Arena Mode (3 page)

The fact that superhumans were a reality played a big part in the collectors bubble. People who had never picked up a comic in their lives were now obsessed with acquiring rare back-issues, fascinated by the notion that they could be reading a piece of mythology that turned out to be actual fact. So little was known about super-powered beings since their existence had only been verified for a couple of years. Their adventures, however, had been imagined and chronicled since the 1930s. Conspiracy theorists speculated their emergence was not so sudden at all – they had just been cleverly concealed from the general public.

The discovery of superhumans did a lot more than just kick-start the flagging comic book industry – it challenged entire belief systems. One couldn’t help but ponder the metaphysical can of worms this opened. What about the stories predating comics that were assumed to be nothing more than legend? The fantastic tales of magic and sorcery, and ancient scripture that spoke of gods with supernatural abilities?

I’d never subscribed to any particular religion, but it even got
me
thinking: if someone could lift several tons above their head or outrun a sports car, was it so impossible that two-thousand years ago someone could have also walked on water? Theoretically that would make the Bible one of the first ever superhero adventures adapted into a book ... which would explain its popularity.

When I pushed open Excelsior’s front door, an electronic chime announced my arrival, and Gavin raced out of the stacks to greet me with open arms. “Mox, my man! You made it with seven whole minutes to spare.” His artificially-whitened grin was wider than usual.

Tall and clean-shaven with a wave of perfectly-coiffed golden hair, his appearance always managed to ratchet up my insecurities – and his new custom-fit suit wasn’t helping.

“Hey Gav,” I replied with a weak smile. I pulled off my hood to reveal three days worth of beard stubble and some seriously dark circles under my eyes.

Whenever Gavin and I were photographed side-by-side, we looked like a ‘before and after’ advertisement, designed to discourage America’s youth from letting their post-college lives go to hell. Beware, kids: you may look confident, successful and attractive
now
, but
this
could happen if you waste the next ten years of your life.

“Do you have any coffee, because this is a little earlier than I usually wake up on a Saturday, so ...”

He cut me off with a frantic wave of his hands. “No time for that. There are some people you
have
to meet before The Reveal.” He rushed me to the back of the store where I was introduced to a pair of kids who, judging by their brightly-colored jackets and designer sunglasses, were tourists from The City. And if they came here from Manhattan, they were probably here to spend.

Gavin motioned to me like he was presenting a prize on a game show. “Chad, Darren,
this
is the guy I’ve been telling you about: Matthew Moxon, but everyone calls him Mox.”

I shot him a sidelong glance. “You’re the only person who calls me that.”

The shorter kid removed his gold-rimmed sunglasses and carefully folded them into his pocket. “So
this
is the genius?” He sneered in a clipped English accent. He looked me up and down as he spoke, arching his eyebrows.

“He’s more than just a genius,” Gavin replied. “This guy is a
super
-genius. He’s like Lex Luthor, Tony Stark and Brainiac all rolled into one.”

“Way to not oversell it,” I grumbled.

“Seriously, this will blow your freakin’ minds. Go ahead Mox, do your thing.” He nudged my shoulder with the point of his elbow and his grin widened.

I loved Gavin like a brother, but when he pulled this crap to impress the customers, it made me feel like a carnie. “All right,” I said with a heavy sigh, digging my hands into the pockets of my hoodie. “Pick a book.”

The kids glanced at each other and then back at me. “Any book?” The taller one asked.

“Yes,” I said abruptly, and with a little too much impatience. I shouldn’t have been taking it out on these kids – they didn’t ask for a sideshow – but it was still annoying, and I was criminally under-caffeinated. “Pick
any
book. Go through the back issues and pull out whatever you want.”

They each pulled open a drawer and proceed to flip through the Mylar slips. The taller one yanked a book from the middle of the row with a little too much reckless abandon, causing Gavin to wince. He peeled open the bag’s enclosure flap and slid the book out with care.

Gavin started breathing again. 

“Okay,” the kid said, examining the cover. “This one is called ‘Alpha Flight’ ... and there’s a leaf on the front for some reason?” He squinted at the logo as if it were the most perplexing thing he’d ever seen.

I tried not to sound condescending. “It’s the leaf from the flag.
Canada’s
flag. Alpha Flight is a group of superheroes from Canada, so ...”

“Ah, I get it!” the kid shouted. I could almost see the light bulb illuminating over his head. “That’s pretty clever.”

I rolled my eyes. “Not so much. Go ahead and tell me the issue number.”

“Number seven.”

“Alpha Flight number seven, written by Scott Lobdell, with pencils by Dave Ross and inks by Mark McKenna. The cover price is two dollars and ninety-nine cents, but that was back in November of 2004 when it was originally published. The one you’re holding in your hand is a first-printing, worth six hundred and twenty since it’s in near-mint condition. I’ve seen one go for over a thousand that was signed by McKenna.”

“Holy shit,” the shorter one exclaimed, sticking his thumb in my direction. “This guy is the real deal.”

“No doubt,” Gavin said with a satisfied nod.

Gavin’s obsession with comic books was rivalled only by my own, but even though we shared that common interest, I don’t think it’s what made him value me as a friend. An independently wealthy kid nearly a decade my junior, he was the most ambitious person I’d ever met; I had no idea how he managed to build and maintain a profitable business by the age of twenty – especially having been born and raised in The Dark Zone. Surely there were more successful, interesting, and better-dressed people he could have been spending his free time with. I could only imagine that he thought of me as some sort of a low-level superhuman because of my photographic memory. Aside from performing parlor tricks and counting cards I’d yet to find an actual use for my ‘grand IQ’, but Gavin seemed to find me endlessly entertaining.

As he ushered the tourists to the more expensive books towards the back of the stacks, it occurred to me that his sole employee was behind the cash register, quietly engrossed in a comic. Normally it would be almost impossible to miss a beautiful, porcelain-skinned girl with a sweep of pink tresses, but there she was: sitting perfectly still, absently twirling a loop of hair with her finger as her eyes scanned the pages.

“
Peyton
,” I shouted, “is that
my
book you’re devaluing with the acidity of your finger prints? I think it just went from ‘very fine’ condition down to ‘fine’.”

“No way!” she replied with a tiny giggle, holding the comic up for my inspection. “This is
totally
mint.”

I shook my head and tried to suppress a smile as I approached. “No, it
was
close to mint before you started rubbing your greasy little paws all over it. Then it dropped from ‘very fine’ to ‘fine’ condition when you dented the cover three seconds ago.”

“Whatever, Matty,” she said with a huff. “It’s not like you’re gonna read this before you bag it and box it anyway. Someone might as well get some use out of it.”

In all the years I’d know her, I’d never seen Peyton crack open the cover of anything aside from a veterinary textbook. “I didn’t even know you read comics?”

“I usually don’t,” she said brightly, “but it was
so
weird ... I had this dream about spiders last night, and as soon as I sat down behind the counter it was just lying here – Spider-Man.
Totally
fate, right?”

“That
is
totally fate,” I smirked, “because today my horoscope said that a crazy girl with pink hair would ruin one of my books, so it looks like we both had a date with kismet.”

Peyton just smiled back. “You were always up my ass about getting into comics, and now that I
finally
read one you’re gonna be this much of a douche? You should be happy! Why don’t you read it after me and we can talk about it over coffee?”

“Save your time,” I said. “I’ve already read The Amazing Spider-Man number seven hundred, and it’s complete bullshit.”

“Then why do you want to buy it?”

“Because I have the six hundred and ninety-nine issues that came before it.”

“And also because you have a crippling case of OCD?” she replied, now wearing a smirk of her own.

“No, it’s because I’m a collector.”

“A
compulsive
collector,” she snapped back without missing a beat.

I shrugged. “It’s redundant to say ‘compulsive collector’.”

Peyton folded her arms loosely across her chest. “All right, I’ll bite. Why is this book ‘bullshit’?”

“Well first of all, it’s unrealistic.”

“A story about a guy who gets bitten by a radioactive spider and sticks to walls isn’t living up to your expectations for realism?” She let out a short laugh. “I’m pretty sure that’s why it’s a comic book and not a documentary.”

“It’s because of the ending.” Peyton had a way of agitating me. “At the time it was advertised as ‘The Death of Spider-Man’, but it’s not really a death at all. Peter Parker and Doctor Octopus just swapped brains like they were in some stupid Disney movie. And then a month later an all
new
Spider-Man title goes on sale, and Parker is back as a goddamned ghost.”

Peyton crinkled her nose. “Hey, spoiler alert.”

“That’s the thing: it’s not a spoiler because the heroes
never
die. They just come back to life in another comic with some ridiculous explanation about how they survived, and go about their business like nothing happened.”

“So the hero is just supposed to die at the end? That’s pretty bleak.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” I said, waving the comic in front of me without even realizing it. “What if the protagonist accomplished everything they’ve set out to do? Maybe they reach their ultimate goal, or sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Wouldn’t it be better to go out in a blaze of glory than to linger on for decades, rehashing the same tired storylines month after month? To have their legacy diluted by cookie-cutter plots chosen by creatively-devoid editors, who wouldn’t know a good story if it shot them in the ass with a plasma bolt?”

Peyton leaned forward on her elbows and gazed blankly across the counter. “Not to be rude, but I checked out of this conversation, like, five minutes ago.”

I pulled the four hundred dollars from my back pocket and slid it across the counter. “This belongs to your brother. Tell Gavin to put the twenty-five cents for the bag on my tab.” I slipped my comic back into the Mylar and carefully sealed it shut.

Peyton reached across the counter and wrapped her fingers gently around the back of my arm.

“I’m sorry, I was just teasing,” she whispered with a hint of regret in her voice. “I know this means a lot to you.”

“It’s not your thing,” I said. “It’s cool.”

“No, it’s
not
,” she replied emphatically. She straightened her back eagerly, as if she were a student about to address a professor. “You were sharing something important to you and I was rude. Let me make it up to you: I’ll take you to dinner, and you can teach me
everything
you know. We’ll talk about Han Solo blowing up the Death Star thingy ...” She paused for a moment and bit her lip, and then snapped her fingers as her eyes brightened. “Oh! And you can explain that big purple space guy who looks like an angry raisin. I think he’s an Avenger?”

“Luke Skywalker destroyed the Death Star, not Han ... and the raisin guy is ...” I trailed off, fidgeting with the comic in my hands. “Look, it’s not gonna work.”

“It
could
work!” she said earnestly. “I
promise,
right after my finals next week I’ll watch
all
the Star Wars movies again. Even those crappy ones with the Jamaican fish guy.”

I smiled weakly, glancing down at my untied shoes. “You’re Gavin’s sister.”

She reached across the desk and ran her fingers across the back of my hand. “And
you’re
my brother’s hot older friend. What’s your point?”

I rubbed the back of my neck and cleared my throat. “What if we
do
go for dinner and things don’t work out? You’d end up hating me, and then things would fall apart with Gavin.
And,
I’d lose you as a friend too, which would suck because you’re the only girl friend I have. Well, not a ‘girlfriend’, but ... a friend who happens to be a girl. And what if ...”

“Whoa,” she interrupted, holding up her hands. “You’re glitching out on me, Matty.
Relax
. I’m taking about
dinner,
not eloping. You know, dinner? Food, drinks, a waiter ...” Peyton paused and trailed her eyes down, crinkling her nose at my Dorito-stained hoodie. “Clothing that’s been through the wash in the last decade. We’re not exactly on the fast-track here – we’ve known each other for years. I
know
you like me, at least enough to go out for dinner ... and I’ve been pretty clear about how I feel.”

“You’re right,” I said, nodding quickly. “It’s been years, so a couple more weeks can’t hurt, right?”

“What are you afraid of?”

“Let’s just ...”

“
Hey
,” Gavin shouted, jogging from the stacks with a wine glass in each hand. His customers were following close behind. “Anyone interested in a mimosa before The Reveal? It’s starting in two minutes.”

“I’ll take one!” I snatched a glass from his hand as he passed, retreating to the front of the store. The thought of consuming champagne and orange juice was making my stomach turn, but if it was going to get me out of that conversation with Peyton, I would have chugged battery acid.