Podcast of a Teenage Super-Villian

Chapter Three: Plans II

Chip Hardwell.  Chip's parents didn't have any real reasons for picking the name,  no Confederate generals or coffee brand, not even a baby-naming book. They just loved how it sounded, short and perky, loved that name almost as much as they loved their tall and stoic son.

10:13, October 8th, Chip stares down at his cell phone with his head in his hands and his shoulders hunched forward. He's slouched in his favorite rolly chair, the one with the missing wheel and the seat stuffed with goose feathers. Percy's sitting up on his rolltop desk, her head lowered and her hand squeezing his shoulder. All she can see of him is a blonde head, all he can see of her is her ruffly purple sweater. 

"You did what you had to, Chip. I'm so sorry I never noticed." Her voice lowers, her green eyes cloudy now in the flickering light of the attic room. She's about to cry. A stranger could never tell, because she's trained herself to hide her emotions with a short laugh and a smile,  but Chip can. He can tell because when he lifts his head, red creeps up her cheeks, all the way to her eyelids, brow. He can tell by the way her shoulders begin to quiver.

"Not your fault," murmurs Chip, glancing back down at his phone screensaver. It's a picture of the three of them, dolled up for tenth-grade homecoming, back when Percy was pretending to date Chip. They're standing in front of the school's all-glass exterior, and each panel splashes back a starry night at the camera. Percy, always smiling, sits atop Chip's shoulders, piggyback style. Her hair runs down her neck in perfect curls, her eyelids smoky dark with makeup and her lips lacquered to a red sheen. Emerald dress with a jeweled belt. She looks like a movie star, this fifteen-year-old making bunny ears behind Chip's head. 

Chip is grinning—he never smiles, not with his teeth—at the lens, hair swept sideways in a ponytail that coils down his neck in waves like liquid gold. His sleeves are rolled up to reveal leather cuffs. Nine of them on each arm, count 'em, black, studded, spiked. He'd left his thrift store Oxfords that bought him admission to the dance in one of the urinals, and now he's wearing his favorite combat boots that lace to the knees. Max is standing beside him, suit sleeves tied around his waist, chocolate-brown hair flopped down in front of his face, tie making him look young and dignified. He's making a 'crazy' gesture by his left temple, his finger a loop of motion, and his right-hand squeezes Chip's hip.

It's almost been a year.

Chip wants to go back. He wants to burrow into the photo and stay that almost-smiling kid forever. Before Max got his powers. Before Max hurt him.

"But there are signs, you know?" Percy says, legs swinging. Her bare feet whoosh over the arm of Chip's chair, missing his shoulder by half an inch. "You were bruised all the time and Max got weird and twitchy. His dad is crazy! Those are signs! I just..."

"S'alright." He flips his phone over so he can't stare at Max's sweet smile. When he lifts his head to look into Percy's eyes, he blinks several times, as if he's staring into the sun. "I'm okay." He even grins. "I promise."

"He hit you!" She throws herself off his desk and paces around his barren room. His room now is just a bed, desk and guitar equipment he keeps under tarps. When Percy was little, she couldn't stay after dark because she thought the tarped-cover stereo system was a monster, perched in the corner. "Chip, you're amazing, just everything you've been through. I'm so so sorry, I—"

"I'm good, Persephone." Chip doesn't like to talk, and Percy might as well have been born to do the opposite. He doesn't know when he started to call her by her full name when she got too talky, just knows it's something he caught her parents doing ("Percy! PERSEPHONE! I just want to hear myself think!"). And it has an immediate effect on her, every time. Her face goes all red and she starts to fidget with her hands, glance sideways, twist up the hem of her shirt in her fingers or stuff her hands in her pockets. She starts to smile nervously, all fake demure. Perfect girls aren't supposed to talk so much, to fill up so much space with their thoughts. They're supposed to shrink. She quiets, but the silence is strange and uncomfortable. Chip sighs. "I mean, no, I guess I'm not all okay."