The Confidential Files of A Superhero

Onyx: TWO

Allison’s Point of View

“It’s all about looking as basic b***h as possible,” Macey’s hand brushed my hair back behind my ear. My eyes couldn’t budge from the mirror in front of me. My eyes had been green my whole life, but staring back at the faded green of these contact lenses left me feeling unsettled. I blinked a few times, feeling the lenses settling into my eyes.

“Macey,” her mother hissed at Macey’s choice of words, casting that disappointing gaze across the room. I chuckled, my teeth sinking into my lip as I made a lame attempt at covering it up. This moment was supposed to be serious, but it was hard to keep a straight face whenever Macey referred to my superhero cover as basic b***h.

“Change her eyes to whatever colour you want, nothing about Al will ever be basic. Have you see how gorgeous she is?” Alex commented from across the room. He leaned back in his chair, his eyes leaving their usual focus on the computer screens to meet mine. My cheeks warmed immediately, smiling back at him. It was amazing how much time we spent together and still a smile, a breathtaking gaze from those gleaming blue eyes, and a cheesy compliment made my heart pound against my rib cage.

“I love you,” I mouthed the words to him and he grinned back, but before he could answer, we were interrupted again.

“Alex, stop distracting her,” his mother snapped at her second child, an attempt at returning us all to the seriousness of the moment.

Alex brought one more gentle chuckle out of me as his voice whined, “fine,” followed by his hands dramatically raising in the air. With another glaring look from his mother, he proudly flashed that charming smile in my direction one last time before turning his full attention back to the monitors. He was itching to get back to work, back into his super suit and out there on the city skyline again just waiting for whatever crime would strike next. He was born to do this, and it would be wrong of me to take this talents from the world, but after all that had happened at the end of last summer, I wasn’t so sure I could be excited about him going back to work.

After several hours of me and his parents pleading with him, only then did Alex agree to take the summer off to rest and recover. He needed to get back to his full strength before going back to the field again, but even then I wasn’t worried about what the world held out there. When I’d met Alex, he’d never responded to a code black before. But then my mother came into the picture and everything changed. I still had nightmares about him lying on that hospital gurney, and now he was running right back into the line of fire. At least my mother was gone now, which meant the greatest risk was over. Alex had been doing the simple human superhero stuff for years and nothing this dangerous had ever happened before. The incident with my mother was a fluke accident. He was going to be fine out there, just fine, right? No matter how many times I thought about it, the dealt still crept up inside of me.

“She has to be ready,” Maria snapped my attention back to the conversation at hand as she mumbled to no one in particular, but we all knew the words were directed at me. You could practically feel her nervous energy in the air around us, but then again, maybe that was my own.

Tomorrow I’d return to school, university this time. That step alone was enough to have my nerves wired, but now we had to add in these crazy ink glowing eyes and emerging superpowers I wasn’t even sure I knew how to handle yet. With Alex taking a break from his own superhero lifestyle, I hadn’t been doing much training of my powers either. I wasn’t sure I wanted to though, having seen what it did to my mother. I didn’t want to look ahead into the future again, all I needed was Alex and I was certain he was always going to be here. My eyes flickered to his again, but his gaze was still turned downwards at the computer monitors.

Alex and I had spent the entire summer together, with a good chunk of our time dedicated for training me for this exact moment, rather than training my superpowers. This had definitely been more important. Training the day I returned to my normal life, this time as a girl with superpowers hidden behind a flimsy pair of contact lenses.

“Tomorrow is going to be a very big day for you Allison, we can’t have any -“ Maria began but this time Alex was cutting her off.

“Mom!” Alex’s voice boomed. Suddenly he was standing from his chair and taking wide strides to join us across the room. “She’s going to be fine, she’s ready. Will you stop freaking her out?” Alex’s arm wrapped around my shoulders, pulling me protectively into his chest. His mother’s eyes softened, flickering between the two of us briefly before offering me an apologetic smile.

“I’m sorry Allison,” her head dipped for a moment, ashamed. “It’s just that all of us have been working our entire lives to keep this secret under wraps. I’ve never had to prepare someone for it, this late before.”

I nodded my head, accepting the apology and trying to ignore the way my stomach twisted into knots at those final words. This late. The unfair series of events that had led my life down this rickety path that ended up with me not discovering my powers until much later in life was something none of us could have prepared for.

My eyes moved around the laboratory, scanning over the freshly dry walled area across from us. What was once a window into one of the training rooms was now a solid wall, blocking us out. Only the door remained, but with all the construction around it, it was clear the room was out of order for the time being. The scattered pylons that Ben had thrown around the room in an attempt to keep all of us “safe’ around the construction zone, and the caution tape plastered across the smashed up floor tiles catching our attention as if this lab was used by anyone other than those who lived here.

Maria caught me glancing in that direction and rolled her eyes, the topic thankfully changing as she glared to Alex next. “And once she’s back in school, you and your father better get to work finishing whatever these renovations are.” Alex dodged his mother’s eyes uncomfortably, shoving his hands in his pockets and shuffling back and forth on his switch.

“Straight away mother,” he mumbled, then ducked away from her entirely. “I should get Ali to school,” he quickly changed the subject next, and with an arm around my waist we were really heading out of the lab this time. My heart skipped, feeling the tinge of anxiety in my chest as I thought about moving into my new dorm room. I quickly had to change the conversation before I lost my nerve about going entirely.

“Are you guys putting in a bigger training cell or something?” I asked Alex as we headed out of the lab. His arm still wrapped around my shoulder as he led me down the hallway. Alex’s body felt rigid against mine, his teeth grazing his bottom lip as he nodded his head.

“Yeah, something like that,” he muttered. I tried to ignore the weirdness that continued to overcome my boyfriend every time I brought up the renovation. From the very first morning I’d found that part of the lab torn apart and boarded up, there was a type of tension that overcame him. I had a feeling it had something to do with a disagreement regarding his father, because that morning the two of them had seemed to be at odds about something.

I trusted Alex, more than anyone, but I couldn’t shake the fact that it felt like he didn’t trust me as much. Plus, the state of that room truly hadn’t changed much. You’d think a family of hard working superhero’s would just fly through a home renovation, especially one in the centre of their lab. But this one seemed to be going on forever with very little progress being made each day. Or maybe, I was just overthinking it.

“Come on, we should go over your class schedule one more time,” Alex’s hand gave my shoulder a squeeze and I was pulled from the web forming in my mind. Clearly my anxiety over starting this new chapter in my life tomorrow was getting the best of me. Once I got through this first week, whatever strange feeling this was would disappear. His lips turned up in a sweet smile and I leaned up on my tippy toes to press my lips to his.