Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

A jangle of cowbells announced my arrival. I briefly surveyed the place—noting the comics and animé were shelved alphabetically, and the most valuable editions were secured behind glass cases—then noticed the hanging silence. I looked down at my leather minidress and the skintight knee-high boots—which, I’d been horrified to discover, cost more than a payment on my Jag—and grimaced. It’d seemed a conservative enough outfit that morning, but I realized now it was somewhat inappropriate for visiting an establishment frequented by teenage boys.

I compared myself briefly with one of the buxom beauties on the cover of a nearby comic and found I held up nicely. This would explain why the looks I was getting from the half-dozen other patrons were less lascivious than hopeful. Too bad I didn’t have a gold lasso in my pocketbook.

I settled for sauntering up to the register, manned by the only adult in the place. I gave him Olivia’s most encouraging smile. “Hi.”

The man didn’t answer, just stood there, tongue half exposed between his chubby lips. Perhaps he was just shy…though the saliva pooling at the corner of his mouth couldn’t have been normal. I tried again. “Hello, earthling?”

A voice popped up beside me. “You look just like Daphne of Xerena.”

I turned my head, saw no one, then looked down and recoiled. Hairy ten-year-old, or large midget, it was a tough call. “Excuse me?”

“Daphne, the Xerenian princess whose shadow detaches to fight crime worldwide while she’s sleeping. Do your heels turn into switchblades?” he asked, bending over to look for himself.

Ten-year-old. Definitely. “Sorry. No.”

He straightened, plainly disappointed, and I got a clear look at his face. Tufts of hair sprouted from his cheeks in aberrant fashion, and muddy brown eyes peered up at me from beneath bushwhacked brows. “Let me guess, Wolf-Man?”

He rubbed a hand along his voluminous sideburns and shook his head. “Growth hormones. They just have the added benefit of making me look like a superhero.”

I wanted to tell him that Eddie Munster wasn’t much of a hero, but refrained when he pulled a claw from behind his back and made to lunge for me. After the month I’d had, he was fortunate I saw the nails were made of plastic. Another nanosecond and he’d have been eating my Dior handbag.

I raised a brow. “Cute.” He growled menacingly.

I realized then exactly where I was. A role-playing, hormone-ridden den of iconic culture. An adolescent precursor to Playboy magazine and Internet porn. I studied a half-dressed heroine on one of the rags behind the case. Warren probably felt right at home here.

Turning to the man behind the counter again, and ignoring the growling noises emanating from Wolf-boy, I tried another smile. “I’d like some information on superheroes, please.” I felt like an idiot as soon as the words were out of my mouth, a feeling intensified by the way the guy just continued to stare, but I waited. And waited. “Do you speak English?”

“Why do you want to know?” he finally said.

“Well,” I said, taken aback by the coldness in his voice, “it’s just that you weren’t answering me.”

A voice popped up on my other side. “He means why do you want to know about superheroes?”

I turned to find a bald-headed youth staring at me with an equally closed expression. He had a twin—identifiable as such by a T-shirt that said i’m his twin with an arrow pointed in the first boy’s direction—who duplicated his expression and his stance, right down to the spindly arms crossed over his chest. As twins are wont to do, I supposed.

Keeping my eyes on the twins, I spoke to the man. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but is this, or is this not, a retail establishment? I buy, you sell. I ask, you reply. The customer is always right…any of this sound familiar?”

Dead silence.

Clearly the mantle of “reasonable adult figure” was being thrown solely across my shoulders. I took on a commanding stance—as one did when facing a prepubescent Inquisition—and crossed my own arms over my chest. When all eyes had finally returned to my face, I cleared my throat. “If you really must know, I’m doing a paper for school. You’ve heard of college, right, boys? It’s where you go if you haven’t ditched too many high school classes to hang out with Wolf-boy over here—”

“No!” A voice flew at me from the back of the store. I looked in time to see a head duck back behind an upside-down comic. Even if the voice hadn’t cracked in the middle of the single syllable, it wouldn’t have been an especially impressive show of vigor.

“No, you haven’t heard of college?” I asked sweetly.

“No, we won’t tell you about superheroes,” the man behind the counter finally said.

I returned my gaze to him, clearly the ringleader. “What’s your name, sir?”

“Zane.”

“Well, Zane, I’d like to speak to your manager.”

“I am the manager.”

Wolfie giggled beside me.

“The owner, then.”

“I’m the owner too.”

“Then sell me a comic book.”

“No.”

Confused, I stared at him. Then, figuring I’d been given this body for a reason, I leaned over the counter and asked again nicely. Olivia, I thought, could have done no better.

“No,” he said again.

Now, if I’d been in my own skin I might have given in to the impulse to take Zane by his greasy hair and slam his head into the counter so that glass became a permanently identifiable part of his features. But I was Olivia now, and Olivia would never. Besides, I didn’t relish the thought of taking on Wolf-boy, Tweedledee and -dum, the town crier…and whoever else might be lurking in the back of the store. I straightened and sighed, reconciled to trying reason.

With a grown man who read comics.

“Well, why on earth not?”

“Because earth is all your puny close-minded psyche can fathom!” yelled the crier, rising halfway from his chair. His face was bright red and he was unconsciously crushing the comic book in one balled fist. “There’s a whole universe out there you’ll never grasp! A whole world that can never be accessed by the likes of you!”

“Sebastian!”

The boy dropped back into his seat, deflated, and lifted the crumpled comic to cover his face. His hands were shaking.

“Is he on medication?”

A chorus of growls met this suspicion, and I could feel the hostility rising in the room. I inhaled deeply, imagining the air passing through my limbs, my chest, every cell down to my toes. I scented deodorant, raging hormones, and a taut thread of high-strung affront, but there were no weapons, no Shadow agents, and no superheroes in the bunch…including Wolfie and his plastic claws.

“Sebastian is a little sensitive,” Zane said unnecessarily. “We all are when people like you come poking around.”

Did he mean people who brush their teeth after each meal? I wondered, catching sight of something plantlike between his front teeth. “People like me?”

“People who want to study us like bugs under a microscope—”

“You tell her, Zane!”

“Who think we’re a sociological macrocosm to be dissected and analyzed, then served up in a report so you can get an A-plus in some moronic class that perpetuates the myth of modern-day society. But we don’t accept your mores and values, got it? We defy your definitions of what is right or wrong, and what is truly the norm. We defy you !” He finished off with a pump of his fat fist, accompanied by a loud chorus of victorious accord.

I looked around the store suspiciously. Seriously, reality shows were popping up in the strangest places these days.

“Now get out of here,” he said, breathing heavily, “before Sebastian really gets upset.”