The letter was in her hand, addressed and stamped and ready to go. This letter, just a flimsy piece of paper, was going to close the Ivy League door, maybe forever. But you couldn’t fight youma from seven states away and if you thought your chances for survival were improved by running from the negaverse then you were a coward. So the letter was going in the mail today, come hell or high water.
Angus intercepted her by the front door. He was sitting on the flowery-upholstered window seat, which would have been comical given his size if he hadn’t been so imposing. “Tal?” he asked, and Tallulah looked up from the task at hand in surprise. She felt like a small child caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “Tal,” said Angus, “Pretend for a second that money’s not an issue.”
She hadn’t even been thinking about money by the time she sat down to write the letter. “It’s not,” replied Tallulah, hand on the doorknob. She lived in a world full of terrorists, aliens, and talking cats. She’d been to outer space, even been informed she was originally from there. Money was the least of Tallulah Cowden’s worries. “I still can’t go.”
She opened the door. Angus shook his head and patted the cushion next to him. “Talk to me for a bit,” he said.
She shut the door. Angus patted the cushion insistently. After a moment’s hesitation, Tallulah sat. “It’s not about the money,” she said again, tucking her legs up under her. “And, I mean, I got into DCU and I can learn all the things I want to learn at DCU so why not and it’s a lot closer.”
Not to mention less expensive. She studied Angus’s face – either he was unconvinced it wasn’t about the money, or he had another, better idea to pester her with. “Well,” said Angus, “If it’s not about the money.”
“It’s not,” Tallulah repeated, and left it at that, because ‘I can’t go to my dream school because I’m a super-hero fighting a war I didn’t start’ wasn’t exactly king of the believable excuses category.
“It’s not about… that boy, is it?” asked Angus.
“You mean Jaimie?” asked Tallulah. Getting her father to call Jaimie by his actual name was an ongoing process.
“Yeah,” said Angus gruffly. “Jaimie. It’s not about Jaimie, is it?”
“No, it’s not about Jaimie.” Even if he was going to DCU, it was most definitely not about him. Tallulah couldn’t say they were fighting because they weren’t, but she hadn’t spoken to him enough times in the last month to really feel good about what had happened over new years. Things hadn’t gone the way she’d planned them to. In retrospect, it all seemed sort of stupid. (Everything always seemed sort of stupid in retrospect.)
“What’s it about, then?” asked Angus, oblivious to her inner adolescent angst. Tallulah shrugged. Of course it was the super-hero thing, but how did you explain that to your father?
Well, you could just say it and hope he thought you were joking. “I’m a super-hero,” said Tallulah, and Angus gave her a quizzical look.
“Is that code for something?” he said. Tallulah shook her head. “Seriously, Tal. What on earth is keeping you from going to Dartmouth next year?”
Tallulah stared out into the middle distance somewhere between the dining room table and the foyer rug. She’d known that, sooner or later, this day might come, but that didn’t mean she’d planned for it especially well. “You know how… there’s a war going on in Destiny City?”
Angus’s eyes narrowed. “The terrorists?”
“It’s like super hero-super villain stuff,” replied Tallulah quietly, drawing her knees up to her chest. She felt like a little kid under his gaze. “Like the justice league and the evil league of evil.” Not the same universe. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t really. Those were fictional. This was real life. “I can’t leave because I have to fight back the forces of darkness.”
God, it sounded corny. Corny and ridiculous. It didn’t surprise her that Angus looked incredulous. “Is this for real? Is this why you can’t go?”
Tallulah nodded into her knees.
“How did this happen?” asked Angus, which she figured was the next natural question.
“I don’t know,” she said, the words muffled by her jeans. “Random chance, I didn’t ask for it – But it’s all over Destiny City, lots of people, and it’s ******** up everything.”
Tallulah was not one to curse lightly, and Angust knew it. He put an arm around his daughter’s shoulder and did his best to let her be sad. He wasn’t sure how much of it he believed, although it certainly explained a lot – the sneaking out, the injuries, the strange groups of friends. He pursed his lips. After a while, he said, “Let’s not tell your mom about this.”
Tallulah nodded into his shoulder, and he let her sit there for a while. When he got up, it was to gently pull the letter out of her clenched hands and take it out to the mailbox himself.
