Hero Worship (2 page)

TWO

I was homeless and living on the streets when I met Yvonne. She was the first person I'd ever encountered with powers. I spent three nights watching her in an alley behind a Fast Mart. Drug addicts would approach her and hand over some crumpled bills, and she'd lay a hand on their heads. It only took a few moments, but the effect of her power was evident by the sudden relaxed and serene expressions that appeared on her customers' faces. They would stumble away, only to return the next night.

It didn't take long for her to spot me watching. For some reason, I felt I could trust her. Maybe it was because she too didn't go through the Power Aversion Program. I told her my story—what I was capable of—and was impressed that she didn't flinch. She admitted to having a power that allowed her to ease another person's pain. In helping the junkies, Yvonne was doing what she had to do for survival, despite the fact that she was breaking the law. Living on the streets has opened my eyes to the reality of just how many dirties use their powers to make money. I might be the only one who doesn't.

I came back to the alley the next couple of nights, and Yvonne asked me where I was staying. I told her on a bench in Reese Park. She said there was plenty of space at her place, and she smiled when she said that it was conveniently located right by the freeway. She'd made a home inside the embankment of the Edinger Avenue overpass. She called it her concrete cave. It was built so safety inspectors could enter and check the bridge for structural damage. Thankfully there hadn't been any earthquakes in a few years, so no one had a reason to inspect the place.

Yvonne stumbled across it while running away from a half-dozen cops who were rounding up dirties. Hiding under the bridge, she'd spotted the latch and pried it open. She'd made a home out of the place, including pirated electricity, satellite television, and running water.

Yvonne holds the door open now as I help Kent into our concrete sanctuary. Kent's body is nearly completely melted and is draped over me like a soggy blanket. A heavy soggy blanket. “Hold on, Kent,” I say. “Almost there.”

“'Urrrry an' geat mee tae my rum,” Kent says, having difficulty speaking because his jaw hangs down to his chest.

Kent's room contains a chair and desk, a couple of lamps, and an oak chest that he sleeps in. The furniture looks like it belongs in an old folk's home, not in a room belonging to an eighteen-year-old. Yvonne hurries inside and opens the chest. Struggling under the weight of Kent's formless body mass, I manage to hobble over to it. Yvonne and I pour Kent inside like a cake mix into a mold. She closes the lid, securing our friend snuggly inside.

I wipe the sweat from my brow and sigh. “He's lucky we're friends or I'd just let him ooze into the storm drain.”

Lifelike plaster masks hang all over the walls in Kent's room. Each one is a mold of a person: skinny women, fat men, old folks, young kids. They give me the creeps. It's like all these people are inside the walls trying to escape. There's an unfinished mask resting on the desk. “Who's he working on now?” I ask.

“It's your birthday present,” Yvonne says.

My birthday is next week, and I've told my friends that I won't accept gifts purchased with ill-gotten money. “What did I tell you about presents?”

“Hey, you only turn eighteen once.”

I pick up the mask and see my face staring back at me. While still rough around the edges, it's clearly a mold of me. “I don't even want to know,” I say. “But I'm taking this to make sure I don't land on the Most Wanted list.”

Yvonne opens the lid to the chest, revealing Kent's gelatin-type translucent form, and bends down, placing her mouth close to the goo. “Kent, Marvin's taking his mask,” she says.

There's a low gurgling sound and an air pocket forms near the bottom, then slowly rises to the top. It bubbles through the surface and pops, which produces a garbled “Laaammmeee.”

If you're lucky, when your powers manifest you can still blend in with the normal people, or “normies” as we call them. But Kent isn't one of the lucky ones. He was born a normal-looking child, but with each passing year, his appearance slowly changed. All his bones and muscles are malleable, making his body flexible and pliant. He sleeps in the oak chest because he says he's most relaxed when he doesn't have to work to maintain a bodily form.

Kent's condition gives him some advantages, like being able to survive impacts that would kill someone else. I've actually witnessed him get hit by a car and walk away smiling, usually after extorting money from the driver to not file a police report. He can compress his body into small, tight places, making him a perfect thief. It didn't take him long to discover he could reshape his face to look like somebody else. To do this, he makes plaster masks to sculpt his gooey flesh. Kent has become incredibly talented at making molds based on photos, replicating facial features to perfection.

Mortified by his grotesque appearance, Kent's hillbilly parents kicked him out of their trailer when he was twelve. They didn't have the money to pay for him to go to the Power Aversion Program, and, even if they did, I don't know if the program could have made him normal. There's always talk about new breakthroughs in medicine to cure people who have dirty powers. The new fad is DNA-strand modification that will “repair” our molecular composition. Kent lived on the streets for three years before he crossed paths with Yvonne, and she, always the mothering type, welcomed him into her home with open arms.

“Are you scheduled to
work
tonight?” Yvonne asks me, looking up from the trunk. She rolls her eyes while she says this.

“What do you have against my job?”

“Nothing—if you were a normie. But you're one of us.”

“But I obey the law.”

Before disappearing to her room, she says, “Sometimes obeying the law isn't the right choice.”

THREE

Surveying the mountain of dirty dishes, I slip on rubber gloves. I've lobbied the owner of the Midtown Café for a job as a waiter, because then I'd make real money from all the tips. But I'm stuck with bussing and dishwashing, since Gus says he never hires high school students as servers—school should be my top priority. That always ends the conversation. I'm certain he knows I'm a dropout, but it's a conversation we've never actually had. It's like Gus is toying with me, daring me to confide in him.

I turn on the hot water to fill up the sink, squirt in dish soap, and begin washing the dishes. My job isn't glamorous, and it tends to be tedious, but it's legal.

The Clean Powers Act was signed into law before I was born. The controversial bill established a department with the authority to certify powers as either “clean” or “dirty.” When an individual's powers manifest, that person must register with the department and be subjected to a blood test. It doesn't take more than a minute to have the technician tie off your arm, find a vein, and take the blood. It's shipped off to a lab on the East Coast, and the results are mailed back within a week or two.

My test was a nightmare from the get-go. The nurse couldn't find a suitable vein no matter how tightly she cinched the rubber hose around my arm. She unapologetically stabbed me with a needle three times before she managed to extract enough blood to fill the test tubes. And to add insult to injury, when the results came back they were attached to a bright red stamp that read
DIRTY
. This meant that my powers were “unstable” and that I was a perceived danger to myself and others if I used them. It was explained to me that being dirty and using your powers is like driving an 18-wheeler with faulty brakes—you never know when you could lose control.

While my parents had always argued, having a son diagnosed as dirty was the beginning of the end. My father wanted me to go to the Power Aversion Program and hopefully take DNA-strand modification meds. “Marvin will be normal,” he said. But my mother would have none of it. “Let him be who he is. He's perfect just the way he is.”

They say the Power Aversion Program is voluntary, which I guess is true. But if a dirty doesn't enroll, it seems to attract a lot of attention from the government. My father had had run-ins with the law since before he was a teenager, and he certainly didn't want any unnecessary attention directed his way because of me.

For people whose blood tests are determined to be clean, fame and fortune are in the cards because they become authorized to use their powers for monetary compensation. Being dirty is the opposite—it's a label that makes you a pariah, prohibiting you from using your powers to earn a living.

And that's pretty much why I'm standing over this stainless steel sink washing dishes. I obey the law. Yvonne and Kent don't. I've lost count how many times I've told my friends it's just a matter of time until they get nabbed. They joke there isn't money in obeying the law and they'd rather get clipped than be poor.

“Marvin Maywood, you were late,” a cheerful voice booms behind me. It's not hard to see that Gus was a handsome man thirty years ago, but years of playing hard and working hard have taken a toll. I'd guess he's in his early sixties. His brown skin is leathery and cracked, and his hands are calloused and scarred.

“How'd you know I was late?” I ask. “You weren't here when I came in.”

Gus picks up a dishtowel and begins drying the dishes, stacking them to the side. “You're right, I wasn't here.”

“Who ratted on me?”

“You just did,” Gus smiles, nudging me with his shoulder. “You pay more attention in school, you might actually learn something.”

My smile fades, which I'm sure doesn't escape my boss's attention.
Here we go again
, I think,
talking about school
.

“Did you hear about Streak?” he asks.

My heart skips a beat and my mouth is suddenly dry as the desert. “What about him?”

“Some dirties drugged him today in the park.” Gus laughs. “Can you believe that? It's been on the news all day.”

“Do they … do they know who did it?”

“Some kids. But Lieutenant Mercury said that he won't rest until the Core uncovers who's responsible.”

A plate slips out of my hand and drops to the floor, shattering into a cascade of porcelain. “Oh man, oh man, oh man!” I mumble.

Gus grabs a broom and a dustpan and sweeps up the broken plate. “It's okay, Marvin. Accidents happen.”

Stunned, I watch as Gus cleans up my mess. His words, as ominous as a death sentence, ring in my ears. Lieutenant Mercury is going to attempt to find out who's responsible for drugging Streak.

Most people generally consider Lieutenant Mercury to be the first costumed hero. There were a few before, but none were introduced to the world like the masked man in yellow and black was. It was a public relations blitz, or so I'm told. He had his coming-out party before I was born, but I hear people all the time say that everyone knows where they were when they first heard about him.

He's the leader of the Core, so he's featured prominently in my collectibles. He sits at the head of the clean class, setting the bar high for everyone who's followed. Growing up, I wanted badly to be just like him. When my powers manifested, I thought it might actually become a reality, but reality came crashing down on me when I tested dirty. Mercury is as clean as you can get.

Gus dumps the pieces of porcelain into the garbage and looks at me, a concerned expression on his face. “What's gotten into you?” he asks. “Are you okay?”

I go back to washing dishes. I can feel him staring at me, but I refuse to look his way. I'm worried he'll see right through me and realize it was Yvonne, Kent, and me who had the unfortunate run-in with Streak.

He comes up beside me and begins to dry the dishes again. “Marvin, if you're ever in any kind of trouble,” he says, “you know that you can come to me, right?”

“Trouble? I don't have any trouble,” I say.

“You can run away all you want, but your wounds travel with you.”

“Who said I was a runaway?”

“I said ‘run away,' not ‘runaway.'” Gus laughs.

“Well, I'm not—”

He raises his hands to silence me. “It's important to surround yourself with a strong support group,” he says. “Friends and family that you can turn to for guidance. Do you have this sort of support group?”

“Yeah, of course,” I say. “I have friends.”

“Do you have friends or do you have friends?”

“Huh?”

“Are they friends who move you toward your goals?” he asks. “Are they friends who you can act like your normal self around? Friends should bring out the best in you, and if they don't, then you should find new ones. Put a rose in a sack of fish and soon the rose will start to stink, too.”

Are Yvonne and Kent supportive of my goals? I think about them harassing me about my job and my decision not to use my powers to make money. I think about Yvonne telling me to stop trying to be something I'm not. Do my friends bring out the best in me? Do they move me closer to my goals? Well, if I'm being honest with myself, I suppose that I'd have to say—

Gus tosses the drying rag at me. “Now if you'll excuse me, I've got real work to do.” He walks out of the kitchen.

I never have a conversation with Gus where I don't end up wondering whether he knows more about me than he's letting on. It's the way he says things, and how he asks questions, that makes me think he's asking something else entirely. It could be my imagination, but sometimes he looks strangely at me when I talk to him, as if he's disappointed by what I'm saying. I don't know what he wants from me. It's like he's waiting for me to do or say something, but I don't have a clue what that is. I wish he'd just tell me, because I'm not a mind reader.