Podcast of a Teenage Super-Villian

Chapter Fourteen: Superhero Side Effects

It's not her mother's fault, and it's certainly not Monet's fault, but Percy hates the superhero shtick.

She loved it as a kid. Kept a stash of Image comics under her bed that she traded for on the school blacktop. Image stuff, all big burly men and lithe little women, gore and blood, violence and...violence. She'd duck under the sheets with a flashlight and read late into the night, careful to keep her fingers off the line work.

Monet never said a mean word, never made fun of her, but when Monet pawed through the stash, Percy made out the faintest grin on her girlfriend's face.

"Kai's into detective pulps. I like the cheesy stuff. Max..." She trailed off for a moment, glancing out at the ocean."...also liked the cheesy stuff, but the bad guys. Never thought you'd be the one into the big dudes and blood explosions." She laid her head against Percy's shoulder and smiled, and Percy could only press her hand on Monet's, thousands of words gnawing at her insides, ones she chose to keep bottled.

Hours later, she piled up the comics on her bed and tore them into dozens of little pieces. But it was only a momentary relief. She sat in the cozy quilts, surrounded by the shreds of her childhood, breathing so quick and shaky that pain welled up from the very pit of her chest. So she scrounged her desk drawers for a wheel of tape and pasted them back together.

But she hates it, hates the thing that took her mother away from her. Hates the thing that hurt Monet. Hates what changed Max. Hates that, for everything she is, smart, athletic, and a person, she's the superhero's daughter. The superhero's girlfriend. Percy isn't smart, she's small; not athletic, weak; not a person, a defenseless thing. Her mother makes her take MMA classes now, makes her weight train, tries to teach her everything she knows.

And she hates it.

She doesn't want to learn how to fight. She doesn't want to learn how to hold a gun and shoot it.

She's been crying. She wants to stay in the hospital, but she doesn't want to be seen crying. She's hungry and tired and her phone only has 4% battery, but she clamors into a stall and presses her head to her knees, waiting for the tears to quell. After several minutes, they do, leaving her face stained, her head aching, and her hands quivering. When she looks down, her phone is down to 2% battery and her head is pounding something nasty. She rolls it back on her aching shoulders and stares at the lights morphing on the ceiling, wishing more than she ever has before that she could shoot lasers out of her eyes, or leap tall buildings in a single bound, or heal things. She wishes she could save people. And she knows, knows more than she ever has before, that she can't. Drowning in a cell of white porcelain and tile, her face cupped in her hands. Her shoulders jerk and rattle with dry sobs. Tiny heaving noises she hardly notices she's making.

And then she removes her hands from her face to check her phone battery. 1%. That, she takes in with a quick glance, but something makes her breath catch.

There's a shadow moving across the floor.

The bathroom was supposed to be empty, but she can hear the clack of pacing feet. She can make out the polished toes of black shoes moving back and forth across the bathroom, first in front of her stall and then across the bathroom's length. Click-clack. Percy's heart is caught in her throat. Her hand hovers feet above her phone. The thing drains battery like a Hummer drains gas. It'll be dead soon, but she doesn't want to reach down and touch it, lest someone notice her hand.

The feet stop in front of her stall. They know she's here, she thinks with a gulp. Her purse is on the floor.

This won't be the first time Percy's been in a dangerous situation, nor will it be the last. Still, she can feel her pulse slamming in her temples and throbbing in her fingertips. The polished shoes turn away from the stall door, resuming their pacing on the tile. Clack. Clack.