Three Kinds of Scars

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IntroductionIntroductionIntroductionIntroduction

(in which I explain this story, impart a truth of the universe, and generally run off at the mouth)

This story is designed to be a self-contained tale, so I’m going to blither pointlessly for a bit.

(Authorship hath its privileges!) The story starts on the next page if you’d like to skip this part.

This story takes place in the fictional world I created for Masks, the young-adult adventurenovel I’ll be serializing online this summer. It’s a lot like our world, except that it’s got

superheroes and all the comic-booky stuff that implies—supervillians, mad scientists, time-

traveling sorcerers, etc. Almost every major city has at least one or two heroes, except Los

Angeles, where something killed off all the good guys about ten years ago. Now the city is wide

open to opportunistic bad guys and amateur good guys who couldn’t make it anywhere else.

The heroes of this story are also the heroes of my serial. Rae Masterson is a sixteen-year-old

mask (superhero without powers) who defends L.A. with a homemade costume, some dead

heroes’ gadgets, and sarcasm you can bounce rocks off of. Trevor Gray is an almost-sixteen-

year-old former sidekick from another city, well-trained in the ways of heroes, who’s been on his

own ever since the hero who raised him vanished under bloody circumstances. Rae and Trevor

meet accidentally and team up to stop a villain who’s kidnapping superpowered kids, eventhough the big-name heroes won’t bother helping a pair of mere masks. On their adventure, they

discover that the world around them is a place of magic, mystery, heroism, and heartache. Also,

a lot of stuff blows up and there’s lots of snarky dialogue and some kissing, because that stuff’s

just fun to write and I don’t believe in writing things that aren’t fun.

The heart of Masks, however, is the evolving relationship between Rae and Trevor. This

creates quite a problem whenever I have to write short stories about them! Because the serial

isn’t out yet, all the short stories I publish have to take place before it begins, and that means that

Rae and Trevor can’t actually meet each other even when they’re in the same story. But their

fans online want to see them get together, whether the serial’s out or not.

That demand got me thinking. As much as the readers want to see Rae and Trevor team up,

they probably want it even more. But heroes never get anything just handed to them—notwithout a terrible cost. And that got me thinking about all the different ways their relationship

could go, and what might possibly induce them to give up the prize everyone seems to want.

Masks, you see, is not just about superheroes. It’s about stories, and why we tell them—about

heroes and villains, yes, but also about love and loss and growing up and sacrifice and hope and

all the vitally important things that human beings all over the world have been putting into their

stories for the five thousand years we’ve been writing them down.

And here is a secret truth about stories: in great stories, there are no spear-carriers. There are

no disposable characters, no people whose sole purpose is to walk into a story, shout, “Look! Up

in the sky!” and then vanish. Sure, some characters may do that, but they have lives of their own

outside those brief appearances. Each spear-carrier is really the hero of his own story. Good

writers know all those other stories even if they don’t write them out. Great human beings knowthat the apparent spear-carriers around them have stories, too, that each human life matters.

This is a tale of what happens when stories collide, and when heroes, as they always do, must

make a choice. Because there are no spear-carriers. Even small choices can change the course of

a story, and a life. And if you’re not careful, and sometimes even if you are, the life that changes

is yours …

-R.M. Hendershot, May 2011



ThreThreThreThree Kinds of Scarse Kinds of Scarse Kinds of Scarse Kinds of Scars

AAAA MasksMasksMasksMasks Story byStory byStory byStory by R.M. HendershotR.M. HendershotR.M. HendershotR.M. Hendershot

It was just after the sixth-period bellwhen Rae Masterson crawled in thewindow of the girls’ bathroom, still incostume, and found she wasn’t alone.

“Who the hell are you supposed to be?”The voice was rough from crying, and

as she dropped to the tile floor in a crouch,Rae turned her head sideways and saw itsowner for the first time. The stall by thewindow had its door ajar, and a girl withdark purple hair was sitting cross-legged onthe toilet, fully dressed in threadbare jeansand a faded concert T-shirt from a band Raedidn’t recognize. She palmed something asRae straightened up, but she couldn’t palmthe vicious red cut marks on her forearms.

With an effort, Rae kept her face fromturning the color of an embarrassedstrawberry. She was still wearing the mask,after all, and only twenty minutes ago she’d been trading punches and wisecracks withCaptain Catastrophe. (Well, maybe just

wisecracks—Catastrophe had broken hishand on a wall trying to punch her at theirfirst meeting, and now he mostly blastedaway at her with made-in-China death rays.And his aim hadn’t gotten any better sincethen, either.) She was still Peregrine,masked protector of the city, and the factthat she was standing in Rae Masterson’shigh-school bathroom in her hooded tunicand mask was completely irrelevant.

Assuming she could get Alana Tanner

to believe that.“Who do I look like?” Rae challenged,

trying to sound as superheroic as possible.Alana looked her up and down, her face

looking like she’d swallowed a lemon.“An idiot,” she said finally.Rae rolled her eyes. “Great. Tell you

what. You don’t tell anybody a mask snuck

into your school, and I won’t tell anybodywhat you were doing in here at the time.”

Alana stiffened, and her eyes narrowed.“You can’t talk to me like that. You’re notmy dad.”

Not my dad, Rae couldn’t help noting.The little mechanism in her brain that letPeregrine slide into different identities—into her opponents’ heads, into the differentparts she had to play as a high-schoolstudent and superpowers-free superhero—filed the information away unbidden. Shehadn’t said not a teacher, or not my parents.She’d said not my dad. There were issuesthere, clearly.

Which, to judge by what the high-schoolrumor mill had to say about Alana, mightexplain the marks on her arms. Rae studiedthem as quickly as she could without lettingAlana see where she was looking. Somewere pink and nearly healed; others werestill fresh and oozing. She had overheard

Mr. Tanner once at an open house yelling atAlana about her hair. Rae could onlyimagine what he’d say if his daughter werein the habit of pulling on a mask andclimbing through bathroom windows.

Of course, you couldn’t trust the schoolrumor mill on everything. Rae, for example,had never once sacrificed a goat in a lockerroom at midnight, but wear a little dark eyemakeup and a lot of black and suddenlyyou had an incredibly busy social calendar.

Rae forced a devil-may-care grin andtugged the glove off her right hand,revealing an obsidian arrowhead in herpalm. “Don’t mind me,” she told Alana.“Just need to use the chem lab to destroy adangerous mystical artifact. Maybe.”Belatedly, she remembered Peregrine



wasn’t supposed to be a student here andadded, “Where is it, anyway? The lab?”

“You tell me,” Alana said nastily. “I’mpretty sure we have first-period chemtogether. Should’ve wiped off that

eyeshadow before you ditched third,Rachel.”Rae groaned, not least because

she hated being called by her givenname. “Oh, for crying out loud.”

“Is this what you do when youpretend to barf and sneak out of class? Everyone thinks you’resmoking weed, but this is actuallydumber.”

“Yeah, and you’re the queen of coping,” Rae growled.

She regretted it almost immediately.Alana’s eyes burned as bright as the red-gold roots of her hair where the purple wasgrowing out, and she drew in breath to saysomething withering, and Rae knew deepdown that she deserved it. She of all peopleshould know better than to poke people intheir open emotional wounds …

Then a boy poked his head through thewindow.

Rae saw the hair first, shaggy and in

that weird brownish-blondish color rangethat made her think of dead grass. The boyneeded a haircut in the worst way. Nextwere the eyes, startlingly dark blue underthat curtain of hair, darting all over theroom before coming to rest on Rae in thestall doorway and Alana behind her.

“Boyfriend?” Alana asked, her tonemarginally less contemptuous now.

“Maybe yours,” Rae retorted, unable toswitch off her snark.

“Oh, good,” the boy said as if theyhadn’t spoken. “I was hoping I’d catch upwith you before it started talking to you.”He looked around again, seemed tosuddenly notice something. “Crap. This isthe girls’ bathroom, isn’t it?”

“Yup,” Rae said, curling her fingers intoa fist around the arrowhead. She’d been

wanting something to hit. “Guess what thatmeans?”

The boy grimaced, but he didn’t flinch.“Geez. Stand down already. I’m just herefor the artifact. I wouldn’t even be here

except it tends to screw with people’sheads, and I knew a cape once whogot his entire timeline rewritten by aSikandri artifact, and I saw youleaving with that one—”

“Excuse me,” Alana interrupted,“but who are you and what are youdoing in the girls’ bathroom?”

“Wait,” Rae said at the sametime, “you followed me?”

“I thought I just explained that,”the boy said.

“Not really,” Rae said, and snapped apunch at his nose.

She had just enough time to feel theedge of the arrowhead slice the skin of herhand on impact before the world went black.

Rae shook her head to clear the cobwebs

and opened her eyes.Fire was falling from the sky.She felt her breath catch, but she’d been

at this too long to be truly surprised byanything anymore. Her hands were alreadymoving, fingers of her right hand tappingthe stolen force-field control module on herleft wrist before she realized it. The fieldhummed to life, and the molten flamessplashed harmlessly against the invisibledome overhead, pouring down the sides inrivulets of fire like rainwater off anumbrella.

Rae let her breath out and shifted herweight, feeling the rubble of the fallen-inroof tremble beneath her feet. Beside her,Trevor Gray rose to his feet, still breathinghard from the end of his fight with Dr.Maligno’s final robot assassin. A littletrickle of blood ran down the side of his face



from a fresh scalp wound, soon to be thenewest addition to his vast collection of scars. But he grinned at her like always, a blue-eyed pirate’s smile, and held up therobot’s logic core, still sparking where he’d

yanked it free. Rae grinned back, unable tohelp herself. Trevor punched the core’sgreen feedback button.

From the far end of the half-destroyedisland lair, they heard the familiar howl of alittle mad scientist venting his frustration ashis databanks exploded in roiling blacksmoke and a shower of sparks. Therain of fire vanished, and Rae tooka step closer to Trevor as alarms belatedly began to wail all aroundthem, far too late to do anyone anygood. The hideout wasdemolished, the superweaponswere burning, and there wasnothing to do now but get out before the rest of the roof fell in.

“Another day, another self-destructswitch,” Trevor said with a smirk. “I thinkMike and the capes can handle the cleanup,don’t you?” He turned his lopsided smileon Rae. “Thanks for catching the shield.”

“Just remember, love,” Rae replied,

wiping the blood from his temple andrunning her fingers playfully through hishair, “nobody gets to scar you but me.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,”Trevor said, and slipped an arm around herwaist. Their eyes met, then closed; their lipstouched; and then the shrieking sirens andacrid, billowing smoke didn’t matteranymore as they lost themselves in a kiss.

Then they opened their eyes, jerkedapart, and said in unison, “Wait a minute

…”The world dissolved around them—the

smoke, the rubble, the island itself. Rae wasstanding in the dark now, and the boy’s armwas still resting on her waist. Trevor’s arm.But how did she know his name?

The boy seemed to realize what hadhappened as soon as she did, and hurriedly

let her go, his face glowing like a sunset.Rae felt her cheeks getting hot withembarrassment even as she found herself missing his touch. She scowled tocompensate.

“What was that?” she demanded of him.“Are you screwing with my head?”“You’re the one with the brain-warping

alien artifact,” he retorted, his own voicestill shaky. “I was trying to tell you—”

“That was a whole life back there! I was,what, twenty-five? And you were putting

your tongue in—”“Not my idea!”“Well, I didn’t do it!”I did.The voice echoed in Rae’s

head like a single thud of a bass drum. She took a step back from the boy, and with aneffort pulled her attentionaway from those curiously

dark blue eyes.Sitting off to one side was a coyote. It

was looking at her.Rae shivered involuntarily. She hated

coyotes, had ever since that one bad daywhen she was eight years old. She wanted

to throw something at the animal, but allshe had was the arrowhead, her fingerswrapped around it and locked tight. Likethey wouldn’t listen to her.

I have taken this form, the coyote said,because it is familiar to you.

“Take it off,” the boy growled, his voicethick with emotion. “You don’t have theright to wear his face.”

Rae glanced over at him in surprise.“Face? Whose face are you talking about?”

“Who does it look like to you?” the boyreplied, still glaring at the coyote. “Yourmom? Your best friend? It looks different toeveryone. That’s how the Sikandri do it ontheir homeworld.”

“Uh.” Rae looked back at the coyote. Itwas still a coyote—soft dust-colored fur,ears like radar dishes, bright golden eyes,



seated on its haunches with its black-tippedtail curled around its feet like a cat’s. Sheswallowed. “Just an animal,” she lied,sweating. “Who does it look like to you?”

“Nobody,” the boy spat, and Rae could

tell he was lying as well. She could tell, too,that he didn’t care that she knew.I thought, said the coyote, that you might

be more inclined to negotiate with a familiar face.

“You thought wrong,” Rae told it. “Ifreaking hate—”

“What have you done to us?” the boyinterrupted. “What do youwant?”

His face was hard now whenRae looked at him, his dark eyesnarrow with concentration. Hestood with his feet braced, knees bent, arms slightly apart from his body as if ready to run or fight.Rae felt an uncomfortable twingeof déja vu as she studied him. Shehad never seen him before today, but somehow she knew that healways sounded like this whenthings got really bad, that he hadtrained all his life to face down

powerful and incomprehensible things, justas she knew that his middle name was James and that he liked Chicago hot dogsand that his back was crisscrossed with oldscars. It was as if she’d known him foryears.

She wondered what he knew about her.I want to help you, the coyote said.“Bullshit,” Rae and Trevor said at the

same time. They looked at each other, thenquickly looked away.

But I can, the maybe-magic, maybe-aliencoyote pressed. I am Nimrod’s arrow. I always

find my target, in the right place and in theright time. I can find for you whatever future

you choose—and there are many futures tochoose from. All I ask is that you keep me safe soI can help you.

“I don’t need your help,” Trevor toldthe coyote.

“I don’t want your help,” Rae said. Are you sure? So many heart’s desires …The blackness swallowed them.

They boiled out of the rift betweenworlds, gibbering and slavering and lashingout with tentacles at anything they couldreach. Where they touched, trees blackened

and dissolved in puffs of ash, andthe earth itself bubbled and hissedas it tried to repel the invaders.

Trevor dropped out of a live oaktree with a shout of challenge,loosing an arrow from his ancienthorse-bow as he fell. The shaft sangthrough the air and plunged intorubbery squid-flesh, its barbs of blessed iron setting the nearest OldOne ablaze with blue fire. Trevorhad another arrow nocked before helanded, and as his feet touchedearth he let it fly, hearing it strikehome with a nauseating splutch.

“Incoming!” a voice shouted from behind him, and he rolled to the side just ahair ahead of the tentacle that sizzledthrough the space he’d just occupied. Henocked another arrow, aimed, and sent itwhizzing into the encroaching Old One.

He was going to run out of blessedarrowheads before he ran out of monsters, but that was all right, because she was herenow. Rae flitted past him like a shadow,and he saw only the glimmer of steel as shesliced the tentacled creature in two, spillinguseless compound eyes to her right and left.She flicked ichor off the blade and danced back a few steps to fall in beside him, her breathing slow and steady, her green eyes bright.

“Miss me?” she asked, still studying thegibbering mass.



“Only always,” he said.

So many destinies …

The polarized rear viewscreen cut theworst of the glare as the distant Earth behind them flared into nothingness,consumed at last by its renegade sun.Trevor heard a half-choked sob from thenavigator’s seat, and glanced over to seeRae sitting rigidly as she punched in the

final corrections to their course.“I’m sorry,” he said,

knowing it was almostmeaningless.

“Not your fault,” she said,as she’d said a hundred times before. A smile ghosted acrossher face at the memory. Theyspoke about six languageseach, now, but English wouldalways be their first, and the

most common way to expresssympathy in English was, ironically, alsothe most common way to apologize andexpress remorse. I’m sorry/Not your fault had become one of their lingering jokes, and itonly got funnier as they found more waysto communicate—Spanish, Cantonese,Ancient Martian.

Trevor eased himself out of the pilot’sseat and limped over to rest a hand on hershoulder. Without looking, she reached

back to press her fingers over it.“We’ll find a better world,” she said, bravely, over the basso thrum of the greatship’s engines. “For all of us.”

Trevor squeezed her shoulder gently,thinking of the scant million humans they’dmanaged to save from the plague and thefinal immolation of their home planet.

Humans who now huddled in the hold of astolen Martian cruiser, emigrants on theirway to an unknown destiny.

“Yes,” he said. “A better world.”

“Hey,” Trevor said sharply, andsuddenly he was back in the darknessagain, the girl by his side. Her shoulderswere still trembling, as if she’d only juststopped crying, and he had a sudden,savage desire to strangle the creature infront of him. To his eyes, it smiled with theface of the man who had raised him, trained

him, and taught him what it meant to be ahero. Back in his sidekick days, Trevor hadhoped to someday fill hismentor’s shoes, his ambition likea fire in his insides. Now he wasalone, and seeing thissimulacrum of his foster fatheronly made him burn hotter,more furiously.

Have I failed to please you? thenot-man asked.

Trevor could feel the weightof the sling in his pocket, his favoriteweapon. He had at least one slingstone left.He wanted to send the stone flying right between the thing’s eyes, tell it exactlywhere it could stick its eagerness to please, but he remembered the voice of the man itnow impersonated. Shouting doesn’t count.Winning does. He’d been good at this once.And no matter how good he’d feel takinghis frustration out on the creature thatinhabited the alien artifact, he couldn’t riskletting the girl’s mind and his be lostforever when he destroyed it.

It was uncomfortable, being this close tothe girl. He could smell her green-appleshampoo, and the false memories implanted by the artifact told him that she loved old books, that she’d had the crap beaten out of her as a kid and now she put on a



homemade mask to make sure ihappened to anyone else, that sresist making incredibly bad pusome reason he found that endehated the artifact more for maki

like that toward her. He might hher—loved her, even—on his oits help, and now he wouldn’t blook at her without rememberinfelt like to have an alienintelligence nesting in his brain.

“Yes,” he said calmly,“you’ve failed to please.You’ve also failed to explain.Tell me—”

“Why do you keepshowing us together?” thegirl interrupted. Her voicewas rough from crying.

The creature tilted its head tBecause your destinies are most poconjunction, it purred. Together yreshape worlds. But if you prefer so

The ground beneath Trevor jwith the impact as Powerhouseinto it headfirst, carrying over hithe soon-to-be remains of Nuclegout of flame and flying dirt kicTrevor raised an arm to protectfrom the sudden rain of fragmeand adamantine armor patteredaround him. With his free hand,the commpiece in his ear.

“Rob?” he called. “Is he dowThere was a pause, filled onl

white static of an open channel.someone at the other end cough“Yeah. God, he was tough. I thinmy knuckles.”

Trevor shook his head ruefuthing you’ve still got a hyper-im

nevere couldn’ts. Forring. Heg him feel

ave likedn withoutable towhat it

one side.erful inu may

litude—

umpedlammeds shouldertron. Aed up, andis headts. Earthdown allhe touched

n?”y with the

hend and said,k I skinned

lly. “Goodmune

system. I’m sure you can talunch money.”

“Oh, sure,” Rob/Powersarcastically. “Don’t mindunbearable pain, that’s all. I

had a nosebleed, you know“So you keep telling mewith a grin, wrinkling his oremembering the four time

broken in tHe glancedtime to seeTwins strea burning off zombie gasatmosphereactually seemoving, busure they wover which

earned Trevor’s ire this timthem with cleanup duty. Sowould figure out he was julistening to them squabble,he’d keep sending them whenough air to transmit soun

“So, are we done?” Powpleadingly. “I have a date

reporter.” His voice crackleas he floated up out of the cwobbling a bit as he rose. Cprobably, Trevor decided.

“After you see Doctor Stold him. “No brain-damagteam.”

“But he’s busy with LasMoonclaw,” Powerhouse cCybergrunt’s still solderingtogether, and you know wh

does to my sinuses!”“Whine, whine,” Trevo

grin. “We just saved the wocan take five minutes to getyour date.”

Rob’s shy grin lit up the behind him.

e any virus’s

house repliede. I’m just in

’ve never even

!”,” Trevor saidwn nose and

it had beene line of duty.up at the sky inhe Tempestk by overhead,the last of thein the upper. He couldn’ttheir lipshe was pretty

ere still arguingof them had

and saddledmeday theyt tired of

but until thenere there wasn’td.erhouse askedith that hot

d in Trevor’s earrater he’d made,oncussion,

pectre,” Trevord capes on my

t Chance andmplained. “Andhimself backat that smell

told him with arld, Rob. Youchecked before

evening sky



Such dreams …

It was exactly like Captain Catastropheto put the last bomb in the mostuncomfortable spot, Rae reflected as shehung by her knees from the grate at the bottom of the ventilation shaft. Maybe the big-name masks got fancy self-winchingharnesses and grapnels; she would pull thisduty with only her childhood gymnastic

training to fall back on. And it wasn’t as if she even knew anything about bombs,really, except what she’d read on theinternet.

She’d accidentally droppedCatastrophe’s stolen blueprint tothe bottom of the pit, but shecould just barely make out thewiring diagram as she fiddledwith the bomb’s electronic guts.At least he’d been a relatively

sensible bomber and made all thewires the same color. She’d have been embarrassed for him if he’dactually gone with the red-wire/green-wirecliché. And she’d have gone crazywondering whether he’d switched wirecolors on her just to spite the universe.

Blood rushed to her face as she dangled,stretching her arms out below her head totug on wires. The detonation circuit had to be there somewhere …

With a final snick of her wire-cutters, shereleased the breath she hadn’t realizedshe’d been holding. So much forCatastrophe’s plan to blow up his ten-yearhigh-school reunion. One of these days shewas going to have to get some publicity fordoing all this crazy stuff.

But then, she reflected as she crawled back up the ventilation shaft, that wouldspoil the fun.

“You haven’t told us what you want,”Rae told the coyote, nervously wiping sweatfrom her face. She had been able to smellthe dusty shaft, hear the hypersonic hum of the bomb’s electronic parts.

I will give you the future you desire, thecoyote said. All I ask is that you keep me safe.

“Right,” Rae snorted. “Because theGreat and Powerful Oz needs me to keep

him out of trouble.”Beside her, the boy shrugged. “It’s adangerous world out there,” he observed.

“Especially when yourhousing is made of volcanicglass. Doesn’t matter howpowerful you are if you candie from being hit with arock.” He slipped a hand intohis pants pocket, a little toocasually.

Precisely, the coyote agreed.“But why us?” the boyasked.

Because you are here. Because you want.Because your timelines are like rare wine to me.

“Well, that sounds sort of dirty,” Raesaid. “Personally, I think you just likewatching us blow stuff up. It does seem to be a recurring theme. Aren’t there any calmpossible futures?”

You desire serenity? And for a heartbeat Rae was somewhere

else—a little blue house at the end of a longcountry driveway, children spilling out thedoor around her as a car rolled to a stop outfront. The driver’s door opened and Trevorunfolded himself, taller and older thanshe’d seen him before, but smiling, andsomehow she knew that he didn’t have asmany scars this time, and the gray in his



hair was worth it to see him grin at her ashe hoisted their youngest daughter onto hisshoulder and carried her into the house likea princess—

“Never mind serenity,” Trevor said,pushing aside the memory of a life he’dnever had and trying not to show hisastonishment at learning that there was anypossible future where he lived past histhirtieth birthday. “I want out.”

That can be arranged …And now he was standing in a tiny

apartment, and the carpet was sticky with blood, and for a moment hethought he was back homeagain. But the smell waswrong for home, and as astrange-familiar perfumeflooded his nose he realized itwas her blood he was smelling,the slender black-hairedwoman sprawled on the floor bleeding her life away fromher neck, and he had just enough time totake in the gleam of a diamond on herfinger and the mad, hungry gleam in Rae’seyes as she rose from the pool of blood withher knife ready for more—

“Stop.”For a moment Trevor thought the mad

Rae had said it, the one with the knife, butthen the darkness was back and he was nextto the girl again. Just the girl; he couldn’ttrust his memories of her anymore, just asshe couldn’t trust her memories of him (anda chill ran through him as he thought aboutthat—had she seen where he’d come from,

what he’d done before standing beside hertoday?).

She stood with unnatural stiffness now,not looking at him, her attention focusedentirely on the not-man in front of them.

Trevor’s hand was back in his pocket now,and his fingers closed around the weight of the slingstone. All he needed was anopening—

“You’ve made your case,” the girl saidcoolly. “At least, you’ve made your case tous. But what about her?”

The girl jerked a thumb over hershoulder, and for the first time Trevorrealized there were four of them in thedarkness, not three. The other girl from the bathroom was there, sitting on the invisibleground, hugging her knees to her chest and

shivering every now andagain, her purple hair fallenover her face like a curtain.Livid red cut marks werevisible on her forearms, onestill oozing blood—presumably what she’d beendoing in the bathroom.

Trevor looked back atRae. Did she know the girl with the cuts?

Even his false memories of her held no clue.The not-man tilted its head to examine

the shivering girl, then gave a too-humanshrug.

No future, it announced. Dull. Not like you.

Rae set her jaw, her lower lip protrudingstubbornly. “What if she’s what I want?”

The not-man tilted its head so far overTrevor was sure it was going to fall off.Explain.

“I put on a mask to help people,” Raesaid, her voice only shaking a little. “Evenpeople who bug me. You screw aroundwith the future as much as you do, you’vegot to be changing some things in the past,too. Some of those worlds, I’d known thisguy for years. One of them, he was missinga few scars I’m sure he’s got right now.” She



twitched her head toward Trevor withoutactually looking at him. He wasn’t surewhether to be offended or relieved.

“So, Nimrod’s arrow,” Rae continued.“Can you give her a future?”

The not-man smiled. Its teeth were toopointed to be human.

They were in bright sunlight now, on atilted sidewalk that made Trevor stagger before he got his balance. Beside where theystood, a tree had grown up next to theconcrete, its roots pushing up the pavement

to form a not-entirely-natural hillock.A happy giggle close by made him turnand look. A little girl with red-gold hair wasfuriously pedaling a pink bicycle withtraining wheels toward him, bending lowover the handlebars and pumping with allher might as she approached the jump.Trevor stepped hurriedly off the sidewalk, then belatedlyrealized the girl hadn’t evennoticed his presence. Was he

invisible?Girl and bike rattledgamely down the street,picking up speed, andlaunched off the rise. Trevorwatched in slow motion as the bike yawedsideways in midair and came down hard onits side, spilling the girl onto a lawn andpopping off a training wheel. The girllanded with a thud, whacked her helmetedhead on the ground, but rolled with theimpact and came up blinking.

She looked right through Trevor,screwed up her face, and began to bawl.

Alarmed, Trevor looked around for aparent. Surely somebody was watching allthis? Somebody who wasn’t invisible?

Then he saw a familiar figure across thestreet. Rae was standing behind a parkedcar, next to a middle-aged man with

thinning reddish-blond hair. He lookedenough like the girl to be her father—andRae’s steel-fingered grip on his upper armas he tried to get out of the car warnedTrevor not to intervene.

He saw Rae’s lips move. He saw theman turn pale, then slump back into the car.He not-remembered the things he’d heardher whisper, to him and others.

Rae let the man go, slammed the door,and ran across the street to the girl as if she’d just noticed what was going on.

“Oh, honey!” she cried. “Are you okay?That was a bad fall!”

The girl only threw back her head and bawled some more. She had pulled oneslightly bloodied knee up to her chest andwas sneaking occasional looks at it throughher tears. Every glance only made her cryharder.

“Oh, sweetie,” Rae said sympathetically,and Trevor wondered whether her gothmakeup wasn’t half the reason the kid was

crying. All that eyeshadowmade her look like a raccoon.“Do you live around here, hon?”

The girl nodded hesitantly,then pointed. Trevor followed

the glance, spotted a house withan open garage door and a bicycle pump lying on thedriveway, and pointed in what

he hoped was a more helpful direction. Raefollowed the line of his finger just as thefront door of the house opened.

Behind him, a car engine started up, andsomething heavy pulled away from theopposite curb.

“Look,” Rae told the girl, “here comes

your mommy! You’ll be okay now!” Shepointed at a tall blonde woman nowhurrying down the front steps of the house.The girl saw her mother coming andstretched out her arms to Rae to be pickedup. Rae bit her lip, hesitated, then scoopedthe girl up and carried her to her mother.



They met just in front of whwas standing. He caught some oconversation—“took a bad spill be okay”; “really brave little girlthere.” He watched as Rae gentl

the little girl’s hair out of her ey“You’ll be okay now,” she to“Has anyone ever told you you’special little girl?”

The girl stared, wide-eyed. Tshook her head.

“Well, now someone has. Yoeven have a scar, I bet. Keep wehelmet, okay?”

And he knew, as she stood ustepped away from the staring liher worrying mother, what Raeplanning. A thousand memoriesweren’t his and now never woulflooded his mind as their eyes toshe flashed him a wolfish smile.the arrowhead, and in responsehis fingers tightened around theslingstone.

It was like his hand moved bitself, without consulting him,although he’d probably have tolit to go for it if he’d been asked.

His hand flicked out of his pockand tossed her the stone before tnot-man could stop smiling. Raecaught it as she dropped to one

“Thanks all the same,” she sdropped the arrowhead on the craised the stone over her head, “make our own future.”

And she brought the stone dcrunch.

It was just after the sixth-perwhen Rae Masterson crawled inwindow of the girls’ bathroom,costume, and found she was alo

re Trevorf the; “shouldyou’ve gotstroked

s.ld her.e one

hen she

u won’tring your

p andttle girl andwasthatd beuched, andShe held up

y

d

the

nee.id as she

oncrete and but we’ll

own with a

iod bellthetill ine.

She pulled off her tunicher street clothes on undershoulder where she’d bangduring her fight with CaptaServed her right for skippin

fight the biggest loser in thsupervillainy. He hadn’t evtell her his whole plan thiswhile he was blasting awayray (before it melted downmelted his hand off in the pwith all the blasting and flystupid probably-not-even-had gotten smashed, and ngoing to have to spend theafternoon making up jokescalled “the arrow of Nimroright.

Rae ran a little water onthe bathroom’s one workinplastered her dark hair do

look would ealibi—she couwashing any sthe rumor milcare of the res

She pausefront of the m

good look at hdark curls, tirhiding under

inch of makeup. Days like tknow why she bothered coall. She would just test outher life, if only she knew wto do with it. It wasn’t likefriends here.

It wasn’t like she had aanywhere.

With her tunic stowed iand her secret identity backshuffled out of the bathrooempty hallway. She sauntewell past the late bell, darewith her eyes to say somethdropped into the last empt back. She was just thinking

slowly, leavingeath, rolling herd it on a wall

in Catastrophe.g math to go

history of n bothered toime, not evenwith the death

and almostrocess). Whating debris, hisagical artifactw she wasest of the

about something.” Nimrod is

her hands fromsink and

n. The wet-doghance herld have beenmell out, andl would taket.

a moment inrror to get a

erself. Drippingd green eyesquarter of anis she didn’ting to school at

nd get on withat she wantedhe had any

y friends

her backpackin place, she

and into theed into Englishthe teacher

ing, andseat in the

about napping



the rest of the class away when a glimmer of light by the window caught her eye.

In the front-row desk was a slender,pretty girl with hair the color of a red-goldwinter sunset. She smiled slightly as she

raised a perfect white arm to answer theteacher’s question. Rae tried not to glare.Sometimes on dark nights she wanted to beAlana Tanner—beautiful and loved,strangely fatherless but blessed with a smileso bright it lit up the world. But it waswrong to resent her. Her dad had

disappeared during a marital separationwhen she was only six, and it wasn’tAlana’s fault she was happy and perfect inspite of it.

A flicker of motion outside the window

drew Rae’s attention just as her eyes wereclosing. Had a shadow moved out there bythe trees? She was almost certain she’d seena face in the branches.

But no. That was silly.Rae drifted off and dreamed of dark

blue eyes, of scars and of a pirate’s smile.

Copyright 2011 R.M. HendershotCopyright 2011 R.M. HendershotCopyright 2011 R.M. HendershotCopyright 2011 R.M. Hendershot

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Three Kinds of Scars

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