Heroes 'Til Curfew

  “Get in the house,” was what he said when I was close enough to hear it without him having to raise his voice. Because he didn’t. He didn’t have to.

  I got in. Didn’t rush to comply, I just nodded reasonably and walked past. My mom opened the door for us. She must have been watching.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, right off. Because that’s what real moms do.

  “Yeah, Mom, I’m fine, I—” The door closed and I swallowed whatever else I was going to say.

  She looked up at my dad, a quick meeting of eyes. “Let’s go in the living room and sit down.”

  Which we did, but of course Dad maintained the Dad Stance.

  “I just came from Vinyl Salvation,” he said. The words dropped like rocks on my shoulders. “Last night, over the scanner, they did a good job of making it sound like a simple robbery. This morning though, when they finally tracked Rick down to come in and take a look, it was sounding like something else.”

  The way this was said invited me to reveal something, but I could wait.

  “They did quite a number on the place. Some heavy stuff tossed around, merchandise missing, destroyed, scorch marks, and then, of course, the angel. And the blood on it.”

  “Blood? What happened to the angel?” Mom wanted to know.

  “Looks like it fell on someone. And now they’ve got people coming in to look at some cracks in the plaster. They’re concerned about structural damage. Rick’s half off his head about whether or not his insurance is going to cover something like that. I, meanwhile, drive back home to find my daughter, who I thought was home in bed, waltzing down the street like she hasn’t got a care in the world.”

  And all I could think was, I was sooo close to getting away it. I just had to jinx it. The Universe always demands penalty.

  “Well, young lady?”

  “Jocelyn,” Mom began, reasonably, a little pleadingly, “you were mixed up in this somehow, weren’t you? I can see you’re all right, but the blood…Was someone hurt?”

  I turned to her, letting my hair slide over my face, a privacy screen between Dad and me. “It was Dylan.” I swallowed. Why is it that you think you’re totally fine, but as soon as you start to tell your mom it’s almost impossible to not cry?

  “That boy is nothing but—”

  “Gene, please. Is he okay, sweetheart?”

  Dad pissed me off and gave me the moment I needed to suck the tears back in. “He’s okay now. There’s this kid who can…just disintegrate stuff. He hit some of the cables that hold up the statue. Dylan saw it coming down and shoved me out of the way.”

  My mother gasped and crossed herself, a remnant from her childhood she only brings out on very special occasions. “God bless Dylan.”

  “So I assume you were busy showing off your abilities such that you missed the giant, falling statue?”

  “Yes, sir, I was engaged.”

  “And who else was there to see this?”

  I decided to stand up. If I was going to have to report, military style, I should be on my feet. So I gave him the run-down of who was there, what the abilities were, who ran off and who stayed and fought us. And the whole time he stood there, looking down on me with the Dad Look.

  “So. The cracks, the possible structural damage. How did that happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know.”

  The tone was Not Good. I could see that, below the crossed arms, my dad’s hands were white-knuckled fists, and his tick was making his eye twitchy. Which I had to try really hard not to look at because he really hated that he couldn’t control it. But I also had to maintain eye contact while trying to figure out how deep in it I was, and what he thought he saw that I didn’t.

  “The statue fell on Dylan,” Dad continued. “Something that heavy, falling from that height, would have hit the boy pretty hard. Even a glancing blow might have knocked him out. Did it knock him out?”

  “Yeah, it did. He took a good blow to the head, Dad.”

  “Bet that gave you a good scare, huh?”

  “Well of course it did!” What the hell?

  “And you were angry.”

  “Well yeah I was angry. They were wrecking the store, then that stupid piss-ant follower of Marco’s gets clumsy with his Talent—he really hurt Dylan. He could have been killed!”

  “And you were out of control.”

  “Oh Lord,” my mom breathed.

  “What? No, Dad, I totally held it together. That kid, Nathan, he got freaked out, called 911, but I totally got us out of there, got past the cops, got Dylan home. I was cool.”

  “Cool. You were cool? Is that what you’re calling it?”

  “No! Not like that. I mean—”

  “Who caused the structural damage, Joss?”

  “I don’t know. You said they only suspect—”

  I cut myself off when Dad broke the Dad Stance to grab at his hair and start pacing around the room. I took a step back before I could stop myself. Then he stopped suddenly across the room and spun to face me.

  “You did it, Jocelyn! You were out of control. You let your Talent get away from you. I suspected it when I went into the Dawson home and saw that kitchen. But I let you convince me that you had it under control. That you knew what you were doing. That you did what needed to be done.”

  “What? Yeah, ’cause that’s what happened.”

  “Don’t you take that tone with me. It’s like that fire all over again. Bad enough how it started, then you panic and almost bring the house down on your head!”

  “Gene, please—” Mom tried to cut in.

  “When they took that place down, it was cracked down into the foundation. And that didn’t happen because of any fire. How long do you think it would have taken NIAC to figure out there was another Talent to take away if we didn’t have the right friends in the right places to hush that up, huh?”

  I remembered the picture Mr. Dobbs had showed me, the one in the file Dylan had stolen for me, a black and white photo of a charred and ruined kitchen with the cabinets ripped from the walls. I didn’t remember doing that either.

  “I broke the house?” My voice sounded very small.

  My father fell into his easy chair, his elbows on his spread knees, his head in his hands. Then he looked up at me. He looked very tired. “What were you doing there in the first place?”

  “I wanted to get a line on what’s been going on down there. All these little crimes lately, the smashed windows, Mr. McGuffey’s robbery, the fire where Mueller’s used to be. And then you’re missing money and I see you making a payoff.”

  My mother put a hand over her eyes in a gesture that told me she was totally in the loop.

  “You need to keep your head down and mind your business.”

  “This is my business! The store is a family business, and I’m part of this family. Not only that, but Talents are behind it. What are we gonna let them do, Dad? Get away with it? Run the town? Let the cops handle it? Invite NIAC in to investigate our problems? I’m the only one qualified to deal—”

  “You are about the least qualified individual I can think of right now to deal with this problem, and I think you’ve proven that adequately.”

  “What’s Joss not qualified for now?” Jill asked from the entry. “Are we ever gonna have breakfast?”

  “Go fix yourself some cereal, sweetie,” Mom told her, “we’re discussing something with your sister.”

  “I wanna know.”

  “Bugs, this is an A and B conversation. C your way out of it,” Dad told her. And his expression softened a little when he said it, took some of the bite out of it.

  Yeah, she gets to be Jilly-bug. Think I ever got a name like that? Nope. Why? Because I broke a house? Because I scared Dad so bad he had to go a sanitarium? Seems fair.

  When Jill left, Dad refocused his glare. “When I agreed to cut you some slack, it wasn’t so you could hang yourself with it.”

  I had to cool off. I was being baited,
and the last thing I was going to do was chomp on it by being threatened and insulted, and ranting like a dumb kid. “That was hardly my intention. Sir.”

  “Joss,” Mom again, “you can’t let yourself feel like this is your responsibility. You’re just a girl, sweetheart.” She threw up her hands in defense of my glare. “Albeit the most capable, the most…bad ass, if you will, girl in the world at this time.”

  It was almost impossible not to snicker at my mom saying “badass,” and saying it like she was picking up old gym socks, but I managed.

  “But,” she continued, “you’re only one person. And the thing that makes you feel most invincible is also the thing that makes you most vulnerable.”

  “Maybe I should call myself Irony Girl.”

  “This is not a joke,” Dad cut in, “and damn McGuffey for ever giving you those banned comics. They’ve already got that costumed vigilante crap going on up in Banner, attracting all kinds of attention to the Talents there. The minute you put on a mask, you are out of this house.”

  “Gene!”

  “That’s exactly where she’s headed and I will not have it. There’s no excuse for this kind of recklessness, Joan. We’ve tried it your way, and it’s not working. She’s way out of line, out of control, and it’s got to stop.” He turned on me. “This whole experiment is over. I don’t care what you have to tell those people, I don’t care what kind of attention it calls to you. Your free time after school privilege is revoked. You are not to have any unnecessary communication with any of those kids. Do not speak to them in school any more than is required—and you know full well what that means. No more phone calls. I don’t want to see any of them in my shop or showing up at my home. You make sure that’s clear to them. Especially Dylan.”

  “No! You can’t do that!” I felt like I was being shoved into a box and the lid was coming down. I felt desperate to keep from being trapped in there again. And it wasn’t just Dylan, though the idea of not being able to see him anymore made me crazy. It was everyone. It was my whole life. As much as the changes were weird and uncomfortable, I suddenly knew that it was so much better than what I’d had before. I couldn’t go back. I just couldn’t.

  “It’s done. You did it to yourself. This conversation is over.”

  “The hell it is!”

  “Jocelyn!” my mother gasped.

  “I’m not giving them up. Not my friends, not my life. Not anymore. I’m sorry that it’s been so hard for you, having a daughter like me. I am. And I’m sorry that I got in that trouble with Emily. But that was twelve years ago and I have paid for that. I’ve given up my whole life paying for that. I’ve done everything you asked me to do. I’ve been everything you wanted me to be. But that’s not who I am and I just can’t do it anymore.”

  “And just who do you think you are?”

  “I’m—I’m not someone who just stands by and watches while bad things happen to other people! Not anymore. I have abilities and I have a responsibility to use them!”

  “That’s bullshit. The only responsibility you have is to—”

  “Keep my head down, keep my nose clean? This is what you’ve made me, Dad! Can’t you see that? My whole life you trained me to fight and you expect me to just sit and watch bad things happen and pretend I don’t have the power to stop them. What’s it all for? For someday? When does someday start?”

  “It starts when I tell you it starts. Until then, you stop running around risking your future like some idiot idealist punk kid!”

  “And what kind of future am I risking? A whole future of this? Of hiding? Of never doing anything or having anything worthwhile?”

  “Joan?”

  “Joss, sweetheart,” Mom crooned, “you’re being very dramatic.”

  I was feeling pretty dramatic. I realized tears were running down my cheeks and that underneath all the things I wanted to scream at them, huge sobs were trying to push their way out of my chest. I looked at my dad, with his brows drawn down over a hard, angry face. My mom looked up at me, disappointed, her eyes pleading with me to back down and end this. To be her good girl.

  “It’s my life,” I ground out, trying to keep my back teeth set against everything I was holding back, “and if I do what you want me to do, there’s going to be nothing worth saving it for.”

  Then I just turned and walked out. Dad called me back, and I heard Mom talking quietly to him as I climbed the stairs. She’d be telling him to let me go, to give me some time, and she’d really mean for both of us to take some time to cool off. Come back and talk about this later.

  I needed to take some time, but it didn’t matter how much cooling off we did, Dad and I were never going to see eye to eye on this stuff. I was trying to hold it together, but my whole body was shaking from the confrontation, and in the wake of all the things I was just now starting to realize about myself, and even about my dad. I had a lot of thinking to do.

  But I couldn’t do that right now. Right now I needed to get ready for school, and before I did that, I had some packing to do.

  Chapter 11

  Dylan

  “So, you sure charmed my mom. I’m afraid I missed a lot of what went on last night, though.” I swung our joined hands as we walked to a meet-up at the Warren.

  “Oh yeah? What’d she say?” Joss’s tone was guarded. She’d been in a weird mood today. Even for Joss she’d been quieter, less eye contact. But yet when I took her hand her grip was quick and harder than it should have been. I don’t know, there was just something about her today that felt…brittle. I guessed it had something to do with last night.

  “Um…I’m not gonna repeat what she said. There was an I don’t want you to see that girl anymore vibe to it, though.” I was trying for a joking tone.

  “Oh.”

  I felt her go stiff beside me, so I bumped my arm against her shoulder. I didn’t want to be bringing this up. It was embarrassing, knowing that she’d been to my place, met my mom. I’d never intended for that to happen, ever, and not knowing what went on while I was out of it was really getting to me. I couldn’t bring it up at school because it seemed like no one would leave us alone today. But now that we were strolling down a public street, there was nothing to do but rip off the Band-Aid and find out what had happened.

  “Obviously, her opinion has great relevance in my life.” I made sure there was enough sarcasm in my voice that Joss couldn’t mistake my meaning even if she wanted to.

  “You know it’s my fault you’re not stealing for her anymore.”

  Fuck. “Is that what she said?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Well, I wanted to know what they talked about, didn’t I? What was I supposed to say to that? Especially since it was pretty much true. I mean, it had been fun, seeing what I could get away with, and it felt good, bringing things to my mom that made her happy for a while. Then it wasn’t fun anymore, she started to expect things, was harder to please, and I just didn’t feel the need to keep trying so hard. And then there was Marco, pushing, raising the stakes. And then there was Joss, making me want to make a change, making me feel like maybe I could.

  “It sounded like you were supporting her? With the stealing.”

  “No. I never took that much, and we never, you know, tried to fence stuff.” Like that somehow made it better. “Mom’s always had a job—two jobs at one point. What I brought were the extras, things she couldn’t afford to buy us because she was always paying the rent, car repairs, food…grown-up stuff. I kept us in stuff like cigarettes and sometimes something special like jewelry or electronics.”

  “Or a flat screen.”

  “Yeah, that was a—” Um, no, I cut myself off. Joss is not going to be amused by the story of that caper. “Stuff like that.”

  “And she just thinks it’s okay, to encourage you to steal?”

  “I don’t think she really thinks too hard about it. I mean, she gets really down sometimes. It’s been hard on her since my dad left, and sometimes she just needs a little pic
k-me-up, you know?”

  A glance a Joss’s tight-lipped profile told me that she didn’t know. At all. And I was dangerously close to trying to justify something she would never understand. I should just shut up.

  * * *

  Joss

  Is it really wrong to hate your boyfriend’s mom? No, right? That’s like a classic in-law dynamic. I mean, not that we’re anywhere close to that yet! Clearly, being this pissed off at her, on top of everything else, was making me crazy and I needed to just turn it off. Because thinking about it might lead to saying something about it, and it probably wouldn’t be cool to tell Dylan just what I thought of his mother.

  Damn that woman for treating him that way.

  “Joss? You’re thinking. What are you thinking?”

  “I don’t know. Not a lot.” Or, actually, everything. About how when you go to work I have to sneak back to my house and get the bag I dropped into the hedge this morning and bring it back here because I’m not going home tonight. And about how maybe I want to tell you about that but also I’m not ready. And probably how, on my way back from getting my stuff, I want to stop by your mom’s and punch her in the face for being such a lousy human being.

  “There’s scowling. You have scowl-face.”

  We had reached our entrance to the Warren, and, as we checked the area and moved the grate, I felt myself smile. I couldn’t help it. It was like he knew when I needed a reset, and always knew what to say. This is part of what I loved about Dylan. Ugh, and there was that love thing again, making me feel kind of weak and silly.

  I scowled down at Dylan gratuitously as he climbed down the ladder. “You don’t like my face?”

  His low voice drifted up as I climbed down. “Get down here so I can tell you what I think.”

  As I neared the bottom of the ladder, his arms came around me from behind, stopping my descent and giving me chills as he nuzzled my neck.