Action Figures - Issue Six: Power Play

by Michael Bailey

  “Would they kick me out if I asked for a steak and a baked potato?” I ask.

  “No, but the waiter might give you a snort of haughty derision,” Meg says.

  “I can live with that.” Funny thing is, steak with a baked potato is on the menu, at the low, low cost of my first year of college tuition. “Man. Even the salads are crazy expensive. I could buy a PlayStation for less.”

  “Would you like to find someplace a little more our speed?”

  “No. No, we decided to treat ourselves and we’re treating ourselves. We’ve earned this night.”

  Meg reaches across the table to take my hand. “Yes we have.”

  I shove my sticker shock into a box and get on with the important business of enjoying my night out. Dinner, while bank-breaking, is delicious. For dessert we indulge in crème brûlée so good it makes my toes curl. After dinner we head to the grand ballroom where Meg’s band will play. It’s impressive, to put it mildly, with its high ceilings, decorative columns running up the walls, ornate wooden scrollwork all over the place, and a parquet dance floor so polished it looks like ice. Jay Gatsby would be right at home here.

  Meg heads backstage to meet up with her bandmates and get ready for the show. The doors don’t open for a half hour, and their set doesn’t begin until eight, so I have time to kill. I sit at the bar, never considering that I’m too young to do that until the bartender asks if I’d like a glass of wine. I politely decline and ask for a soda instead, but I keep my status as a minor to myself.

  It isn’t the only time someone overestimates my age. The doors open and fellow revelers flow in steadily, and every one of them immediately hits the bar. Two college-age guys offer to buy me a drink. I politely decline. As soon as they move on, a man old enough to be my father asks with a skeevy leer if I’d like to join him at his table to share some Champagne. No thank you, creepy guy. Move along, nothing to see here.

  Come on, universe. You couldn’t send at least one woman to hit on me?

  At eight sharp Meg’s band, Cold Brass Monkey — not the name Meg suggested — takes the stage and proceeds to blow the audience away. I’m right there with them. I’d expected a small ensemble, not the fifteen-person big band-style mini-orchestra that spends the evening rocking the house with old-time swing, hot jazz, and upbeat rhythm and blues. Meg, as the tenor saxophonist, gets several solos. Every one of them gets a cheer and thunderous applause.

  That’s my girl.

  Their set lasts an hour and a half, including a brief intermission, but Meg doesn’t return until almost ten. “Had to freshen up,” she explains. “I got a lot sweatier up there than I expected.”

  “Sexy.”

  “I know, right?”

  “Probably shouldn’t have bothered. You’re just going to get sweaty again because I expect to spend the rest of the night dancing with you.”

  “Oh, no,” Meg says with mock dismay.

  I spoke too soon. The headliner band is a much classier affair that prefers a mellower tempo. It’s music for slow dancing, for dancing nice and close to your partner. No complaints here.

  The evening flies by. Before I know it, the lead singer is alerting people that it’s time to grab our celebratory Champagne — nonalcoholic sparkling cider in our case — and get ready for the final countdown.

  “Tonight’s gone by too fast,” I say. “I don’t want it to end.”

  “Me either,” Meg says, “but I think we both want to stay on Christina’s good side.”

  “Yeah. Still.”

  “I know.”

  “Here we go!” the bandleader says. “Ten seconds! Nine! Eight!”

  The rest of the crowd counts down with him. We don’t. We’re too busy holding each other and gazing into each other’s eyes like the sappy dopes we are. I don’t care about the countdown. I don’t care about the press of bodies all around us. In this moment, no one exists in the entire universe except Megan Quentin and me.

  “I love you,” I say.

  “I love you,” she says.

  Two. One. Midnight.

  We kiss.

  Happy New Year.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The New Year opens on a decidedly surreal note.

  It’s long been our tradition to meet up for lunch at Silk Sails, a.k.a. Junk Food, and eat ourselves stupid at the all-you-can-eat buffet. We started the tradition the year Missy moved to Kingsport, and for a few years, it was just the four of us. Carrie got sucked in last year, and I honestly never expected the circle to grow any further. The New Year’s Day gorge-a-thon was a sacred thing, no outsiders allowed.

  I don’t know when we decided to say screw it and open up membership, but apparently, we did. Meg — who stayed the night on my couch at Christina’s insistence — and I arrive first and put in for a table for five. That number almost doubles when Matt, a big grin plastered on his face, shows up with Zina in tow. Stuart and a girl I don’t recognize are right behind them, and Missy, Bo, and Ty complete the gathering.

  “Hey, Meg,” Matt says, opening his arms for a hug. “Happy New Year.”

  “And Happy New Year to you, good sir,” Meg says, kicking off a round of welcoming hugs among the inner circle. “Introductions, now, chop-chop. I want to know who all these fine-looking people are.”

  “Okay, speed intros,” Matt says, pointing out everyone by name in rapid succession. The girl with Stuart is Peggy, who I know only by reputation as one of his youth club coworkers. When he finishes, Matt looks at me and says, “Man, when worlds collide, they really collide.”

  “No kidding.”

  Bo and Ty move up to greet Meg properly. “I’ve never met a real super-hero before,” Bo says.

  “Uh, well, technically you have,” I say. “Hi.”

  “Oh, are we doing this now?” Missy says. “Okay, whatever. Hi. Me too.”

  “I feel like I’m missing a private joke,” Peggy says.

  “You aren’t. It’s not private anymore and we’re not joking,” Stuart says. “Hi.”

  Zina, already well in the loop, doesn’t flinch. The other normals, however...

  “Seriously?” Peggy says.

  “For real,” Stuart says.

  “What do you do?” she says, posing the question to all of us.

  “Magic gloves that only work when no one can see them,” Matt says.

  “Psionic,” I say. “Telepathy, telekinesis, so on.”

  “Genetically engineered human-cat hybrid,” Missy says.

  “Lift heavy stuff. Punch things. Look awesome doing it,” Stuart says.

  “Are you, like, invulnerable?” Peggy asks.

  “Oh yeah.”

  She pokes experimentally at his beefy arm. “So I could, say, stab you with a big knife...”

  “Wouldn’t hurt at all.”

  “Huh. Cool. I kind of want to try it now.”

  “Why aren’t you wigged out by this?” Bo says.

  Peggy shrugs. “Why would I be? We all know Kingsport is crawling with superhumans. Why should I be surprised that I’m friends with one? And Stuart’s a great guy.”

  “Fact,” Stuart says.

  “That doesn’t change because he runs around in a costume.”

  “Uniform,” Stuart corrects.

  “Costume.”

  Bo frowns at me. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything about this before,” I say, “but we only decided a few days ago to drop the secret identity thing. We got tired of lying to people we cared about.”

  Okay, yes, that is a cherry-picked element of the greater truth, but at this point it’s entirely on Bo to accept us — or not — as we are, weirdness and all. If he wants the full story, he can join us for lunch, and I’ll tell him anything he wants to know. I’ll tell him everything, but he has to decide whether he wants to hear it.

  Ty makes the call for him. “Why don’t we grab our table, get some food, and you can lay this all out for us,” she says.

  “Let’s listen to the sensible girl,” Missy says. Ty responds by t
aking Missy’s hand and, together, leading us into the dining room.

  Over many, many, many plates of Chinese food, Bo, Ty, and Peggy grill us about our formerly secret lives. Some of the questions are silly (“Do you really wear your costumes under your street clothes?”), some are probing (“You almost got killed. How can you act like that’s no big deal?”), and others are deeply uncomfortable (“What do your families think of it?”).

  That last one hits hard. Stuart’s parents seem to be coming around, if slowly, largely thanks to his grandmother, but Matt’s folks are still fighting him every step of the way. I feel especially bad for Missy. Her mom stayed in New York throughout the holidays despite repeated entreaties from Missy and her father to come home.

  Eventually, the questions stop, and the conversation turns pleasantly, refreshingly, gloriously mundane. Bo, Ty, and Missy talk up the band’s upcoming concert, which they’re already rehearsing for; Peggy and Stuart share amusing anecdotes from the club; Matt and Zina flirt playfully with one another; and Meg and I regale everyone with our fantastic New Year’s Eve together — in the process greatly impressing Bo and Ty with Meg’s diverse musical talent.

  “Piano, flute, violin, sax, and the banjo?” Ty says. “That is awesome.”

  “My brother’s threatening to take up the bagpipes,” Meg says. “He has to defend his title of Most Annoying Member of the Family.”

  Ty lifts her glass of soda in toast. “To infuriating brothers.”

  “Hear hear.”

  “You’re not doing anything. Go get me some more tangerine chicken,” Ty says to Bo with an imperious wave of her hand.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bo says, rising.

  I head to the buffet table too under the pretense of wanting more fried rice, even though I’m so stuffed one more grain of rice would make me explode like that guy in that Monty Python movie.

  “How are you doing with all this?” I ask.

  Bo calmly scoops chicken onto a clean plate. “The super-hero thing is weird but that doesn’t bother me,” he says. “You lying to me, however…”

  “Bo…”

  “I understand you had reasons.” He hesitates. “I have trust issues. I’m painfully aware of that. Ty’s even more painfully aware of it. It’s why we’re not, you know, a super-serious couple. It’s like I have a built-in emotional escape route. You know?” He shakes his head. “Sorry, getting off-topic. Point is, I don’t care what your reasons are; I don’t like being lied to.”

  “That’s fair, but I hope you understand this wasn’t easy for me. The last two times I made a deep personal confession to someone, it blew up in my face. When my parents learned I had super-powers, they treated me like a freak. When I came out, my father went absolutely ballistic. He never learned to accept me for who I was.”

  That strikes a nerve. Bo unconsciously scratches at a long scar running up his forearm, the remnant of a suicide attempt sparked by his own family’s reaction to him coming out as bi. His parents eventually came around, but it took time.

  “I love you,” I say, “you and Ty. I don’t want to lose you as friends.”

  Bo sighs. “Then don’t lie to me ever again, about anything.”

  “I won’t, but I need to be clear about something. There will be times that something’s going on in my…um…”

  “Professional life?”

  “Yeah. I won’t always be able to talk openly about that stuff. If that’s the case I’ll say so, but I won’t share any details. If that’s not good enough —”

  “No,” Bo says, “it’s good enough.”

  Bo wraps his free arm around my shoulders and pulls me close so he can kiss my head.

  And with that, I declare the New Year off to a good start.

  ***

  One of the great annoyances in life, one I think everyone can identify with, is having to explain something over and over and over again. What’s wrong? You seem down. Oh, someone close to me died. How’d you break your arm? I slipped on some ice and fell. What’s the deal with your hair? My stylist said mohawks were in vogue. First time she’s steered me wrong.

  We head back to school on Tuesday, and I walk in braced to have to repeat my big news several times over, but I inadvertently stumble onto a much easier and more efficient — if not necessarily reliable — means of spreading the word when Ashlyn corners me at my locker.

  “Hey, girl,” she says. “Man, it feels like I haven’t seen you since last year.”

  “That’s funny. I’ve never heard that joke before. Did you make it up yourself?” I tease.

  “Did you see Carrie? Did you give her my present? Did she like it?”

  I wince. This one’s going to sting.

  “Ashlyn, I have to tell you something. It’s not going to be easy to hear and you might freak out but you need to know the truth.” Her face falls. My chest tightens. God, you’d think I was delivering a break-up message. “Carrie isn’t living with her father. She’s gone. And by gone I mean she’s off in outer space somewhere.”

  Ashlyn’s worried frown turns into a smirk. “And you have the nerve to give me crap for my bad joke.”

  “It’s not a joke.” The smirk shrivels to become a frown again. “Carrie’s Lightstorm. The super-hero.”

  “I know who Lightstorm — wait, seriously? For real? You’re not messing with me?”

  “Seriously, for real, I am not messing with you. Carrie is Lightstorm, and Carrie went off with the aliens who helped us fight off that invasion last month.”

  “Us? What us? You us?”

  “Uh-huh. I’m Psyche. Missy is Kunoichi and Matt is Captain Trenchcoat.”

  “That is a tragically awful super-hero name.”

  “It is.”

  Ashlyn slumps against the neighboring locker to sort out everything I’ve dumped on her, which is when I spot Amber Sullivan, Kingsport High’s gossip queen, gawking at me from her locker. We lock eyes, briefly, and then she skitters off. I give it two, three hours max before the entire school knows. Like I said, easy and efficient, though I’m perversely curious to see whether anyone believes a word of what she says. She doesn’t exactly have a glowing reputation for honesty or accuracy.

  “Is she ever coming back?” Ashlyn says.

  “She will. Eventually.”

  She nods. “When you get a chance, can I get my present back? I’d like to give it to Carrie myself. You know, when she’s done playing General Leia or whatever.”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks.”

  And that’s that. She tells me she’ll catch me later and heads off to homeroom like it’s a perfectly normal day.

  Amber does her job admirably; all morning long, students and teachers alike come up to me and ask if it’s true. After a while, I pick up on an interesting pattern. When I confirm to someone my own age that I am indeed a super-hero, there’s a fleeting moment of shock and disbelief. Sometimes they ask a few questions, sometimes not. Most kids seem to regard my new status as a superhuman as interesting but not necessarily impressive. A few think it’s way cool and want to see a demonstration. Others think I’m making it all up to get attention. No one runs away screaming in terror.

  But when I tell an adult, they follow up the shock and questioning stages with intense dismay and suspicion, like I claimed to have a bomb strapped to me, and they can’t tell if I’m lying or not. They have no idea how to deal with me. Not sure what to do with this information, or if there’s anything to be done, but the junior psychologist in me finds it fascinating.

  The day takes an unexpected turn during my third period class when Mr. Dent enters without knocking, which is unusual; he respects the teachers and the sanctity of the classroom and isn’t the type to barge in.

  “Mrs. Meece, I need to see Sara Danvers,” Mr. Dent says, to me rather than to Mrs. Meece. He does not look happy. Also unusual.

  I gather up my stuff and follow Mr. Dent into the hallway. “Mr. Dent? Is something wrong?”

  “Come with me,” he says.
>
  Our destination is the principal’s office. I step inside and get a horrible sinking feeling when I see Matt, Stuart, and Missy sitting there.

  “Sara. Have a seat,” Principal McGann says. I sit, joining what suddenly feels like a tribunal. Mr. Dent takes a position at the corner of Mrs. McGann’s desk, arms folded, mouth set into a hard line. “Something has come to our attention and, well, we normally don’t pay much heed to the rumor mill but this was especially concerning.”

  Matt glances at each of us in turn. We knew this might happen, I say telepathically. Might as well get it over with.

  “The rumors are true. We’re super-heroes,” Matt says without fanfare.

  Mrs. McGann, perhaps expecting resistance or a token attempt at deception, does a double take. “I see. Well. I’m afraid this puts us in an awkward position.”

  “Oh? How so?” Matt says, casually and unconcerned.

  “I believe your presence at this school poses a possible threat to the faculty, staff, and other students. In the interest of maintaining a safe, secure school environment for everyone in this building, I’m going to have to ask you all to leave immediately.”

  “What?” I say.

  “I’m sorry, but I have to do what I feel is necessary to protect the people in this school. None of you are welcome here any longer.”

  “You’re expelling us?” Matt says with far less outrage than it rightly warranted.

  “I’m asking you to leave the building now, and I will ask your parents to voluntarily remove you from school in the interest of maintaining clean academic records.”

  “Oh, isn’t that generous of you?”

  “Excuse me, young man,” Mrs. McGann begins.

  “No, excuse me,” Matt says, holding up a finger. He takes his phone out and places a call. “Hey. Sorry to bother you, but I’m calling from my principal’s office and we have a situation here. Our principal found out we’re the Hero Squad and is basically threatening to kick us out of school if we don’t leave voluntarily. Yeah, that’s what I suspected. Fifteen minutes? Cool. Thanks a lot. See you in a few. Bye.”