The Posterchildren: Origins Read online

  THE POSTERCHILDREN

  VOLUME ONE: ORIGINS

  By Kitty Burroughs

  Copyright 2013 Kitty Burroughs

  Smashwords edition

  ISSUE #1

  There were protesters at his father’s funeral. For the life of him, Mal couldn’t understand what they were protesting— over his father being buried in a graveyard full of humans, over the insinuation that he’d been a hero at one time, or over the ugly, simple fact that his father had existed in the first place. Protesting a burial seemed like a complete waste of time and energy. It wouldn’t change anything. Corbin Underwood had been born, had lived for forty-nine years, and had died. He’d been a father and a hero, though Mal personally thought that he hadn’t been successful in either role.

  Others disagreed, though. Many spectators seemingly thought him a model citizen, dabbing at their eyes and singing the Rook’s praises as they lowered him into the ground. His cape and goggles were spread over the top of the closed casket, folded and arranged so neatly, he half expected his father to step out of the crowd and begin suiting up. He had to remind himself that his father was inside the wooden box, and that the cape and goggles were going to be buried with him. His father was gone. His father was dead. They were burying the Rook, and everyone had shown up to watch.

  Sandwiched between his mother and the empty chair where his brother should have been sitting, Mal felt like he was suffocating. Despite Marshal’s crimes, a seat had been saved for him. If he did show up, it probably wouldn’t be until long after the casket had been buried and the guests had gone home. He’d want privacy to spit on the Rook’s grave. The thought turned Mal’s stomach.

  “Hey,” a woman’s voice whispered by Mal’s right ear. “This seat taken?”

  He twisted in his seat, coming almost nose-to-nose with Ellie Lark.

  She smiled in greeting. He frowned back.

  “You’re late,” Mal accused. Before he had a chance to complain at her more for her tardiness, his mother lightly smacked his ear. It was a silent, though effective, command to behave.

  “I’d hoped you’d come, Elouise,” she whispered, leaning over Mal to kiss her cheek.

  Ellie gave them another smile, this one thin-lipped and wan.

  “I wasn’t going to pass up my last chance to say goodbye.”

  Ellie was the wayward foster child. She was the one that the public forgot about, the unofficial ward of the Rook, so her presence at the funeral was not being noted any more than her absence would have been. Mal wasn’t sure how anyone could miss her, though. As a green-band poster, Ellie’s band paraphernalia contrasted brightly against the sea of black. He was positive that she’d chosen the brightest green accessories that she could find, a neon act of protest against the muted dark tones that the rest of the mourners had paired with their black formalwear. The fluorescent lime of her cheap jewelry kept catching his eye, drawing him back from the eulogy.

  Not that it was much of a eulogy. One by one, the members of the Set had stood at the podium and had tried to pretend that they hadn’t abandoned the Rook years before. His father’s old teammate, John Wright, was the only one that had yet to speak. He was soaked from the storm, rivulets worming from his hairline into the sodden collar of his shirt. For an agonizing ten minutes, John simply stood there, shuffling and reshuffling his notecards, while the rain pounded down on the mourners.

  December in Portland was cold and wet and miserable on a good day. The endless gray rain was either the best backdrop for a funeral, or the worst. Shivering in the formal clothes that had fit him two growth spurts ago, Mal wasn’t sure which it was.

  “Corbin Underwood,” the Commander began, then stopped. He cleared his throat. “Corbin Underwood— Corbin was...” His voice shook, choked thin. “Corbin was a damn fine man. He was my friend. My partner. When things got tough, I always knew he’d show up to set things right. He was a hero, and that’s why we— why we’re...”

  John Wright, the leader and former Knight of the Set, broke down. Standing in front of the casket, the big man started to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” the Commander rasped, his voice thick. “I can’t do this. A week ago, most of you were screaming for his blood. Well, you got it. You got him.”

  The assembly went very quiet— silent, until someone punctuated the rain with a strangled little sob. Beside him, Ellie was crying. She’d tried to muffle the noise with a hand over her mouth, but it’d escaped through her shaking fingers. The first sob was followed by another, and Mal’s mother reached over him to comfort her.

  Ellie cried for the man that’d failed her countless times. So did the Commander. It was real, and it was raw, and it was painful to hear. Mal didn’t understand it. Dry-eyed and sick to the pit of his stomach, he didn’t understand.

  Abruptly, Mal realized that he needed to leave before he got sick. He lurched out of his chair, squeezing between them and stumbling gracelessly over his own feet. He didn’t get very far— just to the field bordering the cemetery— but thankfully, nobody tried to go after him.

  The grass hadn’t been cut for months, so it was waist-high and marshy from the continual rain. He vomited in the weeds, heaving until his stomach cramped up. Mal kicked some loose dirt over the mess, then crouched in the high, wet grass. His face and fingers burned with shame.

  He was hiding. From what, he wasn’t sure. The ugly, ignoble thing that was a superhero, much less a man, openly sobbing, maybe. The protesters, probably. His mother, definitely.

  Mal heard Ellie coming long before she parted the grasses and found his hiding place. Ellie hadn’t been trained to be quiet and sneaky. She smiled when he met her blue, blue eyes. The first time he’d seen her, he’d noticed the bright living blue of her eyes long before he’d seen her wings. Nothing could detract from the physical deformities jutting from her back— not for long. They were too big to hide, but too small to carry even her negligible weight. She crouched down next to Mal, smoothing her skirt over her knees.

  “Hey. How’re you holding up?”

  “I wouldn’t sit there,” Mal mumbled, glaring at his uncomfortable shoes. “I threw up.”

  Ellie didn’t make a show or fuss about it. She just moved to his other side and settled in. She spread one of her wings over him. It was too small to hold her aloft, but large enough to shield him from the patter of the rain. Mal tucked his chin out of habit, leaning down so that Ellie didn’t have to strain herself. She smiled at him, her eyes rimmed raw red and smeary gray from mascara tears.

  He’d tried not to see her crying, but she’d hovered at his peripheral throughout the service. Most green-bands wore earthy tones, but not Ellie. Her preferred shade of lime was blinding. He hated it. He hated her, just a little bit, for being there when his own brother was not.

  “Why did you come?”

  “What?”

  “Why did you come?” Mal repeated, impatient. It was a simple enough question.

  Ellie shrugged. The flutter of her wet feathers flicked raindrops on his cold face.

  “Like I said, this is my last chance to say goodbye. Why else?”

  “He doesn’t deserve your tears,” Mal ran his sour tongue over his teeth, grimacing. “Wright can say what he wants, but Father was weak. That weakness got him killed.”

  Ellie bowed her head, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. She’d woven her hair back into a thick braid, but it was starting to fray. It looked strange to him, since she usually wore her hair loose over her thin shoulders, curling and wild. Without that mane, she seemed very small.

  “Yeah, well, nobody said that heroing’s an easy gig.”

  “If you believe that he was a hero.”

  This time, she hit him with h
er wing. It was only slightly less jarring than having his ear boxed.

  “Let the old man get in the ground before you start him rolling in his grave, okay?” Ellie’s blue eyes blazed. “C’mon, Mal. You’re supposed to be a genius. I know that you know that what they’re saying isn’t true. Not about him, and not about you.”

  He rubbed the side of his face, looking away.

  “If you’re attempting to cheer me up, you’re doing a shit job of it.”

  “Language, young man. And are you admitting that you need cheered up?”

  “I said no such thing,” Mal said, inwardly proud of the imperious ring he managed to plaster over his shaky voice. She probably couldn’t even tell how hard it was getting for him to swallow past the tears in his throat. “I don’t need anything from you, harpy.”

  “Oh!” she said brightly, clapping her hands together. Ellie had a way of ignoring him when he tried to get a rise out of her. “That reminds me! I’ve got something for you. I hope you didn’t think I’d forgotten that a certain someone turned fourteen last month.”

  Ellie patted down all of the pockets of her bright green raincoat before she found what she was looking for. She dropped a small, poorly-wrapped gift into the palm of his hand.

  Unwrapping it, he found a little wooden bird pendant. It was strung on a leather cord, and blue seed beads glittered from the gouges of its eye sockets. Glued in, most likely. He turned it over in his fingers, inspecting it. It wasn’t skillfully made. In fact, it was kind of ugly.

  But she’d made it herself. He could tell.

  “Jewelry,” Mal commented blandly. “Mm.”

  “It’s supposed to be a rook,” Ellie said, leaning into him so she could get a better look at her crude attempt at arts and crafts. “But it kind of turned out badger-ish, so I thought of you. Marshal’s been teaching me how to carve. I’m starting to get the hang of it, I think.”

  When Marshal had left home, he’d taken Ellie with him. His eldest brother had hated him from the first moment he’d first laid eyes on him, so it always nettled Mal when Ellie accidentally reminded him of how attentive a brother Marshal could be. When he wanted to be. When he cared to be.

  “Of course.”

  “Happy belated birthday, Mal,” Ellie smiled, undaunted by his lukewarm response.

  Mal stuffed the necklace in his pocket with a grumble. Her smile faltered, so he sighed loudly and slipped the cord on over his head. He’d wait until she was gone to throw the stupid thing away, he vowed, tucking the pendant under his shirt.

  “It isn’t a big deal.”

  “It’s a deal if I say if it’s a deal,” Ellie countered, her wing brushing his cheek again. “And I say that it’s a big deal. So shut up already.”

  He shrugged, feigning indifference. Fourteen wasn’t a big deal. It was a filler year between teenage landmarks, that awkward stretch of months between late childhood and early adulthood. The only thing special about fourteen was that it marked the end of his second block of training and the beginning of his third block.

  “I’m going back to Foundation with my mother,” Mal said, after the silence between them had cooled from warm companionship to something that itched at his skin. He’d been avoiding this conversation since the last time he’d seen Ellie.

  “I know. Like I said, I...I figured that this might be my last chance to say goodbye, and I wasn’t going to pass that up.” She sighed, her gaze wandering out to the wet field. “We’ll miss you.”

  Mal stared at the scuffed toes of his too-small dress shoes. He didn’t dare look at her. His chest was already aching.

  “My brother won’t miss me.”

  “Says you.”

  “You’re not denying it.”

  Ellie puffed an annoyed little breath.

  “Fine. I’ll miss you. Better?”

  He was positive that she meant it, too. Like her tears, her words were genuine. It did make him feel better, but he wasn’t about to admit that to her.

  “Whatever.”

  “Look, I have a shift that starts in a half-hour. I tried to get the whole day off, but the boss is anticipating a hungry post-funeral crowd, so...” She looked at him, finally. Her blue eyes were swimming again, big and glossy. “So this is it, I guess.”

  Mal bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper, stubbornly unwilling to make a sound in front of her. It was one thing that she’d felt strongly enough about his father to see him off, but another thing entirely that she’d come to say goodbye to him, too.

  His chin wobbled. He rolled his hands into fists, nails digging into his palms. The pain kept him focused.

  “Goodbye, Elouise.”

  She looked like she wanted to hug him, but he didn’t give her any signs of openness to that kind of contact. He didn’t want her to touch him. A hug would be disastrous. He’d fall apart in front of her, and he couldn’t do that. He just couldn’t let that be her last memory of him.

  Ellie pressed a dry kiss to his forehead, then stood.

  “I hear that the third block’s the toughest one,” Ellie said, tousling his hair. “So give ‘em hell, big guy.”

  “I will,” Mal promised, nodding jerkily. His hot, dry eyes itched, but he managed to keep hold of his composure until she was well out of sight. When he was positive that she was gone, he let go. He wasn’t even sure why he was crying, since he was angrier than he was sad. He was angry that his father was gone, angry that his brother hadn’t bothered to come, and angry that he had to leave Portland. He was angry, but he was crying all the same.

  It felt a lot like betrayal. All his life, he’d been told that things would go a certain way. He’d excel in his first block of Academy training, he’d spend his second block as the Rook’s sidekick, and then he’d return to the Academy to finish out his training. He would graduate in the top of his class. He’d lead a public superhero team, just like his parents. The world had promised him all that and more, under the stipulation that he worked his hardest.

  It’d all been one great big lie.

  His mother must have known that he’d break down after talking to Ellie, because she waited fifteen minutes before she came to collect him. Thankfully, Mal got most of the shuddering, gut-twisting sobs out of his system before he saw her violet umbrella coming his way. The privacy gave him time to collect himself as best he could. Composure and poise were two things that people associated with his mother, the Queen. Mal tried to be as collected and strong as she was, but he often fell short.

  His mother stroked back his hair. He closed his eyes and leaned into her hand.

  “Have you said all of your goodbyes?”

  Mal looked out at the muted gray veil of rainwater, trying to pick out any smudge of lime green still visible amid the monochrome mourners.

  “Yes, Mother. I have.”

  “Then dry your eyes, habibi. It’s time.”

  He angrily smeared at his face with both hands. All signs of a bleeding heart had to be cut out and left in the field like the entrails of a kill. There would be no place for a weepy boy back at the Academy. They’d be looking for weakness— looking for his father’s flaws.

  Mal would not give them that satisfaction.

  °

  When the airport car service finally pulled into the gravel drive and parked in the field in front of the Academy, June’s first impression of the high-and-mighty Best School in America for Posterchildren was that it had more trees than was strictly necessary. Everywhere she looked, there were trees. Pine trees. Leafy ones. Trees, trees, trees. Clearly, the deforestation myth was yet another lie that the government perpetuated to rile up conservationists and give the hippies something to do with their time. Flying over the state, it’d been obvious to June that Foundation, Oregon was nothing like New York. Peeking out the tiny window before they’d touched down, all she had seen past the wing were breathtaking mountain vistas and a worrying lack of city lights.

  It was going to take some getting used to, but she was nothing if not ad
aptive. This wasn’t her first time being sent to a big-name boarding school. The Maillardet Foundation for the Future of Humanity was the best school for posterchildren in America. Everyone said so. So in spite of her mother’s fears and her own reservations, June was going to Oregon to become a superhero.

  And okay, maybe she didn’t know exactly what ‘becoming a superhero’ entailed, but June had skimmed the Welcome to The Academy brochure a couple of times, and she hadn’t seen anything in the literature that looked like it’d be too much of a challenge. The way she saw it, it just wasn’t possible for her to continue in the life track her mother had laid out for her. She wanted her to finish up high school, go to college, get a degree, and then live a nice and/or normal adult life. Now, that plan had been a good one— though June had privately vowed to have at least two or three questionable college experiences, just to keep Marcy on her toes— but it’d belonged to the Old June. Old June was on the slow track to a nice, normal career. New June was a clean slate.

  June must have been staring at the trees for a little too long, because the driver twisted in his seat and gave her an indulgent smile.

  “If you drag your stuff up to the forum, someone’ll transport it to your room,” the driver said, gesturing up the unreasonably large grassy hill with a roll of his wrist. It was a polite way of telling her to get out and get a move on.

  Gathering her purse, June took a deep breath of her future. And then she sneezed. Twice. Her allergies were unbearable, as she had predicted. The greeting committee of Too Many Freakin’ Trees came paired with Too Much Freakin’ Pollen. She had knocked herself out with a hefty dose of antihistamines on the plane ride in from New York, but even her old pal Benadryl didn’t stand a chance against the leafy tyranny surrounding her.

  Shading her eyes from the sun with one hand, June squinted up the hill. The heathens running the Academy obviously hadn’t gotten the memo that paved pathways were the hot new thing in landscaping this century. She could pick out the way she was supposed to go, but only because the dry, weedy grass had been trampled flat by foot traffic. There was a concrete building in the distance, but it was way too distant for her comfort.