A Guide to Being Super

Rule #15

Rule #15: Keep your sister (or any siblings/family members) out of your secret lair. It's your private space, dude, protect it with your life. Once you start letting them in, as innocent as it seems, things just go downhill. They start coming in all the time and using your bathroom and eating your food and it just gets entirely out of hand. But if you try to cut it off then, everyone gets upset. So set your boundaries early. They still might be annoyed but they're your family so they'll forget about it eventually. I promise, things will be better off in the long run when you're able to dance around in your underwear without them randomly showing up. Not that I do that, I just have a friend that does. Stop asking so many questions!

A few days later, after class one day, Faye called after me and pulled me aside. Naturally, this gesture freaked me the fuck out. For one thing, she never came up to me. At least, not before Ike and Lena made fun of the heroes and definitely not before I saved her. Also, she had been practically stalking me the last few days but had left me alone all day today, which was doubly weird. But now she was walking up to be all out of the blue? It was weird, especially since she definitely looked guilty. Had she told someone about my being a superhero? What the hell was wrong?

"Hey," I said, ready to run if necessary.

"Hey." Now she looked even more nervous. WHAT WAS THIS.

"What's up?" Please don't tell me that you betrayed my secret. Maybe just ask what the homework was and just walk away.

"Uh... Well, this is embarrassing..."

Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit.

"It's just, uh-" she said. "Would you maybe want to go out on a date with me?"

"What?"

The word was out of my mouth before I could stop it and her face flushed even more. Great, now I was that asshole. Here she was, asking me out on a date (even if it was only a pity date) and I was acting like I had the social skills of a kindergartener. No, a kindergartener would know to be more polite, I was practically an infant. No wonder Ike was my only friend. (Damn it, I realized then that I was one of those friendless kids teachers and parents worried about and pitied all the time. I mean, I technically had Dan and Rachel but I don't think a grown man and my sister were really what people thought of when they thought of friends.)

"Nevermind, if you don't want to then don't worry about it."

Her face was bright red, she looked like a cute tiny little tomato, and she started to turn away. I panicked, trying to get her attention but not knowing what to say, and ended up basically grabbing her shoulder and wrenching her around to look at me. Even better, now I was the guy that hurt girls. That would be an easy one to explain to the superhero council.

"No!" I was finally able to say. "No, I do want to."

"You do?" She looked so surprised (hopefully pleasantly surprised) that I felt like the biggest asshole in the world. Could she really not tell that I had been drooling over her for the past million years? That seemed unlikely, I was kind of a bumbling idiot.

Truth was, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. On the one hand, I wanted to say yes just because she hadn't told anyone my secret. Like it wouldn't be a pity yes but it would be a "I'm not sure about this in general but you're sweet and have shown that you're a good person by keeping my secret" sort of thing.

But on the other hand, after she had kissed me I was feeling it a lot yes. Maybe I had built her up too much in my head so I was disappointed or something, but it wasn't what I wanted.

But on another hand (I had many hands in this scenario), I had liked her for so long for a reason and she was still pretty/nice/sweet/cute and all that so I would be lucky to pay for her movie ticket.