True Heroes (86 page)

              ‘How long have you been watching her?’

              ‘How long have we been in the car?’

              ‘I feel as though that’s the same question.’

              Caleb gently flipped a page. ‘Mine has far fewer implications.’

              ‘No, actually, the same. On every level.’

              Another page flipped. ‘She hasn’t said anything to me since we’ve been back.’

              Caleb’s eyes shifted to the white corner of a panel. ‘You’re worried she’s forgotten about you?’

              ‘I don’t know what’s going on between us. She’s infatuated with you still. Why not me?’

              ‘We’re not the same person, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to talk to you.’ His eyes flicked back to the colorful drawings. ‘David’s here, and has been around. When he’s asleep, I’ll let you take over so you can talk. Deal?’

              ‘Why?’

              ‘Why am I doing something nice?’

              ‘For me, yes. Perhaps it isn’t weird that you’re doing something nice, but doing it for me seems odd, even borderline folly.’

              ‘Why folly?’

              ‘What if she talks to me and I take her from you?’

              ‘Then that’s what happens.’

              ‘Do you think sounding like that helps your insecurities at all?’

              Caleb smiled as he turned a page. ‘I can’t help but feel a reversal of roles here.’

              ‘You do want her.’

              ‘I think I need her.’

              ‘Then don’t say things like that.’

              ‘Look, I just mean if she wants to be with someone else to be happy, then that’s what happens. I wouldn’t stop her. Sure I’d argue with her, be sad, and try everything I could to talk her out of it, but if she is pulled to someone else, then so be it. As far as being folly, it’s not. It’s not even about me having faith in what we have or in her being loyal. I’ve seen the look in her eyes when we talk and the actual glow we both share after we kiss. Something like that makes us…perfect for one another. She isn’t Carol.’

              ‘What makes you right now and not then?’

              ‘Because now I remember something I never learned.’

              ‘To hell with that! Talk to me straight.’

              ‘Sorry. I know now that I’m not something, or even everything, or a hope, or a beacon of light, or a sample of divinity or whatever other nicknames I was given. I thought I was me, and I thought I could be happy with just me. Well, maybe not happy, but content with the idea of dying slowly, but there was always something big and blue inside of me that pushed me forward until I met someone that pulled me out of everything, and suddenly I was an apparent miserable wreck that couldn’t reconcile with who he was anymore. Now…I don’t know what you’d consider me. Maybe I’ve finally grown into nobody. She’s seen me stripped down to something so basic and inconsequential, and yet she still is here. She can’t walk away from me, and there’s something besides you inside of me that can’t walk away from her.’

              ‘That makes no sense. How would you survive without her then?’

              ‘I’d still be a nobody.’

              ‘Nothing would change?’

              ‘I’d lose something—probably the most potent chance of something true, something right anyone can hope for—but I have no more self to lose.’

              ‘That’s crap. You’re still the self-indulgent imbecile you always have been.’

              ‘Only when I have to be. Only when logic tells me to be.’

              ‘Shut up. I’m tired of listening to your ramble.’

              ‘That’s probably half because you stayed up all night staring at Alice, waiting for her to open her eyes and talk to you.’

              Caleb reached the finished comic back for a replacement. ‘How did you know?’

              ‘I had a different kind of dream last night that turned into nothing more than my imagination being let loose. It was a nice change from the trances I usually find myself in. Apparently, it’s easier to sense when you’re out and about when I’m not completely entrenched in a dream.’

              Alice accommodated him. ‘It makes me feel like you. I felt that was wrong.’

              ‘I stayed up for two days straight: you’ve got some time before you get to that level of depravity. Another thing that shows I’ve overcome something inside of me. I sleep like a baby.’

              ‘What’s my excuse for staying up then?’

              ‘As we’ve expanded and gone through our crap, you’ve found more and more things wrong with you that you can’t solve, or won’t.’

              ‘I only have one problem and that’s between me and Alice.’

              ‘It is just one problem, but it has nothing to do with her.’

              ‘Enlighten me.’

              ‘You’re still on Carol. There’s something still tethering you to her.’

              ‘And not you?’

              ‘Not since the cave.’

              ‘What the hell happened to us in there?’

              ‘To me, a future that isn’t mine told me that my past was irrelevant. You were reminded that you couldn’t stop something strong from taking what you thought was yours away from you.’

              ‘She was mine….’

              Caleb closed the comic and let it fall to his lap while rubbing his eyes. ‘No, she was she. You only had her because of me. You’re morbidly terrified that you’ve lost something you never had to begin with.’

              ‘She even said I was the one that said all those nice things. I was the one that smothered her with feeling and adorn!’

              ‘And we’ve found the root of your problem. You don’t have an “I” to latch on to. You’re a part of something larger that you think is yours just because you have some small influence when, in the larger picture, you couldn’t do anything beyond what you’re capable.’

              ‘I’m capable of a lot.’

              ‘No, you’re capable of what this world allows you to be capable of. That, right there, is the difference between what happened.’

              “So, why did you stockpile these things?”

              Caleb turned his head quickly. “Comics?”

              Alice leaned forward until the seatbelt limited her approach, then reached to his shoulder with her hand. “Yeah, you said it wasn’t because you were holding onto something, but you never said what they were for really.”

              He rewound his mind and validated her claim. “Oh, well, that’s silly of me. These were the first things to tell me about what a hero was. When my real dad packed everything up, I guess he knew I knew I was wrong about my definition, so he wanted me to keep looking.”

              David reached down and turned the already quiet music to mute. “So, they are from the past.”

              “From the past, yeah, but not me holding on to the past. I’m in the present, psyche-boy, I promise.”

Caleb moved his hand up to hold Alice’s as a small piece of paper came across his other shoulder. “Is that what this is?”

He examined the paper sideways as it fell. “Ah, my list of narrowed words. I’m surprised he found this. Yeah, I narrowed down notebooks full of words to the word “power.” I thought that’s what it took to be a hero. In a way, I was right really.”

“No you weren’t don’t say that.”

A planted kiss received a sigh from Alice before he spoke. “To be a hero is to have the apparent intention of helping others, but there’s always something holding you back. Either you’re actual ambition—fame, fortune, what-have-you—or your inherent need for the danger, for the experience,” Caleb looked towards David, “of saving someone to become your all-encompassing realm.” He let his eyes drag across the dash and out his window, and for his hand to squeeze a little tighter on Alice’s. “A true hero is something different. This isn’t even a man, or a woman, anymore. This is a person, one completely willing to sacrifice who they are, how they live, and, most importantly, the idea of life, all because they know it is the right thing to do. It’s the truth of action carried out by a true person.”

“Someone’s been thinking about this.”

He flipped the rest of the way around to flash a smile. Along his quest to homeostasis within the seat, he noticed David’s eyes. “Someone else looks a little tired.”

The driver glanced over. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

Alice took her hand back and leaned closer to the back of David’s seat. “New job on the mind?”

David just nodded.

“So what’s this new job all about? You’re handing the group over to Alice, I take it?”

“The group won’t be sanctioned anymore without me around, but Alice will probably talk them into meeting at her apartment or from the coffee shop.”

“And the job?”

He adjusted his glasses. “It’s more of a tryout than an actual posting. As long as I don’t screw up, I’ll be a made-man.”

              “My little David is finally getting out into the world without me and the tag-a-long group.” She reached forward and lightly punched his shoulder. “Will you be doing the same thing as before?”

              “No, this will be a little different skill-set, but nothing I shouldn’t be able to handle.” He flicked on the turn signal and took an unexpected exit. “Sorry, but someone else is driving. I really need to rest my eyes.”

              Caleb eyed the gas station ahead—‘Vintage pump from the Flintstones,’—before unbuckling his seat belt. “Might as well get a stretch in while we’re stopping.”

              The engine growled to a halt and sputtered out of commission before all three doors opened and tight legs found the welcoming cement. David wandered uneasily inside while Caleb and Alice smiled towards one another. “You want me to drive?”

              “You can,” she said. “I’d feel bad letting you drive the rest of the way though.”

              “It’s only like four more hours. We’ll be smelling sea salt and dodging seagull poop in no time.”

              She smiled wider. “Are you sure?”

              He raised his chin to the stack of comic books. “Clean those off for the sleepy psychiatrist. You can sit up front with me.”

              She turned and crawled over to the box with her fanny sticking just out of the door frame. ‘I have never admired her posterior before. I’ve been missing out.’

              ‘Says the supposed hero.’

              He smiled and walked closer, putting his hand on her lower back and stopping her murmur. “And what are you doing?”

              “Your white skin was blinding everyone back here.”

              She dropped the box into the back and rotated her body until she was sitting with Caleb between her ankles. “You’re the only one back there, and you’re whiter than me, buddy-boy. I think you were just being a perv.”

              “You are my girlfriend.”

              He watched as her eyes closed at the run of his hand across her cheek and under her chin, beckoning her closer with a gentle grasp. “I am, aren’t I?”

              They leaned their foreheads together. “And I’m the lucky one here. That’s the cool part.”

              Alice quickly kissed him on the lips and backed away. “Why can’t we both be lucky? Isn’t that how this goes? We were lucky to find one another, so neither of us can be luckier than the other.”

              “Well, like that, neither of us are lucky period. We were always pulled to this spot at this time, and there was never anything we could do about it.”

              He backpedaled to give her space. “That’s not the truth though, is it?”

              “No, no it isn’t.”

              She stepped out and closer to him. “You’ll tell me the truth?”

              “I always have.”

              “The true truth?”

              “I always will, now.”

              “So tell me.”

              “I will: future-tense.”

              She nodded her head with a depth in her eyes that sent Caleb’s own mind plummeting into vertigo. ‘What’s her mind working out right now?’

              David tapped Caleb’s shoulder with the sharp key. “I take it you’ll be driving?”

              Caleb gently took the keys and moved his arms towards the door. “Your chariot awaits.”

              Alice smiled. She hopped into the passenger door before either of the men could enter their respective portals. Caleb fooled around with the interface while David could be heard getting comfortable in the back seat. He could see her smile from the corner of his eye. “You don’t drive new cars very well.”

              “I’ve done it once in twenty years. If the wheels can get rolling we should be good. Give it a push.”

              “Foot on the brake,” she instructed.