The two of them walked wordlessly through the front gate and out onto the sidewalk, the still-high summer sun sparkling off the famous San Francisco skyline ahead of them. Sam closed the gate behind them as the hearty winds tossed her brown hair to and fro. Without Andy noticing, she paused to make sure no one inside was watching their departure.

Andy started down the steep sidewalk, but Sam grabbed his elbow and reeled him back.

“Come on,” she said.

“But the store’s down here,” he protested.

“We’re not going to the store,” she said, dragging him along to get them out of eyeshot of the house.

“But I thought—”

“Well, we WILL go to the store. We can’t go back empty-handed. But we’re going somewhere else first.”

“Where?” he asked.

“You’ll see.”

“Why?”

“Two reasons,” she said as they reached the corner and she guided him to their left, towards a small park. “One, I just had to get you out of there.”

“What? Me? Why?”

“Why do you think?” she asked him, looking back once more just to be sure no one else was following them.

“I don’t know,” he said, sounding nervous.

“Because you looked like you were about to go find a length of rope and a tree branch, sweetie.”

“What do—”

She stopped him and turned him toward her as they reached the entrance to the park. She spoke to him directly, but kindly. “Because you’re in love with Monique and it’s killing you having to see her mooning all over Caleb, as usual.”

Andy quickly went from nervous to panicked, and turned sheet-white. “What? I don’t know what—”

“Andy,” she said, quieting him and putting a hand on the side of his face. “Come on.”

He surrendered denial uneasily, but still looked scared to death.

“Don’t worry, she doesn’t know,” Sam told him to ease the obvious question feeding his terror. “OBVIOUSLY she doesn’t know,” she added with a helping of distaste. “I swear, how can a girl get such good grades and still be so—”

She stopped herself, realizing she was about to say ‘retarded’.

She brushed his long blond bangs aside, as the wind had gotten them in his face. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to embarrass you or anything, and I swear, I’m not going to tell anybody.” She kindly didn’t add that she didn’t have to because pretty much every one of the grownups already knew it. “I just saw you hurting and I thought you could use a break.”

Andy studied the sidewalk and didn’t respond. He was a young man with a lot on his mind.

“And the second reason,” she said, changing the subject. “Is because I want to show you something. And, Andy, you can’t tell anyone, ANYONE, what I’m about to show you. I’m serious. Not Tomas, not Gabriel, and for GOD’s sake not your parents.”

He looked up and forgot his embarrassment for the moment, suitably intrigued.

“I’m serious,” she said again. “No one. I’d be in so, so much trouble if anyone knew. Do you promise?”

“What is it?” he asked, morbidly fascinated by the promise of danger.

“Promise?” she asked again, very solemn.

“I promise,” he said.

She looked around again, not really thinking anyone had tailed them. This was more for his benefit. “Come on,” she said, taking his hand, and she led him quickly into the park.

They crossed the expanse of grass, and the path of a couple of dog-walkers. As the Strange’s house was in a more affluent and less populated area of town (though one could argue just about ANY area of San Francisco was affluent, based on the rents), this park wasn’t as heavily used as many of the city’s others on such a summer afternoon.

To Andy’s further confusion, she led him to the ladies room.

She came to a stop outside the women’s restroom at the park’s south end. “Wait here,” she said, and went inside, and he thought like there was some question about that? He looked around the park anxiously, his mind racing with dead-ends as to what she could be trying to show him…and why she suddenly had to take a pee after they just left the house.

In a few seconds she poked her head out the door and looked past him, then back and forth. She opened the door wide and said, “Okay, come in.”

“Are you nuts?” Andy whispered, even though no one seemed to be around. “I can’t go in there.”

“There’s nobody in here. It’s clear.”

“That’s not the point!”

“Will you come on?!”

“No!” he said, and took a mortified step back.

Sam made an impatient sound and reached out and grabbed his shirt. While Andy had sonic powers—that had manifested about a year before, thanks to his mother’s genes—he did NOT have super-strength…while Sam did. She yanked him bodily through the door and pushed it shut.

“Yes, look, no urinals,” she said dryly. “How will your psyche EVER recover from learning this horrible secret?”

“What are we doing in here?” he asked, still whispering as though she might be fibbing and there were really ladies hidden in the stalls waiting to scream and call the police on him.

“It’s private in here,” she said, and turned her back to him to face a wall with a grimy full-length mirror on it.

Raising her hand in a casual gesture, and creasing her brow with just the faintest bit of concentration, Sam used her OTHER power. A roughly seven-foot-tall portal of shimmering energy opened out of nothing, just inches from the wall. Beyond it, visible through the slight wavering of the portal’s event horizon, was a living room.

“People tend to notice when you open these outdoors,” she grinned. “After you.”

“Where are we going?” he asked, out of curiosity, not fear (he’d been through her teleportation portals plenty of times).

“Hey, Question Man,” she said. “Get your butt through the portal before some old lady comes through that door and sprays you with mace.”

Remembering where he was standing and liking any alternative better, Andy stepped through. Sam followed him and closed the portal up behind them.

 

Andy looked out the window of the stylish, and obviously feminine, apartment and immediately recognized the Space Needle and the other familiar landmarks of Seattle, the city that was like his second home.

Sam stepped past him and hit a switch, and the clear glass suddenly went smoky and lost its transparency. Something Andy hadn’t seen in an apartment before, and he thought it was pretty cool.

“Just in case,” she said. “We’re not going to be here long and I don’t want anyone to know I’m home.”

“This is your place?” he asked, looking around. He knew full well that she lived at the Parker house with Uncle Jack, Aunt Sabrina, Monique and Nikki. Had she gotten an apartment since the last time he was in town?

“This is my OTHER place,” she said, turning on some lights with another switch on the wall.

“Oh,” he said, still not understanding, but still just looking around and checking out the place. There was a seriously tech-looking flatscreen taking up most of one wall, and he was immediately jealous of it. He started picturing Tekken 5 being played on such a screen.

“My other home.”

He was still imagining taking on Gabriel in Tekken (probably with Jin), and, darn it, the way Monique sometimes cheered for him when the girls watched them play.

“On MY Earth.”

Thoughts of Tekken went away.

His mouth went to a slack oval and he turned to Samantha, who was smiling, enjoying his reaction.

“No.” he said.

“Oh, yes,” she grinned.

“We’re on another Earth?”

“Welcome to the year 2016, Andy.”

“Holy CRAP!” he blurted out, looking around the room like he was seeing it all again for the first time. “We’re in the future?”

“Well, that’s all relative,” she laughed. “Since my Earth’s time is slightly out of whack with your Earth’s time? This is the present as far as I’m concerned. To me, your Earth is in the past.”

“Holy CRAP!” he said again. “We’re really—?”

“Yes, and you’re REALLY not supposed to be here,” she said, getting a little serious. “For one thing you just don’t take kids to other Earths without their parents’ permission. Your dad would kill me and they’d never find the body. Another? It was decided when I first showed up over on your Earth that people should know as little as possible about my world…especially you young guys. There are a lot of differences between our Earths, but there’s a whole lot that’s the same, and knowing about the future here may or may not be learning about the future there. So people learning stuff about the future might either give away actual future events, which is bad, or it may just make people THINK what happened here is going to happen over there, which is also bad. Are you understanding me?”

“Yeah,” Andy said, still mind-blown and looking around.

“So you see what I mean about never telling anyone—?”

“Never,” he said, looking her in the eyes. “I swear, Sam.”

She smiled. “I know. I trust you, Andy. That’s why I knew this was okay.”

She passed him on her way to her kitchen and gave him a quick hug. “Hey,” she said, “you want something to drink? There’s this stuff out now called Pepsi Prime that just rocks.”

“Yeah!” he said, feeling strangely blessed to be able to sample a Pepsi product from the future. He decided to give her flatscreen a closer look while she hit the fridge.

“I keep this place for when I’m over here visiting,” she explained, taking a moment to look her fridge and freezer over to take inventory. She’d forgotten to shop the last time she was here. “When I come to visit my Mom or my sisters or whatever. But sometimes I just come here to be alone. If the Forte stuff or work or man problems get too much, I just pop over here and don’t tell anyone I’m home. I just kick it here and relax.”

“Does that…” Andy was looking at a shelf next to her flatscreen that held what looked like DVDs, only smaller. They were all movies. Some of them he recognized, other ones he didn’t. Such as… “Does that say Star Wars Episode SEVEN?!”

“Oops,” she said, closing the fridge door after pulling two cans of Prime.

He had pulled the case and was reading the back, and was now freaking out even more. “Directed by PETER JACKSON?!”

“Yes,” she said, taking if from him and replacing it in its slot, putting a cold can in his hand instead. “And you’re already learning too much. Remember, it may or may not happen on your Earth, so don’t get your hopes up.”

“Can we watch it?!” he asked desperately.

She laughed at him. “I don’t think they’ll believe we were at the store that long, Andy. Sorry. Maybe, MAYBE, we might come back here sometime, and if we do, maybe we’ll watch it. If you prove you can keep your trap shut.”

“Oh, man,” he said, still shaken by the piece of geek prophecy that had been right in his hand.

“Come on,” she snickered, and put her arm through his. “I want to show you my room.”

She led him down the hall and kept talking. “Movies are one of the reasons I come back here, you know. All those big new summer movies coming out back on your Earth? I’ve seen them all already! Years ago! I have to come back home just to get movies that I don’t know the endings to. Same with music. MTV’s an oldies channel to me.”

“That must SUCK,” he said, imagining it.

“Well, it’s kind of fun, too,” she said, opening her bedroom door and hitting the light. “Like, imagine there’s this band you really liked years ago…” She looked at him and thought over his age. “Well, just imagine, like, Guns N Roses. They’re broken up, right? But imagine you could go back in time and get a chance to see them when they first started out, see them in concert. It’s like living music history. I get to do fun stuff like that.”

“Cool,” he said, looking around her bedroom. Like her living room, it was noticeably girly, with the kinds of trinkets and stuffed animals and strange little bottles and things that girls always had lying around. She had a queen-sized bed with a flowery (of course) comforter on it and a bunch of pillows.

She ran over to her nightstand and grabbed some kind of small electronic thing that looked about the size of a palm pilot. She placed her Pepsi can where it had been. She then jumped on her bed, landing on her stomach, her head toward the foot of the bed, and bounced her way toward the mattress’s far end.

“Come here,” she said, patting the bed next to her, kicking her feet. “I want to show you something.”

Andy looked at the wall at the foot of the bed, toward where she was facing, to see what she might be getting at. There was, hanging there, what looked to him to be a framed portrait. He recognized the couple in the large photo.

“Hey, that’s Aunt Sabrina and—”

“And my Dad, yeah,” she said, smiling fondly. “Back when he was alive.”

The photos showed a happy-looking Jack and Sabrina Parker from another world, smiling and holding each other beneath a spreading tree in a meadow.

“Oh,” Andy said, suddenly uncomfortable and embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Sam.”

She lingered on the photo for a minute and then snapped out of it and looked at him. “Oh, hey, sweetie, it’s okay,” she said with a forgiving smile. “That was a long time ago. Almost 10 years.” She patted the bed again. “Come on. We don’t have much time.”

Andy sat down on the bed and situated himself onto stomach and elbows along with her, holding his still unopened Pepsi Prime in his hands. Noticing this, she reached over and popped the tab for him.

“Try it,” she said.

Andy took a tentative sip, which he quickly followed with several gulps.

“Oh, my God!” he said, looking at the alien yet familiar can and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “This stuff rocks!”

She smiled with her tongue between her teeth. “Toldja.”

While he took another drink, she fiddled with the tech thing she’d picked up.

“This,” she said, pointing toward the framed Parker photo, “is called a ‘screen’. Simple, I know, but that’s what they call it. This picture up here is kind of like the screensaver or wallpaper. But you use the screen for all kind of stuff, like watching TV or making video calls or looking up stuff on the web or looking at all your pictures. And you control it with this,” she added, showing him the little device in her hand.

She started running her finger over it, and the image of her parents—the people that Andy had known all his life but really hadn’t, he considered with no little amount of awe—was replaced with some kind of main or home screen. One done up in girly colors with, big shock, a floral design. Sam scrolled quickly through some menus and moved some icons around, and then, with a tap of her finger, the screen filled up with another photo. This was one of a couple of kids in a swimming pool, smiling for the camera on a very bright sunny day and looking happy as…well, as kids in a swimming pool.

It took Andy a minute to realize…

“Wait a minute,” he stammered. “Is that…? That’s me!”

“That’s you,” she smiled at him, nudging his shoulder with hers. "And you know who that is next to you?”

He stared at the large photo and tried to figure out the answer.

She leaned over and whispered in his ear.

“That’s me.”

“That’s YOU?” He looked at her, then back at the screen. “That’s you and me?”

“Yep. We were about five there. I think we were at Aunt Miranda’s house in Brazil.”

“That’s me,” he marveled again, transfixed. “That’s me, but it’s not me. That’s another me.”

“Welcome to the wonderful world of alternate Earths, kiddo. If you’re born into the Forte family, best get used to it early.”

“I am used to it,” he said quietly, in a kind of far away voice. “There being another me.”

Samantha pinched her eyes shut, and now it was her turn to feel embarrassed. This Andy had to grow up knowing that ANOTHER Andy, him from the future, had been flung back in time and been a member of Forte—and died—before the “real” Andy was even born. And had to grow up wondering if he was destined to grow up to be “that” Andy and go back in time and die again. But everyone’s fears about that—especially John and Jeanette’s—were fairly well laid to rest with the final destruction of Lucifer D’Arque, who had been the one to send Andy and Trixie back in time…WOULD be the one to send them back in time. With him gone from existence, their future, it seemed, was now all their own. But that probably didn’t make it any easier of a subject for Andy.

She reached over and hugged him. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Hey, it’s cool. No big deal.” He did his best to play it off as fast as possible. “So over here, you and me—?”

“Have known each other for a LONG time, mister,” she grinned, looking back at the picture herself. “All our lives. And not just us…”

She moved her fingers on the pad again, and another photo popped up, this one with five kids in it. There was Andy again, about 10 years old now, and Samantha again. But this time, they were joined by Monique and Nikki, and another boy Andy didn’t recognize.

“Woah,” he laughed. “That is SO cool.”

“We all grew up together. Just like you guys on your Earth, but I was there, too.”

“Yeah, but who’s that?” he asked, pointing at the mystery boy with the cocky smile.

“That,” she smiled, “is Dom. See, in this world? Aunt Sydney and Uncle Stephen never got together. She got married to her old boyfriend Dominic Fortune. And together, they had Dom.”

“Wait, so…what about Caleb?”

She was actually touched by the concern in his voice, all things considered. “There’s no Caleb here, Andy. Don’t worry, it’s not like he died or anything. There are variations on every alternate Earth, and on this one, there just isn’t a Caleb. Just the way it is. Just like there’s no Dom where you’re from.”

“Wow. That’s…that’s just weird.”

“Now can you see what I went through when I moved to your Earth? I had to relearn everything I’d known. Things were different, AND it was like going back in time. So I was 19 when I came over, but all you guys I’d grown up with? You were all 6 and 7.”

“How did you deal with it?”

“I learned. I didn’t care. I had my Dad back. That was all that mattered. And him and Mom never got to know me at all because…of what happened to their version of me as a baby, so they felt kind of the same way. It’s been worth it all.”

After a couple of seconds of silence between them, she went back to the controller.

“Now this,” she said, “is some of the stuff I’m REALLY not supposed to be showing you. Are you ready?”

“I guess,” he said, now not certain.

She pulled up a photo of a young group of superheroes, all teenagers, maybe 16 or 17. There were four of them. One of them was Andy, in the familiar—from his world—costume of Shrike. It didn’t take him but a second recognize Monique and Nikki, in costumes, too, and this Dom guy.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Sam said, “I give you Seattle’s future hero team. Fourstar.”

Andy was at a complete loss for words.

Sam watched him carefully, amused. “On this world, you guys formed a team when you were teenagers. You became Shrike.”

“I became Shrike,” he repeated in a dreamlike voice.

“Monique called herself Exodess. Nikki went by Fairwolf. Dom took the name Fortune. And boy, were you guys all the news. The sons and daughters of Forte, grown up and starting their own team. Everybody LOVED you guys.

“And YOU,” she said, shoulder-nudging him again. “They REALLY loved you.”

“Me?”

“Do you SEE that picture? Andy, you’re a STUD. When your picture started showing up on magazines, OH, the girls went crazy. You were the biggest teen idol in years.”

“Me?” he asked again, still not connecting with the idea.

Just to help him along, she played with the controls again, and an article from Paladin Magazine popped up. There as a big color shot of him with his arms crossed over his chest, and the headline read “Justice: The Next Generation”, with a subheading beneath it, “Actions speak louder than sonic screams with Shrike, America’s newest hero and biggest heartthrob”. She forwarded through pages that showed other photos, some of him in action, one of a mob of screaming girls lining up at a charity autograph signing to catch a glimpse of him.

“You were on LUNCHboxes…” she teased. “On posters, on trading cards. You’d get mobbed after villain fights by girls with the villain still laying there on the street.”

“That’s…that can’t…”

“And you can’t even see it, can you?” She sounded both sad and annoyed. “I’m showing you evidence and you can’t even let yourself believe it.”

“It’s just…”

“Well, there’s more,” she interrupted. “And this is what I felt you really needed to see today. So there’s all these girls, thousands of them, all dying to hook up with you. But you? You could have had any girl you wanted, but there was only one girl that you really loved. And you couldn’t see any other girl past her. The problem was, she didn’t seem to feel the same way. She didn’t see you that way. And you just loved her from afar for years, torturing yourself, denying yourself any other happiness—”

He’d turned to her halfway through this part of her talk, his eyes wide. “You don’t mean—?”

“Monique, Andy. That’s how I know how you feel about her. Because I spent years watching you go through it over here. Watching while she pined after one guy after another, watching you have to watch her with all these guys, never seeing what was right in front of her.”

Andy looked like he was going to be sick. “For years?”

Samantha nodded. “Years, Andy. But you just couldn’t let it go. You couldn’t move on.”

“Well, what—?” he asked, looking crestfallen and heartsick. “What happened? What happened to me?”

“What happened?” she answered back. She looked down at her controller again, then back at him, then slowly tapped at it with her finger. “I’ll show you what happened to you, Andy.”

With a final click, she pulled up another photo. Not knowing if he wanted to see it, Andy turned and looked up.

There in the picture was him, in a bathing suit, wearing sunglasses. It was on a beach, looking like Hawaii or somewhere like it. In his arms was a girl in a bikini. They were pressed close together, obviously in love, happy and smiling for the camera.

And the girl?

Monique Parker.

“You got the girl!” Samantha shouted, bouncing up and down on her stomach and yanking on his sleeve. “THAT’S what happened!!”

“No way!” he blubbered as Samantha laughed and shoved at him.

“You never gave up, Andy. You followed your heart, and you rode it out, and she finally pulled her head…sorry…she finally came to her senses and realized that her dream guy was right there the whole time. Like a year after the team started. And you guys were TOTALLY boyfriend/girlfriend after that.”

“For real?” Andy asked, hypnotized by the picture…not in small part due to how Monique looked in the bikini with about an eighteen year-old body on her.

“You guys were SO in love there in that picture,” she said, looking up at it with him. “Our parents were so happy. Everybody felt like it was just meant to be.”

She looked back over at him fondly. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to show you this, Andy. Because I’ve seen you go through it once before. I watched you doubt yourself and hate yourself make yourself a wreck. And it hurt me so bad to see you go through it. I wanted you to at least see that it CAN happen. It happened here, and it started just the way it’s going on for you guys now.”

“But here,” Andy said, a slight bit of glumness invading his happiness, “there’s no Caleb.”

“There’s ALWAYS a Caleb, Andy. Trust me, she had her Calebs here too. There’s just this hideous capacity we humans have, no matter what Earth we’re on, to always think the grass is greener. She grew up around you. We were all like cousins. And sometimes when something’s right there all the time, you take it for granted and don’t even see it. But we all grew up and went through changes, and she finally realized what an absolutely fantastic and wonderful guy you were, and that nobody would ever love her as much as you.”

Andy tried to take it all in, and couldn’t say anything for a couple of minutes. She let him process it.

“So,” he finally said, “I have to wait HOW many years…?”

“Don’t think about it like that,” she said. “Remember. ALTERNATE future. Not ACTUAL future. Things don’t have to happen the same way. You could, for example, have someone on the inside helping you, someone who talks about you all the time to her, talks about how great you are, keeps her thinking about you…”

“You’d do that?” he said, excitedly.

“Of course!” she said. “I mean, it’s got to be her choice, Andy. I can’t MAKE her feel that way about you. But I know what I know from my own life, and it tells me that you guys are meant to be together. So I’ve got no problems trying to nudge things in a direction.”

“You are SO cool, Sam,” he said, dumbfounded.

She put her tongue between her teeth again in that way she had. “I’m going to be your partner in crime, buddy. But you HAVE to be patient. And you have to stop hating yourself because she doesn’t see all the great stuff in you that I do. Yet. You can’t let what other people think or don’t think keep you from being happy.”

“I don’t…hate myself…”

“Andy,” she said. She looked away for a minute and then back to him again. “I know you do. I know what you’re feeling. I know what it does to you. Because I went through it for years myself.”

“You did? Really?” He seemed very interested, having that fourteen year-old’s belief that no one else in the world can possibly understand what you’re feeling or going through.

“Yeah,” she said. “And I hated myself, and I thought something was wrong with me, and I was miserable, and I let it tear me up and take me over.”

“Who was the guy?” he asked, bending his elbow and resting his jaw in his hand, settling in to hear the story.

She looked down at the control and studied it for a moment. Then she activated it and pointed it at the screen. Andy turned and looked up at the new photo.

But it wasn’t a new photo. It was the photo of Andy and Samantha as children, happy together in the pool, bright together in the sunshine.

He looked at it, confused.

“You were the guy,” she said quietly.

Andy blinked dumbly. “Me?” he asked, not looking back at her.

“I had the BIGGEST crush on you, Andy Clayton,” she laughed, happy he wasn’t looking at her to see how red she was turning. “Since we were kids. I mean, we were always the best of friends. You were always there in my life. And I thought were just the greatest guy ever born. But I…never told you that. I just kept having these feelings and hoping you’d start having them for me and just waiting and waiting.”

“Well…” he said, turning red himself and not sure what to say. “I mean, why…how come you never…”

“A lot of reasons. First, you were always in love with Monique, and I knew I didn’t stand a chance with her in there. She was Monique, the pretty one. She had the hair, the looks, she got the boobs first…”

Andy turned a while new shade of red and continued looking straight ahead.

“And as time went on, you guys all got super-powers. I didn’t. Mine were hidden and didn’t come out until Lucifer D’Arque pulled them out of me when I was 19. Until then, I was the Parker girl with no powers. And you guys all had that stuff in common, and you formed the team, and I was just kind of left behind.”

He forced himself to look at her now. “You mean they…that we…”

“Oh, none of you did anything to make me feel like that. Especially not you. You were still my best friend. Always. You were always over at my place, watching movies, hanging out. But that was a part of your lives I couldn’t be a part of. And it hurt. I just felt like a nobody for a long time.”

“You’re not a nobody,” he said…lamely, he felt.

She smiled and took his hand. “I know, you big goober. I know that now. But then, it was affecting me. And those feelings I had for you. All I could see of myself was the way you DIDN’T see me. I just saw all the things Monique was that I wasn’t. All the things those other model girls that were after you had that I didn’t. And for a long time I let that define who I was. The girl who wasn’t good enough.”

“Sam,” he stammered. “I’m…really sorry.”

“Oh, sweetie,” she said, smiling brightly and squeezing his hand. “It wasn’t you. You’re not even from this world, remember? You don’t have anything to apologize for. I’m just telling you this because I want you to know that I understand what you’re going through…not just because I’ve seen you go through it before, but because I’VE gone through it. And it’s no way to live.”

“So…what happened? With you?”

“Well,” she smiled. “Eventually I got over you. As much as a girl CAN get over the great Andy Clayton.” She giggled and he blushed some more. “And I was happy for you and Monique, and I still had you as my best friend, and I started college and getting into that started a whole new life for me and that changed me a lot and the way I saw myself. Oh, and then I got super-powers. THAT helped a little too.”

“I’ll bet,” he said. “Then, what…” He started to ask a question and then thought better and bit down on it.

“Whatever happened to you and Monique?” she grinned at him slyly.

“Well, yeah…”

“Sorry,” she said. “I can’t spoil all the surprises. I’ve told you WAAAYY too much already. The rest you’re going to have to wait and see on. But would you say knowing this stuff helps?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Yeah, it does.” She could tell. He seemed to weigh less, spiritually, than he had back at the Strange house. There was a light back in his eyes that she hadn’t seen in a while. The same light she’d seen dim in the Andy from her own world.

“Then it’s all worth it,” she said, more to herself that to him. She studied his face for a moment, and then leaned in and kissed him softly on his cheek. She felt his hand stiffen in hers as she did. She pulled back and smiled at his red cheeks.

“You’re a good man, Andy Clayton,” she told him. “You’re cool, you’re good-looking, you have super-powers, your parents are super-heroes AND spies, and you get to see and do things other guys can never even imagine. You are a CATCH, sweetie. Always, always remember that. Can you promise me that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, awkwardly. “I can try.”

“At least say it out loud for me.”

He rolled his eyes and cracked an embarrassed smile.

“Come on, just say it. No one else in your entire reality is around to hear it.”

“I’m a catch,” he said in monotone.

“It’s a start,” she laughed. She gave him one more nudge to the shoulder and then said, “Okay. We’re taking too long at the store. Let’s get back home and think up some stuff to buy.” She sat up and rolled her legs off the bed.

“We could take back some Pepsi Prime,” he said, chugging the rest of his and getting up, too.

“THAT wouldn’t give anything away. Not at all. I can SO tell your Dad’s a secret agent…”

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