Podcast of a Teenage Super-Villian

Chapter Two: Plans

Song Selection: Breakeven— Cover by Jocelyn

You never hear about broke supervillains, because hypothetically speaking, they shouldn't exist. Not with banks to rob, citizens to mug, and worlds to ransom. If you're strong enough to pulverize a man with a single punch and you don't care who you have to hurt, then you should be living it up. Two plus two equals four. Simple as that.

You never hear about supervillains who are scared of guns, either.

I won't pretend I'm a good person. It's not that I'm scared to rob or mug or ransom, it's that I'd rather gulp down a tin can full of worms than face one more gun than I have to. Bullets? Loud noises? No thank you.

I lick my thumb and hold it down to my wound, a makeshift bandage. Blood races down my upper arm and my side. As the hail thunks my head , I curl up under the branches of an old magnolia tree, a small and tight little coil. Bloodied, I swallow big puffs of air. I think of Monet, twitching at my feet, her soft voice obliterated in that instant. Dead? She's being sewn together from the inside, unless my dad popped a cap into the base of her skull, in which case, I don't know. To think she died for me makes me sick in the back of my throat, so I try not to imagine it. The click of the trigger, the horrible sound of the gunshot. The superhero, limp and defenseless, a heap on the floor of the same room where she flirted with me past midnight, her smooth voice sliding off the walls. That same voice stretched into screams.

I rub my back up against the tree's peeling bark, twine my feet into the roots. The branches whip in the hurl of ice and rain; wind crawls through my hair and chews my scalp. I open up my suede bag by its plastic buttons, click-click, pull out a ziplock bag of saltine crackers and a slice of goat cheese wrapped in foil. The cheese, thick and creamy, runs down my bloodied fingertips, and I slather it on to the crumbling crackers. Tastes like swallowing dry leaves. I eat until my stomach roils from stale grain and moldy milk. And then I stare down at my bag.

A plan is churning in the back of my skull. Not a full roadmap, just threads to weave together. I have to leave Silver Dollar. Non-negotiable. I should talk to Chip. Maybe. Next, money. I have fifty dollars pinched together from odd chores. Then, there are the thousands my father dealt me for the destruction of each super, split across six accounts. If I disguise myself, I can get an apartment. My breathing evens. I'll be fine, I tell myself, though my chest still aches.

I dig into my bag. I'd stolen some of Chip's clothes. A pull-over faded band shirt. An old hoodie torn at the sleeves with fishnet running under the holes. Chip's go-to fix. Made him look edgy, he said. And when I clench the faded black hoodie to my chest, with its tears and shoddy stitches, I can still smell Chip. He never wore cologne, not even the bottle of Dolce Gabbana Percy bought him when they pretended to date ("I'll tell Dad I don't like guys as soon as mom comes home, I promise! Just put on the stupid suit, Chip. And if we're gonna pretend date, you can at least smell presentable."), but he's always had a certain smell to him, cigarettes and cinnamon. Cigarettes because his aunt smokes, cinnamon because he's always popping red hots.

My hands tremble around the bunches of fabric. Chip's smell is so intense, if I close my eyes I can imagine he's behind me. But I don't. I stare back down at two bottles of black hair dye that have rolled out of my bag. Since it's cheap, familiar, and cliche enough to fade into the background, Chip's all-black punk look was the first disguise I thought to steal. If I throw up my hood, kept a sweep of black hair over my eye, and put in my gray contacts, then maybe I'll slip into the background. Just some goth twerp, nothing to look at. But slipping Chip's hoodie over my tattered shirt, surrounding myself in the whispers of his warmth, that spicy-sweet smell creeping up my skin, it makes my eyes flutter open wide. I think of him strewn at my feet, the bruises on his neck a chain of purple and green, blue and black.