Action Figures - Issue Two: Black Magic Women (13 page)

“We’re going to the Main Street Movie House to see something called
Buckaroo Banzai
.”

“
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8
^th
Dimension
,” Matt says, “newly restored print, with the extended intro sequence.”

Whatever that means. I should have brought Natalie along to translate. “I’ve been told my life will never be complete until I see it.”

“Well, can’t have that now, can we? All right, hon, you have a good night. Boys, Missy, Sara.”

“Greg, m’man, catch you later,” Stuart says, trading fist-bumps with my grandfather.

Fist bumps. With my grandfather.

My world no longer makes sense.

Neither did that movie.

“It’s not supposed to make sense!” Matt says as the crowd flows out around us, dragging with them the aroma of stale popcorn and movie theater floor (a tangy-sweet combination of spilled Coke and crushed Junior Mints that lingers on the senses long after you wish to God it would go away). “It’s not supposed to fit in neat little boxes, conceptually or narratively, which is what makes it so freakin’ brilliant!”

“I’m sorry, but the whole movie seemed weird for the sake of being weird,” I say.

“YES! Exactly!” Matt raves, nearly clocking a passing couple in the face with his flailing arms. “
Buckaroo Banzai
was a mocking response to the glut of cliché-ridden, by-the-numbers sci-fi adventures born of the
Star Wars
era of genre filmmaking.”

“Uhh, okay. I’ll take your word for it. Maybe it would’ve made more sense if I’d actually seen
Star Wars
.”

Matt freezes, a look of bone-deep shock on his face. “You — how — never saw — are you kidding me?” he manages. “You’ve never seen
Star Wars
? How have you lived your whole life without ever seeing
Star Wars
?!”

“Well, I mean, I’ve seen bits and pieces of it on TV,” I say sheepishly, “but I’ve never gotten around to, you know, watching it beginning-to-end. But I know the good parts! I know ‘Use the Force, Luke,’ and I know Darth Vader is really Luke’s father...”

“That was
The Empire Strikes Back
!”

“Ummm...that was the one with the teddy bears, right?”

“That was
Return of the Jedi,
and they’re called Ewoks, you clueless twit! EWOKS!”

How I held onto a straight face for this long is beyond me, but his anguished cry of “EWOKS!” proves too much, and I fall to the sidewalk, laughing so hard I can barely catch a breath. The dam breaks and Sara, Stuart, and Missy lose their minds right along with me. We sound like a pack of crazed hyenas.

“Wait, were you messing with me?” Matt says.

“Of course I was messing with you!” I squeal, the winter night literally freezing my tears on my cheeks. “Come on! Who hasn’t seen
Star Wars
?”

“Seriously, dude,” Stuart says.

“The funny part was when you believed her!” Missy giggles.

“
Ahhhh
, that was golden. Well played, Miss Hauser, well played.”

“Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week.”

Matt, mustering the last of his dignity, announces, “I’m going home now. I’ll thank you to wait until I’m out of earshot before you relive your grand jest,” he says to me before marching off.

“Dude, wait up,” Stuart says. “Later, ladies.”

“You do know Matt’s already plotting how to get you back,” Sara says as we begin the long, bitterly cold march home.

“What’s he going to do? Spout obscure movie quotes at me until my brain melts?”

“Nah, but he might kill off your cleric,” Missy says.

“He’s not above fudging dice rolls in the name of revenge,” Sara says.

“Oh, he better not,” I say, more indignant than I should be over the threat of fictional murder. “I worked really hard to build Aurora to level ten, and she just got that cool mace of disruption, and my God I’m a
Dungeons and Dragons
nerd. When did that happen?”

“You’ve always been one of us, Miss Hauser,” Sara says in a sinister voice. She fishes her phone out of her jacket. “Uh-oh, movie ran later than we thought. It’s almost midnight.”

“Oh, crap,” I say, digging for my own phone. “Mom’s going to freak.”

“Still got you on the short leash, huh?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Fly home, we’ll be okay.”

“No, I don’t watch to ditch you. Hold on.” I call Mom’s cell directly, figuring she’s holding it in her hand at this very moment, glowering at it, like it’s the phone’s fault I’m not home yet. After a half-dozen rings, it goes to her voicemail. “Hi, Mom, movie got out late, walking home now with Sara and Missy, see you soon love you bye.”

“She asleep?”

“Maybe. Wish I were asleep,” I say, keenly aware of my waning energy levels.

“Same here. Today was rough.”

“What’d you two do?” Missy asks.

“Natalie made me destroy stuff,” I say.

“Mindforce tried to teach me to use my telekinesis without destroying stuff,” Sara says, “which is way harder than it sounds, but he told me if I — what did he call it? — physicalize? I can’t remember what he called it, but he said if I —”

Sara stagger-steps to a halt. She wavers, like she’s about to fall over, and her eyes go out of focus.

“Sara? You okay?”

“I. Um. Oh.”

Missy and I skitter away, dodging the splash as Sara doubles over and bazooka-barfs all over the sidewalk. She drops to her hands and knees, retching uncontrollably, but her first volley completely emptied her stomach; it’s nothing but painful dry heaving for the next couple of minutes.

“Oh, God...” she moans. Missy and I rock her back into a kneeling position. Her skin is so white it practically glows under the streetlights.

“Are you okay?” I ask. At moments like this, all possible questions are equally stupid.

“I don’t know,” she rasps. “What the hell was that?”

“Aside from disgusting?” Missy says.

“One minute I was fine, and all of a sudden it was like someone was, I don’t know...it was like someone was squeezing my entire body. I felt hot and dizzy and I hurt all over...”

“How are you now?” I ask. “Can you stand?”

“I think so,” Sara says, and she does, but Missy and I keep our hands under her nevertheless. We act as human crutches all the way home, where we pass her off to her parents, who dutifully hustle her into bed.

Bed. Sounds like a plan.

It’s eight when I wake up. I consider calling Sara to see how she’s doing, but decide against it. I shoot Matt a quick text —
Sara got sick last pm, got her home ok, letting her sleep in
— and roll out of bed in search of coffee. With luck, Mom will be sleeping in and I’ll get to make my own, so I don’t have to suffer her industrial-strength paint stripper sludge.

Looks like that’s not going to be a problem; her bedroom door is open, and she’s not in bed — and hasn’t been. Mom’s morning routine is always coffee first, bed-making last, and unless she got up crazy early...

Mom never came home last night.

I head downstairs, pushing away the tiny surge of panic. Granddad is up and in the kitchen, prepping a pot of coffee fit for human consumption.

“Mornin’, hon,” he says. “How was the movie?”

“Weird and confusing. Granddad, did Mom ever come home last night?”

Granddad frowns at me. “She didn’t come home?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Hm. That’s odd,” he says, “but I’m sure she’s fine. She’s an adult, she can take care of herself. She would have called if there was a problem.”

Sure, because when you roll your car into ditch, first thing you do is call your daughter to let her know everything’s cool. I check my phone. There are no messages from her, so I try calling again. Right to voicemail.

“She’s not picking up.”

“Carrie, don’t get yourself all worked up. Hey, I bet that’s her right now,” he says as my phone goes off, but it’s not Mom: Mom’s ringtone is Bruce Springsteen’s version of
Pink Cadillac
; the song playing now is
Speed of Sound
by
Coldplay, which means it’s Concorde.

(For the record, my choice of ringtone for Concorde is not as cool as it might sound; I hate that song with the seething fury of an erupting volcano.)

“What now?” I snap.

“We have an emergency. Get the Squad, get to HQ as soon as you can.”

“Look, I have something going on, I can’t just drop everything on your say-so,” I say, completely missing the fact Concorde didn’t lay into me for my rude greeting, the urgency in his summons — hell, I totally miss that he’s calling in the Hero Squad for an actual mission.

“This is an all-hands situation, Carrie,” Concorde says. “Astrid has something for us, and she’s says it’s big, possible yellow-level threat, so whatever you have ‘going on,’ it’ll have to wait.”

I’m about to tell El Jerko Grande exactly what I have “going on,” and that is the moment my mother, looking decidedly ragged, walks in. She spots me, and an odd look passes over her face. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it was a flash of guilt.

“Never mind. Problem solved itself,” I tell Concorde. “Be there soon.”

“Good morning,” Granddad says to Mom, with a hint of disapproval. Mom may be an adult, but she’s obviously not above parental reproach.

“Morning,” Mom says. “You two just get up?”

“Where have you been? I tried calling you last night, and you never picked up,” I say.

“I’m sorry about that, sweetheart, I went out with some co-workers, we hit this wine bar in the city and, um.” She momentarily breaks eye contact with me. She’s definitely feeling guilty about something. “I overindulged. I wasn’t in any shape to drive home, so I spent the night at a co-worker’s place.”

“I was worried about you, Mom.”

“I said I was sorry, Carrie,” Mom says, a little irritably. “I had my phone off. I forgot to turn it back on.”

Why do I suddenly feel like she did this intentionally, to teach me a lesson?

“Well, now that I know you’re not lying dead somewhere, I’m heading out,” I say, darting past Mom. I pause in the front door. “And, for the record? I will have my phone on.”

I swing by Sara’s place. She’s awake, has been for a while.

“Feeling okay?” I say.

“Meh,” she says, making a
so-so
gesture. “Not terrible, but...I think I feel hung-over. Not that I’m speaking from experience...”

“
Pft
. Call my mom, she could tell you.”

Her eyebrows jump. “Your mom’s hung-over?”

“Yeah. Get this: she was out all night with her friends getting hammered. She got home, like, ten minutes ago.”

“Whah. Doesn’t sound like her.”

“I know. Hope this was a one-time thing. If she’s experiencing some kind of regression to her wild and crazy college years...”

“Awkward.”

“Totally. Anyway, we have to roll. Concorde’s calling us in.” Sara groans. “I know, but this sounds bad. Possible yellow-level threat, he said.”

“A what?”

“Well, a red-level threat is a ‘major incident involving superhumans with a high body count potential,’ ” I say, recalling Mindforce’s explanation, “so this would be two steps below that...assuming the Protectorate uses the same rainbow we do.”

“Oh. So, bad.”

“Yeah.”

“We should go.”

“Yeah.”

FOURTEEN

“You know what it sounds like?” Matt says. “Sounds like your mom got lucky.”

I am not a punchy person by nature. When someone says something upsetting to me, I endeavor to take the high road. If it’s something particularly offensive, something that presses a hot button, I might respond with an insult or two, maybe a well-placed F-bomb. I prefer to use words that hurt rather than fists. Because I’m civilized.

Matt’s comment prompts me to leap the width of the Wonkavator and drive my knuckles into the meat of his upper chest.

“OW! What the hell?!”

“Don’t you ever say anything like that about my mother again!” I scream in Matt’s face. “My mom did not
get lucky
, and if you say that again I swear to God I’ll put my foot so far up your butt you’ll need Stuart to get it out!”

“Sorry, dude,” Stuart says to Matt, “but I ain’t touching your butt.”

“God, Matt, do you have to blurt out every stupid thought that comes into your head?”

“Come on,” Matt says, “don’t tell me it didn’t cross your mind.”

“It didn’t, because that’s not what happened,” I say. “She had too much wine, she couldn’t drive, she stayed with a friend. That’s all.”

Matt holds his hands up as if in surrender. “Fine. Sure. Whatever you say. By the way? Ow.”

“Deserved it. Ass.”

“Would have hurt less if you zapped me.”

I laugh. “Not anymore. Natalie showed me how to turn up the volume. If I blasted you now, you’d be all like, splatto, nothing but smoldering meat chunks.”