Refraction

  Refraction

  By Hayden Scott

  Max Jackson spends his days worrying about the same things most teenagers do—homework, college admission, and how to detonate the doomsday device his mom built in their basement. As a member of the “Injustice League,” Max has devoted his life to destroying his city’s corrupt power structure. Everything is going according to plan until all-American superhero Crush Goodman steals the device right out from under him. Max’s life gets even more complicated when Crush starts stalking him at school and acting friendlier than he ever should to his archnemesis. Caught between his evolving feelings for Crush and wanting to protect his secret identity, Max has to steal his device back and show Crush the true meaning of supervillainy.

  Endless thanks to the friends who listen to me panic about fake people for months at a time.

  “DYNAMAN, TO the bell tower!” Max’s mother bellowed at him, swinging wildly from Mr. Magnificent’s shoulders as he heaved, trying to unseat her.

  “You won’t get away with this, Catalyst,” Mr. Magnificent declared. “Your days are numbered!”

  “You couldn’t even count high enough for that!” sneered Max’s mom, and she toppled them both over the railing onto a large conveyor belt.

  Max sighed.

  It wasn’t that he wasn’t committed to the mission or didn’t understand how important their work was. It was just that his mom and Mr. Magnificent had the same exchange every other week. And the worst part was that Mr. Magnificent was always right—he never let Max and Catalyst detonate their doomsday device, even though it would make a totally impressive battle finale. A lever always broke at the wrong time, or the sharks escaped the shark tank, or one time his mom’s monologue ran long enough for the SWAT team to arrive.

  It was enough to give a guy a complex.

  But Max flew up to the bell tower anyway, because one time he had gone home in the middle of a fight, and he was pretty sure he was technically still grounded.

  The doomsday device sat proud and tall like a throne on the stone floor at the base of the bell. Max crouched in the windowsill for a moment, observing its majesty, then indulged himself in a midair backflip as he landed in front of it.

  He could still be badass even if no one was around to see it.

  He stretched, his back loosening with a satisfying pop, and set to his routine of hitting the complex combination of levers and buttons that would arm the device. (He and his mother had almost gotten the start-up procedure down to eighteen minutes this time.)

  He’d made it to the fifth toggle-change back and was reaching for the hidden pulley when the door burst open behind him, and Crush Goodman barged onto the platform.

  “Halt, fiend!” he declared, pointing at Max with one obnoxiously righteous finger.

  Max raised his hands above his head and turned slowly. “Well, if it isn’t the Crush,” he recited. “Come to meet your maker today?”

  “Villain, I’ve come to stop your heinous plot,” Crush parroted. Max scoffed internally—Crush had used that exact same line last time.

  Max scoffed again out loud to make sure Crush knew how disappointing he was.

  But Max was a professional, or at least training to be a professional, so he dedicated himself to the dialogue even if he did have to be partnered with a verbal Neanderthal.

  “You and what army?” Max taunted, inching backward toward the doomsday device. “You could never stop me alone.”

  “I stopped you just last week!” Crush insisted, his shoulders dropping from their heroic angle, and a note of genuine offense sneaking into his voice.

  “Yeah, with the help of your dad.” Max casually dropped his arms and looped his hands behind his back. “Does he cut your meat for you, too? Tie your shoes?”

  Crush’s face turned beet red, an unfortunate look on anyone that blond. Max took a moment to mentally congratulate himself on his own dark brown cheeks, which never betrayed him.

  “You take that back!” Crush sputtered.

  “Never,” Max singsonged, his fingers working frantically behind his back, pulling toggles and levers in a sequence his mother had made him memorize blindfolded last weekend. “You’re a tiny, whiny baby-child who probably needed Daddy’s help to even find me up here—”

  “Shut up!” Crush shouted, and he launched himself at Max, tackling him to the ground.

  “Oof!” Max hit the floorboards hard. “You’ll never stop me!” he gasped, mostly out of habit. Crush was almost definitely going to stop him, just like always.

  Max rolled as Crush threw a fist at his head, shattering the wood where Max had been.

  “Easy, Goliath!” Max scrambled away, swinging himself around a beam as Crush lunged for him again. Crush was aptly named for his super strength, but Max’s only superpower was flight. He was pretty nimble, but if Crush managed to pin him down, he was a goner.

  Max grabbed a broom and swung, smashing Crush in the face as he rounded the pole after Max. He took particular delight in Crush’s howl of pain as he clutched his nose.

  “You bleepah!” Crush honked, fingers pressed to his face.

  “Did you just call me a ‘bleeper’?” Max asked, delighted. Superheroes were so ridiculous with their antiquated moral standards. It was adorable.

  Unfortunately, he was so busy laughing at Crush that he didn’t notice Crush lunge until a split second too late. Crush grabbed his ankle, yanking him out of what would have been another really impressive escape backflip.

  Max went down with a yell of protest, kicking futilely at Crush’s shins. Crush threw himself on top of Max, trying to contain his flailing.

  “Stop… hitting me!” Crush grunted as Max rained effectively useless blows on his head and shoulders.

  Max managed a lucky poke in the eye before Crush snagged his wrists and pinned them to the floorboards.

  “Damn it,” he grunted, struggling to unseat Crush. “Get off!”

  “Knock it off!” Crush demanded. “I said… stop it!” He dropped his weight on top of Max, locking him in place with his hips.

  Max stopped.

  “Um,” he choked out.

  Crush’s forearms pushed Max’s own down into the floor, bracketing his head. Crush’s cheeks slowly turned red. Max’s were definitely not heating up underneath his mask.

  Crush swallowed. “You, uh… ow!”

  He convulsed once, then flew backward off Max, who sat up with a gasp. Crush rolled across the floor to a stop, clutching his leg. Max’s mother stood in the window, cape whipping in the wind.

  “Dynaman, now!” she yelled, holding out an arm.

  He ran to her. “But the doomsday devi—”

  “There’s no time!” she said, and the wall next to her exploded.

  Mr. Magnificent burst through the hole, splinters flying. “Halt, vile crooks, for—”

  “Jump!” Catalyst shouted, and she tossed Max out the window.

  He flailed for a moment, absolutely did not shriek at all, and spun into a tuck just in time to catch the open window of their helibot as it flew past the tower.

  “Did you shoot Crush in the leg?” he demanded when his mother tumbled through on the bot’s next loop past the window. Mr. Magnificent stood in the tower, gallantly framed in the crater he’d left in the wall.

  “Did we leave the doomsday device with them?” Max asked, aghast as he watched the clock tower disappear behind them.

  “Put your seatbelt on,” his mom snapped, wresting control of the bot from the autopilot and pointing them toward home.

  IT WAS all over the morning news, of course. Well, not the fight so much, because The Powers That Be always tried to sweep the public property damage under the rug. It drove his mother crazy.

  Today the coverage consisted of the mayor publicly
congratulating Mr. Magnificent and Crush in front of City Hall.

  “We are proud to have such dedicated heroes upholding the moral fiber of our city,” the mayor said, shaking Mr. Magnificent’s hand for an awkward length of time. Camera flashes reflected off their faces, putting Max more in mind of a pair of pasty disco balls than fearless leaders of the community.

  “Other community leaders joined the mayor in supporting our local superheroes,” the morning anchor said. “Wayne Sheffield, CEO of Sheffield Pharmaceuticals, had this to say.”

  The camera cut back to a grainy close up of Sheffield’s face. His toupee was artfully styled today but remained aesthetically offensive. “There are those who will always try to tear us down and those who will always be there to rebuild. Sheffield Pharmaceuticals has already reopened fund-raising efforts to support our community in the wake of these thoughtless acts of destruction.”

  Max scowled at the screen.

  The camera cut to Crush. If he embodied “aw shucks” any more, he was going to become an actual scuff on the toe of someone’s shoe. “I’m just happy to make a positive impact,” he said, “alongside the generous leaders of the city.”

  “Sycophantic lemmings!” Max’s mom hissed. She turned the TV off with a sharp jab.

  “I know, Mom.” Max poured milk into his cereal, observing her from the corner of his eye.

  She had clearly been up for a while, her eyes widened by at least a full pot’s worth of caffeine and her fingers dusty with chalk. Her fro, never very orderly to begin with, was particularly erratic today, the frequent victim of unconscious tugging whenever she got caught up in equations on her blackboard. One strand of long, crimpy hair smoldered slightly at the tip, undoubtedly collateral damage in an early morning experiment. It bobbed in front of her forehead like one of those creepy fish that lived in the darkest depths of the ocean. His mom didn’t seem to notice.

  Max sighed and pinched the smoky bit to make sure the ember died as she swooped past him, gesticulating angrily.

  “They’re blind fools,” she spat, “protecting rich fools. Everyone knows there’s nobody more dangerous than a rich fool!”

  “Except us,” Max said. He sucked the last of the milk from his bowl.

  “We do all right,” she allowed after a moment. “But mark my words, those men will be the ruin of society. And until we get our doomsday device back, we have no leverage.” She grabbed her blowtorch and blasted it a few times.

  Max shrugged and took his bowl to the sink. “So we get it back. Where are they keeping it?”

  “In the basement vault of the First Trust Bank, under a hundred tons of steel with rolling passcodes and twenty armored guards.”

  “Oh.” Max paused. “So….”

  “To the drawing board!” she declared.

  Max rolled his eyes. “I have to go to school first.”

  “Oh, fine, baby, but don’t be late for the meeting tonight.”

  “Mom, I have football practice,” Max reminded her again.

  “Oh, right….” she muttered, already absorbed in the rocket boosters strewn across the kitchen table.

  “It was your idea in the first place,” Max groused to himself as the door swung shut behind him.

  MAX DID, in fact, have football practice that night. Sort of.

  “Empty those Gatorade jugs, champ. We don’t have all night.” Coach tossed a towel at him, which Max caught with his face. “And wash these before you go home.”

  “Yes, Stepmother,” Max mumbled, pulling the sweaty towel off his head. Standard supervillain protocol was to participate in one or two extracurriculars to hide in plain sight—not enough to consume his life and all his free time, but enough that people would go “Oh yeah, Max,” instead of “Oh, that weird loner kid?” when questioned by the police.

  Unfortunately, Max had no interest in team sports, wasn’t musically inclined, and definitely wasn’t going to participate in anything that required wearing a singlet. (He preferred to do that anonymously, for the greater good—not for the amusement of his classmates.) That didn’t leave many options, so freshman year he’d finagled his way into being the football team manager. It wasn’t a glamorous job, and their coach went out of his way to enforce that.

  He could use this as his origin story—poor, unpopular kid shunned by his peers and teachers—but it seemed like way too much work to cultivate the resentment and insecurity that would require. Easier to just go with the “family business” routine. It wouldn’t look as flashy in an exposé, but Max felt like he made up for it with his stylish costume and natural flair for intricate flight patterns.

  “Hey, um… do you need some help with that?”

  Max dropped the towel and looked up into the face of Crush Goodman, quarterback extraordinaire, who had never spoken to him at school before and who definitely did not know he’d been wrestling with Max while wearing tights last night.

  “No, I definitely do not—hey! What are you—hey!” Max sputtered as Crush hefted the Gatorade barrels over his shoulders as if they were oddly shaped balloons.

  Max froze, his heart in his throat. Was this an intimidation tactic? Had Crush figured out Max’s secret identity somehow?

  Crush grinned at him, looking slightly nervous. “These go in the shed, right?”

  Max crossed his arms, peering at Crush suspiciously and hoping his paralyzing terror wasn’t obvious. “What’s it to you?”

  “I’m helping,” Crush told him. “To be nice. Aren’t you ever nice to anyone?”

  “Not intentionally.” Max sniffed.

  Crush laughed, like this was a charming thing to say and not vaguely sociopathic. He hefted the jugs again, settling their weight in his arms.

  “Well,” said Crush, grinning, “aren’t you coming?”

  “I… yes,” Max said with great dignity, because if Crush was luring him to his death in the equipment room, he was going to go with great dignity.

  “So, that calculus project, huh?” Crush commented. He strode easily along the field beside Max, his gait deceptively jaunty for someone about to commit homicidal violence.

  “Yes, we have a calculus project,” Max agreed, because it was best not to argue with the unstable.

  “Pretty tricky so far, don’t you think?”

  “No,” Max said. He could only compromise his dignity so much. The project was not that hard, and Crush couldn’t make him say it was! What if someone overheard? Max would be the laughingstock of AP Prep.

  Crush dropped the barrels on the ground in front of the equipment shed door, rolling them down his biceps with disgusting ease.

  “Maybe we could compare notes,” he suggested, dusting his hands off on his pants and smiling like a ray of sunshine.

  “Uh, no,” Max snapped, outraged. Was that Crush’s end goal? Hold Max’s identity over his head and blackmail him into cheating? Superheroes were despicable.

  “Okay. Maybe next time,” Crush agreed easily, unaware of Max’s seething turmoil. With a friendly wave, he waltzed off back to the locker room like he hadn’t just given Max the scare of his life.

  The nerve.

  MAX WASN’T late to the meeting that night, but only just. He darted into the conference room to the sound of the gavel calling the room to order and cut through the crowd shuffling toward their seats. He hit the refreshments table and slid into the empty seat beside his mother with a stack of doughnuts on a napkin and a Styrofoam cup of lukewarm coffee.

  Conversations still buzzed around him as attendees made their way to their chairs. Boring stuff, mostly—the weather, last month’s PTA meeting, and the new infrared security sensors at the prison. Max kept his head down and avoided eye contact with Nematoad, who always wanted to talk about the mating habits of amphibians. Plus, his skin was always coated in some kind of… secretion. A worm secretion. Or maybe a frog secretion. Either way, Max preferred to keep his distance.

  The Injustice League met on the third Thursday of every month, in rotating locations depending o
n which supervillain had signed up to host. This month they were in the C-Suite of Alarum’s corporate headquarters, normally the working home of senior executives and investors. Next month was scheduled for Doctor Decay’s volcano lair, which Max thought was a little melodramatic, but nobody asked him about these things.

  Next to him, his mother’s argument with the Verminator about the rising price of non-GMO produce cut short as Alarum banged the gavel again.

  “And so I call to order the current convening of the League and its esteemed members,” she intoned. “Maria, please begin with a summary of last month’s minutes.”

  Rattlesnake cleared her throat and shuffled a stack of paper. “On Thursday the eighteenth, the League commenced with a summary of the previous month’s minutes, followed by a detailed progress report of the budget restructure, effective at the beginning of the fiscal year. Topics raised were….”

  And they were off. Max focused his attention on his doughnuts and let the murmur of the meeting roll over him. Being a supervillain came with a dreary amount of red tape, from patent disputes to territory claims to the ever-present debate on whether to unionize. As long as he tuned out the budget discussions and the occasional burst of maniacal laughter, it wasn’t the worst way to spend an evening. Hardly anybody ever got transmaterialized to a different dimension, for example.

  He tuned in and out as the group moved through the upcoming event schedule (European weapons trade show next month, a panel at SXSW—“Villains in Media: Monetizing Your Online Platform”), intel reports (recruitment was down 2 percent this quarter, and the prime minister of Russia was moving a 20,000 pound shipment of potatoes across country next week), and recent battle reports (Nematoad still hadn’t made any progress infiltrating the local zoo, which nobody but he was particularly upset about). They’d reached the long pause portion of the meeting where Alarum would ask if there was any other business to bring to the table, nobody would say anything, and Max would finally be free to go home.

  He was happily dusting his crumbs into his napkin when Doctor Decay, the absolute ruiner, cleared his throat.