Chapter Text
Slowly, but surely, the alarm invaded his dreams once again.
Seven o’clock in the morning arrived anew for Josh Carter, signaling the start of another school day. It was another chance to show the world what he was made of, to make a name for himself, to battle for his place among the popular. It was an irresistible calling, and over the past two years, he had made it his life’s work. Either he entered the ninth grade as one of the most popular kids in school, or he’d ruin everything trying.
Turning over to face the alarm, he hit the button to disable the noise. Josh found it just a little bit harder to get out of bed lately; maybe all the stress and weight of everything that had been happening to him recently was getting to him. But he pushed those worries to the back of his mind; after all, you couldn’t seize the day just lying there in bed doing nothing. At least, that’s what his parents always used to tell him; his mom a high-powered executive, his dad an influential entrepreneur, they seemed to be speaking from experience. It was possible they were already up.
The boy knew he and his friends would convene via screen at 7:15, which gave him just enough time to brush his teeth.
The beginning of his eighth-grade year had been good to Josh; all the groundwork he had been laying in seventh grade was finally starting to pay off, putting him on a fast-track to the stratospheric heights he craved. It all seemed to be going to plan, until a fateful Friday night where he had a run-in with a battle ball — or rather, it ran into him. Since then, the teen had been saddled with the specter of superheroics, the call to be one of the town’s noble virus warriors never too far away. It was a dangerous distraction, and not just because it involved giant, virus-infected monsters. In just a few months, Josh would face the most important moment of his life. Even now, in this mundane minute of dental hygiene, the clock was ticking to persuade, impress, and schmooze his way to inheriting a spot atop the social food chain. Every second counted, every move mattered, and any misstep could prove downright fatal to his hopes. If he came up short, he would never be able to live with himself… and it would probably be thanks to them. Those smarmy aliens and that prying blond and that absolute stalker of a loser known as —
Josh spat out his toothpaste forcefully, as if discarding the thought.
Returning to his room, the aspiring socialite opened up the video chat app on his phone; it was time for the morning video call with his friends. Josh called Simon first, then added Rebecca to the group. After a few rings, both teens appeared on Josh’s phone screen in that order.
“Good morning!” Josh greeted them.
“Good morning,” Simon replied.
“Good morning, guys,” Rebecca added.
“Ready to crush another day at school,” Simon said eagerly. “What about you?”
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been feeling kinda antsy the past couple weeks,” Josh explained. “We’re already so far into the school year… I feel like I need to be making big moves.”
“It’s really starting to get late, isn’t it?” Simon added.
“Honestly, I’m starting to worry,” Josh admitted. “Somewhere in the back of my mind, you know… what if we don’t make it?”
“Don’t say that, Josh,” Simon rebuffed. “We still have time, and we’ve been making good progress lately.”
“Yeah, all we need is a few big plays,” Rebecca added.
“I guess… maybe everything hasn’t been working out the way I hoped it would,” Josh explained.
“Well, no one said this was going to be easy,” Simon replied. “But that’s what makes it rewarding.”
“Yeah,” Josh agreed. “Nothing good ever is, is it?”
“Why don’t we try and figure out your next big move today?” Simon suggested. “There’s gotta be something we can come up with to step up our game.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Josh signaled.
As often happened, the call would devolve into more idle chatter as Josh stepped towards his walk-in closet. Nominally, it was still a closet, as in “the place where his clothes lived”. But really, it was more like an entire room unto itself; a massive wardrobe that would make the stores at the mall take notes. Racks of shirts, piles of pants, rows of shoes, and a variety of accessories neatly lined the walls of the room, a showpiece of conspicuous consumption just as much as it was designed for efficiency on bleary-eyed mornings when he ran the risk of running late. His friends paid no mind as the scenery around him changed; it was all something they had seen plenty of times before.
The fact that some things really hadn’t changed much was all the more reassuring now.
Josh pushed for efficiency this morning, even though he had a reasonable amount of time to dawdle; he knew the kind of impression he wanted to make at school today. The teen coordinated a jacket with a stylish tee, a neutral pair of jeans, and some eye-catching sneakers, occasionally looking over to make eye contact towards Simon heading downstairs for breakfast and Rebecca fixing up her hair to clear her bed head.
In the spirit of being the early bird, Josh spent his time on the car ride to school scrolling through his Instograph profile, looking to study up. At this point in his journey, the aspiring socialite knew that the climb up the popularity ladder began even before the first bell rang.
Scrolling through his @futuresuperstar account, Josh found his usual mixture of aesthetic inspiration posts, buzzworthy celebrity news, and updates from people he found interesting — both other students at Cornbury Middle School, some he had gotten to know on his journey, and influencers online he found cool.
“‘Congratulations on making it to regionals, Asher’…” Josh typed out as a reply to a comment on a skateboarding post from @ashershreds.
Before long, it was time to start another school day. Josh stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of Cornbury Middle School, like so many other students nearby. The teen briefly scoped out the area: friends making plans, talking about how their nights went, desperately trying to copy each other’s homework before first period. In the distance, Josh noticed Tyler, Kevin, Shope, and the Roach, their faces and appearances becoming increasingly familiar to him. Instinctively, he scowled, but then tried to hide it, as he turned his face to the imposing front doorway of the school building. The locker-cladded halls proved a labyrinth of social navigation, something the boy had grown adept at over the years. The right person, in the right place, at the right time, could set up the opening of many doors beyond just the ones that went to the classrooms.
With determination, resolve, and a confident, swagger-enhancing smirk he made look effortless, Josh stepped inside, entering the social battlefield once more.
The hallways of the school were starting to fill in, as students came inside and headed for their lockers. Josh felt he walked in a little early, as if he could’ve waited a few more minutes and timed it better, but he was already strutting on in; there was no turning back now. As he made his way through the halls and on the way to his own locker, he took comfort in the fact that more heads were turning around him; more people were getting to know him, or at least hear of him, and they had taken an interest in seeing what he was about.
Boosted by his own social media presence, his friends, and Zoey Miller’s… comprehensive coverage of his adventures on her news blog, Josh Carter was semi-popular… mostly popular? Almost cool? He wished he had a better grasp of exactly where he was on the school’s popularity ladder, and exactly what perks his arduously-earned cool points got him. He definitely wasn’t uncool, but he wasn’t cool enough that the school’s most popular kids knew him by name. Currently, Josh lived in a weird middle area, a purgatory he had to get out of before it all firmed up into a high-school set of haves and have-nots. He seemed to be making progress, if the response to his entrance was any indication, but it was so hard to tell. It was enough to make him a little anxious.
And as Josh arrived at his own locker, there he saw them, across the hall at their own lockers, as always: the most popular kids in school. His aspiration, his target. Maybe not entirely his idol, because, at least from what he had heard, they all seemed to make some underhanded moves here and there to get to where they are. But having them in his sights every day motivated him. It made his ultimate goal seem just a little more tangible.
“So, how was the walk in this morning?”
Turning around to look behind him, Josh saw his best friend Simon, with Rebecca in tow behind him. Most days, they tried to time it so that they walked in together; today was one of the few times they didn’t.
“I think I was too early,” Josh explained.
“Well, there’s more where those came from,” conceded Simon.
“Any new ideas come to you?”
“No, not yet, but we’ve still got all day.”
With so much of Josh’s life tied up in the margins of the school day, it was almost as if his classes were the boring part. In some ways, they were; math class was seemingly enough to put anyone but the most hyperactive of caffeine addicts to sleep. But in other ways, despite teachers’ best efforts to admonish phone usage and put on what they thought to be interesting lessons, it only really served to put the tension of the social game that played out within these walls on a low simmer.
His quest aside, there was another way life at Cornbury Middle School had gotten more interesting recently, and Josh was reminded of it just after third period had ended.
The rising socialite was just about to reach his locker to trade out a few folders and textbooks, when suddenly, there was an unusual noise, a faraway roar that seemed to momentarily quiet the cacophonous halls. Then, a pang of panicked screams set in as students in the immediate area started to rush away from the scene. Further away from the center of the action, students started to head for the exits in a more orderly manner, the product of well-executed ‘monster drills’ implemented by the principal at the start of the school year, given the increasingly frequent and disruptive virus battles that impacted the school grounds.
At this moment, Josh knew the next little while was about to stretch out into an agonizingly slow slog. Despite being a virus warrior himself, Josh’s next battle wasn’t going to be with whatever was creating a ruckus on the other side of the school building. Instead, it would be with the rest of the team meant to fight it.
And, as if on cue, in teleported Tyler, suited up as the Blue Superdude, ready to bark orders from on high.
“Josh, here’s your battle ball, you’re on evacuation duty,” Tyler stated bluntly.
“Really?” Josh asked. “This again?”
Tyler sighed. They were doing this again. “Josh, I thought we were making progress on this. You said this was a good compromise!”
“I said this was an acceptable compromise sometimes,” Josh corrected.
“You still need to get used to having your battle ball, and you still don’t keep it with you most of the time!” Tyler complained. “And you’re not even doing anything! You’re just making sure that everyone gets out of the school safely so we can do the real fighting.”
Josh took offense to Tyler’s dismissive tone. “I don’t even want to put on your stupid training wheels as it is.”
The monster roared again somewhere off in the distance. Tyler groaned; Josh was pulling him away from the action. “We can fight about this later, okay? I need to get back to that virus beast, and you need to get to getting everyone out of here.” Tyler pushed the yellow battle ball into Josh’s hands to further his point.
“…Fine,” Josh conceded. It was clear he wasn’t getting away this time, another squabble hitting another dead end. “Are you and those stupid aliens happy you’ve gotten me to play along?” Josh asked passive-aggressively.
“Someday you’re gonna run out of chances and you’ll have to fight alongside us; you might as well start getting used to it now,” Tyler replied, showing he wasn’t budging.
Josh grumbled as he started to walk away from Tyler and towards the dispersing crowds. Tyler looked on at him for a moment, displeased at what he had to do. He knew he was being harder on Josh than he would have liked, and it was creating friction that would set them back when the argument did, inevitably, continue sometime later, but he also felt that the heat of battle required strong leadership and decisive action. It was for his own good in the end anyway… right?
Conveniently finding an emptied classroom nearby, Josh darted inside and inserted his battle ball, activating his hero suit and transforming him into the Yellow Superdude. He steadied himself as he tried to shake off that persistent jelly feeling that lingered every time he transformed. As he always did when he was roped into virus-fighting in public, Josh remembered to scrub his hands through his bright yellow hair to mess up his look. While none of the other Superdudes’ identities had been exposed in the year since the heroes arrived, Josh now also knew that secretly they were among the school’s biggest nobodies; being superheroes was probably an upgrade for them, he thought. Because of that, he saw them as a bad barometer. They weren’t a good measure of how secret this guise actually was, so the teen felt he could take no chances. People actually paid attention to Josh Carter, and so if it was revealed that he was also one of Cornbury’s local superheroes, there’d almost certainly be a deluge of questions asked; not least from his friends.
His friends, Simon and Rebecca, who he’s been keeping this secret from for months now.
Josh felt a pang of anguish as he thought of that. He was especially worried about Simon; he could already tell his lifelong best friend was getting suspicious of him. All the weird disappearances, the lies that don’t add up, the uncharacteristically unusual behavior that has already threatened Josh’s hunt for popularity on more than one occasion.
Back in the day, they promised they wouldn’t keep secrets from each other, and now Josh was hiding the biggest secret of all from him.
He hoped he’d understand why, if it did spill out. Look at how it happens on TV! It never ends well, and it only makes them more of a target. And that doesn’t even begin to mention how quickly it would send all their big plans into the gutter, the uncertainty and instability inherent in the hero’s call dashing any hopes of building a reputation. Josh was already abducted by a virus beast once… he couldn’t bear to see it happen to his friends. Plus it was something even he didn’t want to be a part of… why would he want to saddle them with it too?
But at the same time, he knew it was only a matter of time before Simon put the pieces together and figured out what was going on, what the truth was. Simon was just as smart and clever as he was, and more importantly, he knew Josh too well. Just as well as Josh knew Simon, if not better sometimes. He already knew something was wrong with Josh, and Josh feared the confrontation that would happen when, not if, he discovered what that something was.
What they didn’t know wasn’t hurting them… too much, right?
At some point, Josh realized that the jelly feeling he was having from his powers had been replaced by his own anxious, fearful jitters. With his body acclimated, at least, even though his mind wasn’t, he stepped outside, as ready for action as he could be at the moment.
By the time Josh had ventured back out into the hallway, most of the student body was already following the established school procedure and exiting the building. ‘Evacuation duty’, therefore, was little more than a fancy term for picking up the straddlers and making sure no one — or at least no one else — tried to get into harm’s way while the Superdudes fought whatever was attacking the other side of the school. It was so unglamorous — and in Josh’s eyes, so useless a task — that it felt demeaning. And yet, Josh still activated his battle ball’s powers, stretched his hands out to nearly touch the lockers on the sides of the hallway, and started pressing forward, corralling the middle-schoolers towards the front of the building and away from the battle.
“Alright, students, please make your way to the exits… wait for instruction to come back in… make sure you have everything with you…” In spite of his exasperation at it all, which came through in his delivery, Josh still made the effort to put on his deeper ‘superhero voice’. It was the one thing he agreed with Tyler on when it came to heroics. “Yada yada yada…” he added to himself.
In a way, ‘evacuation duty’ almost felt like a waste of his powers, which weirdly made Josh want to use them for more interesting things. But as much as that yearning lingered as he slowly pushed the students onward, he felt it wouldn’t be worthwhile if he entertained that curiosity, and at this point he didn’t want to give any of them the satisfaction of any genuine interest he had anymore either.
This was the fifth time Josh had been pressured into doing this. The pace of virus attacks had been picking up again lately, which meant the other heroes and the aliens had been annoying him more into coming to training and being a bigger part of the team. Supposedly, even the Benevolent Alliance was starting to ask questions about his absenteeism. Maybe their aliens should have picked a more willing soldier, Josh thought.
If it were up to him, Josh wouldn’t have become a hero at all. His life was already busy enough; his plans were already set, in his mind. Play the game, climb the ladder, anchor the cool table for the rest of his schooling life. But, if this was in the cards, it’s not like having superpowers was the worst thing in the world, at least on paper; they were unique new abilities that Josh could probably find some way to work to his advantage, even if he understood it was a bad idea to use them publicly. If it was just that? Josh could’ve handled it. Maybe he could have even… warmed up to some of the other aspects of what having superpowers entailed.
But it wasn’t just that. It took weeks just to confront, and even longer to overcome, how violated he felt over how his body was now tied to his battle ball. Mem and Zen had explained it fairly plainly at the time, and they had tried to break it down for him a few more times later on, with Tyler’s help. In order to enable the enhanced systems that allowed for his superpowers, the yellow battle ball had to merge with and alter Josh’s very DNA. Certainly his arms weren’t meant to stretch as far as they currently were, and then retract back in moments without a second thought — and even now, it freaked him out whenever he wore his super-suit long enough for the question to cross his mind. But Josh felt like his battle ball changed more than just his genetic code; in the brief seconds it seared into his chest that fateful night, the battle ball changed a part of himself, too. It skewed Josh’s trajectory into a direction he never wanted to go, towards a role he didn’t see as all that fulfilling.
The circumstances were all wrong, the weird battle ball felt all wrong, even his teammates felt wrong. He didn’t mind being part of a team; it lessened the pressure on him as an individual, in some ways, and in his real life he always saw Simon and Rebecca as part of his team for playing the game. But did the other heroes he had to work with really have to be the most uncool, unappealing, reputation-kamikaze people in all of Cornbury?
Having superpowers was actually kinda cool, Josh figured. But working with the Superdudes made it suck, harder than he had ever imagined.
Getting the students out of the front door was hardly a difficult task for Josh, especially given everyone was already following directions anyway. It made him wonder why he was even suited up for it. If they didn’t really need him, then why was he even here?
His arms retracting back to normal, he doubled back to check for anyone who might have been straggling, anyone he didn’t see. By his surprise, someone was running behind.
Zoey Miller was dashing through the hallway, trying to get to the door. Josh didn’t know exactly why she hadn’t already left — maybe she was just looking to grab some details on the attack for her blog — but it made the situation a little awkward for Josh. What if she noticed him and was able to piece it all together?
Before he could finish processing the ramifications of that thought, Zoey ran straight into a dropped textbook and tripped, about to fall over. Josh rushed over and managed to save her from falling; not because he knew her, but just because it was helpful and the right thing to do.
It took a second for Zoey to realize what was going on, and why she wasn’t flat on her face right now. But once she figured it out, she looked up at Josh.
“Are you okay?” Josh asked, still in that false baritone, especially now.
“…Y—the Yellow Superdude!” Zoey was stunned for entirely different reasons now. “I… I can’t believe you’re actually here! In Cornbury!”
“Neither can I,” the hero added sardonically.
“I have so many questions!” the reporter began eagerly.
“Let’s get you out of here,” Josh pushed back, interested in answering absolutely none of them. Kicking the textbook to the side of the hallway so it wouldn’t trouble anyone else once the students came back in, Josh walked Zoey out.
At the front of the building, most of the student body were simply waiting for the virus battle to be over. No one seemed to be causing any trouble, it was all fairly orderly. Everyone was used to this by now.
For what insignificant part he played, Josh didn’t actually know how to feel about any of this anymore. Standing outside, in public, in his super-suit… it didn’t make him angry, at least not by itself, but he didn’t feel that great about it either. Looking out into the distance, across the street at nowhere in particular, he felt despondent. Being a superhero… sounded cool, at least at first. But now it felt like a burden, caging him, keeping him away from his own life.
“Hey, uh… Yellow Superdude?”
Josh’s attention turned back to Zoey.
“Thanks for saving me back there.” There was a look of genuine admiration on her face that he wasn’t sure if he had ever seen from her before. This unusual change of situation made Josh see it in a different light.
“Oh…” Josh replied. “I guess it’s no big deal. Part of being a superhero, right?”
He found a way to describe the feeling that was gnawing at him right now. He felt obligated, in a way that he hadn’t before. It was new to him. It made him feel tied down; constrained in a way that felt like it would suffocate him if he let it. It was the unspoken price of a secret identity Josh could have lived without.
“While we’re standing here, I was wondering… would you be interested in an interview? I run this news blog, the Cornbury Hound Dog. It’s so rare that anyone sees you around, compared to the other Superdudes… maybe they’d want to get to know this mysterious new hero helping their town.”
“I’m sorry, I really can’t… being a superhero is — ”
“It’s okay, I’ve managed to talk with a few of the others for the blog too. The Red Superdude was really eager when I got to him.”
Of course Kevin would be, Josh thought.
“I’d really rather not,” Josh insisted. “I don’t want to make myself known any more than I already have.”
“Alright, but if you ever change your mind…”
Zoey handed the hero one of her business cards for the Hound Dog. Josh had seen it before; he was the first person she showed it to after she made them, back when she was starting the blog. It was a picture of Zoey with a determined, yet playful expression, flanked on its left by the name of the blog, an email address, and the blog’s social media handles. He had to admit, it still held up.
A familiar suck-pop noise pulled Josh’s attention away. Tyler had teleported to the front of the school, just outside the school doors. The other Superdudes were in tow a few feet behind him. They all looked a little worse for wear, as you’d expect from just battling… whatever virus-infected thing it was back there. But Tyler put on a brave, confident face.
“Attention Cornbury students,” he began, still in his feigned lower tones, “we have defeated the monster!”
The crowd outside cheered.
“It is now safe to make your way back inside.”
Tyler looked to Josh, specifically, gesturing for him to come along.
Josh headed up the front steps, just in front of where Tyler was standing. He sighed before reassuming his own vocal disguise. “Okay people, orderly lines, no pushing, no shoving,” he said, dejected but with authority. “We all wanna get back in here…”
Once the students started to form their own lines, with the front of the pack guiding the middle and so on, the superheroes stepped back, finding a quiet classroom to regroup and hide their transformations back into civilians.
“See, that wasn’t so bad, you were great out there!” Tyler assured.
“I was useless!” Josh complained, piercing through his teammate’s attempts to build him up. “Why did you even pull me into this?”
“What are we supposed to do?” Shope added, her face showing a tiredness with Josh’s constant arguments. “You won’t let Mem and Zen actually train you.”
“We’ve been trying to ease you into it,” Tyler explained. “So I thought we’d start with something that combines some of the things Kevin says you’re already good at: standing there and looking good.”
“I don’t even want to be seen like this!” Josh argued. “People will start asking questions.”
“No one even knows it’s you, dude,” Kevin explained.
“…You don’t know the people I know,” Josh added. “And no one actually cares who you all are anyway,” he continued dismissively. “I can’t be so… uh… inconspicuous.”
“The unflinching gaze of social media stardom creates an attentive fanbase waiting to examine every detail of your life,” Roach waxed.
“See?” Josh added. “He gets it!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tyler interrupted. “Besides, you haven’t even been suited up enough for people to even think about your secret identity. Just keep doing what you’ve been doing.”
Josh signaled to Tyler that he still didn’t believe him, and the blond-haired hero looked back at him with sympathetic eyes. The two had been meeting in secret, ever since after the Thunderstrike situation, as Tyler tried to break down all the fears Josh had over actually being a superhero. He was reluctant to admit it, but some of the talks were working on him. But there were still some things he was tense over, unflinchingly obstinate to the point of creating an obstacle. He could see Tyler was trying, but sometimes it felt like Tyler was trying too hard; less in it to help Josh and more to curry favor with him on behalf of the rest of the team. It was a defense mechanism he always had up, as part of his journey to social stardom; you needed to be able to suss out whether the person you were talking to was actually interested in teaming up, or just looking to use you for their own game. Josh had been on the receiving end of both over the past two years, but he wasn’t quite sure how to gauge Tyler yet.
The urge to get out of his super-suit and away from his teammates still proved strong enough that Josh resisted blowing out the argument further. He deactivated his suit and left the room, looking to regroup with his friends and act like nothing happened over the last little while.
Some days, he pulled that off better than others.
The disruption of the virus battle meant that the passage of time had been temporarily obscured; upon its reemergence, it was almost lunchtime.
Lunch was the most socially crucial part of the school day. It was the time where plans were plotted, moves were made, and where the place you sat and the things you said were far more important than what you ate.
At this point, Josh and his friends had several options for tables to sit at, each clamoring for sway with a trio who were growing pretty influential in the middle-school social scene. Typically, however, the three chose to either sit with the athletes at Jock Jockerson’s table, the buzzy center of lunchroom action, or by themselves, spending time with each other in a show of humility — or, like today, plotting their next big move, the noise of a hundred children talking at once cacophonous cover from prying ears.
Josh was stressed out entering the cafeteria; the distraction of playing hero meant that he hadn’t yet come up with any ideas for their next game plan. He was scared of watching the next opportunity, the next trend, fly right past him. Worse, he was scared of his friends going back to wondering if he was feeling ‘off’. After the peculiarities of his stint as a supervillain, Josh was able to allay Simon and Rebecca’s worries about him. But he knew the social game demanded more of him, and by extension, he felt his friends would want him to keep up.
This feeling of falling behind was starting to gnaw at him. Even if it wasn’t the Superdudes who kept him short of his dreams… what if he couldn’t do it himself?
Josh tried to put those fears aside as he sat down in between his two friends, eager to put their three heads to work.
“Alright, guys: brainstorming time. We need a new eye-catching aesthetic stat.”
Armed with their lunches, the trio pulled out their phones, ready to do some research.
The following half-hour saw a spirited conversation between the teens, as they scrolled social feeds and websites talking about the latest happenings and bouncing around ideas for their next move. Each offered their own concepts, and the others would weigh in on whether it sounded good, whether anyone else had done it lately, or if they had any personal reservations to it. They trashed one idea because it was too tacky, another because it was so last month, yet another because they heard another student was doing it and they didn’t want to look like a copycat…
Simon stopped his thumb on the image below a link to a celebrity news article.
“‘Rising rocker spotted with promising pop princess’…” Simon mused.
“Hold on a second…” Josh interjected. “Outlandish outfits… larger-than-life personalities… legendary reputations…”
Simon was leaning in, trying to figure out what was churning in Josh’s brain as he leaned on every word.
“Why don’t we just go all-out rockstars?” Josh suggested.
“Heck yeah!” Rebecca agreed eagerly.
“Can I bring out the big hair?” Simon asked.
“The biggest hair,” confirmed Josh.
“Sign me up!” replied Simon.
“Well that’s settled,” Josh added, confident and self-assured. “We’ll start planning after school at my place.”
His friends gave motions of agreement.
Josh’s worries eased throughout the afternoon now that he and his friends had a direction for their next move, something he hoped would vault them up the popularity ladder. It was important to make a scene, to command attention. It set the stage to open doors, to be seen in bigger places with more popular people. You had to be creative, you had to be savvy, but most importantly, you had to be interesting. And that was hard, with so many other people — not just in Cornbury, but all over — all trying to do that at the same time. But thinking back on how he got here, Josh didn’t have too many regrets. He thought he was doing it the right way. Josh took one last look at the notifications on his social media profiles before the final bell for the day rang. Today looked busy online, which was a good sign.
Near the bottom of the list of notifications, Josh saw that Kevin had posted a new comment on something he had posted a few days ago. It served as an inadvertent, unwelcome reminder of the boy’s existence to Josh, something he had been trying hard — and failing miserably — to suppress. It was one thing that Kevin was obsessed with him, to the point that he’d post annoying comments and constantly mention him and cloyingly lurk in his direct messages, and that was bad enough. It was even worse that Kevin could now get even closer to Josh as his teammate on the Superdudes, an opportunity that had already not gone ignored by the eager red hero. It was something that aggravated the aspiring influencer greatly, more than he’d ever admit to his friends. But before he could tap in, see what he said, and post another angry reply, the school bell finally rang. Josh left the app, the notification left seen, but untouched.
Josh gave one last look to the popular kids across the hall, probably putting together their own plans for the afternoon, before finally closing his locker. The ingress that divided them was so small, yet the gulf between them still felt so massive. However, Josh was adamantly confident, at least in his head; he would walk across that hallway very soon.
With his own plans already settled, the tenacious teen could instead focus on making a smooth exit. The walk outside at the end of the day wasn’t as big as the morning entrance was, but it was still a good opportunity to make one last move, leave something for everyone to talk about all night. While the actual exit was important, equally as important, if not more so, was how your parents picked you up at the end of the day. An embarrassing greeting or cringy call could scuttle all the progress up the ladder you’d made that day. Luckily for Josh, he had already told his mom and dad about this, and they respectfully save the small talk until after they leave the school premises.
“So: rockstars,” Simon began. “Do you think there’s anything in there that looks the part?” Josh’s best friend laid across the head of Josh’s bed, his legs dangling onto the floor, as the boy himself looked through his walk-in closet.
“No, only bits and pieces…” Josh replied from deep within the closet, going through a few racks of more costume-like apparel collected over recent years. “Guess we’ll have to order it online.”
“You have the express shipping membership?” asked Simon.
“Yeah, if we have to go there,” answered Josh.
“Just means we get to pick it all out ourselves,” Rebecca added with a touch of anticipation, splayed across the foot of Josh’s bed similar to Simon. “Sweet.”
Planning their next adventure was always something Josh looked forward to on afternoons like this. While sometimes he could get lost in the details, seeing everything come together was energizing for him. As much as they hopped from style to style, from trend to trend, Josh felt that the individual personalities of himself and his friends still managed to shine through it all. Their unique take on the aesthetic was just as much a part of the magic as the surprise of the look itself.
“So when do we put this out? Friday, Monday?” Josh asked as he reemerged from the closet. “I was thinking Friday, come in swinging, and then spend the weekend staging the antics, build the story.”
“Monday could be a good call too,” Simon suggested. “Come in with a complete surprise and ride the shock value of it all for as long as it lasts.”
The ambitious boy gave it thought. “Hmmm… maybe we’ll have to come back to that one.” The teen turned around and flopped down onto his bed, stretching across the middle of his sheets, his legs overhanging in the opposite direction to his friends’.
Josh took a deep breath, savoring this moment he was having.
“You know, we’re kinda already rockstars,” Josh mused. “In our own way.”
“Surfing the crowds to fame and fortune…” Simon added to Josh’s aspirational tone, speaking in that tone he takes as a wingman, adding that sense of gravitas to the idea. “Crafting an iconic look… Trying to build an unforgettable legend. When you put it like that…”
“Well don’t go having crazy all-nighters you won’t remember without me,” Rebecca joked. The three teens burst into laughter.
The trio sat in each other’s company, quietly reflecting and appreciating how far they had come; a rare natural moment to stop and slow down. As often as they were all together, Josh realized that maybe they couldn’t share everything anymore. They didn’t know that he had had a rollercoaster of a day: the highs of plotting a new look, the drudgery and danger of heroics, the stress of trying to keep what he wanted public known and what he wanted hidden secret. It was a lot for Josh to take in; even with all of the moving parts of the ever-shifting Cornbury Middle School social scene, the prospect of being a superhero was something different entirely. He was slowly starting to realize it was something he would have to get used to, whether he wanted to or not.
But maybe, he thought, he could still have this. Maybe there was a way he could still lessen the impact the demands of being a Superdude would have on his life. It may still have been a distraction, sure, but could it be something Josh could control? If there was some way he could, maybe it wouldn’t be such a nightmare after all. Maybe all those conversations with Tyler were onto something. Surely he couldn’t do any worse at it than the superheroes on TV, right? It would be better to try and find out before everything spun horribly out of control.
Maybe everything wasn’t perfect in Josh’s life, at least not anymore. Maybe not yet. But he knew the score, and he knew what his big picture looked like. He’d never let anything get in the way of that before; why would he let anything stop him now?