Comics Will Break Your Heart Page 7

  “He died before you were born,” said Stella, her voice wobbling. “I don’t know why you’ve decided what happened to him is something that you want to be angry about.”

  Mir pulled her hands from her hair and let large chunks of curls fall around her head, blocking off the sight of her mother. Anger was ebbing out of her, leaving behind a feeling like someone had wiped a dirty hand across her heart.

  “I made my choice after he died,” Stella said. She took a deep breath, as though shaking something heavy from her shoulders. “I took the buyout Warrick Studios was offering. I dropped the legal case over ownership of the TomorrowMen, and I got on with my life. What the studio paid was enough.”

  “Not quite enough,” Mir whispered.

  Stella sighed. The hand holding the carrot dropped to her side, and she turned toward the kitchen counter. She started washing the carrots in the sink, scraping their outer skin with a knife.

  “I’m guessing that comment has something to do with you being unsure about what you’re going to do after graduation next year. I know this is a scary time for you, Miriam, and maybe it seems like having lots of money would make this transition easier. If you want to go to university, we’ll figure out how to pay for it. There are options.”

  “I’ll be paying off student loans for the rest of my life,” Mir muttered into the table. Stella started chopping the carrots too vigorously and a small orange piece rolled across the floor.

  “Yep, you’ll be just like everyone else. Maybe that’s the worst thing about this whole TomorrowMen legacy; all we can see is what might have been. But who knew the comics were going to sell so well, that there’d someday be animated shows and merchandise and now this movie? Your grandfather didn’t know. He was an artist who wanted his comic book published, so he signed a bad contract. It happens every day of the week, to artists no one knows of. Nobody would give a shit about the TomorrowMen or Micah Kendrick if those comics hadn’t continued on for forty years.”

  Mir threw out the last words she had in this argument, the signal that the fight was over.

  “It isn’t fair.”

  Stella slowed her mutilation of the carrot and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “You’re right, it isn’t,” said Stella. “But this is the way it is. Go call your father and brother in. Tell them to stop hiding. The fireworks are done.”

  That evening, Mir called Evan.

  “Are you busy? Want to go to a movie?”

  “Going out will screw up my very important plan to stare at the internet all night, but okay,” Evan said. “What kind of movie?”

  “I dunno,” said Mir, realizing she hadn’t thought that far. “Something with … uh, explosions? Accents?”

  “Exploding accents?” Evan said. Miriam could practically feel his shit-eating grin through the phone. “Maybe something Schwarzenegger-rific?”

  “No, he’s way too old,” Mir sighed. “I’m always afraid he’s going to break a hip while beating up bad guys.”

  “Guess we can just head down to the theater and see what’s playing,” Evan said. “Not like there’s more than one place to watch movies in Sandford.”

  “Sounds good,” said Mir. “See you there in forty-five minutes?”

  “Raleigh and Jamie too?” asked Evan. Mir twisted the old phone cord around her wrist, pressing the soft plastic into her skin.

  “Nah, just the two of us.”

  There was a pause at Evan’s end. He recovered quickly, so quickly Mir almost thought she’d imagined the pause.

  “Okay. See you in forty-five.”

  Sandford’s only movie theater was a thirty-minute walk from Mir’s house, wedged between a slowly dying local grocery store and a brightly lit twenty-four-hour pharmacy. It was a squat building with a faded pink-and-gray color scheme and neon signs bolted to its exterior. Despite the theater’s apocalyptic facade and a manager who seemed to hate anyone under the age of fifty, half of Mir’s high school was gathered out front. Mir found an empty wall to lean against and propped herself there, waiting for Evan.

  If I see Weldon Warrick here, I’ll run away screaming, she thought. She looked around furtively, almost expecting to see Weldon’s wide smile as he walked toward her. Deciding it would probably be safer not to look in any direction, Mir stared at the pavement between her shoes.

  “Hi,” said Evan.

  Mir looked up, relieved.

  “Hi. You made it on time.”

  “Indeed,” Evan said, offering Mir his arm. She smiled and looped her own arm through his, and they walked toward the theater entrance.

  “So what’ll it be for tonight’s entertainment? If You Could See Me Now, starring Canada’s own Ryan Gosling?”

  “Ugh, no.” Mir wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I like a good Gosling movie as much as the next girl, but if a movie’s got a title that’s a sentence, odds are it’s a terrible romantic comedy. I could use something action-y tonight. Is there anything with fights?”

  Evan scanned the movie titles. Around them the scrum of teenagers churned and whooped, phones held to their chests like talismans.

  “What about that one?” Evan said, pointing. “The Avenging Queen. Natalie Portman is a clone of Queen Elizabeth brought back to life to fight the Spanish Armada, who are zombies. I think. I watched a trailer online and it seemed pretty insane.”

  “You had me at ‘Natalie Portman,’” said Mir. “Also at ‘clone’ and ‘zombies.’ Let’s do it.”

  Arm in arm, they walked into the theater, under the flickering neon signs.

  Ninety-six minutes later, Miriam gave The Avenging Queen two severed Spanish Armada zombie thumbs up.

  “You like anything with Natalie Portman in it,” Evan said accusingly.

  “She is my nonsexual girl crush,” Mir said.

  “Aw, I was hoping it was entirely sexual.”

  “Boys!” sighed Mir, rolling her eyes.

  “We do tend to like it when hot girls make out with each other,” Evan said, grinning. They walked down Sandford’s main street, stopping to stare at the mutated clay bowls and ashtrays in the front window of the make-your-own-pottery store. The stores were closed, but their signs were brightly lit, casting multicolored reflections on the sidewalk. Small groups of teenagers roamed the street, bored but not ready to return home so early on a Saturday night. Most of the faces Mir recognized from school, although she didn’t know any of them well. A few friendly nods were thrown her way, but the groups mostly ignored Mir and Evan, shouting to each other about how there was nothing to do.

  Mir looked at the front of the Emporium of Wonders, a few blocks down from the pottery store. She’d never paid much attention to the store exterior, but now she noticed how run-down it looked compared to the closed but brightly lit Starbucks.

  “Evan, what are you going to do next year?” Mir asked, still looking at the Emporium of Wonders. Did Berg ever wash its windows? It looked terrible. She made a mental note to wash them herself on Monday.

  Evan shrugged.

  “I dunno, graduate like everyone else?”

  “Yeah, but after that.”

  Evan smirked and took a step back from Mir, stuffing his hands in his pants pockets.

  “Oh, right, your whole freak-out thing.”

  Mir stared at him, hurt.

  “What freak-out thing?”

  “Come on,” Evan said. He was still smiling, but his eyebrows were drawn downward, making his smile look deeply annoyed. “You’ve been doing this for months. You’re freaking out because next year is our last year of high school and you’re the only one of us who wants to go to university.”

  “You’re not even going to try to get in?” Mir asked. She leaned against the make-your-own-pottery store window, folding her arms across her chest. The spring air suddenly seemed very cold.

  Evan shrugged.

  “I hate school, Mir. I hate reading things that aren’t comics, I hate writing essays. I like seeing people every day; I like maki
ng them laugh. Sometimes I like drama class, because that’s just fooling around and being stupid. That’s what I’m good at: being stupid.”

  “Evan,” Mir said. “You’re not stupid.”

  “Yeah, okay.” He looked away from her, putting his hands back in his pockets. “That’s probably true, but I don’t care about school. Why would I do more of it? I’m fine working for my dad after I graduate. He wants me to work for him.”

  The electric sign over the entrance to the Emporium of Wonders flickered, then went out. Mir glanced over at it. The store was almost completely dark, a faint edge of light coming from some back room in the store’s interior. Mir wondered if Berg was in there, working late.

  “Will you be happy doing that?” Mir said.

  “Sure,” said Evan. “I like landscaping, and my dad’ll help me learn the business end of things. Why wouldn’t I be happy?”

  “That sounds nice,” said Mir softly. Evan watched her, waiting. “I don’t know what I want.”

  “You want to go to school,” Evan said. “You do this really long slow-motion look around every time we walk by the guidance counselor’s office, so you can see if she’s got new university pamphlets in.”

  “The McGill one is really pretty,” Mir said. “Have you seen their coat of arms? It’s red. It’s got birds and crowns on it.”

  “So what’s the big deal?” Evan said. “You go to university after you graduate. I don’t see what you’re freaking out about.”

  Mir slid down the store window and crouched on the sidewalk, wrapping her arms around her knees. Her sweater was several sizes too large, and she pulled it over her knees, making herself as small as possible.

  “Because I don’t know what I want to do in school. I don’t know what I like, or what I’m good at, and school is so much money. What if I spend all that money and I can’t figure it out? What if I’m still this way after university graduation?”

  “How do you think so far ahead?” Evan said wonderingly. He crouched on the sidewalk beside Miriam and they huddled together. He reached out and put his hand on the back of her neck, underneath her hair. Mir forced herself not to flinch at the feeling of his touch, warm and solid.

  “You’re taking over your dad’s business, Raleigh and Jamie have each other. What do I have? Why am I the only one of all of us who can’t figure it out?”

  Evan’s fingers on the back of Miriam’s neck moved a little. His head was so close to hers, their foreheads nearly touching. Since Jamie and Raleigh had started dating, Mir had felt the focus of Evan’s feelings shift, centering more directly on her. Over the past year she’d noticed him looking thoughtfully at her out of the corner of his eye, as though he was weighing some new idea in his mind. She’d been careful to keep him at a distance since she first noticed his feelings had changed, but now there was only the two of them on the sidewalk. No Jamie to make some cutting remark and ruin the moment, no Raleigh to remind her that the three of them had been friends since sixth grade. I watched you grow that beard for the first time, Mir thought, not daring to look up. I wish I wanted to be more than your friend. It would make so much sense. But I can’t seem to feel that way about you.

  “I’m such a jerk, Evan.”

  “Nah, you’re okay,” Evan said, and pulled his hand away from the back of her neck. The warmth of him went with it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Weldon had changed his shirt five times and his pants four times. Each time he thought he had his outfit figured out, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and realized it was all wrong.

  “Why don’t I have any non-asshole clothes?” he muttered, dumping his entire suitcase on the guest bed. He flung an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt across the room, and swore at it.

  Weldon looked at the clock next to the bed. He had forty-two minutes before he was officially late for dinner at Stella and Henry’s house. Was their last name Kendrick? He wasn’t sure. It made sense that Micah Kendrick’s daughter would have his last name, but if Stella was married, maybe it had changed. Maybe he could ask. He very much wanted to make sure Stella knew how polite he could be, and calling her Ms. Kendrick instead of Stella seemed like a good place to start.

  After the encounter with Miriam’s family on the waterfront, Weldon had pulled out his laptop and googled Micah Kendrick. He’d stared for a long time at the first photograph that had popped up: a sepia-tinged snapshot of a young man with a strong jaw and easy, charismatic smile. He could see the resemblance to Stella immediately, especially with her hair cut so short. Weldon’s fingers hovered over the laptop keyboard, then typed in “Micah Kendrick comics.”

  Micah Kendrick’s artwork filled the laptop’s screen. The drawings looked primitive compared to the photo-realistic art style of modern TomorrowMen comics, but energy bubbled from every line. When drawn by Micah Kendrick, the TomorrowMen were outlandishly superheroic, striking impossibly athletic poses as they fought their way across the galaxy. Skylark, the only female TomorrowMan, was drawn smaller than her male teammates, but no less powerful. She fought alongside her teammates in whatever battle the TomorrowMen were facing, her gaze charged and regal.

  Weldon had stared hard at one drawing of Skylark in particular, the cover of Spectacular Space Stories, issue number three. The first meeting of Skylark and Skybound, when Skylark came to warn Earth of its impending doom. There was something familiar about the way Skylark’s face was drawn, the way her hair swirled upward, the tilt of her nose. Weldon had turned away from his laptop and pulled out the painting he’d bought from Miriam, holding it up next to the digital image of the comic cover. The two faces of Skylark were identical, not just in design but also in character. One was a painting and the other an ink drawing, but otherwise they matched perfectly.

  Weldon’s hands had hesitated over the keyboard, then googled “TomorrowMen rights lawsuit.” Pages of links sprang up, mostly to news sites. He scrolled down the page, clicked to the next page, and kept scrolling. Weldon vaguely remembered his father mentioning the lawsuit when he was younger, usually in cheerful tones. It was some battle from the past that David Warrick had fought and won; Weldon had never before thought about the people on the other side of the lawsuit. He closed the laptop without clicking any of the links.

  Weldon stared at the pile of shirts in front of him. He grabbed a plain gray one, pulled it over his head, and stared hopefully at his reflection in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door. The T-shirt and jeans were as close to neutral as anything he owned. I guess “neutral asshole” is better than total asshole, he thought. He glanced up at his face, noting with relief that the bruise was nearly gone. All that remained was a purple smudge underneath his eye.

  Weldon’s aunt stuck her head in the guest bedroom. She glanced, surprised, at the piles of clothes strewn around the room.

  “Are you going somewhere, Weldon?”

  “Yeah,” Weldon said. “I met these people the other day, Henry and Stella … Kendrick? They invited me to dinner.”

  “Stella and Henry,” said Aunt Kay, and her warm brown eyes narrowed suddenly. “Oh, yes, I suppose they do have a daughter about your age, don’t they?”

  “Miriam,” said Weldon.

  “Well, that’s…” His aunt’s voice faltered. “That’s very nice that you’re visiting them, Weldon. But please be careful; they’re, well, we have some history with them. You’re here to avoid trouble, not go looking for it.”

  “All the comic book stuff, right?” Weldon said.

  Weldon’s aunt entered the room and quickly invaded his personal space, placing her hands on his shoulders. Her solution to every problem seemed to be to massage it to death.

  “Yes, all that comic book nonsense. All of us, your father, your uncle, me and Stella and Henry grew up in this town. We even went to the same high school. I did my best to be nice to the Kendricks, considering … everything that happened. But sometimes…” His aunt paused, her face darkening. “Sometimes things can be strained in a small town. I just
want you to know they might have … some underlying hostility.”

  Weldon watched his aunt talk, fascinated. All this family history he knew so little about. She continued:

  “I won’t tell you not to see them tonight, but be careful with yourself. All right, Weldon?”

  He nodded.

  “How are you getting down to the Kendricks’ house?”

  “I thought I’d walk,” Weldon said.

  “Ask Alex to drive you; it’s a fair distance to their side of town,” said his aunt. She hesitated, looking at him, then seemed to decide something, and smiled warmly at him.

  “You’re a good boy underneath it all, Weldon. I know you are.”

  “Thank you, Aunt Kay,” Weldon said, smiling back.

  * * *

  Half an hour later, Weldon stood outside Miriam’s house, watching his uncle’s car vanish into the Sandford horizon. He turned and walked toward the house, pausing to look at the large garden stretching out beside it. The garden looked overgrown, tomato vines clambering up wire-frame supports, stalks of corn waving gently in the evening breeze.

  Miriam clattered out of the house, her face screwed up like she had just eaten something sour. She had a small basket tucked under one arm. She missed the first porch step when she saw Weldon, and stumbled down the remaining steps, regaining her balance by flailing her arms. Weldon quickly plastered a smile across his face.

  “Hi!” he said. Miriam stared at him, looking as though she hoped she could will him out of existence.

  “Hi,” she said, then held up the basket. “I’m getting tomatoes. I guess you can help.”

  “That sounds cool,” Weldon said. Miriam turned away from him, heading toward the garden, and Weldon thought he heard her mutter something like, “Ooh, yeah, so cool, picking tomatoes. Whee.”

  Weldon stared at the back of Miriam’s head as he followed her into the garden. Her hair was tied at the base of her neck with what looked like string, and she was wearing an oversized sweater, similar to the one he’d seen her wearing on the waterfront the other day. The sweater was so large she was practically swimming in it.