Carrie Vaughn - Dreams of the Golden Age

“You think they can do it?” Anna asked, after her long and pointed silence. “I mean, do you really think they can be like the Olympiad?”

“I really think they’re crazy,” Robbie said. “But then again, we were crazy.” He chuckled like it was a good thing. “I’m looking forward to seeing what they do, that’s for sure.”

“It’ll certainly be interesting,” Suzanne added.

“Can we talk about something else?” Anna said. “This … it’s just sensationalism.”

“Sometimes I think that’s the point,” Robbie replied.

“Anna’s mad because she wishes she had superpowers,” Bethy observed.

“No, you’re the one who wants powers,” Anna shot back, more a reflexive argument than one that made sense.

“Girls,” Celia said in a warning tone that was rapidly losing its effectiveness. Soon, they’d stop listening to her entirely, and wouldn’t that be a fun day?

“It’s not even about the powers, isn’t that what you’re always saying?” Anna looked straight at Celia, a challenge or a warning. “It’s about doing good whether or not you have powers. Right?”

“Exactly,” Celia said, but without confidence, worried where this was going to go next.

Robbie shrugged. “It’s still the superpowers that make Commerce City what it is. It’s part of your family heritage.”

“See?” Bethy proclaimed.

Celia glared at Robbie, with a curl to her lip. “I don’t know. Not having them is a pretty big part of their heritage, too.”

“Can we please talk about something else?” Anna pleaded. She propped her head on her hand and was looking a bit green.

“God, you’re so touchy,” Bethy shot back, and Anna rounded on her.

“Girls,” Arthur said softly, and wonder of wonders, they shut up. Celia was pretty sure he wasn’t even using his powers on them. But when he looked at them, like he was looking through them, they were very aware that he was likely seeing more than they wanted him to. It would shut anyone up.

They focused quietly on their plates.

“I have dessert,” Suzanne said brightly, making her way to the kitchen. The old defense mechanism, not a bit rusty.

“I’m not really hungry. Thanks for dinner, Grandma,” Anna said, then shoved away from the table to stomp off, not looking back.

Celia was relieved that no one called after her. That left them all a little bit of dignity, at least. Anna was in a mood, pleading with her wouldn’t change it. She remembered what it was like, wanting nothing more than to be left alone. She wondered if the others remembered.

The fruit and sherbet tasted as wonderful as expected, but they were all distracted, and conversation stumbled. Bethy finished only half of hers before fleeing, claiming a mountain of homework. Then, oddly, Celia felt like the kid at the table. The evening ended quickly after that. Robbie said enthusiastic thank-yous and made farewells. Arthur walked with him to the elevators, leaving Celia to help her mother clear up.

Suzanne, who usually bustled through the kitchen cleaning up after meals, was slow to start. She sat straight in her chair, in her place at the head of the table, gazing over the remains of the meal. Mostly successful, despite the moodiness of teenage girls. But tonight, Suzanne seemed sad.

“Mom?”

“I miss your father,” she said.

Celia started crying. She couldn’t help it. All day long, all the reasons she’d had to cry and hadn’t, not once. She was saving it up, she told herself. She’d cry later. But then her mother said exactly what she’d been thinking and it all came out, tears streaming, her swallowing her own breaths to try to keep from making noise.

“Oh, honey, shh.” And just like that Suzanne came to her and held her tight, and Celia clung back. She almost told her mother everything. But she just cried until they pulled apart, and Suzanne smoothed back her hair and kissed her forehead, and they cleared away the dishes. Everything back to normal.

WHENRobbie insisted that Teia and her bunch had been the ones to tip off the cops about the drug dealer, Anna nearly screamed. Everything after that, she deserved a medal for self-restraint. Turned out she did care about publicity. Or at least recognition. Who knew? But she kept her mouth shut. She could lead the secret double life of a superhero vigilante, just watch her.

She practiced. She looked for Mayor Edleston after watching videos of his speeches and reading articles about him from the last campaign. Found him, but only when he was where she expected him to be—City Hall or the mayor’s mansion, for example. She attempted to track down various celebrities and found she could really do it only when she knew what part of the city they were going to be in anyway. She tried to hunt them down after only looking at a picture, but that didn’t work—she actually had to know something about them, which meant trolling celebrity gossip websites. It was a frustrating handicap. And she gave herself a headache.

She’d started searching missing children websites and reports. She hadn’t yet gotten enough information to be able to find them. But she kept trying, because if she could save just one kid she’d at least feel useful. Most of the stories just made her sad.

The next day, superteen trio made the news again, stopping a gang fight outside a convenience store late the previous night. Five guys with knives and lead pipes about to pound each other into goo, and they’d been stunned and frozen in place—obviously the calling cards of Lady Snow and Blaster. The official police statement repeated well-worn phrases about not condoning vigilante justice, even as they took the gang members into custody. The tabloids and hero groupie websites were rapturous: “Commerce City’s New Ice-Cold Supers Are Red-Hot!” The accompanying pictures were stills from black-and-white security footage, and the darling among those showed Stormbringer and Blaster high-fiving while Lady Snow looked on proudly, hands on hips. Anna could have gagged.

The trio had gotten a name, as well: the Trinity. The Super Attention Whores would have worked just as well.

Anna wasn’t ready to give up, but she and Teddy needed another plan. Another mission. So what if they didn’t get credit. They did this because it needed to be done, not because they wanted attention. They just had to keep going until people realized that there was another, subtler, more mysterious team at work in the city.

At school that day, Anna avoided Teia. The car pulled along the drive, and Anna knew Teia and the others were hanging out by the front steps like usual, probably grinning and ready to brag. Anna wasn’t up for it, so she asked Tom to continue on to the middle school. She would walk back.

“I need the exercise,” she explained. A really lame excuse, but she didn’t care.

“I’ll just nag you for five more minutes,” Bethy said. “Who are you avoiding?”

“I’m not avoiding anyone.”

“Liar.”

Tom looked at them both in the rearview mirror. He never yelled at them when they fought, like Mom and Dad and Grandma did. Which meant they actually fought less in the car than anywhere else.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Anna said finally. Amazingly, Bethy didn’t respond. At the middle school, they both piled out of the car and Anna started the trek back to the other side of the campus.

“Anna,” Bethy said, and Anna hesitated. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Anna said and kept going.

Her power was absolutely useful for avoiding people, and she made it all the way to first period without seeing anyone she’d have to talk to for more than a hello. She waited until lunch to track down Teddy, dragging him off to a table way in the back of the lunchroom to talk. From the far side of the room, Teia might have looked at her and laughed at one point. Whatever. For years, they’d eaten lunch together. They were supposed to be a team. Their separation now was an ache that Anna tried to ignore.