32. Actions and Consequences
A harshly thrown fist catches her unaware, smacking into the side of her jaw and sending her stumbling back into a display rack. Whose fist was it? Ghostanna's of course, as she appears out of thin air (or thick air, not sure how that saying works) to throw a right hook at her foe.
I eagerly shovel another spoonful of cereal into my mouth, leaning closer to the TV as I eat.
Fireballs are flying everywhere - but that was no surprise, as fire appears to be the other chick's main power. Most of them are aimed at Ghostanna, who is doing a relatively good job at dodging and avoiding them. Only one has hit her so far, burning a little hole in the calf of her suit. But right now, other chick (whose supervillain name was Pyr, or Pyro or something) is aiming a blast of fire right at Ghost's face, which she quickly ducks under as she aims a kick right into Pyro-something's stomach.
"Tim," my mum calls, from elsewhere in the house. "Shouldn't you be just about ready to head off to school? You'll miss the bus."
I shrug, briefly removing my attention from the television as I turn my head in her general direction. "Eh, I'll just fly."
It is only a replay, from a fight that took place last night - but that doesn't mean the bus would be worth missing it for. Is it bad that I've always liked to watch supers fight - expressly when the supers involved are both hot chicks? I turn back to the TV, just in time to see Pyro-something - mental note, look her up later - hit Ghost back, fist smashing into cheekbone. Ouch. That would have left a mark. Actually, I'll be surprised if they didn't both wake up this morning with nasty bruises on their faces.
"Tim, come on. At this rate, it is gonna take you all day to eat your cereal." She walks into the room and switches it off. I roll my eyes at her, before wolfing down the rest of the bowl. My phone beeps from the armrest of the couch and I gently pick it up and enter in the passcode, checking to see who loves me enough to send me a message at eight-twenty a.m, on a school day.
Josh. He wants me to... fly over to his house and carry him to school? I text back, to see if he is kidding. No joke, he seriously wants me to 'give him a lift' to school.
"Don't do it," calls Mum, now in the kitchen. Seriously? Hasn't she heard of privacy? "I can't help it," she adds, while I find myself rolling my eyes again.
"Don't worry, I'm not going to." In so many words, I text a 'no' back to Josh and slip my phone into the back pocket of my jeans. I grab my bag and place my finished bowl on the bench. "Okay, I'm going now. Laters, Mum!"
"Love you! Be nice! Don't forget to ask out Anna!"
"Aww hell, Mum," I groan. "Not you too."
"Remember what I told you about dating..." I quickly run out the door before she can finish the sentence, slamming it closed behind me. Oh man. I'm doomed.
—-
I get to school and surprise, surprise, Josh isn't here. Instead of texting him to confirm that he decided to stay home and kill hookers on Grand Theft Auto, I head straight down the hallway to my locker. I nearly freak out and faint from embarrassment on the way, when I walk past a group of girls in the year below me laughing and giggling, while sticking printouts of me - well, 'Lightning Strike' - to the insides of their lockers. Really? What is so good about me? I'm lame and I've broken my nose so many times that I should really consider opening a bank account to start saving up for plastic surgery. In no way am I attractive. Can't they pick some supervillain instead? What about Superto Thefto, or Ice Breaker?
Speaking of attractive... shoot, there is Anna, heading my direction. She hasn't seen me yet, luckily. Yet. Not wanting to take any chances, I quickly reach my locker and attempt to hide behind the door. I hear her footsteps approach and pass, I'm just about to let out a sigh of relief when I hear someone lean against the locker next to me, laughing softly. Shit, I could recognise her cute laugh anywhere - it's Anna.
"Uh, Tim, what are you doing?"
"Uh, hey," I say, turning around while trying to sound and act as casual as possible. Damn it, Tim, stop panicking, stop panicking... My hands better not be sparking again. I quickly hide them behind my back, just in case.
"Hmm?" she asks, prompting me to answer her first question. I look up at her face, trying to quickly think of an excuse. That is when I see the faint bruise, across the left side of her face. A sudden flash of Pyro-girl hooking Ghostanna in the cheek comes to mind. What? Anna is... Nah, that isn't possible. What are the odds that Ghost is somebody I know, out of all the teenage girls in the city that she could be. Pretty small. I might be unlucky, but I'm not that unlucky...
"Nothing," I finally answer. "I was just, uh, thinking of things to stick up in my locker."
"How about Lightning Strike?" she suggests. "I've already seen two girls with collages of him covering theirs. Apparently, it's the current trend."
God help me.
"Right, yeah, uh, no thanks." I awkwardly look down at the ground between my shoes. Here you are, Tim, talking to that pretty girl that you should probably ask out... "What happened to your face?" I ask instead, silencing that train of thought.
"Oh, uh," answers Anna, "Some crazy super-" I almost get in the chance to raise an eyebrow, before she corrects herself. "Supermarket, some crazy girl ran into me at the supermarket."
Right... "Ouch, did it hurt?"
"Yes. It did." She smiles at me and I find myself awkwardly smiling back. Looking at her face, her brown eyes, I can't help but blush. Then blush some more, from the embarrassment of blushing the first time. Anna... hold on, is Anna blushing back? Is she? Nah, my eyes must be playing tricks on me.
Maybe... she does like me? For the love of all that is holy, Tim, just... Okay, okay.
"Uh, so, Anna..." I wish my heart would calm down. Here goes nothing...
"Yes?" she sweetly asks, prompting me to go on.
"I was wondering if, uh, maybe on Frida-"
My back pocket of my jeans starts to vibrate and ring. I wince, eyeing Anna's confused face.
"Uh, one second," I tell her, before answering, praying that this is important, and not, say, Josh bragging about his latest kill streak. "Hello?"
"Tim? It's Julia."
Wow, my luck is just the best today, isn't it?
"What do you want?" I ask, trying not to sound too obviously frustrated with her. If she wanted to call me, she should have done it yesterday morning. Or, you know, anytime within the last few years. Anna also doesn't look too happy that I've interrupted our conversation with a phone call, so I quickly add: "I'm busy doing something."
I hear her sigh through the speaker. "I need... Tim, can you come to the hospital, as soon as you can?"
"As I said, I'm in the middle of something." I feel mean, but I am a little annoyed with her. The word "hospital" sparks my interest, though. Damn, it's probably a supervillain thing.
"This is important," she insists.
"Okay, okay. I'll be there in a half hour or so. Do I need my..." I trail off, not wanting to say the word "suit" in front of Anna. Hopefully Julia gets what I mean.
"Suit? No. Just come. Quickly." Right. That wasn't what I was suspecting. What does she want, then?
"Alright," I say, hanging up on her and tucking my phone back into my pocket. "Sorry." I give Anna an apologetic look.
"It's okay. It sounded important." She shrugs.
"I hope," I say with a sigh.
"So, what were you wondering?" she asks, the impossible blush returning to her cheeks.
"If you... would like to, well, on Friday afternoon, we could maybe go see a movie together, or go to a cafe, uh, or something." I quickly stammer out the end of that sentence, raising my head to meet hers after awkwardly finding my eyes fixed on the floor again. Breathe, self. It's not like my life is in danger or anything.
"Sure, okay," Anna answers, smiling at me. Hold on, what is this? I, Tim, haven't been epically rejected?
"Uh, okay. Cool!" I reply back, feeling like dork for not knowing what else to say.
"Yes? So, uh, which one did you want? Movie or Cafe?"
"Uh, um." Now would be a great moment to grow a brain, Tim. "How about we meet at the downtown movie theatre, the one that Ghostanna and Icebreaker had a brawl in around a week ago. Meet after school and go from there?"
"Sounds good," Anna softly answers.
"Yeah!" I barely resist the urge to pump my fist in the air, having to settle my happiness with a massive grin. Yes!
—-
My mood is far too good to be ruined so soon, so I hang around by myself on the roof of the hospital for a few minutes, before discreetly floating down the side and wandering over to the entrance. I smile to myself, knowing the odds that I'm gonna be as happy as I am now after dealing with whatever Julia wants aren't very high. Practically nonexistent.
I spy her blonde locks as soon as I enter the door, then her frown half a second after. Shit. Something bad happened, didn't it? Man, I swear life would be a whole lot easier if I never bothered to deal with this whole superhero thing. Joined the supervillain league, or society, or whatever name they go by these days. I should have been the bad guy...
"What's up?" I ask Julia, awkwardly sitting next to her on one of those uncomfortable plastic waiting chairs.
"Tim—" Her voice chokes up and she buries her face in her hands. I hear her sobs and awkwardly put a hand on her back, take it away, put it back again. Sigh. I really need to start being more confident.
"What is it? Julia? What happened?" I ask, taking a careful look at her face. Her lower cheek and jaw is slightly bruised, as if she has been assaulted by someone. "Your face?" I continue. "Did somebody hit you?"
She lifts her head and looks at me, tears streaming down her cheeks, cutting through the foundation she wears. She looks beautiful to me - still - even if she just looks like Josh in a long-haired wig, wearing eyeliner and lip gloss, with some rockmelons stuffed in her shirt.
Even if I have a date with Anna at the end of the week. I'm a guy! What can I do? I can't help what goes on... y'know... down there. Bad thoughts, Tim. Bad, bad, bad thoughts. You're in a hospital. Think of death. That horrible smell of cleaning supplies. And that old lady I can see out of the corner of my eye, staring at me. There we go. Much better.
"No. Yes. Maybe. Look, that's not important now. Josh... He—" Julia stops again, bawling her eyes out some more.
"Take it slow," I say, patting her on the back. Her body feels tense. I'm feeling pretty tense, too. Hope I don't accidentally give her a zap. That's the last thing she needs at a time like this, with her twin brother in the hospital and all.
Julia takes in a big breath and lets it out slowly through her nose. Looking away from me, straight at the wall, she says in a monotone: "Josh was in an accident."
"What!" I shout, and the other people in the waiting room turn to look at me. One woman scowls and swears under her breath something sarcastic about how the damn kids today need to stay at home and play more video games, and become even bigger sociopaths. Good going, Tim. "What happened, Julia? He's not dead, is he?"
"No. I— I think you need to go in and s-see him for yourself, Tim," she says to me, still looking away. "I-It's bad..."
"How bad? Like, on a scale of 1-28, with one being a small paper-cut to his throat and twenty-eight being him as a puddle of mush under a blanket." Yikes. That sounded way, way more horrible out loud than it did in my head.
Julia just looks at me, her eyes wide. I see them well up with more tears. She suddenly stands up and runs away crying.
"Twenty-eight?" I shout to her as she runs into the ladies' room. No response.
Way to go, Tim. You just made a girl cry. Well, she was already crying, so... Nah, I still feel terrible. Mister Oblivious. That should have been my superhero name. I'll be sure to keep it in mind for later, should I ever fake my own death and return to the super scene with a new costume and identity.
A nurse steps into the room and everybody's heads lift to hear what she has to say, wondering who's getting the news - bad or good.
"Julia?" she asks, glancing from face to face.
The others all look back down, grumbling to themselves.
I raise my hand.
"You're Julia?" the nurse asks me. "Well, okay, but you look like you could use a few more operations. Though your lips do look very beautiful, if you don't mind me saying, sweetie."
What? I put a hand to my lips. They don't feel girly. "Yeah, no. I'm Tim but I'm here with Julia, and she's in the toilet right now. I'm also best-friends with her brother Josh, and he's the one who's in the hospital, so, uh, I guess I'm the guy you want." Breathe, Tim, breathe.
The nurse nods. "Follow me, then, Tim. If you're squeamish, you may not want to come in, however. Are you squeamish...?"
"How squeamish?" I ask. People just don't seem to be giving me straight answers today, do they?
She frowns and says: "Follow me. You'll see for yourself."
I leave the waiting room and follow the nurse. I look back and the people I'm leaving are all giving me death-stares, wringing their hands and grinding their teeth. Better avoid them in the parking lot. Wouldn't want anymore attention.
We head down a few different hallways, left and right and left again. We get to a room with the door closed.
"He's just in here," the nurse says, shaking her head. "It truly is horrible what happened to him. Poor young man." She walks off, still shaking her head.
Damn. Must be bad. I calm myself down - breathe in, breathe out - and open the door. In this hospital, the patient's bed is further back in the room and blocked by a wall, so I can't see Josh straight away. I walk in and peer around the corner.
There he is, though I can't recognise him.
Josh is laying in bed, watching TV (a rerun of The Simpsons). His face is wrapped entirely in white gauze, like a mummy, except for around his mouth and eyes. And there are two holes poked where his nostrils are, so he can breathe okay. His arms and legs are attached to pulleys, hoisting them into the air. They, too, are covered in the white gauze. There are bags of blood and other fluids beside, with tubes going in and out of him. Must have been some accident.
He doesn't seem to notice me. I step closer to him. "Josh? Hey, buddy, how's it going?"
His blue eyes find me. The pupils constrict to sharp little points. "You."
"Yeah, it's me. Tim. What's going on? What happened? Julia didn't tell me."
"She told you to come, did she?" He sounds pretty pissed.
"You're my best-friend, man. Of course she did."
"You're not my best-friend, Tim." His eyes are slits now. "Best-friends don't want to get with my twin sister. That's just gross. And creepy. Didn't you ever notice that me and Julia looked the same, dude?"
"I— I didn't before, Josh," I stammer. This isn't what I was expecting. Why is he so mad at me? What did I do?
"But you do now?" He laughs, and it doesn't sound like the warm, carefree laugh Josh had before. This new laugh of his is cold, cruel and scary. Like how all the supervillains laugh in the movies and games we watched and played together. "Then you'll be pleased to know, Tim, that I no longer look like my twin sister. So feel free to get with her."
I start to say something - maybe as a defence, I dunno - but then I notice the gauze around Josh's face starts to unravel itself, and I stop. I don't know how it's happening, but it is. He's not doing it with his hands. The gauze spins around and around on its own accord, each time revealing more of my best-friend's new face.
It's horrible.
The gauze floats over and tangles me in it. I rip it off and throw it to the floor, looking at Josh. His skin is seriously burned or corroded, or something. It's all red and bloody, cracked and peeling off. He doesn't have hair anymore, either.
I look away, unable to stand the sight of him for much longer. He's right. He doesn't look like Julia anymore. And if I wasn't so revolted by him, I might even make a little joke to myself about it.
"Look at me, Tim."
I don't. I can't.
"Look at me! Look at what you've done!"
That last bit forces me to look up. "What I've done? Josh, I didn't do that to you, man. Why would you say that? I'd never. You're my friend."
"You made me this way. With your heroics." He sneers at me with contempt, like I'm pathetic, like I'm just a little ant and he's the foot of man stomping down to crush me. "You could've been great, Tim. You had so much potential. But you wasted it. You don't deserve your superpowers."
"Josh, I'm confused. What happened?"
"I was on my way to school, Tim." He says my name like it's a bad word. "On my way to school, just thinking about how much more than you I would do if I could fly, and if I could use electricity. You know that's an evil power, right? In the history of crazy-as powers, anyone with electricity has been bad. The Sith from Star Wars ring any bells? They loved to use Force Lightning, Tim."
"I didn't know you watched Star Wars." I truly didn't. Josh always claimed Star Wars was for nerds.
"There's a lot you don't know about me, Tim. Some friend you are."
"Josh, you always said only nerds liked Star Wars!" I can't help but shout.
"I was seeing if you'd judge me, Tim!" he screams back. "And you did. You agreed. 'Yup, Star Wars is for total dorks, Josh.' Like the little sycophant you are. Yeah, I know big words, dude. I only pretend to play dumb."
"Josh, please," I plead, "please tell me what happened to you. I don't know why you're being so mean to me, man." The gauze is wrapping itself around my leg now, like a snake. I kick it off. "Damn thing. How is it doing that?" Maybe Josh is doing it? He wouldn't, though. He's my friend.
"I've got powers now, Tim," Josh continues.
"Cool, man!" I say, trying to be friendly and steer things away from the I Hate Tim show. "Uh, what are th—"
"Shut up," he cuts me off. "And listen for a change. I got my powers on my way to school - remember, when you didn't fly me? I was too busy thinking about you, how unworthy you are, how you aren't meant to be a super," he spits out. "Then, not thinking of my own safety, I mistakenly walked into traffic. A big truck screeched to a stop and jerked to the side so it wouldn't hit me. But it did hit me. It hit me with its cargo. Before I was changed to how I am now, the last thing I remember seeing was the warning sticker on the side of the truck. 'Danger: Hazardous Materials'. Then I was splashed with radioactive and chemical waste. And I woke up here."
"Dude..." I say, getting closer so I can try to comfort him. "That's horrible, man."
"GET AWAY FROM ME!" Josh screams at me.
I immediately back off, wondering if the noise Josh is making will cause someone to come in and check on us. "Hey, man, why don't I go close the door." I take a step towards the door.
At that moment, as I watch a piece of metal - probably a medical tool of some sort - sink into the wall just inches from my head, the reality of the situation also begins to sink in. Josh is for real. He is frothing mad and, more importantly, he is actually gonna kill me. No bluffing.
I gotta get outta here. Your best-friend is trying to kill you. I begin to mentally deny this fact, until another item slices through the air, this one taking a few locks of my hair with it. Nevermind. This crazy-guy, Josh is gonna kill me. I can brood on the weight of the situation and what this means later. Josh is gonna...
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