Edgewood Series: Books 1 - 3 (87 page)

“Okay then,” Mallory said after a few minutes. She tapped Layla on the shoulder. “I think that should do it.”

Layla opened her eyes and rotated her head. “Wow, that’s amazing. I’ve been to physical therapists, chiropractors, the works. This is the best I’ve felt in a long time. Thank you.” Her gratitude seemed genuine. I could only think that Mallory had implanted the idea that the pain was gone. Whatever she did, it was a good thing.

“You’re welcome.” Mallory smiled.

“It was a lucky day when I met you guys in Miami. I hope we can stay in touch,” Layla said, overcome with emotion.

“Well of course we’ll stay in touch,” Mallory said, her voice indignant. “Why wouldn’t we? We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we’re friends,” Layla said. She didn’t have the dopey look that I associated with mind control. Carly was right; Mallory had really fine tuned this talent. She was scary good. “Of course we’re friends. I think you guys understand me better than anyone.”

“We’re here for you,” Jameson said.

“It’s hard being me. The media mobs me. I can’t even go to a concert with friends like normal people. I have to sit backstage and watch.”

“You poor thing,” Mallory said. “It must be rough.”

“It is.”

Jameson said, “So what do you do for fun around here? I think I heard something about a White House bowling alley? We could give that a go.” His self-assured grin made me think that he was planning to get a perfect score. Who needed a ball to knock down pins when you could do it with your mind?

“Oh no,” Layla said, blowing out a puff of air. “Bowling’s not my thing. How about a movie?” She explained that the White House had a movie theater on site, and that they received films before their release date. “I’ll call down and get them to set it up and get the popcorn ready.”

She picked up the phone and said, “I’d like to watch a movie with my friends, please.” I hadn’t heard her say please before. I wondered if that was something Mallory had implanted. “Really? Why not? Oh, that’s disappointing. Well, maybe another time. Thank you.” She hung up the phone and gave us the bad news. “There’s an event I have to attend—a sick kid in a hospital, and I have to leave in an hour to go visit her. It was on my schedule, but somehow it slipped my mind.”

“We can come back another day,” Mallory said, like she was soothing a small child. “We’ll be here for a few more days.”

“Another day,” Layla agreed. “Maybe tomorrow?” She looked around the room like she was seeing it for the first time. “I suppose I should get ready. There are always photographers at these things.” She exhaled loudly. “They expect me to look a certain way. I definitely need to do something with this hair.” She pulled a lock away from her face and looked at it, then let it drop. I thought her hair looked nearly perfect, but from the disgusted look on her face, it needed a lot of work.

“We have to go anyway,” Mallory said, taking the glass from my hand and crossing the room to set it on the tray. I slid off the bed, followed by Jameson, and finally Layla. “I don’t know why they get so weird,” Layla said, smoothing the bed spread. “We didn’t spill a drop.”

Jameson ambled toward the door and Mallory and I followed his lead. “I guess this is good-bye for now,” Mallory said, pausing.

“Wait a minute!” Layla said, striding toward us and for a split second I thought she was on to us, that she’d figured out the mind control and that she knew she’d never met us before today. But what she said next erased my worries. “You don’t think I’d let you leave without a hug, do you?”

She embraced Mallory and then Jameson, thanking each of them for coming to see her and saying how happy she was that we came out for the Bash. When she got to me, the hug lingered and I felt the unmistakable sensation of her knee working its way up between my legs. She whispered in my ear. “We are going to have some fun, Russ Becker. Just you wait and see.” Then she planted a forceful kiss on my startled lips. I didn’t see it coming and I was too shocked to react.

When she pulled back three seconds later, I knew my face had reddened because I felt the warm, embarrassed flush go from my cheeks all the way up to my hairline. I hoped it wasn’t obvious, but of course it was. “Look, Russ is blushing,” Jameson said. He nudged Mallory. “How cute is that?”

“Very cute,” she said.

I couldn’t get out of that room fast enough. We were halfway down the stairs when Mallory said. “You don’t have to thank me Russ, but you can if you want.”

“For what?” I said.

She laughed. “For the little something extra I implanted in Layla. Not only does she remember meeting you in Miami, she now wants you in the worst possible way. More than she ever wanted anything in her entire life.”

Russ

To say I was pissed off at Mallory would be an understatement. She knew how I felt about Nadia and she went and did this? What kind of friend does something like that? I stopped midway down the stairs and said, “What did you do that for?”

Her eyes grew wide in surprise. “I thought you'd like it,” she said. "Layla obviously has a thing for you anyway. I just gave her an extra nudge in that direction."

Jameson said, “It’s a gift, Russ. If you don't want it, I'll take it. She's totally hot.”

I gave him a steely-eyed look. Was he serious? “You'd want some girl to want you just because she's been brainwashed to want you?”

“Well, yeah," he said. "A sure thing. What's wrong with that?”

If he didn't see anything wrong with that, there was nothing I could say to convince him otherwise. I said, “You heard him, Mallory. Switch Layla over to him.”

“Oh, I don’t know if I can do that. You’re her date and having her get all crazy over Jameson would be really awkward.”

“Guess you’re stuck with her,” Jameson said, slapping me on the back. “Tough to have to take one for the team.”

“Seriously Mallory,” I said. “You have to undo this. We’re supposed to be protecting her at the Bash. How can I do that if she’s hanging all over me?”

Mallory tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I don’t know if I can get close enough to her to do it again. Besides, if she’s hanging all over you, we don’t have to worry about her wandering off. If anything, I did you a favor. She’ll be easier to keep track of if she’s attached to you.”

“So you won’t change her back?”

“I’ll think about it.” I knew that ‘I’ll think about it’ was Mallory’s code for ‘not in a million lifetimes.’ I was screwed. Unless I wanted to tell on her to the Praetorian Guard officials I was stuck with a presidential daughter determined to seduce me. A year ago I would have thought this was a good problem to have, but not anymore.

I was too mad to even talk to either of them so I kept going down the stairs and didn’t say a word. When we met with our PG escorts and they said we could have some downtime before dinner, I opted to go back to our room alone, grateful that Jameson and Mallory were leaving to explore PGDC. “You really aren’t going to go with us?” Mallory said puzzled, as if she hadn’t just done this heinous thing. It occurred to me that she actually thought she was doing me a favor and I would enjoy having Layla obsessed with me.

“No, you guys go ahead. I just want to decompress.”

“Suit yourself,” Jameson said, leading Mallory away. With old Russ out of the way, he thought he had a clear path to Mallory’s heart. Good luck with that. He was welcome to it.

Back in the room, I finally had time to hear myself think. As far as the mission went, everything was on track. Mallory had convinced Layla that we'd met before, I had started my healing work on the president, and Jameson hadn't screwed anything up with his show-off moves. Still to come: Mallory working on the vice president and me going back to the hospital to try again with the president. So much to think about.

I settled back on the bed and watched a little TV, first viewing
Underworld
, a movie I’d seen a million times before, and then the beginning of an old
CSI: Las Vegas
, before I finally got bored with it and clicked it off. I grabbed my carry-on and rifled through the pockets until I found the packet of comic books Kevin Adams had given me at the airport. I might be sixteen, but I loved comic books as much as I did when I was eight. The great graphics, the action-packed plots, the way I didn't have to strain my brain to follow the story. They were so visual it was easy to see why so many of them were made into movies. Sometimes a guy just needed some fun reading.

I rifled through the stack, looking to see which ones I’d already read and which ones were new to me, when one caught my eye in a big way. It had a large yellow sticky note on it that said,
Russ, this is a comic book that Sam and I made when we were a little older than you. He did the story & I did the pictures. I thought you might like it
. I put the sticky note on the pillow next to me and I flipped through the pages. It was clearly handmade, but well done. The same size as a typical comic book and about as many pages. The drawings were pretty good too, considering Kevin wasn't a professional artist. I thought of the two of them working together on this project, a young Sam Specter and Kevin Adams, totally getting into this nerd enterprise. They must have had copies made somewhere and then stapled the pages together themselves. Things didn't line up perfectly, so it was a little off. Not too bad though, considering.

The title on the cover said:
Superheroes of the Twenty-First Century!
Interesting. Especially because it was written during the twentieth century. The twenty-first century must have seemed way off in the distant future to young Sam and Kevin.

I started reading and by the second page, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Seriously, I was hyperventilating and my heart began pounding when it hit me that the comic book story was about us. Four teenagers from a small town gifted with superpowers. Their names were Persuasa, Spark Boy, Secret Weapon Girl, and Mover! (with an exclamation point—it was part of the name, apparently). Kevin’s drawings had been done more than twenty-five years ago, way before the four of us had even been born, and yet there we were in the pages of his homemade comic book. Persuasa had the power of mind control, just like Mallory. Spark Boy could shoot electricity out of his palms. Clearly that was me. Secret Weapon Girl walked around with her face obscured by a hood. Her superpower was forcing people to tell the truth. Not quite like Nadia, but close. And Mover! was Jameson, without a doubt. He was tall and lanky, with white-blond hair. In the story, Mover! had a sort of know-it-all attitude that had Jameson stamped all over him. Mover!’s power was telekinesis, of course.

The similarities were too much to be a coincidence. Puzzled, I flipped through the pages and then read Kevin’s note again. 
Russ, this is a comic book that Sam and I made when we were a little older than you. He did the story & I did the pictures. I thought you might like it
. And then it hit me. Sam did the story. Sam Specter, who had the power of seeing the future, wrote the story. He knew about us before we even existed and knew what was going to happen. But why make a comic book out of it? Maybe to keep it fresh in his mind? His powers had since faded, in the same way that Kevin and Rosie and Dr. Anton’s powers had also faded. Could it be that he knew that would happen and didn’t want to forget? It would have been more than a quarter of a century ago—a long time and details could easily fade from a person’s memory.

I read through the comic book, paying attention to each word and every illustration. I got chills reading the story. In
Superheroes of the Twenty-First Century
, the teenage superheroes got called to Washington D.C. by a secret organization that needed their help avoiding a national incident at a charity ball the president will be attending. The biggest problem is that the lady president is in a coma. Spark Boy is called to use his healing electricity to make her well again.

Layla had a role in this story too. Just like in real life, she was the president’s daughter, but in this version her name was Lola. Pretty close. In this version of events, Lola was vain and a real man-eater. In the comic book she wore a low cut gown and had one of those long cigarette holders, like you see in old movies. Very dramatic and elegant. Unlikely to happen in real life, but a nice comic book touch.

Although all four superheroes are invited to the charity ball, Secret Weapon Girl (Nadia) has to stay behind to fight crime in their small hometown. A crazy woman is on the loose in the town of Edgemont, jumping out of hiding after dark, and attacking people with a large butcher knife before retreating and getting away. No one knows her identity, but Secret Weapon Girl is sure she can figure out who she is and bring her to justice. “I will join you as soon as I can!” she cries to her friends, who board their Superhero jet and wave good-bye.

The bad guys, aptly named the Associates, just like in real life, planned to kill the president and Lola at the charity ball. The head of the Associates, Commander Whitlock, arranged to be at the ball, to oversee the actions of all his underlings. The three superheroes are there to protect Lola and watch out for anything underhanded. Spark Boy tells Lola:
Do not worry, gorgeous, you are safe with me! I will be at your side all night.
And then Lola gratefully grabs him and plants a kiss right on his mouth.
Swak!
It must have been one great kiss because in the next panel, she swoons. Literally swoons. The room spins for her and stars swirl above her head.

For the second time today I felt a flush of embarrassment realizing that Mr. Specter knew all about this, the whole time. Did he know it would be me? All of sophomore year in his science class did he know that someday I’d be Spark Boy? And if so, why didn’t he destroy the comic book? He was on the Associates’ side, but this comic book was a manual on what they were planning to do and could tell me how to defeat them.

I read on. At the ball, Persuasa uses mind control on the vice president to convince him to switch sides, so he’s no longer aligned with the Associates.