When we are children, adults spin bitter stories of broken friendships and swear to things that they believe in that friendships, even powerful ones, don’t always last. They chuckle sadly at their children when they see them making future plans with their friends and say things like “Don’t get your hopes up.” But children have a great sense of hope and tend to believe strongly that they will break the chain—that their friendships will last their lifetime.
Tobias MacClain did not break the chain, and he had no regrets, disappointments, or woes about it. He had suffered the company of Benjamin Jones for twenty-six years of his twenty-eight, and the company of Poppy Tris only one year less. While the other two remained thick as thieves, Tobias had grown sick of their company. On some days, even resentful of it.
On the morning of February 29th Tobias awoke to another dreadful year of, so he thought, enduring them. He opened his eyes to his gloomy, windowless room and turned the dimmer on to the lowest light to stare disdainfully at the plain white ceiling above and considered how foolishly he had wasted his twenty-seventh year tolerating Benjamin’s arrogance and Poppy’s tactlessness.
He sighed and pulled back the covers to rise. After neatly setting the bed, he tugged an already-buttoned button-up over his undershirt, then slipped into his closet to find a pair of pants and his most comforting fuzzy slippers.
Mornings were his least favorite time of the day. His head spun, reeling with blurry and disorienting images. In his dizziness, he toppled back onto the bed upon his exit from the closet, only one arm of his red robe in place. He closed his eyes, rubbed his temples, slipped the other arm through, and looked up at his door.
What were the chances, he wondered, that Benjamin Jones would break it down again this year? It happened every single birthday, ever since they had moved in together, and it rattled Tobias to no end. He pressed his fingers to his brow and tried to focus.
What were the chances?
As he’d grown older, and tireder, and more dependent on caffeine and schedules, Tobias’s powers to see the possibilities of the near future had grown, too. Futures buzzed and bounced around his skull, speckling his vision until he simply couldn’t bear to try further and most of the little blurry images fizzled out. A few always stayed to plague him, and before his morning coffee, they were nothing but static.
He groaned and shook his head and unlocked the door, just in case Benjamin was going to be predictable once again, then settled at his desk. He pushed on his glasses and opened his computer. While it booted, he contemplated the framed photographs pushed up against the wall and smiled particularly at those including a raven-haired girl, and in the more recent photos, a raven-haired woman. Her hair was always a mess—he loved that about her. So carefree, unafraid of how her appearance could shape perceptions of her.
In his e-mails, as he’d predicted even foggy-brained and without his powers, was a “happy birthday” e-mail from that woman, with a midnight time stamp. Viola Mae Reed, the night owl. He smiled wider and moved to open it, but at thundering crash behind him he jolted from his seat so abruptly that his chair fell to the floor, right on top of his already fallen, broken-down door.
“BENJAMIN JONES,” Tobias howled, clenching his fists. “That door was unlocked, you brute, you buffoon, you—you—!”
It was futile, for Benjamin Jones, as usual, was not listening. He and Poppy Tris couldn’t hear Tobias’s protests over their loud and off-key singing of a terrible rendition of a happy birthday song. Between the two, they carried a large tray with a very delicious-looking cake that was really a stack of cinnamon buns held together by glaze and topped with a number seven candle, and a cup of something steaming. Poppy Tris carried a big square present wrapped in paper patterned with onomatopoeia in comic-style text bubbles.
Tobias scrambled to get out of their way, snatching his laptop and hugging it to his chest before they could put the tray on top of it.
Benjamin Jones grinned at him. “Officially seven years old, Toby!”
Tobias ducked quickly to avoid his companion’s inbound knuckles reaching for his hair. He stood when Benjamin’s swing withdrew and glared.
“Twenty-eight,” he muttered. “Did you have to break down my door again?”
“You love it.” The man winked.
“I don’t.”
Poppy Tris wrapped her arms around Tobias and he stiffened like a plank. He held tightly to his laptop and frowned. She gave him the knuckle-dusting that Benjamin hadn’t managed and he scowled and struggled out of her hold. She grinned a big toothy grin.
“Happy birthday, Tobias.” She picked up the gift that she’d brought and exchanged it with him, taking his laptop. “We made this for you.”
“What is it?” Tobias narrowed his eyes. “Is it a trick?”
Benjamin laughed, head tilting back. “Open it, Toby.”
Tobias carefully peeled the papers from the corner. His eyes flicked cautiously up to his companions, and they grinned stupidly to one another. Benjamin Jones had his uniform, his supersuit, beneath his clothes, Tobias noticed. A blue hexagon lattice covered arms, poking from the sleeves of his t-shirt. He wasn’t wearing his gloves or goggles yet.
“A photo album,” Tobias remarked. He opened the leather cover and looked at the first page, which read: To twenty-eight years of Toby and all the more to come.
In my research, I was able to find this particular photo album. The photos it contained were sentimental to Tobias, including depictions of better times and youth. It included proud photos of when their team actually performed as a team—such as the ceremony celebrating the beginning of their public careers as city defenders, back when Viola Mae Reed remained among them. It included pictures of a younger Tobias holding hands with her. I, myself, was moved when I found the picture of Benjamin Jones raising Tobias over his head, Poppy and Viola Mae cheering in the background, as their team graduated from The Academy for Non-Typicals as one complete picture, rather than the fragments Tobias felt they had become.
He felt a pang in his heart as he flipped through the pages and thumbed through the best of times. Tears welled in his eyes and he pushed up his specs to wipe them away. He closed the book and propped it up on his desk, behind the tray, then pinched the flame on the candle. He pulled it out of the cinnamon bun roll stack and took one of the sweets from the top.
Maybe things aren’t so bad after all, he thought, face scrunching up at the invasive burn of his reddening nose and flushing cheeks.
“Thank you,” he said. He looked at the mug, but was disappointed to find a simple black tea. He never drank tea, but he lifted it anyways, not to be ungrateful. He appreciated the effort, at least. He gave them a smile, but he was tired, and it was as tired as he was.
Benjamin Jones clapped a hand on Tobias’s back and started to lead him towards the door. Tobias clumsily allowed himself to move, distracted by the cinnamon bun half in hand, half in mouth. His elbow stuck out as he tried to keep his tea from sloshing onto the carpet running the hall.
Poppy Tris loped out after them with a pair of buns in her hands, munching with half-lidded eyes.
“We’ve got a big surprise for you, Toby,” Benjamin Jones said.
“It’s totally radical,” Poppy emphasized in her lethargic manner. She spoke with a vocabulary that always seemed a few decades out of date. It was only her hero character; and in times of sincerity that character broke to expose her well-spoken true self.
Anyone that knew Tobias MacClain would know very well that he was not accustomed to surprises and did not appreciate them one bit. Benjamin knew Tobias even better. So much better, in fact, that he knew that a distracted Tobias was a complacent, compliant, and gullible Tobias—a Tobias that could easily be surprised. Or rather, a Tobias with a cinnamon roll was more interested in the cinnamon roll than in whatever it was that Benjamin was up to.
As they reached the balcony doors, Tobias wiped his sticky fingers on his trousers and frowned. “Wait a minute,” he said. He started to turn around, blinking. “Wait a minute.”
Benjamin burst through the doors and pulled Tobias with him.
The smaller man stumbled and fell onto the handrail, spilling a slap of tea over the edge. He squinted at the daylight, disoriented. Hazy visions swam before him, and he pressed his hand to his head. “Benjamin, my powers aren’t as flexible as yours,” he hissed, trying to adjust. He could barely hear himself.
Cheering and hoots and howls and hollers bellowed from below, becoming louder as the internal static receded. Tobias squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head, then opened them again, pushing his glasses right up his nose. He gasped, head pounding. Sounds came to him as if he were underwater; muted, distorted, incomprehensible.
A crowd became clearer and clearer out of the haze. Blurred faces differentiated and gained identities; strangers. Bouncing signs in vibrant colors gradually became legible. He could hear his name being chanted, but it was not the name that he preferred. It was not a name he was comfortable with. It was not a name he had ever endorsed.
Wide-eyed and ashen-faced, he tried to stagger backwards, back inside, back to safety, but Benjamin Jones had a fistful of his robe and held him in place.
Tobias shook his head over and over and gaped up at the tormenting banner overhead, aghast. His gut turned in turmoil as volatile and unyielding as the sea.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PAJAMA BOY!
There he stood, pinned in place on the balcony, shaking from head to toe in the very same fluffy red robe and slippers that had earned the nickname and the humiliation that came with it. Comforting things that Benjamin Jones had turned on him. It had been the same for years. Pajama Boy on the newspaper pages, Pajama Boy during interviews, Pajama Boy on talk shows.
“How could you?” Tobias choked.
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