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16 Years Later

Chapter 2: Lifelong secrets

Friday, 9:00 PM

Mandy walked up to the museum alone with her unpleasant memories of the day clouding her consciousness. The cold night gave her an excuse to hide half of her face in her scarf and to cross her arms as if to keep herself warm, but in reality, it was to keep her emotions hidden.

She walked up to the ticket booth and the man let her in without a word. All of the employees knew her; she came often and usually by herself. Once she stepped inside, she felt more at home than she had all day. She hadn't gone home yet, but she knew her father had a tracking device on her phone. She didn't even feel like talking.

It was crowded today, for some reason. As she walked through the halls to the elevator, she could feel the eyes of various different types of people either glancing at her or staring. She would usually meet the eyes of those younger than her and smile, but she rarely said a word. It was the brief recognition that delighted the children.

Every so often, a group of teenagers would try to strike up a conversation with her, bring her to a certain part of the museum and ask her questions about her father. Most of the time, she could answer and have an OK time with them, but not always. If she saw anyone she knew from school, she tried to avoid them, but her evasions didn't always work. Mandy was naturally outgoing, but at school, she tried to stay invisible—a hard task. The popular kids had a knack for finding her just about anywhere; a skill she despised. It was enough being Megamind's daughter, the fact that she was the only 14 year old in the 12th grade added to her "stardom" at school, making it impossible to have one moment alone from people she'd rather not be with.

Although her parents thought she had no friends and mostly hung out with Isaac, they were only half right. It was true that Isaac was her only real friend, but she found it very difficult to escape her popular life or even talk to him during school hours. It was like she a different person at school, a shy and miserable no one held up on a pedestal for her heritage, at the same time on the bottom of the food chain for the same reason. It was all a confusing mess, and she hadn't the heart to tell her parents the truth of her stress, it would only worry them, and to worry the protector of the entire city with her personal problems was the last thing she wanted to do.

She walked into the elevator; she was almost alone until a last minute teenager ran in. Mandy couldn't believe it, out of the entire student body and Jeffrey was the one she was stuck in an elevator with?

Jeff was out of breath from running.

Mandy sighed. "Big crowd today." she said, as if nothing had happened at school that day.

He looked at her, obviously hiding his astonishment of her saying something casual to him.

"You could've told me to hold the door for you." Mandy said.

He was still breathing pretty hard. "Well, I don't think you could've heard me even if I yelled. It's pretty loud down there."

Mandy nodded. "True."

There was some silence. She'd never really talked to a teen that didn't have something to say to her.

"Sorry, for today. Those guys are jerks. I don't know why I let them hang around me." Mandy said in an unwilling confession. It's not that she didn't want to tell him the truth-because he deserved it-but she didn't want to admit her own flaws to herself.

"Yeah." Jeff said. "But-I-I should be the one apologizing. I'm the one who got you into that mess."

"Don't waste your breath, you're not gonna convince me." Mandy said, smarmily. She stopped, then cringed at herself. "Sorry, I hang with the wrong crowd too often, it's easy to pick up a bad attitude from them." she sighed heavier this time.

Her melancholy tone gave Jeff a chill down his spine. Guilt racked his brain, but he was able to keep it hidden.

"I can't escape them." Mandy added breathlessly.

The elevator stopped and they both walked out.

"You know, you can break free if you really try." Jeff said. Mandy glanced at him and he froze for a moment, as if her eyes could cut through his chest and into his heart. He tried to speak up. "I-I'm Isaac's friend." He lied.

"Oh, you are? So am I. Well, I wish I was a better friend. I hardly see him at school."

"But that's not your fault. Isaac, you know he's all into sociology," another lie, "he tells me that you're basically stuck because of your...fame, I guess. You're like royalty in this city, it's the fact that, well-" He stopped when he met Mandy's eyes. She was sad, and he could tell that something else was upsetting her. "Mandy," Jeff started over, "y-you can hang with me and Isaac in the library and ignore those jerks. They just want to be seen with you, they don't actually care-"

"I know, Jeffrey. I know. And, that's exactly what I tried to do today. I tried to step out of that boundary I've put myself in. But-" Mandy stopped herself. Something caught her attention below them. They'd been aimlessly walking around the giant statue of her father and were now looking down from the top of the building. Mandy could see her mother's car parked across the street from the museum and her parents getting out. Her father started off running but stopped, probably because her mother had stopped him.

"Oh, dad." Mandy said under her breath.

Jeff was watching too and he knew he had to leave soon. "Well, I guess-no, I will beseeing you at school." Jeff said, turning and walking away.

He was half way to the elevator when Mandy tried to stop him. "I don't know if I can do that-"

"I'll be seeing you, don't deny it!" Jeff reassured her. His sudden determination made her laugh. Jeff had never heard her laugh before and all he could do was smile and wave.

As he walked into the elevator, all he could think about was his terrible regret for tricking her. He knew what invisible crimes lied in the future and how deep into them he already was. He hated how much he liked her; how much he wanted her to have a normal life, just like how he wanted the same thing. He pitied them both, but at the time, there was nothing he could do.

…

"Megamind, you can't just barge in there!" Roxanne said, running after him. "Remember the last time you did that?"

Megamind stood a few feet from the building steps and turned to Roxanne. "Yeah, I was surrounded by a mob all day and I lost my favorite pair of boots, but I think my daughter is more important than my making it out alive!"

Roxanne almost rolled her eyes at how dramatic he made everything. "Would you listen to me for two seconds? She comes here all the time! She probably just had a bad day and didn't want to come home. That's all."

"Is this a normal teenage girl...thing, or something, because you're making it sound like that."

"I'm just saying, you're blowing this way out of proportion!"

"She should've called one of us if she wasn't going to come home!"

"She knows you track her everywhere she goes, so why should she?"

"Who's side are you on?"

"When were there sides to begin with? We're one family, and apparently, we have some problems." Roxanne said as she crossed her arms.

They both stared at each other for a moment, at first angry with each other, but quickly realizing that getting angry was pointless.

"We don't have problems, Roxanne. I have problems." Megamind said. "I'm sorry for overreacting."
Roxanne sighed and took his hand. "Come on, let's use the secret entrance."

…

Mandy stood alone in the cold once again. She leaned on the rail and rested her head on her crossed arms. A moment ago, she was thinking of Jeffrey and how weird he'd acted. At first, he was speechless, like she was a movie star or something. Then, he was completely sure that she was able to change and just drop her popularity and hang out with her real friends without consequences. But how could he have so much confidence in her after what happened that day? And how could she just tell Jeff what was on her mind? She was never able to tell anyone what she really felt about something important. Was this normal? It had to be, what else could be causing her so much stress?

Now she was thinking about the suspension slip burning a hole in her pocket. It was her fifth one this year. She skipped class much too often, and usually to avoid passing period, as ridiculous as it sounded.

Before she could think any further, she heard her parent's voices coming from the secret entrance.

"It's about time." she said to herself. To her surprise, there was no running to her or yelling at her; no sign that she was in trouble. She was used to being a troublemaker. Sleeping in class, being a little too creative in chemistry class, impulsively dissecting the fire alarm just for the heck of it, she got in all sorts of trouble. She wasn't mean, she was just bored and lonely. But today was different, today was a mistake.

Her parents came from behind and were quiet for a while. Roxanne took her daughter's shoulders and broke the silence.

"So, anything bothering you?" she asked. "Anything at school?"

"Besides that principal who can't take a joke?" Megamind said under his breath.

"Megamind!" Roxanne warned.

"It's alright mom, he's totally right." Mandy said. She caught her mom's evil eye. "Well...I think...oh, I don't know anymore!" Mandy dropped her head down on her crossed arms and let her hair hang down over her face.

"I feel like I'm being watched all the time! I have no freedom!" Mandy confessed.

Megamind looked behind them and found people watching them as they briskly walked past.

"Tell me about it." He said. Roxanne slapped his arm in disapproval.

"I don't know what to do! I'm not bad, I'm just bored."

Megamind had an "I told you so" face on, but Roxanne countered with a "really?" right back at him.

"Wait, sweetie, no one said you were bad." Roxanne said.

Mandy reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her suspension slip. She held it in the air between two fingers waiting for one of them to take it. Roxanne did.

"I wanna be home schooled again. I don't like...people I guess." She said this to Roxanne, knowing it was her mother she had to convince. "No one gets me, I don't want to have to deal with them."

Roxanne didn't want to disappoint Mandy, but she still didn't like the idea of homeschooling. She would reconsider, however, if Mandy would finally tell her the whole truth about life at school. She was always leaving something out; she never told her parents the true hardships she faced. Megamind knew he had to say something, knowing Mandy would have the same reaction to Roxanne's reasoning as he did at first. Since they were one family, they had to work together.

"Mandy, trust me," He began. "I know everything seems...pointless and boring even, but things will only get better."

Mandy hesitated, knowing that if she wanted her parents to fully understand her, she would have to start telling them the truth.

"You know why I got suspended? There are these football players who think they're my bodyguards or something, and they caught me talking to someone who actually earns his grades without being on a sports team. One of them stuffed the kid in his locker thinking he was bothering me, then I called him out on it. We didn't throw fists or anything-just, just words."

"What did they call you?" Megamind asked, without skipping a beat. He was always called names in school, but Mandy had never told them if she was being made fun of.

Mandy wanted to tell them, she wanted nothing more but to tell them the truth, but something stopped her. The same something that always stopped her.

"Can we go home? I don't want to talk about it."

…

Jeff entered his own house with caution, knowing that he would get an evaluation on his monitored "performance" the second he walked in. He opened the door and stepped into what would fool anyone as a regular house. There were family photos on the wall, video games lying around the living room, and the dog was sleeping by the door.

"Hey, dad!"

Jeff looked up to see Isaac at the top of the stairwell calling for his dad. He'd lied to Mandy when he said they were friends, because if anything, they were rivals. Isaac was his cousin, and ever since he was little, they told him that his uncle took him in after his parents died in a fire. But it wasn't just any fire, it was a fire that he started. With his mind.

"Dad, the freak's home!" Isaac yelled.

"I have a name, you know." Jeff defended himself.

"And I've never used it before, so why start now?"

Jeff tried to think of a comeback, but he knew there was no use for it.

"Heh. Hey, why don't you be like Mandy and keep your real thoughts in your head! You can do that, right? Or can you only limit somebody else's communication with your telepathy?"

"Shut up!" he retorted, angry at his job as well as his cousin's frequent changes in character. At school, he was the perfect actor, charming and pleasant whenever he was with Mandy, though Jeff knew he never enjoyed it. He manipulated people with his own minimal mind powers to avoid being with Mandy whenever he could help it.

Before Jeff could say another word, the sound of his uncle's heavy footsteps approaching the top of the stairwell silenced him.

"Jeffrey, my boy! My talented, genius boy!"

"I'm no genius, I'm a fraud." Jeff said under his breath.

Just his uncle walked down stairs while Isaac remained standing; watching them like a hawk. Isaac was the spitting image of his father, only shorter and skinnier. Jeff looked nothing like the rest of his family. Just by looking at them together, anyone would think he was adopted.

"What an incredible performance today! You really know how to mess with a girl's emotions!" He leaned closer to Jeff' ear and whispered, "Much better than Isaac could ever do, and he's been undercover for years!"

Isaac wasn't really listening, but he heard his name.

"Son!" Jeff's uncle said, turning to his son who was now running down the stairs. "Go to your room and 'study.' Psychic powers don't come from of thin air." He looked glanced at Jeffrey for a split second. "At least not for you."

As Isaac somewhat reluctantly went upstairs and into his room, memories flashed into Jeffrey's consciousness. Cold metal on every inch of his skin, tests that took hours and hours to perform, endless blood samples and brain scans made. These memories were all blurs to him, the government having tested on him when he was only a small child. He was the only one in the family born with these powers, and had grown up to believe that these tests were somehow going to be put to good use. He was mistaken, and now was working trapped into working for the government's most wanted felon, he himself the greatest weapon the country has ever known.

His uncle continued. "Now that subject D is beginning to step out from her boundaries, we can finally execute Plan B! Because subject A hasn't responded to any of my requests, we'll just have to stop negotiating nicely."

Jeff rolled his eyes. "We can call them by name; we know exactly who you're talking about." Jeff said, annoyed.

His uncle turned to him. He almost snapped and yelled at him for defiance, but he restrained himself. He needed Jeff on his side, at least until tomorrow. Just for one more mission.

"An act of habit, my boy. Megamind will do as we say. And if he doesn't, which I doubt, we'll have another brain to pick."