Sidekicked (34 page)

Mr. Masters, who I was completely wrong about. Not that I was right about a whole lot. Mr. Masters told us that in light of recent events, he saw no reason not to reinstate the H.E.R.O. program. After all, it had been the Fox's idea to shut it down, to keep us out of the way—fat lot of good that did. Besides, Mr. Masters said, we had passed our first real test together, as a team. We were ready to take it to the next level. More fieldwork. More after-school training sessions. More weekends spent with our mentors, “keeping the trash off the streets.”

Yesterday was H.E.R.O.'s first meeting since its brief suspension, though we spent most of it eating the pizza Mr. Masters owed us while he talked on the phone, cleaning up some of the mess and confusion that the Fox left behind. More phone calls to the mayor and the commissioner, making sure everyone had their stories straight, trying to keep as much of H.E.R.O. under wraps as he could. We would have to get back to our training soon, though, he said. The Dealer wasn't Justicia's only threat, and with the Fox gone, ironically, it left a hole in the city's defenses. Until it was filled, we had to be ready to put our masks back on.

Then he told us how we reminded him of another group of Supers from not long ago. How proud he was of all of us.

Though I know he only meant most of us.

It felt strange without her. Sitting together in the circle, I could tell we all felt it, Gavin especially. He barely said a word, just chewed methodically on his crust. We tried not to talk about her, but in doing that we found ourselves not talking about anything. In the halls, the rumor was that she had simply transferred to another school. In the basement, the feeling was that she had been misled or even betrayed by her Super. Everybody believed what they wanted to, I guess.

I didn't say much to the others about what happened. I had already told Mr. Masters everything—or most everything, anyway—and he and I both agreed that it was better to stick to the Titan's version of things. There were lots of questions, of course, but whenever possible I just kept my mouth shut and nodded.

The nod is the easiest lie there is.

When the bell finally rang and everyone trudged back up the stairs to the teachers' lounge, Mr. Masters grabbed me and asked to speak with me for a moment. I still couldn't say no. I followed him back to his office, and he shut the door.

“I know you were in here,” he said. I thought about feigning innocence but knew it was pointless. Mr. Masters knew things. That was his job.

He pointed to the broken clock. Turns out he broke it himself, trying to install the video camera secreted behind it. Once he pointed it out, I could see the lens peering through the center. I made a note to be a little more diligent, especially when doing something I shouldn't be.

“It's all right,” he said, noticing the look on my face. “I don't blame you. I wasn't completely honest with you before,” he began. “With all of you. Though I hope you can understand. I wasn't entirely sure who I could trust. I suspected the Fox had her own agenda, even before the Dealer showed up. That's what the plans were for. I hoped to find some evidence, something definitive to confirm my suspicions. But I needed help.”

“The Titan,” I said.

Mr. Masters nodded. “We had been working to bring him back for a while. The thought was that if he had a sidekick—especially one who believed in him . . .” I thought about the letter I found in the Titan's folder.

“It didn't work,” I told him.

“Oh, I think it did,” Mr. Masters replied, then laughed to himself. “It
took
a few tries, but it worked. It's not as if I couldn't have found him if I'd wanted to, of course. But he wouldn't have listened to me. I was right about him, and you,
and
the Fox—it was just . . .”

“Jenna.”

Mr. Masters shook his head. “The bond between a Super and a sidekick can be very strong.”

“I'll have to take your word for it,” I said, forcing a smile.

“Somewhere along the line the Fox convinced her that a world without the Titan, without any superheroes—a world where she and Jenna were the sole arbiters of justice—was a better, safer one. And Jenna believed it. She believed in the Code. Or the parts that suited her, anyway. Unfortunately you can't pick and choose which rules you live by.”

I turned and glanced outside the office at the stone engraving on the wall.

“But you saved her, Drew. I know it doesn't seem like it now, but if you hadn't been there, I'm not sure what would have happened. You stopped her.”

He means Jenna. Not the Fox. I think about the conversation we had on the bleachers, before she changed everything. In the end, wasn't it all right? Did it really matter how? Kyla's gone. The Jacks are locked away. The Supers were saved. There were no civilian casualties.

“So she was a hero,” I said, trying my best to convince both of us.

“The end doesn't always justify the means, Drew. Somehow or other, Jenna will have to face the consequences of
all
of her actions.”

I thought about the Titan leading her away after our minute was over. For a week I'd wondered if I would ever see her again. I told Mr. Masters as much.

“That's actually why I wanted to talk to you,” Mr. Masters said. “I'm going to Colton tomorrow. You should come along. Talk to her. You may not have another chance.”

So it's Tuesday, and I'm missing school again, supposedly to go to a museum with Mr. Masters and the rest of our science class—at least that's the story. In actuality, we are taking his blue Chevy north to see about a girl. To be honest, I'm not sure my parents believed the whole museum thing anyway, though they did sign the permission slip. Something in the way my mother kept
looking
at me. Mr. Masters says the time will soon come when I'll just have to suck it up and tell them and hope they don't totally freak out and lock me in a closet. He says it's getting too hard to cover our tracks and that constantly lying to your parents isn't good for your karma. I told him I wanted to hold off a little longer. Maybe wait until I get straight As on my report card again, just to soften the blow. But I know he's right. You can only hide who you are for so long.

Colton Maximum Security Prison was completely repaired and refortified after the lone break-in in its forty-year history. A new fence has been added, along with two new watchtowers and an infrared tracking system with an electromagnetic pulse that shocks prisoners who are deemed potential escape threats, such as the three Jacks, who Mr. Masters is here to question. He wants to find out just how much they knew about Kyla Kaden, about her triple identity. If they ever suspected that they were being played, that the cards were stacked against them from the start. They weren't idiots—though you'd have a harder time making that case with the Jack of Spades—but there's a possibility they didn't realize their boss was also their nemesis until they were staring the Fox in the face.

Mr. Masters drops me off at the gate for the juvenile offenders building and says he will be back to pick me up. The guards check me for weapons—I left my belt at home for just that reason—and usher me through a set of steel doors to the visitation area, a large room encased in bullet-proof glass, with several scratched wooden tables and a water cooler. A single row of windows lines one wall, coated in a dingy gray film.

I don't have to see her to know she's there. Even without the Purple Passion. I recognize the pattern of her breathing the moment I walk in the door. The sound she makes when she clears her throat. From across the room she whispers to me.

“Don't look now, but your fly's unzipped.”

Of course I look, and of course it's not. But it's good to know she hasn't lost her sense of humor.

I thank the guard and then walk to the back of the room, taking the seat across from her. All part of the code of conduct. I'm not allowed to sit beside her. I'm also not supposed to hug her or hand her anything. There are a dozen other rules, but I don't intend to break any of them. I'm only here to talk.

“Hey,” she says.

She looks good in orange, the jumpsuit hanging on her loosely, as if they didn't quite have her size. In here, I can tell, she's just Jenna. Her hair's pulled back, the glasses perched on her nose. When she smiles, my heart hurts.

“Hey,” I say back.

“You look . . . um . . . nice,” she says. I look down at my jeans and my blue Highview sweatshirt and my holey shoes before I realize she's being sarcastic.

“Yeah, you too.”

She looks terrific, as healthy as ever. Still, there's something a little off about her, vagueness in her eyes, as if she's in two places at once.

“So how's life at Highview?” she asks.

“Oh, well, you know. Same as always. Football team still hasn't won a game, and Ms. M. says we have to start reading
Dracula
this week. Oh, and Rebecca Matlin supposedly broke Jon Trotter's nose when she hit him with her backpack last week. Apparently he kissed Rachel Worton. He was gushing like a fountain.”

I look at Jenna's nose. It's still slightly bruised around the bridge from where the Fox punched her. I can tell by the look on her face that she doesn't care about anything I'm saying.

“Nikki has a new boyfriend,” I add. “Though between you and me, I think maybe she kind of likes Mike. Oh, and Mr. Masters started the program up again.”

This grabs her interest a little. Her eyes brighten.

“They miss you,” I say.

“So you haven't told them, then? What I did to you?”

I just sit and stare at her. I don't think she has the first clue about all the things she's done to me.

“I told them you saved me.”

She laughs. “There's no rule in the Code about lying.”

“It's not a lie,” I say.

“It's not exactly the truth either,” she counters. Behind us, one of the guards ushers in another visitor, who sits at the first table, waiting on someone—maybe her own son or daughter—to be brought in. I wonder how many people my age there are in this place. And whether any of them are really evil, or if they all just lost their way.

“What about you? Are you okay?” It's a stupid question. But she understands what I mean. She plays with a loose string on the edge of her sleeve, wrapping it around one finger, winding and unwinding. “It's just middle school with bars. A bunch of people telling you what you can and can't do,” she says. “Though I don't imagine I'll be in here much longer. I've already been approached by some people in the government. They say they can grant me a deal to drop all charges, provided I come to work for them after high school.” She leans back in her chair. “They'll ship me off somewhere, some kind of boarding school where they can keep an eye on me, but at least I'll be out of here.”

I try to picture Jenna as a government agent, doing covert ops, slipping past security to disable some nuclear weapon or eliminate some high-profile target or something. She'd be scarily good at it. Still, I'm a little surprised they'd take her. “Aren't there rules?” I say, but she knows what I mean.

“There's an awful lot of gray in the world, Drew,” she says.

For some reason this ticks me off. “That's your excuse? There's a lot of gray in the world?” The guard by the door looks at me. I lower my voice.

“I didn't know you wanted an excuse,” Jenna says softly, instantly defeated.

“It wouldn't hurt,” I say.

“I don't know. I don't know what to tell you that you will understand. It's . . .”

“Complicated,” I finish. “I know. Try me.”

She turns and looks out the window. “She said we would make the world a better place. That when it was over, we would be unstoppable. The Fox and the Silver Lynx. We would restore the faith, become a power unto ourselves. No more failure. No more one-upmanship. No more epic battles between good and evil. No more lost fathers. No more sidekicks left hanging over the void. We would be above it all. Somehow beyond good and evil. No one would dare stop us once we got started. But we had to prove it. We had to show them.”

“And the Titan? And the others?”

“The price we had to pay,” Jenna says weakly, looking down at her hands in her lap. “She said we'd be doing the world a favor.”

“She was lying,” I say. “She was using you.”

“Just like Mr. Masters was using you,” she counters. “Shaping us all into what
he
thought the world needed in order to save it. That's the way it works, Drew.”

“But we were never going to
kill
anyone.”

“Neither was the Titan,” Jenna says. She looks past me, at the glass all around us. Separating us from the rest of the world. When she turns back, her eyes are scrunched behind her glasses again. “Have you ever wanted to be normal, Drew?”

It's the same question as before. I give pretty much the same answer. “Yeah. Sometimes. Maybe.”

“Not me,” she says. “Not ever.”

Then she reaches over and takes my hand. And in that instant I see her as she might have been five years ago. A confused, powerful, and impressionable little girl, who knows somehow she is special, that she is destined for great things. A little girl so determined to live up to expectations that she doesn't think about the cost.

The guard sees and takes a step toward us. I instinctively try to jerk my hand away, but Jenna flashes the guard a look, almost daring him to take another step. He's armed and backed by another dozen men, and she's only one teenage girl, but there is something in her eyes that freezes him in place. He stops and looks down at his shoes. Jenna turns back to me like nothing happened and smiles.

We sit there for an eternity, holding hands, not saying another word, until our time is finished and she lets go. Only then does the guard come to escort me out.