“All the screaming little girls and boys who can’t wait to see them kiss and hug and all that junk will cry themselves to sleep at night at the thought of Monkeywrench and Bright Boy loving each other in the afterlife,” Trent continues. “And all of them will tune in to our final battle, as the two mourning father figures fight each other for revenge.”
“Final battle? Are you going to kill me, too?”
“Only if you step out of line,” Trent says, then laughs. “Kidding! I’m kidding! What good would it do to kill the golden goose? You realize, once we set this thing in motion, all of our battles from here on out will be huge! We’ll always be battling over our fallen children. And that will always suck in a new audience, looking for teen love and tragic romance. The kids will be dead, but their story … their passion … will live on, forever … sniff … sob …” Trent laughs. “And you and I will rake it in.”
“Sounds good,” Edward says.
“Of course, it sounds good. You’d have to be deaf for it not to sound good. Well, Edward … are you deaf?”
“Just stop, OK. Maybe I’m not as ecstatic about killing a couple of teenagers as you seem to be, but I’d have to be an idiot to not see the possibilities. And—”
“You’re not an idiot,” Trent says. “Exactly. Two little pawns taken off the board, and you and I are set for life.”
“Sounds good. When?”
Trent smiles. “No time like the present.”
on Allison’s favorite roof, looking out at the Brooklyn Bridge for the past half hour, and she’s been quiet the whole time.
“Yeah. I’m fine,” she says in a way that is clearly not fine.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“You? Oh God, no …”
“So there is something wrong, it just isn’t my fault.”
She sighs. “You can be a real pain sometimes, you know that?”
“OK, so now it’s my fault?”
That gets a smile out of her, but then her eyes start tearing up. She puts a hand over them to try to hide it, and I know enough about her to know that she’s not thrilled with the idea of crying in front of someone … anyone.
“Allison?”
“It’s nothing,” she says in the slurry way people talk when they’re talking and crying at the same time.
“Right. It’s nothing. Obviously.”
“I feel like an idiot, OK?” she says, and the tears are really coming now.
“What? Why?”
She wipes her eyes, but the tears keep falling.
“Tonight, when that woman screamed and you stopped kissing me, there was a little voice in the back of my head that was like, Only a dork stops kissing a girl in order to go save someone he doesn’t even know. How horrible is that?”
“Absolutely horrible. So horrible, in fact, that I was thinking the EXACT SAME THING. You think I wanted to go save someone instead of kissing you?”
“No! And that’s my point! You didn’t want to go, but you did! Because you knew someone was in trouble! I would never do that.”
“What are you talking about?! You went with me, remember?”
“Yeah … tonight. But how many nights in the past five years have you done this? Huh?”
I thought about it. There were too many to count.
“Too many to count, right?” she said. “And how many times have I done it? Counting tonight … once.”
“So?”
She sniffles, takes a deep breath, and lets it out quickly. “So, all this time—even these past couple of days—I thought you were naive…. I thought you’d have to be to be a ‘good guy.’ Saving the world, one person at a time … and while you’re helping other people—people you don’t even know—your own life is going right down the toilet.”
“That seems a little harsh, but OK …”
“I thought only a total sap would do that.”
I shrug. I don’t know what to say.
“Except I was wrong,” she says. “Look at you. You don’t even know what to say right now because you’re trying not to hurt my feelings. You’re trying not to point out the obvious … except it wasn’t obvious to someone selfish like me. You’re not trying to save the world … you’re trying to save the people in it. You’re not naive … You’re noble.” She’s crying hard now. “And I’m a jerk.”
I start laughing. I can’t help it. “Bull,” I say. “And I’m not just saying that because I want you to stop crying so we can get back to the making-out portion of the evening. Although, if you wanted to stop right now so we can get back to making out, I wouldn’t think less of you.”
She laughs through her tears, but then immediately goes back to crying.
“You wanted a normal life,” I say. “There’s nothing selfish about that.”
“Yes, there is. When you’re like us, it’s completely selfish to pretend like you can’t help people because you want to fit in … because you want to have friends, and go out, and have fun.”
I shake my head and am about to argue, but she cuts me off.
“Five years!” she says. “Do you know how many people I could have helped in five years?”
“No. I don’t. And neither do you. So stop beating yourself up over it. All I know is that when I went to go help those people tonight, you were right beside me … And quite frankly, that’s how I’d like things to be from now on.”
She nods, but in a distracted way, as if she’s only half-listening to me. I take her in my arms and hold her. She lets me. Her tears are winding down. She wipes her face on my shirt, then looks up at me. I’m about to kiss her when she pulls away from me
“Oh man,” she says, taking her phone out of her pocket. “My dad just texted me.”
She opens her phone to read it when my phone goes off. It’s Trent. For a second, I consider not answering it. I don’t really want to talk to him. Plus, I’m suspended, right? That means he doesn’t get to call me.
The phone rings again. I pick it up.
“Scott?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s Trent. Listen”—he pauses—“I think I was a little harsh on you last night … no … wait … I don’t think … I KNOW I was a little harsh on you.”
“Oh … uh … OK …”
“I’m sorry. I’m just”—he takes a deep breath, then lets it out—“I’m just a little frustrated. You know how important justice is to me.”
I don’t know what the proper response to that is, so I just say, “Uh-huh.”
“And well, it’s just killing me that filth like Dr. Chaotic is running loose in the city. I just wanted to make sure that it was killing you, too,” he says.
“Trent, listen. I’m still with you. I am. I just needed to make a few changes, that’s all.”
“No, I get it. I get it. You’re getting older now, and … well, you’re going to start having your own opinions”—he stops—“no. Wait. Scratch that. You’ve had your own opinions for a while, it’s just that now you’re a little more forward in voicing them, right?”
“Right,” I say cautiously.
“And I’m not really used to that … and I didn’t really handle it as well as I could have. In fact, I didn’t handle it well at all.”
“No, you didn’t,” I say. I look over at Allison, but she’s still hunched over her phone, tapping away.
“I have no excuse. You’ve saved my life, for God’s sake. The least I could do is show you the respect you’ve earned many times over. I’m sorry,” he says … and is that a sniffle? “Hold on a second.” He puts the phone down, and I hear it again. It’s definitely a sniffle.
I’m too shocked to say anything. Trent has never expressed anything close to this to me before, let alone gotten all teary. I mean, I knew he cared, I guess I just never realized how much.
I look over at Allison. She waves to me, then points and mouths the words I have to go. Her eyes look worried.
I want go over to her, but I don’t want Trent to hear that I’m with Allison, no
t when it seems like he’s starting to trust me again. I give her an “Are you OK?” look. She nods yes and gives me a small smile. I give her a “Really?” look; she mouths the words I have to go again. I mouth OK back to her. She smiles, a genuine one this time (but still with a small trace of worry in it), then turns and leaps off into the night.
“Scott?” It’s Trent. He’s back. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s OK.”
“You have to understand that this is all new to me,” he continues. “I”—he stops, takes another deep breath—“I don’t always know what I’m doing. I never had a mentor, and well, I guess I let the power go to my head. I’ve been trying to be an example for you, lead you … but I guess you’re older now, and you’re going to have your own ideas about things.”
“You don’t sound happy about it.”
“The only thing I’m not happy about,” he says, “is how I’ve handled things so far. And the frustrating thing is I went through what you’re going through … exactly! I mean, I was the kid in school who had a big secret and had a hard time connecting with people because of it.”
“Really?”
“Of course. I mean, I didn’t have a secret identity then, but I knew there was something different about me, and I did everything in my power to hide it. Part of me wanted everyone to know the amazing things that I was capable of, but I had a feeling that it wouldn’t go over too well. I was afraid people would think I was a freak. I was afraid that whatever I accomplished would be taken away from me, and I would lose my temper and do something I regretted.”
“You’ve never told me this.”
“Yes, well … I guess I always thought of you as a little kid. I kind of missed the point when you grew up”—he pauses—“but things are going to be different from now on. Very, very different.”
“Thanks, Trent. This really means a lot to me.”
“Not as much as it means to—wait … hold on … the perimeter alarm is going off.”
I can hear the alarm going off in the background. Suddenly, there’s an explosion.
“What was that?” I yell. My mind feels like it’s running in thirty different directions at once. I don’t know what to do
“Dr. Chaotic!” Trent yells. “He’s here! He’s—Aaaaa!” There’s another explosion, this one closer to Trent. I hear the phone clatter to the ground.
“No!” I shout. “Trent! Trent!”
The only response I get is another series of explosions that almost blows out the speaker in my phone. I’m about to race home when Dr. Chaotic picks up the phone.
“Bright Boy, I presume. Or should I call you Scott? You had a lovely home here, Scott! Ha-ha-ha-ha!” A jumble of images flash across my mind: a giant hole in the wall of Trent’s study with the wallpaper still smoldering around the edges, the leather couch split in half and coughing up its stuffing, papers and debris scattered all around the room. Dr. Chaotic is using telepathy to show me his handiwork.
“How did you—?” I start to ask.
“How do you think? You didn’t actually believe she liked you, did you?” Dr. Chaotic starts laughing, then stops short. “Whoops! I guess you did! Awww … such a poor, naive, lovestruck little sidekick. So I guess you also believed her when she told you that she didn’t follow you home! Oh, Bright Boy! So trusting! But I guess that’s what makes you … noble!” He busts out laughing again.
The back of my head tingles as if someone just hit me with a two-by-four. I can feel the heat rising to my cheeks, out of fury and shame, anger and embarrassment. “Where’s Phantom?”
“Oh, don’t worry. I haven’t killed him … yet.” An image of Trent lying unconscious on the ground, covered in debris, flashes through my mind. Then another image replaces it … an image that knocks the wind out of me. My stomach cramps up, doubling me over. “Looks like this guy wasn’t so lucky, though!” cackles Chaotic.
“It’s a lie,” I say. “This whole thing. It’s not real.”
“What’s wrong, Bright Boy? Can’t face the fact that your big, cuddly bear is dead? Hm? Maybe a picture will help!”
My phone dings. I have a new message … a photo message. I open it. It’s a photo of the same image that Chaotic mentally sent to me: it’s a charred corpse wearing the still-smoking remains of jeans, a shirt I gave Louis for Christmas last year…and the bear slippers. There’s no mistaking them. They’re smiling happily at me. One of them is missing an eye.
“Louis …” I whisper. My eyes sting as tears start to form. “This isn’t real. It’s not real.”
“As real as the tears on your face, kid,” Chaotic says. “You could race home and see for yourself, but if you do, you won’t have the time to save your partner! And really, what’s the rush? This guy’s not going anywhere!”
I take a deep breath. “I’m going to kill you, Chaotic.” I say, feeling strangely calm. “Do you hear me?”
“Oh, I hear you, Scotty Boy … believe me, I hear you. And you know what? I’m going to give you your shot. It’s only fair. Ha! Plus, I want this over with, once and for all. I’m too smart to underestimate you, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. So … here’s the deal: I’m going to take Sleepy here back to that warehouse we were at the other night. You remember that warehouse?”
I nod, even as the image of the warehouse and the address pop into my head.
“Good boy! The whole family will be there, waiting for you! And you’ll get your shot. You have fifteen minutes to get there. After that, I start removing limbs. His, not mine … but I suppose you probably guessed that. Ha!! See you there! Oh, and wear your costume. I want this to look official!”
Chaotic hangs up on me. I stare at the bear slippers in the picture on my phone. I don’t want to look at them anymore, but I can’t stop staring. It’s my fault. Louis is dead and it’s all my fault. I stare at the slippers a little bit longer … as penance.
“I’m sorry, Louis. I know it’s not good enough, but I’m sorry.” I check the clock on my phone. Two minutes have passed. I have thirteen to get to the warehouse. Thirteen minutes before I can start tearing into Dr. Chaotic … and his daughter.
I don’t even want to think her name.
I start moving.
Street. I still have a minute and a half, even after the stop at one of my costume stashes. So I do a quick visual sweep, even though I know it’s useless. Chaotic is too good to plant his booby traps in plain sight.
I check my clock. It’s time.
I burst through the roof of the warehouse.
Allison turns. “Scott?” She looks shocked to see me, but I can’t tell if her shock is fake or sincere. Dr. Chaotic doesn’t look surprised at all.
“Where is he?” I scream.
“Where’s who?!” Allison says. “Scott, what are you—?”
“Shut up, Allison!” I yell at her, then look at her father. “WHERE IS HE?”
Allison turns to her father. “What did you do?” she yells at him. Then she turns to me. “Scott! What happened? Tell me what happened?”
“You know what happened!” I yell. “You killed Louis and kidnapped Trent! Now where is he?”
“What?! No, I didn’t!”
Suddenly, there’s the harsh squeal of tearing metal from right outside the warehouse. The warehouse wall starts to bend, buckle, then finally get peeled back. Trent jumps through the hole in the wall. “Chaotic! You should have known that cage wouldn’t hold me!”
Allison comes over to me. She grabs my shoulders. “Scott!” Allison says. “Scott! I didn’t know he was here! Honest!”
“She’s lying, Scott!” Trent yells. “I heard them talking! This is a game they’re playing! They’re trying to confuse you!”
“No, I’m not!” Allison yells. “I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON!”
“Louis is dead, Scott! He’s dead! And it’s all their fault!” Trent yells. “They did it together!”
“No!” Allison shouts.
“It was b
oth of th—AAAAA!” Dr. Chaotic hits Trent with some kind of weapon that sends him flying backward. Chaotic goes after him. Trent hits him. Chaotic is able to dodge, but his weapon fires again, this time knocking Allison and me through the wall. We land on the ground outside. I push myself off her, flipping back onto my feet. I advance on her, swinging a right hook. She ducks.
“Scott!” she yells. “Scott!”
I swing again. She ducks again. “Your father told me, Allison!”
“What, Scott? What did he tell you?”
“You lied to me!” Kick.
“No!”
“You used me!” Jab.
“Scott, no!”
Jab. Knee. She avoids my blows, but she’s not fighting back.
“Are you happy? Huh? I told you about Louis, the one person in the world who cared about me, and then he killed him!” I throw another punch, and another, and another. She dodges them all. “Did you get a good laugh out of it?”
“I didn’t tell him about Louis!”
“Don’t lie to me!”
“I’m not lying!” she yells at me.
“You’re a villain! You’ve always been a villain! And now you want me to believe that you wouldn’t lie to me? That you wouldn’t manipulate me?”
“I told you! I was at first! But I stopped!”
“Liar!” I scream, and punch again. The tears in my eyes are making her blurry. “You’re a liar!”
“NO! I’m NOT, DAMN IT!” she screams back at me. She’s crying, too. “I’ll turn myself in! Is that what you want?!”
“I don’t know what I want!”
I throw a punch, but she just stands there. She doesn’t even try to stop it or get out of the way. I pull the punch at the last second. I look at her. She’s standing there, not moving, stubborn and defiant.
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