The sun is rising when I finally make it to Babbling Brook Inn & Suites. The hotel is kind of sketchy, along with its name, but it's the only hotel that I have enough energy to bike to because my leg is a little incapacitated. I shove the bike into a nearby rack, apologizing to Delores as I leave her behind to walk into the lobby.
The foyer smells like mildew and cleaning supplies, but I really don't care. I walk up to the grey-haired lady at the front desk. She peers at me from behind a pair of chunky black-framed glasses and does not look amused.
"Um. Hey. Do you take credit cards?" She gives me a thinly concealed once-over, her eyes straying over the dirtied bandages and the bruises spanning every inch of my exposed flesh, over my faded t-shirt and my hair that I didn't even try to tame. A week ago, I would've had a panic attack if I left the apartment looking like this. It's funny how a few events can really put things into perspective.
"What happened to you?" she grunts with mild interest as she takes my credit card. I shrug.
"Bar fight," I say dryly. Her eyes narrow as she swipes my card into the machine on top of the battered wooden desktop.
"Your card's been rejected. Do you got cash on ya?" She's chewing nicotine gum, and I can smell it when she talks. I reach into my front backpack pocket and pull out a few twenties I always keep on hand.
"Will this be enough?" I ask, taking my card back. That's weird. It's always worked for me. I'll have to try it at an ATM later. She shocks me with her next words.
"Nope. Our rate's 80 a night," she tells me without looking up. I nearly choke on my own saliva.
"80 a night? For this craphole?" I scoff incredulously. She, again, is not amused.
"We were bought out last night and the owner raised our rates. Craziest thing," she replies conversationally. What. The. Frick. Are you fricking kidding me? Reggie bought a whole motel just to make me miserable? Well, the man certainly doesn't half-ass anything. Jesus. Talk about holding a grudge.
"Fine. Guess I'll have to take my business elsewhere," I mutter. Unless he bought out every single hotel within a twenty-mile radius. This is seriously not my day. But when has it ever been? I feel like I'm the star in a really crappy, dramatic soap opera/action movie.
"Have a nice day," she says, and fishes a peppermint from a glass dish beside her dinosaur of a computer monitor. I watch, dumbfounded, as she hands it to me along with my cash.
"Um. Thanks. You too, I guess," I say, pocketing the peppermint and shoving the twenties back into the zippered front of the pack.
She gives me a brittle grin and watches as I leave the rank-smelling lobby behind. I swear I can still feel her gaze piercing into my back even as the door shuts behind me, and the peach sunlight filters across my face. That's when I realize that the sky is no longer red. Kind of a relief. But at the same time it makes me wonder where Taylor is right now. The last time anyone had seen her had been when she took off from her front yard after the reporters' brutal interrogation. It kills me that I'm actually worried about her. We're sworn enemies... Or we were when I was Eris and she was Crimson. There's no way I can ever play super-villain now. Not after everything.
I just keep thinking about the pleading in her eyes as the reporters assaulted her with their insensitive questions. (Just stop thinking, Maya. Seriously.)
"There's one good thing about being a villain, Delores," I tell my boa, stroking her scales through the gaps in the plastic, "you keep low expectations." I give a sad smile before swinging myself back onto the bike.
There's a Walmart not far from here. With salty beads of sweat rolling down my forehead in the suddenly blazing sunlight, I slowly make my way over to the sprawling white building in the distance. My leg aches in protest, but it's definitely an improvement from when the bone was literally sticking out of the skin and I felt like I would pass out whenever I merely tried to move it. Hey, look on the bright side! You're not being held in a dungeon by a creepy German jewel thief and a psychopathic villain syndicate leader! Smiley face!
But on the downside, you're kind of homeless and broke and battered and you're kind of the reason an adorable little six year-old is dead. Yeah... And and you've been framed for the death of a superhero's son. The world sucks. I've always known that. I'm no stranger to devastation and hopelessness. But this is an all-time low for me, even lower than when I suffering the aftermath of the living hell that was Chicago. It's hard to go on when you feel like the world's crashing down around you and you can't gain your footing, but I'll never go back to who I was. I'll never let anyone hurt me like that- nor will I resort to hurting myself again. Rehab taught me that much, even if I didn't actually quit drinking.
I finally reach the parking lot and I shove the bike up against one of the cart corrals, praying to a God I don't believe in that the bike I stole won't be stolen again by somebody else. Delores watches me unhappily through the slits in her carrier.
"I'm sorry, baby. I'll be right back, ok?" I smile at her and then speed-walk towards the entrance. As the automatic doors slide open and I limp inside, the Walmart greeter gives me a skeptical look. He's a grizzled old man with tobacco-stained teeth. Even the lowest of society looks down upon me. How fitting. I avoid eye contact and walk with my head low through the aisles with as fast as a speed as I can manage. Please don't have anybody recognize me, please don't try to talk to me...
I don't exactly know what I'm looking for, but I know that all I have is my credit card, the twenties in my purse and the clothes on my back to survive off of. I guess food would be a good place to start, even if I don't have a place for said food just yet.
There are approximately twenty brands of protein bars, and after a minute of helpless searching, I just decide to grab the cheapest and the ones with the most protein. The only other person in this aisle is a gawky teenager with the look of a shut-in; he has pale skin, baggy eyes, and nervous fingers. As soon as I move over, he snatches a box of bars and darts away like I might try to stop him. What a weird generation we're creating.
I turn around quickly and limp away, but then of course because I'm not looking where I'm going I slam into the person next to me.
"I'm sorry," I apologize immediately, scooping up the store-brand bags of cereal that I knocked from their arms. When I shove the food towards them, they just stand there, frozen. That's when I look up at the person's face.
"Maya?" It's Dave. He watches me with careful, concerned eyes. Karma, you and I need to have a talk. He reaches an arm toward me and places a hand on my shoulder when I turn to walk away. "What- I've been worried about you. What happened?" His eyes rove over the bandages layering my skin, over the mosaic of bruises and cuts that I wish would just disappear. Of course my healing factor couldn't just heal the flesh wounds first. I should've been less careless. I should've placed an illusion down before I made the reckless decision to face the public looking like this.
"Nothing," I tell him flatly, moving away from his hand. His arm drops down to his side, looking even more concerned rather than hurt like I expected him to be when I blew him off. Ugh.
"Right. Because this is what 'nothing' looks like," he says sarcastically, gesturing to my wounds. You gotta love Dave. I know I do, but for God's sake- why here? Why now? Life has entirely sucky timing sometimes.
"Not in Walmart, Dave," I mutter under my breath. "Not ever," I mumble even lower. He must be able to hear me though because his face downturns into a frown.
"So what? You always want to have drunken conversations in some falling-apart bar? Is that what our friendship will always be based off of?" He sounds a little pissed. I guess I would be too.
"What friendship, Dave? So you drove me home one night. You think you can get me a BFF necklace now? We can go to the movies and squeal in each other's ears when our favorite parts our playing? You want to go the mall and get pedicures?" As soon as the heated words leave my lips, I regret them. But Dave's face doesn't change. He just shakes his head.
"I don't know what happened to you, but I'm scared for you, Maya-"
"Don't call me that!" My voice comes out louder than I intended it to, more like a shout, and several passerby glance at me like I'm crazy. Good. Maybe then they'll finally stay away.
"Then what do you want me to call you? Waterman? Like we're poker buddies? Or how about just 'gal?'" He bites his lip and looks away. "I know you're afraid of getting too close to people, so I'll back off. But I want you to know that I'm always here for you, May," he takes a step back, with his bags of cereal crinkling in his arms. He has this sad little smile on his face. When he turns around and walks away, I almost have the strange urge to call him back to me. But it's too late. I'm standing alone in the cereal aisle, clutching a box of protein bars like it's my lifeline.
Apparently everybody in this whole freaking city thinks that they have a degree in psychology. And I must make the perfect psych patient.
"Nosy little twerps, the whole lot of them," I grumble darkly as I approach the self checkouts. My mutterings earn me worried glances from the middle-aged couple beside me. I give them the widest grin I can possibly give. They shuffle away quickly, their arms laden with white plastic bags. I childishly stick my tongue out at their backs, but the only person around to appreciate my oddity is the same Walmart greeter. He looks one step away from calling the local mental institution and asking them if they're missing a patient.
I swipe my card through, but a little notification pops up on the screen of the machine.
Card denied.
That's weird. I try it again.
Card denied.
Oh crap. Crap. This cannot be good. Third time's the charm?
Card denied.
I start to swipe it over and over again, my heartbeat picking up after every denial, but eventually I have to accept the fact that maybe I am forever going to be the subject of some sick voodoo experiment. But wait. Maybe it's just the machine.
I leave my bars behind and try a nearby no-fee ATM. My card is rejected once more. And again. And again. I. Am. So. Screwed.
"Is there a problem?" The Walmart greeter has noticed my distress and walks over cautiously, fiddling with his name tag. "Can I help you?"
"No, Wallace," I say, reading his name-tag briefly, "you cannot effing help me because the world is effing stupid and unless you can lend me a few thousand dollars I'm not going to waste my time trying to explain the hopelessness of my effed-up life to you, so goodbye." With that, I take off running toward the automatic doors like a maniac. I don't know why I do. Maybe I'm just tired of trying to contain my craziness. I scream and kick at the metal carts in the corral until they go rolling across the asphalt like they're running away from me.
"That's right, mother-effers!" I shout after the carts. A guy is eating a frozen burrito in his car and gives me a deer-in-the-headlights look with crumbs stuck in his beard. I flip him off and take off speeding on my stolen bike, ignoring Delores's hiss of protest. I keep telling myself that maybe there's still some hope left for me, but I think that maybe my share of hope got lost in the mail.
YOU ARE READING
Super?
Adventure"Stop pretending to be an idiot, idiot." Ouch. It burns. "You're starting to sound like a dear old friend of mine," she adds, her tone implying that her "friend" isn't so much of a "friend" as a mortal enemy who she probably also dragged into an all...
