"Angelos? Bud? Good news."

My hands are dashed with small, shallow cuts. I'm lying on the couch with my face pushed into the pillows. My breath is gasping and a new bruise wells up under my eye. Blue or black, I'm at least partially sure. When I try to speak, my tongue is heavy and suckers to the roof of my mouth. "Hrrm?"

"Aaron texted me. The cast lists are up."

"Ugh." I chew my lip, playing broken skin between my teeth. I'm less speaking and more whistling, attention drawn to a creaking forearm under armored hands, numbing. "G-great."

Someone is stroking my hair. The fragrance of vanilla lingers in the air, pulled in with my every gasping breath. "He's gone," she says against my skin. Her breath is a warm puff on my cheekbone. "You didn't hurt anyone. You're okay, hon."

Somewhere, Jaylin grunts. I squeeze my eyes shut, thinking only of the blackness that overtook me, the sound of my aura's thoughts. Darkness strung into poetic cadences, the rush of strange emotions. Kill. Reign. My own panicked shouts of equations and multiplication tables in a quickly smothered attempt to push him out. How I held my eyes shut and pressed my face into the crook of my elbow so he couldn't hurt my brother. And how, seconds later, I lost control. My thoughts, whisked to some dark, hidden place as his raced, loud and pounding.

Brains are gray globs of slimy meat. They shouldn't break.  "Why is this happening to me?" I say. "What did I do to deserve this?"

Fear rattles inside me. My breathing is still quick, and the sounds leaking from my mouth are soft and squeaky.

"You want to guess who's Romeo?" Gats asks, but I'm not listening. I'm trying to still my shaking. To breathe again.

Jaylin grabbed me by a fist full of shirt and pushed my face into the cushions. I don't remember what I said to her. All I remember was fear, Luce's and mine, and how I so vividly thought of her cackling laughter, her ropes around my wrists, her strips of tape on my face. I must've hit her, because under the sweet vanilla of Heaven's perfume, I can still smell blood. I must've hit her because she dug her nails into the back of my neck and pressed my face so deeply into the couch, I stopped breathing. You ever been smothered by a cushion? Your lungs wheezing desperately for air, big black spots welling up in front of your eyes? Words become gasps. Thoughts become screams. You flounder and cry as you drown in a room full of air. And then? Then, there's only darkness.

And it sucks. 

"You." Gatsby's claws tap gently on the crown of my skull, sheathing and unsheathing, so I feel the cool talons and then the hollows of his fingertips. His voice is a happy croon, gentle and quiet. "You're going to be a lead."

"Oh," I murmur through a clumsy tongue. Heaven releases my arm, leaving the bone creaking under slashed skin. I don't remember her coming. Just the searing wounds on my hands and her ever-tightening grip on my arms. I turn over, blinking up at my friends. Heaven, with the visor of her mother's armor slid up. Her eyes fluttering, then falling tacitly shut again, shoulders slumped. Soot stains her armor. Gatsby, blue eyes big and round, smiling sympathetically. He touches me again, and I only glimpse Jaylin by a locke of black hair and an ice pack over her eyes. I bolt upright, and pain uncoils deep in my chest cavity. My hands grope at the arms of the couch. My brains ooze and ache behind eyes I blink, once, twice, but my eyes still seer behind burning eyelids. I'm a lead. Freaking-whip-ee. I mean, yeah. I wanted a role. And it aches, that something I cared about has, suddenly, become nothing at all.

He says, "I'm your understudy." A smile creeps across his face, and his eyes, which I'm used to seeing perpetually rounded, have fallen back to their normal width. With his cheeks flushed bright and that small smile lingering on his smug face, I'd almost say he looks happy. Makes me sit up a little more, though my ribs sear. For weeks now, I don't think 'happy' and 'Gatsby' fit in the same sentence.

"They meant it the other way around." My voice is a croak. I crack opens up in my chest, some swell burning in the back of my throat. Regret is a strange, sour taste on my tongue. I wish I'd gone to the school and seen the list for myself. I wish I could feel the way I'm supposed to, happy and proud. Instead, I feel nothing but numb, dashed with nostalgia for a present I don't get to have. "That's your role, dude."

Heaven leans against the couch arm. She rests her fingertips on Katris's knee, and for the first time he doesn't start. Just sort of sighs, his breathing still elevated. Wheezing in and out in quick nebulous puffs.

"So we're not going to talk about what happened? With the aura? At all?" Jaylin asks. She stalks across the living room, ice bag pressed to her face. My heart sinks into my stomach. But before I can speak to her, to voice an apology, maybe, a metallic clang booms outside the door. There is a hiss and twist of a key trying the knob. Jay huffs and throws the door open, just as Heaven startles to her feet.

"Fire," she murmurs. "I have to go." She lays a hand on Katris's shoulder. She kisses him on his forehead, a brisk touch, her fingers smoothing his bandages. And then she stalks toward the balcony while Gats never bothers to look up, leaving his hand lingering on my shoulder.

June slips inside, and I'm already standing at a limp. The sun is setting outside, and through the pans of the hall window, the orange light sweeps into the room, and for a moment, I stand still, breathless. I dream of fire so much I breathe it, think it. My nails are chewed to stubs and my cuticles torn to forked white scabs of skin. June tucks her suitcase into the closet, bent over. Her skin is so damp with a mist or sweat, her silk waist shirt outlines her small, frail form. Jaylin's staring at the sunset, arms crossed.

"Cleo's back," is all she says, aura forgotten. June's suitcase hits the ground with a thud.

"Come again?"

"She's the one who hurt Poison."

June turns toward us. Her eyes widen as they sweep over Katris's hunched form, his hand pressed to his cheek, winding the bandages around his fingers. When June g'asps, it's a strangled sound, less like she's surprised, and more like she's gulping for air in sinking quicksand. She's even jauntier than when I last her, like a skeleton wrapped in bandages of skin. Bloodshot eyes blink at Jaylin, then at me. "She's in prison. She can't be in Starlight City."

Katris speaks. His voice is quiet. "I would know who tortured me."

"And I would know what my mother looks like it." But Juniper isn't listening. She kneels in front of Katris, who is still slumped and shaking, despite the cool cadence of his speech.  She places her hands on his shoulders and whispers into his ears. He jerks and rattles violently. And then he nods once, collapsing against the cushions with a sound that isn't quite a squeak and isn't quite a sigh.

 My stopped heart begins to beat again, slow and painful. "I...I'll go."

I swallow and the moisture fills the dry patches on my tongue. Jaylin tosses her hair, long and dark, against the back of her neck with a humorless snort. Gats glances up at me, his earlier smile fading, quickly fading, until it is only a frown. He stuffs both hands in his pockets and shuffles into his bedroom, and I leave for mine. Keppler sweeps past me. She sniffs at my feet, barks once, and then follows after Gats with a few, short happy yips. I wonder if I scare her now. I scare everyone I love.

I keep my sketchbook hidden under my folded shirts, top drawer.  Once I shut the bedroom door, I sketch in the already yellowing eves with the book held over my head. I think of my father, and I try to sketch him from memory. After several false starts and once my hands are smeared with ink, I finally get the shape of his face. And then I start on the blurry features, the structure, my features, and my structure. He had kind eyes. Just as black and just as cool as mine, but softer somehow. It's the crow's feet, I think. He must've smiled a lot, once. June and Jaylin are yelling at each other, and as I lay on my back, the apartment falls silent. My door flies open, and I'm staring at it upside down, pen still gripped in my stinging fingers. Jaylin frowns down at me.

She's cute at this angle, her hair piled up in a bun. Dark chunks fall over her eyes and behind her ears in loose, bouncy tendrils. "Hey," I say, reaching up at her. My hand is still stinging from Heaven's cuts, and my pulse is a roar in my upside-down-head. "You, uh, you okay?"

Jaylin rubs her bloodshot eyes, taking my hand in hers. Her palm is damp with sweat, but I only smell the shea lotion rubbed into her skin and the sweet fragrance of her shampoo. "Angel, come with me. I want to talk to you."

I stagger to a stand, dripping ink rivulets down her wrist. "Where to?"

"Oh, just out" is all she says. I'm propped against her shoulder. My legs are like stilts, stiff and clumsy. In the kitchen, a blade comes down hard on the chopping board, again and again, and I can smell the savory scents of broth bubbling on the stove. She shoves out of the apartment, my fingers intertwining with hers. We take the service elevator to the street below, and though my every limb pulses with a unique sort of ache, I keep a shut mouth. I don't go out with Jay much anymore, so Luce can fuss and attempt murder as much as he wants. I'll think about him later.

We leave the misty streets and enter the superhero museum through its back entrance. After paying our customary seven dollar dues, we climb the circle of stairs together. Each level represents a super, all smelling of fresh paint. We pass a moving 3D image of Mars hefting her battle axe over her shoulder, a free, meaty hand extended downward. A little girl waddles curiously toward the super, placing her hand on the image's. We pass a billiard's room, all bright shades of green and dim lighting, leather chairs pushed up against the walls and the cushions scuffed and dented as if with use. A recreation of Jupiter's basement, lifted detail for detail from Luna's diary. You can buy a copy at the gift shop for twenty dollars a book. It ends mid-sentence and I cried after I finished it.

The funny thing, I realize, is that she's probably my aunt. And it isn't a funny thing. It strikes me as tragic. I could sit her, in the fake basement the old supers used to gather in, making plans and shooting painted balls into cups and shouting at Jupiter for his drinking problem. I could sit here, reflecting. But Jaylin only offers it a passing glance and treks higher into the museum, her fingers twined tightly with mine.

The Room of Love.

The ceiling is a canopy of electric twinkling stars, the center of the room, a monument to Nebula and Taurus. The two of them are embracing, their faces rapt with joy.

 What the adults in the museum don't know, or what they don't let on to know, is that the pedestal beneath the stone heroes' feet is hollow. Thousand of teens trek to the museum to make out beneath the stars and the hugging heroes; the pedestal is stuffed with flowers, pillows, blankets. Security clears them, but every time I've glanced inside, the floor is covered in plush throws and fresh petals. Jaylin glances over her shoulder at me, and I shrug, tugging the scabs on my palms. She slips inside and I follow. Just her and me and the faded smell of roses lingering on the walls. We're sitting together, criss-cross applesauce, knees touching. I bring my non-bleeding hand to her face, since that feels like the thing I'm supposed to do in a place like this. But I'm thinking back to my aura explosion, and she doesn't reciprocate. Her fingers spider on my kneecap.

"It's really private up here," she says. Her breath is quick. "Needed to talk to you."

I let my hand linger on her cheek. "Okay."

"You have to get out of Starlight."

"We've talked about this." My heart is a lump stuck to the back of my throat. "Can't do it. Don't have a car. Gotta do something to Syndicate."

"No, no. Not what I meant." She leans forward, taking my bleeding hand in hers. She clenches it. "June signed your bill of Sale. Cleo...my mom...scares Fallout. He's gonna get you and Hev'll try to stop him, but she's only so strong."

I close my eyes, as if I can shut out the truth if I refuse to look at the person whose bringing it. I'm tired of crying. Tired of panicking. After losing myself to Luce, I only want to lay my head on her shoulder and sleep. Instead, I try to make my voice smooth. "How much longer do you think I have?"

She presses her thumb to the torn parts of my palm. "A few hours."

***

Hi, guys. It's been a little over a month since I lasted updated this story, which is unfair to you. I've posted why I've been struggling so much with this in my 'Hero Stuff' author book, but I'm getting back at it and I'll have an update for you next Monday.