Henry wrinkled his nose. “Spreading the heroism around? You sound like you plan to do more of that.”
Miles could see where this conversation was headed. If Henry thought Miles’s trip had been a one-time thing, then he’d probably let it slide. But Miles wasn’t in a let-it-slide mood. He was in a hold-his-ground, no-one-was-going-to-order-him-around mood.
“Why shouldn’t I? It’s a big world, you know. It’s full of people who need my help.”
“Your help,” Henry stated.
“That’s what I said.”
“Not Gilded’s?”
“Same thing.”
“No, Miles,” Henry said icily. “It isn’t. You’re an eighth grader. Gilded is a superhero. If you’re having trouble remembering who’s who, you’re the one with the zits.”
Miles’s jaw tightened. “Watch it, Henry. Now isn’t a good time to take cheap shots.”
Henry sighed, knitting his brow like a concerned mother. “You’re right. You’re a wreck. You won’t be any good to anyone today.” He reached into his shoulder bag, pulling out a pad of nurse’s slips and a pen. “I’m signing you out,” he said, scribbling. “Go home and get some sleep.”
Sleeeeep.
Miles mustered enough energy to smile. “Finally, something we agree on.”
Henry scowled, then ripped the slip from the pad. “Here’s something we aren’t going to agree on. Hand over the backpack.”
Miles jolted like he’d been doused with ice water. “What?”
Henry held out his hand. “You heard me. I’m grounding you. Give me the cape.”
Miles stepped away from Henry, his fingers clenching the straps of his backpack. It was instinct. He was protecting what was his and his alone. “No.”
Henry took on the posture of a ten-foot-tall man packaged inside a below-five-foot-tall body. He meant business. “You can’t be trusted with it. I let you leave here with it, you won’t go home. You’ll go searching for a fender bender or a cat stuck in a tree—any excuse to turn into Gilded.
“It’s only for a few hours. Just long enough for you to get some rest. We’ll talk about it more when you have a clear head.”
Miles’s head was abundantly clear. He pressed his back against the wall of the hallway. “No,” he repeated.
Henry stepped forward, staring up into Miles’s face. He pushed his glasses up his nose, which for Henry was the equivalent a barroom brawler rolling up his sleeves before a fistfight.
“Miles, you will give me that cape, or I won’t give you a slip to go home. I’ll go to Mr. Harangue and tell him I caught you cutting class. I’ll tell him I suspect you have contraband in your backpack. He’ll take it from you. He’ll search it. What do you think will happen then?”
There was no telling what would happen then. Mr. Harangue probably wouldn’t think anything of the cape, except that Miles was a little too old to be bringing a superhero costume to school.
But what if he thought more? What if the cape was vibrating? What if he caught a glimpse of its beautiful, enthralling glow? He might get scared and turn it over to the police. He might keep it for himself. Whatever happened, it’d be the end. Miles would go back to being a nobody. Forever.
Miles’s resolve weakened. “You wouldn’t.”
Henry lifted onto his tiptoes and craned his neck upward, almost bringing his eyes directly in line with Miles’s. “Try me.”
Miles wilted. All the incredible things he’s done over the past two days, but he was powerless to defend himself against a pint-sized kid threatening to tattletale. He was embarrassed and infuriated, the heat of both burning his skin. He shrugged off his backpack and shoved it at Henry. “Here.”
Henry nodded. “You’re doing the right thing.”
Miles simmered. “What if something goes wrong, Henry? What if the world needs me?”
Henry pushed the nurse’s slip into Miles’s hand. “The world does need you. I know you don’t believe me, but that’s why I’m doing this. Go home. I’ll meet you at your apartment after school. I won’t let the cape out of my sight, I promise. As for the world, it can survive a few hours without you.”
Henry walked off, Miles’s backpack clutched to his chest.
Miles wanted to run after him, beg him to give back the cape, swear to be better. But he knew it was no use. Henry had made up his mind. Miles was stuck being himself until Henry decided otherwise.
He’d never felt so small and alone.
CHAPTER
10
ATLANTA WAS BURNING.
The sky was black with smoke and ash. Miles didn’t know if it was day or night. The ground shook beneath his feet, like the Earth itself was being wounded. Somewhere in the distance, a woman screamed.
Miles couldn’t remember how he’d arrived downtown. He didn’t know what caused the cataclysm. He only knew he had to stop it. He reached for his backpack, knowing the answer lay safely hidden within.
It was gone.
He searched the ground frantically for his backpack. Acrid haze seared his eyes, stopping him from seeing. It grew thicker, billowing over and around him. He choked and spluttered, wiping his face until soot-stained tears muddied his hands and cheeks.
A skyscraper crumbled. The ground shuddered anew. Another scream in the distance. “Gilded! Please, save us!”
Miles wanted to answer, but the smoke smothered his words. I’m here! he thought desperately. Has anyone seen my backpack?
• • •
Miles bolted upright in bed, his sheets sopped with sweat. Lightning flashed, setting his dark room aglow. A thunderclap followed on its heels, rolling through like an overburdened cargo train. Then came the hushed beats where the world takes stock.
A Georgia storm was in the offing.
It was night, but which night? Miles’s extended stint as Gilded had caused him to completely lose track of time. Had he slept for hours? Days? He felt disconnected from the world, out of touch and out of sync. This, from a kid who hung his shirts in his closet arranged by color. All was not right in Miles Taylor’s world.
Through the drowsiness, he heard voices murmuring in the living room: his dad and Henry. He couldn’t make out their words, but he didn’t need to. He knew what they were discussing.
He was awake now.
Miles leaped from his bed and pulled on his jeans and a T-shirt. This was a discussion he wouldn’t allow himself to be excluded from. No way. The old man had given the cape to him. He alone knew how to wield it. And he would decide its future.
(Not until after he combed his hair and brushed his teeth, though. People with tangled hair and funky breath were never taken seriously.)
Miles threw open his bedroom door and strode down the hall. He was strong. He was confident. He was the Golden Great. And he was more than capable of knowing what was best for him.
Mr. Taylor and Henry were seated at the dinette table. They were hunched forward and talking close, like conspirators whispering in a foreign café.
“What’s going on here?” Miles demanded.
Mr. Taylor sat back. His expression made it clear that only one person would be doing the demanding tonight, and it wasn’t going to be Miles. He pointed in the direction of the living room sofa. “Sit. Down.”
Strength, confidence, and greatness: evaporated.
“Yes, sir.” Miles bowed his head and moved toward the sofa as instructed. You can be a thirteen-year-old. You can be a superhero. But when your dad looks at you like that, you do what the man says. The end.
“Dad, I—”
“Not one word,” Mr. Taylor interrupted.
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. Taylor and Henry followed Miles into the living room. Miles sat on the sofa, but they remained standing. Miles remembered a time when his dad was suspicious of Henry. When Henry and Miles were a team, working together to prevent Mr. Taylor and everyone else from finding out about the cape. Now Henry and Mr. Taylor were the “we,” and Miles was the outsider. Forces were allying again
st him.
Then Miles saw it. Henry must’ve had it stashed somewhere out of sight before, but now he had the backpack—Miles’s backpack—holding the cape—Miles’s cape—over his shoulders. It looked awkward on him, too big and bulging for his small frame.
On Miles the backpack fit like Baby Bear’s bed: just right. Because he was the hero. He saved people. He thwarted disasters.
Henry didn’t know anything about that. All he did was sit around, face buried in his phone, and think up new things to scold Miles about.
Maybe sensing he was a lousy match for the backpack and its contents, Henry slipped it off and set it on the coffee table. Miles gauged whether he could snatch it up and be out the window before anyone stopped him. He’d slept the whole day and maybe longer, plenty of time for the world to fall into danger. He was definitely needed somewhere. Right now.
Miles reached into his pocket for his cell phone, but it was empty.
“Searching for this?” Mr. Taylor said, holding up the phone. “I’ll be keeping it.”
“You can’t!” Miles protested.
Mr. Taylor fumed. “You were gone all night! No phone call home. No checking in to tell me you were okay. Henry thankfully had the good sense to let me know what was going on. I’m your dad, and the only way I knew what part of the country you were in was to hope somebody was covering it on the news. This has to stop, son. It will stop. In this household, if you break the rules, there are consequences.” He slid the phone into the back pocket of his work pants. “Henry says you two can get along just fine without your phone. So that’s how it’s going to be. Welcome to consequences.”
Henry nodded in agreement, like sticking the knife in Miles’s back didn’t warrant a second thought.
“Henry doesn’t know anything!” Miles wasn’t going to let them gang up on him. He was the sole inheritor of the cape. Everyone else was nonessential personnel. “So he carries a phone in a holster. Big deal. He just likes pretending he’s in on the action.”
“Pretending?” Henry spluttered. “Pretending?”
Mr. Taylor put a hand on Henry’s shoulder. “I’ll handle this.” Then he turned to Miles, his expression resolute. “If taking away your phone has you this hot, you’re really not going to like this next bit: I’m taking the cape, too.”
“That’s not fair!” Miles erupted. Take the cape? That was too insane to even consider. “That girl in Nashville and the gunman in Dallas—those weren’t traffic jams. Those were real emergencies putting real people in danger. Was I supposed to ignore them? You’re acting like you want people to get hurt.”
“Don’t you dare put that on me. You’re Gilded. I know that. But, darn it, you’re also my son. Taking care of you is my number one job. Everyone else . . . I hope they have their own people to look out for them. I really do. Because it can’t always be you.”
The backpack was within reach. Miles imagined the cape glowing inside, its gorgeous, golden light begging to be let out. No one but him could make it shine. “It can always be me,” he said defiantly. “It will be.”
Mr. Taylor raked his fingers through his hair, like he was going to rip it out by the roots. “What’s the matter with you? It’s gotten so I can’t even talk sense to you.”
Henry unzipped Miles’s backpack and reached inside. Miles envisioned Henry’s fingers probing for the cape, grabbing it roughly as though it were his to do with as he wished. His internal reaction was visceral, instinctual, like how he imagined a guard dog felt when an intruder started its way up a fence. It took everything he had not to jump at Henry, canines bared. Every. Thing.
What Henry pulled from the backpack wasn’t the cape, but the copy of Gilded Age he’d gifted to Miles. “I bought this for you,” he said, handing the comic book to Miles. “What do you think about when you see it?”
Miles rolled his eyes and snatched the copy from Henry. “You want me to give you a book report now? What’s next, writing sentences on a dry-erase board?”
Miles glanced down at the cover image of Gilded’s right cross punching the toothy snarl off Lord Commander Calamity’s face. The image thrilled him just as it had the first time he’d seen it—and every time he’d thought of it since.
“I see me,” Miles said, emphasizing the “me” so that it also implied “not you.” He flipped the comic book onto the coffee table.
Henry pressed his lips together. Miles was getting under his skin. Good. This was a waste of time, particularly to the people of the world who needed Gilded right now. The sooner it was over, the better.
Henry picked the comic book up again and began flipping through the pages. “Sure,” he hissed. “Of course you see you. But I don’t. I see a hero who was scared to death but risked his life anyway because he knew he had to. Not because he wanted to be on the cover of a comic book but because it was the right thing to do. That’s not you anymore. At least not right now. Right now you’re a whiny eighth grader who thinks decking a few aliens means he has the brainpower to be global guardian.”
Ouch. So it was going to be like that? Fine. Let it be like that.
“At least I can’t be replaced by a smartphone,” Miles said.
“Son,” Mr. Taylor cut in, “Henry has been a friend to you. You best stop and think about what kind of friend you want to be back to him.”
Henry looked at Mr. Taylor. Miles could tell he’d cut him deep. “I’m fine, Mr. Taylor. I can hack it.”
Henry turned the backpack over, emptying the contents onto the coffee table. Miles’s math book and a couple of pencils tumbled out, the flowing fabric of the cape sliding after. It was a treasure, and Henry had dumped it onto the table like sweaty gym socks. Where was the respect?
“Remember how we met?” Henry said. “You’d just gotten the cape. You didn’t know the first thing about how to use it. Sometimes it worked for you and sometimes it didn’t, and you had no clue why. We figured it out together. It only works when you do what’s right.
“Think about how amazing that is. All the heroes we look up to, but we always get let down in the end. Remember the baseball player who got caught gambling on his own games? And then there was that teen actress who always plays nice girls in the movies, but got videoed at the mall being mean to her own mom. Turned out they were both just people. We all do bad stuff sometimes.
“But not Gilded. He can’t be bad. He can’t ever do wrong. He’s the totally perfect hero who makes us all want to be better people. And he’ll never disappoint us.”
It could’ve been a reflection on his glasses, but Miles thought he saw a hint of tears welling at the bottoms of Henry’s eyes.
“Things are really hard for you right now,” Henry continued. “You’ve got responsibilities coming at you from every direction, and you don’t know what to do. I blame myself. I should’ve realized it was happening. I’m not sure what to do about it yet, but just like before, we’ll figure it out. Together.”
Miles saw the sincerity in Henry’s demeanor. There was no faking something like that. He really did want to help.
Then the unthinkable happened.
Henry grabbed the cape.
He slid his fingers across the shimmering fabric, and he smiled. The cape glowed, its beautiful light reflecting off his face.
Miles knew how that light felt—warm like a spring sun—but he couldn’t feel it right then. He couldn’t hear the soothing hum. But he bet Henry felt and heard it all.
How had Miles not seen this coming? It was so obvious now.
“You’re jealous,” Miles breathed.
Henry’s head snapped around. “What?”
“I’m so stupid. You want the cape. You want to be Gilded. That’s what this has been about the whole time. Telling me what to do and where to go. Deciding when I can wear the cape and when I can’t. You want me to fail. So you can convince everyone you deserve the cape instead of me.”
“You’re stupid all right,” Henry said angrily. He stood from the sofa, the cape clenched in one fist.
“And you,” Miles said, glaring at his dad. “You don’t like me being Gilded, either. You liked it better when I was just me. The new kid in school with no friends. The kid whose own mother didn’t want to be around him. Because then it was just us hanging out all the time. Well, I have more important things to do now.”
Mr. Taylor looked at Miles like he was speaking a made-up language that made no sense. “I have no idea what to say. When did you stop being you?”
“Don’t say anything. Just know that I’m onto you. Both of you. But I’m not going to give up being Gilded. Not ever. I am Gilded. Gilded is me. I’m a hero.”
“You . . . you . . .” Henry was bubbling like a volcano about to explode. “You call yourself a HERO?”
Miles puffed his chest out, pride inflating him. “Everyone calls me a hero. All the people who’ve seen me fly. All the readers of Gilded Age. Anyone who watches the news or listens to the stories about me on the radio. That’s who calls me a hero.”
Henry looked so mad, if his ears were steam whistles, they would’ve been shrieking. “They’re wrong. Maybe you were once, but now I’m not sure. If you were a true hero, the best day of your life would be the day you didn’t have to wear the cape anymore. The day the world didn’t need Gilded because no one was in danger or getting hurt.
“But you?” Henry jabbed his finger at Miles. “You want to wear the cape. You want to be a hero. Don’t you get what that means? It means you want bad things to happen. You look forward to them. Because they give you a reason to be Gilded.”
Miles balled his hands into fists. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, so quit pretending you know anything about being a hero. Get it through your tiny head: You aren’t Gilded.”
“Clearly,” Henry snapped. “But at least my tiny head has a brain in it.”
Mr. Taylor stepped in. “That’s about enough from the both of you. Henry makes a point, son. There’s no denying it. More and more you search for reasons to go to the cape. Jackknifed chicken trucks and rush-hour traffic and all manner of other nuisances. It’s like you’re hogging all the heroism to yourself. At first I thought it was just your way, you trying to organize the world like your skivvies drawer. I guess that’s why I wasn’t as harsh with your punishment as I should’ve been when you broke your promise about dialing yourself back.