Tuesday
I woke up before my alarm and couldn't get back to sleep, so I dragged myself out of bed. As I was showering I was still processing yesterday. I kind of got butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it but I also couldn't wait till I could go back again. When I got home last night, I was still riding high, from everything we'd done, from opening up to Alex, all of it. So I'd used all of that, to screw up the courage to finally tell Dad about the bullying.
I knew I was going to have to if I wanted to actually get out of that school, but it was still hard. He… he was incandescent with rage. Not at me of course, but at the school, at the teachers, at my fellow students. I've never seen him so mad, and it was a bit scary. He was so mad that his hands shook and he paced around the living room. It took me half an hour to talk him down from just charging in and screaming at people. That wasn't going to help. This, of course, was why I hadn't told him sooner. But I had a plan now.
I'd explained about what Karen had told me, that I could just withdraw and get a GED and still get into a college. Beth backed me up: Even if the college I wanted wasn't interested at first, I could go to a community college for a year or two and transfer later.
Well, if I was going to college. But I wasn't prepared to have that conversation with my Dad yet. There were still a lot of conversations I wasn't prepared to have with my Dad yet. That Emma had orchestrated it. Oh, he'd asked about her, of course. And I'd let slip that she and I weren't friends any more, that she didn't defend me. But I could not, would not, tell him what how far she'd gone. All the things she'd done to me, that the daughter of his oldest friend was the one doing this to me.
I couldn't tell him about my powers either not with him like this. He'd always seemed very uncomfortable when the topic of capes came up. I didn't really know what his problem with them… us… was, but I knew he wouldn't be thrilled to learn that I was one. Oh and the whole probably bisexual thing, but I don't even know myself there exactly. I guess I'll have to have those conversations eventually, but one crisis at a time.
I told him that I was planning to volunteer at the Vanguard while I worked on finishing my credentials and… well, I wouldn't say he was happy about that either but Beth helped me convince him.
I finished my shower and went back to my room and started putting away my, uh, cape outfit? Costume? Calling it a costume seemed wrong but I suppose it was easiest. Tucked away in the back one of the bags was something I didn't remember. I pulled it out…
It was the brick red textured top that I'd liked, but that had been declared "too me". How did this get here? I was certain that it hadn't been in there when I'd put on my costume yesterday at the Vanguard office. And yet, here it was.
I huffed, it must have been Alex—I just couldn't work out when, exactly. I held it up to myself and looked in my mirror. It was cute. I put it on and got the rest of the way dressed and went downstairs.
As I neared the kitchen I could hear Dad and Aunt Beth talking in intense tones. I heard a fragment of her part—something about a "brilliant young woman who will be an asset to the organization". I didn't catch all of what my dad said next but it ended with "had better not get my daughter locked up." Well. On that note, I think maybe it's time to join in person.
I stepped into the kitchen and said cheerily "Good morning!" I could immediately smell coffee and made a bee line for it.
"Good morning kiddo. I hope you slept well?"
I shrugged and said "Okay I guess, took a while to get to sleep. I was kinda wound up." I poured myself a cup and sat down at the table between Aunt Beth and Dad.
They shared a look and my Dad said, "I called the school. They've got some paperwork for me to fill out and we've got an appointment setup for Thursday to finalize everything."
I nodded. "That sounds good."
"What are you planning for the day?"
"I'm not sure? Can I get started at the Vanguard today?"
Aunt Beth said "I'm sure you can sweetie. I can bring you in with me if you'd like?"
"Thanks," I replied and got up to get breakfast.
⁂
We arrived at the Vanguard offices and Aunt Beth turned off the car and turned toward me.
"So I hear you all made a big splash last night? Liking your new teammates?"
"Yeah, I still can't believe Glory Girl could be so cavalier. I guess somehow I thought that she must just be, like, hurting people by accident. But no…" I said, shaking my head.
I continued and shrugged, "Tattletale seems nice enough, I didn't get to know her that well. And Circus," and I find myself flushing slightly, "I liked Circus too." Despite her teasing. Ok, fine, maybe because of her teasing.
"Well, I'm glad to hear it honey. Come on, we'll get you keys to your team's side and you can get settled in."
We got out of the car and walked into the Vanguard office. "Do you have a computer with Internet access I could borrow? I should really do some of my own research on who we're going to be running into."
We walked back to Karen's office and Aunt Beth nodded and said, "I'm sure that can be… ah, Karen? So if you haven't heard, Taylor's on board. Can you get her what she needs? I've got a meeting I'm due at…"
Karen smiled at both of us. "Of course Beth, Taylor why don't you sit down and I'll go over a few things."
I hugged Aunt Beth goodbye and waved as she left, "See you tonight!"
I shut the door and sat down across from Karen.
"Ok, first thing's first, here's a cell phone. Please keep it on you at all times. It has my contact information and your teams already programmed into it. If an emergency comes up we'll contact you with it."
As I took the phone she reached into a drawer in her desk and withdrew an envelope and handed it to me. "This is two hundred dollars, for any incidental expenses you run into. If you have a bigger expense, talk to Circus, she knows how to put that through.
"You'll also be receiving a regular pay check. Speaking of which, we should setup an account under your pseudonym so you can deposit that. I can take care of that if you like?"
I nodded and said "Uh, thank you, I'd never thought about that before."
"You'll still need to file taxes of course. The IRS has a separate set of forms for filing as a pseudonymous parahuman. I can help you out with those when the time comes. It's a higher tax rate, I'm afraid, to stop ordinary folks from fraudulently claiming to be parahuman."
She hummed and said, "What else? Oh yes, here, this card has the address for the office next door. You can have mail delivered to Qualia there without any questions."
"I asked my Aunt but, do you have a computer with Internet access I could use? I'd like to do some research." I said.
She smiled at me. "That's no problem, there's a computer already setup over in your team's space that you can use. Oh and yes, the last thing is keys…", she said, pausing to rummage through another drawer.
Placing a keyring with a single key on it on the desk she said, "This is your key. Feel free to use the space any time, it's yours as much as anyone's now."
I collected the key and got up and said, "Thank you for everything, I guess I'll head over and get started."
⁂
The computer was setup next to the kitchen area, facing a wall. It was also a lot nicer than I was used to. The school's computers were pretty old and they were hardly high end when they were new. This one… was top of the line. As it booted I saw the logo and famous "made in Canada" tag of that tinker-written OS that was all over the news last year. After Leviathan had attacked the San Francisco bay area nearly ten years ago the tech sector there had collapsed. Folks had assumed that Seattle would take over but instead it seemed that Vancouver. I suppose being home to the premier tinker in the world probably attracted a lot of talent.
My power showed me an array of very minor manufacturing defects in the hardware but hardly any wear. Everything was so zippy and responsive I could almost cry. I pulled up the PHO wiki entry for Glory Girl and started reading.
Let's see, summaries of her public appearances, official New Wave bio, official summary of powers. Pictures of her. Geez, more pictures of her. Rumors… which, uh, yeah, those aren't useful. Rumors around Glory Girl seem to be focused on shipping her with half the wards. Ah, there is a brief mention of the excessive force thing, sandwiched between a rumor that she's secretly a member of the Triumvirate and one that she's seeing Aegis behind her boyfriend's back.
There was a lot there, but didn't find it very useful. I felt pretty self conscious as I looked up my new teammates, but did it anyway. With Tattletale I found… nothing. Not even a page. I guess she did say she was new. Circus' page was rather more complete. It said she appeared on the cape scene about a year ago and has been visible, but low profile since then. Pictures of her had her in half a dozen different costumes. There was a summary of her powers that didn't seem too far off from what she had told me, though it was missing the perfect balance and aim thing. There was a list of thefts attributed to her, but they were flagged as "suspected". The PRT incident was described in great detail, however, with a number of pictures of filled-with-confoam gift shop. And finally there was a note of her claim to not be a villain and her association with the Vanguard. I wondered what they had to say about us and went to click and jumped as I heard a door open down the hall and footsteps.
"Hello?" I called out.
Coming around the corner was a boy, maybe my age, maybe a little younger. Not very tall, only maybe an inch taller than me. He had brown hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. He was wearing red jeans and a black windbreaker that was open over a white t-shirt. He was cute in a not-so-intimidating kind of way. There was something familiar about his smile. "Alex?"
He grinned. "Got it in one. What'cha up to? I didn't expect to see you back here so soon."
His voice, like his smile was familiar but I'm not sure I would have recognized it straight off. It wasn't that it was deeper exactly but it had a different timbre and cadence.
"So with the bad time I've been having at school I talked to my dad and… I'm going to be withdrawing and doing the GED thing, you know? So I'm still figuring that out I guess? I thought I'd research local capes more so I wouldn't be caught as flat footed as I was by Glory Girl's aura last night."
"Sounds like solid thinking," and peering around me at the screen, "and looking me up I see. Find anything juicy?"
I felt myself blushing in embarrassment. "I thought it would be a good idea to know what folks were saying about my teammates, that's all. Did you know they've never heard of Tattletale?"
"I did. Well, that'll all change this Thursday. The Vanguard PR folks would like to do the press release then. Will you be available?"
"Yeah, uhm, in the afternoon anyway. We have a meeting with the school in the morning."
"Good, good. Before then they'd like to do some PR photos of us in costume. They've got individual shots of Teetee and me of course, but they'd like some team shots in addition to some of you. And for Thursday they'd like us available when the press comes calling."
I nodded having mixed feelings. I wasn't too keen on photos really, but it was obviously necessary. And I had to admit that my costume did look pretty good. "So what has you here so early this morning? Karen said that you all usually are only here in the evenings?"
Alex gave a short laugh, "Yeah, that's true. I was here super late last night finishing up the reports on our little visit to Glory Girl. Plus I did a first pass edit on the video I recorded. It was late enough I decided to just crash here." He paused for a moment and then said, "I'm going to make some coffee, you want some?"
I shook my head, the one cup I'd had was almost already too much. "Hey, do you know anything about… uh, figuring out more about powers? 'Cause I dunno, I guess I don't feel like I really know much about mine yet."
Alex nodded, "A little bit. I had a bit of a mentor when I first started out and they helped me figure out some of the details." As he spoke he filled a kettle and started it boiling and moved on to picking out coffee beans. There were more kinds than I'd seen outside a shop in that little kitchen's cupboard. He continued, "The key thing is to be methodical. We can pick a particular approach and then explore that thoroughly. Teetee can probably suggest some approaches you wouldn't think of otherwise, but ultimately the testing is gonna be up to you."
"That makes sense, I guess, uhm, I'm still not sure where I'd even start though."
Having picked out his beans he added them to a little hand grinder and turned back to me while he cranked the handle. "Ok, so you have a thinker power, so off the top of my head my list would be: How does it work on you? How does it work on things? How does it work on ideas? And finally how does it work on other people?"
I nodded. "Ok, that sounds pretty good. So that first one, it does seem to work on me, I guess. I have to look in a mirror though."
He finished the grinding and set the little grinder back on the counter. "Ok, does it work if you look at your hands, or your feet?"
I held out my hand and looked at my nails critically, as if I was really the sort of girl who cared about her nails. I'd painted them before in play with Emma when we were little but now, well, as a social outcast I didn't have any girlfriends who were going to do makeup with me. And with my Mom dead… well to be honest, even if she were still around she was never much for makeup, she probably wouldn't have been much help anyway. I willed my power to show me something but it stubbornly refused. I shook my head. "No, it doesn't seem to work like that."
Alex poured his grounds into a funnel/filter contraption that seemed to be precariously balanced on top of a coffee cup and poured the boiling water into it. He nodded. "Alright, let's try with you looking in a mirror then. Have you tried this much on your own yet?"
"No, I… uh, at first I couldn't help but see and I thought I was being, I don't know, super self critical or something? But since I've gotten some control I've tried not to."
He paused to look at me for a moment. "Are you sure you're comfortable trying this?"
I took a breath and nodded, "I've gotta, I've gotta face this sometime."
He walked past me and over to one of the bathrooms, turning on the light. "Try to put what you're seeing into words," his voice sounding gentle, "if you find it's too much don't worry about it, we'll try something else. Don't make yourself push through."
I stepped in next to him and faced the mirror. My power spread over the mirror and I willed it to go further and it recentered on me. There were a lot of familiar patterns. "When I first saw myself with my power it was focused on um, physical imperfections? Which is why I thought I was just being self conscious. But now I can see a spider web of cracks radiating out centered on my face. It doesn't really look any different than anyone else's. They're kind of different… colors? If I focus on one then I get a sense of what it represents."
"Do the colors mean anything? Are the consistent between people?"
"I … I think so? I mean, yes, they seem to be. Like, there's a black line that I associate with depression. How big a crack is seems to somehow correlate with how big a, mmm, flaw, it is? That one seems… kind of average?"
"Ok, so what do see if you concentrate on that particular line?"
I peered into my depression line and… I suddenly felt the world swallow me up. Every moment when I'd embarrassed myself, every time I'd felt isolated and alone, it all came crashing back in on me. I could feel loneliness and grief and anger at my mother's death. I could see Emma there, just through the mirror, telling me again that I wasn't her friend any more, that she couldn't be friends with losers like me. I could feel tears running down my cheeks. Somehow I couldn't look away. I couldn't… I could feel Alex's hand on my shoulder and vaguely hear him saying my name. He turned me and my view of the mirror fell away and I was back with myself, looking at him now.
"Taylor! Are you… are you going to be ok?" The worry was evident in his voice.
Tears still running down my cheeks I felt entirely overwhelmed and leaned up against him. Feeling his arms go around me I clung to him and let out a sob. I closed my eyes and felt dizzy, I could still feel the memories swirling around me. My Mom's funeral, my Dad's own depression and distance, Emma's many betrayals. Finally it seemed to slow and I disengaged myself. I pushed my glasses up as I rubbed my eyes. "I'm sorry about that, I… I didn't expect that."
"You don't have anything to apologize for," he said, his voice very careful. He led me back out to the kitchen. "Here's a box of kleenex and let me make you some tea. We have some herbals."
I nodded hazily and gratefully took a tissue. It gave me an excuse to cover my face again. That was… awful and embarrassing. I'm not usually that fragile. I shook my head and said "I don't … when I look at other folks lines I just um, almost hear a voice? It describes what's behind the line. I've never experienced the emotion behind it."
Alex heated up more water and made me a mug of chamomile tea. Soon it was ready and we went out into the couch area and sat down next to each other. For a long moment we just sat there, each sipping at our own drinks.
"Did… did you want to talk about it?" he asked.
I wasn't sure. I'd made it through my mother's death because of Emma's support, and even then I'd cried for what felt like a week straight. "I, well, I was hit by all of the emotions from when my mom died. And on top of that Emma's…" I could feel my lip start to tremble and tears prick my eyes. I took another sip of tea to center myself. "Well, all of the things she's done."
"Emma was your best friend? The one who went sour?"
I took another sip of my tea, "Yeah."
He looked down in his coffee cup and then back up at me, "Hey, you want to get out of here? Go to a park maybe? We can people watch and you can test the, ahm, safer parts of your power?"
I smiled and said "That sounds nice."