Podcast of a Teenage Super-Villian

Chapter Four: A Place to Stay

The Song Max is Currently Playing On His Ipod: Neophobia by Nano ^^

Starlight City.

Starlight fricking City. If you can make it here, you can make it, well, you can make it in a superhuman haven that doubles as a four-state-spanning metropolis. That's gotta count for everywhere, or at least, close to it.

After weaving through trees to hide from a certain searchlight, I stumble into the first Wawa I can find across the state border. Every city has its villains, many of them killers. I'm not one of those. I'm just a kid, I tell myself as I stand at the counter with a Monster and a road atlas, just a kid with a too-large jacket, skinny jeans, and a shitty dye job. The cashier only looks at me with a lazy, roving eye as I pay. And then I'm out. Unsuspected and a free man.

The Wawa is at the edge of the city, all brick painted this blonde-white color, peeling and ivy-covered. I leave it, treading grass for the nearest bench across the street. I shield my head with my hands knotted together over my hair, the atlas crinkled over my knees, Monster nestled in my inside pocket. The rain has become a mist, ice melting in my tangle of hair, dripping black into my eyes. I squint down at the threads of roads, teeth chattering. My whole body is quivering, the cold of the cast iron bench bleeding through Chip's hoodie. The yellow-gray sky would be pretty if I could hide from it.

I determine that Starlight City is about two hundred miles south of where I'm curled. Instead of cashing out a few hundred bucks from the ATM and splurging on a motel, I decide to sleep here, in the rain. I don't know why I torture myself like this. I try to rationalize it deep down by telling myself that I'm only trying to keep my identity safe. That if I stay here, out in the open, I can swoop away without busting open my fragile right hand. But that's not the truth. The truth is that I don't deserve to sleep. I deserve to lie awake, cold and shivering, staring at that sky I used to love. I deserve to remember Monet's disgust when she learned who I am, the feel of Chip's body yielding against my fists. He was so light for someone so lanky, like his bones were full of air, like a bird's. Like he could sprout feathers and fly.

It frustrates me that when my face is wet, I can't tell anymore whether it's the rain or if I'm crying. I let my hands hang limp at my sides so I can't rub my eyes to check.

And I'm alone, surrounded here only by the grass which has gone brittle and bone-white, the rain too late. The silence has a way of driving my memories to the front of my brain, and I let them play, over and over. Like I'm staring at a bright light I can't blink away from. My own, quivering voice. The way I'd forgotten how to speak. "I just...I hate myself...I hate myself..I..." I'd hated how I'd taken up pacing, hated how when I stared at my reflection I looked like some caged thing, with my smile too tight and my eyes too big, like I was desperate for something. Desperate for what? 

Chip was curled up on my bed. Slender legs thrown over the pillows, his pen rushing furiously over his notebook, back and forth, back and forth, a constant, inexhaustible loop of motion. "I hate myself!" And I shattered that mirror, while Chip wrote. I busted it into a thousand shards, over and over with both fists, until my knuckles were covered in blood. The base of my neck was a grid of red, swollen veins, and I'd accomplished nothing. I remember this: Chip edging toward me, the soft rustle of the sheets. The smell of him, of cigarettes and cinnamon candy, like he kept cartons of both crushed in his pockets.

I blink away the rain in my eyes, watching the gray clouds shift over the edge of the sky. I'd whipped around, and I felt like an animal. In those moments, and in many more, I was so consumed with pain and self-loathing I wanted to fling it all at someone, like all that vicious energy that squirmed in my belly could be spent in one brilliant burst of violence. Chip was always the perfect victim. He never fought back and broke easily under my fingers.