Every Day is Like Doomsday (26 page)

Innya normally found Evil Chemistry a skullcrushing bore and Professor Boom a garden-variety
nut-job. But this morning she was both hung over and
still seething, which was bad for anyone nearby who
wanted to survive. Add to that the fact that Elliot hadn’t
been waiting for her at their usual spot and her fists
itched to make contact with a certain someone’s pale,
made-up face. During her trek to Evil Chemistry class
she decided that she would start by kicking Elliot in the
shins all through class just to show him who was boss.
What happened after that would be up to him.

Then she walked into the room. And Elliot was
already there. And he was sitting with Casio and Crusher
and Ventriloquist and that random girl Innya had
punched in the hallway simply for saying ‘hi’ to Elliot.
She was sporting the yellowing remains of a black eye.

Innya hoped that the girls were catching a whiff
of the chemicals from Elliot’s recent dye job. She wished
that she hadn’t stayed up late to dye his hair two nights
ago because she hadn’t gotten anything out of it. He had
left for the lab right afterward to meet with Brain. And
since when do I do things for other people if it doesn’t
serve a purpose for myself, she wondered?

Innya took her regular seat and glared openly as
the nameless girl leaned into Elliot and whispered something into his ear before collapsing into a fit of ridiculous
giggles. Elliot smiled and Innya would have bet that there
was a blush hidden beneath the layer of extra pale Cover
Girl foundation smeared over his face.

Other students slowly inched their desks away from
Innya’s, anticipating an explosion.
Then Crusher ran her man-hands through Elliot’s
hair. That did it. Innya stood up and walked over to where
Elliot was sitting with his admirers and smacked the manhands away,shuddering because she had had to touch them.
“What the hell is your problem?’ Crusher said.
“The fact that I just had to touch your hands. Is
your disease contagious?”
“You bitch,” said Crusher. She stood up, her fists
clenched into two giant wads of flesh and ready to battle.
“Ladies, ladies,” Elliot suddenly said as he stood up.
Innya almost barfed when she saw the other two girls
smiling up at him as if he was a god. “There’s enough of
me to go around.”
Innya rolled her eyes. “You’re kidding, right,
sacapuntas
?” she asked through clenched teeth.
The girls giggled and the nameless girl, with her
adorable Tinkerbell voice said, “You know, I’ve realized
that you use a lot of words no one else knows to make
yourself look mysterious. But I do believe that you just
called Elliot a pencil sharpener.”

Laughter ensued and Innya fumed because the
bint
was right. It was all she could do not to grab her by her
braids and smash her face into her desk hard enough to
break her perky button nose.

“I have had enough,” she hissed, “Listen to me, dead
boy, you died once and I can make sure you die again,” she
paused for emphasis on the last words,
“For real this time.”

The smile on Elliot’s face faded as if it had been
drawn there with disappearing ink. “Girls, can you excuse
us for a moment?”

Innya turned and walked out into the hallway and
Elliot followed her. As soon as they were out of earshot
he said, “What’s wrong? I thought this was what you
wanted? Me… taking care of myself… being The Zombie. It’s what
you
created.”

“What’s wrong is that you are acting like an ass and
I don’t appreciate it. I helped you first because I was paid
and then because you were a challenge, someone to mold
into whatever I wanted. But if you keep up this act then
you’re just like all the rest of them…oh wait,just like them
except for one important thing.
You’re not a Villain!
”

Shhh!” said Elliot and looked around, panicked,
but no one else was in the hallway. “You made it abundantly clear before that you helped me because you were
paid to do it.”

Innya felt as if she had been slapped in the face. She
couldn’t believe that this was the same innocent Elliot she
had started with. Not that she would admit it out loud
but he was right. She had created this. She had told him
to be self-sufficient and here he was, looking at her with
a newfound smugness. And even though she had been
telling herself that there was nothing there, that this was
all in the name of boredom and money and that he meant
nothing to her, it took this to see that she was wrong.

She straightened her shoulders and wiped the
shock from her face. He didn’t need to see how he had
hurt her. “That’s right. I was paid to protect you and I’ve
done a good job. But don’t forget that I was also paid to
kill you. I didn’t do it even though I kept the money. And
think about it… if a Villain doesn’t have her honor, what
does she have?”

Then she spun and stalked off, leaving Elliot
standing behind her with what she hoped was a dazed
expression on his stupid face. She only hoped that she
had re-instilled some sort of fear in him because the way
he was going he’d be dead within the week without her
protection. He was getting too cocky and without her
there to guide him he was bound to reveal himself eventually. And then they would kill him.

Innya spent the rest of the day in the arcade and
the mall, scaring the other teenagers who were also ditching school and blowing up pixelated people and property
because she couldn’t do it in real life. It was not satisfying.

“Alright, Elliot. Show us what you got,” said Coach.
Elliot’s heart dropped as he walked to the center of
the room, fully aware of the predatory eyes of his classmates. He hadn’t seen or talked to Innya for four days and
after their argument he had spent most of his free time
in his room hiding from those same girls he’d sought to
impress, wanting to apologize to Innya but too afraid to
do it. And now he had to find some tangible display of his
power to show the rest of the class and the only person
who might have been on his side was nowhere to be seen.
“Well,” Elliot asked, “What would you like to see?”
Elliot’s eyes quickly scanned the piles of junk for Innya
but she wasn’t there and hadn’t been in any classes since
their fight. There was no one to save his ass now.

“You discovered your power a while ago but you
haven’t given us a demonstration.”
“Yeah,” said Red, stepping forward. “I’d like to see a
demonstration, too.”
“Perfect,” said Coach with a wicked grin, “Go at
it, boys.”
“Wait,”said Elliot, stalling for time.“But my power is
resurrection, not super strength or whatever. And in order
to show it to you I’d have to die and… uh… come back.”
“That’s right,” said Red, “And I’d like to help you
out with that.”
Red’s cronies chuckled and Elliot’s mouth went
dry even as his palms and armpits became swampy. He
knew that Red hadn’t been too pleased when Ventriloquist started flirting with Elliot, even though after that
first day Elliot had tried not to encourage it. Oh, thought
Elliot, this is not going to be fun.
Red picked up a car’s rear bumper, all rusty chrome
and sharp, twisted edges and passed with back and forth
between his hands as if testing its weight. Once he had
ascertained that it would inflict the proper amount of
fatality he said, “This will do nicely.”
Elliot panicked. His life flashed before his eyes and
he realized that he had been a fool. The girls he had tried
to hang out with had looked at him with adoration in
their eyes but they didn’t know the real him. Only one
girl knew the real him and he had been mean to her and
even though that’s how she had taught him to be she had
left him and now he was going to die and not come back
this time and she’d be so pissed that she didn’t get to be
the one to kill him.
“You ready?” asked Red. He smiled then, a big,
crimson maniacal gesture that didn’t help his ugliness one
bit. In fact, it might have made him uglier. He cocked the
bumper back over his right shoulder like a baseball player
at the World Series prepared to take the swing of his life
to win the game.
“Ye—”started Elliot. Red swung the bumper before
Elliot even finished the world. It connected with the left
side of Elliot’s face and everything went black.
It felt like only a moment had passed when Elliot
opened his eyes. Everything was dark and he didn’t know
why he had fallen asleep on the floor. He pushed himself
up to his knees and the world spun like a dirty pinwheel
and he fell forward onto his hands. He puked until he
had nothing left inside him then he squeezed his eyes
shut and crawled blindly to another place in the room
and collapsed once more.
He was alive. The world was a horrible, dark and
spinning place. He was fairly certain that he had a concussion and it maybe even a skull fracture or two. But
he was alive. And tomorrow when he walked into class
looking as if he got hit by a truck they would all see and
they would know that he was telling the truth. Except
he wasn’t. But at least this would enable him to continue
lying for a little while longer. He offered a silent prayer
of thanks to his parents for giving him such a hard head.
As he lay there in the darkness, his cheek pressed
up against the cold concrete floor of the warehouse, he
thought of Innya. He missed her. He wished she were
there with him even if she was mean and vindictive and
would probably punish him harshly enough to put him
into the hospital, which was probably where he should be
headed right now.
He passed out to thoughts of her.
He woke up what had to be several hours later to
the sound of Innya’s voice. Sunlight was just starting to
come in through the high windows and Innya was singing a song in Russian or maybe Polish or some other
Slavic language that he didn’t know. It sounded like a folk
song. Elliot tried to smile but his face wouldn’t obey. He
rolled over slowly onto his back. He had learned his lesson the last time and knew better than to move quickly.
His cheek stuck to the freezing ground and he wondered
if it should have hurt but his face was numb so perhaps it
was for the best.
As soon as he moved the singing stopped. He closed
his eyes against a wave of nausea and listened to her footsteps come closer. When he opened his eyes again he was
staring up into her face. She was kneeling beside him.
“I’ll bet you feel like
kak
,” she said harshly. Just as
he had expected, she had no sympathy. He found himself
strangely grateful for it and for her odd linguistic tendencies.
“You have no idea,” he said, though he wasn’t even
sure he was saying it or just thinking it because his head
felt so funny. Maybe this was just a dream.
“You deserve it, you know.”
“I know,” said that strange gravelly voice.
“You almost died, I think.”
“Really?”he asked. He felt so awful that death didn’t
seem like such a bad idea. The longer his eyes were open
the faster the world spun and so he closed them again. It
didn’t really help.
“Yes. And you still might. Looks like you have a
pretty bad concussion.”
“How do you know? Since when were you a nurse?”he
asked, not sure if she was serious or just trying to scare him.
“The puke gives it away. Also the fact that you can’t
open your eyes because the world is spinning.”
“Oh.” He didn’t know what to say because his heart
was suddenly so full of apologies.“Did you watch over me?”
“Yes.” Her tone implied no warmth or affection.
“Thank you,” Elliot said and he felt the tears roll
out of his eyes. She had watched over him. She didn’t take
him to a hospital, which would have been better but still,
it was something. Maybe we could let bygones do that
whole bygone thing, Elliot thought.
“I wasn’t sure whether I should finish you off or let
nature take its course. I still haven’t decided in case you’re
wondering.”
So she wasn’t over it. “Innya,” Elliot said. He tried
to form words with a dry, sticky tongue and a half-swollen face. “I’m so sorry I treated you the way I did. It was
uncalled for. You were so good to me—“
“I was being paid to be good to you—“
Elliot sighed, then gasped as his ribs smarted. So
they were back to that. “But you didn’t kill me when you
were supposed to and that means something. I was disrespectful. A jerk. I am so sorry. Can you forgive me?”
Her voice sounded suddenly very close and he
opened his eyes to find her just inches away, “I do not
forgive. I get revenge.”
Elliot’s blood ran cold, at least the blood that hadn’t
already oozed out of his face and frozen on the ground.
He was in such sorry shape she could have easily dispatched him and put an end to this ruse for good. As he
met her narrowed eyes with his swollen ones he wondered
if that was where her mind was going. He wondered what
real death would feel like.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I want to give you a little piece of information that
will hurt you much more than physical pain will, I think.”
“What’s that?” he asked, not entirely at ease, and
only partly because he was feeling like he might throw
up some more.
“That person who wanted you dead?”
“Yes.”
“The person who paid me to kill you?”
“Yes?”
“It was your father.”
Elliot closed his eyes as his mind tried to wrap
itself around that piece of info and failed. His injured ribs
throbbed as he tried to take a deep breath to quell any further tears, an effort he knew was destined to fail. “There’s
no way. My father wasn’t the best dad in the world but he
wouldn’t have wanted me dead.”
“He may not have been the only one who wanted
you dead but he was definitely involved.”
“No.”
“No? Then please explain to me why a Villain
named ‘The Senator’ was up on the screen in the Strategy
classroom, alongside a Villain named ‘The Ginger’. And
while you’re at it explain why they both seemed to be
located in Fort Rose, Iowa. Remind me, your dad’s assistant is a redhead, isn’t he?”
“You’re a liar,” Elliot said with as much strength as
he could muster even as tears closed his throat. “I don’t
believe you.”
Innya stood and brushed off her jeans. “Believe
what you want but it’s the truth. I have no reason to lie to
you now. We’re not even friends anymore.”
And then she was gone. Elliot rolled over and cried
into his arm and drooled blood onto the concrete and
wondered how someone could be so cruel.