Chapter Twenty-One
(Part 2)
The 20th of July came.
Just as one might expect of the dead of summer, this day, in particular, was scorching. We were in the middle of a legendary heat wave, but the weatherman on channel 10 had said it was one of the hottest days Townsville had seen in 30 years.
And just as the weather itself was remarkable, many other remarkable things were to happen on this day.
On our drive over to the courthouse, we passed cars parked on the sides of the road that had overheated engines. There were kids splashing through kiddie pools in front yards, and running through sprinklers, and throwing water balloons. The tinkering tune of ice cream trucks filled the air of residential neighborhoods.
I took in these sights as we passed them by. Surrounding my senses in these comforting, familiar summertime sights were helping to calm my nerves.
This court appearance would be our first official public appearance since we had been revived and had mostly healed as we relearned our world. And the thought of facing hordes of the press after so long was incredibly daunting.
"Remember girls," Professor had said to us before we'd left the house, "sunglasses on, faces down. Do not engage. You are not required to answer any of their questions. You don't owe them anything, not even after being out of the spotlight for so long. The police will be there to keep the press under control."
We had all spent most of the drive to downtown Townsville in a deep silence, the car's air conditioner roaring and the car's engine being the only sounds. The air conditioner needed to be fixed, though—the air wasn't nearly as cool as it needed to be, and lukewarm air blowing at our faces wasn't enough to keep our legs from sticking to the leather seats.
Sometime later, a little too soon for my liking, we had arrived.
The Townsville courthouse was beautiful. It was one of the oldest buildings in town, and it had managed to stay out of the way of most attacks the city had weathered, so it was also the most well-preserved. The dome of the building arched up high above the rest of the building, and the stained glass it was partially made of reminded me of a cathedral. On the numerous front steps of the courthouse, however, were hordes and hordes of reporters. There must have been at least two hundred of them. Buttercup groaned at the sight of them all, and Bubbles made a nervous whimpering sound. I only sighed.
After Professor parked his car in a non-conspicuous area in the courthouse's parking lot, we sat waiting for our police escorts to arrive at our car—they had been parked at the edge of the parking lot, keeping a look out for Professor's car, and once they spotted us, they followed us.
Within minutes, eight uniformed police officers had come to stand by our car. Professor looked over at me in the passenger's seat and then turned to look at my sisters in the backseat. I glanced back at them, too.
Bubbles was in her powder blue floral mid-length, belted sundress with cap sleeves, along with a pair of heels, and Buttercup was in an oversize Iron Maiden t-shirt knotted in the front with black cutoff shorts and her neon green lace-up Vans. I had asked her to try to dress a little more appropriately for a court appearance, maybe something like my denim skater skirt and blush-colored, sleeveless mock neck blouse and sandals, but she'd ignored me.
She hadn't even removed her small hoop nose ring when I'd asked, or opted for a more neutral lipstick instead of her deep purple lipstick when I'd suggested it. I sighed inwardly. At least her hair looked nice. Her hair had now grown out somewhat and resembled a neat Mia Farrow style pixie cut. Just as her buzzcut had, it looked ridiculously charming on her. I was rather jealous.
"Well," Professor said, unbuckling his own seatbelt. "It's now or never." He had changed out of his lab clothes into a more regular looking dress shirt, tie, and dress pants. He looked nice.
I nodded, sighing again, and unbuckled my seat belt too. Now or never.
With all of us out of the car, the officers gave us a polite greeting, and then all 12 of us headed to the front of the courthouse, knowing that soon the piranhas would awaken.
Once one or two of the reporters had spotted us, the rest quickly followed, and soon a whole ocean of people was shouting at us and running at us, cameras flashing and microphones thrust out towards us.
The officers tried their hardest to keep them all at bay, but that meant our progress up the grand steps was slow. Professor stood in front of us within the huddle the police provided, and my sisters and I held hands, keeping our heads ducked downward and our mouths shut.
The humid, hot air pressed in on us from all sides, which was made worse by all the surrounding body heat, not to mention the odors of sweat and sunscreen mixing together with melting perfumes and colognes into something horrible. The shouts, the camera shutters, the shoving bodies—it was all so overpowering. I hadn't remembered all of this. I didn't ask for this.
I hated this. I hated this so much. Why did we decide to come here? It was a horrible idea. We should have just stayed home and continued living our relaxing summer. I would rather have been reading out in the backyard with my feet dipped into a kiddie pool.
Nonetheless, our little huddle pressed on through the press hornet's nest, moving slowly but surely toward the double front doors of the courtroom. My hands still gripping my sisters', we continued to refuse to look up.
So, I suppose, that's why the sudden high-pitched voice calling my name brought me out of my tense daze like a jolt.
"Blossom!"
I heard the small voice through the adult reporters shouting from somewhere behind me, and even though I knew I shouldn't, I turned to look. And immediately I saw a small, tan and skinny arm with a small hand holding a lone dandelion flower, and a small, scared face peeking through the tall bodies of the reporters, who didn't even seem to care that they were squishing a child.
Before I could stop myself, I let go of my sisters, and I reached a hand out toward him. "Stop!" I yelled at the reporters. "You're crushing him!" Immediately I rushed over to the little hand holding the dandelion, and I clutched onto the hand with mine. "Let him through!" I instructed.
"Blossom?" I heard the unspoken question in Buttercup's low voice behind me. I glanced back at her, only nodding at her and Bubbles in reassurance as they stared at me in question.
I turned back, and as the two officers on either side of me pushed the careless reporters aside, I took the little boy's shoulders and pulled him out of the dense crowd, into our safe huddle. I bent down to look him in the face. "Are you okay?" I asked him. "You're not hurt, are you?"
The boy laughed. He had the sweetest face and sparkling almond-shaped eyes. His two front teeth were missing. "Yeah, I'm all right. Thanks to you!" He held up the dandelion to me. "I picked this for you!"
The crowd had quieted, and I could feel every camera on us. But, oddly, I didn't mind. I accepted the dandelion, grinning. "For me? Why, thank you." I placed the stem of the flower behind my ear so that the flower poked out from the curled tendrils of my hair. "There. Now my hair looks pretty."
"You always look pretty!" he told me, and then his small face grew very worried. "Blossom, are you still sick?"
Professor had told us to avoid the press' questions. But there was no way I could ignore a question when it came from a little boy this sweet. Immediately, I answered, "No, I'm not. I'm all better now."
A big smile burst onto his face now, and dimples appeared on either side of his face. I melted a little. He shouted, "Good! You gotta feel good to kick bad guys' butts!" The whole crowd burst into laughter, including me.
Suddenly, one of the police officers said to me, "It looks like you have more admirers. Should we bring them over?" I looked over to where he was gesturing, and there was a group of more hopeful, excited-looking kids around the same age range who were each holding pieces of paper.
I nodded, smiling. "Yeah, let them through!"
The officers guided them through the crowd to us, and the excited kids burst through. One girl came running directly to me, throwing her arms around me so tightly it felt like she wanted to squeeze all the air out of my lungs.
"Whoa!" I said, bending down slightly to wrap my arms around her tiny shoulders. "Hello there. You're good at hugs!"
The little girl looked up at me so brightly that I couldn't help but smile down at her. She had red hair, too, and rosy cheeks. "I love you, Blossom!" she said to me. "I love you so, so much!"
Just like that, tears pricked in my eyes. Seemed to happen at the drop of a hat these days. I was glad once again that I was wearing these big sunglasses. I was so touched that for a moment I couldn't speak. Then I gently squeezed her back. "That means so much to me. Thank you."
The kids began giving me and my sisters handmade get-well-soon cards, and the press was practically in a frenzy trying to capture every moment. They gave us hugs and high fives, and even Buttercup was in on it, even though in the past she had sworn up and down that she hated kids.
But when a little girl approached Buttercup and pointed to her own almost hairless head, telling her she'd shaved her head so that she'd look as cool as her hero Buttercup, I could have sworn that Buttercup looked a little glassy-eyed through her reflective aviator sunglasses—at least, from what I could tell with my momentary x-ray squint.
And in this moment, I felt it so strongly—this. This was why we were who we were, and why we did what we did.
Not for these reporters. Not to feel like an animal in a zoo. We did it for them. These kids, the citizens who needed us now, and would need us for as long as we remained around.
And it was as simple as that.
Before we knew it, fifteen minutes had passed, and we couldn't be late for the trial. So we said goodbye to the kids, and now that the press was satisfied with the footage that would surely be all over the five o'clock news that evening, there was much less resistance as we headed inside.
Right before we walked through the entrance, though, a lone journalist, maybe a blogger, with a recording smartphone outstretched called my name. "Pardon me, Blossom?"
Deciding that he was harmless and that it couldn't hurt, I turned to him and paused just as the heavy, tall doors in front of us opened. "Yes?" I asked, wary.
He smiled at me, making his face look kind. "Welcome back."
I smiled back at him, feeling a hand pulling on my arm, urging me forward—Bubbles. "Thank you," I said to him as I walked through the doorway. Then I turned and disappeared inside the cool, air-conditioned courthouse as the doors swung closed behind my officer escorts.
And what a welcome back it had been.
#
"Thank you, defense and prosecution, for both of your opening statements." Townsville's Supreme Court judge, Maisy Jackson, was someone I had admired for a long time. One of Townsville's most praised judges, I was now sitting in her courtroom and listening to her speak. It was like listening to a queen address her court. "As I know it, the defense was unable to attain witnesses and has refused to testify. So, with that, I turn the floor to the prosecution."
Currently, I wasn't looking at her. At Princess.
I had been determined not to look at her when she had first come in, but then I had slipped for mere seconds. Black, beady eyes just as I remembered. Full of contempt, entitlement, and hatred. Being looked at that way reminded me of our hellish high school years with her, and the hellish middle school years, and the elementary school ones before that.
She was clad in a neon orange jumpsuit that clashed unflatteringly with her dark red hair, which was straightened permanently these days, and made her spray-tanned skin look even more unnatural. Interestingly, though, prison orange suited her. Karma was sweet.
But I could feel her piercing gaze all the way from the defendant's bench. Her gaze hadn't left us once since she'd first entered the courtroom with police officer guards on either side of her.
The courtroom was packed with people, too. But she only glared at us. I could practically imagine all the fantasy strangulation scenarios running through her head.
"Prosecution, you may call your first witness."
"Thank you, your Honor. Prosecution calls witness Bubbles Utonium to the stand."
Bubbles looked over at me, her eyebrows furrowed in worry. I reached over, rubbing her shoulder and giving her a reassuring grin. She nodded, took in a deep breath, and then stood from our bench.
Steadily and gracefully, hands clenched in front of her, she made her way over to the stand. Her heels clicked against the wood floors, and the sound echoed off the high ceilings in the silent room. I had advised her to wear her demure tan-colored ones rather than her favorite 'lucky' mermaid pumps that were covered in pure turquoise glitter and seashells, and I was glad she had taken my advice.
Bubbles arrived at the stand, sitting down and looking down as she smoothed her skirt over her legs, though we couldn't see her from mid-torso down. It was one of her nervous habits. Just as well, she reached up to tuck some of her hair behind her ear—another nervous habit.
The judge cleared her throat. "Will the witness please stand to be sworn in by the bailiff?"
Flustered, Bubbles immediately jumped back up from her seat, biting down on her bottom lip in embarrassment. "Sorry," she mouthed to Ms. Jackson.
Ms. Jackson, ever the judge with the kindest, most down-to-Earth personality, only slightly grinned with patience in response.
The bailiff had made his way over to Bubbles, and she placed her left hand on the Bible he held out.
"Please raise your right hand," the bailiff requested. Bubbles complied. "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" The stern-faced bailiff asked her in his deep voice.
She nodded. "Yes, I do."
The bailiff took the Bible away. "You may be seated."
The state prosecution lawyer, Mr. Jones, stood, making his way over to the stand. He was very tall, had curly hair that was cut short with thick sideburns, and he was properly dressed, unlike one of my sisters. Formally, he said, "Good afternoon, Ms. Utonium. Thanks for being here."
At his politeness, a slight grin cracked the staid nervousness on Bubbles' face. "Sure," she said.
Mr. Jones got right to it. "Ms. Utonium, let's talk about the incident almost 4 years ago, an incident that I'm sure most of this courtroom can recall—the widely-covered incident that transpired between your sister, Blossom Utonium, and the accused at a public park."
My stomach flip-flopped. I certainly remembered that. I would never forget the humiliation. Even years later, at just the mere mention of the incident, I felt people seated in that courtroom turn their heads to look at me, and with my face carefully composed and shoulders held back, I resisted the urge to look at their expressions—to gauge their level of judgment.
"You mean the fake incident?" answered Bubbles without missing a beat, pleasant smile still on her face.
The courtroom stirred collectively. I bit my lip to keep from bursting into a giggle. Buttercup, on the other hand, snorted audibly. I nudged her with my elbow.
Mr. Jones raised his eyebrows. "Do you mean to say that your sister Blossom attacking Princess Morbucks did not happen?"
Smile still intact, Bubbles nodded delicately. "That's exactly what I'm saying, sir."
"Objection!" cried a voice, and everyone turned to look at Princess's defense lawyer, Mr. White, standing up from his seat next to Princess. "Your Honor, this witness is clearly trying to gaslight this courtroom. She's claiming an event that we all saw on the news didn't happen. That is outrageous."
Mr. Jones calmly turned to Mr. White. "Mr. White, my witness has not explained herself. Do not put words into her mouth."
"Mr. Jones is correct, Mr. White," the judge responded, her voice echoing and authoritative. "You have interrupted the witness before she even had a chance to explain herself. Sit down."
The defense lawyer did as she instructed, though not looking pleased about it. The judge nodded at Mr. Jones, signaling him to go on.
He turned toward the jury, examining their faces, and then turned back to Bubbles, frowning. "Ms. Utonium. How can you claim that this event did not happen when the accused was interviewed many different times over this incident?"
"Simple," said Bubbles calmly. "She lied." This time, I couldn't help it—I smiled. I turned my face downward to hide it.
"She lied?" Mr. Jones repeated. For all his theatrical responses, he didn't seem all that surprised. "About what?"
'Come on, sis,' I thought, reaching over to grab Buttercup's hand. 'Don't hold back.'
As if she had heard me, Bubbles really came through. "About everything. Blossom would never attack any human with her powers, even when threatened. All of us know much better than to do that. Not to mention that if she had attacked Princess, Princess would've had to be put in the hospital. She didn't even have a scratch if you recall."
The murmurs in the courtroom had grown to a hum, and the judge pounded her gavel. "Order," she called out. "Order in the court."
The audience was silenced.
"So, what you're saying is," Mr. Jones paused for a couple of beats, probably for dramatic effect, "the defense has a history of exaggerating stories in the media?"
A moment ticked by, and then the unthinkable happened—Bubbles smirked. She actually smirked! I was so proud. "Well, that," said Bubbles, "and a history of paying media sources to skew their stories in her favor."
Obviously, that had been the exact response he'd been looking for. Mr. Jones smiled. "Just like she had paid media sources after the Townsville Park battle to make you and your teammates appear to be incompetent, and to sway public opinion against you?"
"Yes."
"Objection!" Mr. White cried out, jumping from his seat again. "Hearsay!"
"Overruled. Sit down, Mr. White," Ms. Jackson said again. Mr. White sat, petulant.
More murmuring. Buttercup and I tightened our hold on each other's hands. She was killing it. Risking a glance over at Princess on the bench, she was glaring maliciously at Bubbles.
Mr. Jones had turned to look at the jury once again, and then he turned back to Bubbles. "All right, all right. Let's switch gears, here. Going back to the incident 4 years ago, what sort of ramifications did this incident have for you and your sisters in your daily lives, outside of the media?"
Bubbles answered, "Well, it basically caused all our classmates to alienate us."
"Go on," he coaxed.
She went on. "Princess used all the media's sensationalizing to her advantage, and she spread tons more rumors about us. She claimed that Blossom was crazy and that none of us could be trusted because of it. One by one, our classmates turned on us. They isolated us and stared at us and called us names. Even people who had been our friends had turned on us."
"Even your friends turned against you?" Mr. Jones asked.
"Yes, sir."
Mr. Jones, frowning, said next, "Ms. Utonium, in your opinion, from that sole negative experience you had with the accused in high school, would it seem impossible to you that she could orchestrate the same effects outside of a high school setting?"
"Not impossible at all," Bubbles responded. "Really, at that point, she already had. People have brought up this incident up for years, and it didn't even really happen. There are still people from all over the world that still believe that it really happened."
"What did happen that day, exactly? Could you explain it to us?" Mr. Jones folded his hands together, starting a slow pace in front of the stand.
"Blossom had a horrible morning," Bubbles started. "Princess had caught her at her worst, called the paparazzi and told them of Blossom's location and then instigated a heated argument in public in order to make it look like an attack. To humiliate and demean her."
Mr. Jones hummed. "In short, we can all pull from your account that, at the very least, Princess Morbucks has made it a mission to verbally and perhaps emotionally harass you and your sisters for years now. Correct?"
"Correct," replied Bubbles as she nodded. Buttercup and I also nodded, even though he hadn't been talking to us.
"One more question for you, Ms. Utonium, before I give the floor to defense," Mr. Jones said, stopping his pacing and standing in front of Bubbles again. "Are there any other major instances of emotional abuse or bullying from the accused during your high school years that you can recall?"
Bubbles' eyebrows raised as she thought for a moment. "I don't even know where to start," she admitted.
"Just one more is sufficient enough," Mr. Jones assured her.
Bubbles paused. Then she frowned, looking downward into her lap. Silence ticked by.
Suddenly, the defense lawyer sprang up from his seat again. I was beginning to wonder if there was some sort of launch mechanism on his chair. He was like a jack-in-the-box from hell. "Your Honor, the witness is obviously stalling because she doesn't have any other instances of 'abusive behavior' from my client." He placed air quotes around 'abusive behavior'. My lip curled.
"Objection!" Mr. Jones cried this time, turning to the judge. "Your Honor, the defense is badgering the witness. And out of turn, at that."
"Order!" Judge Jackson called, pounding her gavel once. She aimed a cutting scowl at the defense lawyer. "Mr. White, if you do not sit down, and remain seated, I will be tempted to shorten your time to cross-examine the witness. I do not allow bullying in my courtroom."
Mr. White, who had a rather large and pointy nose, quickly sat back down, face screwed up in annoyance. Princess looked equally annoyed. Two pinched up rat-like faces. Mr. Jones turned back to Bubbles at the stand, looking at her patiently. "Go on, Ms. Utonium."
Buttercup leaned over to me. "Hey," she whispered to me, "what's up with her?"
I had noticed, too. Throughout the lawyer squabbling, Bubbles had been staring downward, rubbing her head and frowning hard as if she were in pain. Something was up. "I don't know," I whispered back.
"Of course," Bubbles finally answered, her voice thin. She cleared her throat. "After the public park incident, at school, Princess spread false rumors. She started rumors about my sister being violent and bloodthirsty. The worst of the rumors she spread were that Blossom was planning to attack the whole school. Horrible rumors. They started out about Blossom, and then as they spread, they included me and Buttercup." She tilted her head, looking at Mr. Jones earnestly. "These rumors lasted until we graduated high school, and they were severely hurtful and damaging, especially considering our jobs as superheroes. And they were especially hurtful because…" she paused. "Because the three of us were already dealing with some deep hurt stemming from our personal lives."
I frowned. Somehow, it seemed like she had changed her mind and decided to rephrase her words at the last moment. What had she been about to say instead?
"But I suppose that didn't matter to Princess. Our hurt." Bubbles shook her head as she finished. "It never mattered to her."
A satisfied Mr. Jones nodded, glancing sideways at the jury, then he turned to the open courtroom. "No further questions." He walked back over to his table, pulling his chair out to sit down and taking a sip from a bottle of water.
After a momentary pause, Judge Jackson announced, "The defense may have the floor."
Mr. White stood up from his seat, finally free to have his turn. Slowly making his way over to the stand, he smirked at my sister, looking altogether creepy and predatory. My stomach churned. This was going to be maddening. "Hello, Ms. Utonium."
All politeness had wiped off Bubbles' face. Flatly, she said, "Hello."
Mr. White cut to the chase. "Ms. Utonium, can you honestly claim, without a reasonable doubt, that my client was truly so awful to you and your sisters?"
Bubbles paused, blinking. "Yes," she said as if it were obvious.
"Really?" Mr. White responded, rubbing his chin. Lawyers sure were dramatic. "Well, consider this. Consider the fact that you and your sisters had never even considered letting my client join your superteam, and were prejudiced against her for being human. Consider the fact that you never even tried to be friends with my client, and all you ever did was shut her out."
I leaned forward, looking to where Princess was seated. Arms folded, she had a subdued smile on her face. So, this was their angle. Sympathy.
"That's not true," Bubbles answered, keeping her cool perfectly. "We did try to be her friend once when we first met her. But then she tried to coerce her way into our team, and we had to turn her away."
"'Coerce?'" Mr. White repeated on a laugh. "You do realize you're talking about when all of you were five or six years old, don't you Ms. Utonium? And you're telling us that an innocent five-year-old—" he emphasized this point heavily, looking out at the crowd, "Could coerce someone?"
Bubbles nodded. "Yes," she said.
"How would she be able to coerce you at such a young age?" Mr. White shot back.
"Using her fathers' money," she answered. She gave a half shrug. "She was always that way. Even from an early age. But we couldn't be bought." She shifted her gaze from Mr. White to Princess. "And the fact that we were the only thing that couldn't be bought just egged her on more."
Whispers. Mr. White was quiet for a moment, returning to the table where his briefcase sat, rifling through some papers momentarily. I looked at Princess again. Pale-faced rage was written all over her face as she whisper-barked sharp-tongued orders at him.
Quickly, though, Mr. White turned back around, clearing his throat and seeming to regain his composure. "Ms. Utonium," he started again, voice loud, "you claimed that my client had purposely sought to humiliate your sister in that public incident four years ago, correct?"
"Yes."
"What was it that could have possibly put your sister in such a dour mood that she would scream at my client for any reason at all, and in such an unhinged manner? And don't try to claim that your sister didn't scream at her. We all saw that footage. That was real."
I swallowed hard, trying to will myself not to feel the humiliation. I couldn't remember why I had been in such a horrible mood in the first place—it was so long ago, and furthermore, memories from the night prior to that were still blank for me. It was the night we went to that teen club to celebrate our 16th birthdays.
But I still couldn't remember most of that night. It was mostly blank for me. Did Bubbles remember? And did she remember why I had been so upset about it?
I leaned forward, shooting Professor a panicked look. He deciphered its' meaning immediately, and he leaned forward to whisper to Mr. Jones—likely to remind him of our memory issues that he had warned him of prior to today. Mr. Jones nodded grimly, looking back at Professor.
Meanwhile, Bubbles was silent. She had looked down again, and she had an entire palm plastered to her forehead, her eyes squeezed shut. Mr. White was tapping his foot, full smugness returned to his face. A few more moments passed, and Mr. White spoke up, smugness leaking into his voice. "May I remind you, Ms. Utonium, that you are under oath?"
Mr. Jones stood, preparing to interject if he needed to, medical papers detailing our memory loss in his hand, ready to hand them to the judge.
Suddenly, Bubbles spoke, "I…" she trailed off and looked up, appearing dazed. Her eyes were slightly unfocused. She dropped her hand. Finally, she continued in a soft, shaky voice, "Yes. I remember. I…I'll tell you."
Surprise jolted through me. I felt Buttercup sit up straight next to me. We traded looks with each other, then with Professor. Did she remember? When had she remembered this? Appearing confused, Mr. Jones sat back down again.
"Go on then, Ms. Utonium." Judge Jackson told her patiently. "Answer Mr. White's question."
Bubbles nodded, a determined frown on her face. She turned her eyes back to Mr. White and spoke succinctly. "Blossom was upset that morning because the previous night, the three of us had attended a teen club called Electric Blue. At the club that night, the Rowdyruff boys were in attendance. And that night, the Rowdyruff brothers, the brothers who were once our sworn enemies until the events that very night…" she hesitated, looking over at Buttercup and me in the crowd, "…the Rowdyruff brothers confessed to having romantic feelings for us."
Gasps from all around. Murmurs and whispers. My jaw dropped. Even the judge had raised her eyebrows. I glanced at Princess again—she was gaping at Bubbles. No one had been expecting that.
Quickly, I shut my mouth before anyone could see, but squeezed Buttercup's hand. She turned her face into my hair, whispering so that no one else could hear, "What the hell is she saying? Is she serious?"
"I don't know," I mouthed back to her.
Bubbles went on despite the widespread controversial reaction, "The shock all three of us experienced from this night was enough to leave us in emotional turmoil for months afterward. So, the morning after, at the park where Blossom had gone alone in order to clear her thoughts, she was an on edge and overwhelmed teenager. Don't you remember what it was like to be sixteen and insecure? Princess had gone over to her to purposely upset her. Of course she'd snapped." She turned her face to the jury, eyes wide and sincere and brimming with tears. "Wouldn't you have?"
My heart was pounding. I felt Buttercup's pulse, too—it was racing. What was Bubbles doing? Why was she lying on the stand?
Then something occurred to me…what if she wasn't lying at all?
But how could that have been the truth? How?
The murmuring had risen in volume again, and the judge pounded her gavel. "Order," she commanded.
Mr. White had been standing very still. It was as if Bubbles' confession had rocked him to his core. He clearly hadn't been prepared for that. He shifted from foot to foot for a few moments, wrung his hands together, and then slowly, he turned to face the courtroom. "No further questions," he said.
Bubbles was dismissed from the stand. And then immediately, without even sitting down again, she excused herself, telling us that she had to use the restroom. She exited the courtroom quietly.
As I watched her leave, my eyebrows drawn together in concern and confusion, I wondered if my sister had just lied, under oath, to an entire courtroom.
-Bubbles' POV-
I ran through the halls of the courthouse as best as I could in heels, ignoring the stares, searching, knowing that the bathrooms had to be around there somewhere. Finally, I found the signs, and I rushed over to them, pushing through the door to the women's bathroom.
I bent, checking for feet underneath all of the stalls. There were no feet. I was alone. Finally.
I turned to the nearest sink, turning the cold water on high and splashing water on my arms, forcing myself to cool off and calm down. I gripped the sides of the sink with both hands as the water ran, peering up into the mirror, looking at my own wild, wide eyes as I breathed heavily.
"God," I said between breaths. I was on the verge of sobbing. "Oh my God."
I remembered.
A rooftop with stars. A soft touch. The moonlight that lit up the emotion on the curves of his face.
Holding hands, reciting lines to a play. A spirited argument in a high school hallway, followed by a kiss that changed everything.
Cupcakes. Greek food. Afternoon flies. Slow dancing in a kitchen. Napping, heartbeats, and breathing that rose and fell together like the notes of a song. A head in my lap, nestled under my hands, shaking hysterical sobs that I could see but couldn't hear.
All at once I remembered everything. Up on that stand, it was like the pressure of having to remember, needing to remember that one tiny detail, as all those eyes were on me—it made it all explode, like a tidal wave breaking through floodgates. That one little detail I recalled was the catalyst, made it all implode, and now I remembered it all.
And now that I remembered, everything had changed. My whole world had changed.
I needed to leave that place. Now. Right now, right that very moment.
In one quick motion, I switched the water off on the faucet, and then I turned, then turned again, and my eyes locked on it—a window on the wall. My perfect escape. I looked for a latch, and thankfully there was one on the old window. I pushed the window open, pleased to find that there wasn't a screen on the outside.
I lifted into the air, levitating through the open window soundlessly and gracefully. It was wide enough for me to fit through without brushing up against the ledge or anything, so my hair and dress were untouched.
When I got outside, I touched down into the lawn below. Teetering awkwardly across the grass on my heels for a few feet, I thought better of it, bending and lifting each foot to take my heels off, holding one in each hand. The lush grass was cool against my bare feet.
I would have to make my getaway relatively unnoticed. The press would still be waiting outside the front doors, I knew that. I was on the back end of the building, so if I flew in the opposite direction of them, I would be home free.
As I glanced to my left, I suddenly spotted a man standing several feet away from me, smoking a cigarette. He looked like a janitor. His eyes were locked on me, and he was frozen, seemingly in shock. He recognized me. Uh oh.
I lifted a hand, waving slightly. "Hi there," I greeted. Hesitant, he lifted a hand in response, waving back awkwardly. I clasped both of my hands together in a pleading gesture. "Please don't tell anyone you saw me leave like this. It's kind of an emergency."
He blinked at me. Then, hesitant again, he nodded. "Sure," he said. "I won't."
I sighed, relieved. "Thank you!" I said. Then, deciding I really needed to leave now, and fast, I gripped my shoes hard in my hands, preparing for lift off. Then, being careful not to take off too fast, I lifted into the air—gently at first, slowly levitating upward. I heard the janitor guy's cigarette hit the ground. Then, away I flew, and I was gone.
The feeling of speeding through the air, Townsville far beneath me, was incredible—strange, but in the most perfect way. There was once a time when I had believed that I would never be able to do this ever again. Feeling the air wrapped around me, whipping past me, feeling weightless—it felt like a miracle. Because it was.
I made my way through the air, leaving deeper into downtown Townsville. And it was only then that I realized I had no idea where I was even going.
I was going to find him. But thinking that wasn't enough. Because to begin with, I had no idea where he even was.
I didn't know where he and his brothers lived now. And furthermore, I didn't even know if he would be home. What if he were somewhere else? He could be anywhere! I hadn't thought this through at all. Why did I think this was a good idea? Now I would have to fly all across town in search for him, like a crazy person!
Of course, I remembered, I could technically teleport now. But our version of teleporting only let us teleport several feet at a time, like a stone skipping across a lake. And we still weren't fully used to doing it. Buttercup was the best at it right now. She had managed to teleport across thirty feet once, but afterward, she'd still had to lie down flat on the ground because of how much it had disoriented her.
I'd barely had any practice doing it, so, what good would that do me now? Absolutely none. I needed my wits about me if I was going to find him. I needed all the focus I could get.
And right now, being so far up in the sky wasn't helping me all that much. The fresh air gave me a clear head, but it definitely wasn't giving me any ideas. And ideas were what I needed most. I needed to be immersed in busy surroundings so I could better picture where he might be.
I decided that downtown might be my best bet after all, so I abruptly stopped moving forward, lowering myself far down toward the sidewalk below as gently as possible.
I landed with my bare feet against the scorching pavement. I hissed in through my teeth. The heat didn't hurt me, but it didn't particularly feel good either. As I uncomfortably scrambled to place my shoes down so I could put them on again, I pictured my feet as two giant cookies baking in an oven.
I had only grabbed a handful of people's attention as I had landed, but likely due to the current unrelenting sweltering heat, they kept moving—though not without staring at me first. The hot sidewalks were busy and packed full of people moving to get to their destinations without being outside too long or getting sunburnt.
People walked past either side of me busily, and fortunately for me, many of them were distracted by their cellphones or getting to where they were going and didn't look up at me. I was grateful for that—I didn't think I could handle being mobbed for a second time today.
My shoes now on, I observed my surroundings. Unrelenting sunlight glinted off the windows of the high skyscrapers which stretched up high above, the smell of gasoline filled the hot air, and regular city noises enveloped me. It had been so long since I'd been downtown. Too long.
Now, I had to think. Where could Boomer be? Where could I start?
I began to walk behind a group of people, following the flow of bodies so that I wouldn't stand out by standing in the middle of the sidewalk like a statue. As I walked, dipping my face downward and ducking behind the tallest member of the group I was following, I began to brainstorm.
Where could he have been? Where, where, where?
In the traffic packed road next to me, a car stalled. The windows were rolled down, and Frank Sinatra was blasting out of its' speakers.
Frank sang of flying to the moon and playing among the stars. Just ahead, the traffic light turned green, and the sound of his singing faded as the car drove further way. The sound of it had immediately made something arise inside of me. That song. The slow dance in the kitchen.
Our song. Baking the cakes.
I bit back a gasp. A bakery!
A lead! I finally had one!
'But think, Bubbles,' my thoughts persuaded. 'Think. What bakery would he be the most likely to go to if he were to go to any at all?' The group ahead of me stopped at a crosswalk, preparing to cross the street. I paused behind them, keeping my face ducked down, letting my carefully styled loose waves hide my face as the wheels turned inside of my head.
Not just any old, plain bakery, I realized. I had taken him to several regular bakeries before. He had enjoyed the treats, of course, but he didn't find the places themselves interesting.
And that was what Boomer looked for the most in his eating establishments. He could be such a food snob, I remembered, biting my lip and choking back a giggle that had suddenly made its' way up my throat.
Atmosphere. They had to offer something else. Familial-like customer treatment. Interesting or unusual knick-knacks on the walls that each told a story. Presentation of the food that made him want to whip out his sketch pad and draw his plate. Or a menu that offered things that were out of the box, different from the same-old, same-old.
The group ahead of me began walking across the street. And before I could decide whether to follow them to continue hiding behind them, or to stay behind, the idea clicked with me so suddenly that I stopped and grabbed onto the telephone pole next to me, as if the force of the idea had almost knocked me over.
Coffee. Boomer loved cafés. A bakery that also sold coffee. That had to be it.
There were several bakeries in town. There were countless cafés in town. But there was only one place that was the combination of a bakery and a café—one that we had both been to together a handful of times, and loved.
Moriah's Café.
I was only blocks away from there. No longer caring about maintaining a low profile, I leaped, launching 20 feet into the air, and I sped off, ignoring the sounds of shouts and car horns below me.
Flying around multiple bends of buildings, my heart seemingly racing ahead of me, showing me the way, the space of time felt like years but was only seconds. Every move I made felt like slow motion.
And when those seconds passed, and I made my last wild turn—so reckless that Buttercup would've been proud of me—I finally spotted the bright purple building below. I had arrived.
I landed so rapidly in the parking lot in front of Moriah's Café, the ground shook and a few car alarms went off. It was a miracle I hadn't snapped a heel. My knees wobbling and my head spinning, I took several deep breaths, trying to gather myself as I looked around me, searching for that blue Audi. I didn't see one, not even any other blue cars.
If he wasn't here at all, and I had been wrong, I didn't know what I would do.
Would I give up? Would I just go back to the courthouse? Or would I have the courage to try another day to look for him?
Would I even be able to handle this feeling for longer than I had been feeling it now, this uncertainty and restless, feverish anticipation that made me feel like twenty people were tap dancing inside my stomach? The car alarms wailing around me urged on my anxiety and built it up and up, the soundtrack of this event.
Why did I feel so intensely that this might be my last chance? That this moment was do or die?
I took another deep breath. Held it. Closed my eyes. Then I slowly let it out, opening my eyes again. I forced myself to walk forward toward the front door—bright purple, with a bright rainbow arched across, and a large butterfly painted over it. I pushed the door open, walking into the café.
Once inside, momentarily, I froze right there by the door. I was scared to even look at my surroundings. I knew I would see tall tables, with stool chairs perched at each one, and the front counter, which held windows with many cupcakes sitting behind them, sample ones for each flavor that customers could choose from. They also had scones, cookies, pastries, muffins, ice cream desserts in the warm months, and cakes for special occasions that you had to order special on their website.
Finally, I gathered the courage to walk up to the counter. Thankfully, there was a woman standing behind it, with hair that was styled into a 50's style flip, but it was as purple as the building we were standing in. Her uniform nametag said 'Candy'. She was looking at me with held breath just as that janitor man had—immediate recognition and surprise.
I reached the counter. But to my surprise, before I could speak, she spoke to me first. "You're here for him, aren't you?"
My stomach dropped. My heart dropped. My pulse skipped entirely too many beats. I swayed on my heels, feeling for a moment like I was going to fall straight over. Finally, I breathed to her, "Him?" Shakily, I added, whispering, "Is he here?" Outside, the car alarms came to a sudden stop.
Almost looking relieved, the woman named Candy smiled at me. Then she shook her head. "Oh, sweetie," she said to me, "he comes here and waits for you every day. He's been waiting for you for so long. Weeks now."
My pulse stuttered again. "He…" I gripped the counter with both hands, taking a quick glance around the café. He wasn't sitting inside, and there were only a handful of people there, including two teen girls eating a heaping bowl of a Korean shaved ice dessert with ice cream and fresh fruit on top. The two of them were looking at me curiously. I looked back at Candy standing behind the counter, finishing my sentence. "He waits for me? Here?"
Seeing my confusion, Candy jabbed a finger toward the back of the café—a back door. "In the garden," she said. She smiled again. "Every single day. He's out there now, painting like he usually does. Just ordered his third iced coffee," she added with a chuckle. "Sometimes I give him decaf just so he leaves here at the end of the day looking less jittery and nervous. Poor thing."
I was shaking. I was shaking all over. "Should…" I pointed toward the back door, hesitating. "Do you think I should…?" I trailed off when she began nodding, something like disbelief on her face.
"Um, yes. Yes, you should. One thousand percent," Candy said to me, then folded her arms and added under her breath, "If I were 20 years younger and wasn't married…oh, to be young again."
I was unsteady. Suddenly I cursed my decision to wear high heels this morning before I'd left the house. Suddenly I wished I'd put on my best perfume. I looked down, smoothing my dress, then reached up and smoothed my hair, rearranging it in the reflective surface of the counter window, making sure it wasn't windblown anymore. I swallowed back the stinging in my throat and the pinpricking in my eyes—I couldn't cry, not yet. I was terrified, but I wouldn't cry in the face of this. I would be brave. I straightened up, turning to her again. "Do I look okay?"
Candy looked me up and down, then gave me a thumbs-up. "All good. You're a vision," she said to me, winking and leaning a curvy hip against the counter. "Go get 'im, doll."
I managed a timid smile this time, nodding. Then, slowly, I walked over to the door leading to the back garden, my shoes clicking against the wood floor.
Click, click, click, click. Step, step, step, step. One, two, three, four.
I reached for the door handle, pulling, opening the back door slowly. Then I stepped outside into the garden.
Moriah's Café was first known for their mind-blowing cupcakes. They were secondly known for their back garden.
I had last seen it in the fall, but that had been when it was in the process of drifting asleep for the incoming winter. Now that it was summer, the garden was fully awake, and I had stepped into a fairy tale book.
The air was humid and rich with the scent of heady earth. Willow trees surrounded the circular garden, and it was like a tall, lush, green curtain encasing the area. Abundant tall grasses, flowers sprouting in every direction—I had never seen so many rosebushes in my whole life. Lilies, tulips, orchids, peonies. Thick, heavy green plants that shot up from the ground, surrounding benches and covered tables with chairs at them. A babbling, small fountain at the far, right-hand side of the garden, where visitors would go to toss coins into and make wishes.
And at the center of the circle-shaped garden: a white, wooden gazebo. The center of which sat a single table, with two chairs at it. One of the chairs was currently taken.
And there he was. Partially drunken iced coffee on the table in front of him, and a stand with a canvas on it, a portion of the garden landscape partially painted on it.
Immediately, he had sensed me. Because by the time my eyes had found him, Boomer was already staring at me. My pulse, already wild, went into overdrive.
Setting his thin paintbrush down onto the table, he slowly stood from the chair he'd been seated in. But he made no move toward me.
He was beautiful, and I couldn't believe he was real and in front of me. Tall, sun-bleached hair, sun darkened skin, expressive eyes in a sharp face. Dressed for the weather in long shorts and a light t-shirt, but not sweaty at all, like he hadn't been out here sitting in the heat for hours. He was a masterpiece. A powerful longing, sweet and painful, banged into my chest and spread throughout my body.
The two of us stood like that, staring across at each other for moments that drew out and felt like years. I read his face—his expression was daunted, unsure. And maybe restrained. And suddenly I didn't know what I'd been thinking, ambushing him like this.
That woman had told me that he'd been waiting for me. But there was no guarantee he fully remembered me yet—maybe not that way.
He had remembered this place and had known to come here to see me. But what if he just wanted to talk? What if he just wanted answers, as me and my sisters had? What if he wanted to see me instead of Professor to confirm some of his memories of me, and that was all? What if I had jumped to conclusions and gotten my hopes up?
Any number of things could go wrong with a spontaneous meeting like this, with no military-grade barriers between us.
I should have been running away. I should have been escaping while I still had the chance, in case the only way he remembered me was as his sworn childhood enemy. That's what my logic was screaming at me, and I knew that I should've been listening.
But I couldn't listen. Because my instincts were telling me that I had to do this. That it was important that I was here right now, staring at him. That it was important that I at least tried.
Because nothing would haunt me for the rest of my days greater than the regrets I would have if I never took this risk, this ginormous leap of faith that could either be a train wreck or would without a doubt change my life.
So, I took one more step forward into the terrifying unknown.
And I smiled, and I tried not to let fear overwhelm my voice as I asked him, as I had asked him a thousand times before, "How's my prince?"
Astonishment spread across Boomer's face all at once, though I couldn't tell if it looked more like outrage. I could hear his heartbeat from where I was standing—it skittered. Another agonizing moment pulsed by, and for a millisecond I thought I had made a horrible mistake and I would have to fly away from him and never return.
But then his face softened. The look in his eyes changed—suddenly he was looking at me the way I had forgotten he'd looked at me and the way I wanted him to look at me until the end of time.
And on a sigh, a sigh that sounded like it contained relief the sheer weight of a hundred thousand pounds within it, he replied in a voice so gentle, so achingly familiar, that my eyes immediately welled up with tears. "How's my princess?"
A sob released from my throat, and I blinked, tears falling down my cheeks and trailing into my smile, and then within seconds, he was right in front of me, wrapping his arms around me as my arms found him back and locked around him. "You waited for me?" I asked between wracking sobs.
And surrounding me was his t-shirt, his scent that reminded me of summertime itself, the sound of his joyful laughter vibrating through me and echoing in my head, him, him, him. "Of course, I did. I told you I'd always be here for you. And you came," he said through his laughter. "You found me."
He had said that. And he'd kept his promise once again. I was trying so hard to respond, but my tears kept choking me, and I couldn't say anything. So, I just clung to him and buried my face in his chest and sobbed and sobbed.
"God, I missed you so much," he went on. He kept leaning down to kiss the top of my head. I felt every word that he said rattle in his chest. The sound of his voice was most beautiful composition I'd ever heard. "I've been so sick over you. I've barely slept or eaten. I was so worried you wouldn't remember me, or this place. I was so worried that you wouldn't find me. You came. You finally came."
Sobbing so hard that I was now hiccupping, with my arms around him still, I took my face away from his shirt and came up for air and looked at him. I wanted to say something meaningful, to unscramble my brain and make myself spit out everything I had planned to say to him, but instead, I said between hiccups, "I can't breathe."
Boomer smoothed his hands up and down my back. "Easy. Breathe," he said. Then, taking both of my hands, he began to lead me over to the gazebo. "Here, let's sit down. Come here." I let him walk me over to the steps of the fairytale gazebo. I sat unsteadily on the lowest step, and he sat two steps above me. Then, with one gentle hand, he laid my head across his lap. "There. Better?"
I nodded, my breathing already starting to calm. My tears had slowed, but my face was still wet. I knew my makeup had to be totally ruined. Not that I cared, really. Not anymore. "I can't believe I forgot you," I said softly, shaking my head and grasping his left knee in my hand.
He brushed my hair back, which had fallen into my face. I was growing it out again, and its' length was already starting to trail between my shoulder blades. "It's okay," he replied. "That's all over now. Besides, it wasn't for long."
"It could've never been for too long," I said. I gripped his knee tighter in my hand. "I don't know what was wrong with me before…if it was some kind of…glitch in my brain or something. I don't know. But what matters now is that once I remembered who you truly are to me, it all came back to me." I turned slightly, looking upward to see him bending down over me, the sunlight touching the outer edges of his hair. "You're unforgettable," I said.
Slowly, humbly, the corners of Boomer's mouth lifted. "Back at you," he said.
I adjusted again, letting go of his knee and twisting so that my head rested back against his leg, and my view became his face dipped down over me, and the roof of the gazebo, and the blue sky beyond it. The view of dreams. I took a breath to ask something when abruptly, my bra buzzed. "Sorry, hold on," I told Boomer as he looked down at my chest in bewilderment. I reached down into my bra and pulled out my phone.
"Oh," he said with a laugh of realization.
"No pockets on this dress," I explained with a grin, then I unlocked my phone screen.
"Must be handy," Boomer commented, gesturing to his own chest as if he were talking about a specially made carrying case. Then he blushed and forced his hand back to his side, realizing the accidental innuendo he'd made. It was good to know he was nervous too, and it wasn't just me.
"Oh, a text," I said, smoothly changing the subject as I stared at my phone screen, burying a smile. "It's probably my sisters wondering where I am."
Sure enough, as I opened the newest text, I read Buttercup's name there. 'Did u fall in the toilet?' I scoffed aloud at her crass question. "Oh, Buttercup," I said, scrunching my nose as I began to type up a response.
"Where were you before?" Boomer asked, curious, seemingly recovered.
'i remembered', was my response to Buttercup. I wanted to test the waters, just in case she might have remembered Butch too. I hit SEND. "Over at the courthouse, testifying against Princess." I pointed in the general direction of where I'd come.
Boomer's eyebrows shot up. "The Princess? Morbucks? Ex-Queen bee, ex-tormentor-of-everyone Princess, who just got booked?"
I nodded, pursing my lips. "That's the one."
"Are you still supposed to be there?" he asked, concerned.
I froze, considering that for a moment. Then, oddly, I giggled. "I have no idea," I said honestly. Hopefully, I wasn't in trouble. My phone buzzed.
'Remembered what, u weirdo? Are u still here?', was Buttercup's response. I sighed, discouraged. "I don't think Buttercup or Blossom remember yet." I looked up at him. "Do Butch and Brick remember them, too?"
He nodded. "They both do." Then he admitted, "The three of us have been playing the waiting game for a while."
A mix of guilt and relief banged inside me. "I'm gonna tell her. Maybe it'll help trigger a memory to come back to her." I typed up a two part response to Buttercup, hoping that it would help, even if just a little bit. "So, where have you been all this time?" I asked him. "I'm curious. Where have you been living?"
He grinned slightly. "Well, thanks to Professor, we haven't been homeless."
Sending Buttercup my response, I looked up at Boomer, slack-jawed in surprise. "Really?"
"He convinced Mayor to provide us an apartment," he said. "It's a penthouse downtown, only a few blocks away from here, all paid for by the city. Professor also talked to Mayor and Ms. Bellum about our memory situations, so we were given time off to recover, just like you guys. So, when we moved into the apartment, we each found things to do with our time during the day. I've been coming here mostly, but sometimes I go to the Art Museum too. Butch is taking a summer class, being trained at a car garage, learning to upgrade old models, and Brick's been volunteering around the city."
"Sweetie, that's great," I said, smiling and reaching up with one hand to stroke the side of his face. His skin was so soft that it made me want to tear up again. "That's so great." I was so happy to hear about the boys' lives over the past few months. Before I couldn't fathom what might be happening with them, though I was curious. I was happy that they'd been doing their own things, finding their own ways to recover, just as we had.
"It was okay," he said. Then he admitted, "It would've been better with you there with me. You would've loved the pop art exhibit the museum had in late May." He enclosed my hand on his cheek with his own hand. "I wish we could've shared that."
I kept stroking his cheek with my thumb. He leaned into my touch like a cat, closing his eyes. My heart constricted. "The last time we saw each other," I started, voice low, "it was weird, wasn't it?"
Boomer nodded, opening his eyes again, smile fading. "It was," he replied. Letting go of my hand, he reached down, wrapping his arms around me as he scooted down onto the step just above the one I'd sat on. Then he brought me closer to him, holding me in his lap, placing my legs over his. That was much better. I cupped his face in my hand again, not having to reach as far now.
"You felt like a stranger to me," I said. "I can't believe I ever felt that way."
"I did too," he said reassuringly. He shook his head, frowning. "Until that day that we saw each other again, I couldn't remember you…but after that day, I couldn't get you out of my mind." He slowly turned his face inward toward my fingers, brushing his lips against them as his gaze locked on mine. "I saw your face every time I closed my eyes. I felt like I was losing it."
I said nothing, only just reached up with my other hand, played with his hair and let him talk. Hearing his side of this experience was so reassuring—it made me feel less crazy, especially since my own sisters hadn't remembered yet.
He went on. "The only thing that helped me feel sane was drawing you. So, I started to draw you every day. Just to try to get you out of my head." He paused. Then he shrugged one shoulder. "Obviously didn't work. Because shortly after that, I started coming here every day."
I sat straight up, staring at him. "You drew me?" As far as I'd known, he hadn't drawn me before. I had begged him to draw a portrait of me a handful of times a while ago, but he hadn't, saying he didn't think he could capture me well enough.
Boomer smile at my excitement was tender. "Want to see?" he asked. I nodded, eager, hands dropping to my sides. Boomer leaned to the side, taking out his cell from his back pocket and unlocking the screen. After opening a few things, and then a few swipes, he handed his phone to me with a shy look on his face.
I took the phone gently, looking down at the first drawing and flipping the phone into landscape mode as I gasped. This first one was just my eyes. Large and with irises that were a kaleidoscope of seemingly a million shades of light blue, framed by long eyelashes.
"That was what I couldn't forget first," he said quietly. "Your eyes."
After taking another long few moments to appreciate this one, I slowly swiped to the next one. This one was just a long cascade of blonde, curling, shining and glistening and seemingly moving on the page. My hair.
Quietly, I moved onto the next one. It was a full-body portrait of me sitting on a cloud, legs bent up and my arms wrapped around them, and I wore clothes that were made of clouds, too. My head was leaned on my knees, and my eyes were closed like I was sleeping.
The next one, a head and shoulders portrait. Drawing me was staring at the viewer of the drawing, bewildered and perturbed. Was that how I had looked when I stared at him through the glass wall?
The next, a portrait of me flying up into the air, my hand reaching back to take another hand that stretched out toward me—his hand—so that I could lead him to wherever we were going. This one looked like it had taken him days to complete. Every detail was precise. The stitching on the jeans I wore, every strand of hair that flew out behind me—even the glare from the above sunlight looked like it was real. And that was what made me realize that he had drawn memories of me, too.
There was a portrait of the two of us, taking a selfie as we sat on something that was up high—the Townsville Bridge. I remembered that. Another portrait of me standing in a place that was shadowy, but a wide expanse of stars behind my head. Another portrait from the night of Electric Blue, the image of me lying on his chest as we looked up at a shooting star.
There were more head-and-shoulder portraits. Portraits of my face, surrounded with glossy hair and beautiful eyes, making every kind of expression imaginable. Seeing myself as he saw me, I couldn't believe it.
"Boomer," I spoke finally, my voice catching with emotion. "I don't even know what to say. These are so beautiful."
I looked up at him finally after seeing the last drawing, and he was watching me, vulnerable. He swallowed hard. "So are you," he said.
I flushed shyly at his compliment, even though it wasn't nearly the first time he'd called me beautiful. But it felt like the first time all over again. I handed him his phone back, and he took it, locking the screen again as he returned it to his back pocket.
"So, I need to ask, how did you find me here?" he asked. Then he smiled, clarifying, "I mean, I wanted you to, and of course, I had hoped. Because that's why I kept coming back every day. But…how did you figure it out? How did you know I would be here?"
I paused, thinking, leaning against his shoulder. "Well, after I remembered you, I just tried to think of all the places you might be. And then I remembered how many times we'd come here. I wasn't sure you'd be here, but I hoped. And thank god I was right." Then I thought some more, thinking back to how we'd come together the first time—in high school. "Come to think of it, you've always been the one to come to me. So, I had to be the one to come to you this time." I smiled up at him. "And I couldn't wait another second to do it."
"I'm glad you didn't wait." He leaned his face over to me, pressing a kiss to my forehead.
"Me, too," I said, relishing in the press of his lips against my skin. My fingers knotted in the front of his t-shirt, keeping him close to me.
"I was going crazy," Boomer said darkly. It made me laugh.
"Sorry. I promise it wasn't on purpose." I tilted my face up toward him, keeping just enough distance between our faces to tease him. "Forgive me?"
Boomer let out a long breath, the corner of his mouth turning up in a half grin. "I never held it against you. We both did what we needed to as we recovered. I could never be mad at you for something you couldn't help." He looked down at my legs, gripping my shin in one of his hands, running it up and down my skin. "I just missed you like crazy. Even before I knew that it was you that I was missing, there was still this whole part of my life that felt empty."
I watched his hand on my leg. Suddenly I felt the heat outside in a completely different way. "I felt that too," I said. "The emptiness." Though I hadn't known what had caused it, I had stayed constantly busy with my sisters, trying to fill a gap. A gap that I knew hadn't been there before. I had thought it was just the memories I had lost, and in a way, it was—it was all of my memories of him.
"It wasn't until now that I realized that there's so much to fill my life with. So many things I've missed out on doing because I had been so focused on what I was supposed to be." He looked up at me again, eyes serious. "I still want to be a superhero. But…I want to be an artist, too."
A smile burst on my face. "So do it."
He went on, rambling. "I mean, there's nothing that says that a guy couldn't do both, right? No international rules to superhero-dom. It's always something that I've wanted, I was just too afraid to tell people because it wasn't what was expected of me and because it was the polar opposite of who I was in the past. Before I said that I would be an artist if I were human, but I want it now. And nothing says that I would have to lack superpowers to accomplish that other dream."
"Of course not," I said. My heart was pounding hard again at the passion that had lit him up from the inside. "So do it!"
"I don't know what my brothers think. I haven't told them. They've seen all the drawings of you that I've made, and all the paintings I've made, but they haven't said anything. Do you think they think that it's lame? Is it lame that I just want to fly to every place I could think of, see the entire world with you, and just paint everything? It's probably not cool, but so what? I don't care what they think! I don't care what anyone thinks! Not my brothers, not the entire freakin' city of Townsville, not the world. I just wanna be happy and create, is that so bad?"
"Boomer!" I stopped him, planting my hands on either side of his face and squishing his cheeks. He stared at me with wide eyes, coming back down from his ranting fervor. I looked into his eyes. "Do it."
Now he looked dazed. "Huh?"
"Do it. Be whoever you want. Do whatever you want to do," I told him. "And I promise to be right there next to you for all of it. Loving you no matter what might happen."
Boomer's gaze had zeroed in on mine again, and his face had softened. His hands closed over mine, still on his face. "All I want is you, art, and happiness."
"I'm already yours." I closed my eyes, brought my forehead to rest against his. "And you can make whatever beautiful art that you want. So, that only leaves one question."
"What's that?" Boomer sounded breathless.
I opened my eyes again. They gazed into his. "Are you happy?"
To my surprise, Boomer laughed, leaning back slightly and adjusting me in his lap, pulling me even closer to him. "Well, let's see. You flew all the way across downtown to find me. You remembered that we're desperately in love. And now you're in my arms." His look of laughter faded, giving way to a gaze full of intoxicating rapture that immediately made me weak inside and out. "I'm the happiest I could possibly be."
Letting go of his face, I wrapped my arms around his neck. "Then I guess all that's left is to see the world together, so that you can paint all of it," I said. "Where do we start?"
"Hmm." Boomer pursed his lips together, thinking. His answer came a few moments later. "Milan."
In delight, I responded, "Italy?"
He nodded, biting his bottom lip with a smile. "I want to see the art at the Pinacoteca di Brera, wander through every single gallery holding your hand." He leaned in toward me, stealing a kiss on my cheek. He spoke close to my ear. "I want to stand outside of the Duomo di Milano cathedral and paint it. I want to take you to a fancy restaurant and eat fine Italian seafood and mind-blowing pasta." He kissed my other cheek, this time lingering with his lips against my skin longer. I held my breath. Boomer leaned back again, lifting his eyebrows as he said, "Take you shopping at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II."
Oh, God. It was amazing, all of it. I wanted it all.
But most of all, I wanted him. Forever.
Boomer saw the wanting in my eyes because slowly, he leaned, eyes darkening to the deepest, most penetrating blue. "You want it, don't you?" he asked, voice soft. "With me?"
My throat was dry. I swallowed. "More than anything."
He leaned even closer. The tip of his nose brushed mine. "My love," he said, lips teasing delicate against mine, melting me, "for as long as we live, you'll have it all."
And then his lips took mine.
The world swirled and my lungs collapsed, and I pulled him closer as our mouths moved and his hand went into my hair. He consumed me, and I consumed him, symphonies rising and falling inside of me, swelling and building and filling my senses.
I kissed Boomer the way I hadn't even realized I'd been needing to for months now—desperate, I kissed him with all the love I'd always held for him, for the pieces of me that he had hidden inside of him, for the pieces of him that were inside of me.
When we broke apart to catch our breath, a flurry of monarch butterflies—the largest flurry of butterflies I had ever seen in my life, there had to have been hundreds of them—burst through the garden in a sudden explosion of color. I gasped as I stared at them, and Boomer kissed my cheek and the side of my chin, exhaling blissfully against me as he tucked hair behind my ear. The butterflies flew into the willow trees that bordered the garden, settling onto their long strands of leaves and resting there, making the curtains of green dance with orange and black.
Speechless at what we had just beheld, I rested my forehead against Boomer's again, sighing. "So, when should we go to Milan?" I could hardly contain my excitement as I asked.
The only warning I had was Boomer's hands tightening on my lower back and in the crook of my knee. "Right now."
Then he stood up and leaped with all his strength, soaring past the roof of the gazebo and shooting straight up into the sky. I squealed, at first hugging tightly against him, then remembering that I could fly, too.
"Are you crazy?" I asked him, not able to control my laughter as he stalled in the air right above Moriah's Café. "You want to go now? What about your paint supplies?" I pointed down at the gazebo where his canvas, stand, and paints still sat.
He shrugged, beaming. "Candy will bring it in for me, keep it safe for when I come back for it. I'm her favorite regular." Boomer gave me a funny look then, looking like he had thought of something.
I smiled. "What is it?"
"She's looking for new bakers, you know." He nodded at me, a tangle of blond falling into his eyes. "I think you would like working there."
I glanced down at the purple building, considering. I hadn't thought about working at a bakery seriously before—at least not before now. It sounded kind of nice. "I'll think about it," I said. I reached up, brushing his hair out of his face. "Now, you don't have to carry me the whole way. If you don't mind, I'd at least like to fly alongside you." I lifted out of Boomer's grasp, lowering myself to levitate beside him. I gave him a teasing nose scrunch. "It's the twenty-first century. A lady can fly herself places when she wants."
Boomer took my hand in his, waggling his eyebrows. "Yes, ma'am." He kissed my hand, and I giggled.
Then we turned toward the horizon, took off, and we escaped. We flew out of Townsville, out of state, and made the journey over the Atlantic Ocean to Europe for our impulsive daytime trip. Miraculously, I didn't lose my shoes.
We started our new lives together that day. Boomer bought new paint supplies in a hidden-away hole in the wall art store, and we explored Milan together. That was just the first of our many adventures.
We had firmly learned not to take this for granted. Our health, our powers, what we were capable of—and most importantly, our love.
So we dove in, doing all we could because we could.
And we never looked back.
-Buttercup's POV-
"Where did Bubbles go?" Blossom whispered to me.
I looked to the door she had disappeared through, frowning. "I thought she was just going to the bathroom?" The both of us had been sitting here on edge since the scene our sister had caused with her testimony. I don't think either of us could figure out whether she'd been lying or not—we didn't want to accidentally let someone overhear our doubt for our own sister, though, so we both had kept our mouths shut until now. We'd only exchanged worried glances.
And it wasn't that we didn't trust Bubbles, of course we trusted her—we just couldn't remember any memories for ourselves that backed up her claims of what had happened that night at Electric Blue. The both of us had looked over at Professor after she'd said it, though, and he hadn't seemed surprised at all. All of this was so weird, and confusing—I didn't know what to believe now.
"I thought so too," Blossom said. Her face was pinched with worry. "It's been fifteen minutes, why isn't she back yet?"
"Hold on," I said, taking out my phone as I made sure no one was looking. Hidden in my lap, I texted Bubbles. 'Did u fall in the toilet?' I sent it, then stealthily hid my phone between my hands flat against my legs. I leaned over to Blossom. "Let's see if she responds," I whispered, and she nodded.
We only had to wait one minute before she responded. My phone buzzed, my hands absorbing the sound of the vibration so that no one else could hear. Sneakily, I took a peek at my screen as I opened the message from her. 'I remembered,' was all it said. I frowned, leaning slightly over again, showing the message to Blossom.
"Remembered what?" she whispered back to me. "Did she go somewhere?"
I shook my head. I didn't know either. I typed, echoing Blossom's sentiment. 'Remembered what, u weirdo? Are u still here?'. I sent it.
"Prosecution, you may call your second witness," said the judge.
"Prosecution would like to call witness Buttercup Utonium to the stand," said the prosecution lawyer.
Scrambling, I shoved my phone back into my pocket. Just as I stood, I felt my phone buzz. Cursing mentally that I wouldn't be able to read Bubbles' reply until after I stepped off the stand, I sighed and walked over to the stand be sworn in.
"Good afternoon, Ms. Utonium," the prosecution lawyer said to me after I swore in, whose last name was Jones. I preferred Jonesy. "Thank you for coming here today."
"Don't mention it," I said, feeling the own wryness in my voice. It wasn't like I had a choice in coming or anything. And if I'd had a choice between coming here and having to see Princess's mug and staying home to continue my Friday the 13th movie marathon, I would've chosen the one where I wouldn't have had to put on pants or brush my hair.
"All right, Ms. Utonium," Jonesy said. "Could you give me an idea of what your past experiences with the defendant were like?"
"Well," I started, folding my arms. "For one, we were constantly arresting her as kids."
"Could you elaborate?" Jonesy asked. The way he talked reminded me of Professor.
"Elaborate how?" I asked, frowning. How much more clear could I get?
"Tell us why the defendant would often be arrested by you or your sisters when you were kids," he explained.
So, put it as laid out as possible. I could do that. "Okay," I said, unfolding my arms and straightening in my chair. "Well, she was always going after us with something that her daddy bought for her, like an expensive super robot or some other kind of weapon. And citizens would always wind up getting between us and getting hurt, and she didn't care. Sometimes she would attack the city on purpose, to call us out and force us to pay attention to her. She always wanted us to take her seriously as a villain. She was constantly trying to prove herself." I nodded in her direction with my head, though I didn't look at her. "Even now, too, I guess."
"So, you echo your sister's earlier sentiments, that Princess Morbucks had always been a villain throughout her childhood years?"
I said, "Sure do, Jonesy."
He smiled politely. "Don't call me that, please."
I smirked. "Sorry," I said. I'd still think it.
Jonesy went on. "So, if Princess had been a villain as a young child, what changed in middle school? Did she continue her villainous ways when you all got older?"
"Not really," I said, thinking about this. I hadn't thought about this in a while. "Come to think of it, I think middle school was around when she started…embracing the heiress life. She began practicing using her popularity and money to manipulate all our schoolmates. I guess it was a different kind of power that she used for a while."
"Social power?" Jonesy confirmed.
I nodded, pleased that he got what I was trying to get across. "You got me," I said. "Once she discovered the power of being the queen bee of the school, that seemed to be her focus for the rest of our time growing up. We thought she was done trying to be a super villain." I shrugged. "Until now."
"Objection!" Princess's annoying lawyer jumped up from his seat once again. "Your Honor, this witness is only inferring what she believes to be true about my client, seemingly based on nothing."
Immediately I stood from my seat, glare locked on him. "You calling me a liar?"
The judge pounded her thing that looked like a hammer. "Order! Sit down, Mr. White. The witness will speak what she believes to be the truth per Mr. Jones' questions. Wait your turn and be quiet." White sat down again, looking irritated. The judge turned to me next, saying, "Sit, Ms. Utonium. I'll handle the interruptions from here."
I sat again, nodding, but shooting another quick glare at Princess's lawyer—who was just as snooty as she was, it turned out.
Sighing, the judge gestured to Jonesy. "You may continue."
Jonesy continued. "So, Ms. Utonium. You said that she became the popular girl at your school in middle school and high school," he said, looking unaffected by the interruption. "Does that mean that during this time, she was mostly harmless?"
I laughed. "No, for sure not," I replied bluntly. "She just found subtle ways to be awful."
"Bubbles said that the accused spread rumors about you after the park incident," he said. "Did she spread rumors about you three before that, as well?"
"All the time," I said. "But they were never taken as seriously. After the park thing, it all changed. She'd become this…idol or something. Everyone suddenly believed everything she said because nationwide, the media had validated her. Suddenly she'd become this person for people to look up to, all based on a lie. It was like…watching the majority of our high school join a cult or something. It was the weirdest."
He responded, "Would you say that, because of her status and money, Princess had influence before—but once the mainstream media had begun giving her widespread attention, her influence grew to gargantuan heights?"
I narrowly avoided snorting at the word 'gargantuan', managing to keep a poker face. "Yeah, I would say that," I said.
"So, would it be so ridiculous to think that she might use this large influence that she'd accumulated over these years to frame all of you in a large way now, to try to compromise your careers?" Jonesy was on a roll. He was a smart guy, I'd give him that.
"No," I said, impressed. "Actually, it would make a lot of sense."
"And would it make sense that this sort of influence and expertise in manipulation from her years of practice on her own peers in high school would translate over to the social hierarchy of the villains of Townsville? That she might be able to convince even other villains to do as she asks?"
I nodded slowly. "Yes," I said. "It would make perfect sense to me." For the first time since we'd arrived there, I allowed myself to look directly over to Princess. She looked livid. Deliberately, I grinned as she watched. 'You're going down,' I thought.
"No further questions," Jonesy announced, turning around and walking back over to his table. I shifted in my chair, glancing over at Blossom. She only nodded at me in approval. I grinned back at her.
After a few moments, the judge said, "The defense may have the floor."
I realized that this meant I would have to talk to that smarmy-faced lawyer that worked for Princess as soon as I looked to see him stand up from his seat. Ugh. Great.
"Ms. Utonium," White said to me, slinking over to the stand like a snake. "Good afternoon. I apologize for my outburst earlier. I hope we can start this on a good note."
I raised an eyebrow. Now he was trying to make nice? He could keep it. It was probably just so he would look better in front of the judge and jury, anyway. "Let's cut to the chase, shall we?" I said, voice flat. I heard a snort, and I turned to see the bailiff concealing a slight smile underneath his hand. At least someone in this courtroom had a sense of humor.
White looked at me, blinking in surprise at my answer, then cleared his throat. "Well, then, all right. Let's get straight to it, then."
I raised both eyebrows at him. "Let's."
"Ms. Utonium," White started, "Earlier, you claimed that your high school classmates all rallied against you and defended Princess after the park incident."
I blinked, then choked out a laugh before I said, "That's not exactly what I said, really, but okay."
White turned, his back facing me. "That's true. You compared it to watching helpless people looking up to a cult leader," he admitted.
I wondered what his goal was in repeating my own words back to me. "Yeah," I said warily.
"Yes," he said back to me. "You said that. And I found it interesting, to say the least."
I sighed. He was clearly trying to bait me. All right. I'd bite. "And why is that?" I asked, my tone dry.
"Ms. Utonium, tell me," White paused, turning slightly toward me again. His face had changed—he looked at me now like a predator as he asked me, "When was it exactly that you started to hold such a contempt for humans?"
A few gasps came from the audience. Both my eyebrows shot up my forehead. Was this guy for real? After stopping for a moment to get past my shock, I replied, "Pardon?"
Cruel contentment was all over this snake's face. "Please answer the question, Ms. Utonium."
"How about never?" I answered, folding my arms tightly. "Does that answer your question?"
"So, you deny hating humans?" White asked.
My mouth worked for a few moments, my face flushing in anger. I couldn't believe he was asking me this. "Why would I hate humans?" I countered. "Hell, how could I?"
"Why couldn't you or your sisters let Princess Morbucks join your team? It was because she's a human, was it not?"
"Not just that!" I bit out. "It was way more than that! My sister told you that Princess tried to coerce us with her money."
"But her being a human was a contributing factor in your decision to not let her join. Do you deny that?"
I floundered for a second. "No, but—"
He cut me off. "So you wouldn't let a human on your team solely because they don't have powers. Correct?"
Really pissed off now, I burst out, "Yes! Okay?"
White paused for a long moment, suddenly calming as a low murmuring moved through the courtroom. Then the slow, snake-like grin appeared on his face again for a moment, before it disappeared. "I see," he said, turning his back to me again.
Realizing what he'd just made me admit, and how it must have looked, I scrambled, adding, "But it wasn't an exclusion thing!"
He turned slightly, looking at me over his shoulder. "Oh?" He had me in the palm of his hand now somehow. I didn't know how he'd done that, but I hated it.
I hurried ahead, wanting to make myself clear. "We didn't keep her from joining because she wasn't like us. I mean, we barely knew her, so that was another thing. And the coercion thing. But it's more than that. We just…" I trailed off. Something else, some entirely different point, had grabbed me, and I ended up saying, "You don't know what it's like."
White's eyebrows lifted. "Beg pardon?"
"You don't know what it's like," I said again, then finished, "to be like us. To do what we do." I looked out at the courtroom. "None of you do. You don't know what it takes. Even when you have super powers."
I had seemed to capture everyone's attention now, even White's. He seemed intrigued. "Go on," he said.
I had suddenly become very sober. I didn't feel like mocking or joking around now. "The things we've seen. The things we've gone through. You don't get it." I stared out at all the faces staring at me. "And we do all of it to protect you. Everything we've ever done was to protect you." I looked back at White now. "Do you know the kind of sacrifice that requires? What kind of guts you need to have?" I went on before he could answer. "Not just for fighting villains. The other stuff too. The protecting. Do you know how many freaking suicides we prevent on Townsville Bridge each year?"
A low murmuring passed through the room again. I stared hard at White, forcing him to answer me. Finally, he said, reluctantly, "A lot, I assume?"
I nodded once. "More than you could possibly imagine." Something nasty, something dark and guilty stirred inside of me. I leaned forward, holding my gaze on him. "And do you know how horrible it feels when one or two slip through the cracks, and we're too late?"
The room was dead silent. I nodded again. "After what me and my sisters went through over the winter, we finally learned what it was like to suffer as humans do. It's an experience that I will never be able to forget. Just like I'll never be able to forget about those times over the years, since I was a child, that I failed saving someone and saw their lives getting taken away from them. And you suggest that my sisters and I hate humans?" Ever so slowly, I shook my head, sitting back against the chair again. "How dare you?"
White stood there for a moment, looking at me with a stunned look on his face. I'd finally knocked him off the mountain of his ego, and I'd surprised him once again. Then he broke his gaze from me and looked down at the floor, beginning a slow pace back and forth in front of me for a few moments before he finally said something. "It seems we've gotten far off subject here." His voice was quiet. "Let's get back to facts. And the fact is, Princess being a human was a contributing factor to you and your sisters not allowing her to be a part of your team."
I sighed heavily. Were we really going back to this again? "Okay, yeah," I admitted, hoping that he would just move on already. "So what?"
"So, this was the catalyst that led to Princess disliking you," White answered, looking at me again. "Do you blame her for disliking you because of that?"
I shrugged. "No," I said, voice flat. "Lots of people dislike us. As evidenced by the amount of the public that immediately turned on us given the first opportunity." I nodded over at Princess again. "Which I'm sure was her plan by manipulating the media in the first place."
"Do you have photographic evidence of Princess Morbucks doing this so-called manipulation?"
"Well," I paused, wondering if this were some trick question. "No?" I finished finally. I glanced over at Blossom sitting in the crowd. She looked frustrated. At the prosecution table, Jonesy had his head leaned on one hand, rubbing his temple with the other. Uh-oh. Had I answered wrong?
"No!" White cried out suddenly, making me jump and look back at him. A big, triumphant grin was on his face as he turned to the jury box. "No! There is no photographic evidence, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. So, who's to say that prosecution isn't simply…exaggerating, to make my client look bad?"
I interjected, amazed that he even just said that, "We don't have to make her look bad." My voice rose. "She's already done that herself. And she's never given a shit about looking good before now."
The judge cleared her throat pointedly. "Language, Ms. Utonium," she said.
This time I had the decency to feel embarrassed for a moment. It hadn't occurred to me that this wasn't exactly the right time or place to curse. "Sorry," I said to her. Then I turned to look at the bewildered faces of the jury. "But my point still stands. Why else would this guy have to do logical somersaults to try to make her look even remotely decent?"
"Onto my next question, Ms. Utonium," White said hurriedly, looking eager to stop me from going any further in that direction. "If you don't hate all humans, you do seem to hate Princess in particular. Do you?"
For a moment, I deliberated over whether answering with tact would be better. Then, deciding against it, I answered challengingly, "Yeah. And it's justified."
"Justified how?" he asked.
"By her own behavior," I said. I dared him to twist that.
White paused. I just knew he was trying to slither his way around what I'd said, and so I wasn't surprised when he asked next, "Who else do you hate?"
"I hate all villains," I said simply. "That's what Princess is. A villain."
"That didn't seem to apply to your teammate then," White said slowly, beady snake eyes sparkling. "Or should I say, your boyfriend? Where is he, by the way?"
My eyes widened. Ten thousand brick walls crashed down onto my head at once. My heart stopped beating for a good few seconds.
"Objection!" Jonesy cried from the prosecution table. "Your Honor, that is irrelevant. The defense has stooped to using personal attacks against this witness." I heard him stand, and the courtroom roared with tons of voices at the same time.
I had looked down at my hands. 'Spitfire.' At what that slimy snake of a lawyer said, this word had suddenly, weirdly appeared in my mind.
My heart was beating irregularly, and my brain was throbbing. Suddenly I was so upset that a lump had risen in my throat. Why had him saying that to me made me react so strongly, especially if it was a lie? I didn't have a boyfriend. I wasn't opposed to some fun, but I wasn't even the serious dating type. I preferred to be alone. No one deserved to deal with my shit on the daily, and it was already enough that my sisters had to.
'Spitfire.' There it was again. What was this word to me? Where had it come from?
But why did I feel like I was about to start crying? And why was there some sort of weird recognition inside of me, like something about what he'd said had made sense?
The courtroom was still loud, and the judge pounded her hammer thing. "Order!" she called. "Order in the courtroom!"
'Spitfire.'
He'd said teammate first, before the boyfriend thing. And those Rowdyruff dudes…before, Professor had told us that they were our teammates after they stopped being villains. And he didn't lie about that, did he? Why would Professor have lied to us about that? He had no reason to.
"Mr. White, I agree with the prosecution. What you just said to Ms. Utonium was not only irrelevant to the case, but it was mean-spirited. As I said before, I will not have bullying in my courtroom. Control yourself."
'Spitfire.'
Professor had also said that we were romantically involved. And all those pictures existed. Those were proof. Weren't they? How could all of those candid pictures of us together with them exist on the Internet if it wasn't true?
But Blossom. Her theory. She said she thought that the pictures were all staged and that it was to make the Rowdyruffs look good to the public. She said it was fake. And she couldn't have been wrong.
Blossom's never wrong. She knows practically everything. She was right. She had to be right.
'Spitfire.' The word kept swirling in my head, uncontrollable, like a skipping CD playing inside my head over and over and over like rapid gunfire. 'Spitfire, spitfire, spitfire, spitfire, spitfire, SPITFIRE, SPITFIRE, SPITFIRE!'
What was spitfire? What did it mean? Where did it come from?
"Ms. Utonium," the clear voice of the judge broke through the repetitions and spiraling thoughts in my head. "Are you all right?"
My mind finally silenced. I was hunched over, my head buried in my hands, and my cheeks wet. I opened my eyes, looking up at her. She had a look of concern on her face.
"Um," I said finally, sitting up straight again and quickly wiping my cheeks with the back of my hand before anyone could see that they were wet. That was my answer to her, just 'um', because I was pretty sure I wasn't okay at all. My throat was dry and I felt dizzy. I blurted out, "Could I have some water?"
"Of course." The judge turned to the bailiff. "Bailiff, some water for our witness please."
As the bailiff walked over to the wall where there was a box of prepackaged plastic water bottles, I used this short amount of bought time to look over at Blossom with wide eyes. She was already staring at me intensely, worry all over her face. She'd already caught on that something was wrong. I pointed at my own forehead, tapping it with my finger, hoping she would tap in with her sister-telepathy and understand what I was telling her.
Immediately, she turned to Professor and whispered to him, and Professor leaned forward to whisper to Jonesy, who nodded and stood up.
The bailiff had come over to the stand, handing me the bottle of water with a look of sympathy on his face. I took it with appreciation, opening the bottle and taking a few gulps out of it straight away.
"Permission to approach the bench, your Honor," said Jonesy in a respectful tone, picking up some papers from the table in front of him.
After a moment or two of consideration, the judge answered with a nod, "Permission granted."
Jonesy walked over to the Judge's bench, looking over at me with a reassuring glance. I hoped that they were trying to get me out of this. I didn't know how much more of the White Snake's questioning I could take.
I set the water bottle down next to my feet. Then, as everyone's attention was on the judge and Jonesy, who I heard was quietly telling her of my memory issues as he held up the papers he'd brought over, I decided to take my chance. Very quietly, as nonchalantly as I could, I reached back into my back pocket for my phone. Thankful that I'd lowered the brightness of its' screen earlier, I hid my phone down low by my knees, glancing downward casually as I unlocked it.
My curiosity had gotten to me, and I had to know what Bubbles' text had said. I had to know right this second where she had gone, and why she wasn't here now to help us cope with this mess.
I opened the text.
The first part of the message said, 'i left to find him. professor was right. those pictures of us were real. don't you remember?'
Then the second one said, 'the boys remembered us already. butch remembers you.'
I froze.
Something in my chest bloomed warm and forceful, spreading through my heart and my brain and my soul.
Bubbles didn't lie on the stand like we thought she had. She'd just told the truth—the truth we hadn't remembered. She had remembered what Blossom and I hadn't. Professor had been right, which meant that Blossom was wrong.
The pictures weren't staged, they were real.
"There's nothing I can do. I'm sorry. You should have considered this before."
"I know I should have informed you of this potential problem before now, your Honor, but I was hoping that it wouldn't become an issue. Please don't let my witness be humiliated for something that's out of her control."
Sounds of the courtroom around me drifted in and out of my awareness as I slipped my phone back into my pocket. I squeezed my eyes shut again as I felt the puzzle pieces slowly, finally, fitting together.
Butch.
Butch.
Spitfire.
Butch remembered me.
…I was Spitfire.
Butch called me Spitfire.
Butch wasn't just a villain before. He had eventually become my teammate, with his brothers. And he hadn't just been my teammate.
He was also my boyfriend.
Butch had not just been some villain years ago. He was made to be my counterpart.
He was mine in every possible way. And he always had been.
"I understand the Utonium girls' difficulties with their memories," said the judge to Jonesy, snapping me out of my own head. "And I would like to pardon her for that, but you should have told me about this problem sooner."
I looked over at them and suddenly stood up on my feet. "It's okay," I said to her, my voice louder than I had intended. Jonesy, the judge, and White all looked at me in surprise. "I…just remembered something. Something that I was trying to remember before," I added, trying to clarify as I saw the confusion on their faces. "And there's something I'd like to say." I pointed to White. "To him."
"Of course," said the judge to me. She turned to Jonesy. "Take a seat, Mr. Jones. Let's let her talk."
Reluctantly, after shooting me another glance, Jonesy made his way back over to his table, shrugging at Blossom and Professor and shaking his head.
White—looking supremely pleased to have the floor back again, and not even remotely sorry for the several moments of the mess that he'd caused—turned back to me. "Something you'd like to say, Ms. Utonium?"
"Yeah," I said to him, sitting and raising my voice again so that everyone would hear. "I do have something to say to you."
White folded his arms in an amused manner. I couldn't wait to wipe that look straight off his face. "All right, go ahead," he said.
"One thing I said earlier was an exaggeration," I admitted to him plainly. "About hating all villains."
White nodded, looking over at the jury smugly. "Was it?"
"Yeah. I haven't hated all villains throughout my whole career. That was an over generalization." Roaring with sudden exploding courage, it flew from my mouth. "After all, I saved a villain once."
This time, when he turned back to me again, there was genuine surprise on his face. There we go. I had him right where I wanted him—posed right in place in my mouse trap, ready to be crushed. Two could play this game. "Really?" he asked.
"Really," I said. "Well, technically, he was an ex-villain. And he had done plenty of things in the past to justify my hating him. But that was the thing. I didn't actually hate him when I saved him. Not anymore." I shrugged. "I hated him at first, when we were kids. As we grew up, though, things got complicated. I still disliked him, but things weren't quite in hatred territory anymore. I had seen him so often, fought him so much, that he had become more like…routine for me. Eventually, I saw battles with him as uninteresting as going to school every day. I fought him because I had to, but my heart wasn't in it anymore. I was used to him. He was more of an annoyance than a threat, at least that's what I had thought. Things had changed between us, but I hadn't realized how much they had changed until he confessed that he was in love with me."
The court reacted just as I thought they would: with unanimous shock. Now they all knew exactly who I was talking about. I'd reeled them all in. The flood of memories pulsing through me, all coming back to me at once, I kept going before I could be interrupted.
"Now, a whole bunch of other things happened after that, dramatic teenage things that none of you need to know about," I said to the room. "But just know that his confession changed everything between us. Permanently. And I fought against it. I fought it so hard that I almost ruined my whole life in the process. I fought it up until the moment that I saved him from a suicide attempt."
I looked out at all the pale, shocked faces staring up at me. "In his moment of vulnerability and true pain, that was the moment that I finally realized that every idea I had about the Rowdyruffs was wrong. They weren't indestructible. They weren't brainless anymore, or heartless. They'd grown into their own people. They weren't evil. And this person who I used to call my sworn enemy was his own person, and he understood me better than I have ever understood myself." I paused, heavily, the undeniable truth coming and overwhelming me for a moment. "And that was when I realized that I was in love with him too."
The courtroom was stirring again. I especially felt the stares of shock coming from Professor, Blossom, and Princess. And White was gaping at me, silent.
I finished. "So, no. I don't hate all villains, not always. As evidenced by the fact that I fell in love with someone who used to be one. But his case was unique. He matured, he owned up to his past mistakes, and his wants and needs changed. He grew up." I paused, looking directly over at Princess. "She, however, did not change as she grew up. She just got better at hiding how rotten she is on the inside." Princess, black-eyed and flushed in the face, scowled back at me.
I turned back to pale-faced White. "And that, sir, is why my hatred is justified. Because I'm a reasonable superhero, and my true hatred is reserved to those who are truly awful and have no worries about being that way." I leaned back in my seat, smirking at him. "Perhaps you can relate to that."
Boom.
The pale-faced White swung around, practically running from me. "The defense has no further questions," he rushed out, retreating to the defense table. The jury was whispering amongst themselves. Princess was staring at her lawyer like she wanted to rip his head off his shoulders. I'd won us another point against them, and she knew it.
Powerpuffs: two. Princess: zero.
I smiled widely. I looked up at the judge, and I could tell she was trying really hard not to grin back at me. "The witness is dismissed from the stand," she announced in an unbiased voice.
I stood up, grabbed the edge of the box surrounding the stand with one hand and launched myself over the top of it, leaping down over the front of the stand unceremoniously. After my sneakers touched onto the wood floors, I bounced over to the lady who was sitting at—I kid you not—a typewriter, typing down every sentence word-by-word. I'd thought they only did that in the olden days. She looked at me in surprise as I bent down and asked, "Did you get all that?"
She had a hand pressed over her heart, and was slightly leaning away from me. "Yes," she answered finally, looking at me like I'd grown horns. "I did."
"Good. Make sure I sound cool," I said. I clucked my tongue and chucked up two hand-guns at her as I winked.
Then I lightly jogged down the aisle of seats to where Professor and Blossom were also staring at me, but with two entirely different expressions. Professor looked excited and impressed, and Blossom looked horrified and confused. She leaned toward me, her eyes huge the way they get before she launches into a lecture.
"Buttercup," she said, "Have you lost your mind?"
"It's funny you say that. Because I actually found it!" I nudged Professor, leering. "Get it?"
Realization crossed over his face, and he laughed. "Oh," he said, putting a hand on his chest, not unlike that typewriter lady did. "And thank goodness you did."
Blossom looked at him in confusion, then looked back at me in her narrow-eyed way that made me positive that I was in trouble. "Come sit down. What were you thinking, saying all that on the stand? You're acting crazy!"
I preferred to think of it as acting 'enlightened'. "Hmm. About that," I started, leaning in toward her so that I could whisper. "I gotta split. Cover for me, will you? If they ask, I left to feed wide-eyed orphan kittens at the rescue center. You da best, Red!" I reached a hand out and fluffed the top of her hair affectionately, messing it up.
Immediately, before she could even comprehend what I'd said, I turned and ran down the aisle, pushing out of the doors of the courtroom just as I heard Blossom exclaim, "Buttercup!"
I probably could have pretended to go to the bathroom, like Bubbles had done, but Blossom and everyone else would've figured out that I was gone anyway. Besides, subtlety wasn't my style.
I ran through the courthouse, searching for a door, any door except for the front doors. And then a door with an emergency exit sign above it caught my eye. I hadn't remembered that emergency exits have alarms until after I'd already pushed it open, the alarm ringing down the hallway and cutting through my eardrums.
'Oh well,' I thought to myself, cringing as I hurried out the door. 'Might as well go out with a bang.'
As soon as I was outside of the side of the courthouse, right in the middle of the nicely manicured lawn, in fact, I blasted off into the air.
An explosion of air followed me, along with a loud crack. Immediately following, I heard several car alarms go off at the same time. Whoops. I was still getting used to these new upgraded powers, and now every time I took off flying too fast, I broke the sound barrier.
I had missed flying so much, and for so long, that I couldn't help myself. I'd had so many bad, recent memories associated with flying that I made it a mission to erase those bad memories every time I flew now. To make better memories to replace the bad ones. Because I'd be damned if I let anything take flying from me again.
Regardless, I pushed through the sky, phasing through the air molecules at certain points and reappearing yards away. That was something I'd found hard to get a hang of, too. Teleporting was wicked, but doing it too much made me start to feel dizzy and lightheaded. I would get used to it, though. Hopefully. But at least I'd have plenty of opportunities to practice, like now.
I knew where he had to be. The moment I knew I had to get out of there, I knew it was to find him. I needed to find him now, or I was going to go crazy.
I was in love with Butch Jojo, the man who years ago made me realize that even though I never ever changed my mind about things, let alone people, he was the sole exception. And now it was time to go find him so that I could tell him.
And I had an idea of where he was—of where he hopefully was. And if I had to check every damn car garage in the city, then so be it.
I landed at the first car garage I ran across. It was a chain one, one that I always muted the commercials on TV for. The garage doors were wide open, and it smelled strongly of gasoline and grease. I marched straight inside, not risking standing there and letting anyone that might stop me come forward.
There was barely anyone inside. Most of the workers were in the isolated part of the building on the side where no doubt the air conditioning was on high, gathered around an ice cooler and drinking water. There was one guy inside the garage itself, slumped in a plastic lawn chair and reading a magazine. He glanced up at me from under his sweaty brow. "Can I help you?"
I backed up a step, shaking my head. "No," I said quickly. Just then, I noticed that he was reading a gossip magazine. Which me and my sisters were on the cover of. I pointed to it, then threw my hands up in exasperation. "Oh, come on!" I exclaimed.
The man looked down at the cover of his magazine to see what I was pointing at. Then, slowly, what I had been waiting for happened—the realization spread over his face, his eyes widening as he looked at me again. "Wait a second," he said, lifting a hand to point at me in disbelief. "Aren't you—"
"Yes, yes, it's me! Ugh, I don't have time for this!" I burst out in frustration, cutting him off.
I spun on my heel, running back outside, and bursting into the air the next second, speeding away with a crack just as I heard the man in the chair cry out, "Guys, come out, look! A Powerpuff girl!"
As I flew, starting toward the next car garage I could spot, my phone buzzed. I stopped mid-air, levitating there and reaching toward my pocket. Biting back a laugh, I took my phone out to see the enraged text I'd already been expecting to see from Blossom.
'Buttercup, get your ass back here! I mean it! This is incredibly unprofessional!' It said.
Shaking my head with a grin, I closed it and put my phone away again without answering. As tempting as it was to egg on her temper, I was better off just letting her cool off instead of humoring an inevitable half-whispering half-shrieking phone call from her.
Besides, I was busy here. Trying to find the dude of my dreams and all that. I didn't have time to be yelled at.
I left to the next car garage that I knew of in town, and then the next. Nothing at both, just old sweaty, hairy men dressed in polyester who were complaining about the heat. After one more car garage, and receiving nothing but stares and smirks, I began to feel foolish. What the hell was I doing, running around town like this? There was no guarantee that I would even find him. He could've been in Citiesville, for all I knew of him lately.
Finally, I got one last idea. I took off into the air again, and quickly, I arrived at the car garage on the University of Townsville campus. It was my last bet. The guys had gone on leave from their school when they were sick, just like we had.
But maybe, just maybe, he could be back here taking summer classes. It was a long shot, but I had to take it.
As soon as I landed on the ground, maybe twenty feet away from the car garage, I felt it with certainty.
He was here. He was in this one. I could feel it. I listened closely, and there were several heartbeats coming from inside. But there was only one heartbeat that stood out from the rest. A heartbeat that sounded just like mine, inhuman and quick.
I came closer to mouth of the garage, within maybe 8 feet. I intended on going straight inside, just like I had at all the other places, and getting it over with fast.
And that was when I heard his voice.
"Yeah, pass me that? No, not that one. That one over there. Behind that other thing. Yeah, yeah. Thanks, bro."
I stopped cold. All at once, my heart jumped and did a cartwheel and sank into my stomach. Fuck. It was him. It was him. He was really here.
Suddenly, I was petrified. What the hell was I doing here? Why did I think I could just drop in on him like this, like it was no big deal? It was a huge deal.
My legs stiffened, and my eyes glazed over as I stared in the direction his voice had come from. He was underneath a car, partially hidden, but his long legs were sticking out from it, and he was right there.
Now I felt like I shouldn't have come looking at all—that I should've just stayed in that dumb courtroom and stayed there for moral support for Blossom, and to watch Princess get locked up for good.
What was I doing there, at that car garage like it was last fall again? Like I was handing him wrenches as he worked on cars, and as we talked about everything and made jokes and kissed behind the car hoods?
I didn't belong there with him anymore. Everything was so different now. I didn't belong with him.
In my sudden fear, I hadn't noticed that one of the garage workers had spotted me and walked over to where I was standing outside. I didn't snap out of my daze until he spoke to me. "—thing I can help you with?" he was asking.
I looked at him, startled. He was a short dude with floppy hair and looked nice enough. My gaze snapped back to that long-legged form lying underneath the elevated car, and then back to him. Now he had his eyebrow raised at me expectantly. "Um," I said. Then I paused, noticing it when the sound of a wrench being dropped came from under the car. I forged on, intent on leaving as quickly as I could. "No…no. I just thought I saw someone I knew. Sorry to bother you."
Here's the thing: Buttercup Utonium isn't a quitter. But she for damn sure has some semblance of sense. And my sense was telling me to get the hell out of there.
Before the dude could reply, I spun around on my heel, beginning to walk quickly away. And just as I was about to take off into the air, likely about to break some windows and make car alarms go off again, there came the only thing that could have stopped me in my tracks in that moment.
"Buttercup?" It was his voice. This time directed straight at me.
I literally skidded to a stop, my sneaker soles grinding against the pavement. I stiffened, my heart pounding so hard that I could feel it in my pulse points. I was scared to look back at him, scared at what I would find in his face.
Anger? Hatred? Annoyance?
Finally, I slowly turned, risking a glance. And there he was, crawling out from underneath the car, staring at me with wide eyes like he was looking at a ghost.
We just stared at each other for a few seconds, staying still, and then suddenly he jumped to his feet the rest of the way—subsequently accidentally knocking the floor jack out from underneath the car. In a flash, faster than I could even blink, he whirled around and caught the nearest edge of the car with both hands before it could fall and smash onto the ground.
He gripped the vehicle without any visible struggle, and as he sent an apologetic glance at an older looking dude that had a look of panic on his face, he set the car down on four tires gently. Then, as if remembering I had been standing there, Butch whirled to look at me again. There was a shadow of something like embarrassment on his face.
I had the strangest urge to laugh, but I held it back. Not knowing what else to do, I folded my arms and shrugged at him expectantly. He held up a pointer finger. 'One minute'. Then he turned walking over to talk to the older guy. The two exchanged a few sentences, and then the old guy seemed to relent, and I heard Butch thank him.
Butch turned back, facing me and wiping his hands on a rag and tossing it on a nearby chair. Slowly, he began to walk toward me. The slowest walk in all of existence.
Was it possible that he actually was moving in slow motion? Because that's how it felt.
Wide shoulders rolling as he walked the way that they always had, strolling along like he had all the time in the world. Hair as short as mine, only disheveled in all directions like a wild weed. His eyes—dark green and stormy and intense—were locked on mine, sunlight glinting off his eyebrow ring, and I felt my insides and my skin boiling like I was in a pot of hot water.
He was an exquisite menace. Looking at him, I was drunk. And I was screwed.
There was something about him now that I hadn't noticed—or realized—the last time I had seen him, when I had barely remembered him. He radiated trouble. The kind of trouble that drew you in with everything you had ever wanted and caught you in its' jaws and then leered as it dared you to try to escape, because it knew you wouldn't. You would never even try, because you didn't want to.
Finally, he was in front of me—but he didn't stop until we were literally toe-to-toe, a breath's distance from each other.
At his proximity, my breathing had quickened, but I stood my ground, not willing to take a step back and show how vulnerable I felt. I looked straight up into his face as he gazed down at me. He didn't look menacing at all, though. He seemed to be looking for something in my face. I didn't know what.
Breaking the unsure silence between us, when he finally spoke to me again, it wasn't what I had expected. "Come take a walk with me," he said. Then, without waiting for my response, he turned and walked in the opposite direction of the car garage, not glancing at me to see if I'd follow.
I hung back for a few seconds, weighing all the possible ways this could end. Then, with an annoyed huff, I walked quickly after him to catch up.
I left about two feet between us, but I followed behind him as he kept walking. I could tell he was walking somewhere with purpose—he was leading me somewhere. But I had no idea where. Maybe under normal circumstances, I would've asked him where we were going, but I was still reeling from finding him, and from everything that I'd remembered about him. About us. So I stayed silent, following from behind him and not being able to say anything.
Instead, I stared at him. He hadn't been dressed in a polyester uniform like all those old dudes at the other car garages had been wearing. He was dressed casually in a loose dark green t-shirt with a vintage flaming skull logo of The Offspring on it, and loose jean shorts with his worn black Vans. As I looked down at myself again, it occurred to me how accidentally similar our clothes were. Okay, that was weird. What were the odds of that?
After several minutes of this, walking as I remained several wary feet behind him, he finally broke the silence again.
"You know I'm not going to try to hurt you," he paused, glancing back at me over his shoulder and raising an eyebrow, "right?"
I eyed him incredulously, then scoffed. "As if you could," I retorted, folding my arms. "If anything, I would take you down instead."
He cracked a smile, then quickly turned away before I could stare at it. "Noted."
We continued walking. I cleared my throat. "So, this is weird, right?"
"So weird," he agreed flatly.
I went on. "I mean, I woke up this morning preparing to give my stupid testimony against Princess in a courtroom, and the next I know, I'm remembering everything about you."
He paused, looking down at me in alarm. "You only just remembered today?"
"Literally like 40 minutes ago," I said.
"No lie?" he asked. I shook my head, resisting the sudden odd urge to smile. He nodded slowly in amazement, resuming his pace forward. "This memory loss stuff was some crazy shit."
"You're telling me," I muttered.
Butch turned halfway to me again, still walking. "Wait," he started, "so you just remembered me 40 minutes ago…while you were in court?"
"While I was up on the stand being questioned. Yup."
"And then you just…left?"
"Uh-huh."
"…Are you allowed to do that?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "But I waited until I had been dismissed, so I don't think it matters. That's what Bubbles did too, anyway."
"Bubbles left the courthouse, too?" he asked, surprised.
"Yeah." I paused, thinking. Then something occurred to me. "I think…I think she remembered Boomer while she was giving her testimony, too. Weird."
Butch 'hmm'ed. Then he asked, "What about Blossom?"
"Dunno, she was supposed to be the last one to be questioned. She's probably being questioned now, actually. Guess we'll see what happens." I chuckled slightly, then sobered immediately, but I didn't know why.
I felt the urge to be formal with him, even though he wasn't some stranger to me anymore. I knew who he was now, and what he meant to me. But it still felt weird. It was so weird to wake up in the morning and see someone one way, and then the next second seeing them completely differently.
I now remembered everything about him. I remembered one of the last times I'd seen him—before I had lost my sight when I was sick. He had shaved his head bald, like he'd wanted—because he wanted to stand by me in solidarity after I'd asked Blossom to shave my head, too. Two baldies together.
And from before that, I remembered how he was the only thing holding me together those last months, especially the night we'd snuck out to drink. I'd gotten wasted and freaked out at him and he'd let me, because he'd known I had to get it all out. And then he'd held me as I apologized and cried in his arms.
Just as he'd always had this way of getting under my skin when he wanted to, his voice was also the only one that calmed the raging storms inside of my mind.
I remembered things from further back, from the good days. I remembered how many times he liked to knot the laces on his boots—three times. I remembered how he liked to do push-ups as I sat cross-legged on his back. I remembered how he usually preferred energy drinks, but when he did drink coffee, he liked it black, just like me. I remembered his love for obscure, weird comic books, as well as all the latest underground horror movies that he always made me watch. I remembered the horrible rap music he'd blast in his precious Lambo while I tolerated it in the passenger's seat, stone-faced. I remembered all the countless arguments we'd had over whether metal bands were superior to punk bands (they are, FYI). I remembered how he looked first thing in the morning, messier hair, hooded eyes, raspy voice. I remembered all the times we'd boned—we did that a lot.
I shook my head, forcing myself to stop that train of thought, knowing I couldn't afford to be more rattled and nervous around him right now than I already was. "So, when did you remember?" I asked, switching the subject back on him.
"A while ago," he replied.
"A while?"
"Yeah. Weeks ago," he said. Then he turned to me again, raising an eyebrow. "What took you so long, Spitfire?"
I shook my head, breaking my eyes away from him again when my guts leaped at his use of that nickname. Only he called me that. And I was so glad I remembered it. "I dunno. It's like my brain just…blocked you out for a while," I said to him. "I don't know why." I didn't know why it had taken me the longest to remember something—someone—that meant the most to me of all. What kind of sense did that make?
Out of my peripheral, I saw him nod. "You're here now. You came to me. That's what matters."
Hesitantly, I glanced at him without turning my head. He was already looking at me evenly—I'd noticed that he was looking at me a lot. Quickly, I looked away from him, staring down at my feet and letting the neon of my sneakers reflected off the sunlight cut into my retinas. "Yeah," I said, stupidly. The answer fell flat compared to what he'd said. Embarrassed, my cheeks tingled with heat, and I wished I hadn't said anything at all.
For a minute or two, we continued to walk, and Butch hadn't said anything else, probably sensing how nervous I was. I hated how obvious it was that he could tell. I hated how he could see straight through me.
Only, I didn't really hate it. I didn't hate it at all. I had just forgotten how it felt to be around him—feeling so helpless and exposed like this. He was the only one that could make me feel that way.
Finally, we'd come across a small park. It was the kind without playground equipment, just a bunch of grass and trees and benches and junk. I glanced over at Butch as we arrived, and he continued to walk toward an area where there was a handful of metal benches facing one another in the grass.
When we were standing before them, Butch turned to me. "Take your pick," he said, gesturing widely to the benches. "Lots of variety here. We have one that's half in the shade and half out," he said, pointing to one of them. "Then we have one completely in the tree shade that's covered in bird shit," he said, pointing to the one that had turned practically solid white from all the bird poop. I grimaced. He pointed to the next one, "Another half shade one," he paused, then pointed to the last one, "and then that one in concentrated sunlight which would probably fry the skin off the underside of your thighs."
Oof. Just at the mention of it, I reached down with both my hands, rubbing the backs of my thighs. "Thanks for that mental picture," I muttered.
"You're welcome," Butch said with a grin. Then he gestured to the benches again. "I'll let you get first pick."
Wordlessly, folding my arms again, I made my way over to one of the half-shade benches, sitting gingerly on the shaded side. Butch followed me, sitting directly on the other, sunny end of the bench.
Before Butch could say anything, I asked, "So, why are we here?"
"Just thought it would be a nice place to stop and talk," he said, shrugging. "Catching up, and everything. Less distractions here. I like to come here and think sometimes."
Half-joking, I scrunched my nose up. "Ugh, that's right. You're one of those outdoorsy types. Always hiking and rock climbing and stuff with Brick." I liked taking walks, but that was my limit, personally. I liked actual sports that helped get my frustration out, and climbing was so mild. Why climb stuff when I could just fly?
A tiny smile tugged at his lips as he turned a sideways glance at me. "Don't knock it 'til you try it."
"That'll be the day," I remarked. I shook my head and said before I could think twice about it, "Such a human sport."
I felt the realization hit both of us at the same time. All my good humor swept away, and I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
The atmosphere had been soured. Then, quietly, Butch replied, "Nothing wrong with that. We would know, wouldn't we?"
Old discomfort and dread crawled up my spine. I brought my feet up onto the edge of the bench, hiking my knees up and resting my arms around them. "Yeah." My voice had matched the quiet tone of his. "I guess we would."
Some quiet passed between us again. Nearby cicadas in the tall grass made noise, keeping the area from feeling too closed in as bad memories threatened to swallow us both. He didn't say a word but I knew he felt it too, I knew it—I could see muted pain in his eyes as he looked out at the trees.
I took a deep breath, shut my eyes, and sighed. "It's just a memory," I said out loud unexpectedly. "It can't hurt you. Just let it pass." When I slowly opened my eyes again, he was looking at me. "That's what I do," I said.
Butch nodded, a glint of appreciation in his eyes. Then he leaned to the side, grabbing something from his pack pants pocket. "This is what I do," he said as he pulled out a cigarette box, pulling one out and placing it between his lips. He held out the box toward me, offering me one.
Though it was tempting, I shook my head. "No thanks, I quit."
He cocked an eyebrow. "Really, now?" The cig bobbled on his bottom lip as he spoke. "Since when?"
I bit the inside of my cheek again. I shouldn't say it. I shouldn't say it. "Since I died." Whoops. I said it.
He stared at me blankly for a few long beats, blinking. Then he removed the unlit cigarette from between his lips, put it back inside the box and closed it, tucking it into the front pocket of his jeans. "Not funny," he said in a gruff manner. He looked like he was trying to suppress something—maybe a laugh.
I looked away, choking back a grin.
"I'm serious, Buttercup. That wasn't funny."
I could feel him staring at me, and that combined with his insistence that my joke wasn't funny made a choked snort spill out of me. I smacked a hand over my mouth, my shoulders shaking with my suppressed laughter.
"You think you're real cute, huh?" he asked, a smile in his voice.
"Um, no," I said, immediately not laughing anymore and raising my eyebrows with annoyance. "I'm not cute." I hated being called cute. He knew that.
He rolled his eyes, though his lips had curved up. "Whatever you say," he said under his breath.
"I'm not."
"Okay, okay," he said. A long pause. "But you are, though."
"Butch!"
Finally, he outright laughed, throwing his head back and slapping his knee. "You're not, you're not." He looked at me, laughter fading as he sobered. He sighed, gazing at me. "God, I missed this."
I looked at him for a moment. Then, slowly putting the soles of my sneakers back down on the cushy grass, I nodded, becoming shy again suddenly. "Me too," I admitted. Even if I hadn't known specifically what I'd been missing before, I had been missing something all this time. And I hadn't realized until the moment I saw him standing in that garage that he'd been exactly it.
Him. This. All of it.
Suddenly, interrupting our brief silence, Butch asked suddenly, "Hey, wanna know something?"
My eyebrows raised as I regarded him again. "Sure," I replied, wary.
He sighed in an almost frustrated manner, folding his arms. "You are impossible to get over. Point blank."
"What?"
"But oh man, did I try to. Did I ever try. Tried everything in the book to continue forgetting you." He stared at me, staid. "Not possible."
I looked down at my feet, quieting. "I don't blame you for wanting to forget."
"It's not that I wanted to, Buttercup. I wouldn't ever want to forget you. It's just that I thought it was my only option. I didn't think…I didn't think you would ever remember me." I looked up at him. He was smiling bitterly. "And why would you?"
"But I did." I folded my arms, unintentionally mirroring him. "Of course I did."
He went on. "I know. But for a while there, I was sure you wouldn't. And that I would have to go on and make something of my pathetic life without you. I've never once lived without you in my life. You know that?" Then he paused, blowing out a breath bitterly. "Except for that one time. When I tried to stay away from you. And if you recall, that didn't go so well for either of us."
His words brought back the ache that drenched my memory of those days, and of what Butch had tried to do to himself. Then I swallowed, pushing past the feeling to tell him, "Your life isn't pathetic, Butch."
"Of course you would say that," he said, frowning down at his shoes. "But you weren't created to destroy. You were created to save."
"Hey," I said, my voice softening as I scooted closer to him on the bench tentatively. He still didn't look at me. "It doesn't matter what you were made for. What matters is what you're doing now. Who you are now."
"But maybe I'm still figuring that out."
"There's nothing wrong with that," I told him. I took one more scoot toward him. Now I was half in the shade and half out. "Everyone has to figure themselves out. Even humans do." Then I laughed once, self-depreciatingly. "We've just had to do it twice now."
Finally, Butch's face lightened up again, almost smiling. Then he turned to look at me again. "You know, even when I didn't remember you yet…once I saw you behind that glass wall, I couldn't forget your face. That's actually why I picked up smoking. I needed some other sort of release to distract me from thinking of you."
I was staring at him, frozen. "Really?" I asked.
Butch nodded. "Mhm. But that's just you. I can't remember a time when I wasn't just…consumed by you. You've always been that way. That way of just…wrapping around me. Weaving into my skin. Taking my mind prisoner without even having to do anything." He shook his head, still gazing at me. "Even just sitting there right now, you're killin' me."
My face was bursting red. I was positive I could fry an egg on my forehead. Man, did I miss having hair I could hide behind. That was the one drawback of having hair this short—everything was showing.
So naturally, with this train of thought lingering in my mind, I decided to lighten the mood with, "So you don't mind the hair, then?" The question was mostly a joke, but I wanted to know the answer anyway.
Butch chuckled under his breath, and he smiled, almost friendly looking if it weren't for the wicked tinge to it that made it look wolfish instead. "It's sexy as hell."
Something flared inside me. I broke my gaze on him and cleared my throat. I think I was flushed down to my shoulders now. And I knew that he'd noticed it, that he was indulging in my reaction, because he was laughing to himself low in his throat, which just made me redden more. Trouble. Damn trouble. "Whatever," I muttered.
And just when I thought I couldn't get any more agitated, he said, low and mischievous, "You're so red. I've missed that, too."
My stomach flipped. I groaned, putting a hand over my face, knowing it wasn't enough to hide it. "Stop that."
"Stop what?" he asked, innocence personified.
"Stop flirting," I said, hating that he made me say it. "There are things that I still have to say to you, and that's just making me want to jump you. In public."
He was still staring at me, and I refused to glance over to see what his face looked like. Especially after I had said that. "I wouldn't be opposed to that," he replied. "Though I know you're not huge on raunchy PDA. But there is nobody here. Except for us."
I groaned louder, this time jumping to my feet, standing from the bench. I pointed at him, backing away. "Quit it. I mean it. I need to be serious for a second, and you're not helping. Stop distracting me." Now that I was standing away from him, I was in front of him and was seeing his charm full in the face. It made my throat dry, my body burn and made me want to do anything but talk. But we needed to. Because there were things I had to tell him.
Finally, as he always did when he knew playtime was over and it was time to be serious, his face changed, and he looked me, solemn. "Okay. What do you need to tell me?" He patted the bench next to him. "Sit?"
I eyed him suspiciously. "No funny business."
He grinned again, but this time it was free of mischievousness. "Scout's honor."
I rolled my eyes, but my lips pressed together tightly and curled up slightly. I sat next to him on the bench again. Then I took a deep breath, starting. "You know…Blossom told me something about a month ago, when we were starting to regain our memories. Something about starting over."
"Let me hear it," Butch said.
"She was telling me about how humans face all sorts of crap," I said, rubbing the sides of my sneakers against each other. "She reminded me how weak and fragile they are. Like we were. Remember?"
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I remember."
"She was saying…" I trailed off, frowning, trying to remember exactly how she'd put it. "She was saying how humans don't know when they're going to kick the bucket. And they're weak, and they don't have powers. So it's worse, basically." I stopped, smacking a hand to my forehead. "Wait. No. I'm screwing this up. It didn't sound like this when she said it."
"It's okay, keep going," Butch said, sounding amused. "I wanna see where this goes."
I sighed. "Anyway, what I'm trying to say is this: humans don't let their weakness stop them. They could literally croak any second, but they just…keep going. They live their lives, you know? They go after what they want, and sometimes they fall, but…they get back up again. And they keep going." I thought of the little girls at the park by our house. How the one that had fallen off the swing kept laughing and playing with her friend, even though she was hurt. I leaned back against the back of the bench, tilting my head all the way back to look up at the sky. Warm blue and cloudless. "And I wanna be like that. I was like that once, when I was a kid. I wasn't afraid of what I didn't know." I turned my head to look at him. "I wanna start over and try to forget about what happened. It'll be impossible to forget about it completely, but…" My hands clenched into fists. Ready to fight. "I won't let it stop me from being who I am."
Butch was silent for a few beats, expression pensive and staid, absorbing what I'd said. Despite messing up in the beginning, I thought it had sounded pretty close to what I meant to say in the end.
Then he looked at me, smiling subtly. "That sounds pretty great to me," he said to me. Then he nodded slowly. "I wanna do that, too."
"Then I'll be there to make sure that you do." I lifted my legs onto the bench, folding them criss-cross applesauce, turning to face my body toward him completely. "So, it looks like you're stuck with me. For good." I folded my arms, daring him to question me. Because from then on, nothing could ever, would ever, take me from his side again. I'd be like one of those face hugging parasites from an alien movie.
"Well, that goes for you too, Spitfire," Butch told me, leering widely now and raising his eyebrows. "You're stuck with me, partner in crime."
I nodded once, pleased. But something in my guts warmed and glowed and grew 10 sizes at what he'd said. Somewhere in me I knew he'd say them, but hearing him say them felt better than what I could put into words. "Good," I said. "Just like I like it."
He turned to face me on the bench, too, one leg folded in front of him and the other stretched to the ground. "Besides, you need me. Admit it."
I laughed then, loudly, arms still folded. "Wow. Careful, your ego is showing. Might wanna cover that back up, unless you want to be arrested for public indecency. As a superhero, I'd be obligated to do it."
"Come on," he said, leaning toward me on his fists. Ignoring my joke, he teased, "Who else would wake you up at night to roll you on your side when you start to snore?"
My jaw dropped, and I pitched forward to push his shoulder. "Shut up! I don't snore that loudly."
"You do. You really do," Butch insisted, blank faced to show how much he meant it. Then his smirk came back. "I mean, it's amusing, and the sight of you sleeping is still a dream, but good god sometimes it's like you snorted up an entire elephant and it's screaming to be let free from the inside of your sinuses."
My cheeks lit on fire again, and I groaned through my clenched teeth, hiding my face with my hand once more. He was the only one that could get underneath my skin like this. In front of everyone else, I was charismatic and awesome, but around him, I was like some blush-y damsel.
He made me vulnerable, but it was more than just that. He made me honest.
Butch laughed. Then I felt his hand on my hand, moving it away from my face. "Come 'ere. Just teasing." I glanced at him, and he had scooted closer to me. His shin was touching both my legs, his bare skin burning against mine. Then his hand that had moved my hand flipped, and he smoothed the back of his hand against my hot cheek. "I love your loud snoring. Because when it wakes me up, I get to see how cute you are when you're asleep."
My entire body flushed this time. "I'm not cute," I mumbled, looking away from his soft gaze, and then I grabbed the knot at the bottom of my t-shirt, pulling the fabric away from my skin and fanning myself with the garment. "God, it's hot out here." But it wasn't the weather making me feel that way. It was him.
The back of Butch's hand remained against my face for a beat, then he turned it over, cupping my cheek. "You're cute. But you're also beautiful." His eyes remained on my face, and I finally met them. All traces of teasing were gone, and now his gaze was fiercely reverent. Nearly worshipful. It made my heart skid to a stop. "You're beautiful, and I can't live my life without you."
My breath heaved. "You won't," I said, surging inside. I reached down with my hand, grasping his other hand in mine tightly, fingers weaving together. We both squeezed. Our souls touched.
"Death came for both of us. We still survived it." Butch leaned his face closer to mine until our foreheads touched together for a moment. Then he leaned back a couple inches, his thumb tracing my cheek, then dragging down to trace my bottom lip, decadent—and as he stared down at it, his eyes darkened.
My veins lit with electricity. "I know," I said, my voice a little raspy, bottom lip moving against his thumb.
He gently pulled my lip downward, then let it go, watching it and biting down on his own lip. "Not even death could tear us apart," he said. His eyes locked back with mine. "You're here. I'm here. Don't you think we could get through anything?" He tilted his head, the sunlight hit his eyebrow ring, and I was long gone.
He was the most beautiful person I had ever known. There was, nor would there ever be, anybody like him. Mine in every possible way.
My throat was dry again, like the parched grass in the field nearby. I swallowed hard, but it was still dry. "Maybe," I answered.
He shook his head. Wrong answer. "No, not maybe," he said, frowning slightly. He let go of my hand, but only to cup the other side of my face with it. I was enclosed in his hands. Possessed. "No matter what gets thrown at us, we get through it together." He leaned closer to me again, our noses brushing. "Invincible. That's us." His eyes were fierce again. Greedy. Drinking me in, just as mine drunk him in.
Mine. Always mine.
Nodding slightly, I replied with a slight grin on my lips. "That's how we survive. Together."
Butch inched closer. The heat that radiated from him drenched me, soaked into me deeper than the hot sunlight and humid air. "Nothing can stop us," he whispered. His hands slipped through the shortness of my hair, fingers spread against my scalp and holding me in place. "Nothing."
Mine forever.
My breathing heavy, I uttered just one word. "Promise?" My eyelids fluttered—they were closing against my will. My whole being was crying out for him and I needed him.
"Always," Butch whispered, lips lightly brushing mine as he did.
And then we collided.
Our lips crashed hard, moving against each other as if our lives depended on it—two pairs of lips that had once breathed their last. My hands moved over his chest and his shoulders, squeezing and raking with my nails through his shirt. His hands pulled my hair, fingers curling, and he locked me flush against him as I sat in his lap. My heart's pace competed with his, racing and racing ahead.
Butch came up for air the same time I did, and he kissed down my chin and across my jaw, nipping my earlobe as I gasped and tugged him closer despite the heat that made both of our skin slick and made our clothes cling to our bodies. His teeth gnawed down my throat and his tongue followed recklessly and I wanted more, more. And I would never ever get enough of him for as long as I lived, however long that might be.
"God, I love you, Butch," I rasped down into his ear, desperate. "With every part of my fucked-up soul that is capable of loving, I love you."
Butch leaned away from my neck, meeting my face with his again, his eyes cloudy and voracious. "I will love you until my final day, no matter when that'll be. And even after that. You've always had me, Spitfire. You have all of me."
In that empty park, we sat there and kissed with swollen lips long enough to make up for every moment we had been apart, for all our lost time. Our souls bonded together, our words became permanent. Final.
Now that I had died once, and I'd crawled my way back to him despite everything, I knew without a single doubt within me that what we said to each other on that tiny park bench was true, and that this was for real. And we would hang onto each other, protect each other, see through each other, keep each other out of trouble, and fight the world together for life.
Partners in ass-kickery. Forever.
"Hey!" A teenage stranger's voice called out to us from afar at some point. "Get a room!"
We broke apart only long enough to both flip the kid the bird as we laughed. And then we were connected again—lost, consumed, in our own bubble.
And I would never have it any other way.
-Blossom's POV-
"Prosecution calls witness Blossom Utonium to the stand."
Before that sentence snapped me out of it, I'd been totally zoned out, looking at the screen of my phone as I typed a text message to Buttercup.
Just as Bubbles had, Buttercup had stormed outside immediately after her questioning had been completed. Except Buttercup had brazenly taken off, flying away outside with a sonic boom like a fighter jet, which had been impossible not to hear. No one inside the courtroom had been able to figure out what the sound was, or why there was a loud chorus of car alarms that had followed it—except for Professor and I. We had exchanged worried glances with each other.
I had just been typing out my fifth consecutive text message to each of my sisters, demanding to know where they were and insisting that they return to the courthouse immediately—but alas, none of them had earned responses, and it was now my turn to testify against Princess.
I put my phone on top of the handmade kids' cards I had stowed away in the main compartment of my purse earlier, which I left on the floor in front of my seat, and stood, smoothing my hands down my previously mussed hair as I felt every eye in the room turn to me. I looked at Professor, and he gave me a slight nod. Why weren't my sisters here? What could've been so important that they had to leave me here on my own, with just the Professor to support me? And where could they have possibly been?
I walked into the aisle, taking a deep breath and reaching up to touch the dandelion behind my ear, making sure it was still there, remembering the little boy and the little girl. Remembering that this was to protect them, to protect the whole town. It was my duty.
My feet carried me to the stand, and the bailiff came over to me with his outstretched Bible. I placed my hand on it.
The bailiff sternly asked, "Do you swear to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"
"Yes," I said. I wouldn't hold anything back.
"You may be seated," he said to me.
I slowly took my seat, my knees feeling a little shaky from the returned nerves. I breathed in, breathed out.
"Thank you for being here, Ms. Utonium," Mr. Jones said to me politely.
I nodded, forcing a small grin. "My pleasure," I replied. Unable to help it, my eyes ticked over to where Princess sat, looming far beyond the left shoulder of Mr. Jones like a simmering dragon crouched in her chair. She was looking at me just as I knew she would be—smug, condescending. As if I were a centipede under her shoe. As if I were the one wearing a prison jumpsuit instead of her.
She always had this way of looking at people that made them feel as if they were all beneath her like they were lucky to even be breathing the same oxygen that she was. I wondered how she managed to maintain this air about her even now, considering her circumstances.
"Ms. Utonium," Mr. Jones began, "what are your past experiences like with the accused?"
Without breaking eye contact with her, I answered with a slight grin on my lips still. "Horrible," I said.
Princess's nostrils flared like a bull, her glare deepening.
"I think we've all gathered that by now," Mr. Jones said with a tinge of humor in his voice. A few people in the crowd chuckled under their breath. "But can you elaborate on that, please?"
I sat up straighter in my seat. "Sure, I'd be happy to do that." I paused, gathering all my thoughts into an organized list. "Well, as my sister Bubbles told you, that exaggerated park story of hers ruined my reputation for a while. To this day, I still have people asking me about an incident that never actually happened. But going even further than that, like my sister Buttercup mentioned, back when we were children, she antagonized and harassed my sisters and me simply because she wanted to become a Powerpuff Girl."
"Can I stop you there for a second?" Mr. Jones asked me, then turned directly to the jury. "I just want to clarify this for you, ladies and gentleman of the jury; this statement isn't an accusation. As you recall, the defense themselves even proved this as fact after Bubbles Utonium's testimony. Just as well, there is numerous actual video evidence of Princess Morbucks herself declaring this to be the reason she hated the Powerpuff Girls. Years later, footage of this disappeared from the media. Why, you may ask? Well, I have legal transcripts provided from these media sources that Mr. Morbucks, Princess's father, paid these media sources a large sum of money to destroy the footage from their possession, as well as physical copies of the actual checks that were written to them." Mr. Jones took out a few folders from his briefcase, and he passed them over to the jury. Then he looked over at the judge. "And if you recall, your honor, all of this evidence was approved of prior to today."
Judge Jackson nodded, her long, numerous braids shifting around her shoulders. "It was. Therefore, I'll allow it." I glanced over at Mr. White, and his forehead was gripped in one of his hands. Looked pretty stressed.
Mr. Jones turned back to me. "Please continue, Ms. Utonium." He flashed me a grin, almost sly in nature. This guy was a very good lawyer. He had saved that evidence this whole time, for just the right moment. I had no doubt that whatever I said, he'd have hard evidence waiting to back it up. Since I was the last witness against her, he was going all in now. This was going to be much easier than I thought.
I continued, detailing all the major incidences of battles between Princess and my sisters and I that I could think of. Along with almost every incidence, Mr. Jones had proof of each one—pictures from witnesses that had never been shown on the media. He passed them out to the jury for them to see for themselves. Some pictures went back to over a decade ago. I was amazed at the breadth of his research.
Finally, Mr. Jones said when I was done, "So, in conclusion, Ms. Utonium: would it be safe to say that you and your sisters know Princess Morbucks better than anyone else in this whole courtroom?"
I nodded. "Yes, it would be safe to say that."
"With that in mind," he followed, arching his eyebrow, "in your opinion, is she the opposite of an innocent victim of isolation and bullying that defense is trying to make her out to be, and is in fact, a dangerous, irrational person who has committed the crimes she's been accused of in this courtroom?"
"Absolutely," I answered him with a smile.
Mr. Jones shot me a smile back, gave the jury a pointed look, then turned toward the rest of the courtroom and said, "No further questions."
I was satisfied with the teamwork that Mr. Jones and I had, but now it was time for the part I was dreading: the defense.
"The defense may have the floor," Judge Jackson announced.
After seeing how relentless Mr. White had been with Buttercup, even going as far as taunting her, I knew it was going to be miserable. I refused to be run over by him, though. I had to hold my own.
Mr. White sauntered up to the stand, giving me a smile that made his rat face squinch up. "Good day, Ms. Blossom Utonium."
"Hello," I replied stiffly, not wanting to but doing so anyway.
"Let's talk about something else for a moment," Mr. White said to me. "And you don't have to answer this if you're not comfortable with it, but I'm sure that after your sisters talked about it, the courtroom has grown curious about it."
Uh oh. I hoped it wasn't about what I was dreading.
"The Rowdyruff brothers," he started. Crap. "As your sister Buttercup said, they were villains until they decided to team up with you. Correct?"
All right. That was innocuous enough. That for sure, I knew, was a fact. "Correct," I answered, though I was still wary. Where was he going with this?
Mr. White nodded at me, then nodded at the jury. "Okay. We agree on that. So from there, I need to ask something of you."
I took a deep breath, trying to appear unruffled. "Okay."
"For you, and your sisters, what was the difference between the Rowdyruff brothers' redemption and Princess hanging up her own troubled past?" The defense lawyer asked me. "What made the brothers' change redeemable compared to Princess?"
The question actually wasn't bad. I had been expecting some ridiculous accusations thrown my way like he had done with Buttercup. Apparently, he'd decided to change his strategy. "Well," I paused, thinking. "Great question. The Rowdyruff brothers certainly were no angels. And Princess really has never been either. I think that the difference between them lies in their desire to change."
"Could you elaborate on that?"
"Sure. What I mean is, the Rowdyruffs actively made the decisions to change, to become superheroes, because they wanted to. Whereas Princess," I made an offhand gesture toward Princess's direction, where I knew she was staring lasers through me, "simply got bored. Instead of wanting to be good, she just stopped being a villain for a while because she found things that were more important to her for the time being. Which were attention and the spotlight."
Mr. White stood there for a moment, bringing up a hand to stroke his pointy chin. Then he asked, "But how do you know that Princess didn't want to be good?"
"Because it was obvious," I answered simply. "If Princess had wanted to be a good person when she stopped being a villain, bullying her classmates wouldn't have even been on her radar. But that was what she did."
"Ms. Blossom Utonium, tell me," Mr. White walked closer to the stand, folding his arms. Something had changed in his expression. I didn't like it. "If you and your sisters were so concerned about people being good, then why did your sister Buttercup need to be taken into custody by the Townsville SWAT team for attacking a student?"
Wait. What? I didn't remember that. Oh no. He'd found a hole in my memory. I couldn't remember that happening. And why hadn't he brought that up while he was questioning Buttercup, instead of me? Panicked, I looked over at Mr. Jones.
Immediately, he stood up. "Objection! Your Honor, defense is twisting the facts," Mr. Jones said on my behalf, to my immense relief. "The student that Buttercup Utonium got into an altercation with was Butch of the Rowdyruff brothers, and it was before reconciliations had taken place between the teams. The defense is purposely twisting what happened to make his client look better."
Buttercup had fought with Butch at school? And before we had teamed up? Why didn't I remember?
…Wait. I distantly remembered sitting in the waiting room at Townsville Jail with Bubbles and Professor. And Bubbles and I were upset. What were we upset about? Were we upset about Buttercup getting arrested?
No…it was something else. We were upset about something before we'd had to go get Buttercup. What were we upset about?
"Sustained," Judge Jackson said. She turned to Mr. White, glaring at him. "Watch yourself, Mr. White."
"I apologize, Your Honor," Mr. White said. Then he looked directly at me again, smug. He knew he'd hit a chord. So much for changing his strategy. This guy liked to play dirty. "It's interesting how your sister got into an altercation with the boy she claimed she had fallen in love with. Is that the only difference between the brothers and my client? Romantic interest?"
I froze, stomach squeezing in panic again. How was he still going with this angle? And why did he keep saying that?
Bubbles had said that, and Buttercup had said even more things like that. They had sounded strange to me when I'd heard them, and they confused me. But…why had I immediately assumed that they were lying? Especially if everyone else here had believed them?
"Mr. White," Judge Jackson thankfully spoke before I could think of a sputtered answer. Her tone was exasperated. "What do the personal, private choices of this witness and her sisters have to do with your client?"
I wanted to believe what my sisters had said, of course I did. Professor had even said that we were romantically involved with the brothers. But it just didn't make sense.
"I'm getting there, Your Honor. Please let me finish," Mr. White said. I held back a frustrated sigh. It was no wonder that this man was a defense lawyer. He was stopping at nothing.
The judge sighed. "Kindly get on with it," she said dryly.
Mr. White jumped right into it. "My client has informed me that she was present at the club Electric Blue the night that you and the Rowdyruff brothers were also in attendance. Does that check out?"
Electric Blue. That rang some bells in my head. I knew from Bubbles' testimony that it had been the name of the teen club we went to once after our sixteenth birthday. Before, I had remembered only minute details of that night, specifically getting stared at and being asked for my autograph. But I still couldn't remember much else about it.
I thought harder. Suddenly the image of Princess in a miniskirt, grinding with some guy, appeared in my mind. Immediately, I wished that it hadn't. I grimaced. "Yes," I answered. "She was there."
"She also informed me that you and your sisters were seen with the brothers for a large portion of the night. That seems to coincide with what your sister Bubbles said. Was this true?"
I paused, taking the moment to think again, to remember. This guy was really pushing the limits of details I could make out from that night. It also hadn't helped that what Bubbles had said about it had muddled my memories of it even more. But I remembered standing in a huddle with my sisters, annoyed, looking at the entrance of the club as someone entered it.
It was them, wasn't it? The brothers? It had to be them. Who else would we have been so annoyed to see on our night off?
I swallowed. "Yes, I believe it is," I said. I couldn't manage to keep the hesitation out of my voice, and I hated that I let it slip.
It didn't go unnoticed by the lawyer. He cocked an eyebrow at me. "Are you sure about that?"
I nodded, determined not to let him make me look stupid. "Yes, I'm sure."
He nodded, skeptical. He folded his arms again. "This night was also before your reconciliation, and long before all of you teamed together. Am I right?" The only thing I could do was nod. He went on, "So how exactly did all of you seem so close that night if you were so-called enemies still? And how would it have been possible that, like your sister Bubbles said, they all confessed to having feelings for you, especially if this was before their redemption? Couldn't they have just been lying to you? Or using you?"
These questions fed into old questions that I had asked myself, once upon a time. And they weren't recent questions. I had once asked myself these questions a long time ago. Years ago. I felt it. They were familiar.
But they had awakened something—a memory. A memory from when I was a kid. I was fighting Brick, and I was angry.
No—I had already been angry before I'd seen him. So, I went and looked for him. Instigated a fight.
We fought in an alley. There was lots of mocking. I took his hat—his red hat. And I flew away so that he would chase me.
I lead him to an abandoned place. What place was it? A park? No, no. There was…metal. Lots of it. Machinery.
A construction site. Right? It had to be. There was a bulldozer involved. And an anvil. I ran into it. Wait…no. That was something else, some other memory altogether.
Lots of punching, kicking, ducking, blocking. I stumbled. I kicked his face. And then…something horrible. Redness flowing from his face.
Brick bled. He bled a lot, even though he wasn't supposed to be able to. And then…more red. Red from my ribbon. My ribbon against his face. Against his eye. No…his eyebrow. Where the injury was. Where a scar was now.
He had a scar.
He had a scar on his eyebrow.
A scar made by me, that I had intensely regretted, but at the same time had marked a shift in how I looked at him.
A scar which had changed everything.
My heart sprinted, and it was as if the entire planet had shifted on its' axis as something inside of my brain clicked, and all at once, everything my sisters had said had made sense. Everything in the whole world made sense to me again. I gripped both sides of the chair I was sitting on, feeling as if I was about to fall over.
Oh.
My.
God.
"Ms. Utonium, you don't have to answer that," Judge Jackson's voice broke through my intense thoughts suddenly, where I had become lost, and I jerked to attention to what was happening around me again. "Those questions have nothing to do with Mr. White's client. Therefore, Mr. White, I'm cutting your questioning short. Please go take a seat. I warned you." She cut another glare at Mr. White, and he turned away from the stand, wordlessly walking back to his table. Then the judge looked back at me. She was looking at me with pity. "Ms. Utonium, you are excused from the stand."
Still dazed, I stood up from the stand, making my way back to my seat next to Professor. As I walked past Jones, I shook my head, cheeks burning with shame because I somehow felt like I had failed the case by letting White get the better of me and humiliate me like that. "I'm sorry," I whispered to Mr. Jones.
"Don't be," Mr. Jones said to me in a low voice. He looked furious. "He was way out of line."
I sat next to Professor, knees shaky, and he wrapped an arm around me comfortingly as the courtroom was filled with whispers. I didn't say anything to him because I didn't know how to put into words what I'd just remembered up there, which felt so uncontainable within me that I felt like I was going to burst.
Brick's eyebrow scar.
The 2nd night at the same abandoned construction site with Brick years later, which we'd flown to together, holding hands, the same night we'd accidentally collided at Electric Blue when I'd been trying my best to avoid him.
And most importantly of all, I'd remembered what he'd said to me at the construction site, after my moment of hysteria when I'd believed he'd had an ulterior motive. Words that he'd said after he revealed he'd kept my ribbon all those years as a keepsake. Words that, now that I'd remembered them, I realized they had been imprinted deeply into my mind, always there, but evading me until this very moment.
'You heard me, Blossom. I love you.'
Brick loved me.
I remembered when we'd kissed that night for the first time. I remembered the second time we'd kissed, months and months later, standing in my front yard in a dress and a suit the day of the homecoming dance, finally together. And I remembered the seemingly endless drama and heartbreak in-between those kisses, difficult moments that had permanently shifted our roles in each other's lives.
But they had changed everything. Just like remembering all of it now had changed everything for me once again. For good.
Because I loved Brick.
As I sat there in silence, simmering in this life-changing revelation of mine, something else was happening. Heated whispers were coming from the defense table at the other end of the courtroom.
Finally, with a shell-shocked expression, Mr. White left the table, rushed over to the judge's bench, leaning up on his tip toes to whisper something to her. Ms. Jackson regarded whatever he'd said to her for a moment, seeming to mull over something as she gazed over at Princess. After a few moments, she looked back down at Mr. White, nodding.
Mr. White turned, facing the court. "Defense calls Princess Morbucks to the stand."
Shocked gasps and whispers once again flooded the courtroom. Stunned, I looked over to Mr. Jones, leaning forward toward him and whispering into his ear, "What are they doing? I thought she wasn't going to speak!"
Mr. Jones only leaned back toward me, murmuring grimly, "That's what they said before. I guess they just changed their minds."
My stomach flip-flopped as I watched as Princess, in her prison orange, was chaperoned by two guards over to the stand, where I had just been sitting mere minutes before. I continued to watch her as she was sworn in by the bailiff. I couldn't read her face—it was carefully blank and serious. But strangely, her smirk was long gone.
Mr. White, after rifling through some papers on top of his table, came strolling over to the stand with a feigned look of ease on his face. He looked at Princess with a nod that was almost indecipherable. Princess nodded back at him.
"So, Ms. Morbucks," Mr. White started, voice back to its' loud default volume. "What have you to say about those accusations the Powerpuff Girls made that you were jealous and treated them badly?"
It took Princess a few moments to respond. But when she did respond, she responded with something that no one had been expecting. "…They're true."
The courtroom stirred. Even Mr. White seemed caught off guard. "I-I'm sorry?" He stuttered.
"They were right," Princess said, folding her arms. "I was jealous of them."
Mr. White was flustered now, and his voice rose in volume again. "But what could you possibly—" He cut himself off, seemingly trying to gain his composure. In a calmer voice, he started again, facing toward the jury. "My client seems to have…been somewhat influenced by these passionate witness testimonies. While those testimonies were, indeed, compelling, they were…How should I put it? Over exaggerated, at best." Then he turned back to Princess. "After all, Ms. Morbucks, you have had a life that many others could only ever dream of. There would be no reason for you to be jealous of these so-called superheroes."
"Are you kidding?" Princess interrupted, looking directly at her lawyer with a searing glare. "Of course I was jealous of them. I wanted to be them."
This setup was convincing, I had to hand it to her. I wondered how many times they had rehearsed this exchange.
Mr. White shook his head, perplexed. There were even beads of sweat on his forehead. "But—"
"Let me tell you a story," said Princess, cutting him off. She unfolded her arms. "A story I want everyone to hear." She looked out at the audience, making sure everyone was listening. Everyone was. Just as she always did, for the moment that she spoke, she had them all in the palm of her hand. I had to admit it, if Princess had one talent, it was that. She started. "I still remember the first day I met the Powerpuff Girls. It was my first day at Polky Oaks kindergarten. I didn't like anything or anyone there, even though they were nice to me. I didn't want to be there. But then…I saw them in action. The Powerpuffs. I saw them fly and use their powers for the first time, with my own eyes." She stopped suddenly, looking directly at Mr. White. "Do you remember the first time you saw them? I mean, not on TV. I mean in real life. With your own eyes."
Her lawyer seemed startled that she'd suddenly asked him that. "Well…" he hesitated, looking at Judge Jackson, who shrugged at him. Then he looked back at Princess. "Yes, I suppose I do."
Princess turned to the jury. "Do all of you remember the first time you saw them?" She paused. Most of them nodded their heads. "It was amazing, right?" She turned away from them, facing the rest of the courtroom again. "I'll never forget…the wonder. Seeing the things they could do. Things that I couldn't do. Seeing how much everyone loved them—how everyone truly loved them. For being who they were. For being extraordinary." She folded her arms again, frowning. "People had only ever been nice to me because I had money. I know I'm not a nice person, and I don't pretend to be. But I have always wanted what they had. The way they were worshiped because of what they were." Suddenly, Princess looked directly at me. It took me off guard. Her gaze was strange—it was neither angry nor guilty. It was hungry. "I wanted that."
The look on her face as she'd stared at me, coupled with the last part of what she'd said, I'd begun to have doubts that this whole story had been their new plan.
"So, you were jealous," Mr. White cut in again, seeming to sense that he was losing reign of the floor once again. "But that doesn't mean that you've done what this courtroom is accusing you of doing. Childhood jealousy is one thing, but these crime accusations are another completely." He turned to the jury. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, perhaps my client was jealous. But this jealousy did not give her the desire, nor the ability, to commit these sorts of crimes."
There was a pause. Then Princess said, loud enough for everyone to hear, "Yes, it did."
Mr. White whirled, eyes as wide as saucers, facing her again. "Pardon?"
"I wanted to be them. I wanted to be them so bad that it made me despise them," Princess told him matter-of-factly. There was no remorse in her tone, not even any hesitance. "I despised them so much that I wanted them gone."
Sharp gasps and dropped jaws throughout the room, including mine. I couldn't contain my surprise at her easy confession to the entire courtroom, which had seemingly come from nowhere. Her lawyer's face had gone pale. This, obviously, had not been part of their plan at all.
Princess had gone rogue.
She'd just made their entire defense fall apart. In front of the jury, the judge, and everyone.
"Ms. Morbucks, stop right there. Stop." Panicked, Mr. White held out a hand in her direction, then rushed out, "No further questions. The defense rests." Though he avoided everyone's gazes, it was impossible for him to completely hide his shock and upset as he rushed back to his seat.
Shortly afterward, as neutral as possible, though it was probably difficult to maintain, Judge Jackson announced, "The prosecution may have the floor."
Getting up from his seat, Mr. Jones shot me and Professor a glance that I felt said, 'We got this.'
"Ms. Morbucks, good afternoon." Mr. Jones started as he approached the stand. Princess didn't respond, only looked at him with scorn. He went on regardless. "You mentioned just now that you wanted the Powerpuff Girls and Rowdyruff Boys gone. Could you elaborate on that?"
"Yeah," Princess said, continuing with her direct tone. "I wanted them gone. But I knew I could never take them on myself, especially if I tried to have them killed. I knew no human opponents could ever be threat to them." She was looking directly at me again. This time pure hatred and coldness gripped me from her eyes. "So, I thought of another way to take them down. I thought that if I could manipulate everyone else into hating them, they would eventually be public enemy number one. And then my hands would be clean."
"So," Mr. Jones paused, then asked, as if just to clarify, "you're admitting to all of the things you've been accused of in this courtroom today?"
Princess looked back at Mr. Jones. "Yes. I did it. I did all of it," she said, point blank. The sound of Mr. White angrily slamming his notes down onto the table echoed.
The entire room was stunned. Why was she admitting to it now suddenly? All of it? After all of the effort that she and her lawyer had stewed up to keep her looking sympathetic enough that she would at least get lighter charges?
Almost as if he had read my mind, Mr. Jones asked her, "Ms. Morbucks, why are you suddenly admitting guilt? Is it a guilty conscience that's caught up with you?"
Princess paused. She seemed to actually be thinking about it. "Maybe," she admitted. "But I don't know if I have one of those. You know, a conscience, or whatever. Doing the things I've done has never bothered me. I've never lost sleep over it." She took a deep breath and released it. "But I'm out of money. I have nothing else going for me anymore. My life was over the moment my rotten father left me with nothing. And at least if I had gotten rid of them, I wouldn't be stuck watching them from afar and hating them." She paused. "And wanting." She shot me another hungry look. "But I couldn't even do that. So, what's the point in even lying anymore?" She looked back at Mr. Jones. And this time, there was a certain emptiness in her face. Almost like surrender. "I know what I am, and what I've done. And I'm done lying about it."
This moment gave me the strangest feeling. I hadn't ever, in my whole life, seen Princess like this. It was almost as if it wasn't even her. I wasn't sure if it was the defeated slouch of her shoulders, the sallow of her freckled cheeks, or the limpness of her hair, or the way that she looked so small now, even compared to how she'd looked to me when she'd first entered the courtroom.
But seeing her this way made me remember, despite all the ways she had tried to rip everything from us, that she really was human in the end. And for some reason, though I really didn't know why, it was humbling that someone we had spent so much time scorning wasn't as indestructible as she had seemed.
In a weird way, seeing her downfall, I was reminded that she was just a person after all—a person with flaws, and with scars, and with the ability to destroy. Just like anyone else.
Just like us.
Soberly, Mr. Jones asked her one final question, "Is there anything else you would like to say, Ms. Morbucks?"
She paused again, thinking. Then, slowly, she shook her head. And that was the end of it.
Mr. Jones turned away from her, looking like he had just won the lottery, though he tried to conceal it. "I rest my case."
"Ms. Morbucks," said the judge, "You are dismissed from the stand."
Princess left the stand with both guards, and immediately afterward, the jury was dismissed to the jury room, where they deliberated for the next fifteen minutes. Everyone in the courtroom anxiously waited, everyone on the edge of their seats. I held Professor's hand, trying to keep calm. Princess had basically just handed us the entire case. She'd wanted to go down, and she did everything to make that happen.
The jury returned, sitting back in their seats. It was time.
"Has the jury reached a verdict?" Judge Jackson asked the jury.
The representative of the jury stood, an older woman with a cheetah print blouse and an orange fascinator on her head. "We have, Your Honor."
"What say you?" asked the judge. The entire courtroom collectively held its breath.
"We, the jury, find the defendant, Princess Morbucks, guilty on all charges."
Every reaction happened at the same time—some gasps, some sounds of relief, some of disbelief, some of joy. I sat there in shock as Professor turned and grabbed my arm. Mr. Jones turned to look at us in quiet triumph.
Faintly, I noticed Mr. White storming out of the courtroom in humiliation and fury with his briefcase in hand, yanking open the back doors and disappearing through them.
The honorable Judge Maisy Jackson listed off what Princess had been charged with—2 counts of constructive possession of an illegal substance, 4 counts of attempt to destroy the city, 6 counts of conspiring murder.
40 years in prison, without bail. Princess would be 60 years old the day she was finally released.
"The court is dismissed," Judge Jackson announced, and as everyone stood from their seats, Princess was taken away. Instead of weeping, like I'd expected, she was utterly grave. It was as if she'd already accepted that this would happen. As she left through the doors, she stared at me.
I stared back. Neither of us broke our gazes until the double doors shut between us.
After the doors shut, I turned, looking over the courtroom around me, silent.
Sometimes, after going through low after low, the lows are all someone comes to expect from the universe anymore.
But sometimes—other times—the universe has this way of knowing when the bad things get to be too much. Sometimes the universe takes a look at someone and decides to give them a break, to throw more than one good thing their way at once. And the good things stack up together, almost overwhelmingly—like a miracle.
When this so rarely happens, you can't help but feel how lucky you are to even exist. You can't help but feel like you just may be the luckiest being in the entire solar system to get to experience this miracle of events.
In that moment, this is exactly how I felt. An overwhelming sense of justice and stars finally aligning the way they were supposed to, in a way that I had never thought would happen again.
In this moment, I thought back to being in that hospital bed, my life shredded apart molecule by molecule by the black hole that had consumed everything. That time when I had stopped fighting for my life and for what I loved because I couldn't anymore—because I'd lost my strength and my will. Because I'd lost everything.
That time, it seemed that I would never witness anything noble, or happy, or beautiful ever again and that the universe had nothing good left to offer me.
And yet here I was. The universe had sure proved me wrong.
In this moment, I knew that there would always be something left to fight for. There was so much to gain from fighting for goodness and never giving up. And it would always, always be worth it.
This was why I existed. And so, as long as I continued to exist on this planet, I would never give up the fight for this feeling of good and of indisputable virtue.
Never.
A pair of arms closed around me, and I snapped out of my daze. Professor hugged me tightly, then pulled back and bent to look at me. "You all did it," he told me, squeezing my shoulders in his hands. "I knew you could."
Smiling humbly, since it hadn't been mostly me anyway, I shrugged. I reached up, touching his hands with my hands. "Professor, I need to go," I said with urgency.
Professor's eyebrows rose. "How come?" Then, he glanced at my side, and something occurred to him. "Come to think of it, where are your sisters?" He looked around us, bewildered, realizing they both hadn't come back yet.
I now knew exactly where they had gone. Because it was exactly why I needed to leave now. "No time to explain," I squeezed his hands with mine. "Just trust me when I say that I've just remembered some very important memories and I need to set some things right. Immediately."
He looked at me for a moment, blinking. Then understanding spread across his face, and then relief. "Go do what you need to do," he said, pulling his hands away from mine.
At his immediate support, my face burst into a smile at him. I picked up my purse, taking out my cell and gripping it in one of my hands, then I pushed the bag into his hands. "Could you take this? I won't be needing it." I began to back away, but then, remembering my manners, I looked around Professor at Mr. Jones. I stuck my hand out toward him. He looked at me with surprise. "Congratulations. It was a pleasure working with you," I said to him, and I meant it.
Mr. Jones grinned, taking my hand and shaking it. "Likewise, Ms. Utonium. Thank you once again for your help. It was irreplaceable."
I nodded again, grinning as I shook his hand, then took mine back. Then I saluted at Dad, briskly spinning around and running down the aisle and pushing out of the courtroom doors.
I rushed toward the courthouse doors next, barely restraining the craving to fly and shove through the crowds in my hurry. Eventually, though I had made it to the front doors of the courthouse. With both hands, I yanked inward on both ornate door handles. I stepped outside.
Instantly, flashing lights and shouts surrounded me.
"Blossom!"
"Over here! Blossom!"
"Blossom, what are your thoughts on Princess's sentencing?"
"Blossom, how do you feel about Princess going to prison for good?"
"Blossom, a moment of your time, please!"
"Blossom, where are your sisters?"
I marched right through that crowd, this time having no security guards surrounding me and not even needing them. Head held high, shoulders back, and eyes focused with no sunglass barrier this time, I walked through those reporters. As if sensing my fire and determination, they made room for me, parted straight down the middle, like the Red Sea.
No one even touched me.
I had faced the last remaining dragon of my past in that courtroom. This dragon had laid down in defeat, in a way I would never have even imagined—the dragon had become a mere earthworm. Slain, conquered. Hopefully for a long time.
On a mission, nothing else could stand in my way. And so, when I broke from the crowd, blasting up and straight into the sky with a booming crack that Buttercup would be proud of, I left the dragon of my past and the shouts of the reporters behind me. And I never looked back.
Now it was time for this last personal battle, this thing I had to do before I did anything else, or else every bit of my world that had just returned to me would be lost.
I needed to find him.
Because if losing everything once made me realize anything, it was to do what you need to do before it's too late. Before you can't do anything ever again, forever.
And I would not lose him twice.
Early afternoon, the sun was directly overhead, and relentless. The heat was unimaginable—the hottest it had ever felt for this entire heatwave. And in that moment, when I realized just how bright and hot it was, of course only then would I realize that I had forgotten my sunglasses.
Pushing through the scorching sky as best as I could, my first stop was the café—our café. The café which was the perfect distance between both of our colleges, which was my favorite place to study, had the best raspberry cappuccino, and which was never too empty nor too busy.
I burst through the door, the bell above my head ringing.
Small and humble, my café was just as it had always been. Nothing at all had changed since January—the wood floors, the acoustic music playing over ceiling speakers, and the scent of roasted coffee beans that felt like home to me. Instead of the welcoming heat that had warmed this place during the fall and winter months, there was now a pleasant coolness to the air, a sweet relief after being outside. The owner, with his round glasses perched on the tip of his nose, looked at me from across the counter, bewildered at my sudden, noisy entrance, but recognizing.
I rushed over to the counter. "Has Brick been here?" I asked, not beating around the bush. I knew he'd know exactly who I meant. Brick and I had been here more times than I could count, individually and together, and he knew all his regulars.
The owner smiled at me sympathetically and said in his soft voice, "He has been here, but not today." He shrugged, shaking his head. "Sorry."
I inhaled deeply, nodding in disappointment. "Thanks anyway," I told him, then I quickly walked back through the door, evading the stares of the few patrons inside.
That was okay. Just a setback. I had the right idea, looking at places he'd been at. I couldn't get discouraged. I just had to keep looking.
I took off into the air again, heading straight for the nearby University of Townsville campus.
When I landed at the near-deserted campus, for a moment, I questioned what I was even doing there. It was summer. And obviously, he still didn't live on campus. He and his brothers had moved out before Christmas break.
But maybe he was taking some summer classes or two. I couldn't rule it out. I had to give it a try. I went to the main office on campus and finding the registration office, I asked if Brick Jojo was currently enrolled in any summer classes.
"Sorry, I don't see that name on the lists of any of our summer courses," said the nice woman in the office to me, looking up from her desktop screen. "Are you sure that's the right name you're looking for?"
I restrained a sigh. "I'm sure. Thank you for looking anyway, I appreciate it." It had been worth a shot. But now I had to figure out where else to go.
I left the building, stepping out into the heat again. I walked out into the courtyard, and after seeing a nearby guy sitting on the grass with his guitar jump up when he saw me, screaming, "Holy crap!" seemingly in recognition, I immediately lifted into the air again, taking off before any further fuss could kick up.
Where else, where else? I thought of his favorite independent film theater downtown where he liked to see the latest hyped film in the movie buff world, and as soon as I did, I took off in the direction of it.
I arrived there quickly, and when I landed, my eyes caught on a sign on the front doors of the seemingly empty building. 'CLOSED FOR REMODELING. RE-OPENING COMING LATE AUGUST.', it said.
I stood back on my heels, folding my arms in dissatisfaction and rolling my eyes. "You've got to be kidding me," I said under my breath. I'd thought that this had been a brilliant idea, too—but nope. Another dead end.
Taking off into the sky again, I paused, hovering mid-air to think. There had to be somewhere else I could look. I was annoyed at how quickly I had run out of ideas.
There was only one other idea I had, one that was far more hard work, but one that I knew would probably get me results quicker. I had to be bold. So if I had to work harder, then so be it. I'd do anything.
Flying slowly back down to the ground again, I touched down onto a downtown Townsville sidewalk, one that was busy. It was time to get to work.
The first person I saw passing by that looked me in the face, I went directly over to them. A woman holding the hand of a complaining child. "Hi, excuse me, have you seen Brick Jojo?" I asked her immediately. She'd paused, looking at me in surprise, but she frowned at my question, not understanding. "He's tall, has red hair and red eyes? Looks kinda like me?" I expanded, hopeful. "He's a superhero?"
She was shaking her head, starting to move away from me, her child dragging her away by the hand. "Sorry, I haven't seen him." Then she continued leaving, scolding her kid.
I nodded, accepting, moving onto the next person that passed by me, a tall gangly teenage girl that towered over me. "Excuse me, hi, could you help me?"
She looked directly at me, startled, but then smiled slightly. "Oh, sure. You're a Powerpuff girl, right? Blossom?"
I managed to smile back, relieved that she knew me by name. That would make this easier. "Yeah, I am. I was wondering if you've seen the Rowdyruff boy that looks like me around here today? You know, Brick?"
"Oh, yeah, Brick!" she responded, and my heart soared. Then she shook her head. "Sorry, I haven't seen him today. But I saw him last week, at the animal shelter, when I was volunteering there. He was volunteering too."
I was disheartened, but also somewhat encouraged by this piece of information. He had been volunteering somewhere. Maybe he was volunteering somewhere today. "Thanks, that actually helps me a lot."
She looked relieved. "Good! I'm glad I could help." I started to leave, but then she interjected, making me stop again, "Hey, wait! Can I ask you something?"
I turned back toward her, surprised that she had something to ask me in return. "Oh. Sure, what is it?"
She bent toward me, whispering to me behind her hand, "Are you dating him? You are, right?" She was beaming, metal braces full on display. So enthusiastic that it was adorable.
Unable to help it, I laughed. Then I told her easily, finding no reason to lie to someone so sweet and innocent, "We…were. And then we…took a break." I leaned up toward her, whispering back behind my own hand, "That's why I'm trying to find him. To get back together with him."
She gasped in delight, clapping her hands together. "Then you'd better get out of here!" She said excitedly.
"I know," I said, nodding and laughing as I turned away again to leave. "I'm gonna go!"
"Good luck finding him!" She called after me as I walked away, waving. "I'm rooting for you!"
On my phone, I gave each animal shelter in the city a call. All of them told me that there was no Brick volunteering with any of them today. Disappointed, I continued the asking approach. I stopped a few more people after that, asking if they'd seen a Rowdyruff volunteering in the area. Most people said no, and a few of them ignored me altogether and only kept walking with not even a glance in my direction. I supposed even being a superhero didn't make me exempt from rude people.
Beginning to get frustrated, I stopped an older man who was looking at me in concern. I must have looked crazy. "Excuse me, could you help me?"
He paused, eyebrows raised, then he said with a laugh, "You need help? Aren't you normally the one helping folks?"
The irony hadn't been lost on me, either. I grinned, but quickly, I asked, "Have you seen the Rowdyruff that looks like me around this area? Or have you seen him at all?"
He frowned. "Rowdy what?"
He didn't know their team name. Crud. This would be difficult. "The superhero. He's like me," I tried to clarify. He only shook his head, still not getting it. Suddenly, an idea came to me—my phone. A picture. "Just a second," I told him.
I snatched my phone from my skirt pocket, unlocking it and going straight to my photo gallery, which I'd refused to look through for months because I was scared of what I might find in it, scared which memories the photos might trigger.
Swiping frantically, stomach panging at some of the images I saw, I stopped only when I found the first picture of Brick where I could clearly see his face. I pinched, zooming in on him, then I held it out in front of me, showing him the photo. "This guy," I said. "His name is Brick. Have you seen him?"
The man's eyes lit up in recognition. "Oh, yeah. That fellow. You looking for him?"
"Yes! You've seen him?" I asked, lighting up too.
The man grinned, wide and toothy. "Yeah, on the news!" His grin faded slightly when he saw my face fall. He asked, "Is that what you mean?"
Disheartened, my hand holding my phone out lowered. "No. I mean, have you seen him around here? Downtown? Like, today?"
"Oh, in person you meant." He shook his head. I was beginning to resent that gesture. "No, no I haven't. Sorry."
Quickly, I left, but not without saying to him first, "Thanks anyway."
I took to showing the picture to more people passing me on the sidewalks. I even moved to different areas, with different crowds. Each time someone shook their head or said no, which was every single time that I had asked somebody, I tried my best to swallow the lump in my throat and push down the panic. This would work. It had to work. I would find him.
I was working my way deeper and deeper into downtown, where the city was loudest and hottest and the most crowded, and I was starting to lose heart.
And just as I thought that maybe it was time to hang up the towel for today, go home and rest and pick this search back up tomorrow when I hadn't had the longest, craziest day in history, I saw it.
A guy slightly older than me, holding a toddler on his hip with one arm. In his free hand, a clear cup with a frozen treat in it—a cup that said 'Pop's Ice Cream & Gelato' on it.
Immediately, my mind spun. Memories of looking at gelato through a glass window, Brick telling me I could have whichever one I wanted, and black flowing out of my nose.
But Pop's was multiple blocks away from here. Much further than most people would be willing to walk in this kind of heat, especially humans. Maybe he'd taken a cab here. Or maybe—
I walked over to him before I could stop myself. "Excuse me," I said to him as I approached, pointing at his Italian ice and playing dumb. "Where did you get that?"
The guy, thankfully, was friendly. "Oh, I just came from the town square. There's some sort of festival going on down there. There was a tent set up there, by some local ice cream shop. They were giving out free cups of it for charity." Then he paused, looking at me closer, lowering his sunglasses to get a better look. "Wait a second. You're a Powerpuff girl, right?" Before I could give an exasperated response to this same question I'd received at least 50 times the past hour, he commented, "I think one of the volunteers at the tent was your teammate."
The words had an effect of thunder clapping and echoing inside me.
"Oh my God," I whispered, hands trembling, then I turned on my heel and shouted, "Thank you so much!" Being careful so as to not knock him over by suddenly taking off, I gently levitated up around thirty feet into the air, and then I sped off in the direction of town square—mere blocks away.
I did it. I found him. I was so close. I was flying so fast to get there I phased through the air, teleported several yards, and when I came out on the other side I had arrived.
There certainly was a festival happening here. There were multiple tents and stands set up, and lots of people.
Catching sight of the Pop's tent immediately, my stomach sunk slightly at the sight of the huge crowd around it. There were so many people waiting for their turn to get their frozen treats, at least a hundred of them. I remained in the air, taking advantage of the height I was at to stare inside of the tent, looking at the several volunteers on the inside. They were all scrambling around, scooping up frosty treats and putting them in cups with plastic spoons, frantically handing them out to the demanding, sweaty people.
One guy was even apologizing to the unforgiving crowd through a megaphone. "We're sorry, but we can no longer provide free Italian ice, the machine is broken!"
But I didn't see him inside the tent, among all the chaos. Where was he? Slowly, I lowered my feet to the ground, eyeing the crowd. Could he be among them?
Steeling myself up for being crowded for the second time today, I pushed my feet toward the massive gathering of people. I looked for an open space where I could possibly speak to one of the volunteers inside the tent, ask if Brick had left, but the body-to-body space was impossible to move through. And when I tried, a girl shoved me back with her sharp elbow without looking and yelled, "Wait in line like everyone else!"
I almost snapped back that there was no line to speak of, only unadulterated anarchy, but I bit my tongue and stepped back. It was no use. He wasn't in there. I'd have seen him already if he was, and there was no use risking getting maimed to try to penetrate this madness.
So I turned, walking away from the crowd and looking out past the concrete block across at the other side of town square that wasn't madness, a small park. It was mostly just a field of grass full of people sitting on picnic blankets and enjoying their cold treats peacefully, listening to an acoustic band that was playing on the other side of the park on a small stage.
And then. Red.
A red shirt. Among the sea of peaceful picnickers, leaning against a shady tree.
I stopped walking. I stopped moving, period. I stopped breathing.
It was him.
Brick was across the town square, leaning against that tree, back turned to me.
And then, when he saw a pregnant woman walking close by, he stood away from the tree, offering her his shady spot. As she thanked him, he grinned, moving to stand in the sun instead, drinking from a nearly empty plastic water bottle. Then he turned around, the front of him almost facing my direction. His feet splayed as he looked up at the sky, squinting, hand reaching up to block the sun, leaving a hand-shaped shadow across his face.
I couldn't breathe.
It was him. It was really him.
I stared at him, physically unable to look away, and he was all I saw. Dizzy, I was breathing hard, and I tried to force myself to slow down. The noisy square had faded away into nothing.
I was seeing all of the things that I'd forgotten. All of the precious days and nights I'd spent with him. His scar that slashed through his eyebrow, standing out to me like a beacon. His tangled rusty hair gleaming in the sun, his broad chest and wide shoulders. His kisses and his touch and his soul and his beautiful, brilliant mind.
I was stuck in my spot, terrified to move. What if he didn't remember me still? What would I do if he didn't remember me?
If he never remembered me?
Or worse—what if he remembered me, and he didn't love me anymore? What if he hated me? I could never handle it. I would implode. I would die.
Suddenly, making my breath catch again in my chest, he froze, hand dropping downward suddenly.
He began to turn in my direction, very slowly at first—and then as if he had felt me standing there, had felt my stare, he looked directly at me. Our gazes locked. The air shook. Buildings crumbled. Planets spun free of their orbits, shooting off into deep space. Time shriveled and then ceased to exist. Moments passed when I considered, believed even, that I should never ever so much as move again—to be caught in this moment of wild terror forever.
And then he smiled at me.
My heart swelled, exploded and thundered like supernova explosions in my chest.
I gazed at him, searching his gorgeous ruby eyes. He remembered, and he recognized me. I knew he did, I knew, because he was looking at me the same way that I was looking at him—like the Earth itself was shaking and cracking apart beneath our feet, threatening to swallow us both up whole. Even though it already had.
And we'd still found our way back to each other. Because nothing, not even our whole worlds ending, ever tore us apart for long.
He took a single step toward me, and that was all it took.
I ran.
I ran to him, ran desperately across the square like the concrete ground couldn't hold me, and then before I knew it, without controlling it, I was flying—the sheer bliss of seeing him again and knowing him had made me break gravity's very hold on my body and lift into the air without my control.
I flung myself toward him through the air, accelerating, and I soared, not caring who was watching. Brick's arms opened up, beckoning me, gorgeous smile growing impossibly huge, illuminating like the sun.
The distance between us shrunk, inch by aching inch, and then it was gone. I slammed into him full speed, and he caught me easily in his arms, lifting into the air and spinning me around as I began to cry and told him, "I love you so much. I love you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I love you."
At his arms around me, familiar and with a warmness that made me feel as if I was going to melt, my soul sang. I've found you again, it said. There you are. I've missed you. I've been searching for you. Here you are. I've found you.
Every inch of loss and emptiness within me was gone and replaced with this glowing truth that now overflowed, spilling over, and I was so full, so certain, that I knew this had been exactly what I was looking so anxiously for these past months.
My person.
After Brick set us both down on our feet, I clung to him tightly, and I sobbed as I looked up into his face. My breath was coming in heaves. "I'm so sorry I forgot you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
"I know, Bloss. Shh." Brick grasped my head, taking it into his hands, and he kissed my forehead, my tearstained cheeks, my nose, as he always had. Then he wrapped his arms around me again, tightly grasping my trembling, unsteady frame. "Blossom. My beautiful love. It's okay. It's okay."
My hysterical sobs into his shirt only increased at his tenderness and palpable adoration. My hands clenched at the material of his t-shirt, burying my face in it, and I felt his heart through his chest, racing just the way mine was, the way only our hearts did.
How could I have ever forgotten this?
"Shh, baby," he whispered. "You're home now. We both are." He placed his hand at the back of my head, holding it there as he pressed his cheek to the top of my head. "We're back home."
After a minute or so, as my crying calmed as he held me, suddenly, he took my hand. "Come here," he said, turning and leading me back through the people packed square again. I followed him through my tear-blurred vision.
Instead of heading directly for the Pop's tent, where the rowdy crowd still was in the front of it, we began making a wide arc to the side of it. When we reached the back of the stand, which was empty, with no one back here and was covered by a large plastic tarp, Brick pulled me into the shade that the tent had provided. "There," he said, pulling me against him again with satisfaction. "Shade and privacy."
I slumped into him again in relief as his arms wrapped around me again. Then I reached up with one of my hands that grasped his face, touching his eyebrow scar with my thumb, smoothing it over and over, a fresh set of tears rolling down my cheeks. I wanted to kiss it, but he was too dang tall for me to reach his eyebrow with my lips, even on my tip toes. "How could I ever have forgotten you?" I asked him, sniffing deeply. "How could I? And for so long?"
"I don't know how I could have either," Brick said to me, frowning and shaking his head. "And I'm sorry. But we just weren't ourselves for a while. We had to adjust to this new crazy life."
There was so much I wanted to say, I didn't know where to begin. "When did you start to remember me? Why didn't you tell me? Maybe if you had told me, I would've remembered sooner. Maybe it would've…" I trailed off, sighing. I didn't know that, not for sure. After all, I had gone as far as deleting him from my phone contacts. I had been set on never speaking to him ever again.
Brick brushed some of my hair back. It probably looked crazy windblown from all the flying I'd been doing. "I did a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't sure if you remembered me yet, so I've waited until you came to me first. I wanted to tell you so bad, but I didn't want to scare you off. I mean, for all I knew, you still saw me as an old childhood nemesis. That's how I saw you at first. It was so weird."
"I know," I said nodding my head in agreement.
He continued eyes distant as he looked past me at nothing in particular, "For the past few months, I'd been wandering, talking to Professor. My brothers and I only had him for guidance…we didn't remember you guys, and there was nothing else to do but adjust to the new apartment the city had given to us and get used to our new powers. And then one day it finally came to me. I remembered it all." His eyes locked with mine again, gazing lovingly down at me. "I told you I would always come back to you."
"I remember." I gazed at him too. I remembered that night he'd told me that. The night of our first time, on a hospital bed of all places. "You were right."
"I can't believe it. I can't believe you're here. I missed this face." He cupped my face in both his hands, then lightly pinched both cheeks between both sets of his thumbs and pointer fingers. "I missed these cheeks."
I laughed. "Ow," I said teasingly, still smiling.
He immediately let go, stroking my cheeks with his thumbs instead, laughing also. "Sorry." Then something seemed to occur to him, and he said, "Hey, wait. Aren't you supposed to be down at the courthouse right now? For the Princess trial?"
I wasn't surprised in the slightest that he'd already known about it. "I was," I said. Then, subdued, I grinned. "We won the case. She got 40 years."
Brick's eyes grew wide. "40 years?" He blew out a breath. "Damn. So she really did create those monsters we fought."
Nodding, I said, "It was the craziest thing, Brick—she went onto the stand admitted to all of it." I frowned. "It was like she wanted to get caught this time. She looked like she'd just…given up."
He considered this for a few moments, pensive. "Maybe she'd gotten tired," he said finally. It surprised me. "It's difficult to maintain a villain career like that for so long. Maybe she just decided to throw in the towel and be done with it."
I thought about this, thinking about how she had looked up there on that stand. Then I shrugged. "I don't know," I admitted. Deciding to change the subject, I looked up at him again, poking him in the chest. "You know, I heard you."
"What?" My rapid change in the subject had thrown him off.
"'You are my sun, my moon, and all my stars,'" I recited. My face grew serious again. "When I was all alone, in the darkness. I heard your voice. I heard you reading my favorite books to me and whispering my name. I heard you crying." Those were the most important memories at all, the memories I couldn't believe had evaded me for so long.
Maybe it was a miracle that I could even remember anything from that time in the painless star ocean, imagined or not. But I remembered it like a dream—one long, uninterrupted dream. I remembered flashes of it, his voice. Foggy but still there.
Vulnerable, Brick's face had unraveled, pain clear in his eyes. He whispered, "I knew it. I knew you could." Pain was in his voice, too. It felt taboo, almost, bringing up this time. I knew for certain that it always would be. But I had to tell him that. He had to know.
I thought of the night of our first time again, the things he'd confessed to me. His struggles and his fears. And then I knew that there was something else that he needed to know.
"You're not bad inside, Brick. I know you're scared that you are, but you aren't," I told him, stark serious. Someone that was bad could never love the way that he did. "Look at all of the ways you've chosen to be good. That is good. Who you are is about the choices you make." I reached up, taking a lock of his hair between my fingers, playing with it. I could feel him stare at me. "And I know you've done things in the past that you may always be haunted by. But I have, too. Just because I'm a hero, it doesn't mean I'm perfect. I'm not perfect." I looked up at him. "I know you're not perfect, either. But even with your flaws, you're perfect to me. Because you're you. And there is no one else that has ever existed who is more perfect for me than you are. I accept your past because it influenced who you are now. I accept all of you. I hope you know that."
He had become quiet, listening to everything I was saying and watching me. Then, in a low voice, he said, "I do now." His hands smoothed up and down my back. "Thank you."
I buried my face in his chest again, sighing in relief at getting all of that off of my chest. His hair tickled the sides of my face. Silence passed between us for a few long moments, comfortable, safe. I was so glad to just be here with him, surrounded by him. Smelling him and listening to the sound of his voice. Something I might've never had again if my stupid memories hadn't returned to me.
My voice came out muffled when I spoke. "What if I had never remembered you, Brick? What if you hadn't remembered me? What if I'd gone the rest of my life never knowing you?" I peeked up at him again, my voice trembling.
Things could have so easily been so different. They almost were. I was so prepared to just…throw him away. It scared me that an entire, vital part of my life could be so dependent on fragile memories.
Instead of returning my fear, though, Brick shook his head. He smiled broadly in an almost cocky manner, and said, "I'd like to think we would've met again somehow. In a different context, maybe. I would have had to finally stop being such a dick." He paused as I laughed heartily into his t-shirt, relieving some of the intensity. He was always able to make me laugh at the perfect moments. He went on, "And you definitely would've had to warm up to me again. Both of us would have to be a little less stubborn." He chuckled, brushing some more loose hairs out of my face gently. "But eventually we would've fallen in love all over again."
A small smile spread my lips. "You think?"
"Of course," he said with absolute certainty. He leaned his face down closer to mine. Our noses brushed. "Or do you doubt it?"
I paused, pretending to think about it. Then, slowly, my smile became wider as I said, "No. I don't doubt it."
"Oh, well," he said, shifting on his feet, "since you think that, then I must really be right."
"Know-it-all," I said, wrinkling my nose at him.
"Curmudgeon," he said. I threw my head back, laughing again in surprise and delight. He ducked his face toward me again, kissing my forehead, my cheeks, my nose.
And then both his hands came up to hold the back of my neck, pulling my face to his and kissing my mouth—kissing it again, and again, and again. Inside I soared, and the whole galaxy detonated into shards and stardust. In the center of it all was the two of us, intertwined, powerful. Eternal chaos.
I broke away from him, dizzy and needing to catch my breath, my arms tightening around him. "Brick Jojo, I'm going to love you forever."
Brick lifted one eyebrow, a simper on his lips. "You bet your sweet ass you will."
The two of us decided to leave the town square to go find our teammates, and so after Brick told his supervisor he was done for the day, the two of us began to walk away, hand in hand, in no hurry. But when we reached the middle of the square, which was relatively cleared of people, I stopped him, getting one last idea.
Reaching to my ear, surprised and pleased that the dandelion had stayed there throughout all of the wind as I'd flown around town, I removed it, having to untangle it from my hair. I held it in front of his face. "Here," I said.
Slightly confused, he looked down at it, a little cross-eyed from it being so close to him. "Are you giving me a weed?" he asked.
"It's not just a weed. It's a gift. It was given to me earlier today, before I went into the courthouse," I told him, holding it lower and looking down at it fondly. "But I'd like to think of it as a symbol."
Brick looked down at it again. "A symbol of what?" he asked in a soft voice.
I glanced back up at him, then I reached up to tuck the little yellow flower behind his left ear, just like I'd had it in my hair. It peeked through his locks of red perfectly. It was so long now. Almost as long as it had been in high school before he'd cut it. "New beginnings," I answered.
Brick reached up with one hand to gingerly touch the flower behind his ear, then he smiled at me. "I like the sound of that." I smiled. He bent down again, tilting my chin up and meeting my lips once more—but not before quipping playfully, "Get back over here."
Laughing against his mouth, we kissed in the middle of the town square, the high afternoon sun beating down on our heads.
The crowds around us, which we had completely forgotten about, broke into applause, and we only broke apart for a moment to laugh in embarrassment. I covered my face with my hand.
We waited until people kept moving, not clapping anymore or drawing any extra attention to us. And then we looked at each other. I returned my hand to his shoulder, twirling around a lock of hair.
Quiet and calm again, Brick's eyes met mine. Earnest. Tender. "Blossom Utonium, you have always been my whole world," he said. "And you always will be." His fingers tightened on my waist, holding me tight against him so that we were one. I ached. Harmonious pain. I wanted this forever. And now I would do anything so that I would—at least as close to forever as we could manage.
But was it greedy to want him for longer than that? What was longer than forever?
As if no one were around us, as if we were the only two people left on the planet, he leaned back in, touching his forehead against mine before moving his lips against mine. Slow, burning. Savoring as I fell apart beneath his touch, holding onto him and letting him softly destroy me and put me back together again. And then even in a crowd of strangers, it all fell away, and we were alone. Alone together.
My person and I. The one who was made for me. The one who I could not feasibly exist without.
Home.
#
Our lives were on-track to getting back to the new normal—truly normal.
Normal for us, so to speak. Because we would never truly be normal, whatever that was. And that was pretty great.
We spent the rest of that summer rediscovering what had made the six of us what we were, and what we had loved so dearly about our lives before they blew apart—and we learned how to bring all that love into the after.
Progress and healing still wasn't always smooth, because it would never be. But it was easier together. It was easier knowing that all we wanted and needed was right in our hands. We had each other. And yes, as cliché as that sounds, honestly? It was all we could ever truly ask for.
And so, just as so many things had over the course of the existence of humanity and of nature itself, we would start over.
We had received a second chance, and now it was time to grow again.
It was time to flourish. To love with no regrets or limits. Laugh at ourselves and laugh with others. Dream of anything our hearts could wish for. Work hard for what we knew we deserved. Let ourselves hurt and feel angry—but not for too long. Be vulnerable. Not to be afraid, or to let fear paralyze us, but to have courage. Make mistakes. Fail in small ways. Fail in huge ways. And forgive ourselves when we did.
Try—always try.
Live.
