“No!”
I stopped and turned around. You tried to hold on to the lie, but it took only a couple seconds of being stared at by a pissed-off thirteen-year-old before you threw up your hands.
“All right! Fine! So maybe it was a little abrupt.”
“A little? They looked like crazy people!”
You laughed. “They aren’t crazy. They’re just excited. This is huge for them. Dad’s wanted to quit that stupid advertising job for years. Selling the Brotherhood to Marvel means he can!”
“But what about Mom?”
“What has she wanted to do ever since she had to stop dancing? Open her own studio. She can do that up there.”
I crossed my arms and scowled at the sidewalk. We were just a couple blocks from the park. I could hear kids screaming and the ice-cream truck’s jingle.
“Look,” you said with a sigh. “You’re freaked. I get it. How about you let me buy you an ice-cream cone—”
“I’m not nine, Tennant.”
“I know you’re not nine, Card. I want a cone. Okay? Let’s get a couple, then we’ll sit down and figure this out.”
I looked over my shoulder to where the East River appeared and disappeared between the buildings at the edge of the park. What choice did I have? If I started running again, pretty soon we’d both be swimming.
Minutes later we were sitting on a bench watching the skateboarders whiz by while tourists snapped pictures of the bridge. I worked on my soft serve while you ticked off the pros.
“No more bedbugs. No more roaches. No more getting packed into subway cars with busted air conditioners in the middle of summer.”
“What about our friends?”
“Black River is only two hours away,” you said. “We’ll see them whenever we want. And besides, when we start at Black River High, we’ll be the cool and mysterious kids from Brooklyn, so we’ll make tons of new friends. Hot girls will literally swoon.”
“Hmm.”
“And there are bike trails,” you continued. “And rivers, and mountains. And people go out and pick their own apples and pumpkins in the fall. We can learn to kayak!”
“Since when do you want to learn to kayak?”
“Since right now! I just decided. I’m gonna be Kayak Guy. Oh! And maybe Snowboarding Guy. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Awesome.”
“I can see you’re a tough sell, kid. That’s why I saved the best for last. This house Mom and Dad are buying? We’ll have our own rooms.”
I didn’t say anything, but all I could think was that I didn’t want my own room. You and I had been sharing a room since birth. The idea of being locked up in some room all on my own made me feel like I’d just been tossed into the East River with a sack of concrete tied to my ankle. I dumped the dregs of my ice-cream cone in the trash.
You nudged my shoulder with yours. “Think about it this way, bro. What would have happened to Kal-El if he’d grown up on Krypton instead of Earth?”
“Uh, he would’ve died when the planet exploded?”
“Okay. Fine. But forget that for a second. If Kal-El had grown up on Krypton, he’d have ended up just like everybody else. Dude had to move to Earth to be Superman.”
You turned to me on the bench and leaned in closer.
“Just think about it. There’s a whole new world out there, and we can make it into anything we want. We can make us into anything we want.”
Across the river the sun streamed down over the skyscrapers of Manhattan. I imagined a streak of blue and red soaring over the city and smiled despite myself.
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe that is kind of awesome.”
I woke with a start and found myself still on the porch. I sat up, groaning, and put my back against the railing. The world was hazy and smelled of sweat and vomit. Dark clouds had spread over the town, and the air had that heavy, charged feeling that comes just before a storm. Once my head stopped pounding, I gathered my things, then staggered down toward the street.
As soon as I hit the sidewalk, I thought I heard someone call my name. I spun around, but didn’t see anyone. Just the house, towering over me. I thought about all the rooms sitting side by side within its walls—my bedroom, yours, Mom and Dad’s. They seemed like those chambers they find hidden inside pyramids, sealed up for a thousand years, airless. I felt a pull to go inside—to climb the stairs, to lie in my old bed—but I pushed it away. I strapped on my mask and started the walk back to Lucy’s Promise.