Another update, another chapter. Read on!
Isn't my life just great?
Lose your father to a drunk driver. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps afterward and relocate to Philly. Befriend a gender questioning girl, a Jew, and a Muslim. And by the way, you all are in charge of keeping humanity in line for these superpowered defenders of the earth. Oh, but it gets better. You're in charge of the group, because they're all looking to you. But wait! Prepare to be attacked by monsters on a daily basis, just because you hang out with video game characters.
And here's the catch: your family needs to know about all of it, even if it puts them in life-threatening danger.
My mom beckoned toward my friends, urging them to come in. No sense leaving either of them out on the patio. Sonic approached the doorway – at a reasonable speed this time. Vinny Lee mouthed, It was going to happen, amiga, and followed him inside.
I huffed and followed the group inside as well. Vinny Lee was right, of course, but that didn't mean I had to like it.
My family had recently finished unpacking after the move – which my mom had always termed as the end of the job. As Helen Parr would say, "I finally unpacked the last box. Now, it's official." We'd finished moving in. Everything was in order.
The old sofa was in front of the window, with two coffee tables nearby – one in front and one beside. There was also the entertainment center we'd set up on the opposite corner, with the flat-screen TV, Blu-Ray player, and Roku (for our Hulu and Tubi). I'd set up the old Wii and Playstation consoles for Peter's old games that he'd burned onto Playstation discs. To top it off, Dad's old chair was just opposite that. I guess if you're going to live somewhere else, at least make it like the old home.
"Ta-da," my mom said, gesturing around the living room.
"Whoa," Sonic said, glancing around. "Nice digs."
Mom shrugged. "Well, it's out of the way. I don't suppose you have anything this nice where you live? Courtney!"
Sonic moved over to the coffee table beside the couch, where Mom had set up a little memorial to Dad. I wasn't exactly sure why Mom wanted to keep his personal effects around – whether grief, or affection, or preservation of his memory. Perhaps all three? On the other hand, I was glad she kept it around.
There was a photo of him, framed in oak. The picture showed Dad just before he started on the set of Grease. He was already in costume, his hair slicked back like an actual greaser, with the black leather jacket like Sonic's, and the same daredevil smile. (That had been what had drawn me to Sonic when I met him – he reminded me of Dad.)
She'd also set up some of his religious items around the photo – his rosary, his scapular, even the little St. Michael statue he carried in his pocket for good luck on the set. (Actors can be as superstitious as athletes.) I would sometimes look at that stuff, trying to feel the connection to Dad, as if his spiritual stuff could communicate to me. Silly, yes, but excuse me if I still looked for Dad after he was gone.
"Ah, that," Mom said, having noticed where Sonic's eyes were heading even before he moved his feet, "that is – was – my husband."
"DJ's dad?" Sonic asked, studying the picture. "He has good taste."
Huge surprise, as Sonic frequently dressed that way. But I appreciated the compliment.
"Yes," Mom replied, her eyes growing faraway. "That was taken when I first met him. He was on set for Grease – as a biker, see. His first shot at stardom – back when that was big for him."
I understood that much from his fondness for that costume. Dad always dressed up in it for Halloween. I'd never really thought he'd be that proud of it, but the first role is always the one you look back on – and sometimes even laugh at. Nor had I considered that once upon a time, he'd actually chased the things I resented. No wonder he was always encouraging me to stay away from them.
"I apologize for the mess," Mom said, "I don't usually have guests over – Courtney! Get your butt down here now! Callie, set the table for dinner. Two extra places."
She got that all out in one breath.
"Coming, Mom!" Courtney emerged out of her room a little reluctantly, phone in hand. I guessed she'd gotten a text from someone from school. How could she have picked up friends so fast? I was guessing it wasn't her killer personality.
"Courtney, would you get your cutters out of the yard? You're going to hurt your younger siblings, you keep leaving them out. After that, help Callie set the table."
Courtney groaned, but headed out to retrieve the trimmers.
Sonic observed her leaving. "What's bothering her?"
Mom frowned. "Not used to the move, is all."
"Understatement," Vinny Lee sang, clapping her hands. A pretty good assessment of Mom's remark, if you ask me.
Sonic cleared his throat. "You were talking about your husband?"
I have to hand it to Sonic, he was pretty good at getting back on topic. I knew he got impatient, a trait carried over from his virtual data. Mind going at light speed corresponding with feet going at the speed of sound – taken together, it wasn't exactly the best combination. But sometimes I could appreciate straight shots.
"Ah, yes!" Mom glanced at his picture like it was a sacred thing, like the rosary and the statue and the scapular. "When we married, he just sort of… changed. Like he knew I was worth something."
"You had a family together," Sonic responded. "Seven, if I recall what DJ told me?"
"Yes. My eldest son, Peter, he's in college right now. DJ was pretty close with him, right up there with Casey."
"I guessed as much. She talks about them both a lot."
Valerie approached from another hallway. We'd adopted her a year before the crash, when she was four months old. She was already shaping up for a prodigious child, having walked her first steps five months ago, but I felt an ache when she got to another milestone. It just wasn't the same without Dad.
"Mama?" she asked.
"Oh, Valerie," Mom said. Sonic spun around to catch sight of her, and she quickly darted behind Mom. "Valerie, this is Sonic. He's a guest here."
She said this as if it wasn't a big deal. Which it probably wasn't, as we'd entertained actual movie stars here before. Valerie timidly approached Sonic, walking slowly, as if she were heading close to a growling dog. She could be pretty shy.
"Hi," she said at last, waving softly.
"She is kinda cute," Vinny Lee observed.
Meanwhile, Courtney had returned, having grabbed the trimmers off the patio and placed them in the garage. She even entered the house that way, having exited through the front door, to show she'd done the job. But I knew my sister a little too well for me to just buy it.
Callie must've thought the same thing, because she wandered to the garage door and opened it, took a peek inside, then closed it. She mouthed back at me and Mom, All good.
Leave it to Callie to check her sister's job. But I was grateful she did.
"Okay, Courtney," Mom said, "We'll need the best silverware we've got. And some of that fine –" She turned to Sonic, perhaps to consult him. "You don't want anything fancy, do you? I try to get my best plates out for guests."
"Mom!" Courtney yapped back. "You sound like we're hosting Harry Windsor and his wife!"
Sonic snorted at Courtney's observation. "Something close, I suppose," he mumbled in response. Then, to Mom, "And I don't really care, Liz. I like to keep it simple. It's not like I'm royalty around here anyway."
He raised a good point. For all their paradox juice and superpowers, the avatars weren't all that respected or accepted among us humans, much like the X-Men. They didn't exactly have that many rights or privileges. For one thing, they don't have any real documentation – such as birth certificates or Social Security Numbers – that proves they really exist, which makes things like getting a car or phone or bank account quite difficult. For another, people can be quite scared of things they can't make sense of. How does it look for a human to discover their favorite character is buying a house?
"What in the world are we fussing over –" Courtney suddenly stopped talking, which could only mean she'd noticed Sonic. "Oh my God." She ran into the living room, leaving the table completely behind.
"Language, Courtney," Mom chided her, but my older sister completely ignored her.
She glanced at the stray quill Sonic had left on the couch. (He sheds them like fur. Don't ask.) "It's true. It's really true."
"What's true?" I started to ask, before Dexter and Josh came upstairs, apparently after a little playtime.
Josh looked like he'd gone cowboy for today. His boots and polo went well with his jeans. On top of that, he was holding a cap gun, which I had to wonder how Mom let him have it. Dexter, on the other hand, looked every bit the computer geek, as usual, with his shirt bearing a graphic of a computer whose monitor read, Do Not Disturb – Reprogramming in Progress, and his own jeans and sneakers.
"Dexter, Joshua," Mom said. "It's almost dinnertime."
"I know," Dexter said in response.
"Hey, are these your hermanos?" Vinny Lee inquired. "Wow. Not seeing a lot of resemblance."
"I know," I said, trying not to sound vexed. I got that a lot. From acquaintances, school fellows, adults. It was annoying when you're the only blond in the family – and they're all a mash of hair colors.
"Whoa, nice gloves," Dexter said to Vinny Lee. For once, someone caught my human friend first. Nice for a change. "What are those grooves for?"
Vinny Lee smiled, then glanced at him sideways. "You really wanna know?"
She then flipped the switch on her claws. I guess I should mention – she'd made those clawed gloves with a little help from Tails, and had spent the better part of the summer improving on them. Early on, she'd used her knuckle guards (so her hands didn't get shredded when she popped out her claws) as the safety, but at this point she'd been able to construct a better set of triggers with a simple switch built in for the safety. Deadly and stylish – the way Vinny Lee liked her weapons. She slipped on the guard and cocked her fist. Four wicked claws jumped out of the grooves, as they always had.
"Wicked," Dexter said in response. "You're like… a female Wolverine."
"Amazing, sí?" Vinny Lee said, unclenching her fist, which retracted the claws. She stroked the clawed glove like it was a pet. "And I made 'em myself."
"Shut. Up." Dexter pored over them, perhaps wondering how they worked. I thought he'd get along great with Tails.
Josh spotted Sonic and held out his cap pistol. "You're going down, boy!"
I had to wonder how many shoot-em-ups Josh had been watching.
Sonic just laughed at the boy pointing the cap pistol at him. Of course, I knew that Josh had been put in timeout once for hitting Dexter in the head with the cap pistol. Hard enough to leave the future Einstein with a welt. But given the avatars were often a little more violent in their play – as in shooting-with-real-guns and sucker-punching violent – I wasn't surprised Sonic didn't find it intimidating.
"You're going to hurt someone, you point that pistol at me," he told Josh.
Josh stared up in awe when he realized who was talking to him. "Hedgehog!" he squealed, and then raced over and tackled Sonic.
Now please understand – the exact way an avatar is shielded tends to vary among them. Sonic's shield tends to deflect anything that could hit him, but apparently this did not extend to excitable children, because he got hit so hard he went down in an instant.
"H-hey, good to see you too, kid," he responded. "Ow, watch the quills. Quills."
I guessed Josh was pulling on Sonic's quills, trying to see whether they came out or not. That was gonna bite him eventually.
Dexter was still musing over Vinny Lee's claws, having not noticed the whole scene with Josh and Sonic. "I would have added flamethrowers to my wrists. That'd be really cool. Oh, or some remote for drones?"
"Giving her ideas, Dex?" I teased. "She already comes up with enough weird ones as it is."
"And they work well enough as it is, amigo," Vinny Lee said in reply. "I don't really see a need to add anything further right now. Just tweaking them to work a little better at this point."
"I suppose you're right," Dexter said.
"Dex!" Josh yelled from the other side of the living room. "Hedgehog!"
"Hedgehog?" Dexter asked apprehensively. I couldn't blame him, as Josh had had a habit of bringing home strange animals back in LA. "That better not be one of your usual – WHOA! No way!"
He'd noticed Sonic. What else would get him that excited?
"Hello there," Sonic only said to my brother. "What might your name be?"
"Dexter," my brother responded. "Forgive Josh. He's a little thrilled to see you."
Mom put a hand on Dexter's shoulder. "We all are very curious," she told Sonic. "We haven't seen the likes of this before. Not even back in Los Angeles."
"I'll bet," Sonic said. "But I'm from New York."
I guessed he brought that up as a way of saying excuse me if I'm not fazed by what you regale me with. I'd heard stories about the Big Apple. You see one bit of weirdness in New York, you've seen 'em all.
"In that case," Mom commented, "it's time for dinner."
Well, this could be interesting. Verse for the update: Isaiah 50:7. Stay tuned!