iBoy

stairs. When I opened my eyes again and looked over at Lucy, she was still just standing there, staring at me ... and as I met her gaze, and we looked at each other across the corridor, I saw a flash of sudden realization in her eyes. She'd remembered where my words had come from — You said you wanted to hurt them, to kill them ... you wanted them to suffer. She'd realized that the words were from her MySpace blog. And who was the only person who'd read her blog?

I saw her eyes widen, and her mouth open, and I saw her lips move as she whispered to herself, 'iBoy'

I chose that moment to leave.

As I went through the stairwell door and started head­ing down the stairs, I could hear O'Neil's distant footsteps echoing on the steps below. He wasn't running any more, but he was still moving fairly quickly. I went inside my head and selected the video of the last few minutes, then I leaned over the railings, looking down at the dizzying drop of the stairwell, and zeroed in on O'Neil's mobile. As I sent the video to his number, I called out his name.

'Hey, Eugene!'

As his footsteps stopped, I heard the sound of my voice echoing dully around the concrete and metal of the stairwell, and then the distant sound of a ringtone (Fiddy's 'In Da Club').

'Answer it!' I called out.

There was a pause, then the ringtone stopped. I gave O'Neil a few moments to open the video and realize what it showed — i.e. him trying to stab me and failing, and me getting hold of him by the throat and nearly pushing him out of the window — and then I called out to him again.

'You got it?'

Another pause, then, 'Yeah ...'

His voice was a mixture of confusion and concern.

'If you go anywhere near Lucy again,' I shouted down to him, 'that video's going on YouTube. Do you hear me?'

Nothing. Silence.

'Do you HEAR me?' I yelled.

'Yeah ... yeah, I hear you. How the fuck —?'

'I'll post it on YouTube and send it to everyone you know. All the Crows, the FGH ... everyone. Do you understand?'

'Yeah ... but —'

'No questions. You've got three seconds to get moving, and then I'm coming after you.' I started counting. 'One ... two ...'

He started running.

I waited until he'd clattered down another few flights of stairs, then I turned off my iSkin and walked back down to the twenty-third floor.

1100

You don't have to be crazy to put on a shiny costume and battle evil — but it helps.

http://io9.com/5228906/top-10-greatest- mentally-ill-superheroes

Gram was just coming out of the bathroom when I got back home.

'I thought you were going to see Lucy?' she said to me.

'Yeah, I was ... I am. I'm just... I forgot something.'

She looked at me, waiting for me to tell her what I'd forgotten.

'My phone,' I said. 'I left it in my room.'

'Right,' she said. 'What's that on your hands?'

'What?'

'You've got red paint on your hands.'

I looked at my hands, quickly trying to think of an explanation. 'Oh, yeah ... there was some graffiti on Lucy's door. You know ... really nasty stuff. I tried to clean it off.'

Gram sighed, shaking her head. 'Why can't they just leave her alone? I mean, God knows she's been through enough already.'

I shrugged. 'It's what they do, Gram.'

'I know', she said, sighing again. 'It's just. . . well, you know ...'

'Yeah.'

She looked at me. 'Is Lucy OK with you going to see her?'

'Yeah, I think so ... I mean, she said it was all right. And she seemed to get something out of me being there ...' I shrugged. 'I'm not sure what.'

Gram smiled. 'She likes you, she always has. Do you remember that time when she asked you to marry her?'

'Marry her?'

Gram nodded. 'It was ages ago, you must have been about six or seven ... the two of you were sitting on the floor in the front room, playing with some Lego or some­thing, and she just turned to you and said, 'Will you marry me when I'm older?''

'Really? What did I say?'

Gram thought about it for a moment, then smiled again. 'I don't think you said anything. I think you just started crying.'

I laughed. 'Yeah, that sounds like me. I always was pretty slick with the ladies.'

While Gram went back to her writing, I went into my room to pretend to look for my phone. I was still feeling drained, and I took the opportunity to sit down on the edge of my bed for a few moments to recharge myself before I went back up to Lucy's.

As I was sitting there, going over in my mind what had happened with O'Neil and the others, trying to work out if I'd made things better or worse, I sensed Lucy logging on to her MySpace page, and a few minutes later there was a message from her in my inbox.

iBoy, it said, was that you just now?

I messaged back: was that who just now?

i know it WAS you, she replied,who ARE you?

i'm whoever you want me to be.

I logged off.

My mind was too buzzy for resting now. I got up off the bed, got my jacket, and went back up to the thirtieth floor.

Slag, bitch, whore ... I knew that they were only words, and that words — so they say — can never hurt you, but as I stood outside Lucy's flat, gazing at those ugly words painted crudely on the wall and the door, I knew that they did hurt.