* * *
Rylan’s neighborhood only had ten houses because they were so massive that’s all that could fit. I used to think my house was huge. My home was full of useless space, but looking across the pond—or was it a lake?—in the front yard of Rylan’s family’s mansion, I knew the Hamilton household just got put to shame.
The estate looked less like a family home and more like Buckingham Palace with its luscious gardens and rows upon rows of red-trimmed windows. Already it was growing dark, and a few of the upstairs lights cast a glow on the front lawn. Through one of the downstairs windows, I noticed a baby grand piano in the middle of a room with white marble floors. An enormous glass chandelier hung from the ceiling. Tall white columns bracketed the porch.
A knocker shaped like an eagle’s head glared at me from the middle of the front door, daring me to reach for the handle. I took a deep breath. I shouldn’t be nervous. Rylan was the one who withheld his identity from me for so long, then stood me up. He should be scared, not me.
The knocker dropped loudly on the wood three times. I took a step back and waited. Maybe he wouldn’t be home. Maybe he put on his stupid super suit and went out to his thinking tree in the middle of nowhere. Maybe …
The front door opened with a loud creak. Rylan peered out of the house, looking sickeningly handsome in jeans and a button-down shirt. He nervously licked his lips and opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. Rylan looked like a fish without water—a superhero without his mask. He tried twice more, running a hand through his dark hair and glancing back into his house as if hoping someone, anyone, would come to his rescue. Finally, he leaned against the doorframe and groaned. “None of this turned out the way it was supposed to.”
He was right about that. The tense moment stretched between us, but all I could think to do was stick my nose in the air and snap, “Your lab is much more impressive on the outside.”
“Yeah.” Rylan sucked in a breath and glanced at the porch, disinterested. He flinched forward, like he wanted to touch me, but thought against it. “Abby, I never meant to hurt you.”
“Never meant to hurt me?” My shrill voice could have doubled for bat sonar. “You know, Rylan Sloan, I’ve had a lot of firsts with you. First time I’ve crept around a shady warehouse in the middle of the night, first time I’ve been stood up…”
“Abby—”
“Why didn’t you tell me? You had a lot of opportunities.”
“Abby—”
“Were you afraid? Did you think I wouldn’t like you or something? Because news flash! I like you. A lot. Even when you’re you. Even when you’re shy and quiet. And you liked me too, or was that just another thing you lied about?”
“Abby—”
“What? Aren’t you going to call me Abigail anymore? Or do you only reserve that for when you’re Iron Phantom?”
With a sharp yank on my arm, Rylan dragged me over the threshold, shutting the door firmly behind us before rounding on me. “Would you please be quiet about that kind of stuff?” he snapped. “I don’t want my neighbors and Franklin to hear us.”
“Franklin? Who’s Franklin?”
“He’s my butler. Well, my grandfather’s…”
“Oh, a butler! Righto, old sport!” I laughed, mocking an English accent. Nothing about having a butler was that funny. I only laughed because I realized that Rylan had at least three personalities: at school, in costume, and at home in his megamansion with his fancy manservant. And the problem was, I didn’t know which was real. I didn’t know if I wanted answers to my questions anymore. It felt pretty cathartic just chewing Rylan out in his foyer.
“Can you stop, please?” he asked, looking uncomfortable again.
“Sure, Rylan. Whatever you want. Cheerio.” I turned to reach for the door handle.
“No, stop! Abigail, wait.” His fingers clenched around my wrist. “Just wait. I like you too, okay? I more than like you, I … please stay.” Rylan jumped in front of me, blocking my path. “Please. Just give me a chance to explain. I’ll answer all your questions, and if after that you still don’t want anything to do with me, I’ll leave you alone. For good.”
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to remain in the house—where we kissed in the basement—and yet I didn’t have the heart to tell him no. I tried to buy myself some time before I had to answer. “Your eyes are brown now,” I said, confused. “Whenever you’re … him, they’re green. What color are they really?”
A timid smile came to Rylan’s mouth. “Brown. I bought colored contacts a while ago, hoping they would keep people from thinking I was … you know. I guess my plan worked a little too well.” He stared at me pointedly. “Are you really sure you don’t want to stay?”
His deep brown eyes pleaded with me—the same unblinking stare I’d seen so many times before. And with his glassy eyes and rumpled hair, he looked so sad. I took a step away from the door. “Okay.”
* * *
The interior of Rylan’s mansion looked so white and sterile it could pass for a hospital. The furniture, the walls, the two spiral staircases leading upstairs were all bright white and free from specks of dirt. Poor Franklin must keep himself busy.
Speaking of Franklin, Rylan gestured to a middle-aged man descending the stairs. His white hair blended perfectly with the house, but instead of a suit and tie—the typical butler attire—he had on jeans and a worn leather jacket. Not exactly what I was expecting. Franklin reminded me of Sarah’s dad that one time he tried to start a motorcycle gang and barhop along Morriston’s South Side.
“Franklin, this is Abigail.”
“Hi, Franklin.” This was too weird. My family didn’t even have a housekeeper and my dad was the mayor. Instead of hiring help, my parents used to punish me and Connor by making us scrub the bathroom floors with a toothbrush.
Franklin nodded in return. “Miss Abigail,” he said with a deep southern twang. Not only was Franklin dressed like a biker, he wasn’t British. He was just full of surprises.
“Does he know what you are?” I asked Rylan as he guided me through the twisting hallways of the megamansion, out of earshot of the butler.
“No. The last time you were here, I told you I had family upstairs who didn’t know. That’s who I meant. Unlike you, Franklin is blissfully unaware.”
“You could always let him in on the secret. He could be your sidekick. The Super Server! Fighting crime one hors d’oeuvre plate at a time!”
Rylan halted in front of a door at the end of a white-carpeted hallway. An oil painting of an incredibly obese bulldog hung on the wall. He cocked an eyebrow. “You turn to sarcasm to deflect stress in your life.”
I shrugged, following him into the room. Unlike the rest of the mansion, this space had blue walls and dark wooden furniture. Newspapers and books were scattered across every surface in the open living area. A box of Chinese takeout sat on a shiny kitchen countertop. Beside me, a door was cracked open just enough to see the edge of a green bedspread. A ball of black fabric sat crumpled on the floor by the hamper. Iron Phantom’s super suit.
“This is the guesthouse,” Rylan said. “I’m not really a fan of my grandfather’s decorating choices, so I stay in here. It’s a bit more homey, I guess.”
“This is your grandfather’s house?”
He nodded, looking around the room. “Yeah. He doesn’t live here, though. He lives in Florida, but this house is his backup. More on that later.” He ruffled his hair, causing a few pieces to stick straight up. “Anyway, I moved here after my parents … well, you know.” He glanced at a copper frame on the mantle, where a mini version of Rylan grinned beside a dark-haired man and woman. They all sat on a checkered picnic blanket, and orange Popsicle juice stained Rylan’s lips, dribbling onto his T-shirt.
Rylan methodically straightened the newspapers on the coffee table. On the front page was an article condemning Iron Phantom for blowing up the mall. Rylan sneered at the paper and threw it in the garbage before collapsing on the couch. He picked at h
is fingernails, refusing to look me in the eyes, even as I awkwardly hovered next to him. I couldn’t believe how much braver a mask could make a person. Rylan as Rylan and Rylan as Iron Phantom were complete opposites. Like the sun and the moon. The sweetness of vanilla and the bitter taste of dark chocolate.
“So…,” I said. “Tell me everything.”
“Everything?” he chuckled, sounding bitter. “Wow. That’s a lot of things. Are you sure you have enough time in your schedule?”
“You turn to sarcasm to deflect stress in your life.”
Rylan patted the couch cushion beside him. “Take a seat. We’re going to be here a while.”
I wanted to bombard him with questions, but I refrained, watching his eyebrows scrunch together in thought. It dawned on me that Rylan Sloan and I were about to have our longest conversation to date where he wasn’t hiding behind his alter ego.
“Okay,” Rylan sighed, fidgeting in his seat. “Okay. So, I guess I should just start at the beginning. Um, when I was eight, I, uh, I started to get a lot of headaches. Really bad ones, like someone was smashing a brick into my skull. I got dizzy a lot. Once, I tripped and almost fell down a flight of stairs. My parents thought I was just suffering from really bad migraines. But when I started to have trouble walking, they obviously realized something was wrong. Really wrong. So I went to the hospital, they did an MRI … and they, um, they told my parents that I had a brain tumor.”
I felt like someone punched me in the chest. His desire to become an oncologist finally made sense.
Rylan scratched at the back of his head. Turning, he parted his hair a few inches above the top of his spine and showed me a long line of scar tissue. “They call it medulloblastoma. It’s cancerous, and it’s pretty much the worst kind of brain tumor a kid can get.” Dropping his hands, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
“Obviously, they did surgery to remove it. I had a round of radiation and chemo after, which was miserable.” His head twitched like he was trying to shake the memory from his brain. “And then they pronounced me cancer-free. My doctor said I had about a seventy percent chance of survival, which are good odds, but it still pissed me off that I went through brain surgery and chemo and there was still a chance I could die.
“But I went back to school and tried to forget. A few months later, I started to develop my powers. The telepathy came first, then the healing, then the teleportation. My parents knew about it, but no one else in my family did. They tried to help me cope the best they could. They took me on vacation and to baseball games, camping and to the park, trying to make me feel normal. But then they died a few years later, and I haven’t told anyone since. On the bright side, the cancer never came back. Supers have different DNA than the normal population; I’ve done a few tests on myself. We’re immune to pretty much every human disease or illness there is. I don’t know if you know that.”
“I do.” Connor was the same way.
“I figure the tumor must have had something to do with developing powers. Cancer is caused by DNA mutations. I get cancer, and then I learn to teleport? What else could have caused it?”
“The radiation, maybe?”
“Yeah.” Rylan nodded. “Or that. I’m sure not every super is a cancer survivor. Either way, if I never had it I would still be normal.”
I took a deep breath, trying to absorb everything he just threw at me. Rylan’s story made me want to cry for the sad little boy who experienced so much pain all before the age of twelve. And as I looked at the guy next to me, head lowered to the ground and knuckles clasped so tightly they turned white, I noted that the little boy from the Popsicle photograph on the mantle may have grown into a handsome superhero, but that didn’t make him any less sad. My brother’s powers literally came out of nowhere. I never would have guessed Rylan went through something so terrible to gain his.
“You don’t like having superpowers?” A lot of people would kill to be a super. Personally, I could take it or leave it. But Rylan sounded like he wished his powers could just disappear. Ironic, really—he could disappear, but his powers couldn’t.
“Remember when I said I was sick of hearing about Iron Phantom? It’s because I was—am. I never wanted powers. I never even owned a suit until I learned about the microchips. What was the point, you know? There are other supers around to take care of everything. I … I can’t help wondering what life would be like if I didn’t have powers,” he said. “Would I keep to myself as much? I don’t know. It’s isolating. It’s hard to explain.…”
“No, I understand.” My brother might be the one with the powers, but I lived with him. I knew what it was like to keep secrets, or divert conversations away from superheroes, or be forbidden from inviting friends over. Connor’s superhero life affected me and my dad as much as it affected him. I felt terrible that the same thing that empowered Connor made Rylan feel so utterly alone.
“You’re not hiding superpowers from me too, are you?” Rylan asked.
“No, but…” Should I tell him? He was finally being honest, and even though I was angry with him earlier, I knew I needed to reciprocate if we were going to get anywhere. Besides, who was Rylan going to tell? Not his butler. Not anyone else either.
I exhaled a long breath. “My brother has superpowers too.”
Rylan eyed me like he expected me to shout, “April Fools’!” When I didn’t, the amused smirk slipped from his face. “Wait, you’re serious? Connor?”
“You know my brother?”
“Abigail, we’ve gone to school together since sixth grade. No, don’t be embarrassed,” he said when I started to apologize. “I know we never talked before this year. So … Connor, huh? Who is he?”
“Red Comet,” I muttered.
Rylan laughed. “That doesn’t surprise me at all. He hates me, you know. Want some water?” He stood, pulling two bottles from the fridge.
“He doesn’t hate you,” I said. “He hates Iron Phantom.”
“What’s the difference anymore?”
“You’re practically two different people!” I laughed when Rylan wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Don’t disagree. You’re much more outgoing with a super suit.”
“I’m not outgoing now?” He brushed a piece of hair from my face, letting his fingers linger on my cheek.
“Don’t go there.” I took a sip of water, hoping it would eliminate the sudden rush of heat coursing through me. I wanted to tell him that yes, he’s becoming quite outgoing in the privacy of his home. But as much as that excited me and caused my nerves to tremble, I wanted to stop him before his knuckles on my cheek turned into hands around my waist or lips crushing lips. I wanted to know why he left a note on my window but didn’t bother to follow through on his promise.
“Why didn’t you come to the coffee shop the other day? I waited an hour and a half for you.”
Rylan’s fingers stilled near my earlobe. “Because most people don’t realize what they’re doing when they do it. They’re selfish, and they don’t think about who they will hurt.” He frowned. “I was going to come. I had this whole speech planned out where I presented you with a giant stuffed crocodile like in Hall of Horrors. And then you would laugh because, hey, look, I guess Rylan can be witty—it turns out he’s not an awkward mess all the time. And then I was going to buy you coffee and take you back to my thinking tree, and we were going to talk.” He paused to tip some water down his throat, but then he fell silent.
I searched for a way to keep him talking. “Why did you tell me you thought Iron Phantom was an idiot? That’s a little strange to say about yourself.”
“Because I wanted to know what you really thought about him, if you’d defend him. And then once you did, all I wanted was to work up the courage to tell you the truth and have you not be mad when you found out that he was really me. This all started with me needing your help with the microchips, but then it turned into so much more between you and me. Or at least I thought it did.”
“You’re not wrong.
”
“I didn’t know what to do.” He clenched his hands in his lap. “I never meant to stand you up, but then I started freaking out. I didn’t want to be … to be…”
“Rejected?”
Rylan stared at a stain on the carpet. “Yeah. So I went to the mall instead, and then once I saw you I thought, ‘This is a sign. I’m really going to do it this time.’ But everything got so crazy and … I know I’m not the person you were expecting when you thought of Iron Phantom.”
I laughed. “Yeah, you’re a lot better.” After all the time I spent with him, I thought he was smarter than this.
Rylan slowly lifted his head, his eyes alight with the beginning of a smile that he seemed too apprehensive to share. “Really?”
“Do you even have to ask? You or Isaac? There’s no contest.”
His smile spread a bit wider. “Yeah, I guess I am a better kisser.”
“Among other things.”
Rylan grinned. “How many other things? I’m thinking I should make a list.”
I lightly pushed his shoulder. “Reel in your ego.” I looked out the window, spotting Franklin emptying a trash can at the back of the main house. “What else were you going to tell me about your grandfather?”
Rylan frowned. I got a sense that he wasn’t very fond of the man. “Like I said, he lives in Florida, but he owns an electronics manufacturing company here in Morriston—Sloan Manufacturing. I used to call it S&M when I was thirteen and kind of angsty … and now I’m rambling. Anyway, they make computer chips and stuff.” He paused. “Conveniently, they made the same microchips that we’ve been testing.”
I gaped at him. “That’s how you knew about them?”
“Correct. I was snooping through his computer one day right before summer ended, just because I was bored. I never expected to find anything, but then I saw that an order of microchips was getting sent to city hall. Originally, I thought it would be a good way to track which citizens had superpowers. It would be easy—inject people without their knowledge, then see who shows up to save the day whenever someone is in danger. But obviously now we know that’s not the case.”
The Supervillain and Me Page 19
