Hero (11 page)

Suddenly I saw Dad behind Uberman at the foot of the stage. He approached Justice, who was engaged in conversation with the mayor, and tapped him on the shoulder. Suddenly my stomach felt sickly and sweet, and although I couldn't put my finger on it, I thought it was really wrong for these two to talk. It could only lead to disaster or shame or both.

Justice glanced over his shoulder and saw my father in his old uniform. Neither of them said a word at first. They just looked at each other, until finally the mayor filled the awkward silence and excused himself to join another conversation on the other side of the stage.

I couldn't tell what was passing between them. My dad didn't give much away—if he'd gone in for gambling, he would have been a world-class poker player. Justice wasn't giving away much, either. I moved up behind the trunk of an ancient oak tree for a closer look.

Then Dad did something that freaked me out. He balled his good hand into a fist and lifted three fingers into the air.

Justice met the gesture, raised his own fist in the air, and lifted three fingers. Then just as quickly, Justice lowered one. Now there were only two. They both grew solemn and looked down at the ground between them.

It felt like the wind had been knocked out of my lungs, and I actually gasped out loud. Suddenly I understood exactly what was happening. Exactly who they were to each other. I couldn't believe I hadn't recognized him when I met Justice in person.

Dad and Justice were re-creating Mom's picture, three generations of the world's greatest heroes. Except now only two remained—my father and his sidekick. I ducked behind the oak and rested my head against the giant trunk and caught my breath. I'd witnessed something I was never meant to see.

Justice had been the hero formerly known as Right Wing.

He gripped my father's hand in a firm shake, the kind old war buddies give each other when they meet years later. Survivors.

I didn't know what to make of this. I guess it made sense that Dad never mentioned he knew the leader of the League, what with his devout bias against superpowers. Still, you'd think it would have come up at some point.

I stole away from the tree and tried to block all the new questions out of my mind. All that mattered was the League try-out, and I needed to get my head together for it. I weaved in and out of folding chairs stacked in piles like giant headstones, and hurried out of the park. I caught the next bus and headed across town to the secret location.

What was it that felt so wrong about what I'd seen? Why did I have the same feeling you get the first time you hear your parents having sex?

Shit, my watch had stopped again. I didn't know how late I was. As soon as the bus stopped, I sprinted the rest of the way there. Sweat poured down my forehead, and my two outfits clung to my body like a wet, heavy blanket.

When I arrived at the address on the invitation—an abandoned tire warehouse with broken windows and rusted doors—I was sure it had all been a joke, an elaborate setup to humiliate me.

Then I realized I wasn't important enough for anyone to go to all this trouble just to make me feel stupid, and I rang the worn button marked "delivery."

Without a sound the door swung open, and I hurried down a sleek, steely hallway to an open elevator. I stepped inside and noticed there weren't any buttons for the floors. The doors began to close, and I briefly thought how stupid I'd been to go to some strange place and put myself at such risk without letting anyone know where I really was. If something were to happen, who would know to come looking for me? As far as Dad knew, I was at a basketball game out of town. My mind raced with possibilities—what if it was one of Dad's old adversaries out to exact revenge? That seemed like a hollow endeavor to me, especially after all Dad had been through in recent years, but you never knew. I felt my heartbeat quicken when it struck me that Mom, too, probably had droves of her own old adversaries who wanted payback for the years they'd spent in jail. I tried to relax by breathing deeply through my nose.

Finally the elevator door opened, and I walked across the slick marble floor of the waiting room in front of me. I stopped in front of the reception desk. The receptionist, a pert little thing who looked more like a morning television personality than a supertemp, uncapped a black Sharpie Magic Marker.

"Your name, please."

My eyes scanned the waiting room full of wannabe heroes. Some of them read old issues of Men's Health and Cosmo from the magazine racks. Some of them stretched out, hoisting a leg over any free spot they could find on a sofa or side table. Some practiced whatever it was they were going to do to impress the League. One guy chatted away, a little too loudly if you ask me, to what sounded like a broker on his cell phone. I couldn't tell if he was looking at me through his Ray-Bans, but I was pretty sure they were purely cosmetic, not meant to contain gamma radiation or anything like that. A couple of costumed crusaders laughed at an off-color joke by the watercooler.

"I need a name, please." There was the hint of a sharp edge to the perkiness.

"Um, it's Thom."

She looked up from her "Hello, my name is" sticker and stared me in the eye.

"Thom Creed?" I ventured. Shit. Only teenagers end statements with question marks like that, and I really didn't want to come off sounding like a dumb teenager who didn't know what he was doing.

She popped the cap back on the Sharpie and smiled tightly.

"I mean your alias." Her lips were pursed, and I couldn't tell if she thought I was just a total amateur or if I was messing with her, or both.

"Oh, right, my alias." It had never occurred to me that I might need one. I glanced around the room for some sudden inspiration, but all I could come up with was "The Potted Plant," "The Fruit Platter," or "Free Subscription!"

"Justice invited me," I said. "The rest of the League, too." Like that would excuse me from this whole silly name thing.

She slid her trendy horn-rimmed spectacles down her nose and gave me the once-over twice. Then she leaned back in her chair and opened the Sharpie and began scribbling something on the name tag.

"Suit yourself." She unpeeled the sticker and smacked it on my lapel. "We'll be calling you in groups every fifteen minutes: have a seat. By the way, love the tie. Next!" And she was on to the next person waiting in line, some guy with oversize purple wings.

"Oh, hi, Lester!" She leaned over the desk to kiss him on the cheek. "How're Fran and the kids?"

I managed to find a quiet little spot over by the potted plants. I looked down at my tie and realized I was the only per¬son there without a costume. I thought the act of disrobing in public would be a little embarrassing. Maybe I'd go to the bath¬room and change in a stall.

My collar was soaked with sweat. I walked over to the refresh¬ment table and swiped a few napkins to dry off my forehead and the back of my neck. I wished I'd taken the time to get a Gatorade.

I joined the line at the watercooler to pour a cup. When it was my turn, I couldn't seem to get the nozzle to work, and the line behind me was growing impatient. I tried to distract the guy in back of me with small talk. He wore a high-tech visor, a tight blue Lycra suit with the symbol of an icicle on his chest, and a permanent frown.

"Hey, how crazy is this watercooler?"

He stared at me. I cleared my throat.

"Do you know how to work this thing?" I asked.

"Most people pull the nozzle." I, of course, was pushing it.

I heard a few would-be heroes snicker behind him. I pulled the nozzle with force, and a torrent of water knocked the cup out of my grasp. The water splashed up on the guy with the visor and immediately froze upon contact with his skin. The line of heroes glared at me. I picked up my cup and skulked back to my space. No one bothered to look at me after that, and right then I really could have used a familiar face. Most of the candidates were at least ten years older than I was.

In fact, the only person in the room who looked close to my age was the pizza delivery girl who'd just walked in. I watched her check in with the receptionist, and then she came over and sat in an armchair next to me. She set her stack of pizzas in her carry bag down on the floor beside me and picked up a magazine with a cover story on NASCAR racers. She crossed her leg and bounced one foot up and down as she read and chomped on a piece of gum. Her face seemed perky and friendly. I glanced down at her tiny body, and I thought she was probably a cheerleader or a high school gymnast when she wasn't busy delivering pizzas to hungry superheroes.

"I'll take mine with extra cheese," I said in her direction.

She stopped reading the magazine and looked straight ahead, like maybe a mosquito was buzzing in her ear but she wasn't sure yet. Then she turned in my direction.

"What did you say?"

"The pizza, I said I'll take mine with extra cheese."

She adjusted her blond ponytail, which poked out of the back hole in her cap, and glanced at my name tag. Then she went back to her magazine.

"I was just saying that I'm glad someone had the good sense to order some real food." I lifted up the corner of a pizza box for a peek. "What you got in there?"

She swatted my hand away with the magazine.

"Hey, hands off!"

She hoisted her delivery bag, and I heard her mutter "twinkie" under her breath as she moved to a new seat on the opposite side of the room.

I looked up sheepishly and saw practically everyone in the room staring at me. Even the guy with the cool shades got off his cell phone to see what was the matter.

I bent down and pretended to tie my shoelaces just so I'd have something to do. Her insult stung, and I kept thinking about the venom in her voice, the way she'd said "twinkie," emphasis on the "twink." I stole a look at her and saw that she was wearing a name tag with a code name: "Miss Scarlett." Once again I was the village idiot. She wasn't delivering pizzas. She was trying out for the team.

"Psst."

I straightened up. Who was pssst-ing me? I looked over my shoulder to the right and saw some guy having a major sneezing fit. He pulled a couple of tissues out of the utility belt on his costume. He blew his nose loudly, checked the contents, and then pinched his nose to stop the bleeding.

"Psst!"

I looked in the other direction over my other shoulder and saw an old lady waving me over in her direction. She had her skirt hiked up above her knees and was massaging her left calf muscle. A network of spider veins spread down her legs and disappeared under her boots.

"Be a doll, kid, and help me pop my knee back in joint."

Her name tag read, "Hello, my name is . . . Old Enough to Know Better."

"Don't you need an alias?" I asked.

She looked at me and chuckled. "Nope. Now  go ahead, its my thigh, and give my boot a good yank."

Some of the heroes looked up from their magazines and wondered what the heck this kid was doing reaching up this old woman's skirt.

"Don't be shy. Give it some oomph."

More people were staring by now, and I figured the harder I pushed the sooner I'd get it over.

"Yeah, that's it, that's it. Owwwwwww!"

Her knee made a nauseating pop, which reminded me of the sound my ankle made when I rolled it during state finals last year. She leaned back in her seat and smiled.

"God, thanks for that. Pass a tired old woman her cigarettes, will you?"

I handed her a padded flip-top cigarette case, and her arthritic fingers popped open the fastener, pulled out a Pall Mall, and fired it up with the alacrity of a woman half her age.

"Knees been doing that ever since I got the replacement last year. Kinda burns whenever you do that thing with your hands, huh?"

I nodded and thought about it for a second.

"How'd you know I could do that?"

She inhaled a deep drag from her cigarette.

"I see the future." She exhaled to the side, careful not to blow smoke in my direction.

"I'm Ruth. Nice to meet you, Thorn." She shook my hand, and smoke came out of her nose. The guy with the sneezing fit and the nosebleed on the other side of the room began to cough.

"How'd you know—? Oh right, you can see the future." Powers are weird.

"No." She took another long drag and gave it the longest granny ash I'd ever seen. "I can see your name tag."

Embarrassed, I looked down at my name tag. The recep-tionist had written my name in big bubbly cursive letters.

The receptionist appeared in front of us and leaned down with a patronizing smile.

"Excuse me, there's no smoking in here." She extended a cup of water in our direction for Ruth to put it out.

Ruth held up a finger—not the one she really wanted to hold up.                                                  

"Just a sec."

She took one last, deep drag on the cigarette that burned it all the way down to the filter.

"There." She popped the cigarette butt into the glass and it made a little hissing noise when it hit the water. "Perfect timing." She gave the receptionist a quick look and said "Thanks," but really meant "You can leave now."

Then a woman in an expensive but ill-fitting business suit and a tight perm entered and called for our attention. She introduced herself as "Sooz" from human resources and passed out a phone book—thick stack of paperwork for us to sign, and began to explain the. contents of the packet. Confidentiality agreements, liability forms, nondiscrimination clauses (which I noticed left out anything about sexual orientation) . . . My eyes had glazed over by the time she got to the personality inventory.

I looked over to the door. Where was Uberman? What was he doing right then? Did he remember me?

Sooz caught me daydreaming and clapped her hands twice.

"C'mon people, listen up, this is really important!"

I looked over at Ruth, fast asleep in her armchair next to me. The guy who'd been sneezing nonstop in the corner raised his hand and asked Sooz where the bathroom was and ran from his seat as soon as she pointed him in the right direction.

About an hour later, I looked down at my packet and saw that I'd only completed about half of it. Sooz wandered into the room and looked over everyone's shoulder. She stopped at the pizza delivery girl.