One
It was weird: There were five minutes left before Mr. Jessup would announce all pencils down, this quiz was at an end, submit to your doom, et. Al., and Evan had barely gotten through the first page. There was another page-and-a-half of parabolic hell awaiting him, but the quiz was forgotten for a moment. Evan just could not stop staring at the single, jet black strand mixed improbably into the snowy tendrils that made up Pietro’s hair. It seemed to be longer than the hairs around it, almost touching the pale boy’s cheek, and it was strangely wavy – the end curling up like an upside-down question mark. Wait – an upside-down question mark? That reminded Evan of Spanish class, something he’d just narrowly managed to pass or he’d have been cooling his heels in summer school for six hours instead of just four.
The blond kept the wayward hair in his sights, as Pietro, with his head bent over a small notebook, scribbled furiously. Evan noticed that his rival wasn’t writing at Quicksilver speed, which, he reasoned, was a good thing, ‘cause likely Pietro’s pencil would rip right through the paper or it would disintegrate from all the speed and the friction or something, and that would hurt like a bitch, and just why the hell was he worrying about Pietro anyway? Better question: Pietro wasn’t even in his math class, so why the hell was Pietro in summer school?
Sadly, Evan had no confusion about his own presence at summer school. It was idiocy, plain and simple. He’d screwed up – big time. Algebra was hardly his favorite class, but he’d managed to score a C-minus. Not honor-roll material, maybe, but a passing grade was a passing grade. His buddy Jason, though, hadn’t been so lucky: he’d gone most of the year failing the class, even after his parents had engaged two tutors from the university for him. Jason said he’d rather turn in his board for a pair of freaking roller blades – pink ones with glitter tassel – than take the class over again, so summer school seemed the only option for him.
But it’d be a boring, long summer, all cooped up in a room with bored, disillusioned kids and graphing calculators . . . so Jason had come up with the idea of having Evan go to class with him. Kids who had done okay in the class but wanted extra help and a grade boost could attend, and Jason said it’d be immensely cool if Evan signed up, ‘cause they could board during lunch and sneak comic books in with their texts, and generally goof off while pretending to give a damn about the subject matter. It really hadn’t taken much convincing for Evan. Summer school was lame, but it was easy. It was only for a month, only for a few hours a day, and to sweeten the deal, Jason had offered to swap his prized Baker for Evan’s no-name board for a few weeks just so Evan could experience the sensation of practically gliding on air. It seemed a great plan, and Ororo had glowed in delight at the thought of Evan “finally taking initiative to improve on his education.” All had been well.
However, with life being what it was, and Jason being what he was – namely a pathetic loser – things had not gone exactly as planned. Jason had pulled a D out of his ass at the last moment – a passing grade! And that meant all talk of summer school, boarding and everything else went out the window for him. He and his Baker were off to Surfside and his parents’ beach house. Evan had not been so lucky – Ororo wouldn’t hear of him backing out of his commitment to the month long class, and his parents had already been told not to expect him in the City for another month, so that left Evan with parabolic equations, ten-minute quizzes and Pietro’s weird black hair.
Said hair jerked suddenly out of sight when Pietro looked up quickly, as if sensing he was the object of scrutiny. Evan, startled, quickly dropped his eyes back to the “diagnostic” quiz he was going to fail quite miserably. The equations that had made sense just moments ago looked as if they’d been re-written in Cyrillic. Y equaled X squared? Good for it. Why the hell was he even there? He knew all this stuff . . . or most of it, anyway. And how lame was his life when Maximoff’s hair was the most interesting part of the day?
The blond cast a perturbed glance at his archenemy and was a bit taken aback to notice the speedster still looking at him. Looking at him, smiling, and still writing madly in his little notebook. And now there were two minutes left in which to finish eight very long algebraic equations. Evan’s head dipped dangerously low, his forehead nearly hitting the desk. Yep. Was gonna be a looong summer.
~*~
“You seem a little down, Daniels. Been looking in the mirror again?”
Here we go. It was almost the first thing Pietro had said to him since the session had begun the day before. The first words the speedster had directed to him had come on the first day of class when Pietro had breezed in, looked around, and delivered a half-heartedly sarcastic, “Boring. And Daniels is here – I must be in the right place.”
“Get bent, Maximoff.” Evan was hardly in the mood for banter, thus he didn’t feel compelled to give his all into volleying insults. They’d gotten their quizzes from the day before back, and he’d gotten a 68. A freaking D. He hadn’t gotten one D in the entire school year and now he was getting them in freaking summer school? His aunt would kill him if he ended up getting a lower grade during the summer session than he had during the year. Added to that was the stultifying boredom that seemed to come with hanging around the Mansion during the summer, and the picture of a very disgruntled young skater was complete. Almost everyone had gone home, save for Scott, Rogue, Kurt and some of the new mutants. Scott was always off somewhere doing who knew what . . . Rogue was Rogue . . . Kurt, Evan’s former partner in pointless mayhem was now head over heels in love with some chick from his math class, and the new mutants were . . . young. That left nothing for Evan to do except skateboard awhile, which sucked since he didn’t have anyone do it with, hang in his room and stare at the walls . . . and study. It was turning out to be the lamest summer he’d had, not counting that unfortunate experience with the Boy Scout camp when he was nine. It had taken forever for some of those stains to get out of his backpack . . .
“How can you be depressed? It’s summer.” Pietro frowned into his notebook, erased something, and began again. Erased again. “Long days, short nights. Ice cream! How can you hate a season where ice cream’s everywhere? Get with it, Daniels. It’s starting to get me down.”
“Then move. Nobody asked you to sit at my table anyway.” Beneath Pietro’s usual sarcasm, Evan detected a solicitous note there, almost like Pietro really cared to know what was bothering him. Evan dismissed it as Pietro attempting to set him up for another wisecrack. “Why the hell are you even here? You don’t take Al II.”
“It’s summer,” Pietro laid peculiar emphasis on the last word, as if it explained everything. “Quit your bitching. I coulda sat anywhere, and let you look like a pathetic lame-ass back here in the corner sitting by yourself. But no . . . figured even you should look like you have a friend or two. I’m such a benevolent soul, don’tcha think? I should open my own charity. I can see it now . . .” The boy’s eyes went dreamy. “The Ministry of the Benevolent Pietro Maximoff. Send checks payable to –”
“Never mind.” Evan silently acknowledged that he had been sitting at a table alone, but only because he barely knew anyone taking the class with him. Many of the girls were sitting together at overcrowded tables, and the few guys there were in the class were stoners, all of them sitting near the windows, tossing lit cigarettes onto the grass each time Mr. Jessup turned his back. Evan figured that by sitting in the back, he could at least sneak his Gameboy in and play Sk8terBoy’03 between relearning functions.
“If I’m depressed, it’s because I’ve gotta sit near you every day.” Evan viciously flipped a page in his textbook. More parabolas! Whee! “Serious, though, why are you here? You barely even came to regular school.”
“Oooh, you got it in one, Daniels. That’s why I’m here. Got too many truants, so I have to make up some of the work I missed. Functions covers, like, 15 units of Algebra II, and I missed 14 of ‘em.” Pietro sounded inordinately proud. “Doesn’t matter, I know this stuff, but gotta be here or Calc I is out for this fall. Besides, what’s not to like – four hours in air conditioning, it’s quiet, beats working, Jessup’s a joke, and I get to see you.”
Evan lifted a brow. That was . . . odd. Just the way Pietro had said it was a bit . . . out there. Like seeing him was a good thing or something. Pietro, apparently reconsidering, amended his words with, “See you and remind myself that you’re too lame to even pass Algebra II. Christ, Daniels, it’s the easiest thing in the world . . . even Todd passed, and he spent most of his time eating the dead bugs on the floor.”
“I know. I sat in back of him.” Evan felt his stomach flip-flop in remembrance of Todd, his tongue and dead cockroaches. So much for lunch later. “I did pass. I got a C-minus.”
For the first time since he’d sat down, Pietro actually stopped writing. Looked up at Evan with curious eyes. “Yeah? Well, why the hell are you here? Water in your pool too chilly? Nothing good on TV? Too lazy to drag your ass to the movies. Not that there’s anything good out.”
“I was stupid,” Evan muttered, and then grimaced, regretting the words a soon as they left his mouth. Good going, Ev. Give fricking Maximoff an opening. Now he’ll never shut up. “It’s, uh, a long story.”
Waiting for the hammer to fall, Evan was mildly surprised when Pietro simply made a noncommittal noise at the back of his throat, nodded, and continued writing. The blond squirmed a little, somewhat perturbed at the sudden end to the conversation. Annoying as he was, at least Pietro could hold his interest better than polynomials, though Pietro was just as maddening and difficult to understand.
“Yo, Maximoff . . . what’re you writing?” Evan tried to make his voice casual, bored. And he failed quite miserably judging by the flush of Pietro’s cheeks and the wary glint in the blue eyes.
“What the fuck do you care, Daniels? Do your equations. It’s enough for your puny brain to handle without worrying about me.”
Pietro’s sudden ferocity startled the blond. Whoa . . . hostile much? Geez! “I was just asking. Get a grip.” Reluctantly, Evan turned back to his book, and turned the page to find . . . inverted parabolas! Yippee! “We haven’t been given an assignment yet, so I know it’s none of this crap.”
Evan wasn’t really expecting a response, and had been on his second page of parabolic madness when a soft, “It’s a long story,” drifted his way. Evan looked up quickly, but Pietro’s head was again bent over the book. And much to Evan’s inexplicable disappointment, the rogue black strand of hair was nowhere to be seen.
~*~
“Hey, Spykescrew – what’s your favorite time of day?”
It was the next morning, during the 15 minutes of quiet time that Mr. Jessup set aside for “reflecting” on the previous day’s lesson. Often that time stretched to a half-hour or even longer, as the teacher would get engrossed in something he was doing on his laptop. Didn’t matter to Evan – he welcomed the chance to reflect . . . but it was for damn sure not on the quadratic formula.
But Pietro was starting the weirdness early. “My what?”
“What part of the day’s your favorite?” Pietro flicked his
thumb over the eraser. “And don’t say
Evan was sure that there was not a logical explanation to any of this – Pietro’s question, Pietro’s reply, Pietro’s existence. “Then why ask me? Just make whatever it is in the morning.”
“That’s an idea.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome.”
“I didn’t say it was a good one.” But Pietro was already scribbling away, the scratch of the pencil heralding the speedster’s descent into whatever world he was creating in that little notebook.
Evan watched the pencil move in oddly graceful swoops, the
point never losing contact with the page. Evan thought of his third-grade
teacher, Ms. Tavares, who couldn’t spell the word "assignment" correctly, but
who’d flunk a kid in a minute for bad penmanship. Woulda
had a field day with Maximoff. She woulda either been driven out of her mind or
wanted to marry him.
“Nah, Daniels. Morning won’t work. It’s too . . . new.” Pietro’s head jerked up, and rested his chin his hands. “New day, new experiences . . . all of that crap. Too much junk has to be done in the morning – shower, breakfast, gettin’ dressed, going to school . . . work, whatever. You got all these expectations in the morning, too . . . that you’re gonna have a better day than the one before, that you’re gonna do stuff different, take chances, try new things . . . It’s just not . . . dramatic enough.”
Evan’s brows nearly met in the middle of his forehead. Maximoff was being halfway philosophical? It was scary, really. Scarier still, Evan was halfway intrigued by Pietro’s statement, and halfway inclined to agree it.
“All right, well . . . how about . . . dusk?”
“Dusk,” Pietro repeated faintly. “Why dusk?”
“Well, the day’s pretty much done. People coming home from work and school and crap going to dinner, and all they have to do is get home and eat and talk about what they did ‘cause they’ve already finished doing it. You got about a two-hour window before good TV shows come on or you have to do homework or get your clothes together for the next day. Plus, if it ain’t raining, there’s, like, that cool pink and red light from sunset. It just looks cool. You can’t tell me that’s not dramatic.”
Pietro considered this. “That’s your favorite time of day?”
“I . . . guess.” Evan looked out the window at the brilliant summer day, the sun lighting stretches of green grass and still trees for miles and miles. Made Evan even crazier being cooped up in a classroom as the sun shone almost mockingly, as if reminding him that he wasn’t out enjoying the rays. “It’s not like I really think about it. It just kinda popped into my head.”
“There’s a lot of room for it in there.” Pietro resumed writing. “Dusk. Everything’s all pink and red and it looks cooooool.” He mimicked Evan’s word in a lisping falsetto. “God, Daniels, if you were a dog, you woulda been put down years ago. Is your brain permanently set on the retarded lamer setting?”
“Shove it up your ass, Maximoff.” Evan took the insults in stride, looking pointedly at the moving pencil. “You’re writing it down, aren’t you?”
The derisive laughter stopped immediately. “Yeah, well . . . it guess it works for what I want.” The blue eyes narrowed. “I woulda thought of it anyway . . . eventually.”
“Then why ask me in the first place?”
The look on Pietro’s face was indescribable – somewhere between mortally embarrassed and highly indignant. The speed demon rallied quickly, though, the cool, detached expression he usually wore sliding back into place with almost an audible click. “Just trying to see if you’re capable of rational thought and conversation. As usual, you don’t disappoint me. Better luck next time.”
Evan was quiet. He wasn’t fooled; he’d seen the other boy’s eyes, saw the twitch at the corners of the thin lips. Pietro could bluster all he wanted. Evan knew he’d won that round, and Evan didn’t stop smiling until 20 minutes had gone by and Mr. Jessup had shut his laptop and began introducing the listless students to the day’s lesson – the wonderful world of hyperbolas.
~*~
“Hey, ‘sup Maximoff? What are you –”
Pietro held up his hand in a gesture that either meant “five minutes” or “hi.” Evan wasn’t sure which. The other teen was writing, as usual, paying zero attention to the world around him, as good as if he’d put a Do Not Disturb sign on his forehead.
Giving up on the thought that they’d start the day on a civil note, Evan took his seat, slowly unloading his backpack, mind turning over the thoughts he’d had in the past 24 hours. Thoughts about life, and Kurt and the furred mutant's newfound love of love . . . of his ex-friend Ethan and the . . . thing. Pietro.
The weird thing was, the last two thoughts had been related and it wasn’t until that moment that Evan had an idea why. Pietro reminded him a lot of Ethan – or should it have been the other way around, since Evan had met Pietro first? In any case, his nemesis and his former skating buddy were a lot alike . . . same height . . . same runner’s build . . . same sense of humor . . . same type of delicate features that would look out of place on any person but them. Ethan was even paler than Pietro, but his hair was the color of the downy fluff on a newborn chick, not snow white. And Ethan had this wide, soft-looking mouth, eyes that were a lighter blue than Pietro’s, and a nose that looked liked it had been broken half-a-dozen times.
Ethan had been a mid-year transfer from the unfortunately
named Intercourse,
“Daniels, if you had to choose, what’s the freakiest way to die?”
Evan’s eyes shifted to the left. Guess the thing Maximoff had done with his hand had meant “five minutes.” “Dying? What, you mean dying for real?”
“How can you die for fake? Try and think a little, Spykey. I’ll even give you a head start.” Pietro was tapping the end of the pencil against his bottom lip. “Death . . . not something quick like shooting or getting your head chopped off. It’s gotta be slow enough so that you know you’re dying, but enough time so you could have a conversation.”
“Uh . . . if you know you’re gonna die, why would you want to talk? Is it like a . . . you know, one of those deathbed confession things?”
“Maaaybe.” Pietro covered his notebook with his arm. “Anyway, I had them trapped in a building, but that’s been done, like, fifty billion times –”
“I suppose . . .” Evan rubbed his forehead. “Though, if it’s a haunted building, maybe they’ll be scared to death by ghosts or something. That’d be kinda different.”
“Nah, too gimmicky. Plus ghosts are lame. Vampires are making a comeback, and vampires wouldn’t be hanging around an abandoned building. I need something dramatic .. . but tender.”
What? Evan was used to their conversations, such as they were, not making sense, but this was starting to break records for incoherence. “Maximoff, what’re you ranting about?” Evan scooted his chair back a little. Pietro’s face was starting to look like a spaceship ready for launch. “Maximoff?”
“Plus, I keep forgetting the dust! And old buildings are full of that shit. Dumb!” Pietro did a furious bout of erasing. “What the hell was I thinking! Now I have to figure out something else . . . dammit!”
And we have liftoff. Mildly alarmed at the shade of red Pietro was turning, but not so concerned – or masochistic – as to continue the conversation . . . or whatever it was. That was another thing Pietro and Ethan had in common, Evan mused – their ability to totally flip out and go the other way on an opinion when someone agreed with their initial point of view.
Like the time Ethan had committed sacrilege by declaring Tony Hawk “way too old” to continue touring. Evan had staunchly disagreed – as long as a guy could do a backwards darkslide without braining himself, he wasn’t too old to do jack. But the minute Evan had said that he couldn’t imagine Hawk skating on tours for more than another three years, ‘cause yeah, he was getting up there a little, Ethan had wigged out and had chastised Evan about daring to speak ill about his idol.
That’s the way usually was with Pietro . . constant frustration, conversations that seemed like more landmines, incidents sometimes weren’t entirely unpleasant, though they should be. Being stuck at the same table with Pietro should have about as palatable as being dragged naked over a barbed wire, but it wasn’t too . . . bad. The speedy teen was, if nothing else, a source of amusement, even if he didn’t make a lot of sense most of the time. And as for the . . . thing and Ethan, well, that should have been more than unpleasant, really, but it . . . had not been.
“Aha!” Pietro flipped the pencil jauntily and smiled brilliantly at his tablemate. “I’ve got it. Rock climbing!”
Evan winced. Was that a headache that was beginning to make its painful, annoying presence known behind his eyeballs? “Rock climbing? That’s a slow death? You fall, and splat. You’re gone. It would be like, ‘I have something to tell yoooouuuuuu – splat!’”
Pietro ducked his head, but Evan could see the thin shoulders shaking with quiet laughter. “Nice visual, Spyketot. But, ha, check it – they’re climbing a rock, and they get to this little plateau that’s real unstable. They broke all their gear so they can’t escape, and the rock is sloooowly breaking apart. Soon as the ledge goes, they go, but it’ll take, like, 15, 20 minutes or something.”
“Won’t one of them have a cellphone? They could call somebody, and they’d have a helicopter up there in two seconds.”
“These are nature guys . . . salt of the earth, eat dead shit with their bare hands guys. No cellphones.” Pietro rubbed his hands in glee. “Ah, man . . . it’s perfect. Daniels, you better cover your eyes . . . I get any more brilliant, I might go supernova.”
“Good. Maybe your head’ll explode.” Headache, nothing. It was a migraine that was taking up residence in the space below Evan’s eyebrows. Felt like some of his spikes were pushing their way into his frontal lobe.
“Maybe . . . but if I were one of those guys, I wouldn’t be talking. Praying, maybe, but talking, hell no? What normal person would to all that facing death? What the hell are you writing, Maximoff?”
“Never said anything about normal, Daniels.” Neatly sidestepping the second question, The speedster had adopted tone of offense at the first. “Whaddaya take me for? One of your no-talent friends? Who, I notice have deserted your pathetic ass.”
Pietro’s hair whipped around his face as he made a show of looking around the room. “Poor Daniels! Nobody to show off for . . . not even that stupid hick that’s been sniffing around ya most of the year. Kid with the buzz cut and the goofy nose . . . whathisname . . . Ian or something?”
“Ethan.” The word stumbled off his tongue, and Evan gripped the edge of the table, sure that he was seconds away from falling off his fricking chair. How did Pietro know anything about Ethan? Evan never flattered himself that he or his skating buddies held anything other than a passing, derisive interest for his fleet-footed rival. And sniffing around? What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“Everybody’s away for the summer.” Evan wondered at the
sudden frown lining Pietro’s forehead. “And Ethan . . . he transferred outta Bayville at the
end of the year. He and his family moved to
“Moved away? Awww. I’m sure you’re heartbroken.” Pietro rolled the pencil idly over a pencil-smudged page before pinning him with a steel-rod stare. “Or maybe it was the other way around.” The speedster gave him a bland smile and returned to his task, apparently not expecting a reply. Probably a good thing, too, because Evan couldn’t think of a thing to say.
~*~
It was all about working in pairs the next day. Mr. Jessup, barely looking up for his computer, had directed everyone to check their homework against their neighbors’ and begin a discussion on the next section, which tackled the scintillating topic of inverse functions. The class could barely contain its excitement.
Evan came to class not in the mood to talk to anyone, so it was just as well he and Pietro were sitting together. Even if the other teen had done the assignment, which Evan doubted, putting their heads together would have been a bad – possibly fatal idea. All their conversations seemed to become train wrecks – no matter how smooth they might start, they jumped the tracks at some point and everything became a mess.
Pietro looked up then, catching Evan’s eye for a second, cocked his head to the side, snickered, and returned to writing.
Evan ignored him. Maximoff was going to be a moron? Par for the course. He had other things to keep his mind occupied. Kurt was being annoying. He was acting like the typical in-real-love-for-the-first-time guy – in a perpetual haze over his “Liebchen” Amanda, and, thus, genuinely confused as to why love wasn’t in the air for everyone. Kurt was convinced that the touch of a woman would thaw Wolverine’s icy heart. That the Professor needed to get out more, and a shapely redhead (Kurt affirmed that the Prof seemed the type to have a soft spot for redheads) would do the trick. And in a statement that still gave Evan convulsions, Kurt had pronounced Ororo “way too hot to not have four hundred guys throwing themselves at her” –
Evan heard a noise like a mouse choking, and he looked up again. Pietro was chucking quietly behind his hand this time, casting sneaky little glances at him here and there. The blond felt the prickle of spikes just below the skin of his forearms. Maximoff was in a goofball mood, and that could mean bodily harm and/or property damage. In a few moments, Pietro got hold of himself and went back to his work without another word, but Evan was on the defensive now, keeping watch on the other boy from the corner of his eye as his mind drifted back to Kurt.
Crazy in love himself, the furred teen had turned his matchmaking eye to the students. He was sure, he’d told Evan, that Scott was seeing someone. Kurt couldn’t offer any substantial proof, but he said there was just something about the way Scott walked nowadays that seemed to indicate there was someone special in his life. Evan had wondered about that. Scott had been walking a little funny, but it seemed more a gap-legged limp than the smooth stride of a guy who was buoyed by the clouds of love. Besides, Jean was away for the summer, and Rogue was . . . away even when she was in the Mansion, so who would Scott be squiring around? That Taryn girl? Didn’t seem too likely, but then, who knew with Scott?
Kurt talked some more romantic nonsense for awhile, going over who among the new mutants were likely to hook up, and whether Mr. McCoy would accept the image inducer the Prof offered him so the long-suffering science teacher could go into the strip clubs in the next town over without causing a riot. Evan had pretended to listen, when Kurt had suddenly rounded on him, demanding to know when his “main Spykeman” was going to stop fooling around and get a girlfriend. Kurt had gone through a whole list of girls, many of whom Evan had never heard of, and assured the blond that Amanda would likely have no problem setting him up. Evan had nearly spiked several holes in the wall in perturbation before he was saved by the bell or, more correctly, the ring, as Kurt’s Liebchen had chosen that time to call –
“Christ! That’s it! That’s –” Pietro pushed himself back from the table. “That’s perfect! It’s –” The rest was lost to choking, barely smothered laughter.
Not that he’d planned on getting any work done, but Pietro was making it appropriately impossible. Evan gave up pretending not to care that his tablemate was having some sort of breakdown. “Maximoff, what the hell is your problem?”
Pietro gasped for breath, straightened up some, brushed wisps of hair from his forehead. Looked at Evan with wide, bright eyes. “Oh, Spykebitch, this is too perfect. I finally figured out who I wanna use for this thing, and it’s just . . .” His lips gave a telltale tremble, but he was able to keep it under control. “This . . . thing I’m writing –”
“What are you writing?”
“– I’ve been going on and on trying to figure out who the two main characters should be, ‘cause, once I figured that out, I could figure out who else was gonna be in it.”
“You mean you’ve been spending all this time writing stuff and you didn’t even know who it was about?”
Pietro made a face. “Don’t mock the creative process, Daniels. I knew it what the storyline was going to be, but I couldn’t decide who I was going to base them on. But now I’ve got it!” He went silent.
Evan waited. One thing about Pietro’s “dramatic” pauses was that they were about half a second long.
Two seconds later: “Reiish and Ken!” This was said with the same glee-filled tone as, “I’ve won 400 million dollars, and a bevy of video models are coming to draw me an applesauce bath!!!”
With effort, Evan stifled a groan. Pietro seemed to expect his nemesis to know the names. And sadly, Evan did recognize them. “The two samurai dudes from Super Block Brawler? You’re writing about video game characters?”
Super Block Brawler had been the game back when they were kids. There was always a line in the arcade, and guys who had the cheat codes did a brisk business within the walls of PS 104. The movie based on the game, however, sucked hard, but Evan had seen it twice anyway – he and Pietro had sneaked into a matinee the first time, and he’d gone again with his parents, who inexplicably loved the movie, though they deemed the game “too violent.
“Wait, what was the rock thing about again?”
“I told you,” Pietro muttered, flipping through pages until he got to a clean sheet. “They die – Ken and Reiish are gonna die on it.”
“There weren’t even any rocks in Juniper World . . . how’re you gonna have them die on one?”
“It’s a different scenario than in the game. This is being played out on Earth. Creative license.” Pietro looked dreamy. “I needed two guys who used to be friends but then started to really hate each other.”
“I thought Ken only thought he hated Reiish because Gaeea gave him the elixir of illusion, and Ken hallucinated that Reiish was the one who killed his sister.” Evan rubbed the back of his head. “And Reiish hated Ken ‘cause Ken hurt Sensei Ural. And all that went away when Stingray gave him the antidote.”
Pietro looked lost for a moment, and Evan hid a smile. He’d always been more into the game and its background than Pietro, though Pietro tended to win because he cheated like a three-armed poker player.
“Doesn’t matter why they don’t like didn’t like each other, just . . . they just don't. They’re not under the elixir anymore, but they still don’t really trust each other. They know it’s stupid, but . . . they can’t really help it. They keep talking, and it’s just like they can’t help ragging on each other.” Pietro shifted a tad uncomfortably in his seat. “Anyway, I’m gonna have it so that Yarweh is trying to take over the world –”
“Again?”
“Yeah,” Pietro grinned, and Evan smiled back. It had been their own private joke way back when. In each incarnation of the game, Yarweh, the half-Giant, half-dragon bad guy, always attempted to conquer some different universe. “You can’t have Super Brawler without Yarweh and his half-assed world domination plans. But this time, he’s got the Griots helpin’ him –”
“What? How? In SBB Ultimate, Yarweh destroyed the Griots’ homeworld.” Evan shook his head. “Why would they want to turn around and help him?”
“I guess . . .” Pietro swirled the tip of the pencil in the front of his hair. “Maybe . . . he’s controlling them with Smarty Pants? Remember how freaked Yarweh was when he found out it evolved and was able to think for itself?”
“Uh, no, Maximoff. Smarty Pants got destroyed at the end of the game in SBB Ultimate, when all the other computers turned against it. SBB The Return didn’t even have it, and the movie took place after The Return was released.” Evan gnawed his lip, thinking. “What about . . . Yarweh captures their queen again and makes ‘em do it, or he’ll kill her?”
“Hmmm . . .” Pietro wrote something down, frowned, and then brightened. “I’ve got it – Yarweh captures the queen, makes her drink that Passion Potion that Yarweh gave Treia in the movie, and the queen falls in love with Yarweh, and she orders the Griots to help him.”
“Yeeah . . . that might work! Remember in the movie the Griot Elders were trying to get the Queen to marry so that they could have protection? And the Griots don’t ever cross their queen.” Evan watched Pietro continue to write as they talked, allowing himself to be a little amazed that Pietro could concentrate on talking to him and writing without making too much of a mess of either task. “But why wouldn’t Reiish and Ken be with the other Brawlers trying to stop Yarweh and the Griot Queen? Why are you killing them off? They’re the main ones!”
“They’re corny. Both had the same moves, had the same sensei, even wore the same kinda clothes. Dhawim was the coolest, and he’s the one who’s going to beat up on Yarweh.” Pietro looked grim. “Reiish and Ken go to the rock because they think that’s where Yarweh is . . . but it’s a trap, and . . .”
“Wait – that won’t work.” Evan had forgotten that Dhawim, who was depicted in the game as a floating, laser-beam-shooting spiritual type, had been Pietro’s favorite character. It had seemed weird to Evan then, because though the powers were cool, Dhawim was kind of lame, and hardly anyone played as him. “Dhawim can read minds, remember? And he’s always . . . whaddayacallit, astrally connected to all the Super Brawlers.” Evan started. Never thought of it, but if Professor X was a little more tan, had Scott’s powers, was covered in tribal markings, could float and wore a loincloth, he and Dhawim could be twins.
“I know that. So what?”
“Well, so he’d know Ken and Reiish were in trouble, ‘cause he’d be inside their heads.” Evan moved his textbook aside. “He could send out Loki, who’d be there, in, like two seconds, or Trestle, who could fly there, and save them. There’s no way he could not know that they needed help.”
Pietro thought this over. Began to speak, but didn’t, sudden
realization darkening his eyes. “Fuck. Fuck.
That’s right . . . and even if I had them Mind Shield, it wouldn’t make any
sense, because they’d be too busy worrying about the rock falling to keep it
up.” He made an agitated motion with his hand. “Great. I probably won’t be able to use him at all then.”
“Hold up . . . maybe . . . maybe if you knocked Dhawim out for awhile . . .” Evan saw the blue eyes lose some of their dull cast. “If he were unconscious, the link’d be broken, and he wouldn’t know anyone was in trouble . . .”
“Unconscious . . .” Pietro mulled that a moment, moving his pencil in pendulum-like swings through the air. “But he can’t just get hit over the head. Too much like a bad anime. Besides, he’d be able to sense if someone were coming up behind him . . .”
The blond kept quiet a minute. “Remember in the movie? That part where Dhawim tried to mind-screw one of Yarweh’s clones and Dhawim went nuts and then passed out or something? What if he tries something else . . . like a mind latch . . .”
“Mind latch?” Pietro looked alarmed. “What, to try to find Ken and Reiish?”
“No!” Evan’s voice rose excitedly, and several people looked around. “Uh, no . . .” He lowered his voice. “To find out where the Griot Queen is being held! They already know that she’s been kidnapped, but they don’t know Yarweh’s got a spell on her. So when Dhawim tries to latch her mind, he’ll get hit with the same feedback virus that hurt him when he did it with the clones! Bam, he’s knocked out for like a day!”
Pietro didn’t take his eyes of Evan as his hand moved fitfully across the page. “Could work.” He glanced down, then up at Evan through lowered lashes. “You know Daniels . . . I’ve gotta say, I never expected this out of you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m pretty good at coming up with ideas for stuff. How’d you think I passed English?”
“Nah, I mean, never expected you to be so pathetic as to know every single thing there is to know about a video game. Jesus, have you ever read a book?” But Pietro was flashing teeth, and for a change, he didn’t look like some caged animal ready to strike. It was a real smile. Evan could tell by the way the corners of Pietro’s eyes wrinkled, making his eyes look like horizontal slashes of blue in that pale face.
Yeah, you’re welcome, Pietro. Evan thought not for the first time that Pietro had one of the nicest smiles he’d ever seen. “What are you writing, Maximoff? Is it a comic?”
But Pietro was gone again, shut back up in his little writing world. The period passed without Evan being able to hear so much as a stifled sneeze from the other side of the table.
~****~
Ethan Unger was a good skater. A really good one. Not as good as the pros, and probably not as good as the bad-asses back in the city, but better than anyone in Bayville, even Evan himself. One of the best Evan had ever seen. So it had baffled Evan that his skating buddies hadn’t liked Ethan at all. It really didn’t make any sense – Ethan wasn’t a braggart, never, to Evan’s knowledge, even bring up the Hawk Tour thing, nor was he one of those rich posers who got his parents to buy him a tricked-out board and the latest gear, but couldn’t even execute a decent kick flip. Ethan was bona-fide, but from day one, there’d been some sort of weird tension between the lanky blond and the rest of Evan’s crew. It had him in an awkward position – his friends were his friends, no doubt, but Ethan was cool, too, and Evan liked hanging out with him . . . despite their sometimes-schizophrenic conversations and Ethan’s tendency to stare at a person with what Evan’s mom called “tunnel eyes” – eyes that could see right through a person clear to the other side.
Evan sat deep in thought on the steps a few yards from the main entrance of the school. It was gonna start raining hard in about three seconds, if the rumbling coming from the flat, gray clouds overhead was any indication. Jean wasn’t going to be picking him up for another 20 minutes, and the blond could have used the time to do some routines, but chose to forgo spinning his wheels in the literal sense to spin his wheels in the metaphorical one. Thinking. And stressing himself out even more than functions and graphs were.
Thinking about Ethan was a sure-fire way to do that. He could admit to himself that even though he was gone, presumably for good, the . . . thing with Ethan was still nagging at his subconscious. He’d been thinking about it since it had happened, had dreamed about it a couple of times, too. It had freaked him out sufficiently to drive the blond to keep what had happened to himself, but Pietro’s sly comments from a couple days back made Evan wonder if maybe other people somehow knew what had gone on with them.
Evan was reasonably sure Ethan would not have said anything. Evan’s other skaterfriends would have bailed on him if they knew. Besides, Ethan had been tight-lipped about the most mundane things . . . no way would he run his mouth of about the . . . the . . .
The what? What? Evan still wasn’t sure what to term it. In his mind he called it the . . . thing. Or the incident. But what had it been really, if he really wanted to be honest? It wasn’t really, y’know, sex or anything. At least, not in the way Evan had heard it described for straight and gay people. It wasn’t making out, either – what had gone on seemed to go beyond the teenybopper kissing and groping. It had been . . . it was . . . a thing. Just . . . a thing that had happened once, hadn’t lasted more than five minutes . . . and three months later, was still keeping him up nights. Y’know. A thing. One minute, he and Ethan were doing handstands, each of them falling on their asses half a dozen times and razzing on each other, bandying affectionate insults about like badminton shuttlecocks. And the next, they’d been on each other, kissing. Touching each other. Fondling. Evan wasn’t even sure that he’d moved. Still couldn’t be sure that Ethan had, either. It was like putting a lid on a pot . . . one minute the pot was uncovered and the next it was . . . all the contents within contained, and in danger of boiling over. It had been the same with the thing. One minute Evan was lying on his back in the grass cracking up at something goofy Ethan had said, and the next, their pants were around their ankles and they were whacking each other off, their tongues down each other’s throats.
Evan remembered every detail . . . remembered thinking that Ethan definitely needed to shave, ‘cause his stubble was digging into his cheek . . . remembered the spot on his lower back that itched like crazy from the grass rubbing against it. Evan remembered praying that his spikes didn’t make a really untimely appearance during the . . . festivities . . . and he remembered thinking that jerking off could be a lot less tedious when you had someone to help out . . . never mind that his someone had the same equipment he had . . . Evan didn’t remember being freaked out by that last realization; everything that Ethan was doing just felt too nice . . . there’d be enough time to worry about what it all meant later.
And there had been time – three months of agonizing over an event that took all of five minutes, not counting the cleanup. Odd thing was, Evan was no closer to figuring out what all of it meant than he had been in the minutes after it had all taken place. Was he gay? Did he like guys? Was that why he’d never had a real girlfriend? Was that why Kurt’s love talk was bothering him?
The blond just didn’t know. Seemed to him that if he was gay, he would’ve known it a long time ago and would’ve been aroused by guys long before Ethan had ever come into the picture. Evan could not say that he recalled having a thing for any other guy, or wanting to do anything physical with another boy, ever.
Well . . . there had been that one time at basketball camp that he and a certain silver-haired boy had to share a sleeping bag because Evan’s had been left with a lot of other gear in the city. It had been cold that night, and he and Pietro had kind of spooned together for warmth, and there was this nice little nook between Pietro’s shoulder and neck that Evan found was a perfect chin rest. Thing was, it was one of Pietro’s ticklish spots, and each time Evan had put his chin there, Pietro had wriggled around, parts of him brushing against parts of Evan, and it had felt . . . nice . . . real nice. They’d both kept their hands to themselves and gone to sleep, but, Evan remembered staring at the ticklish area as he drifted to sleep, and that night he dreamed about kissing Pietro there, making him wriggle and squirm against him just as the boy had done in their waking hours.
Man . . . that had been so long ago, though! They’d just been kids, and Evan had never thought about it, or any other guy . . . ‘til Ethan. And Ethan from the beginning had reminded him of Maximoff . . . only without Pietro’s speed and grace and style and hair. And without that little half-grin the speed demon loved to flash when he thought he was getting the better of someone. And without the put-downs that nevertheless always seemed to carry a tender undertone. And without sudden bursts of conversation like the one the afternoon about Block Brawlers that reminded Evan that he and Pietro still had the ability to make each other laugh. And without that sensitive spot between his chin and neck. Evan knew the last thing to be especially true; he’d kissed Ethan in that exact spot several times during their short tryst, willing the other teen to jump or squirm, and when he hadn’t, Evan was conscious of a deep sense of disappointment – an emotion he’d been hard-pressed to understand. And even now, Evan was reasonably sure he still didn’t understand . . .
“Fuck.” Evan shuddered against the first heavy drops of rain that were painting the sidewalk and pelting the back of his neck. “This sucks.” But whether he meant the timing of his remembrances, the timing of his thing with Ethan, or the timing of the rain, he couldn’t say.