Heroine Complex (28 page)

I laughed, but it sounded false. “Not right now. Bea's an early riser and I need to talk to her. And anyway, I look disgusting.” I gestured to my unkempt appearance. My voice, like my laugh, sounded weird. Like it was coming from someone else's body.

“I think you look perfect.” He brushed a curl off my face.

“Well, I feel disgusting,” I countered, pulling away. I awkwardly maneuvered myself out of bed by scooting down to the foot of the mattress and hopping to the floor.

“Wait.” He stood and faced me. “Seriously. What's wrong?”

“I told you: nothing.” My voice was harsher than I intended. The nausea-anxiety mix was swirling around like crazy.

“Are you acting strangely because you're worried about the karaoke contest?” he asked. “Because you don't have to go through with this Maisy thing. We can come up with another plan.”

I stiffened. Why was he bringing up Maisy? I mean, of course I was thinking about her. I was getting ready to battle her and the fate of the entire city hung in the
balance and it was freaking me the fuck out. I idly wondered if she'd been trying to freak me out further by draping herself all over him yesterday. She knew he was Aveda Jupiter's “escort,” that Aveda might have special mushy feelings for him . . .

Fuck it. I didn't want to think about any of this. I just wanted to go back to my own room.

“I'm not worried,” I said, trying to project confidence. “I want to take her down.”

He hesitated. “I've been thinking about it. And I'm not sure
I
want you to.”

“Why not? Because you have such a deep, personal connection to Maisy Kane after your big meeting?”

“What?” He looked confused.

“Because it was so fun to sensuously eat strawberries off the perfectly manicured fingertips of a demon princess? Who, in case you've forgotten, is totally evil and totally our enemy?” I knew I sounded ridiculous, but I couldn't seem to stop the words from spilling out of my mouth. Why wouldn't he just let me leave?

“No, of course not. The whole experience could best be described as pure torture.”

“Then how come you looked like you were having fun?”

“I was merely trying not to antagonize her. Why are you acting this way?”

“I'm not acting any way. I—”

“Are you jealous?”

“Yes.”
The word shot out of my mouth before I could stop it. I forced myself to relax my shoulders. “Which is stupid since we have much bigger concerns right now. And anyway, we're not even together. Not like that.”

He looked confused again. “Yes, we are.”

“No. We're just using each other for orgasms. We agreed on that.”

His face darkened. “And clearly things have changed.”

“No, they haven't!”

“Evie—”

“We agreed! And we've never discussed changing that agreement.”

“We spend every night together.” His voice was low and controlled, but I could hear the anger percolating there. “We have intellectually stimulating conversations. I have observed details about you that are intimate but not sexual: the fact that you eat cereal at all hours of the day, for example. The evidence suggests that we—”

“Evidence?!” I gaped at him. “You can't use ‘evidence' to determine dating status! That may work for tracking demons and tracking fire powers, but it doesn't work for this!”

“You're jealous because I was seen in close contact with another woman,” he pressed. His eyes were locked on me with such intensity, I had to take a step back. “And I'm jealous of your longstanding friendship with Scott because he is another heterosexual male who—”

“Scott? How can you be jealous of Scott? We only slept together that one time—”

“You slept together?” His face darkened further. “Recently?”

“No, at prom, and . . . you know what, it doesn't matter!” I snapped. “None of this matters. This is just sex and you can't use some scientific algorithm to make it into something else!”

“It's already something else!” He grabbed my hand and pulled it to his chest. His heartbeat slammed against my palm. “And I don't understand why you're so dead-set on insisting it's not. You are the most stubborn, pigheaded, infuriating—” He stopped, trying to get ahold of himself. He squeezed my hand and I felt his heartbeat speed up. “I don't want you to participate in the karaoke contest because I'm worried Maisy has something big planned for that night. That something terrible is going to happen to you.” He squeezed my hand again and there were so many emotions swirling in the dark depths
of his eyes, his gaze pierced me like a physical shock. “And I can't bear that thought, Evie. I
can't
.”

His voice cracked on that last word. My heart smacked against my breastbone over and over and over again. I was still anxious and nauseous and I felt like I was going to throw up all over him and my brain was screaming at me to run, run, run.

“It doesn't matter what you can or can't bear,” I said, trying to hold myself together. “You don't get to make this decision for me.”

“I know that—”

“And anyway, I can't be distracted by all this . . . stuff right now.” I wrenched my hand away. “I have to focus. If Maisy does have something planned for that night, I need to be ready. This stupid fucking karaoke battle is important.”

“It
is
important. That's why we should talk about—”

“No, we shouldn't!” I stomped toward the door. “There's no ‘we'!”

“Yes, there is!” he bellowed.

I stomped back to my bedroom and pushed open the door to find Bea arranging a series of large spreadsheets on an easel, all of them displaying rubrics of data on which karaoke songs should and should not find a place in my performance.

“There you are,” she said, clapping her hands together. “So first we have to talk about how Maisy owns the boy band repertoire. Don't attempt anything in that wheelhouse.”

Anger was still churning through me. “Not even One Direction?” I said.

Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “Especially not One Direction. She'll annihilate you. The songs you choose matter. This isn't just about you taking down Maisy the Demon Princess. It's about
how
you take her down. That's the story that will spread far and wide and be documented on every form of social media. Aveda
Jupiter has been gaining an international audience ever since ‘she' got a fire power. That means you're essentially performing on an international stage. You've got to have a sense of showmanship. And that means . . .” She trailed off, frowning. “Evie. Are you crying?”

“No,” I said automatically. I lifted a hand to my face. It was wet. “Oh, shit.”

I crossed the room and slumped onto my bed. “Keep talking. I seem to be having some kind of allergic reaction. Maybe it's the rain.”

She left her spreadsheets behind and sat down next to me, then laid a tentative hand on my arm. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, my voice robotic. “Let's just keep going with this karaoke discussion.”

“No.”

“No?”

“You're my sister,” she said. “We're supposed to talk about stuff, even when it's stuff you don't think is appropriate for my supposedly innocent ears.”

I couldn't seem to process anything she was saying. My anger was dissipating, but I still felt sick. She jabbed me in the arm.

“Talk to meeeeeeeeee.”

Any confessional resistance I might've once possessed had been thoroughly destroyed in the last two weeks. So that was all it took to get me to start yammering.

“I had a fight with Nate. But I was feeling weird before that. Kind of sick. Anxious. Possibly hungover.” I scrubbed a hand across my face. “Maybe I need to throw up.”

Bea chewed her lower lip. “What was the fight with Nate about?”

“Nothing. Everything. You're too young for me to talk about this.”

She gave me her best Tanaka Glare. “I'll be seventeen in a few days. And don't forget about my birthday
breakfast. I still haven't heard back from Dad, but you have no excuse for not being there. Now. Answer the question.”

I bit my nail off. “It was about whether we're dating or just, um . . .”

“Having sex?”

I nodded. It sounded pretty dumb when you said it out loud like that.

“But you said you started feeling gross before that?” Her expression was so deadly serious, I had the deranged urge to laugh. Beatrice Tanaka, Feelings Detective. “What were you talking about when the weird feelings started?”

I thought about it. I'd woken up feeling a little gross. And despite my best efforts, I'd managed to totally freak out about the Big Maisy Takedown Plan. But my cocktail of bizarre emotions had taken off sometime between those two things. Right before he'd shown me the stone.

What on Earth had we been talking about?

“His bed,” I said, replaying our inane conversation. “He wants to get a new bed. I have no idea why that would make me anxious.”

Bea smiled smugly. “Sounds intimate.”

“Talking about furniture while fully clothed? Doesn't seem as intimate as some of the other things we've done.”

“Oh em gee, that is way more intimate!” She gave me a look. “Nate is a creature of extreme routine, Evie. Just look at his wardrobe. And he's talking about buying a whole new piece of furniture?”

“His bed is really small . . .”

“And he wants a bigger one so you can fit in it!” she crowed. “Like, fit in it all the time. That's what freaked you out. And that stoked the fires of your whole dating-slash-not dating fight.” She clapped her hands on my shoulders and gave me an intense look. “I knew this would happen. He looks exactly like the guy in that movie you and Aveda used to watch.”

“The scientist? In
The Heroic Trio
?”

“Yes.”

He did. How had I never noticed it before?

Oh, God.

Bea's grip on my shoulders tightened. “So first, once you let your emotions come out after shoving them down for so long, your body figured out it was attracted to him. And now your body's taken the next step and figured out you
really
like him. For more than, like, sexual purposes. So your brain's trying to catch up. That disconnect probably made you react to him in a super irrational way.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but she kept barreling on.

“And your anxiety over the Maisy battle is just adding to your stress on top of everything right now, all your emotional stuff. Which probably made your reaction even worse.”

“How do you know I have anxiety about—”

“Well, of course you do. The whole demon princess situation is super scary and you're trying to deny it's scary rather than just accepting that it's okay to be freaked. That you
should
be freaked.”

I slumped over, resting my forehead on my knees. I couldn't even begin to process the thought of Nate and I existing beyond our just orgasms arrangement.

Why couldn't I do that?

“Evie.” I felt her hand on my back. A rush of warmth washed over me, making me feel momentarily soothed.

Unfortunately, then she started talking again.

“I know sometimes you think you can get rid of feelings you don't think you should be having,” she said. “I know because I do it, too. Like with Mom. I still feel sad sometimes and it's like, why? I shouldn't still feel this sad. It's been almost five years. I should be moving on. But just because I think that in the most logical part of my brain space, it doesn't make me less sad.”

My heart clenched. “Bea . . .”

“You're scared. If you let yourself care about someone too hard, they might go away. They might die or leave, like Mom and Dad.” She rubbed my back and I felt that rush of warmth again. “That's not gonna stop you from caring, though. So you might as well give in.”

I lifted my head and looked at her. She was still ultra-serious, trying to gauge my reaction. “You sound so smart,” I blurted out.

She gave a long-suffering sigh. “I've always been brilliant. I got all As this semester without going to class once.”

I should have scolded her, but curiosity got the better of me. “How?”

“I homeschooled myself.” She grinned. “I called the school and pretended I was you and I informed them I have a very rare and contagious disorder and I needed to be quarantined all semester. They sent me my work, I sent it back. I aced all the tests and did extra credit in math. The end.”

“A generic and extremely sudden ‘disorder'? They bought that?”

She shrugged. “Schools have to be super-sensitive nowadays. Otherwise I could totes sue them for discrimination. Against my disorder.”

“But . . . but . . .” I spluttered, not sure what to address first. “Don't you miss your friends?”

“I don't have any friends. Well, not at school. Not anymore.” She looked down at the bedspread. “Aveda's my friend. And Lucy. Scott and Nate.”

I scrutinized her. Even after everything that'd happened with Mom and Dad, I'd always assumed she'd stayed the same: popular and selfish, the tempestuous life of the party. But now I saw that she was nearly as lost as I was.

She was kind of a mess, too.

“Mom would be proud of you,” I said. “Balancing
school with a real job and managing to kick ass at both? Pretty awesome.”

A small smile crept over her face. “Does that mean I can still have my disorder next semester?”

“We'll see.” I squeezed her hand and left the rest of my thought unspoken.

If there
is
another semester. If I manage to keep Maisy from totally destroying the city and all.

“For now, why don't we talk about that song list?” I said. “And my showmanship.”