Super

16 - No, I GLIDED Into The Window

"You shall love your crooked neighbour with your crooked heart,"

– As I Walked Out One Evening

RECAP:

In front of me stood the Claw with her arms crossed, a piece of paper folded neatly in her fingers with Vitelli's unmistakeable handwriting scrawled across. It was an address. The Claw fixed me with a venomous glare and hissed, "Annie, what the fuck is this?"

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When I was little, my mom used to tell me that sometimes the only way to know whether you could trust someone was by just trusting them. Of course that doesn't mean jumping in some stranger's van with the promise of candy and unicorns, but rather if someone saves your life, infamous super villain or not, you should probably give them a chance to explain themselves. Unfortunately, just trusting someone often leads to the knocking-the-breath-out-of-you kind of shock that you really wouldn't have felt if you hadn't stumbled forth so blindly only to get punched in the gut by reality.

It's like when you're hugging someone. You don't need to check every few seconds to make sure that they're still there because you can still feel them in your arms. You still feel them because they're still there and because they're still hugging you. Until they're not and you wake up one day and finally realise your arms are freaking empty.

It's like thinking you aced your math test and then getting it back to see that you failed, or leaning in to kiss someone and opening your eyes and realising they stole your wallet, or it's like turning on your favourite radio station and just getting static. There are a billion different analogies for betrayal, but I won't go into them because I'm not John Green or David Leviathan and I don't think I could make you fully understand like they could unless you just knew. Unless you just trust me.

Now, IH stared back at me with wide, cautious eyes as he tried to make me listen. My dad's baseball hat lay forgotten on the other side of the room from when I had tried to throw it at the super in front of me.

"Annie–" IH held up his hands to try and reason with me.

"SHUT UP!" I screamed, "shut up you fucking traitor!"

I guess I should explain...

After I had gotten home from my date with Ciaran to find a very unhappy Claw glaring down at me, I knew immediately something was up – and it wasn't just the hair on my arms. The first clue was the piece of paper in Lila's long, nimble fingers. I took it, read it over, and concluded that yes; it was the address Obsidian Black had promised me.

"Lila, it's how we're going to find the other supers! That's where he's keeping them!" I explained excitably, but I couldn't help the nervous swallow that followed.

"Annie, what did you do to get it?" She watched me with sad eyes, which was, needless to say, my second clue that something was seriously wrong.

"Um, IH–"

"Oh, IH," She laughed bitterly, yanking off her mask and flopping down on the couch a few feet away. I followed her over and sat in the armchair opposite, trying to gauge her reaction as she continued, "nothing good ever follows that name."

"My date with Ciaran was good, by the way, thanks for asking," I rolled my eyes. Lila shot me a glare, but I saw the guilt in her eyes and my anger immediately softened. "Lila, seriously, what's up?"