Blog of a Teenage Superhero

Chapter Nineteen: Back to the Drawing Board

^^Horseman's edgy ringtone. 

Published Blog Post—Two Week Progress

This is a blog. Usually, you update these, but I've been investigating, and I'm sorry. The tip from Horseman has reaped far more than I planned, so most of my time has been spent taking photos of creepy old places that have far too many buckets of toxic goo lying around.

I wish I could tell you more about the superhero life, but there isn't much to say. I go to school. I wear a curtain for a cape. I get disappointed when I can't find the heroes.

But I will. I promise, I'll find them.

Onyx, over and out.

***

"Do you have a dress?" I ask Finn, copying disjointed phrases from the second half of the Mayor's leather pad into my notebook. Looking into the brown pages is like peering into the mind of a very, very, very organized madman. The eves are clean and well-preserved, the penmanship swooping, almost pretty. Finn and I are elbow to elbow. He's typing, fingers flying. All I can hear is the clack clack clack and the sound of aluminum Red Bull cans crashing to the library floor.

"Is there a reason I should have a dress?" he asks, never looking up from his computer.

"Cosplay. Steven Universe? Remember?"

He glances up, his eyes hidden by the flash on his lenses. His fingers hover motionless over the keyboard. "I'm not giving you my Sapphire dress."

"I just need to borrow it."

"No. Never. You don't deserve the Sapphire dress." And then he's back to clacking on the keys, glasses perched crookedly on his nose.

I'm about to argue that I deserve the Sapphire dress as much as anyone else, but my head hurts."Please? I'm pretty sure we're the same size."

He pauses his typing once more. "You don't have any of your own dresses?"

I shake my head. The last one I turned into matching lampshade sets.

He sucks in a long, theatrical breath, leaning back in his swivel chair. Ankles crossed in the open air, he holds a pencil to his lips like a cigar. He spins around. His glasses catch the candlelight. "I have two suits. A date suit and a funeral suit."

"Thank you. The date suit—"

"You get the funeral suit." And then he swivels back around in his chair and kicks himself over the bumps in the carpet toward the kitchen. I glance back down at the inky scribbles, my hand twitching with cramps, and swig from one of Finn's open Red Bulls. It's flat. He calls back at me from the kitchen. "And Monet?"

"Yeah?"

"Sorry," he says, "If I'm being a jerk."

I rub my face. It's been two weeks. Two weeks after the student council okayed us a thousand dollars to put on the carnival. Two weeks since I told Percy who I am. My nails are chewed down to stubs. The carnival is tomorrow. Between organizing games, bribing shy geniuses into slamming their poetry, hero work, and secret meetings with Percy, this is my first moment of quiet. So quiet I could I swear I can hear my sanity coming undone.

"You're always being a jerk." I unfold the map in my desk drawer. Half of the streets are crossed out. The ink is blurred. I press my fingers to my forehead, and I wish Kai was here, though I know he has to work. Being alone with Finn can be weird. His moodiness is intense. Two can take it, but for one, well, it may be a little much. I think of lying beside Percy under her pink canopy, typing while she talks, and talks, and talks. Her mother is away, across the world, and I'm always welcome at her house. Just the thought of her makes me smile.