“I’m just grabbing some comics for Kira,” I say, crossing in front of them as quickly as possible. “Don’t mind us.”
Houdini gets up from his bed and follows us into the office.
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t close the door with another person inside (as if I would invite anyone in here), but I don’t want tohearwhatever Mom and Perry are watching while I’m in here with Nick.
“Does that happen a lot?” he whispers. “Walking in on your mom and her partner?”
I release a huge sigh and head for the shelving unit. “This isn’t my preferred living arrangement.”
Nick reaches down to scratch Houdini behind the ears.
“The longest I’ve ever stayed with my parents as an adult is…maybe a couple weeks. I don’t think I could take it.”
Other people have expressed this to me and I’m never sure what to do with that sentiment. Is it a compliment about mytolerance level? Or an insult based on my willingness to accept my mom’s handout?
“I won’t be here for too much longer,” I say. “I’ll be in a grad program next year. That’s the plan. This was never supposed to be a long-term thing.” I tug at one of the long boxes. “Can you help me put this box down on the floor?”
Nick does 90 percent of the lifting and manages to set it down gently without any grunting.
“How many comics do you have?” he asks.
“Maybe five thousand issues? Something like that.”
He lets out a low whistle and grabs the edge of the shelving unit and shakes it, testing the sturdiness.
“Be careful.” I’m fully grimacing, ready to take cover.
“This is…” He sighs, like he can’t even form the words. “You can’t leave this shelf like this. There’s way too much weight at the top. I’ll come back sometime this week and try to…make this less of a death trap.”
He takes his time reading the labels on the long cardboard storage boxes.
“ ‘X-tra X-men?’ ”
“That box is for the solo titles and spinoffs.Iceman,Cable,Sabretooth Volume 2.” I lift the lid off the box and run my fingers across the dividers. When I glance up at him, he’s looking at my face with this soft gaze. “What?”
“After seeing this, I definitely feel very comfortable unpacking the rest of myStar Trekmemorabilia.”
“Okay, so we’re both losers in our own ways,” I say.
He gives me a sideways glance and pulls at a box. “ ‘Romance, Horror, Other?’ Good album name.”
“Therearecomics in the world that aren’t about men wearing spandex,” I say. “A lot of artists who became famous for superheroes got their start with these.” I rifle through the box andpull out one of the most valuable issues:Cinderella Love #25.“My dad got a box of them from someone at a garage sale for, like, ten bucks. I think he thought I’d be excited about them because I’m a girl.”
“And you weren’t?”
“I was always all about theX-Men.” I point at the tattoo of Magneto’s helmet on my thigh. “It’s too bad more women aren’t into comics,” I say, digging through a few more issues in the box. “It’s basically fan fiction with cool illustrations. But the community can be kind of unwelcoming.” I immediately picture Hal’s boss at the comic store. “When I’d buy comics with my dad, I always felt like a bit of a novelty.”
Nick points at my leg and I almost flinch. “Why Magneto’s helmet?”
“He’s my dad’s favorite.” Rather, he was remotely interested in him, so I was obsessed. “Magneto started as this one-note stock villain. He literally ran a gang called the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.”
“Subtle.”
“Right? But eventually one of the writers devised this intense backstory. We learn that he’s a Holocaust survivor and that experience colored everything about the way he sees the world and the relationships between mutants and humans.” I scan Nick’s face for signs of boredom as I deliver my monologue, but I don’t find any. “And then at some point, he realizes that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, who escaped his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, were actually his twin children. He begins to reassess all these beliefs he’s held, now that he’s a father.”
“Relatable.”
Houdini gets up on his hind legs to beg Nick for more attention while I dig through the back of the box where my dad stuck some of the drawings I gave him.
