Saving a Superhero

6: Beige+Skeletons

I pushed the door open to reveal a mostly beige apartment. Harper was hiding behind me, Rory on the other side of the doorframe, peeking in. It wasn't that we were afraid of the beige, it was that the door had been left ajar, just enough that my quiet knock left us surveying the scene.

We entered the living room. It was small and conservative, exactly what I would expect from my equally small and equally conservative friend. Beige walls gave way to eggshell white trim. Polished hardwood ran into cheap tiling and shag carpet so old it was no longer shaggy. The living room had been filled with a mixture of rented furniture and banged up end tables straight out of a dumpster. A coffee table covered in school work and closed textbooks, two chairs, and a worn love seat. The room didn't lack decor though. Robin's egg blue pillows and sea-themed bits and bobs decorated shelves and couches.

There was only one problem with Grace's stylistic choices. Or one that my not so critical interior design eye picked up on immediately.

The furniture had all be overturned, rippled from their places like a Goliath had a temper tantrum. Framed pictures of Grace's family, just her and her parents, were still hanging though. She even had a few pictures of her old friends from Nova City scattered around the one bedroom apartment. The ones she didn't fight crime with.

I studied the pictures with interest, more specifically the one constant in each photo.

A petite girl with a pixie cut shorter than I had imagined. It suited her, framing her round face. Everything about her was round and soft. Round eyes peeked out from behind mousy brown bangs. Even a round nose sat with a smattering of freckles.

Just like last night with Rory and Harper, I couldn't help but stare. Early on we had decided to not take any chances with pictures, not sure if it would trigger one of our episodes. That led to late night conversations trying to describe ourselves to each other and forming inaccurate mental pictures. This was the first time any of us had seen Grace. Staring at us through a layer of dust.

"She's not here," a velvet voice called from the tiny kitchen. A brown-skinned girl with black, glossy hair sat at a three-person table. She wore a dark lipstick I could only pull off if I dressed to the nines. She wore it so casually that I found myself unexpectedly jealous. A pair of converse were propped on the chair opposite her. They were perfectly matched to the blue of her dress and tied in with her white cardigan. She everything about her screamed prettier than you.

But I would expect nothing less from Kennedy, who was working on a fashion design degree in New York.

"I already checked the apartment." She got up gracefully and crossed into the living room. With a sweeping gesture she showcased the overturned furniture like it was the main exhibit at a museum of modern art. "It looks like a standard robbery, but nothing seems to have been stolen. Her TV is still in her room. A wad of gas is on her nightstand. The only things missing are a few pictures."

Kennedy held up two identical picture frames with nothing behind the cracked glass.

"Unless our little Grace has a secret vault dedicated to counterfeit bills or black market diamonds, I don't think the robbers were successful." She stopped in the middle of the room suddenly. In one of her rare graceless moments she did a little dance, arms waving about her as if she were having a silent conversation with a ghost. She turned on her heel slowly. Her forehead was covered in wrinkles and her eyes were practically squinted shut. It was embarrassment if I had ever seen it. Finally, she asked, "You three are Harper, Rory, and Juliet, right?"

The three of us nodded. With mock drama she wiped her hand across her brow. "Good. Going all FBI like that would have been hard to explain to anyone else." She gestured for us to take a seat around the only piece of unharmed furniture, the glass top table. To assuage our brief hesitation she gave a friendly wave and added, "It's Kennedy by the way. Not someone else looking for our missing friend."