Chapter Four: A Place to Stay

The Song Max is Currently Playing On His Ipod: Neophobia by Nano ^^

Starlight City.

Starlight fricking City. If you can make it here, you can make it, well, you can make it in a superhuman haven that doubles as a four-state-spanning metropolis. That's gotta count for everywhere, or at least, close to it.

After weaving through trees to hide from a certain searchlight, I stumble into the first Wawa I can find across the state border. Every city has its villains, many of them killers. I'm not one of those. I'm just a kid, I tell myself as I stand at the counter with a Monster and a road atlas, just a kid with a too-large jacket, skinny jeans, and a shitty dye job. The cashier only looks at me with a lazy, roving eye as I pay. And then I'm out. Unsuspected and a free man.

The Wawa is at the edge of the city, all brick painted this blonde-white color, peeling and ivy-covered. I leave it, treading grass for the nearest bench across the street. I shield my head with my hands knotted together over my hair, the atlas crinkled over my knees, Monster nestled in my inside pocket. The rain has become a mist, ice melting in my tangle of hair, dripping black into my eyes. I squint down at the threads of roads, teeth chattering. My whole body is quivering, the cold of the cast iron bench bleeding through Chip's hoodie. The yellow-gray sky would be pretty if I could hide from it.

I determine that Starlight City is about two hundred miles south of where I'm curled. Instead of cashing out a few hundred bucks from the ATM and splurging on a motel, I decide to sleep here, in the rain. I don't know why I torture myself like this. I try to rationalize it deep down by telling myself that I'm only trying to keep my identity safe. That if I stay here, out in the open, I can swoop away without busting open my fragile right hand. But that's not the truth. The truth is that I don't deserve to sleep. I deserve to lie awake, cold and shivering, staring at that sky I used to love. I deserve to remember Monet's disgust when she learned who I am, the feel of Chip's body yielding against my fists. He was so light for someone so lanky, like his bones were full of air, like a bird's. Like he could sprout feathers and fly.

It frustrates me that when my face is wet, I can't tell anymore whether it's the rain or if I'm crying. I let my hands hang limp at my sides so I can't rub my eyes to check.

And I'm alone, surrounded here only by the grass which has gone brittle and bone-white, the rain too late. The silence has a way of driving my memories to the front of my brain, and I let them play, over and over. Like I'm staring at a bright light I can't blink away from. My own, quivering voice. The way I'd forgotten how to speak. "I just...I hate myself...I hate myself..I..." I'd hated how I'd taken up pacing, hated how when I stared at my reflection I looked like some caged thing, with my smile too tight and my eyes too big, like I was desperate for something. Desperate for what?

Chip was curled up on my bed. Slender legs thrown over the pillows, his pen rushing furiously over his notebook, back and forth, back and forth, a constant, inexhaustible loop of motion. "I hate myself!" And I shattered that mirror, while Chip wrote. I busted it into a thousand shards, over and over with both fists, until my knuckles were covered in blood. The base of my neck was a grid of red, swollen veins, and I'd accomplished nothing. I remember this: Chip edging toward me, the soft rustle of the sheets. The smell of him, of cigarettes and cinnamon candy, like he kept cartons of both crushed in his pockets.

I blink away the rain in my eyes, watching the gray clouds shift over the edge of the sky. I'd whipped around, and I felt like an animal. In those moments, and in many more, I was so consumed with pain and self-loathing I wanted to fling it all at someone, like all that vicious energy that squirmed in my belly could be spent in one brilliant burst of violence. Chip was always the perfect victim. He never fought back and broke easily under my fingers.

I don't deserve to sleep. I don't deserve to rest, even. I can't stay on the bench when I have some grand organization to find, a life I need to make. And I don't want to fly either, because that would be too easy. The cool air whipping up against my body, the unnamable ache hammering my muscles. It's not enough to feed that energy churning deep down in my gut, that self-hatred. You're a monster, Max, a monster, a super, a failure of a son and a human being. A monster.

I pull myself off the bench and sling my bag over my shoulder with Chip's hoodie pulled over my head. And it's the smell of him that drives me back into those memories . I put myself into a slight jog out of the park. I'm wearing his combat boots, his favorite ones, that laced up his calves and come to my knees. I feel like this is my own kind of torture, and it kind of freaking works, you know? Because I'm running, as bands of yellow break through the clouds, as the cars honk and the birds rustle in the trees. I take down the sidewalk and run beside the streets, until I can feel a tingle up my thigh that morphs slowly into stabbing pain. And I'm running and running, hoping that my mind will latch to my blistering feet, to my wobbly legs. But it doesn't.

I'm kept thinking of that night, thinking of the shards of mirror glistening in the sunlight, my bloodied fists, Chip's big blue eyes. How I wanted to crush him, that pathetic creature, and how he picked up my hands and ran them over in his. I can still remember his soft, wide fingertips, his broad palms. The smooth skin, all inky from his choice of shitty pens. I can still remember him telling me to stop it, stop it, can still remember blood oozing into my mouth because I'd torn a seam into my cheek. how I was shaking and gasping, wanting to say something like I'm sorry, I'm a monster, I'm sorry, look at what I've become, I'm sorry, I'm—

I can remember him kissing me, and I remember it tasting like blood.

And I keep thinking about it, even when I hear the sirens screaming at the edges of my eardrums. Like he thought he could save me. Like he thought he could change the beast back into the prince.

Like he trusted he could bring me to my senses.

He couldn't.

The sidewalk ends. It swerves into a guardrail and stops beside a highway. Unless I plan on sprinting between cars, I have to fly overhead. Flying, so low-energy, so obvious. I'm not liking it. But I fish out my old mp3 player—can't be tracked, right?, the one my dad got me when I was maybe eight and I thought it held all you needed in this life, all the magic. I play 'Neophobia,' this song by some jrocker Chip really liked.

Really doesn't freaking help Chip picked out all my music.

The sirens amplify and I take off, brooding a very mobile experience. Imagining him and me, tangled up together, my blood making my sheets all red, him eying me like I was some horrible mythological god he better keep happy.

I loop this memory until the music dies and the highway ends. I loop it until it's all fuzzy images, his eyes, big and blue, so trusting.

The city begins.

It's the strangest city I've ever seen, all skyscrapers mixed with brick townhomes and vinyl clapboard houses. Steel towers twisting beside a crumbling wooden shop. The streets are wide and well paved, but pounding the sidewalk, I peer into at least twenty different alleyways. Pieces of the urban sprawl are all glittery, fifty floors up, and then the rest fray into ancient shops, all neon signs and streets that bend together. Hundreds of people crowd into the dirty gutters, and my heart is caught in my throat, because I don't think I've ever seen a place so beautiful and so hideous, let alone let it swallow me whole. Percy would love it. And I can almost imagine she's following me through it all, teetering on that silvertone stilettos. Hair down loose to her shoulders like red tendrils of smoke. It's only the silence that reminds me she's gone and I'm alone.

The crowd thins around me. The shops slope downward, windows covered with cheap, satin curtains and drawn blinds. The alleys become thinner, appearing between every home, telephone cord x'd over the sky like barbed wire. Against the wind and the blare of car horns, I hear the shouts from the darkness. "Help—help!"

I stop in front of the alleyway, my hands stuffed into my pockets. At first, all I see is darkness. Then I make out the silhouettes. The person pinned against the brick wall, floundering and squirming. The others, two lanky figures, leaning over him. I can hear the scuff-scuff of vinyl soles scraping brick. If I focus, I can just hear their breathing, their heartbeats. The figure's screams are muffled now.

"Shut him up, shut him up and knock him out!"

I should be totally okay with another kidnapping. Wink at the darkness, turn around whistling.

but my heart is still pounding, and that awful energy is writhing around in my belly like a boatload of, I dunno, beached eels. And I want to spend it, so I don't have to sleep with that awful turning and turning.

I push my hair back out of my eyes, roll my shoulders back, and cross into the threshold. "Something I can help you ladies with?"

There's a bulb over my head that offers flickers of dim light. It bursts. A clink-clink on brick. Heads swivel toward me, and all I can make out is the pale outline of faces and the whites of eyes. The flash of switchblades.

I don't understand why I want to help this person. I don't understand why I don't turn around. I don't understand why when the knife buries into my shoulder, I kick the man with his fingers on my throat so hard I can hear his bones crack from across the alley. Blood bubbles. Pain roils. The second figure advances on me, and I treat him like I'd treated my reflection. I hate myself, I hate myself, and with each hit, all I can hear is my own seething screams of my own hatred hashed behind my eyelids. He tries to fight back, but the hits hardly register. A punch in his chest has him sprawling across the concrete. I follow him down, pummeling, until the guy who was on the wall, says, "Shit, dude. I think you got him." My hands are covered in blood. I can still imagine the mirror shards stuck in my fingers, stabbed into the pads of my skin, between my knuckles. They start to tremble, and the man starts to groan, and I get off him.

"But thanks. I owe you one."

I walk up to him.

I extend my bloody hand. He takes it, breathing heavily against the brick wall. He's shaking, which, yeah, bound to happen after a kidnap attempt. He stumbles to his feet, and all I can make out is the white of his smile. It's a nervous gesture, his shoulders still twitching. "You can't use your superpowers like that around here." His voice softens. Just above a whisper. "But thank you."

"I know." I nod. I guess the power-harvesting problem is bad down here. If he knew who I really was, he'd take off in the opposite direction.

Behind me, feet land with a hard thump on concrete. I whip around, to the sight of superhero decked out head to toe in purple armor. Cape slung over her shoulder, scorched. Her chest plate is blackened, and she's heaving gasps. "There was a fire," she says, "there was an elderly woman upstairs. I'm sorry I wasn't here earlier."

"It's okay, Galaxy." He's still smiling. He slaps me on the back, and I flinch. "This guy saved me."

Her arm is on mine. I yelp and start to pull away, but she's so strong. Stronger than me or Monet, maybe even as strong as Red Comet. But all she does is roll up my sleeve and have my knife wound cleaned with an antiseptic pad and bound with a bandage. Pretty good use of a utility belt, if you ask me. "Do I need to take you to the hospital?"

I shake my head, breathing in the superhero's smoky scent as if it were an exotic spice. This is past weird. I point my thumb back at the alley.

"Those guys, though..."

She glances along my line of sight and curses softly. "You overdid it."

I shrug. She becomes a blur, and then she's hoisting them over her shoulders, and then her colored eyes go wide behind her visor. Someone probably screaming for help in Georgia. "Do me a favor, bud? Walk him home."

And then she's gone. A purple blur in the sky.

"Would you?" asks the guy I saved. I can see him clearly now, shivering with his butt on the curb. He's wearing a stained apron over a blue polo, buttoned down at the chest. His right arm is a sleeve of tattoos, white ink that glitters under the lamppost's harsh light. I stare at it for a long minute, the feathers and the flames, inked together in generous cross-hatches. "I mean," he says, "you don't have to. You've done enough, already. Just, if you're going to be a superhero about it." He glances nervously down at his shoes, that smile all twitchy. Eyes big as they peer back up into him in the polish.

Just like I don't know why I bothered to save him, I don't know why I nod. I don't know why I ask him his name.

"Gideon," he tells me as he leads me back down that alley.

"Well, Gideon. You ever think of hiring a live-in bodyguard?"

He laughs, dry and humorless. "I wish I had the money to do something crazy like that. I don't think a barista should have this many enemies."

"Well." I wink. "I don't charge that much. Just a place to stay. What do you say? Your own personal superhero?"

Gideon leans on his heels, staring up at a starless sky. "You must be desperate."

"Very."

"My apartment is a closet."

"My apartment is a park bench."

He chuckles, a sound that's soft and sad, then offers out the hand  I've bloodied for a shake. "I guess we have a deal, then."