Electric Flame

1.6

Kid Flash dragged me by the wrist all the way to Central City. He insisted that, in order to figure out how to release Gotham from Time's death grip, he would have to use his own laptop which resided on the couch in the living room of his house. He claimed he had special software from Star Labs that allowed him to see energy waves and radioactivity levels of the Earth's core. 

I need one of those. I made a mental note. Next time, instead of Wayne Industries, I'll hack into Star Labs.

We'd been sitting here for the past hour, him typing away on the keys and me being irritated by the constant clicking and clacking. Not to mention that his mouth moves a million times a minute.

I peeked over his shoulder to get a good look at the so-called 'progress'. Sure enough, there was no secret, specialized software anywhere on the screen. Instead, there was a blond girl in a green suit, a bow in hand and her hair in a ponytail. Her eyes were steel gray and full of struggle.

I turned toward Kid Flash. He was slobbering all over his yellow and red suit. His mouth hung open and drool seeped out of each corner. 

"Why are you drooling?" He looked like the lion in the first Madagascar movie when he was chasing the zebra because he was starving and appeared as a piece of raw steak. I slowly scooted away to the other end of the couch.

Just in case, I told myself. But the girl in the photo resembled the girl next to Green Arrow from earlier. They're probably the same people. And he probably likes her. From the way he was staring at that picture, he must like her a lot.

"What?" He quickly clicked the red 'x' at the top right corner of the screen and began to type into the command prompt instead. Kid Flash's green eyes widened and he wiped the corner of his mouth. "I wasn't drooling. I'm just hungry." His cheeks flushed pink and he pat his stomach. "I haven't had anything to eat in like an hour."

I scrunched my nose in confusion. "What did you eat?"

He smiled at me proudly. "A large, deep dish pepperoni pizza with extra olives." I stared at him, a stupid expression plastered across my face. "What?" He shrugged. "I've got a serious metabolism."

I could hear the clock tick in the new silence. I tapped my foot on the carpet as I rested my head in the palms of my hands. Kid Flash kept typing, muttering an 'almost done' every now and again.

"Who were you thinking about?" I asked, breaking the ice in the room, but my voice came out a lot louder than I expected it to.

"Huh?" He flailed off the end of the couch and onto the floor with a thud. Once he peeked his head over the armrest, he situated the computer on his lap again, but his eyes were wandering everywhere but directly at me. "What makes you think I was thinking about someone? It wasn't a girl or anything." He scratched the back of his neck.

This is almost too easy. I shook my head in disappointment. Boys are just about the dumbest species on this Earth.

"Dude, you just told me that it was a girl," I deadpanned, sounding extremely bored. "It was the blond on the computer, wasn't it? I'm not an idiot. She's the girl with Green Arrow, right?"

Growing up how I grew up, I was built to notice these things. To study people and how they interact with one another. When Mother began taking me on heists, I was already trained to think twenty steps in the future. I needed to figure out within a matter of seconds the dozens of ways guards can react if they caught us. Like chess. I loved chess. But it didn't always work. Being a teenage girl, I was also made to act irrationally.

"How did you know?" he asked, slowly dragging on his words as the sentence came to an end.

I sat up straight and crossed my legs. "I was taught to understand people as part of my training. Their movements, their emotions, their body language. Everything. Though, it's difficult sometimes. It's harder on people my own age. But you've got the words 'love-struck dummy' written across your forehead in big, black letters. It doesn't take a genius," I told him, though I didn't really know why. He had that trustworthy aura around him, I guessed.