Super

2 - Let The Cat Out of The Bag - Literally

"I think about how much depends upon a best friend. You wake up in the morning, you swing your legs out of bed, and put your feet on the ground and stand up.

You don't scoot to the edge of the bed and look down to make sure the floor is there.

The floor is always there.

Until it's not."

– John Green and David Levithan 

Less than a minute later, a familiar midnight-blue suit appeared outside my window, Lila's masked face peeking in. "Mind opening the window?" She was sweating, "it's kind of hard to hold on here." I frowned and opened the window. Lila tumbled in, breathing heavily. She ripped off her mask and exposed her suit just above the waist to where a jagged cut in her hip was bleeding steadily.

"I was less than twenty feet from your house when our little friend," her mouth puckered like she tasted something sour, "appeared out of nowhere and stabbed me! Like, what the hell, man?"

I gasped. I knew IH could clone himself within a twenty-foot vicinity and had no doubt that's what happened. While he was distracting me, he stabbed my best friend. I bit my lip and rushed to get the emergency first aid kit I kept under my bed. Lila was always taking pit stops at my house to get bandaged up so I was pretty much used to her cuts and bruises. She was also a baby when it came to pain. She whimpered as I dabbed her side with rubbing alcohol. The wound wasn't deep at all and it made me wonder why IH had even bothered stabbing her if he barely grazed the skin.

"You're scowling," Lila noted, "is it that bad? You only scowl when something's bad. Am I gonna die?"

"Lila I'm scowling because I hurt myself worse when I fell off the climbing wall in first grade."

"You only grazed your elbow."

"Exactly. He barely grazed you. Why would he stab you if he didn't want to hurt you?"

"Maybe he did it to get your attention," Lila suggested softly, her wide eyes glancing up to meet my own, "oh my gosh! What if he did it to get your attention? We could catch him!" Forgetting all about her little injury, Lila was on her feet and clapping excitedly. "We could use you as bait and–"

"Wow, hold up," I got up and dusted myself off, "I am not being used as bait!"

Lila pouted, "fine. Be that way."

"Look, Lila, I'm only human. I'm not brave like you supers."

"We're human too," she countered, quieter this time, "we just have super cool powers that let us push through the fear."

I raised my eyebrow, "exactly. You have powers and I don't."

"I have powers so I can protect people like you," she said pointedly. I didn't bother arguing.

"Touché," I shrugged, "but I'm still not going to be bait."

"Fine, fine," she muttered, "leave us all high and dry. But when the city gets destroyed because you were too scared to meet lover boy in a dark alley, don't come crying to me," she joked with a giggle and leapt out of the open window.

When the supers revealed themselves to us lowly civilians last year, the truth is, I already knew. Lila had told me everything a good year and a half before everyone "came out" with their powers. Well, their alternate identities came out. Their secret identities remained a secret because they didn't want villains tracking down them or their families. It was much easier when nobody knew who they were. Still, two and a half years later, it still shocked me when Lila took a dive bomb out of my apartment building from five stories up.