Haley colored. “Sorry. I wasn’t going to take it or anything. I just wanted to look at it. My mom has the same book.”
Jeremy turned out to be a slightly chunky guy in shorts and t-shirt. The t-shirt said “Gevil” (except the “e” was a sigma) in Google’s multi-colored letters. Jeremy himself had a small mustache and five o’clock shadow.
“Does she actually believe it?”
“What? No. I don’t think so. I think she bought it at a garage sale. It was really popular once, and she was curious, so…”
“Yeah?” He pulled the tab, and opened the can, barely seeming to care.
That annoyed me, because it wasn’t as if I’d volunteered the information. He’d asked. I didn’t see any reason to start a conversation with him. If anything, I’d be willing to go out of my way to avoid it.
I pressed the down button on the elevator. If nothing else, I could leave.
I got on my stationary bike, and ignored Sean. I didn’t have anything to say to him.
As the woman in scrubs taped sensors to my arm and chest, and after she’d explained to me what I had to do, I turned to Jenny. “I saw Brooke before I met my adviser. I don’t know where she is now.”
From the row of bikes behind me, Brooke said, “Back here.”
“No reason you should remember me. Like a lot of people I attended your grandfather’s funeral, but not as myself, and I wasn’t around much during the years when you were your grandfather’s lab assistant.”
That had to be how it looked from the outside. “After the Rocket’s retirement as a hero, he stayed home and worked on devices for the community with his grandson as an assistant.”
It was accurate as far as it went, but it felt less like my life, and more like I was an appendage to Grandpa’s.
The rest of the week went by in a blur, and we spent most of it in the hotel. We did take a couple field trips—probably to make it seem like we were a normal bunch of students visiting Chicago. During one field trip we went to the Field Museum.
For the other, we toured the Midwest Defenders’ Chicago headquarters.
We got a more thorough tour than most groups, but the Defenders were all out on an emergency. That was okay. As much as I missed seeing Daniel’s dad as Mindstryke, and liked most of the other members of the team, Guardian still made me feel incompetent. Continue reading TBD: Part 7→
Izzy’s mouth twitched. If that meant she was worried, I was in agreement. She didn’t deserve to get in trouble for yanking me out of the crowd like that, but I could see how she might.
We all went into the room anyway.
Lim sat down on the table. “I wanted to talk with you about a few different things, and I’m hoping you’ll pass them on to Travis and Rachel.”
“Now,” he said, “the first two years will be mostly classes, but in the third year your classes will include internships with nearby superheroes or superhero teams. The summers starting in your second year will all be intense physical training, and—”
The sound of someone clearing her throat sounded, audible everywhere in the conference room, but not unbearably loud. Just as obviously, it hadn’t come from the speakers near the front of the room.
