Bob and Martha Gray lived in an old neighborhood along a row of lovingly maintained brownstones. Bob was the brother of Seth’s father, and after Seth’s parents passed, Bob and his wife, Martha, had taken in Seth and made a home for him. They’d never had kids of their own, but they had room in their house and hearts, and Seth was given a place to grieve and grow. Martha was a retired nurse, and Bob still worked as a super for an apartment building uptown, his life as a meter butler years behind him. Nick knew their home almost as well as he knew his own, though he hadn’t been over in a long while.
Their street was lined with trees, the leaves turning from green to gold. The air was cool, and horns honked as soon as the lights changed. A cop car rolled by, but Nick ignored it. His dad still hadn’t texted him.
He’d have to deal with that later.
Nick went up the steps to the Gray house and rang the doorbell. Martha had told him long ago that he could come in whenever he pleased, but he needed to make a good impression today.
They’d come to his mom’s funeral. Bob had worn an ill-fitting suit—too small for his ever-expanding middle—and Martha had hugged him so hard, he felt his bones creak. She didn’t tell him she was sorry, or that everything would get better. Nick would have screamed if she had—he’d heard it so many times already. Instead, as Seth stood at his side and held his hand, she’d whispered to him that if he ever needed an escape, to come to their house, and she would help him do whatever was needed.
He’d never forgotten that, even through the hazy fog that descended for months when Before had become After.
He heard the familiar chimes ring in the house and stepped back to wait. Bob was probably still at work, Seth up in his room, comforter pulled over his head and crinkled tissues on the floor by his bed.
He could see the outline of someone approaching through the glass on the door. He forced a smile on his face as the door opened.
Martha’s eyes widened in shock when she saw him. It was brief, and he couldn’t be sure it even happened, since she smiled brightly. “Nick! Well, isn’t this a surprise. Whatever are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in class?”
“Hi, Mrs. Gray. I just came to see Seth, since he was sick. And it’s three thirty. School got out almost an hour ago.”
Her smile widened. “Of course it’s three thirty and school is out already. Why, I must have lost track of time. Come in! Come in, dear child, and let me look at you. It’s been far too long since I’ve seen your face.”
He didn’t even get a chance to respond before she’d grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the house, shutting the door behind him. “Yes,” she said, and she was speaking so loudly, it was almost like she was shouting. “It has been forever since Nicholas Bell has been in this house. And right at this very moment!”
Nick tilted his head at her. “Are you all right?”
“Fine, dear, just fine,” she said loudly as she dragged him toward the kitchen. “Come! Come, even though it’s been months since you’ve been here, Nick, you still have an affinity for my peanut butter cookies, don’t you? I just made a fresh batch yesterday, and we should make sure you have at least six or seven before you head upstairs to see Seth, the poor boy.”
“Uh, sure?” Nick said. “Also, you’re a lot stronger than I expected you to be for someone your age. No offense.”
“None taken,” she said, looking back at him and smiling again. The wrinkles around her eyes deepened. “I used to have to lift patients at least three times your size. Built up some muscles. Speaking of, you’re still as skinny as all get out. Maybe ten cookies before you go up and see Seth.”
Nick winced as she bellowed that last word.
The kitchen was as homey as he remembered it, small and tidy. Martha and Bob had lived in the same brownstone since they’d married more than thirty years earlier. When Nick had asked why they didn’t have any kids before Seth, Martha told him he shouldn’t ask others that as it might be painful for some people, but in her case, life always seemed to get in the way. But then she’d said that maybe someone somewhere knew that Seth would need a home one day, and it was a good enough reason for her.
She shoved Nick down at the large table where he’d sat many times before, the vase of autumn flowers in the middle rattling but not tipping over. “There,” she said. “Comfy? Good. Now, I know that one cannot have ten peanut butter cookies without having a glass of—”
A crash came from somewhere below.
Nick looked down at the floor. “Is there someone in the basement?”
Martha laughed a little wildly. “Of course not! Seth is ill upstairs, and Bob is at the apartment building fixing a sprung pipe.”
“Uh, then what was that noise?”
“I didn’t hear any—”
Another crash. This time the floor shook.
“Oh,” Martha said. She turned toward the cookie jar shaped like a duck that she’d found in a flea market in 1978, or so she’d told Nick. Rather proudly too. “That. That is … the washing machine. Absolutely dreadful thing. It needs a new … filtering … valve. Yes, a new filtering valve. Bob is going to get right on that as soon as he gets home. In fact, after he’s done with the leaking pipe at the apartment, he was going to go pick up—”
Footsteps ran up the basement stairs.
Then the basement door opened.
Then it slammed closed.
Then more footsteps up the stairs to the second floor.
Another door slammed shut upstairs.
Martha turned with a plate stacked high with peanut butter cookies. “Our house is haunted!” she said cheerfully. “It’s just the oddest thing.”
“Haunted,” Nick said slowly as he picked up a cookie from the plate she’d set in front of him. “So … that was a ghost?”
She nodded, her white hair falling in her face as she went back to the fridge to pour a glass of milk. “Oh, yes. We did some research on it and everything. Apparently, this whole block used to be a tuberculosis … insane … asylum. Yes, exactly. People got tuberculosis and they went insane and then they died. Right where you’re sitting. And now their spirits have awoken for reasons that don’t need to be looked into, and here we are. Isn’t that wonderful? Eat your cookie.”
Nick stared at her.
She set a glass of milk in front of him and waited.
Finally, Nick breathed, “Whoa. A tuberculosis insane asylum and now there are ghosts? Why didn’t Seth tell me about this? Don’t you know what this means? My god, I’ll have to look into it when I get home. We need to find out where they were buried so we can salt and burn their bones to put the spirits to rest. And if they’re malevolent, we may need to hire a medium.”
“Exactly,” Martha said, patting his hand. “You do that. Have another cookie. In fact, I will insist you eat every single cookie on that plate before going upstairs.”
“There’s like, twenty cookies here.”
“Then you best get started,” she trilled. “And while you eat everything, you can tell me what you’ve been up to every day since I’ve seen you last. And be detailed. You know how I love details.”
“That’s … a lot of days. I haven’t seen you since…”
“May twenty-second,” Martha said. “After you and that boy broke up, and you came over here and cried, and I made you grilled cheese and tomato soup like when you were ten.”
“I didn’t cry,” Nick mumbled through a mouthful of peanut butter cookie.
“Oh, I apologize,” she said. “Your face must have been wet from the rain that wasn’t falling at the time. Describe every day, Nicky. And I’ll know if you missed one.”
By the time Nick escaped and made his way upstairs, he was fuller than he’d been in a long time. He’d made it to July 2 and had eighteen cookies before Martha had suddenly cut him off and said he could go upstairs. If anything, it reaffirmed that he had a sharp memory and the capacity to eat a crapload of cookies. Both were good things to know about himself.
The old wooden stairs creaked under his Chucks, his hand sliding along the railing. The wall to his right was covered with framed photographs: Bob and Martha with big hair and parachute pants, Bob and Martha on vacation in front of a gigantic ball of yarn, Bob and Martha and little Seth at a park, snow falling all around them.
Nick was in some too, here and there. Nick and Seth in a blanket fort. Nick and Seth dressed like Jean Grey and Wolverine (Nick was nine, okay?) Nick and Seth standing on the pier, holding tufts of pink cotton candy almost as big as they were. Nick and Seth sitting in front of a TV, shoulder to shoulder, Nick’s head tilted back in a laugh and Seth smiling quietly.
It was physical history of a good life, the wall cluttered with shared moments, some of which Nick had forgotten about.
As always, Nick stopped near the top of the stairs in front of one photograph in particular. The frame was old and worn, and the glass had a little crack in the right corner. The subjects were a little blurry and out of focus, but it reminded Nick of the one of him and Mom, standing near the lighthouse.
In it, Seth was four, and he was sitting on the shoulders of a thin, bespectacled man with a receding hairline. The man had his hands wrapped around Seth’s ankles, and Seth’s hands were thrown up in the air, curled into little fists. A woman stood next to the man, looking up at Seth, a smile on her face that Nick recognized on her son time and time again.
Nick had never met these two people. They’d been gone before the day on the swings. Seth had a few memories of them that he hoarded like a dragon does gold. Nick knew a couple of them, but not all. He didn’t mind. He was aware that sometimes, things needed to be kept hidden in shadow because if they were brought out too much into the light, they would fade.
He wondered if Seth talked to them like Nick did with his mom.
He moved on.
There were three doors in the hallway at the top of the stairs. The door to the right led to the only bathroom in the house. The door to the left was Martha and Bob’s bedroom, all old wood and frilly lace, much to Bob’s consternation.
The last door—the one at the end of the hall—had a battered sign hanging off of it.
SETH’S ROOM
He knocked on the door.
“Come in!” a breathless voice said.
Nick frowned and shook his head before opening the door.
From the ceiling hung a replica model of a 1918 Yellow Curtiss JN-4 biplane. The propeller was broken, Nick’s contribution to the entire project that had started out great, but then had caused him to be bored out of his mind. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to sit still for six hours and put together a model airplane. It was just that he was incapable of doing so. So, on hour three, he’d been so twitchy that he’d accidentally broken the propeller, the audible snap making him look down at his hands in horror. But Seth had shrugged, saying their plane would look as if it’d been in war now, which made it better.
Seth was good like that.
There were bookshelves filled with hundreds of books, most of which Nick had never touched and would never read. There was, however, a shelf toward the bottom that was lined with graphic novels and stacks of comic books Nick had given Seth. And Seth had read each and every one dutifully. Or, at least, he’d tried to read each and every one, but Nick had been so excited at the sight of a comic book in his best friend’s hands that he’d sat right behind Seth peering over his shoulder, pointing out each panel, telling him all the backstory that Seth would have missed. He’d been worried, at first, that Seth wouldn’t like them (and worse, that he’d think they were stupid), but that hadn’t happened. He spent hours with Nick talking about heroes and villains, letting Nick babble at him about how cool Storm was, or how hardcore Venom could be.
It was different now, since Shadow Star and Pyro Storm appeared. They were comic books come to life, right in his city. Nick had known about Extraordinaries before, but they’d been the stuff of legends, in places far away from home. It wasn’t until he’d seen with his own eyes Pyro Storm fly or Shadow Star crawl up the side of a building that it’d hit Nick just how astonishing they could be. After Guardian left for unknown reasons years earlier, the idea of Extraordinaries had been something the people of Nova City only saw from their television and computer screens. It was easy to think of them as almost fictional. It wasn’t until Pyro Storm and Shadow Star had revealed themselves that people started to give a shit again about Extraordinaries.
When Nick became an Extraordinary and teamed up on and off the field with Shadow Star, maybe someone would write a comic book about him, filled with colorful panels of POW and BLAM and heroic deeds against the forces of evil.
He made a mental note to put together a pitch for Marvel and DC and Vertigo after he’d gotten his powers. He did have to expand his brand, after all. Comic books, TV shows, movies. He hoped they would hire someone with nice abs to play him. That seemed like it’d be the right thing to do, even if it would be embellishing a little.
Seth was lying in bed, propped up by two pillows. His comforter was pulled up to his chin, and he was staring at Nick with wide eyes. A trickle of sweat ran down his forehead.
“Hi!” he squeaked. He coughed. Then, in a much lower voice, said, “Hi.”
“Hi,” Nick said, closing the door behind him. “Are you dying?”
“Um. No?”
“That’s good.” Nick let his backpack fall to the floor. “Because Martha told me about the ghosts here, and it would totally suck if you died and became trapped like they did. I don’t know how I’d feel about having to salt and burn your bones.”
Seth squinted at him. “The … ghosts?”
“Yes, the ghosts.” Nick frowned. “And speaking of, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me your house used to be a tuberculosis insane asylum and is haunted now. That seems like information one tells his best friend.”
“Tuberculosis … insane … asylum?”
Seth’s cold must have infected his brain. He sounded like he didn’t know what Nick was talking about. “Right,” Nick said slowly. “The tuberculosis insane asylum. Your aunt just told me all about it. Didn’t you hear those footsteps running up the stairs and the door slamming?” Nick’s eyes widened as he looked around. “Oh my god, are they here right now?”
“Oh,” Seth said. “Right. The ghosts! Sorry. I thought you were talking about something else. This flu. Man, it is really making me woozy.”
“I thought you had a cold.”
Seth nodded furiously. “Right. A cold. That’s exactly what I meant.” He coughed roughly. “Oh man, such a bad cold. So sick. From the flooding. You should leave since I’m contagious, and I don’t want you to catch it.”
“I ate oranges,” Nick told him, sitting on the edge of the bed. Seth pulled his feet away to make room.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat an orange.”
“Why is everyone saying that to me today?” Nick wondered aloud. “I do eat fruit, you know. Like, maybe not all the time, but I do.”
“When was the last time you ate an orange?”
Nick didn’t think he’d eaten an orange in at least three years. “This morning. So I’m chock full of vitamin C and therefore, immune to your affliction.”
“Well, better to be safe than sorry,” Seth said, pulling his covers up to his mouth. “You should probably go home, and then we can talk on the phone.”
Nick shrugged. “I’m already here. If I’m going to be infected, it’s happened by now.”
Seth sighed.
“Are you okay? You’re acting kinda weird.”
“I’m fine,” Seth said. “Just, you know. Medicine head, and all that.” He coughed again.
Seth needed to take better care of himself. “Do you need me to bring you something? I was going to get you soup, but then I didn’t have any money, so I didn’t.”
“Thought that counts, I suppose.”
“Right? You’re welcome.”
“You’re all heart, Nicky.”
Nick opened his mouth to say something about how boring today had been, or about how he’d fought with his dad, or maybe even about how Shadow Star and Pyro Storm had brawled all-out the night before. He could have said any number of things. But then his mouth was hijacked by a rebel part of his brain, and he said, “You kissed me on the cheek yesterday.”
Seth’s eyes widened above his blanket. “I … did?”
“Wow,” Nick breathed. “I did not mean to bring that up. Honestly, I was going to try and work my way up to it in like five or six weeks.”
“And yet there it is.”
“Right? I’m braver than I give myself credit for.” He grinned. “I’m going to make a good Extraordinary.”
“It’s weird how not weird it is that I can totally follow your line of thinking.”
“You’re fluent in Nick, I guess.”
“Years of practice.”
Nick felt like he was about to burst. “So the kissing! We should talk about the kissing!”
Seth winced. “I would really rather not, if it’s all the same to you.”
Nick patted his foot under the comforter. It felt like he was wearing boots, but it must have just been the blankets. Seth would never wear boots to bed. That would be ridiculous. “Too late. It’s already out there.”
“It’s not that big of a deal.”
That caused a strange twist in Nick’s stomach that almost felt like disappointment. “Oh.”
“I mean, friends do that all the time.”
“They do?”
Seth shrugged. “I read they do.”
“What? Where?”
Seth was sweating even more. “The internet.”
“Where did you find that?” Nick demanded. “I tried to look it up, and all I could find were quizzes about what I’d be like in bed that I absolutely did not take!” He’d taken three of them. According to one, he was a modern woman in the streets, and a tigress in the sheets. He didn’t know what to do with any of that. Tigers were cool and all, but he didn’t think he had the posture to be a modern woman.
The comforter dropped a little. “Why were you looking that up?”
Nick blanched. “Um. For reasons completely unrelated to the topic at hand.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” Nick said, suddenly defensive. His skin felt warm, and he wondered if he’d already been infected. “You know I like to look things up. It’s one of my things.”
Seth was looking at him strangely. If Nick didn’t know any better, he’d have thought Seth was almost … hopeful. “I just—I don’t know. It felt like the right thing to do. I was going to face … all that flooding, and I didn’t want to do it without saying goodbye.”
“All that flooding,” Nick repeated.
“Right.”
“So you kissed me.”
“On the cheek. You’re acting like I stuck my tongue down your—”
“Whoa,” Nick gasped. “I wasn’t acting like that at all.”
Seth paled. He must have been really sick. “I didn’t mean it like that!”
Then a thought struck Nick that made him frown. “Do you go around kissing a lot of people?”
“What? No!”
“What about the secret girlfriend and/or boyfriend you have?”
Seth groaned. “I don’t have a secret girlfriend and/or boyfriend. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“Many more times,” Nick said. “Because I don’t believe you. I know I can be dumb about a lot of things, but you can’t expect me to believe that you were at the animal shelter volunteering all summer.”
Seth said, “I was. There was a shortage of volunteers, and I had to do my part!”
“For the animals.”
“Exactly.”
Nick was starting to get a little annoyed. “Why, though? I get that it’s the right thing to do because cats and dogs are cool and all, but do they need you all the time? I mean, there was a flooding problem, and you were the one they called? It’s like they own you.” Then Nick was struck with another thought. “Do they own you? Is there some kind of secret ASPCA no-kill-shelter mafia that you belong to now? Have they bugged you? Are they listening right now?” He glared up at the biplane, sure it was the perfect place to hide a recording device.
“Oh my god. How the hell did you get from volunteering to the mafia?”
“It’s best not to question such things,” Nick said. “And I notice you didn’t deny it. If we need to get you to a safe house, cough once. I don’t actually have a safe house, but I have forty dollars in singles under my mattress, and that should be enough for one of those hotels downtown that rent by the hour.”
“Nicky, there’s no mafia.”
“Maybe that’s what they want you to—”
“Nick,” Seth said through gritted teeth, and that shut Nick right up. Because Seth, tolerant and wonderful Seth, looked exasperated. Nick had seen it before, though never on Seth’s face. He’d gotten it from teachers. He’d gotten it from other kids. He’d gotten it from random strangers. It was the look. Like Nick had spoken too much. Or had gone too far. Or had said something so stupid and crazy and out there that it was impossible to understand how such words could have come out of a normal, sane person. Yeah, Nick had gotten that look from many, many people in his life, but never from those he loved.
Until today.
Dad. Seth. The two people he counted on most.
He didn’t know how to handle that. It hurt in ways he wasn’t expecting. It wasn’t like he could help it, and maybe that was part of the problem. Maybe he made too big a deal out of everything. And maybe, just maybe, Seth was getting tired of it.
“Um,” Nick said, unsure of what to do. His hands were shaking, so he rubbed them on his jeans. “I didn’t mean…”
Seth let out a sharp huff of air. “Whatever’s going on in your head right now, you need to stop. It’s not bad.”
Which was exactly what someone would say when it was bad. “Maybe I should just go home.” That sounded good. He could go home and shut himself in his room. He could do his homework and be a good son, and maybe when Seth was feeling better, they could forget all about this.
Nick shouldn’t have eaten all those cookies.
“I don’t want you to—” Seth sat up in the bed. As he did, the comforter sank lower to his chest. He was wearing a white undershirt, and for a moment, Nick was distracted by how strong his chest looked, how sharp his collarbones were, but then he saw the bruise on Seth’s neck, a purple thing that almost looked like—
“Is that a hickey?” Nick asked, voice high-pitched.
Seth quickly brought his hand up to cover the bruise, but it was large, and the edges still peeked out beneath his fingers. Either someone had attached their really large mouth to Seth’s neck, or he’d gotten hurt, somehow. “It’s not a hickey.”
“What happened? Are you okay? Does it hurt? Can I touch it?”
Seth flushed. “You can’t touch—it’s fine. It’s nothing. Just … hurt myself. Down in the basement.”
Nick nodded solemnly. “Because of the washing machine. Your aunt told me that it was on the fritz.”
“Yes. Exactly. I was trying to fix the washing machine. The motor is broken.”
“I thought she said it was the filtering valve?”
“Uh. That’s what I meant. The filtering valve is broken.”
“Oh.”
Seth sighed again. “Nick, look. There isn’t any no-kill-shelter mafia. There’s no secret girlfriend and/or boyfriend.” He paused for a moment, took a deep breath and said, “And I’m sorry I kissed you on the cheek. I shouldn’t have done that. I know you don’t—”
“It’s okay,” Nick said hastily, not wanting Seth to take it back completely. Right? Right. “It just … surprised me. You’ve never done that before.”
Seth looked down at his hands. “Well, maybe I haven’t had a reason to.”
Nick felt like he was on fire. “And you do now?”
Seth shrugged. “There’s … things. About me. Things I haven’t told you. Not because I don’t trust you, but because I wanted … I didn’t know how you would see me. After.”
“What things?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
That almost sounded like an insult, but Nick kept the hurt from his face. “Why?”
Seth looked back up with a fierce expression. It was familiar, though Nick couldn’t place why. “You’ve got this idea about what it means to be an Extraordinary. You think it’s a gift that will solve everything. But it won’t. You don’t have any idea what it does to a person, and how much easier it’d be to let it all go. To just let the bad things happen. But you can’t.”
“I would never do that,” Nick snapped. “When I become an Extraordinary, I’m gonna do good for everyone. I wouldn’t ever want it to go away.”
Seth laughed bitterly. “You say that now. Just wait until—”
“I know you never wanted it,” Nick said, standing up from the bed. His head almost hit the biplane. “Not like I do. And that’s okay. That’s your choice. This is mine.”
“Why? Why do you want this?”
Nick shook his head. “I’ve told you this before.”
“Right. Because of Shadow Star. Because you think he’s this person you’ve built up in your head. What if he’s nothing like you think he is? What if all you’re going to get is disappointment?”
“No,” Nick said, taking a step back. “It’s not—okay, it was like that. And maybe part of it still is. Because he’s amazing and brave, and no one can tell me otherwise. Just because you can’t do what he does, doesn’t mean you get to talk crap about him.”
“What changed? Why do you want to be one now?”
Nick’s skin was itching. It felt like his brain was leaking out his ears. “For the people. To keep them safe. Shadow Star can’t do it all on his own, right? He needs my help. If I can do that, if I can really help him, that’ll help Nova City, and then it’ll help my dad. And then maybe he won’t hate the way I am now.”
Seth looked shocked. “Nick, your dad doesn’t hate you. He doesn’t hate anything about you.”
Nick’s fingers were twitching. “Sure seemed like it this morning when he asked me why I had to be the way I was.”
“Are you sure that’s what he said? You have a tendency to … exaggerate things.”
Nick really wanted to go home now. The walls were closing in, and his thoughts were jumbled and angry. “Great. I didn’t know you felt that way.” He scooped his backpack up from the floor. “I’ll keep that in mind for the future.”
But before he could turn toward the door, Seth tried to get out of the bed. He swung his legs out from underneath the comforter. Nick hadn’t been wrong. Seth was wearing boots. And sweats that clung to his legs. And the undershirt that was tight against his chest and shoulders. Seth groaned, clutching a hand around his stomach, gritting his teeth.
Nick took a step back. This wasn’t the Seth he knew. The Seth he knew was chubby and wore sweaters and bow ties and sometimes stuck his tongue out between his teeth when he was concentrating really hard. He was resilient and dependable and made Nick feel important.
This Seth looked strong, even though he also looked like he was hurting. The muscles in his arms bunched as he gripped his stomach, breathing through his nose. He looked like he hadn’t exactly lost weight—except in his face—but more so that it’d been redistributed and possibly turned to muscle.
Nick didn’t know what to do with that, especially since his brain seemed to have shorted out. “You’re buff,” he said stupidly. “Why are you buff?”
Seth chuckled through gritted teeth. “Hard work.”
“Why didn’t I notice?” Nick asked.
“Maybe because you don’t always see things that are right in front of you.”
That stung more than Nick thought it would. Because all he could hear in that was Dad asking him why he had to be the way he was. “That’s not fair. You know how my head is—”
“Oh, I know,” Seth said. “I know exactly how your head is. But it can’t be an excuse, Nick. Not forever. You want to be an Extraordinary? Fine. There’s a bus filled with kids that’s about to fall off a bridge. There’s an apartment building ten miles away that’s on fire and about to collapse filled with people who can’t escape on their own. Who do you save?”
“I don’t … that’s not—”
Seth looked up at him, eyes blazing. “Who do you save, Nick? You want to help the city, right? That’s what you said. You want to help the city. The people. Your dad. Who do you save?”
“I would help one,” Nick said. “And Shadow Star would help the others. That way everyone is okay, and no one would get hurt. And maybe I’d even convince Pyro Storm to help put out the fire, because he can’t be all bad—”
“Funny how that works,” Seth muttered. He shook his head. “You have faith, Nick. That’s good. But it’s not going to be enough.”
Nick bristled. “What the hell, man? All I wanted was to come over here and check on you—”
“Even though I told you to stay away—”
“—and now you’ve got bruises and muscles and you’re wearing boots in bed—”
“It’s my house. I can do what I want.”
“—and you’re trying to quiz me or something, and you’re talking crap about Shadow Star who is the greatest Extraordinary alive. And maybe you don’t want me to be like him. Or Pyro Storm. Maybe you’re just jealous about—”
Seth’s laugh was almost hysterical. “Jealous? About Extraordinaries? That’s not even…” He tilted his head. “Huh. That actually makes a lot of sense.”
Nick wasn’t expecting that. “It does? I mean, of course it does. You’re just jealous that … that, um. Okay, wait. Why are you jealous?”
Seth looked up at him again. That same strange glint was in his eyes. “I’m right here, you know? I have been. For a long time.”
Nick was confused. “I know.”
“And then there was Owen, and you—”
“Made a sexy but regrettable mistake,” Nick admitted. “I blame teenage hormones and this thing he could do with his tongue.” He grimaced. “That makes me sound terrible.”
“And now you’ve got this stupid crush on Shadow Star.”
“Don’t,” Nick snapped. “It’s not stupid, okay? He saved me, and he knows who I am without me having to tell him, which means he might like me or something, and even if he doesn’t, I can show him that I can be—”
“Who is he, Nick?”
That stopped Nick right in his tracks. “What?”
Seth stared at him intently. “Who is he? He’s Shadow Star. But who is he behind his mask?”
“That doesn’t matter to me.”
“It might if you find out. It might change everything. What if it were me?”
Nicholas Bell did what was possibly the stupidest thing in a short, short life filled with many stupid things. He didn’t mean to, of course. It was a knee-jerk reaction. He didn’t think he could have stopped it even if he’d tried.
He laughed. He laughed, because the idea of Seth of all people being Shadow Star was so preposterous, he couldn’t even fathom it.
Seth’s expression hardened.
“I’m sorry,” Nick gasped, trying to fight it down but failing quite spectacularly. “You’re Seth. There’s no way you could—I mean, that’s dumb. Come on, man. Don’t do that. You don’t need to be him. You’re fine the way you are. And besides, it’s not like you would keep that a secret from me, right? I mean, if you were Shadow Star, you’d tell me. It’s just … dumb.”
Seth nodded tightly. “Right. Dumb. Of course. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Nick flailed. The conversation had spun out of control. “Oh, hey. Wait. I didn’t mean it like that. You’re my favorite person in the whole world next to my dad. You know that, right? You’re not dumb.”
“Just the idea of me being an Extraordinary is.”
Nick felt like he was on ice, and it was cracking beneath his feet. “I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
“I kissed your cheek.”
Nick felt his face grow warm again. “I … yeah.”
Seth looked away. “You should go.”
Nick blinked. “Wait, what? What did I do? Are you mad at me?”
Seth smiled tightly. “I just want to be by myself. Sick, remember? Can’t have you catching it.”
“We still need to talk about me becoming—”
“Please. Just … go.”
Since Nick was helpless when Seth said please, he turned and left. Before he closed the door, he looked over his shoulder. Seth sat on his bed, face in his hands.
He left, shutting the door.
Bob was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He wore a pair of overalls stained with grease. He looked older than Nick remembered, the lines around his eyes and mouth deeper. His hair hung in white wisps around his face. Nate could hear Martha moving in the kitchen.
“Nicky,” Bob said, his voice a deep rumble. “Everything okay?”
No, it really wasn’t. He shook his head.
“Heard some raised voices.”
Nick winced. “Sorry about that. Just a frank exchange of ideas.”
“You boys okay?”
Nick didn’t know if they were or not. He couldn’t even be sure what they’d argued about. He just knew he was mad at pretty much everyone, mostly for nonsensical reasons. He wasn’t sure if that included Seth. “I’m sorry to tell you that your nephew is a jerk.” Okay, so maybe it did include Seth.
Bob barely reacted. “He’s a teenager. That’s to be expected.”
“But I might be one too.”
“A teenager or a jerk?”
Nick liked Bob a lot. “Both.”
Bob nodded slowly. “Seems like things are changing.”
“Tell me about it,” Nick muttered, pulling on one of the straps to his backpack. “When did Seth get biceps?”
Bob chuckled. “Noticed that, did you? Growing up, I guess.”
“That’s not fair. He gets muscles, and I get a little mustache that makes me look like I should be wearing a trench coat and flashing people.”
“That was … oddly specific.”
Nick sighed. “I tend to do that.”
“You’ll come into yours,” Bob said, patting him on the shoulder. “He’s going through a lot right now. More than you could possibly know.”
“Why won’t he just tell me?” Nick asked, suddenly exhausted. “I’m his best friend. He can tell me anything. It’s how we’ve always been.”
“Can he?” Bob asked. “Maybe he needs to hear that from you.”
Oof. That was pointed, but fair. “I try to be a good friend. But sometimes, other stuff comes up. I get stuck in my own head and forget what I should be doing instead of what I want to be doing.”
“That’s how life goes. Things happen. It’s difficult. Sometimes, people drift apart. They get set upon different paths. Doesn’t mean they care about each other any less.”
Nick stared at him in horror. “That’s not going to happen. I’m going to be with Seth forever.”
Bob’s lips twitched. “How … expected. And if he said the same to you?”
Nick blushed furiously. “I. Um. That would be. Neat?”
“Oh, so I guess the fact that he’s in love with you would—”
“Robert Gray!” Martha said furiously, coming out of the kitchen, a dish towel in her hands. “You close those flapping lips of yours right this second.”
Bob scowled at her. “Someone needs to say it. Aren’t you tired of all the pining? You’re lucky I didn’t tell him about how Seth is—”
She slapped the dish towel over his mouth while glaring up at him.
He waggled his eyebrows at her.
They looked at Nick.
Nick, who was in the middle of a full system shutdown.
“Oh dear,” Martha said as she pulled the dish towel away. “I think you’ve broken him.”
Bob poked Nick on the cheek. “Imagine how he’d react if I told him the other thing.”
“Robert Gray.”
His eyes were twinkling when he said, “Probably a good idea just to keep it at one thing at a time.”
“Why, you old rascal. You’re gonna get it, I promise.”
“I should hope so,” Bob said, kissing her cheek.
Three minutes later, Nick found himself standing on the porch of the Gray brownstone, a plate of cookies in his hand, the door closing behind him after Martha told him to come back as soon as he could.
It took him at least ten more minutes before he was able to somehow make his legs work again.
He didn’t remember much about the walk home.