Cute Mutants Deluxe, page 15
“What?”
“You said your name to me the day we met. Like it was a question.” She smiles. “Ouch, gentle. I knew who you were, like I knew you from around. I always thought you were a mystery girl. And the more I know you, the more mysterious I think you are.”
“I’m about as mysterious as…“ I can’t think of anything.
She moves the ice and I barely feel it. I think I’m going numb.
“…a blanket,” I finish, because I can’t think of anything useless enough.
She laughs, and she’s so beautiful. Like I know she’s shifting, but the weight of my regard renders her into something that would take anyone’s breath away. I wonder what it would be like to kiss her. Like just out of curiosity. What would she turn into? This whole situation is weird. How am I standing here with Alyse, a couple of steps away from being actual friends?
“That feels better.” Lou’s in the doorway to the kitchen. He walks over and takes the ice away from Alyse. He stands really close and holds it against my face. I shut my eyes briefly, and lean into him. I’ve still got my other arm stretched out, holding the ice to Alyse’s face.
“I’m sorry,” Bianca says, drifting towards us.
“What happened?” I try to meet her eyes.
“I couldn’t bear for anyone else to feel what I feel.” She goes very quiet and still. “Even him. And in the end my demons hate me more than anyone. They wanted to hurt me.”
I’m exhausted. I wish I could fix everything. Fix anything at all.
“That’s terrible,” is all I can say. “You don’t have to do this anymore. It’s not fair.”
“I thought we were going to die.” Her voice is high and strangled. Maybe she’s in shock.
I fish my phone out one-handed and google ‘shock’. The first page of results freaks me out. Surely what we’re feeling can’t be medical shock. People get hit. People that aren’t me. I have an uncomfortable feeling about the earthquake thing that he did to me but when I press my hand to my chest my heartbeat feels normal.
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” I tell Bianca, then I turn to Lou. “Does my voice sound okay?”
He shrugs and nods, so I call. I hate voice calls but they insist sometimes.
“Hey, Pear.” I try to act like everything is fine.
“Dilly.” Their voice is rough and warm and comfortable. It instantly makes me feel better. There’s an urge to say something, but I quash it hard. That way lies madness and interrogation and unspecified consequences.
We talk briefly and it’s like hearing my voice calms them too. They trust me. I’ve never given them much of a reason not to. I’m aware I’m breaking that, but I also feel like it’s time. Mutations come in lots of different ways.
After I hang up, we all move into the lounge. Alyse and I hold ice on each other until we go numb. We all fall asleep in the same room—the four of us, survivors of our first catastrophe.
I sleep surprisingly well, but wake up with the sun. Nobody closed the curtains, so it streams into the room. Usually I sleep terribly anywhere aside from my own bed. I wonder if Pillow missed me. Lou lies near me, his face loose and peaceful. I kiss him on the forehead and wander through to the bathroom.
The door is open and Alyse is regarding herself in the mirror. She’s warped and sagging, her face covered in thousands of little scars.
“Morning,” I say.
She sees me in the reflection and blushes. “I’m feeling pretty crappy after last night.”
“None of it was your fault,” I say, but she shrugs. “Your transformation was amazing. He lashed out because he was scared. You did too good a job.”
“Really?” Her reflected eyes meet mine.
“Totally. You freaked me out completely.” I step up to the mirror beside her and poke the blossoming shadow of my bruise. It makes me wince.
Alyse’s reflection blurs as she returns to her normal self. “Come here and let me fix your face.”
We stand facing each other. Her skin is darker than mine, so I can’t use her concealer, but I find a small tub at the bottom of my bag. She stands very close and her face is intent. Her lips do this little pursing thing every time she touches me. When I turn back to the mirror, there’s only the ghost of the bruise, like it’s almost healed already. I dab some more over my forehead, to hide the worst of my skin.
“It’s not that bad,” Alyse says. “You should’ve seen mine before Mum put me on medication.” She runs her fingertips over her smooth forehead.
I look at our two reflections in the mirror. One of us is perfect and vibrant, while the other is a shadow of a girl. It makes sense, because I’ve never wanted people to see or understand me. It seems easier that way, so when people reject the projection of Dylan, they’re not rejecting the real me. Except I’m still in here, inside this tangle, and I don’t know how to get out.
There are so many things I want to say to Alyse. Forgive me, like me, take pity on me, don’t give up on me even though I’m useless. Except if I say any of them, then my pride is gone, and it’s the last thing I have.
“Are you okay?” Her eyes are whirlpools of sympathy that I can’t let myself drown in.
“I’m fine.”
We get to school barely in time, and Emma rushes over with her hand over her mouth. Dani is beside her and won’t even look in my direction. I guess if she does, the instinct to say ‘I told you so’ will be too overwhelming.
“I saw the footage,” Emma looks from Alyse to me and back again. “It looked really bad.”
“It was bad.” My voice shakes, and I clench my fist as if that will centre me. “We’ll talk about it after school.”
Everyone drifts away, even Alyse. I don’t even see Lou. He’s scared after last night. This was never anything he wanted, and now he’s gone too. My real superpower is making people disappear.
Except when I turn around to head for class, Dani is still there. I don’t know what she wants, and I’m too exhausted to even try decrypting her facial expressions.
“Are you okay?” Her voice is low.
“I’m fine.” Bitterness floods through my response. “Just reckless, I guess.”
“Did he hurt you?” She almost touches my face where the bruise is under the makeup. Her fingers hover, but I flinch away.
“It’s fine. We’ll do better next time.”
I’m sure she wants to tell me all the things I’ve done wrong, but she doesn’t.
“You need to look after yourself,” is all she says, and then walks away. It’s somehow worse. I’m so pitiful she can’t even gloat. I’m a failure all around, a crappy leader with a crappy superpower. Reading comics didn’t prepare me enough. I haven’t learned to inspire people or manage my powers or anything useful. In the comics, people fuck up but they always regroup. The difference, as far as I can tell, is that people like them. In real life, they chose the worst possible leader and who’d stick around for me?
After school, we go back to Alyse’s. I almost don’t show, because I don’t see the point. Why watch a slow-motion replay of your failure? Except Alyse waits outside school when the day limps to a close, ready to drag me off to my trial.
Emma actually has drone footage on her laptop and asks if we want to see it. Every other fucking asshole in the Cute Mutants says yes. It happened mostly the way I remember, except it’s surreal to watch me drop and twitch around. I was down for longer than I thought. It’s impressive when Batty leaps up off the ground to catch Tremor one hell of a whack across the jaw. He never even saw it coming.
“Give that bat a kiss,” Alyse says with a laugh.
“There’s nothing to laugh about,” Lou snaps. “Dylan nearly died. We could have all died. We were playing superhero games, but it’s serious.”
“He was supposed to be a robber.” Bianca’s quiet for her, leaning against the wall at the far side of the room. She rubs her chest as if she’s soothing her demons. “Stealing shit from a liquor store doesn’t make you deadly. Who hasn’t shoplifted a bottle of vodka before?”
Um, me, but I don’t bother saying it.
“We’re obviously finished,” Lou says. “Take the footage and give it to the cops. Game over.”
I shrug. I’m exhuasted. “As long as Emma won’t get in trouble for getting the footage in the first place.”
Emma’s eyes flicker between us. “It should be fine.”
I feel like I’m collapsing. It’s hard to breathe. Everyone is posed awkwardly, separate figures instead of a group. If this was a comic book page, they’d show the lines drawn jagged between us.
“This guy hurt us.” My fist is clenched again. “He hurt Emma.”
Lou moves restlessly. He never wanted this, and none of the others need it like I do. Of course they don’t care. They have other things in their lives, and didn’t grow up with this dream.
“He hit us like we were nothing.” I target my words at Alyse. “He’s a bully. We’re not people to him, we’re bitches.”
“You know I’m in.” Alyse is a gleaming statue of a warrior. I’d follow her into battle. It looks like I’m the only one.
“I was in,” Bianca says.
I turn towards her like I want to attack.
“Honest, I was, but that was all kinds of fucked up. Dylan, you’re fucking mental.” Bianca won’t even look at me. “Like I get people have their obsessions, but you should stick to superhero tattoos instead of trying to live it out.”
My hand goes to the X-Men logo on my wrist. My fingernails dig into my skin.
“Good luck with your demons,” I say flatly. “I hope you enjoy playing with them on your own. We’re supposed to help each other, to make each other better, to look out for each other, but I guess you want—”
“What I want is for you to get over your drama and fuck off,” she says, exhausted by me.
“You could have died, Dylan.” Lou acts like his decision is all about me.
“Except she didn’t.” It’s Alyse, with arms crossed and her skin gleaming. Her eyes glow. “We survived and got out of there. It’s not like you were any help.”
Lou flinches away from her. “It’s not my fault,” he says. “My powers—”
“You didn’t have control of them, fine. But it was Dylan’s power that saved all of us. And all you can do is tear her down about it, and tell her she’s not good enough.”
“That’s not what I’m doing!” Lou’s voice comes out high and whiny.
Bianca straight up walks out of the room at this point. She’s done with us. Emma goes too, obviously happy for the opportunity to get the fuck out. This is all falling apart.
“I’m sick of you being a jealous asshole,” Alyse says, her face demonic. “You’re the one that’s wrecking this group, because you can’t fucking handle the fact that you don’t own Dylan anymore.”
“She doesn’t love you,” Lou says sullenly. “She told me.”
I have no idea what this is about, but Alyse reacts immediately. The demon is gone and in its place is this shrunken, shadowed thing that tears off down the hallway.
“You,” I snap at Lou. “Shut the fuck up and go home. We’ll talk later.”
Then I stalk after Alyse.
It takes me three attempts to find her room. I find her brother on the way, curled up in a gaming chair wearing nothing but baggy shorts and Beats headphones. He doesn’t even notice I’ve accidentally barged into his room.
When I do find Alyse, she’s on her bed among all her clothes, curled in a ball. Her skin is stretched tight and her bones are crumbling underneath. It looks like she’s deathly ill or about to be blown away after a Thanos snap.
“Hey.” I sit down on the bed beside her. My hand flops between us, not brave enough to touch her. “Are you okay?”
“You talk about me behind my back?” Her voice is muffled in her pillow.
“To be accurate, the conversation is mostly Lou accusing me of being in love with you, and me saying no, she’s my friend.”
“I don’t want you to be in love with me.”
“No, I didn’t think so.” I have half a smile on my face.
“I thought you were both sitting there and saying horrible things about me. People do that, you know? I couldn’t face it from you.” She begins to fade again, but I poke her in the side with my index finger.
“I would never,” I tell her, completely honestly. “You’re the sunshine one, like the trope, you know, because I am obviously the grumpy one. And I’m not professing my love for you or whatever, but having a sunshine person in my life is definitely cool.”
She beams at me, and she’s gorgeous. And I’m definitely not in love with Alyse, but I’m still vaguely curious about what it would be like to kiss her and how that would work with her powers. But I’m enough in control of my own brain that I don’t do it, because it would make all this even worse.
“I’m really sorry it’s over, Dilly.” The beauty is fading, replaced by the waterlogged outline of sad Alyse. “I know it meant a lot to you.”
I’m so glad I don’t have her powers, because I’d be a whirlwind of damp confetti, falling into the black hole that lurks at the heart of me.
“I’m sorry too.” My voice is hoarse, and I flee the sympathy in Alyse’s eyes.
When I make my way back, I find Lou waiting, all on his own. I barely look at him and head for the front door.
“I’m sorry,” Lou calls after me. “I really am, Dylan. It’s just—”
I’m halfway down the driveway when the door slams. Lou jogs past me. He stands in my way, so I walk around him.
“I don’t want to talk to you.” My emotions are smeared and jagged. I don’t want to feel any of them.
“Look, it’s just really scary. We can’t run around like that pretending we’re—”
“So that’s all it is.” I feel a rush of scorn so hot I think it’ll scald me from the inside. “It’s not that you’re jealous of the fact I have other friends now.”
His mouth twitches, like I’ve slapped him, and then he goes on the attack again. “What did you go off and do in Alyse’s room?” He folds his arms and looks at me like he’s unleashed some deadly strike.
“I talked to my friend and made her feel better after you were a dick.”
He opens and closes his mouth a bunch of times, like he’s frantically writing shitty dialogue in his head and discarding it.
“How is it you’ve surrounded yourself with hot girls in your pet little superhero team?” He asks it helplessly, like i’ve orchestrated all of this and he’s the fool at its center. I don’t have anything left to give him aside from the sullen remnants of the fire that burns at my heart.
“Then I guess you’re extra glad you destroyed our team, aren’t you?”
He stops dead when I say that, and I stalk off down the road. I refuse to look back. I won’t let him see me cry again. I wish I could hate him, but I can’t. This disaster can be laid at my feet.
I’m almost pathetically relieved when I get home and Pear is there. They’re on the couch reading some old sci-fi paperback with their glasses on. I slump on the couch beside them, almost touching.
“Dilly.” The way they say my name has been a magic charm since childhood. It still works, but I wonder if it will ever wear off. “I feel like we’ve been missing each other lately.”
“Busy bees, us two. No Sarah tonight?”
“I love her,” Pear says absently, “but sometimes it’s exhausting.”
“Ha.” I nudge them with my elbow. “You love her.”
“You’re a remarkably immature child.” They smile and touch my hair. I lean back against them.
“I had a fight with Lou.” I recap the worst of it. It’s hard to skirt the edges of my new mutancy, but I manage to. I talk about how he thinks I’m in love with Alyse and how his jealousy is incredibly annoying and how he thinks I like girls, when as far as I’m concerned, I like people.
Pear grunts. They don’t really get Lou’s obsession with gender, even though they should because they’ve spent their life trying to carve a space outside of it.
“In an ideal world, none of it should matter,” Pear says eventually.
“It does to Lou,” I point out.
Pear sighs. “We’re out of my territory. Sarah being a woman doesn’t really mean anything to me. It’s not anything about her looks that makes me like her.” Which is ridiculous, because I know Sarah’s in her thirties and a Mum and everything, but she is seriously good looking. “She’s the kindest person I’ve ever met, and her smile lights up the world and that’s what I love.”
“So fucking sappy.” I laugh because it’s sweet and I adore it. Pear wasn’t happy for a really long time, and it’s not like they’re a ray of sunshine now, but it’s a lot better and a lot easier.
“So what should I do about Lou?” I ask.
“Do you love him?”
I nod. I think so. Love doesn’t make any sense, but the knot of emotion I feel is complicated enough to be love, isn’t it?
“And you’re attracted to him?”
“Definitely,” I say. That’s not the problem.
“And he’s kind to you.”
I start picking at the band of their smartwatch. When did they get a smartwatch?
“Yes,” I say eventually, but it’s too close to the conversation I had with Alyse. Kindness is a hard thing to figure out. Sometimes people are kind when you don’t expect it, like Dani checking in with me after my failure, when I was sure she’d dismiss me with the full power of weaponised snootiness. I remember her hand, tentatively reaching out to touch my face.
I want to tell Pear everything. About my powers, about everyone else. About my failure. Yet even though we’re so close, there’s a point we hit the parent/child divide. They still see me as a kid, and they care so much I can’t see the edges of it. If I slit my heart down the middle and spill out all my loneliness and self-loathing, they’ll buckle under the weight of it. They’ll blame themself for what I’ve become and won’t see they’re a lifeline. I have to climb out myself, which I’m trying to do, but it’s hard when you don’t know how.
