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Grade
11

My phone rang, barely audible over the laughter of the couple three booths down. I jabbed at the green answer button and snapped, “Yes? What do you need?” A nearby server shot me an admonishing look. I swallowed my anger down and added, “Boss.”

With that, she decided to ignore my petulance and set out to finish what she started. “Psykick, Doombringer was sighted in your general vicinity just an hour before. Stay alert, even during your date.”

She hung up. I sat there staring down at the screen of my phone. Alone.

My knuckles went white around the edge of the phone. My sight tunneled in onto my phone and I bit back my anger, choking on it. The cry of I’m being stood up, again! burned going down. A hot coil of shame curled around my guts, tightening with every breath. This shouldn't be any different, even if my date was Jack.

The only name he had for me was Matilda, his best friend, as he told me once. Matilda, the genius college girl and not Psykick, the apprentice to the greatest superhero in the city. That's the only side of me he really knows.

A red apron fluttered as someone stopped next to me, “Excuse me, miss, your order?”

I took my time, settling the Matilda personality back into place. I raked my eyes up and down the disheveled server, finally arching a brow at the neon orange hair. “I don’t think you’ll be able to take that order,” I said. “ Maybe choose a more put together disguise next time, alright?”

“You’re too perceptive for your own good Mat.” The server — it had to be Jack — sat down across from me, pulling the apron off to set to the side.

I just shrugged at his comment, a rather sharp smile on my face as I let the rage go. There was no point in staying mad at him when he was the only good thing left in my life. “You’re late.” I pointed out.

“Traffic was terrible,” he said as he smoothed his hair down.

“Liar.”

The conversation died as we each sized the other one up, the standard procedure used after meeting someone from the internet. Correcting assumptions and the like. Perhaps not so much for Jack, as he’d probably seen at least a couple pictures with my face in them. But for me…

“Jack, would it have killed you to add a selfie to your account? Could have saved me the trouble.”

He just gave me an irritated glare, “Don’t you know that you’re supposed to avoid putting a lot of personal information on the internet?”

“I don’t see what the problem is, I mean, you have a pretty nice face.” Bingo, a blush. Plus it looks like he’s completely forgotten about his tirade about internet safety. He cleared his throat and dived into our last debate that we ended up pausing this morning.

We danced around words like “date” and “girlfriend” and “boyfriend”, and instead stick with familiar arguments. Before I had always won them, with my clever use of words, but in person, Jack was far more persuasive. He used charming smiles and a soothing voice in a pretty good attempt to win me over to his side. But I’ve heard his arguments before, and refuted every one of them.

A real server came over with food to break up our latest debate about whether or not the villains of the city should be contained in their own prison or just have special cells.

“How bad was the traffic, Jack. For real this time, I have classes I need to get to soon, and if there’s a couple of blown up banks I have to leave soon.”

“Eh, it really wasn’t that bad,” he said, pausing to steal a fry from me, “I’m sure that there won’t be anything newsworthy happening here.”

“Why would you think that?” I asked. He stopped moving, fry hovering midair as he processed this question. For the first time during this whole date, I found myself completely focused on him. An innocent question about a rather flippant response and this, this was the reaction?

I started paying more attention, noting his sloppy response that was trying too hard to be casual. I kept the conversation rolling, throwing questions about his college life at him and noting the tension that faded from him. From then on his stilted responses seemed to be less like his personality and more like self-editing. Carefully dribbling out small drops of personal information.

Jack was paranoid about exposing his personal life. I pushed around the remaining food in my plate, slowly tapping my finger against the side of my face as I considered the similarities between the two of us. Jack pointed out that the server was making her way over to us, checkbook clutched in her hands.

My phone lit up with a text soon after he mentioned that. Perfect. “Say, Jack. How about you give me your phone number before we leave?”

He pulled out his phone, as well as his wallet. “For being late,” he told me.

I check the text message first. Just the boss updating me about Doombringer. I flipped over his phone, ready to lock his phone up when my eyes caught on the small engraving at the top of the phone. As I looked closer, the Doombringer’s jagged D came into focus.

“Is something wrong Mat?”

I relaxed my hold on his phone and claimed that I couldn’t figure out his passcode. As he unlocked his phone, I texted Boss about the engraving. Her response was immediate and was four words long. Don’t jump to conclusions.

I tapped my way into his contacts as he chatted with the server. The anger from earlier turned into unease, sinking into my bones. I don’t doubt that Jack was Doombringer. No one else can make that kind of claim about the city’s safety. Not even the boss and I. We just showed up to put out the fires.

“Hey, let’s walk together.” I said, not able to let Jack slip away into the crowd, never to be seen again. Not without a picture of his face.

We just ended up cutting through an alley to get to the bus stop. Like any good alley in this city, it’s completely deserted, crumbling bricks serving as the only reminder of the bloody battles that took place.

I can remember the last time we fought Doombringer, my first battle. It was just a few weeks ago, and he’s been in prison since. But I could still taste the blood in my mouth. It tasted like victory, my blood singing with delight as I landed blow after blow, forcing Doombringer to ditch his broken limb enhancers and run into Boss.

I couldn’t recall any of his bitter threats, only the anger and resentfulness as his voice warped with static. I sat in the alley, chest heaving to get all the air it can. Forcing my own dark delight down.

With Doombringer, there was nothing to feel but anger. To think that he is the same person as Jack, the one person in my life that can still bring smiles to my face. My stomach twists and I can taste bile in the back of my throat. And it hurts, just a little, to breath.

What have I done to deserve this?

“We can meet up next week, but hopefully elsewhere. Maybe closer to your home this time.”

We stopped moving then, and Jack was looking at me, waiting. Most likely for an invitation to join me on the ride home. I would have given that invitation to Jack in a heartbeat, but now? Not without blackmail.

“Let’s get a photo first before we start talking about other dates.” I beckoned him towards the wall. When he got close enough I slid my arms around his, pinning them to his side, camera ready.

“Planning on flying home using your limb enhancers, Doombringer?” I said through my clenched grimacing face.

He froze, his eyes wide open with shock.

Click went the camera.

A snap of my fingers had him pinned against the wall, a thick band of sparks around his chest.

“I'm surprised,” I told him, “I thought the mask over your face when you were in jail was for health reasons. You seem perfectly fine to me.”

The shocked, almost broken look on his face vanished when he laughed, and I could almost hear the crackle of static echoing in the alley. “You can't pin that lie on me! Your police officers couldn't figure out how to take it off and made up a lie to save their public image. Imagine them saying they couldn’t even pry a mask off of the face of the most hated criminal in this city, even with the technological support of billionaires!”

“I wouldn’t say you’re the most hated here. Maybe the seventh, so don’t get cocky.”

“Still flirting even when you’re threatening to break every bone in my body.”

“Only if you lie to me. Tell me, how much of Jack is real?” I let the band crackle, just in case he was planning on lying.

“If you break my bones,” he wheezed, “you’ll have a hard time explaining how.”

I laughed back, nearly loud enough to penetrate the foreboding silence of the alley. “I have a whole list of excuses. But that’s not what I’m here for.” I stuck my phone in his face, our conversations open and shining in his face. “What did Doombringer want with a random college girl anyways?”

“Why did Psykick want a boyfriend?”

“Touché.”

I waited, keeping half of an eye on the alley entrances, and the other half on Doombringer. I tightened the band just a bit more when he didn’t say anything.

“Why do people,” he choked out, “seek another’s company?”

I kept my voice flat. “So you were lonely.”

“Is that so hard to believe?”

I only hummed in response, turning on the GPS on my phone and pinging Boss. “Well, as charming and cute I find you, I’m afraid you still have a kill count, sooooo…” I loosened my hold around his chest to shove him off the ground.

“Back to prison I go.” He gave me a mournful look, probably attempting to beg with his eyes.

“Stop being ridiculous Jack. We both know you can walk out of that prison whenever you want to. Those ‘special cells’ do nothing.”

“Especially since I don’t have a supernatural power.” He smirked down at me, his mask crawling out of his hair and over his face. His next words were surrounded by that static you associate with Doombringer. “I’m just a guy with some cool toys.”

His mask apparently made its appearance just on time, as Boss was stalking down the alley with a group of cops following her. I thought briefly about what I would say next. Briefly.

“Call me. Later.” Then I stood back, letting him fall to his knees and the police swarm him.

“Sure thing, dahling,” he called back, before vanishing into a police car.

Boss just stood next to me, dressed up in her suit, before she asked, “Do I even want to know?”

I just showed her my phone, this time opened to Jack’s face, and smiled. “I’ve got a boyfriend.”