Sidekicks (14 page)

“So … do you like it?” she asks.

“It's perfect.” I run my hands across the sleeves. “What is this stuff?”

“I call it python scales. My own design,” Jimmy says, coming out of his office. He's a short guy with REALLY hairy arms. He looks like he's been through a few wars. “Leather over ceramic plates, plus a fabric of my own design.”

“It's amazing,” I say. “It's so light. I hardly feel it at all. Will it stand up to … uhh …”

“Martial arts practicing. That
is
what you're using it for, right?” he says.

“Right.”

“Yeah, it should stand up to that. It'll stop a .44
Magnum hollow-point from about ten feet away. You'll have a heck of a bruise, but you'll make it. If you're practicing martial arts in a really bad neighborhood, that is.”

“Right.”

“Yeah, well, I don't sell that to just anyone off the street, you know. That's special stock. You're a friend of Allison's, so …”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, thanks, Jimmy,” Allison says, giving him a small kiss on the cheek. “You're a genius. I owe you.”

“Not if you pay for it, you don't,” he says. He gives her a little smile and wink, then slips back into his office and closes the door.

I lean in to Allison. “Does he know we're—?”

“Yeah, probably, but he never says. He'll make a comment or two, but then just goes back into his office. Jimmy really is a genius, though, so I'm pretty sure we're not the first plus/pluses to come around looking for costumes.”

“Yeah … hey, what do you think happened to all the other plus/pluses?” I ask.

“Don't know.”

“I mean, supposedly before we were born, the city was
full of them. According to a couple of things I read, you couldn't fall off a building without three supers fighting over who was going to save you. Even when I was just starting out, there were still plenty around. Now it's just Phantom and me, and like a handful of villains.”

She raises her hand to slap my arm, but I literally beat her to the punch. “And you and your dad, who aren't villains, just misunderstood people that the public calls villains because they're lazy,” I say, all in one breath.

“Nicely done,” she says.

“So, don't you think it's weird that the plus/plus population basically disappeared?”

Allison shrugs. “I don't know. Maybe they all just got sick of living their lives for other people.”

“Yeah … maybe some of the drop-off was because some of them got old, or went to jail, or just decided to go do something else … but what happened to all the pluses around our age?” I ask. “They never showed up.”

“Maybe they don't have your ‘strong sense of justice,'” she says in a slightly mocking voice.

“I guess. Still think it's weird.” I feel a little distance between us starting to form, so I let it drop. I look at myself in the mirror again. “You sure I look OK?”

“Fishing for compliments?”

“No, it's just … I think I look OK, but I see people dressed like idiots all the time, and I assume that they think they look OK, too, so …”

“You don't have anything to worry about. Turn around,” she says.

I do as instructed, giving her a little wiggle. She laughs. “Careful. Don't let it go to your head.” She looks me up and down. “Much better. Hot, but tasteful. You leave a little to the imagination, now. So how do you feel?”

“Amazing. Like I'm tough … a good guy, still, but … you know …” I do a few jumps. My head almost hits the ceiling.

“Whoa,” Allison says. “Take it easy.”

“I can move. It breathes.”

“Yeah. I get all my stuff here. My dad has no idea and it drives him nuts. He wants me to wear the costumes he makes for me.” She stops, as if something new just occurred to her. “In fact, come on.”

She drags me toward the register and pulls out her credit card. She pulls the tags off my new outfit and hands them to the middle-aged cashier, who looks like she's barely functioning. “Here's the tags. He's going to wear the clothes out of the store,” she says. “Cool?”

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Sshh … I love the idea of Dr. Chaotic buying Bright Boy's new costume,” she whispers in my ear. Goose bumps run up the back of my neck. She pulls back and smiles at me. My mind is racing to try to figure out what to say so that she'll have to whisper in my ear again, but all I can do is grin at her like an idiot.

The cashier hands Allison the receipt, as if ringing us up was the only thing keeping her awake. I grab Allison by the shoulders and present her to the cashier. “You know, this girl is Monkeywrench.”

“You jerk!” Allison yells, but she's laughing. “Well, this is Bright Boy, and thanks to me, he doesn't look like a pervert anymore.”

“Hey!”

The cashier looks at us without saying a word. Her expression doesn't change. This causes us to laugh even harder. Allison punches my arm and runs for the door.

“Come on, Bright Boy!”

“Coming, Monkeywrench!” We run out the door, laughing.

It's evening now. We run three blocks at regular human speed. Suddenly, Allison turns on her plus speed and darts into an alley.

“Costume stash,” she says. “Turn around.”

“I look like an idiot, standing in front of an alley like this.” I start to turn to look at her.

“Hey! I'm half-dressed here!”

“Sorry,” I turn back. I can feel the blood rushing to my face.

“OK. You can turn around now.”

I do. She's dressed in her Monkeywrench costume, but a different version of it, one that isn't designed to hide the fact that she's a girl. She looks sleek and beautiful, and I can't believe someone who looks like that is actually talking to me. “What do you think?” she asks. “I've been working on it for the past couple of weeks.”

“You look like a girl.”

“Yeah. That's the point. My dad has been against it, but I'm tired of hiding it.”

“You—” I stop. I'm blushing; I can feel it. I look down at my shoes. I can't look her in the eyes and say it. “You look amazing.”

“Thanks,” she says. I look up to see that she's now blushing, too. “I figured since you were taking a chance with a new outfit, maybe I should … you know … give it a run … see how it feels.”

“This is—”

“Crazy? I agree,” she says. “You need a mask. I always keep a couple around. Here.” She flips me one. I put it on. “You ready, Bright Boy?”

“Wait—”

“No. No time for waiting. Catch me and win a prize.” She smiles at me, then grabs onto the fire escape overhead and hoists herself up. She scales the metal bars and, in the blink of an eye, she's standing on the roof. She looks down on me, her expression full of joy and mischief. “Come on! Don't keep a girl waiting!”

I smile at her, then leap, grabbing onto the fire escape more than half of the way up. She takes off as I'm climbing to the roof. I hit the roof and give chase.

She sprints toward the edge and leaps without hesitating, easily crossing the thirty feet between buildings. I do the same. I can hear her laughter in front of me, echoing through the streets. She leaps for the next roof, but this time she spreads her arms wide, as if she's going to start gliding around the city … but then she tucks her legs under her and does a front somersault. She lands on the roof of the next building, sprinting without breaking stride.

I run and watch her leap gracefully over chimneys, flip effortlessly over air conditioners, fly across the blank
space between buildings, and I wonder if this is what regular people feel when they watch us: the feeling that nothing else in this world could possibly move and fly and leap and laugh so effortlessly. I want to watch her fly across rooftops forever.

She looks back at me. I can see the gleam of neon and streetlights reflected in her eyes. “Hey, slowpoke!”

I laugh. I still have a couple of gears left, so I slip into one and gain some ground on her. She turns around and I'm almost on top of her. “HEY!” She tries to speed up. But she's too late. I put my hand on her shoulder. She grabs it, and, using her forward momentum, flips me over. A split second after she releases me, I'm already adjusting midair. I land on my feet, ready to go.

“Ooooo,” she says. “Bright Boy wants to play?”

I nod.

“Too cool to speak,” she laughs. “Looks like I've created a monster.”

“You going to talk, or are you going to fight?”

She smiles at me, then follows it up with a roundhouse kick to my head. I drop forward onto my stomach to avoid the kick, then try to sweep her leg. She does an evasive little hop, then falls on top of me. I'm no longer sure I want to continue the fight. I have a moment where
I wonder if she's starting to think the same thing. Then she whispers in my ear, “We're still fighting.” With that, she puts both hands under my chin and pulls my head back. I push myself up into a standing position, so that she's now riding me piggyback style. I run backward, knowing that there's a chimney behind me at ten paces. Apparently, she knows it, too, because just before impact, she climbs onto my shoulders and does a front flip off of me. I slam my butt into the chimney, chipping away some of the brick.

“That looked like it hurt,” she says.

“It tickled.” I lunge at her with a right hook, but it's only a feint, used to set up a scissor kick. She manages to grab my foot midair, but I use my other foot to knock her hand off.

It's like we're dancing across rooftops, perfectly in sync with each other … laughing through the punches and the kicks and the blocks and the counters.

She kicks me off the roof of one building, but FP-769 is right there. I flip off it and land on the top of a parked cargo truck. She comes flying in after me and I somehow manage to catch her in a bear hug. I clasp my hands together and keep her off the ground so that she can't get any leverage. She tries to struggle free, so I start tickling her.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-stop-it-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“I caught you! Say uncle! Say uncle!”

“Uncle! Aunt! Freakin' cousins, just stop tickling MEEEE!!”

I stop tickling and put her down, but I don't let go. She stops struggling, stops moving. She looks up at me. “You said something about a prize?” I say.

She puts her hand behind my head, pulls me in, and kisses me. Her lips are salty. I smell cinnamon and flowers. I can hear my heartbeat in my temples. Then I realize that it isn't my heartbeat. We stop kissing, then peer over the side of the truck. About seventy-five people are standing there applauding. At least ten of them are filming us with their phones.

We start laughing. Allison waves and blows kisses.

“We're dead,” I say, but I'm still laughing. I can't help it.

“No, we're not. Not yet, at least,” she says. She blows another kiss to the crowd, which is now cheering. She looks at me. She kisses her fingers, then places those fingers gently on my lips. I hold her hand there for a second, and then it's gone. She's backflipped onto the roof of a passing truck. “See you in school tomorrow!” she calls out. I watch her until she's out of sight.

“Hey!” some guy on the ground calls up to me. “Hey!”

“Yeah?”

“Who are you?”

I smile. “I'm Bright Boy.” I leap off the truck and disappear into the night.

I can hear Louis calling my name, but I'm not ready to answer him. I'm too busy playing over the movie my brain made of last night: the leaping across rooftops, the fighting, the kiss … On command, my stomach does a flop.

“Trying to move the carton of the orange juice with your mind?” Louis asks. He slides the plate of freshly made pancakes in front of me. They're so perfect they look fake, like they were made out of plastic for a pancake ad. Louis takes his pancakes seriously.

“Sorry,” I say. “Lost in thought there for a second.”