Solstice Survivors (Book 1): Superhero Syndrome

by Larrinaga, Caryn

  She looked… unhealthy. Which made her look more like me than ever.

  “When I texted you last week, you said Bruce was doing well.” I reached out and touched the bruise with a gloved hand. “You said things were good.”

  “They are good, Tess.” She leaned away from me and crossed her arms over her chest. “God, I haven’t seen you in three years, and I want to see you, okay? But if you’re going to be here… you need to let this go.”

  We glared at each other across the coffee table for a moment. There were so many things I wanted to say. Each one vied for position in the place between my brain and my mouth, pushing and shoving to be the first to come out. I wanted to yell at her for lying to me, for letting Bruce continue to treat her like a punching bag. I wanted to beg her to come with me. My apartment was a one-bedroom, but we’d shared before. We could share again.

  But I hadn’t come here to fight. I’d come here because out of everyone in the world, it’d been her face that’d popped into my head while I’d thought I was dying. And I’d just barely avoided an argument. Can we just have a normal conversation? I wanted to scream. Now isn’t the time for this.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t want to fight with you. Just… promise you’ll come to me if you need help?”

  Her shoulders relaxed, and she let her hands fall back into her lap. “You don’t need to worry about me. I’m the big sister. I get to worry about you.”

  I stopped myself from telling her I wouldn’t have to worry about her anymore if she’d just cut that asshole Bruce out of her life. It wouldn’t be productive, and I didn’t want this visit to end in a shouting match. So instead, I sipped my tea in silence and waited for her to make the next move.

  She took a deep breath and smiled at me. “So, you didn’t answer me. What brought you back? The Big Apple wasn’t exciting enough for you, Tess McBray?”

  “I think you’re picturing Sex and the City or something. You know I wasn’t in Manhattan, right? I was in Albany. Totally different vibe.”

  She waved a hand. “Whatever. You were in New York, right?”

  I didn’t want to drag out my last three years of failing at being an adult and lay it all on the coffee table for Bethany to see. She didn’t need to know about my string of part-time and dead-end jobs, each more unbearable than the last. And she certainly didn’t need to know I’d had the Solstice Syndrome.

  “It’s not an exciting story or anything. I lost my job.” That was technically true. I glossed over the rest with a shrug. “Figured if I was starting over, might as well do it back here.”

  “Liar. You came back because you missed me.”

  She was kidding; I could tell. But she didn’t realize how close to the truth she was getting.

  “So, are you sad about leaving anything behind in New York? Like… any guys?” Bethany batted her eyelashes and puckered her lips. It was the same face she’d made when she caught me kissing our next-door neighbor, Anatolya, behind our dad’s toolshed when I was seven.

  I snorted. “Yeah, right. Trust me, there wasn’t anybody who cried when I left. Maybe the guy who ran the comic book shop by my office. I don’t know how he’ll put his kids through college without me around.”

  “Well, that’s one thing I can help with.”

  “Putting Mr. Shelton’s kids through college?” I said with a grin.

  “No, you dork. Finding you a guy who would be sad to see you go.” She straightened her spine and bowed, twirling her hand toward the ground. “Bethany Fabiano, matchmaker extraordinaire. I’ll find you a guy lickety-split.”

  “Oh, please don’t.” I couldn’t imagine who she’d dig up to take me out on a date. One of Bruce’s drunk friends, no doubt. Gee whiz, that’d be great.

  “I mean it,” she said. “I’ll admit, I don’t know many single guys. Er… any single guys, actually. But I’ll help you out however I can. We can set you up with one of those online profiles—I see commercials for them all the time! And ooooooh!” She clapped her hands together. “I can give you a makeover. You’ll love it, I promise.”

  I pursed my lips. When Bethany was excited about something, there was no talking her out of it, as evidenced by the fact that she’d married Bruce in the first place. If she was determined to find me a boyfriend, it was a sure part of my future. I decided to let her set me up on exactly one date, show her I was willing to play ball, and then I would shut the whole endeavor down.

  Sipping at my tea, I marveled at her across the table. I’d left in a blaze of profanity and drama and hadn’t bothered to send her a single note or Christmas card the entire time I’d been gone. If somebody did that to me, I’d write them off. But here she was, fussing over tea and biscuits and worrying about my love life. I was a lousy sister. I didn’t deserve her, and she didn’t deserve to be left in the dark about the important things in my life.

  I set my teacup down on the table and took a deep breath. It was time to tell her about my illness.

  Just then, the back door burst open. Our peaceful afternoon tea was over. Bruce was home.

  Bethany’s husband strode onto the porch, baring his teeth in a wide grin. For the most part, he still looked like the popular wide receiver from our high school football team—tall, wavy haired, and blue eyed. But he’d put on a lot of weight in the years since I’d seen him. His hair was beginning to thin, and his once-handsome face was marred by a dense network of spidery blood vessels.

  My shock at seeing him age fifteen years in a fifth of that time was mingled with a little bit of satisfaction. He’d always thought he was hot shit, and I’d once overheard him telling another guy, “It’s not cheating when you look this good.” It was nice to see somebody in this world get a little comeuppance.

  Bethany jumped to her feet. In an instant, her entire manner shifted. Her shoulders hunched, and she looked several inches shorter than she had a moment ago. Even her voice changed. It went up in pitch, making her sound like a little girl.

  “Oh! You’re home early, sweetheart,” she squeaked.

  “Dinner ready yet, Beth?” he boomed.

  I raised an eyebrow. She’d always hated that nickname, preferring the full version. When we were kids, she told me the more syllables your name had, the classier it sounded. It’d been a not-so-subtle criticism of my decision to go by Tess rather than Teresa.

  “N-no, I’m so sorry,” Bethany stammered. “We weren’t expecting you till five.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Just get movin’.” Bruce stomped over to Bethany’s chair, favoring his left leg. He sat down, propped his feet up on a wicker ottoman, and lit a cigarette. “And bring me a cold one, would ya?”

  Bethany scurried into the house, returning a moment later with a can of beer. She handed it to her husband and ducked back inside. I heard pots and pans being shuffled around through the kitchen window behind me.

  Bruce cracked open his beer, took a long swig, and grinned at me. “So you’re back. Beth told me you couldn’t hack it in the big city. Ahh-hahahaha!”

  I cringed. I’d forgotten about Bruce’s ear-splitting cackle. I reminded myself not to make any attempt to be funny. It wouldn’t be hard. I had no desire to impress this guy by making him laugh.

  “Yep. Here I am.” I slumped into my chair and tried to invent a plausible reason to get out of staying for dinner. I couldn’t handle the thought of sharing a meal with this guy. I’d thought I could forgive Bruce for the way he’d treated Bethany in the early years of their marriage, but that was when I’d still believed her lies about him changing his ways. The man who sat before me now bore no signs of improvement, and Bethany’s bruise spoke volumes.

  Bruce stretched his arms up over his head and cast a satisfied gaze over his backyard. Their house sat partway down the forested slope to the seaport, and their screened porch offered a view of the smokestacks from the factories and fish packing plants that surrounded the harbor.

  “You made the right call,” he said between sips of his beer. “Wey
land’s a good place to be. Treated us good, anyhow.”

  “Are you still working at the fish processing plant?” I asked, more out of politeness than genuine interest.

  He nodded. “Got promoted last year. Floor supervisor now. We was thinking of moving down to Florida before that. Be closer to your parents. Sunshine, man. But they put the old golden handcuffs on me. Couldn’t turn down that dough.”

  Something twisted in my stomach. Bruce was somebody’s supervisor? He was in charge of hiring and firing people? I almost wanted to meet the idiot who’d decided to promote him, because I wouldn’t trust Bruce to supervise a houseplant. Especially not since he was drinking again.

  “Once we decided we was here for good, we even got a dog.” Bruce put two fingers into his mouth and whistled shrilly. Before the sound had finished echoing through the nearby trees, a lean Doberman came crashing out of the house and ran up to Bruce, who let the dog lick his fingers.

  I tensed. This was a large animal, sleek and muscular, and despite the fact that he was currently lapping at his master’s hand, he looked vicious. The muscle in my left thigh twinged, and I winced at the memory of my aunt Catherine’s shiba inu’s tiny, sharp teeth sinking into my leg when I was eight. I drew back into my chair, almost unconsciously trying to put some distance between myself and Bruce’s attack dog.

  Bruce saw the motion and grinned at me. “Still hate dogs, huh?”

  “I don’t hate them.” I eyed the large animal. “They just make me nervous, that’s all.”

  “You don’t need to be scared of this one. He’s a good boy, ain’t ya, Bear?” he crooned. “Say hello to our guest.”

  The dog leapt away from Bruce and lunged toward me. With a small shriek, I tried to pivot away from him, but he’d already planted his front legs on my lap and began sniffing my face. I stiffened, not sure what to do. I must have smelled good enough to eat because he started licking me vigorously. When I opened my mouth to shout at him to get down, his slimy tongue slipped inside like a slobbery French kiss.

  The shock of that indignity was enough to make my arms move on their own, and I shoved the dog away from me and jumped up out of my chair.

  “Ack!” I coughed and spat onto the ground. “Dog breath! Gross!”

  “Ahh-hahahaha!” Laughter consumed Bruce, and he doubled over in his chair. “Don’t complain too much, Tess. Bet that’s the most action you’ve had in years!”

  Shaking with anger, I stormed into the house, leaving Bruce to cackle away on the porch behind me. Bethany was in the kitchen putting a casserole into the oven.

  Her delicate eyebrows knitted together when she saw me. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I lied. “Listen, I’m not feeling well. Can I take a raincheck on dinner? My place next time.”

  Disappointment welled up in her eyes, but it wasn’t enough to keep me there. Wishing I had the guts to drag Bethany out with me, I grabbed my backpack off a kitchen chair, left the house, and headed for the Fishbone. It would’ve been pointless to try to get her to leave. She’d have dug her heels into the ground and fought me all the way down the block. Bruce had some kind of hold on her that was impossible to break.

  This is why I’m single, I thought, watching my breath puff into the air in front of me. There aren’t enough good guys in the world, and there are way too many Bruces.

  My head throbbed and my stomach churned as I stomped down the sidewalk away from Bethany’s house. Anger and sadness, and yeah, maybe even a little bit of shame roiled inside of me. I suddenly felt sick, and I clenched and unclenched my fists in time with my footsteps.

  I reached the run-down station on Portside Avenue just as a train arrived. The doors stuck, and for a moment I debated sprinting down the platform to try the next car. Just as I leaned to the side to start running, the stubborn door finally slid open with a wet thunk and I stepped inside.

  The train sped me toward the city, and I scowled out the window. I couldn’t get Bruce’s stupid bloated face out of my head. Over and over, he brayed about his damn dog licking the inside of my mouth. The image skipped and froze in my mind until it was more like a panel in a comic book than a real memory, and anger simmered in my belly.

  By the time I reached my stop, that simmering mass had become a rolling boil, and I realized I wasn’t just angry at Bruce. I hated him. I hated him even more than I hated being sick, and I thought that’d hold the high score forever. I stomped down Triton and Palaemon in a haze, trusting my feet to carry me through the red-tinged miasma of my own emotions. Before I knew it, I was back in my near-empty apartment.

  The glow from the sign above Helena’s Place cast the tiny living room in blue light. It felt like a little aquarium. The entire apartment was roughly the size of my bedroom when I’d been growing up at home, but the small space felt airy and roomy compared to my hospital room. Maybe it was because it was so bare. Four large cardboard boxes sat squarely in the center of the room, but my furniture was apparently coming to Weyland from Albany by way of Moscow. I sunk down into a corner of my living room and pulled off my coat and mittens.

  My hands were still tender from the scrapes I’d gotten the day before. I rested them on my thighs, palms facing up toward the high plaster ceiling, and I wondered how long they’d take to heal.

  “Unpacking while injured,” I grumbled to myself. “Thanks a lot, jerk.”

  Men. I didn’t know if they were awful everywhere or just in Weyland. Literally every man I’d encountered since coming back was a raging prick, from the guy in the hoodie to Bruce.

  And there was his face again, laughing at me from the empty white canvas of my living room wall. I clenched my fists and winced. They were too tender for that—so tender I didn’t dare unclench them. But I wished they weren’t. I wished I could go back to Bethany’s house and drag Bruce out through the back door, then beat his face in. I’d give him more than the bruises he’d given my sister, but that was only fair. This wasn’t something he’d started doing yesterday. He had years of abuse to pay for.

  Years you weren’t even around for.

  “Dammit!” As the word burst from my mouth, my left hand shot out and collided with the wall beside me. Plaster exploded around my arm, and my fist sailed clear through the wall until I sagged limply in the corner with my arm in a hole.

  Startled, I yanked my arm back and stared at the mess I’d made. My landlord was going to kill me. I hadn’t just dented the plaster—I’d punched clean through the wall and could see my empty bedroom on the other side.

  I raised my left hand up to my face. My fingers were still curled into a tight fist, but other than that, my skin didn’t look the way I expected. It was no longer red. It still looked like it’d been torn up a bit, but in the blue light from the sign outside, it looked even unhealthier than usual. It looked… gray. Like the little bits of broken plaster all over my floor.

  “What the…” I murmured, bringing both of my hands closer to my face.

  They stung like a rug burn, but beneath the pain, there was something else—a warmth, almost like I was hovering my hands over an invisible fire. It was such a strange feeling. I focused on it, trying to figure out where it was coming from, and tried to open my fists. I wanted to rub my palms together to see if that would intensify the warmth.

  My fingers wouldn’t budge.

  My two fists rubbed against one another, knuckles to knuckles. But I felt nothing. And instead of the soft, dry sound of skin rubbing against skin, I heard a rough scraping like two stones grinding into each other.

  Frowning, I pulled my hands apart. I stood and bumped on the light switch with my fist, sure it was a trick of the light, but the bright yellow glow only made the truth clearer.

  My hands were covered in hard, dry plaster.

  I’ll admit it. I screamed.

  Heart racing, I stumbled across the living room, tripping over a cardboard box and spilling its contents on the floor. Ordinarily, the thought of one of the fragile comic books sliding out of
a slipcover would’ve terrified me, but there was no room in my brain except for a single, shrill question: What is this?

  The fluorescent bulb above my bathroom sink flickered and buzzed when I hit the switch. My hands were stiff, robbed of all dexterity by the hard shell that had somehow encased them, but I managed to bump the left faucet handle and send a stream of water into the basin. I thrust my hands under the flow. Before long, the water was steaming, but I felt nothing. Neither wetness nor warmth managed to penetrate the stone gloves.

  Panicked sobs rose up in my chest. I sank to the floor, leaving my hands in the sink. Would I be stuck like this forever? Would my hands wither away inside the plaster?

  I’ll never draw again.

  Determination surged through me. I had no idea what in the hell was going on, but I wasn’t going down without a fight. I didn’t survive Solstice Syndrome just to let myself get beaten down by some freaky thing like this. I’d figure out a way to get this stuff off even if I had to smash it away bit by bit in a back alley.

  I stood up to turn off the water and felt something.

  Warmth.

  Then… pain.

  The skin on my hands tingled and burned. It was like standing up on a dead leg after sitting for too long in an odd position. Pins and needles pricked at me, and the water streaming from my faucet was near-boiling. I jerked my hands out from the sink and stared at them. They were a deep shade of red. There wasn’t a spec of stone to be seen. My skin looked… new. Uninjured but raw, like the fresh skin beneath a scab.

  My wounds had healed.

  I don’t know how to handle this, my brain informed me. Then it stepped out for a cup of coffee to mull things over, leaving me to black out and smash my face into my bathroom counter.

  For the second time in as many days, I made an embarrassingly public entrance into Helena’s Place. Blood ran down the side of my face, and I cupped a hand over my right eye to keep it clear. Pain radiated from my forehead, so sharp and intense I couldn’t stop picturing a piece of my bathroom countertop sticking out of my skull.