The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

The voice came from the stairs. I turned my head, which required extracting it from between Diane’s breasts, and found Sloane descending the final steps with her phone in one hand and a lip gloss in the other.

She’d gone with high-waisted white denim shorts that sat snug across her hips and showed off the thick definition of her thighs, muscle visible even at rest. A cropped black tank top left a strip of toned stomach between the hem and her waistband. Her choker. Always the choker. Her pink hair was down today, falling past her shoulders in soft waves. White sneakers, pristine in the way only brand new shoes could be, and small gold hoop earrings that caught the light when she turned her head.

"Tempest is the realest Hero on the circuit," Sloane said, applying the lip gloss without looking at a mirror, because she’d been doing it since she was twelve and didn’t need one. "She doesn’t play the game. She just does the job and tells everyone else to deal with it. I would love to tell reporters to fuck off."

"You would last approximately forty-five seconds in a press conference before destroying the podium," Diane observed, finally releasing me from her chest and walking around the couch.

Then I got a full look at her.

Fitted jeans in a dark wash that hugged every curve from waist to ankle, the kind of jeans engineered to make a woman’s body look carved from marble. A silk camisole in cream draped across her chest with the casualness of something that cost nothing and the precision of something that cost everything, thin enough that the outline of her bra was visible underneath in a way that was technically appropriate and practically devastating. Her pink hair was pulled into a loose twist at the nape of her neck with a few pieces falling around her face, the style she wore when she wanted to appear effortless, which took her approximately thirty minutes to achieve. Gold at her ears. Gold at her wrist. A thin chain at her throat that sat in the hollow of her collarbones and drew the eye exactly where she wanted it drawn.

I held up the keys. "I’m driving."

"You’re driving." She took her purse from the counter and walked toward the garage. "Speed limit, Lukas. Both hands on the wheel."

"One hand steers fine."

"Both hands." She didn’t turn around. "Save the one-handed performance for later."

Sloane gagged dramatically as she passed me, smacking the back of my head with her phone. "You two are gross and I’m sitting in the back so I don’t have to watch."

"You love watching."

Her ears went red. Her pace quickened. She didn’t deny it.

I turned off Point of Impact, pocketed the keys, and followed them both out. Through the hallway, past the kitchen where the remnants of breakfast still sat on the counter, through the side door into the three-car garage where the Range Rover sat looking like it belonged in a commercial.

Diane was already in the passenger seat adjusting the mirrors to her specifications even though I was the one driving. Sloane had claimed the center of the back seat and was scrolling through her furniture Pinterest board with the focus of someone planning a military operation.

I slid into the driver’s seat and adjusted it forward because Diane was the last one to drive and her legs were shorter than mine. The engine started with a quiet rumble that moved through the steering wheel.

"Navigation’s already set," Diane said without looking up from her phone. "First stop is the furniture showroom on Meridian. Then bedding at the place on Fourth. Then organizational storage at the Container Store, which I know you hate, and I don’t care."

"I don’t hate the Container Store."

"You called it a prison for objects that did nothing wrong."

"That was a joke."

"It was funny. You’re still going." She pulled down the visor and checked her lipstick in the mirror, a shade I hadn’t seen before, sitting somewhere between rose and nude in a way that made her lips look fuller than usual.

"We have a full day, both of you. Furniture. Bedding. Storage. Bathroom accessories. Kitchen basics for the apartment even though neither of you will cook in it because you’ll eat at the commons. And we need to stop at the electronics store for a proper desk lamp, because the ones Halloran provides are, and I quote from last year’s parent forum, ’adequate for reading if you enjoy migraines.’"

Sloane leaned forward between the front seats. "Can we get food first? I’m starving."

"You ate forty-five minutes ago."

"Combat metabolism, Mom. I burn calories thinking about burning calories."

I backed the Range Rover out of the garage and onto the driveway. The gate opened automatically as we approached, and I turned left onto the tree-lined street that wound through Creston Hills. Big houses behind tall hedges. Sprinklers on manicured lawns. The occasional jogger who looked like they’d wandered off a Lululemon billboard.

The morning was golden. The car was quiet except for Sloane’s music playing softly from the backseat, something with a bass line and a female vocalist singing in Japanese. Diane had her window cracked two inches, warm air pushing through her hair, carrying jasmine from someone’s garden.

My left hand on the wheel. My right hand on the center console. Diane’s fingers found it without looking, lacing through mine with the casual possessiveness of someone who’d decided this belonged to her and felt no need to announce it.

In the rearview mirror, Sloane’s blue eyes met mine for half a second before she looked back down at her phone. The corner of her mouth moved upward.

Saturday morning. Furniture shopping with my girlfriend and her mother, both of whom I was sleeping with, on the way to furnish apartments at the world’s most prestigious Hero academy, where I’d been accepted under a false identity powered by a gacha system that rewarded me for being the worst person in any given room.

The sun was warm. The car smelled like Diane’s perfume and Sloane’s shampoo. The road ahead was open.

I turned right onto the highway toward downtown Verano and pressed the accelerator.