Falling for a Superhero

It Worked

I sat on my windowsill. No. I sat on my fire escape, hoping that some deranged person could see me, report it as attempted suicide, and then Proliator would show up, but I was sitting Indian style—like he used to do—and I was eating ice cream. That didn’t scream “suicide watch” to me. But at this point, I’d do anything to take away the gapping whole in my chest from not seeing him…also the annoyance towards myself for being so obsessed with someone who I didn’t even know.

“He’s a, a good time, cowboy Casanova leaning up against the record machine! He looks like a cool drink of water, but he’s candy-coated misery. He’s the devil in disguise—”

I ended the music blasting from my phone because I hadn’t even downloaded it. I didn’t even know why it was going off, which caused me to actually turn over my phone and see who called me. Dastan? I dialed him back.

“How did you get into my phone?” I asked him when I heard him pick up.

“I need to talk to you,” he said in a soft voice.

“Alright. Just come over,” I allowed, even though I was mentally slapping myself for being so desperate to him after I saw how threatening he got today with Hayden.

“I can’t,” he said the two words that plunged through my heart. “It’s something that I have to say without anyone else around.”

“Oh,” I replied. He gave me directions to a sort of remote area of downtown. I told my family that Cheyenne and I had to get supplies for a project, but I was sure Sebastian knew that was a lie. He didn’t say anything though. He only gave me a disapproving look.

***

I was waiting here for an hour and a half. I had called Dastan, but he didn’t answer. Hayden had texted me a few times and then I wasn’t the one to answer.

“Dastan, I’ve been waiting here for almost two hours. I’m sure whatever you have to say can wait until tomorrow—that is if you come to school,” I left him a voicemail. “Well, I’m just gonna start heading home. I hope you feel better than you were in school today because I don’t want to fight with you...Bye.”

I started to walk back and when I reached Central Park, I decided that I’d enjoy the autumn scenery. I drank a cup of hot chocolate that I had bought from a closing cart and I just accepted the cool, breezy night. Minutes later, I was walking the trail and when I got to a tree-surrounded path, I heard a group of people to the side of another trail. They were even stationed around a fire.

“Hey!” one of them called. I looked over. “Yeah, you! Come’ere!”

I hesitantly walked over and saw there to be three guys and a couple of girls making out by a tent.

“Do I know you?” I asked them. I noticed the spread out bottles of beer and I became even more reluctant to near them. Not to mention the pungent smell of m*******a.

“No, but you should,” one of them smiled. From behind, someone jumped out and scared me. The other three laughed and stumbled as they neared me. As much as I wanted to run, I couldn’t.

“Hey!” a new voice called. I looked over to the tent and saw a man emerging. He had on a leather jacket, some dusty jeans and a beanie. He looked to be in his early twenties maybe. His friends looked back as he jogged over to his drunken friends. He seemed sober…or at least the soberest one here, because I was sure the others couldn’t do that without falling over. He got closer to me and the fire danced light across his attractive face. He glanced to me shortly before telling his friends something that I couldn’t hear. Then he jogged over to me. “What’s your name?”

“Annie,” I lied. I didn’t know anything about him. I wouldn’t just give him my name. “Yours?”

“RJ,” he said just as vague as me. “So why are you stumbling around the forest at night?”

“I wouldn’t call it stumbling…compared to your ever-so-inebriated friends, but I was just walking around meeting a friend,” I answered.

“With no escort for your lovely self?” he asked, taken back.

“No. I guess not,” I sighed. He stepped near me and the fire cast creepy shadows on his face.

“Well then let me be of service,” he said before sealing our lips. I immediately pushed away from him and slapped his face. He rubbed his cheek and scoffed. Suddenly, he grasped my arms tightly. “Okay, maybe I deserved that.”

“‘Maybe’?” I spat in repetition. “You did! And if you don’t let me go right now, you’ll deserve something else.”

“Like what?” he challenged. I started to bring my knee up to his groin, but then he stepped to the side and I somehow landed on my back, straddled. Then I was the one getting smacked across the face. As I struggled beneath him, his hands moved to the hem of my shirt and started to try and strip it off of me, but then something slammed into him and he was thrown off of me. I sat up and saw a familiar superhero kneeling over RJ.

My emotions were caught in my throat, but I managed to smile in this terrible situation only because I was glad the Proliator was, in fact, alive and here to rescue me…again.

“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” he huffed before sending a fist into RJ after they both stood. Proliator turned towards me and whispered a single word that I had told him before: “Go.”

“Bring it,” RJ dared, punching towards Proliator’s face. Well, I saw him swing and miss contact before I turned my gaze and pretended this fight wasn’t happening. I wasn’t going to just stay on the ground in pain like with the frat boys, I got up and I started running, even though I realized that I was lost in the dark park. Minutes later, I was out of breath and I could feel my burning cheek more that the wind smacked it around, a blur appeared in front of me and I caught my breath.

His eyes were rimmed with red and I couldn’t imagine what he had done to RJ, even though I had heard the shouting. I was surprised no one else had. I wondered what RJ’s friends were doing now. Right as I thought that, I heard the police sirens from the street, hundreds of feet away. We both knew what that meant. I started to part away from him, but he grabbed my hand and spun me back around to him.

“Wait,” he whispered, his body inches from mine…if that. He searched my face with his goldening eyes, and I was both scared and intrigued. “I haven’t healed you.”

It reminded me of the first encounter we had together, but this time, I wasn’t denying his existence or anything of the sorts. I was only questioning why he was saying this when one of our conversations proved that his powers didn’t work on me.

Suddenly, he leaned down and pressed his lips to my cheek for a moment. When he pulled away, my eyes were closed and it was as if a minty feeling had numbed my cheek and spread through my body. I opened my eyes, not feeling the striking pain in my face, and saw the Proliator with bright blue eyes. He had removed all touch from me, but I wanted to reconnect and never let go.

“It worked,” he breathed in a flawless New Yorker accent void of any foreign reverberation. I gave him a puzzled look as he fought to keep away his impressed smile, but the sirens got closer. That’s when reality hit me.

“Wh-what just happened? How did you find me? What happened when you left Sunday? Are you alright? Where have you been?” My questions flooded out of me to say the least. I kept inquiring him, but all he did was lose the azure in his eyes and shake his head. I stopped stammering. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“Not tonight I can’t,” was all he said, but this time he had a new tone. He searched my eyes and they were really saying I can, rather than I can’t. He was trying to tell me something, but he still kissed my forehead as a farewell and escaped from my vision before I could even wrap my head around it or acknowledge the empty feeling from his deserting kiss.

***

“Angela, it does not take three hours to get supplies for a project,” Dad said when I got home. I came back, still shaken, but I could hide it.

“I lied…” I confessed. “Mickie wanted to go shopping downtown and with all the traffic, I got there later than expected and she had started shopping without me so I just walked around and tried to catch a taxi back.”

My lie seemed to work as Dad and Veronica shrugged it off. Until…

“Mickie hates you,” Sebastian recalled from the couch.

“Not anymore,” I hissed, narrowing my eyes at him blowing my cover.

“Yeah. Only because you’re dating Hayden,” he retorted.

“I’m not dating Hayden—”

“That boy I met at lunch?” Veronica asked. I rolled my eyes and nodded. She smiled and laughed. “I knew I still predicted good couples. He’s so cute!”

“We’re not a couple!” I yelled.

“According to Sarah’s sister, yes you are,” a new voice said. I looked to the stairs and saw Jeremy.

“You should be in bed already,” Dad said.

“Yeah, go to bed,” I added.

“You can’t make me,” he said to me, sticking his tongue out.

“Wanna bet?” I challenged. He turned around and shook his butt at me. That’s when I took off in a dash to catch him on the stairs, but his eleven-year-old energy beat me to it and received a slammed door in my face. Giving up, I just went to my room. I sat by the window, wishing that Proliator would come and check up on me now.

He never came.

So, at eleven o’clock I started to get ready for bed and I looked in the mirror to the left side of my face—that RJ’s hand had smacked and the Proliator’s lips had touched. I quietly gasped when I noticed something that reasoned by my family hadn’t noticed anything.

He really had healed me.