger was beginning to unravel, I had a strange feeling that something wasn’t right.
Another strike of a gong. I looked at the nearest television screen hanging on the wall behind a sports bar. Highlights of a baseball game were playing, but the station suddenly changed, now showing a countdown of sixty seconds. With a flicker of lights and a loud click, every screen in the food court flipped to the same picture. The digital numbers had now reached fifty-five and were moving quickly. Ticktock. Ticktock. The noise grew steadily louder as the numbers grew smaller.
Whether this was caused by the same person who had been framing Iron Phantom for months or by a new criminal, I wasn’t sure. I had no idea what the end of the countdown would bring. But it couldn’t possibly be good.
There was a fire alarm across the food court. I raced to it, scrambling to lift the cover and slam my hand down on the lever. The shrill ring mixed in with the ticking from the speakers, jolting the mall into action. Chairs screeched, toppling over. Shopping bags were left strewn across the floor as people bolted for the glass doors by the parking lot.
The ticking grew to a near deafening volume. Thirty seconds on the clock. People pushed from all directions, trying to escape the mall.
Ticktock. Ticktock. Ticktock. Ticktock.
I stopped in my tracks. Rylan hadn’t come out of the bathroom … had he?
I’d never forgive myself if I left without checking. I ran against the flow of the crowd, hopping over fallen chairs as I rushed toward the empty hallway that led to the restrooms.
Something crunched beneath my shoe, and I pulled up short.
I lifted my foot, finding a small cracked key chain. A glass cylinder hung off a metal loop, a few broken pieces scattered across the floor. Not knowing exactly why, I bent down to retrieve it, hiding my fingertips in my sleeve so I wouldn’t cut myself.
As my hand neared, the glass started glowing, first purple, then blue, cycling through the entire rainbow in quick succession. I jerked my hand back a few inches. The colored glass became clear.
Iron Phantom’s words came back to me, as hard and fast as a thunderclap. That’s just a paperweight, he said when we visited his lab. It changes color when it senses body heat. It doesn’t bite.
I held the key chain in my palm again. Through the glow of bright green glass, I could just make out two initials carved on the side.
R.S.
Out in the food court, the ticking stopped.
A rumble rocked the mall, dust falling from the ceiling. I felt the vibration under my shoes, but I barely heard it. I barely heard the screams. I barely heard the breath wheezing through my lungs over the ringing in my ears.
R.S.
A second explosion, this one harsher than the first. The floor shook so violently I feared it would split and swallow the world whole. I was pitched sideways, my head slamming into the cinderblock wall before my body crashed to the ground. Through the stars of color popping before my eyes, I noticed the ceiling beam directly above me, cracking apart, starting to fall.…
“Abigail!”
Iron Phantom appeared in front of me, his rough black gloves clinging to my arms as he tugged me upright. My stomach dropped.
I felt the same nauseating, chest-tighteni
ng sensation I’d experienced twice before. Momentarily weightless, when I touched solid ground again I pulled away from the arms wrapped around my shoulders. We were outside, at the farthest end of the parking lot. The Morriston Mall quaked in the distance, spitting singeing debris into the air like a fountain.
I rounded on the boy standing beside me, his mouth hanging open as he took in the damage. “Thanks for your help.” My gaze was firm, but my insides were shattered. His key chain was still clutched in my hand. I thrust it toward him, and he barely managed to grab it before it fell. “Rylan.”
His shoulders pulled taut as he blinked behind his mask. His eyes were Iron Phantom green, not brown, but his soft voice was unmistakably Rylan’s—he hadn’t bothered disguising it.
“Abby, I…” A third explosion had us both ducking for cover. By the time I oriented myself and turned back to him, he was already gone.
Goddammit, I was going to murder Rylan Sloan.
Sirens wailed through the air. A red blur shot overhead, but Connor’s suit was quickly obscured by the thick smoke unfurling from the depths of the mall. Over the shouts of the terrified crowd, I thought I heard the engine of Fish Boy’s motorcycle.
My feet pounded across the parking lot. Connor couldn’t go in there. Not now. Not when the mall was so close to reaching its breaking point.
A fourth explosion sent everything over the edge. I squinted in the sunlight as the roof burst into bright orange flames. Metal beams creaked and snapped. The building buckled. A gust of hot air hit my face, scorching my cheeks as the Morriston Mall imploded.
With my brother trapped inside.
“Connor!” The sting of my last words to him haunted me, bitter and biting and so, so pointless as the mall came crashing down.
Maybe if you took a minute to listen instead of checking out like you did with Mom, then you could save people too.
Hunter appeared behind me, holding me steady as my screams seared my vocal cords. My throat was on fire. Everything was on fire. Connor was burning alive in that crumbling building. His body would be found amid charred rubble, his bright red suit black from the ash.
He hadn’t saved our mother, but this was never what I wanted. I may have teased Connor about his superhero status and grudgingly did his homework, but he was my family. I loved the infectious smirk that proudly graced his lips every time he used his nerdy powers. And his confusion over sugar and salt, which resulted in baking sickeningly gross brownies that we fed to our dad as a prank. I loved the way he recited lame knock-knock jokes to cheer me up after a rough day at school. The way he treated me as his friend and not his powerless little sister.
“Abby.” Fish Boy’s fingers dug into my shoulders. “Look.”
A familiar streak of red finally flew between two metal beams. His suit was burned and ripped, but his mask still remained intact. He cradled an elderly woman in his arms, setting her down gently beside an ambulance as the crowd cheered.
“Thank God,” I murmured, falling slack against Hunter’s chest. Connor managed to extract himself from his legion of fans and limped toward us, trailing blood from a wound in his leg the whole way over.
“Does anyone have some OxyContin?” he mumbled, then cursed in pain when I threw myself into his arms. Our relationship may have looked suspicious, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
“You’re okay. You’re not dead.” My voice came out muffled against Connor’s chest. He rocked me back and forth, refusing to let go. He didn’t care what we looked like either. “I’m so sorry.”
“Me too. Look, I’m not upset about what you said. You’re right. I didn’t save her. And if anything, that helped me realize that I need to try harder.” He pulled away just a bit so he could look at me. He seemed like he wanted to say something else, but he was prevented from speaking when my phone started beeping with a video chat request from our dad.
I answered quickly, honestly a little shocked that he found the time to call instead of sending another text.
“Abby! I was so worried. I tried the house and you weren’t home,” Dad said as soon as his haggard face filled the screen. Sunlight streamed in through the office windows behind him. Connor took a step away from me, pretending he wasn’t part of our reunion, but I caught him give our father a reassuring nod all the same. “When I saw the explosion, I thought … well, I’d never forgive myself if something happened to either one of you.”
“Dad, it’s okay. We’re both—”
“Benjamin.” Wallace opened my dad’s office door and stepped into the room. His right wrist bore a cast from Iron Phantom’s attack at the warehouse. Wallace’s piercing gaze looked from my father to his phone and finally to me, but if he recognized me as Iron Phantom’s accomplice, he certainly didn’t show it. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes, thank you.” Dad gave me a quick smile before lowering his phone to his desk. His face disappeared, and only his tie filled the screen. “Wallace, make sure you bring in an adequate amount of security. I’m going forward with the press conference.”
“On Tuesday, sir?” I heard Wallace ask.
“Yes. The big one. I just need to draft the speech.” His excitement carried him away and he ended the call, without even remembering to say good-bye.
Beside me, Connor gave Hunter one of those complicated man-fives where you slap each other at least four times and fist bump all in the span of about three seconds. He towed me across the parking lot as the crowd started to press in.
“Abby, I know how you feel, but we’re still going to find him,” Connor said. “We’re going to end this.”
“Comet—”
“No. Iron Phantom isn’t going to hurt anyone else. He isn’t going to hurt you again.”
But Connor was wrong on two accounts. First, Iron Phantom hadn’t bombed the mall. He wouldn’t have teleported me out if he did, meaning the real culprit was still at large. And second, Rylan Sloan was every bit capable of hurting me again. In fact, he already had.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Abby,
I never wanted you to find out this way. I know I hurt you, and for that I’m sorry.
—Rylan
Well, at least he wasn’t dead. That was a good thing, right? The note was shoved inside my locker the next day, but I couldn’t find Rylan anywhere. I looked for him before homeroom, in the halls between classes, and in the cafeteria during lunch. He wasn’t in the library, and I even arrived to rehearsal early that afternoon, hoping to catch a glimpse of him testing stage lights in the auditorium. Nothing. If a super didn’t want to be found, it was nearly impossible to track them down. Nearly impossible, but not completely. I’d looked up Rylan’s address in the school directory and was taking a bus to his affluent Morriston gated community as soon as rehearsal ended to demand answers. Rylan may have saved my life yesterday, but he still owed me.
“Abigail, are you all right?” Isaac’s shadow passed over me as I sat on the floor outside the auditorium. The Hall of Horrors script clutched in his fist was covered with doodles of cars, geometric boxes, and girls with boobs larger than their heads.
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?” The distress and confusion I felt over Rylan the Idiotic Iron Phantom must have shown on my face if Isaac Jackson was taking the time to question my feelings.
I tried to smile. I hoped it looked convincing because, to me, it just felt fake. “Yeah, Isaac, thanks.”
Clearly unsatisfied with my lame attempt to persuade him I was okay, Isaac sighed and sat down beside me. He pulled his knees up to his chest, mirroring my position. “Think about this,” he began. “Whoever upset you, are they really worth your time? Life’s too short to be moping around about things, you know?”
I raised my eyebrows, scrutinizing him. How did I ever believe he was Iron Phantom? His eyes were a darker green, his shoulders narrower, even his legs looked shorter. Now that I knew the truth, I wondered how I could ever be so blind.
“Why are you giving me
advice? You’re being nice to me.”
Isaacs’s head cocked to the side in confusion. “I can be nice.”
“Not without turning to stone or melting into a puddle.”
“Oh, really?” For once, he looked genuinely apologetic. “Sorry. I have a lot on my mind, I guess. Remember how I told you I moved in with my uncle because my parents are … gone? Well, it’s been stressful to say the least.” A harsh bark of laughter escaped his lips. “He’s my dad’s brother. He’s not the greatest person to be around during the best of times, and he’s been even grumpier since my dad died, but … Sorry, you probably don’t care about that.”
I frantically shook my head. I shouldn’t have cared—not after all the rehearsals where he acted like an arrogant asshole. But I liked hearing him open up to me, and I understood why he came across as a jerk. It was a front he put up from dealing with so many bigger issues than dumb high school musical rehearsals. I guess, in a way, we were all like the Morriston supers. We all wore our own masks.
“No! I do, I do,” I said. “It’s just I’m a little confused—”
“Why I told you all that?” He folded a loose page of his script into a paper airplane. “To help, I guess. This is going to sound weird, but I kind of had a little, uh, crush on you when we first started rehearsing. Just a minuscule thing. Insignificant really.” His ears grew red around the edges.
“Oh. Um…” Briefly I wondered how things would have turned out if Isaac had been wearing Iron Phantom’s mask instead of Rylan.
“Like I said,” Isaac continued, “it was stupid. You and Rylan seem to have some weird, mushy thing going on and”—he shrugged—“Jimmy Stubbs has been looking interestingly attractive lately.”
“Oh? Oh!” I gave him a genuine smile this time. “Go for Jimmy. He’s nice.”
Isaac started sputtering, his ears redder by the second. “Well, erm, maybe. I’m not sure if it’ll work out. He’s probably a moron.…”
“God, Isaac. Just shut up and go talk to him.”
Laughing, Isaac stood, throwing his paper airplane into the auditorium. It got caught in Mrs. Miller’s frizzy hair and went unnoticed. He linked his elbow with mine—very uncharacteristically Isaac, but I didn’t mind. “C’mon, Hamilton,” he said. “Let’s get to rehearsal. I need to practice throwing you into that damn crocodile half a dozen times.”
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