SEVENTEEN: Boe, Part Two

Boe, Part Two

 

“You’re really skipping school for this?” Alden asked as Boe dragged a chair noisily across the tile floor toward his table.

Over the past hour, the bakery had filled with customers, and there was a steady buzz of conversation. Everyone seemed to be buying gooey, buttery cinnamon rolls the size of Alden’s head, and he was trying not to resent them for it.

“It’s no biggie. My GPA’s so bloated from all the advanced classes they’d have to fail me for a week straight before I even noticed.”

Boe tossed his ugly knitted scarf and a new, even uglier, knitted hat onto the table.

“Well, if we’re both cutting should we call Jeremy? He’ll feel left out.”

“No,” Boe said. “He actually has parents who care about what he does. It’ll upset them if we turn him into a truant.”

That was depressingly true.

Aunt Connie was Aunt Connie. If Alden dropped out of high school, she would be upset, but it would probably take her several weeks to notice it had happened.

And Boe’s parents were chronically checked out. Alden had only been over to his house a few times when they were younger, and his father and mother had just sat staring at the tv for hours on end. Twelve-year-old Boe was the one who usually cooked meals and cleaned the house. It was an uncomfortable dynamic.

On the other hand, Jeremy’s parents weren’t quite helicopters, but they did regular family pancake breakfasts and came to take pictures of him and his older sister at every school event.

“This place has a nice vibe,” Boe noted as he sat down with a coffee. “Hipster, but everyone’s minding their own business. We should be good to talk here if we keep it quiet. So you got Chainer, then? What rank?”

Alden frowned at him. “You know, I wasn’t expecting you to be amazed or anything. But, you’re being weirdly nonchalant about this. Except for the fact that you’re apparently worried about phone tapping like we’re in a spy movie.”

Boe shoved his glasses up on his nose, and then, in a deadpan voice, he said, “Oh my God, Alden. You’re the chosen one. Can I have your autograph to show my grandchildren one day?”

“Jeez, I should have told Jeremy first. You’re such a buzzkill.”

Boe rolled his eyes.

But, in a slightly apologetic tone, he added, “You’re right. Sorry I’m the rain at the parade. It’s just that I am surprised, and I don’t deal with sudden changes well. And I’m a little pissed that you’re probably going to run off to superhero land and leave me behind here.” He smiled bitterly. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not great at making new friends.”

Alden squirmed in his seat. “It’s not like we’ll never see each other again. I’ll call and bother you all the time. You’ll get sick of hearing from me.”

“Everyone says things like that, but it never works out in the end.” Boe stared down at the coils of his scarf, and cleared his throat. “Anyway, you have to give me the details. I’ll have you know that my own childhood superhero obsession was epic, embarrassing, and not that long ago. You can’t just keep all the good parts to yourself.”

Alden smiled. “Well, like all the best origin stories, mine started in the bathroom of a public high school…”

They talked quietly until the bakery people started glaring at them for taking up a table. Then, they moved their conversation to the streets.

“So you woke up early enough to steal Chainer right out from under the nose of some jerk in North Dakota. Nice. And lucky. Maybe lucky enough to make up for your shitty ranking.”

“Stop calling it that. It’s top 15%. It’s solid.”

“Solid if you wanted to be something normal. But you want to be an unpopular type of superhero. You’ve already limited your options a lot by deciding on that. Major cities don’t pay for solo sidekicks, and they aren’t big on paying for pre-made pairs or teams. Throw the B-rank in, and you just look like a PR nightmare.”

“Rude.”

“Honest. Governments are cowards. They don’t like new ideas. The State of Illinois may have said it supported Hannah Elber and Arjun Thomas after the Drainer incident, but it’s totally why they were fired when their contracts came up for renewal. You know that. And they were an A and an S. B-rank is going to be hard. You’re lucky the Polish guy was trying to offload the class fast without alienating anyone.”

“Yeah. You don’t think Chainer’s too much of a double-edged sword, though, do you? I don’t want to get to Anesidora in a few months, register at a new school, and find out that all the island kids hate my guts because I sold the class to their ancestral enemies.”

“Nah,” said Boe, slapping the button for the crosswalk they were waiting at. “That won’t happen.”

“You sound confident.”

“It’s because I’m smart. I know things.”

“About superhuman politics?” Alden said doubtfully.

“Well, some. I’m not an expert, but I know Bedlam Beldam is a big supporter of the Velra family. A lot of people are. It’s all very dramatic. Like a superhero soap opera. They’ve got just as many friends as they do enemies. So only half of your new schoolmates will hate you. Sixty percent of them tops.”

“Comforting.”

“And this Andrzej guy’s suggestion that you play dumb about it isn’t bad, right? Maybe you can pull off a miracle and sell it to one faction before the other one gets around to throwing their hat in the ring. They can’t complain if they think you’re a clueless outsider who didn’t even know they wanted it.”

Alden frowned. “That sounds really hard to navigate. But yeah. It would be ideal.”

Boe side-eyed him.

Then, with a sigh, he said, “Listen, I know you’ll want to take this the wrong way, but try to be open minded. You do realize you can just…not play the game, don’t you? You haven’t registered. And since I stopped you from shouting that you were an Avowed over the phone earlier—”

“Wow. You really were worried about spies.”

“What? You think there isn’t something scanning our calls for keywords?”

Alden honestly didn’t know. “I guess it’s better to be safe than sorry?”

“Right. As I was saying, you’ve only given your name to one person, and he probably won’t even notice if you don’t show up on Anesidora. He’ll just assume you’re in different academies. You could trade Chainer for some quiet little class, stay here in Chicago, and grow up to be an elementary school teacher.”

“An elementary school teacher?” Alden had respect for the job, but it had never featured on any of his to-do lists. “Where’d you get that from?”

“I think it suits you,” Boe said seriously. “And you’d still have super powers. You could take Audial Brute. I bet it’d fix your tinnitus. And you’d be a total pro at overhearing kids gossiping in your class. They’d think you were psychic.”

“Boe—”

“You’d probably hardly ever get summoned, so you wouldn’t be found out. What’s the downside?”

Alden stopped walking. Boe did, too, but he wasn’t quite meeting Alden’s eyes.

“Gorgon said the same thing,” Alden said. “About maybe not registering.”

“Ha. Did he really? Well, that’s because it’s not a bad idea.”

Alden wished, not for the first time since he’d been selected, that his dreams of being a superhero had included a little less fantasy and a lot more reality. Maybe then he would know how to answer his friend. And how to handle the uncertainty inside him that was gradually turning into fear.

If I make a mistake here, I’m screwing up my whole life.

He shivered, and it had nothing to do with the temperature.

He’d enjoyed the distraction of focusing on the class trade. But now Boe had casually pointed out that even that wasn’t a safe zone. If Alden made his presence too well known through the trades, people might get curious about him. They might look him up.

He couldn’t have that if he planned to be an Avowed in hiding.

And if I did intend to be an illegal superhuman, I really would need “a quiet little class.”

Alden’s self control was okay, but it probably wasn’t good enough to last a lifetime. If he had awesome powers, he was going to slip up and use them eventually. And if his physical stats were high enough, then even something unavoidable, like being involved in an accident, would out him.

People tended to notice if you got hit by a bus, and the vehicle came away from it with injuries worse than your own.

He and Boe stood together, while early morning traffic rushed past on the street beside them, for a long time.

Finally, Alden had an answer. “I think I would regret it.”

Boe shoved his hands into his pocket and looked up at the sky. “Which part?”

“The part where one day I’m watching the news, and I see that some eight-year-old kid just lost their parents in a villain attack…and I wonder if maybe in some small way it was my fault. Because I was supposed to be there, but I was too afraid to try for it.”

Alden exhaled sharply, his breath fogging in the cold.

“Yeah,” he added. “I think I would regret it a lot.”

Boe had never been a warm and fuzzy sort of person. If anything, he’d ranged from robotic to ill-tempered when Alden had first met him. It was only time that had brought out a few of his more human qualities.

He was loyal, sarcastic, funny…

But for some reason it was only now, as Alden watched his friend’s face twist into a forced smile, that he realized he had never once seen Boe look sad.

And he did look so sad. Nearly devastated.

For a second, it was like a cloud had passed between the two of them and the early morning sun.

Then the look was gone just as suddenly as it had come.

“I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything different from you,” Boe groaned. He gave Alden a light punch on the arm. “You’re such a noble doofus for an otherwise smart guy. I honestly think you’d probably feed me the same line if you were a useless freaking F-rank.”

“I wouldn’t,” Alden said, still feeling off-footed by the strangely dark moment. “I’m not suicidal.”

“Sure you’re not. Anyway, since you seem to be committed to playing superhero let’s get to the consulate. I want to see the magic table.”

“Gorgon says you won’t be able to access it.”

“It’s still a magic table. How many chances am I going to get in my life to disrespect an important Artonan artifact?”

“Wow. Okay. No. If you break the table, Gorgon’s supervisor will come for me, and she apparently consorts with demons.”

“Sounds hot.”

“Gross, you perv.”

Boe laughed. “Anyway, what was your special clue?”

“What?”

“From the demon you consort with. You said you thought he was giving you a hint about what class you should choose. That should be your number one priority. Classes are way less figured out than everyone likes to think. If an Artonan prisoner was setting himself on fire to give me hints, I’d run with them.”

“Let me take your luggage.”

Alden had the pleasure of seeing Boe look just as baffled as he had been the night before.

“Huh?” he asked.

“Let me take your luggage.”

Boe’s nose wrinkled. “Oh. That’s the clue?”

“My best guess is that he had to be vague. I think maybe it’s a metaphor.”

“I bet it’s an anagram,” Boe mused.

“You just want it to be an anagram because you like puzzles.”

“Eulogy. Mettle gauger. AK.”

“I’m sorry,” said Alden. “Are we speaking in tongues now?”

“Shut up. It’s a really good solve for first thing in the morning. Clearly eulogy is about Hannah’s funeral tomorrow. Afterwards, you’re supposed to travel to Alaska and gauge your mettle. Duh.”

Alden laughed.

“Rogue eagle amulet?” Boe muttered as he squinted into the distance. “No, that’s not it. I can’t make anything with the remaining letters.”

“You’re literally making the sentence more obscure, man. I was hoping you’d help me simplify the problem, not…”

Boe was a few steps ahead before he realized Alden wasn’t keeping pace with him anymore. He turned back. “You coming?”

Alden gave himself a shake and hurried to catch up. “I just realized…what if I’ve been putting too much thought into it, too? What if Gorgon was actually keeping it really simple for the dumb human? What if it’s a spell name? Or a skill?”

Boe’s eyebrows lifted. “Well, yeah. That would make it way easier. Some classes do have eccentric talent names. Full sentences are less common, but they’re a thing.”

“Right?” Alden was getting excited now. “There’s an Adjuster spell called ‘Hold my hand until sunset.’”

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

It was an unpopular capture spell that magically glued your hand to your target’s.

“How romantic,” Boe said dryly. But then, with a bit more enthusiasm, he added, “Beldam has a passive called ‘Cats are better in nines.’”

“See! I bet I’m right. I’ve never heard of one called ‘Let me get your luggage,’ though.”

“Me either. And the sentence names are memorable. Since we don’t know it, it’s probably not often used. Which would mean it could only belong to one of the classes that gets a stupidly long skill or spell list.”

“People still haven’t tried out everything on the Adjuster spell list,” Alden said hopefully. “So maybe?”

“I think you’d have read about it if it was an Adjuster spell, you mage geek,” Boe replied. “If it was a B-rank specific one you might have missed it, but…it could be Wright? They get so many skills to choose from they say their list looks like the Oxford English. That one S-rank spent two years trying to pick the best one from it when she hit Level 10, and nobody thought it was a waste of time.”

“Yeah.” Alden frowned. “If we’re on the right track, it would most likely be Wright or one of the rares. The other major classes have fairly narrow lists at B-rank. Shaper’s a maybe, but it doesn’t sound anything like one of their skills.”

“It’s not Shaper.” Boe’s tone was dismissive. “Their stuff is all kind of obvious as far as System naming goes. If anything, it sounds like it might be a—”

“A what?”

Boe suddenly grabbed onto the sleeve of Alden’s coat and stopped walking. “Is that who I think it is?” he asked quietly, staring ahead of them.