The Posterchildren: Origins Page 7

  “You didn’t spar with ‘em?” Maks asked, sounding surprised.

  “They think fighting’s fun. I’m more…well, I won’t shy from a fight that needs fought. That’s what matters, I guess.”

  Maks gave him a big grin. His teeth were streaked pink from swallowing blood, but it was still a really nice smile. He was surprisingly cheerful for a guy that’d just gotten popped in the face a couple of times. It took a lot to put a damper on his mood.

  Noticing the fresh, dark stains all down the front of Maks’ green training shirt, Ernest blurted: “You should get cold water on that! To get the blood out of it, I mean. Hot water’ll make the stain set. I do our laundry at home, and you’d be surprised how often Dad’ll come back with his uniform bloodied up. Or maybe you wouldn’t be surprised. I dunno.”

  He could tell that he was talking too much. He did that when he was nervous, sometimes. He closed his mouth, lips pressed into a firm line, and concentrated on keeping even pressure with his fingers. It was difficult to focus on Maks’ bleeding nose without seeing his eyes, though. They were hazel, mottled here and there with blue. The blue flecks were weirdly bright, and he would’ve sworn that the pattern shifted every time Maks blinked.

  “Are you sure you’re okay? He got you good.”

  “What?” Maks started laughing, though it turned into a rattling wet cough. Ernest patted his back worriedly, but he waved it off. “Are you kidding? I got my buns saved by the Champ himself. I’ve hit peak awesomeness. And here I was thinking that if I was lucky, I might get a sighting of one of the legacy posterkids.”

  That made Ernest’s stomach squirm.

  “It’s not a big deal,” he said, quickly. “Why’d Kenneth get on your case, anyhow?”

  “His girlfriend’s my Alpha partner. I was trying to be friendly with her, but my friendly is too friendly by Kenneth’s standards. And this,” Maks pointed to his face. His nose was swollen, and his right eye was rapidly purpling up into an impressive shiner. “This was a friendly reminder to keep my friendly to myself.”

  That didn’t surprise him. Kenneth and Ida Mae had been a steady couple since the earliest bloomers in their class had started to pair off. As aggressive as he was, Kenneth didn’t tolerate anything that smelled like possible competition. Poor Maks hadn’t known what he’d gotten himself into. Then something occurred to Ernest.

  “Wait a minute. Why would he call me your, uh— y’know— if he thought you were going after his girlfriend? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Maks pressed a hand against his bruised cheek, his eyes widening in surprise.

  “You mean I can’t have both?”

  Ernest gawked at him. He didn’t have the first clue what to say in response. He wasn’t sure he understood what he even meant by that.

  Maks gave a congested little chuckle, patting his biceps.

  “Don’t get your wholesome family values in a bunch. I’m joking. According to recent polls, it’s a bad habit of mine.”

  Distantly, Ernest heard the eight resonant notes of the tolling bell tower. Just like that, he was officially late for history. He let go of the bridge of Maks’ nose, wiping his fingers off on a second handkerchief. He always kept an extra or two in the front pocket of his backpack.

  “Nuts. I’m sorry to take off like this, but I’ve gotta get to class before June cooks my goose. You gonna be okay, Maks?”

  He gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up. Ernest couldn’t see his smile behind the handkerchief, but the scintillating blue freckles in Maks’ eyes were brighter than ever.

  “You bet. But, uh— what about your...” He gestured with the stained cloth, holding it by the only white corner it had left. “...glasses wipe?”

  “It’s a hanky, and don’t worry about keeping it or cleaning it or anything like that. Dad says that a gentleman carries a handkerchief for other people,” Ernest said with a shrug. “‘Cause if someone’s crying, or has a drippy nose, or is bleeding, they’re usually embarrassed to be leaking in front of you. So when you give ‘em your handkerchief, it lets them know that you’re looking out for ‘em. We all leak sometimes. I’ve got plenty of extras, so go ahead and toss it when your nose dries up.”

  “Thanks. For the save, and the hanky, and...” Maks dipped his curly head a little further forward, muffled against the wadded-up handkerchief. “...yeah. Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. I’m just sorry that you got such a bad first impression. We’re not all like that around here, I swear.”

  “Hey, you don’t have to convince me. The evidence speaks for itself.” Maks started dusting himself off, picking the bark and pine needles out of his clothing. His knees looked skinned up and raw under the dirt. “Get going, man. I’ll be fine.”

  Ernest spared him one last wave before he took off running again. Showing up five minutes late was better than not showing up at all. He’d only have to apologize to Mr. Carter, June, and his father. It was worth it, he decided. Tardiness wasn’t the end of the world.

  °

  Zip had trouble sleeping before the first day of the new term. She played and replayed the conversation she’d had with Mal in her head what felt like a million times over. His prickly attitude had gotten under her skin, and she spent most of the night agonizing over the luck of it all. Half of her was convinced that Mal was right— that she would be dead weight for him, an embarrassing clown next to his regality and control. The other half of her argued that grades were not everything. Mal Underwood couldn’t decide who she was. He hardly even knew her at all.

  Needless to say, the warring sides of her kept Zip tossing and turning fitfully until long past dawn. When she wasn’t moving, time dragged its feet relentlessly. But as soon as she fell asleep, she caught up with the rest of the world.

  So Zip slept right on through her alarm. When she woke up, the angle of bright sunbeams filtering in through her blinds told her that she was late-late-late. No matter how quickly she ran, she couldn’t run fast enough to wind the clocks back five minutes. The worst part of it was, Mal was in Intro to Constitutional Law, too. It was one of the few periods that they shared.

  To say that he was glaring daggers at her when she finally sped into the classroom didn’t do the look justice. From the far back row, Mal was glaring meat cleavers at her. Katanas, maybe. Suddenly, she was very glad that her new partner didn’t have laser eyes. He would’ve roasted her to a crisp on the spot. She was positive that she would have evaporated like a cartoon character zapped by a space laser, reduced to a pair of soot-filled running shoes.

  After that one vicious glare, he looked away. Mal stared at the front of the room, once again reverting to ignoring Zip’s existence. She’d never met anyone who could ignore a person as forcefully and completely as Mal Underwood did.

  Kinglet, she reminded herself. She had to call him Kinglet, now. As soon as the third block began, the Academy students shed their real names out on the field. From that point on, their instructors referred to them by their monikers during training exercises. They were expected to learn and use their fellow students’ monikers, too, no matter how silly they were. Even if you knew their real name, using it was frowned upon in public. Handles took time to adjust to, so this was supposed to give them three or four years to settle into the hero name that they’d use when their careers launched.

  Monikers were a great big hassle. All of the ones that she thought up sounded dumb to her own ears, at least. So in the paperwork for her class sign-ups, she’d erased most of her first name and had left it at that. Zip wasn’t a bad name for a speedster. Mal was a genius— a real genius, with test scores that made her eyes cross— so she figured that he’d help her think up something better.

  His moniker was pretty neat. KINGLET was printed on the back of his blue shirt in big block letters. She’d looked the word up. A kinglet was a type of bird, not a tiny monarch; the illustration of the kinglet had looked like a pom-pom. Mal’s angry face was way more raging king than fluffy little bird, unfortuna
tely.

  “I told you to be on time,” Mal hissed, his almost-laser-eyes narrowed.

  “Sorry. I won’t do it again. Pinky swear,” she whispered, sliding into the empty chair next to him.

  She held out her pinky to seal the deal. He glared at her like she was offering him a long-dead fish.

  “Do you know what it means to pinky swear?” Before she had a chance to answer, he heaved a sigh and said, “It means that whomever breaks the pact must cut off that finger.”

  “That’s not how they did it where I come from,” Zip said, curling her finger in protectively. She couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t suddenly decide to take her up on her offer for dismemberment.

  “I meant that it was the original meaning. Historically.” Mal crossed his arms over his chest, tilting his chair back on two legs. “Whatever. Luckily for you, the instructor must drive here from Foundation proper, and it seems that she is running behind today as well. Don’t do it again.”

  Zip chewed her lower lip, glancing sideways at him. She quietly, carefully unpacked her bag. The nice thing about being speedy was that in the twenty seconds between waking up and sprinting to the classroom, she’d managed to stuff her messenger bag full of paper and pencils and the two textbooks for Sheriff Galán-Grant’s class. Mal’s desk was suspiciously empty.

  “Did you forget your notebook? You can borrow some of my paper if you need to. I brought plenty of extra ‘cause sometimes when I take notes I take ‘em too fast and I smudge the lead everywhere and-one-time-I-even-started-a-piece-of-paper-on-fire – okayitonlystartedsmokingbeforeOfeliaputitout— ”

  “Transcribing notes is a waste of my time.” Mal interrupted, forcing Zip’s train of thought to jump tracks. He tapped his temple with two fingers, shrugging. “Eidetic memory.”

  Zip added eidetic to her list of words to look up later. She assumed that it meant good, but she wanted to be sure. Mal talked like he’d choked down a dictionary for breakfast, and a part of her was convinced that he did it just because it made him sound smart. That, or because it made Zip feel stupid. Words were slippery for her, since her brain moved faster than her mouth could motor. She would think of the right word, but sometimes, it’d get jumbled up with her next thought by the time it got to her lips. Every time Mal corrected her, the mistake stung.

  “Eidetic memory, huh,” she mumbled under her breath. “Well, aren’t you just Mr. Fancyposter with your great big fancy words.”

  He leaned in close, looking her straight in the eye.

  “Remember when I said that my power was regeneration? That means that I have not sustained lasting hearing damage. Don’t bother whispering, Zipporah. I’ll hear you.”

  And with that, her last nerve fizzled up. Mal Underwood was a piece of work in the worst way. When he wasn’t making her feel bad, he made her mad. Zip hated feeling all tossed around and sick like that. She tried hard to keep calm and let his meanness bead off her like water off a duck’s back, but Mal wasn’t an easy person to be nice to. Those impressive, sharp words of his stuck like needles.

  “You’re a great big cheat,” Zip hissed. “You know that? A cheat!”

  “Is that an improvement over being a great big jerkwad,” Mal returned, cool as a cucumber. “Or is it a step down?”

  “Chance. Underwood.”

  For being a speedster, Zip wasn’t always the quickest on the uptake. She hadn’t realized that the instructor, Sheriff Galán-Grant, had entered the classroom and was giving the back row a frigid look. Zip’s lungs shriveled up from the rocketing heat of her embarrassment.

  “I realize that you’re still getting to know each other,” Sheriff Galán-Grant continued, loudly. “But I promise that your conversation will keep ‘til after. The rest of your classmates are ready to get their learn on. How ‘bout you two?”

  Zip slid down in her chair. She got as close as she could to hiding under her desk without actually crawling beneath it.

  “Yes ma’am. Sorry, ma’am,” she squeaked, fidgeting all over. The muscles in her thighs trembled from the effort of keeping both of her feet flat on the ground. Sitting still was tough when she had all of her attention successfully focused on one thing. When she was nervous and embarrassed, sitting still was more miraculous than walking on water.

  Had it been any other teacher on any other day of the term, she would have asked for permission to run a couple of laps through the halls until she calmed down. But today was the first day of the block, so she was trying her darnedest to make a strong first impression. She was pulling that off, but it wasn’t the impression that’d she wanted to make.

  Zip had been looking forward to taking one of the Sheriff’s classes since the first time she’d attended one of her lectures on interacting with cops. Between her work and family, she only had time to teach part time, so the few Academy classes that she did teach were reserved for the third block and capstone year students.

  Even if she’d had all the time in the world to teach, the younger kids wouldn’t be able to handle her. It was tough to get into Sheriff Galán-Grant’s classes, and tougher still to pass them. She’d had to work her butt off, but Zip was proud of herself for her advanced placement in law. Had she shown up on time, Mal might have been impressed that she shared the AP class with him. Maybe. If he was capable of being impressed, he would’ve been. The thought made her feel a little bit better about cheesing off her hopefully-favorite teacher and her new partner in the span of five minutes.

  “Welcome to your Introduction to Constitutional Law. I’m Roxanne Galán-Grant, and most days, my reputation precedes me,” the Sheriff began, unzipping her forest green jacket. She draped it over the podium, rolling the sleeves of her button-down khaki shirt up to her elbows. “I’m the current sheriff of Foundation, but I’ve been in this game since long before I went to the police academy. As some of y’all know already, I used to be a sidekick.”

  A murmur of nervous laughter rippled through the small class. The Sheriff crossed her arms over her chest and the room went silent again.

  “What’s so funny about sidekicks?” She asked, walking the length of the classroom. The Sheriff wasn’t a big woman, but something in her voice commanded attention with the immediacy of a whipcrack. Her long red braid swung as she turned to look at them again. “C’mon, don’t leave me out of the loop. I like a good joke as much as the next person.”

  No one volunteered their opinion. It was a very dangerous game of chicken, each of them keeping their lips latched as they mentally willed everyone else to raise their hand. If no one spoke up, the Sheriff would start calling on people. Nobody wanted to be the first to speak, though, so they played chicken with the instructor. They saw how close they could get to being put on the spot, keeping silent until someone cracked under the peer pressure. Nobody was brave enough to believe that they knew the right answer to that question. No one ponied up a guess, so she launched into the lightning round.

  “What d’you think, Walsh?”

  “They’re usually super corny? I mean like, the old ones in the comics,” Dylan Walsh said, going pale and flushing hot by turns.

  “With the costumes and the silly catchphrases, right, Lau?” Sheriff Galán-Grant squared her hands on her hips, lowering her voice and booming a battle cry of: “Only a chump would mess with the Champ!”

  “Yeah,” Lan giggled, her hand spread over her mouth. “Like that.”

  “So you laugh at sidekicks because old comic books make them the butt of a lot of jokes. Because they’re campy, presented in such a way as to not be taken seriously. That’s not an accident. When you’re laughing at ‘kicks, you don’t bother to examine them any closer. Here’s the honest truth that people try to forget: sidekicks are children. Sidekicks are minors. Most sidekicks are too young to have a driver’s license, but since they’re first responders to violent crimes, they’re asked to do things that the public wouldn’t expect out of grown men. Adult heroes rely on them to watch their backs. I dare you to find even one mentor who
doesn’t respect and trust their ‘kick as much as their adult peers. It’s easier for the public to forgive themselves for condoning sidekicks when they’re laughing. The moral majority will do just about anything to distract themselves from the mortality rate of ‘kicks under the age of fourteen.”

  She looked at them, chin raised in challenge.

  “So remind me again. Why are you laughing?”

  No one responded. The class as a unit seemed to wilt. It wasn’t that the Sheriff had shamed them, but that the realization she’d shared had weight to it. They could all feel it. Zip was afraid that catchphrases would ring tinny from now on, the bouncy cadence of the sayings warped by the words mortality rate.

  “A general word of advice, kids. Don’t let anyone do your thinking for you.”

  Turning on the overhead projector, Sheriff Galán-Grant clicked through a row of empty slides before she hit the beginning of her presentation. The screen behind her bloomed with a grainy newspaper article. It looked like the front page of an Oregonian paper, dated almost thirty years prior. A younger, fresher Commander stood with his arms crossed over his wide chest. A skinny boy stood to his left, somehow managing to look as bright as a burst of primary colors, despite the photograph being a grayscale print. It looked like a boy, anyway. That’d been the point. It’d been years before the Commander’s right-hand man, his Champ, outed herself as a teenage girl. Roxanne Grant had kept her secret so well.

  “I never went to a school like this one. I was day-savin’ before the BPHA made mentors jump through hoops to get accredited. I wasn’t trained, but I got thrown into the thick of it. The way Wright tells it, the BPHA started laying down rules on who could and couldn’t have a sidekick— or be a sidekick— ‘cause of him and me. In retrospect, we took a lot of stupid risks.”