After talking to Kid Flash on the phone, Jinx hung up and muttered to herself "What'd I just do?"

She sniffed at the realization. Put him off for five days. Five days! He'd have showed up in two seconds if he had the address to super speed to. Just, yeah it's such and such number such and such street then . . one . . two . . KnockKnockKnock! Just like that. He would've. For some reason, thinking of his ardor, a recollection came to mind, in those blissful moments kissing him on the bench in the book store, a split second glance down at the front of his pants. Hard to be sure with pants like that, but . . ! She wondered if he knew what was going on inside her at the same time. Boys think they're the only ones who . . react. Well, he did have that one hand on my . . . Her eyes went wide. He must've felt . .

She sighed making her way to the window and facing out but not really noticing anything. Okay, he had at least an inkling that there was some reciprocity happening there in the book store.

But more than that, the boy did wrong. How did he say it at that mansion, this crime fighting thing that's taken over my life? Was that it? Taken over my life. And then he goes against all of that! All of it! He admitted that he didn't know what the charge was. He only found out afterward about the new anti-anyone with powers policy. He did wrong . . for me. The image of traveling through the city at super speed flashed by. What else could an image like that do? It was a blur to begin with, everything pulled into being horizontal lines, lights and buildings, everything a blur stretched into a line by him. How the hell does he see when he's doing that? That's more than just a get used to it or adjust to it sort of thing to see anything clearly during that. It was twice as fast, no more than that, three times or four or, ugh, who knows but him. It was a lot faster than the first time that he said was 300 miles an hour. And he was breaking the rules doing it. He is sooooo committed, Wally West is.

"A-a little more time's okay . . sure". She smirked thinking of the tone of his voice and the pause before 'sure'. Talk about words going in one direction and feeling in the other. You aresooooo committed, Wally West.

She sighed and made her way over and flopped down on the futon to consider all this some more.

"What about me?", she wondered. I'm not? I'm the one maybe walking away from her life! If that's not a sign of possible commitment then what is? She calmed down. Then why had it been the right decision to not see him for five days? She lay there on the futon thinking about it. It'd felt emotionally right at that moment. But she'd resolved to admit to herself everything that she did and why. She wouldn't be some ditzy emotional girl careening back and forth in this relationship. That's for Starfire or somebody like that, not somebody who'd made her own way in the world. She'd be a woman, a strong woman.

That was a portion of it. To see him right away, to surrender immediately to the desire for those lips, the desire to get both hands, this time, on the seat of his pants, would be weak. Nothing wrong with lusting for a boy. Boys like him deserve to be treated as lust objects . . and as real people if they have that in them, too. But to give in so easy, even for a boy whose shape suggests the incredible things he can do, well, that was for weak girls. Besides. He'd waited two weeks. Two whole weeks! Five days is impossible? Five days is a herculean task when he waited two weeks? Is he so special?

First her lips curled, gently and then completely. And then she laughed out loud at the question.

Another portion was that the idea of punishing him, of hurting him by making him wait five days was very appealing. She thought of the blurb of information, his spazzy sister had given her. A bunch of seniors paddled his buns in front of the whole school. God! To have been there! And then, they-they took his clothes and threw him in a pig pen. She burst out laughing. They took . . his . . clothes. Oh Wally! She lingered on this thought for a few minutes, smiling deliciously.

Yes, there was a certain kind and degree of pleasure in punishing him with delay. Freedom for such pleasure came from a feeling of the strength of the boy and a certainty that such things couldn't really hurt him.

And maybe there was some fear of a boy so strong that humiliations like that would just bounce off him. That didn't have to happen to him. He had to have let it happen, she realized. The average big dumb jock senior couldn't touch him if he didn't let it happen. So, not only did it not faze him afterward but he'd had to consciously choose to let it happen in the first place, probably to prevent any suspicion about what he really was.

Maybe there was fear of domination by such a strong boy, maybe not in any malevolent way but just that the boy becomes a bit suffocating. What was the line from "That's the Way I've Always Heard it Should Be"?. You say we'll soar like two birds through the sky but soon you'll cage me on your shelf. I'll never learn to be me first, by myself . .

That song is so fricking classic and so dead on. But-but he didn't try to control. You can do better. That was him. You can do better. In two dates he hasn't said a word about what I should do. It's just been him and me. She sighed again, worry of suffocation dissipated.

Hmm. This . Intelligent, sometimes perceptive and . . she chuckled then kissed the air, Mmmmuh! picturing him in his tight Kid Flash uniform, boy. All those intentions to discuss powers and their influence and the importance of when you got them went right out the window with a kiss. Those lips! Nice and round and with such good color for a pale boy. She rolled her eyes at the irony again, looking at the light gray skin of her arm. Well, he was pale. Most boys like that had no visible upper lip at all or barely any, just a pale pink line above the middle of their lower lip. Ugh. But he had two full dark lips, so distinct against his very fair skin. Really really good lips , for any boy, lips that kissed so well, but those questions were everything. Everything! To put them aside for a boy's lips, even with the bonus of a full torso grope of him? No, have to be stronger before facing that boy again, no matter how warm and alluring he is. Next time, no matter what, we discuss those things! We'll get down to the nitty gritty.

She thought more of the kissing, or really just before it, all his talk that she didn't belong in jail that he was stunned that he couldn't put a villain in jail and the word "beautiful". That's what he'd said, wasn't it. Beautiful. And this boy was not a player. She remembered his hexworthy sister on the phone. A girl calling for . . him! He wasn't going around talking like that to every girl he met. She sighed recalling him say it and the look on his face. What girl wouldn't want that, wouldn't want to be with him knowing he'd give her words like that, words said that way? A boy feeling like that, kissing like that, was like a narcotic for a girl. Boysmack. The way he looked at her out of the tops of his eyes while kissing her hand! She caught her breath.

She'd wait five days. She'd be a woman, a strong woman.

Damn, it was hard.

Time seemed to creep along. More than once she looked at the phone nearly deciding to call him to chat. But she held off. She finished a book she'd been reading. She started and finished another. And she went to another book store and bought the things he'd recommended on their second date, a collection of stories by Chekhov and Bartleby the Scrivener by Melville. Chekhov was surprisingly good, not that slightly dense style some of the other russian authors had. She particularly liked The Black Monk. She'd have to ask him about that one. Better non-conformist and possibly crazy or healthy and "normal" but not brilliant.

She bought the papers while she was there. Mostly because they all seemed to feature a picture of him. There he was in the same photo in both City papers and the smaller one devoted to just one suburban town. She read the captions. It seemed he'd stopped some carjacker and the guy had run from him. She chuckled. Brilliant! Run . . from . . Kid Flash? You fricking moron. You should go to jail for stupidity. And Kid Flash knocked him out at the entrance to some strip mall ballet school studio. There they were around him, two dozen or so ballerinas and a couple boys, too. The boys looked up proudly at him. Trying to latch onto any accomplishment by a boy in tights, huh? Half the ballerinas looked like they'd developed instantaneous crushes on him. Well, good for him to get some positive pub.

She also bought a few other books while she was there. Jinx had money. And it came from the most surprising source. She was in a convenience store on Thursday evening. In front of her was a woman in her late fifties or early 60's holding up the line of 5 customers with her stupid dithering about which lottery scratch ticket to buy.

"I'll take a-uh . . a-uh . . a-a number 26 ticket and a-uh . . a-uh"

Jinx rolled her eyes and took a deep breath trying to tamp down the impulse to fry this woman on the spot. Do these idiots think that one of the cards is gonna call out to them or something, heralding the presence of a million dollar winner just waiting to be scratched? Over here stupid gambler, pick me! No, over here! Ugh. Soooo inconsiderate of the other people in line.

"-a-uh . . a-uh . . "

"The number thirteen ticket!" said Jinx with an air of certainty just wanting to end the process.

"You really think so?" said the woman to the weird punk rocker looking girl behind her in line.

"That's the one." Jinx proclaimed.

"Okay" the woman smiled and ordered that one from the clerk. "If it wins I'll give you a dollar" the woman said. Jinx nodded her thanks while thinking "If there were a god in heaven it would give you carpal tunnel syndrome so bad that you can't buy another".

Jinx paid for the items her cousin's friend had asked her to get and was leaving when the old woman came bounding back into the store.

"You were right! You were right!" she said waving the garishly colored little card at her. "A hundred dollar winner!".

The clerk had dealt with the other customers and with no line in front of them, the woman made a beeline for the counter. She presented the winning ticket, received payment, gave Jinx a dollar and started the process again.

"a-uh . . a-uh . . " she only snapped out of it when she saw Jinx about to walk out.

"What're you doing?" she asked with urgency.

"Um, I'm walking out of the store"

"But you can't! You gotta use that lucky dollar on the same thing"

Jinx rolled her eyes. "Fine! Give me a number 13 card" she said slapping the dollar down on the counter. The clerk took the dollar and gave her the card which she promptly put in the bag with her other things and walked out. She didn't even think of it again till she was back at the apartment and realized there was something in the bag as she was throwing it away.

Oh, the scratch ticket. With a roll of her eyes and a wry smile, she took a quarter and scratched off the gray stuff covering the numbers underneath. There. That's done with. She reached to throw it into the trash. Wait a minute. She looked at it. How can this be? She looked to either side of her and then all around the room. Is this some kind of joke? It was a winner. Seven 7's. It was a winner. What the hell? She held it out in front of herself like a potentially dangerous alien object. She let it drop to the table and stared at it. Seven 7's. It was worth . . $500. She squinted in confusion. This isn't supposed to happen. Nothing like this ever happens. What the f . . ? Am I being punk'd by Gizmo or something?

She marched back out to the convenience store, another sneaking suspicion filling her head. I know. This is going to make me be in the right place to meet bigger bad luck, a car crash or stray bullet or something. Because this can't happen.

But her walk to and from the convenience store was completely uneventful. Her fake ID worked like a charm, too. Of course I'm eighteen. The clerk said that $500 was the most money they were allowed to pay out from the store. Any more and the winner had to go to the lottery office. He peeled off twenty five twenty dollar bills and she was gone. Nothing happened. It was this money that Jinx had on her when she bought books from the book store.

Wanting a break from her books, she went online using her cousin's friend's crappy computer. She checked out a few writer's sites that she liked, fanfiction and a couple others. She loved sites like that for promoting writing by giving anyone anywhere an outlet for their writing, a chance to get feedback. She'd submitted a few stories herself and would have confessed that she loved the praise she'd received. She was about to log off the aol account when, out of idle curiosity she thought to run a search on him. To her surprise, it turned up not just a lot of references to news stories but also all sorts of other things. Kid Flash saves this person. Kid Flash stops this robbery. Kid Flash fights Captain Cold. Kid Flash fights Gorilla Grodd. Rumors that Kid Flash stopped aHIVE robbery of museum. She sighed. And there were also fan sites to click on. What the hell, why not? She clicked on one of them and then a "forums" tab and read a furious argument between two girls both claiming that Kid Flash was really and truly, honest to god, in real life, her boyfriend and saying so in computer shorthand, half the vowels and half the sentence structure gone. Jinx scowled. So annoying. The language is beautiful. Use it fer chrissakes! What, you're so busy composing a requiem or a symphony or something? But, though her reaction was inspired by love of the english language, it was also, in some small way a feeling of possessiveness. Those two ditzy girls both know the other is lying. He's really mine, so why don't both of you just shut the hell up!

For Wally, recalling the events of the previous day after waking on Friday was like lowering a thousand pound weight back down onto himself. He came to consciousness on his side, the covers only half over him and Empress stretched out as if someone had tried to measure the how far she could reach from front paws to back paws in front of him. Wally lay there, indifferent that his mother or sister peeking in from the kitchen would see his muscle tone. He was trying to recall if he'd thought of any way out of his problems. But he couldn't think of any.

Depression, like a black fog, settled over him, melancholy not for what had happened because his life was exactly the same as the day before, but for what hadn't. The down feeling here wasn't the depth of his present circumstance but the heights which he'd just missed. He'd only seen the first floor lobby and the 11th floor lobby of Titans Tower, but what a cool place. Access to my school records? Access to federal investigation video? Holy shit. What resources! And the teammates! Cyborg. Oh man. I could talk to him all the time. I bet he knows Cheng and Vandermeer forward and backward. And the others! I-

He caught himself and sat bolt upright with a groan. "Stop thinking about it, jackass!" he told himself out loud. "Stop thinking about it! You're not gonna be part of the club". Don't call us . .

His mother had heard something from the living room. "Who are you talking to in there? Are you crazy?" He heard his sister out there laughing at him. With a sigh, Wally got up and pulled on his boxers, pants and a t-shirt to make his way to the bathroom. He barely took in the presence of his sister and mother on the couch, his sister making faces at him as he went by. He jumped in the shower wanting to feel clean, wanting to scrub clean and start anew. But made his way back to his room 10 minutes later just a depressed boy glowing more pink.

He decided to patrol. The high of using super speed would be especially helpful about now. But he felt so down, so much less than he had been on waking yesterday morning that he had to take deep breaths and psyche himself up before going out to patrol. When he'd worked up a more suitable level of energy, he strode quickly out his room to the front door. "I'll be back this afternoon" he threw over his shoulder not wanting to talk.

"Where're you going?" his mother demanded.

"I'm checking on some work" he said half turning to her in the doorway.

"Good. I don't want you sitting around doing nothing this summer, eating us out of house and home"

Wally sighed and walked out. He turned the corner down the street and changed into his Kid Flash uniform, sprinting away at super speed from the spot where he usually hid his clothes in the hollow of an oak tree.

Most of the time, patrolling, he had to mildly fight the euphoria of it to not feel like a dumb jock. But this time, Kid Flash just ran and felt the sensations of his muscles, the pleasant warmth of calves and quads and hamstrings and glutes firing away at a pace that only one other person on the planet could match. He was glad that there was no crimes for him to try to stop right away. He still felt sort of beaten down from the result of the interview.

But as he continued to patrol and exercise his great ability, he felt better. He felt stronger. And he started to wonder if there was any reason he wouldn't get mentally tougher as he got older. Why can't I handle more of this? The thought of indifferent teachers and parents, his bratty sister or anything else, even his isolation defeating him didn't seem quite real running around in his Kid Flash uniform. By Sunday he still felt a bit depressed but not so badly as Friday morning. He tried to psyche himself up before their date. She doesn't need to see me feeling depressed, he told himself. She doesn't need to have me putting burdens on her. No way.

He filled his head with thoughts of her beautiful face, those exotic pink eyes and that pink hair, her exquisite hourglass shape. He remembered having his arms around her. He felt all the energy he needed now. And when he saw her on the street corner he was infused with even more.

He tried to kiss her hand when they met but she pulled it from between his. "Not so soon"

"Sorry" he said a little defensively.

They looked at each other for a few moments, both unsure what to say.

"So, I saw the picture in the paper of you at the dance school, the other day"

He shrugged. "That's where I caught the guy. I have to make the most of any opportunity to not be the guy with the tightest outfit in the room."

She smiled at him in his oversized civilian clothes and knit hat. "Okay" she said starting to walk down the street. "Let's get right to it. No kissing till we've discussed some things. You said that our powers influence us more than we realize. Take it from there"

"You wanna start right off with that?"

She nodded very insistently. He sighed,taken off guard by immediately plunging into such a serious topic but gave it his best. "Um, okay, well, I only know for sure about myself and what my power does to me. It makes me feel kind of euphoric. And it makes me always see possibilities because it makes me feel like I'm never out of time. I noticed it within a few months after I became Kid Flash, how it made me feel to use my powers. I-I thought of it at the museum when you said that your powers were only good for doing evil"

"You heard that? I said it under my breath"

"I was paying attention. It-it sounded like your power was doing the opposite to you of what my does to me. Does it?"

"It, well, I mean, um, well, yeah. It-it sort of heightens anger. I get in line somewhere and it goes slow and I can feel the hex power welling up in me. It's not just that it shortens my fuse. It makes me fly off the handle."
"Sorry"

"Sorry for what?"

"I-I just don't wish for you to be hurt"

"I-I'm not some delicate flower, you know. And I'm not hurt by that part of it. I've actually got it fairly well under control" she said as they reached the entrance of a rather large diner and went inside. Seated at a booth, Wally ordered three meals. Jinx ordered just a bowl of soup and a knish.

"You're really going to eat all that?" she asked when the waiter left them.

He nodded. "Easily. I need fuel for all my running. I still only weigh like 125 or 127. Anyway, you said that time that your powers are only good for evil. Do you mind my asking why you think that?"

"I destroy things. That's my power. I throw hex energy at things or cause them to fall apart. That's all I do is destroy things. You run like comically fast from point A to point B. I make point B fall apart."

"But that could be positive. You can be a hero just destroying things if you destroy the right things"

She sighed. "I've thought so before, too. But it's never worked out. Leaving that aside, for the moment, how do you think that makes me feel, huh?" she asked angrily.

"It-it must make you feel bad. I'm sorry"

She groaned. "Again with the sorries!"

"I-I . . " he barely kept himself from responding by saying 'I'm sorry'.

"Anyway", she said. "I-I don't zoom over the landscape like some people. I flatten the landscape"

Their food came and she marveled for a moment that the slender boy could eat so much as was set before him.

"I flattened my family" she said, her eyes focused on the table top as he looked right at her. "I drove my father away and then my mother. Do you have any idea what that was like?" she asked with a brief glance at a sympathetic Wally West. "Do you have any idea? That's what my power did. I ruined everything around me. I broke every appliance we had. I ruined everything in the house. I made them feel exhausted and like total failures. I ruined things for them. Finally, my father couldn't take it any more and gave up. He left us and my mom didn't really get mad at him. Two and a half years later my mom couldn't take it any more and left me with an aunt. So, when I say that my power is only good for evil, I kind of know what I'm talking about"

He opened his mouth to say "I'm sorry" but realized that would've been a terrible choice and just took her hand in his.

"I-I think I told you that I got my power at 11 years old and change. If I'd gotten it at birth I'm sure I would have made things impossible and fallen into all kinds of bad patterns of behavior that came out of not knowing how to control my power"

"Look, I-" she tried to begin but stopped for rubbing her eyes.

He put one hand to her cheek. She both loved the gesture and disliked feeling as though she needed his sympathy. She pushed his hand away.

"I'm not some charity case orphan or something. I've made my way in the world despite no one being there to help me. I'm not here for anyone to pity" she said and then got up. "I've gotta go"

He was startled and jumped up to head her off from the door.

"Jinx. I don't look down on you. I'm no better. I'm not some goody two shoes looking down on you from on high and giving you pity while secretly enjoying" the difference between us. I'm . . I'm . . " he sighed and looked down. "not loved by my family. I-I have no friends any more, either. The city thinks I'm more trouble than I'm worth, my teachers all disliked me and the-the Teen Titans rejected me"

"They what?"

"I had an interview. They turned me down. Robin hated me on sight." He let out a deep exhale. "Please don't go"

She sniffed with a smile. "I-I'm only going to the bathroom, if that's okay with you"

He chuckled nervously. "Sure"

When she came back they talked some more.

"Circumstances change. Maybe you reacted a certain way to things based on not being able to do better with the hand you were dealt and the way that people treated you. But if you can do better you can't be afraid to question acting the same way as when you had less control"

"You know how much crap I took from other kids back when I was in school? They didn't like me. They tried to make my life miserable because I'm different. And if all those assholes were good, then sign me up for the other side! That was my attitude. And it wasn't just the kids. The parents and teachers . . do-do you think they want a girl like me in their clubs and firms and everything? Do you think they want a girl like me as part of their phony establishment? And then I was getting somewhere on the villain side of things."

"But do you want to give those same jerks a veto power over your life now? Some kids call you names in elementary school and Junior High and other people make you feel like you don't belong and treat you badly and you can't change things now because of them? That's not rebelling against them. That's making them your masters"

"I-I . . " she ran it through her head. Maybe. Maybe. Then the idea of this coming from him struck her and she stared at him. What a weird boy! What a frigging weird boy!

"What makes you . . ? W-why are you like this?" she asked.

"Like . .?"

"How does a 15 year old boy-"

"I'm not actually 15 yet." he admitted looking down. "I'm a few days short. It sounded better than saying 14."

"Why aren't you playing video games and doing stupid shit that other boys do?"

"Look, I'm not necessarily any better than them. I just got slapped in the face by things I've seen as Kid Flash. When I first patrolled alongside Flash, I was just like an appendage of his. It was all kind of unreal. Running along at super speed doesn't add to the gritty reality of things. I was all gee whiz and excitement about the whole deal. I was just an 11 year old kid. Then on one of my first solo patrols, there was a dead man. These crooks killed this young guy just for maybe being a witness. It was the first dead body I'd ever seen and it was horrible."

"Bloody?"

"No. Almost none at all. It was the look in his eyes, the look on his face. I was a afraid to walk in front of those eyes. You almost thought he could still see. What could you say to those eyes? He-he had this look on his face, this incredible look of sorrow and-and longing, like, please don't let it end here. There's so much more left! It was-it was . . "

"Your eyes are watering"

"Jinx. It was the saddest thing in the world and while I was still there, his wife came screaming and sobbing onto the scene and she had their baby boy with her. No more laughter for him. No more jokes. No more sunsets, no more music, no more love, no seeing his boy grow. No more life. Just nothing. Nothing. I was twelve then and that poor dead guy must've pushed me forward two or three years at that instant. The people who would do that . . ? I will never lack for motivation to catch people like that. But you're not one of them"

They just looked at each other and ate for a while. The somberness of his recollection finally dissipated and she was able to joke about all the food he'd eaten. He kissed her hand as he had in the book store and they left the diner and wandered aimlessly till they found themselves in a small park at the edge of an apartment complex. They found their way to a bench there and kissed and necked for over an hour, amour unfettered. Eventually they got up as the sun was starting to set and Kid Flash escorted her back to that same intersection where they'd met up.

"Have you had a girlfriend before?"

He shook his head. "I-I've kissed a couple girls at parties and raves but no, no girlfriend. Well, there is this one girl who sleeps with me all the time but . . " he waited for her reaction. Both eyebrows lifted. Her jaw dropped. ". . but it's our neighbor's cat" he smiled. She slapped his arm and deftly applied a bit of hex energy just as she touched him.

"Ow!" he laughed.

"You deserve it. But I do love cats. If a cat picked you out and chose to sleep on your bed, that's a major point in your favor as far as I'm concerned."

"What about you?"

"No. I-I almost dated Cyborg months back. But it wasn't going to work."

She watched his expression change slightly as he absorbed this.

"Okay"

"But, no, I've never had a serious boyfriend"

"You do now" he whispered then stepped forward and kissed her. They parted with a long meaningful stare that was at least as affectionate as the kiss. She went back to the apartment and he went quickly to an alley where he changed into his Kid Flash uniform to patrol.

Meanwhile, at Titans Tower, Raven was in her quarters illuminated only by the grey light on in one corner. But she wasn't levitating and achieving greater mastery of spells or memorizing new incantations. She was thinking of the monthly meeting to take place the next day. "He always wins. He always has to win. Well, not this time!"