Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) (14 page)

“I’ve got a song in my heart.”

“You’re humming songs from
Disney
movies.”

“I’ve got a
sappy
song in my heart.”

She finally broke. “Spill, Josh. What happened this afternoon? And why are you clipping all those stories about Shift? Were you there when he saved that kid? Did you have anything to do with it?”

“Four questions in one paragraph. You’ll be a reporter someday yet.”

“You’re stalling.”

I was, really. Sheila was the closest friend I had, without a doubt, but somehow I just couldn’t see my way clear to filling her in on my misadventures. A big part of me was regretting even telling her I had powers in the first place.

“I was the one who tipped off the Spectacle Six,” I said. “Anonymously, of course. I knew Shift was going to try pulling a job and I knew somebody had to stop him. And the Spectacle Six aren’t listed in the phone book.”

“Well... you
do
look better than you did before.”

I stood up and gave Sheila a hug. “I’m telling you, I’m
fine.
I’m starting to learn how this whole thing works. Once I’ve got that, I can put a stop to it.”

“So why can’t you
tell
me any of it?”

“Because it would be dangerous for you to know too much. Look, I’m keeping a notebook of every activity that goes on there. As soon as I’ve got enough info, I’ll show it all to you and we’ll put this story together as a team. Deal?”

“All right.” She smiled and we hugged again. As we stood there, our arms around each other, she pulled her head back with a surprised look on her face. “Josh, are you losing weight?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, your pants just fell down around your ankles, for one thing.”

That explained the sudden draft I caught. I yanked my trousers up and cinched my belt. The worn notch, the one I usually used, was several inches from the one I’d unconsciously buckled that afternoon when I changed out of my Shift costume. Even the last notch on the belt was a tad loose.

“Your
training
? Training for
what
?”

“Training for... the... Olympics?”

“Josh...”

“I’m sorry, Sheila, I really am, but I can’t say too much.”

“This silent game of yours is starting to bother me, Josh.”

I patted her on the shoulder. “I don’t like it much either, but...”

She sat down and began wringing her hands in a worried, grinding motion. “You know, we
never
hang out anymore. We never
do
anything, we never see each other outside of work. Now you’re not even telling me what you’re doing all the time. You’re my
best friend
, but it feels like you’re cutting me out of your life.”

“Oh.
Them
.” I sat back down. “You can’t really accuse me of having no life, Sheila. I’ve been keeping myself plenty busy. But I
do
miss you. It’s the masochist in me. Tell you what, I don’t have to do anything tonight. It’s Friday and I know you don’t have a date with Scott or Spectrum or anyone else because if you did you’d have walked in here waving a banner.”

“You see why I love you? You know me so well.”

I smiled. “So tonight, it’s gonna be
us
. You and me, two best buddies out for a night on the town. What do you say?”

“Sounds great.”

“I’m glad you think so. Because you’re not getting out of it. We start as soon as we get off work.”

“Okay,” she said. “And the
first
thing we’re doing is taking you shopping for some new pants.”

And we did. I bought three pairs that evening, a size smaller than what I’d been wearing. We caught a terrible movie and made fun of pretty much everyone associated with it, up to and including the producer’s dog. We split a greasy pizza and then we leaned back and listened to our arteries clog. It was a great time.

But as much fun as I had with Sheila, Annie was in the back of my mind all night long.

IS
SUE SEVEN

VISITING HOURS

The next time I saw Annie, she composed herself enough to inform me the kid I saved was her brother. (I didn’t let her know I’d already heard.) I smiled and asked, “Why didn’t you just tell me the other day?”

She smiled back, that tiny smile she had. “I’m not sure,” she said. For some reason, this made me feel incredibly hopeful -- almost as hopeful as a few seconds later, when she asked me to go home with her and meet Tom and her family as myself.

“You saved his life,” she said. “I think it’s only right that he see your real face. Even if we
can’t
tell him it was you.” It took me about half an eyeblink to agree to go with her.

“The funny thing is,” she said as we walked through Siegel to her parent’s apartment, “Tom is convinced I’m a
Cape
. He thinks I put on a black wig and a mask and go around as Glamour Girl. It’s never even occurred to him that his sister could be the big, bad Miss Sinistah.”

“Well can you blame him? I mean... if I didn’t know better I would
never
place you in the same category as Sinistah.”

“No?”

“Uh-uh.”

“What
would
you imagine me to be?”

I stopped on the sidewalk and looked her up and down. She was wearing khakis that day, and a cargo vest over a green top. On her feet were a well-worn pair of gray sneakers with a yellow trim. Her blonde hair was pulled back by an orange band, away from her face, and her eyes reflected the sun like marbles. She looked silly and innocent and beautiful, and somehow the first two contributed even more to the third.

“Elementary school librarian,” I said.

“
What?
” she smacked me with her purse and we kept on, together, walking along a concrete ribbon glittering in the sun, only occasionally broken apart into the detritus of some rumble or another.

As it turned out, Tom had long suspected his sister’s involvement in the world of superhumans. He had caught her, on occasion, using her strength to lift up her car a bit when she couldn’t find a jack, pick up a sofa with one hand so she could vacuum underneath and, on multiple occasions, utterly failing to be cut by knives and razors. Sindy --
Annie
, I had to remind myself -- repeatedly denied any sort of connection to the Capes, but Tom was too sharp a kid to be dissuaded.

Like everyone else he was under the influence of Mental Maid’s citywide susceptibility field, but since he’d seen evidence of his sister’s powers with his own eyes its hold wasn’t as strong. Most people trapped in the field could no longer even
fathom
putting two and two together when it came to us. In Tom’s case, he knew two and two were
supposed
to go together, but he didn’t quite know what the result should be.

“It actually makes things a bit easier to understand,” I said, “him being your brother. I was wondering how a 10-year-old could be reckless enough to interfere with a rumble like that.”

“I suppose Tom figured, if I was part of the whole Cape and Mask crowd, it couldn’t be something that would hurt him,” she assented.

“The kid loves you, huh?”

“You’d think an 11-year age difference would cause a pretty big gulf between us, but Tom and I have always been close. He’s my little buddy. He even tries to protect me all the time.”

“Protect you? How?”

Annie bit her lip and nibbled, like she was trying not to say something. When she
did
break her silence, it was to indicate a three-story brownstone walk-up, with the perky announcement, “we’re here.”

The Harmon family lived on the second story of the walk-up. It was a fairly small place, with a kitchen/living room combination and a hallway that I assumed led to an assortment of bedrooms and probably just one bath.

“I could afford a better place for the whole family,” Annie whispered, “but not without letting them know what I really do for a living.”

“What
do
you tell them you do?”

Her lips curled into a playful smile. “They think I’m a receptionist at
Powerlines.
”

I stifled a laugh. “You’re
kidding.
”

“I figured if I ever slipped up and let out too much information I could tell them it was something I heard at the office.”

“I wish you
did
work there. It would make my job a lot--”

I stopped talking when Tom’s mother came in from the hall. I hadn’t bothered to examine her during the previous day’s chaos, but now that I took the time to check, she really looked a
lot
like her daughter. She was a small, blonde woman with only a hint of white in her hair, and she carried herself with an air of dignity. She was fairly young -- I’d guess mid-forties -- and her face was as yet unmarked by major wrinkles, the light not yet gone from her eye.

“Well, what have we here?” she asked.

“This is my friend Josh, Mom,” she said. “From work.”

“Ooooh,
Josh
,” she said in an “I-know-something-you-don’t-know” voice. She held out her hand and gave mine a firm shake. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Josh. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Likewise, Mrs. Harmon.”

“Oh please, it’s
Cynthia
. But never ‘Cindy.
’
I
hate
‘Cindy’.” I once again found myself suppressing the urge to chuckle. As I glanced over at Annie, she was doing the same.

“Is Tom around, Mom?” she asked.

“At the park with Quentin. They should be back soon. Make yourself at home, Josh. Would you like some lemonade? I just made a pitcher.”

“That would be wonderful.” Annie and I situated ourselves on the sofa as Cynthia went to the kitchen.

“Girls? Poor kid doesn’t know what he’s getting into.” This prompted another laugh and a dirty look from Annie that probably would have led to an incredibly sarcastic (and therefore adorable) remark on her part, but at that moment Cynthia called her from the kitchen to ask for help. Their backs were turned to me and, with their similar voices, I had trouble picking out who was saying exactly what. I did get a
few
snippets of conversation, though.

“...
stop
it!”

They turned around, Cynthia holding a tray with three glasses of lemonade, Annie holding a half-full pitcher and wearing a look that anyone who has ever known a girl between the ages of 14 and 23 could translate into “if you embarrass me I’ll kill you in your sleep.”

“Pays
well,
does it?” The Look returned to Annie’s face and her eyebrows arched up. She was probably getting furious with her mother, but I was starting to enjoy the hell out of this conversation.

“Hey mom!” There was a slamming door and the two boys came running in tossing a basketball back and forth. “Hey, Annie!”

“How’s your game, squirt?” she asked.

“Hah! Quent’s got
nothing
. I took him in three sets.” He tossed the ball to Annie, who deftly began twirling it on her finger.

“Impressive,” I said.

“This is my friend Josh, guys. He works at
Powerlines.
Josh, this is Tom and Quentin.”

“Hey,” Quentin mumbled. “Mom, did Heather call?”

“Thrice.” She handed Quent a handwritten message from her pocket. He gave the rapid-fire “Howyadoingnicetameetcha” of a teenage boy with a teenage girl’s phone number and vanished.

“What do you do at the magazine?” Tom asked.

“I’m a reporter.”

“Yeah, I
have
met LifeSpeed. Nice guy, that one.”

“A couple. Once I got
real
close. You really like these Capes, don’t you?”

“Maybe not, but... I don’t know, the way Shift acted -- he seemed concerned, you know? Like he actually cared what happened to me.”

He took me down the hall to a bedroom that obviously belonged to a couple of boys whose ages were just creeping into the double digits. There were a couple of beds with blue sheets and a floor littered with sports equipment, comic books, and tons of toys, clothes and school supplies littered with the images of various Capes and Masks. Morrie probably made enough money for a new car just on this room alone. On the wall were posters of the Spectacle Six and Spectrum and a somewhat provocative shot of Glamour Girl near Quentin’s bed. I knew it was his because that’s the bed he was lying on, chattering away on a cordless phone, when we walked in. He gave us a glare as to indicate that we had interrupted an incredibly meaningful conversation about who was dating who since third period and he quickly left the premises.

Tom must have noticed me looking at the Glamour Girl poster because he wrinkled his nose and said, “I don’t like that one.”

“Why not?”