Blue Bug From Outer Space - Part One by: Enemyoffun Jaime Reyes is kid out of his element, who dreams of a life better than his own. He finds such a life when he stumbles about a strange blue stone in the garbage and his whole world changes.

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Author's Note: Here's my first chapter of Blue Beetle, I was going to wait a few days but the story was stuck in my head and I needed to put it down as quick as possible. I've taken some liberties, moving the Reyes' family and other characters from El Paso to San Francisco. This story takes place a couple of months after Jameson Queen's death. Blue Beetle and other characters are property of DC Comics. I'd like to thank djkauf for the editing and wanted to ask if everyone thought there was too much exposition. I'm not sure myself but I'm going to post it anyway.

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Chapter One:

“You are so fricking dead, Reyes”

They were giving chase; there were at least four of them, all of them at least twice my size. I could hear them pounding after me and though I was fast, I was no Flash. I don’t know why they were so pissed off; they started all of this. I’m only getting them back for what they did to me. It’s not my fault if I’m smarter and have better resources than them. It was going to be my fault if the group of them caught me, though. But I was confident I could out run them, even if two of them were running backs and one of them was a sprinter for the track team. I was small and was finding it much easier to weave my way through the crowd of students clogging the halls.

I hate school. I hate it with every fiber of my being. It’s like one of those old Atari games where you fly around in a little space ship and blast invading aliens. What was that game called, I can’t remember. I’d like to say that I was the brave space cadet or whatever, defending Earth from a horde of alien invaders. Unfortunately, that would be dead wrong. I’m definitely the Alien and in more ways than one. If there was a Space Cadet, it was everyone else and boy did they like to BLAST me. There was something about the little Mexican kid that everyone seemed to like to squash. Maybe it was because I was the only Hispanic kid in the school or maybe it was because my family wasn’t as rich as the others. Or maybe it was because I was smarter than everyone else.

Regardless of the reason, I was currently about to get blasted big time. Being the new kid---my parents just moved us here from El Paso about seven months ago---is pretty hard. My father got a new job and seeing as it paid pretty well, he was able to get me into a good school. From there I was able to land myself a scholarship and get into a fantastic school. It was called Ravenwood Academy; it was a prestigious upper crust school that I never would have afforded without the scholarship and a really good word from my father’s employee. It works really well when your boss is one of the richest men in California.

But I digress. What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, being the new kid. It’s not too bad I suppose. At least we were able to live in a neighborhood where I wasn’t so alien. The rich jackasses at my school called it Latino Lane; I think that was their attempt to snub their noses at me. All I saw it as was a good use of alliteration. As much as I hated them, there was little they could do to get a rise out of me. I’m not prone to lose my temper like my father; maybe I inherited that from my mother. Besides, if I ever did anything stupid like that, she’d kill me. My mother is a paramedic and wants me to be a doctor. As cool as that sounds I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut. There was something about space that always intrigued me. I don’t know but ever since I was a little kid, I used to stare up at the stars and wonder what was out there.

So I’m a bit of a geek but in this day and age, who isn’t.

My room at home is covered with star maps and pictures of super-heroes. Yeah, I said super-heroes. As soon as I saw the Green Lantern on the TV, I was hooked. When she told the world about Metahumans and mentioned she lived in space, I was in love. Ok, I might be over exaggerating a bit, but I had it bad. Most of my walls were plastered with pictures of her and the others. There were a lot now, bouncing around the world, saving the day. The most recent being the Green Arrow but I didn’t have a good picture of her. She was a local favorite seeing as she was from San Francisco. My best picture of her was a grainy shot taken a couple of months ago, before she made her disappearance. I’m not sure where she went but after killing the guy who offed my Dad’s boss---it was big news---she kind of vanished into the shadows. Some people think she might have been involved but I think she probably felt pretty guilty for not being there sooner. I mean how much would that suck, not being able to save one of the richest men in the country.

We went to Mr. Queen’s funeral, paid our respects and whatnot. My father was afraid he was going to lose his job but Mr. Queen’s granddaughter, Olivia, assured us that nothing was going to change. She was kind of cool and gorgeous, like a super-model stepping out of a magazine. She was nice too, she always went out of her way to say hi and sometimes she stuck around to talk. But I digress again; I’ll get back to Miss Queen later. What was I talking about, oh yeah school?

I do that a lot, you’re going to have to get used to it.

The rich kids had a name for me; they called me the Mexican Bug. It was because I was so short. Most of the guys in my school were tall and blonde and looked like GAP ad models. They all wore designer clothes and drove around in expensive cars. I didn’t belong with them and they reminded me of it every chance I got. It wasn’t the typical high school pranks they pulled on TV either. Those I could deal with. Rich kids had a whole new way of messing with people. They hacked my face book account and posted embarrassing stuff or messed with my iPhone---the school gives them to incoming freshman---so that it blared music all through the day and can’t be shut off. They stole my clothes from my gym locker once and left behind a pair of cover-alls and a note, telling me to go back to the field. Kind of nice huh?

I don’t generally try to retaliate but every once in a while I get a dig in. That’s how I was in my current predicament, umm I haven’t explained that yet have I? Ok here it goes. I was walking down the hall yesterday and some of usual tormentors thought it would be funny to pour a bottle of cooking oil in front of my feet. I kind of walk fast; it’s a hobby of mine. I wasn’t paying attention and I slipped on my ass. It wasn’t pretty because when I hit the ground I kind of skid and slammed right into one of the teachers who was carrying a tray from the lunch room to the teacher’s lounge to eat. It was spaghetti and I don’t want to get into the details but I’m pretty sure you can figure it out. The worse part, the bastards didn’t even get in trouble. That’s what happens when you have a trust fund.

The Dean actually blamed me for it. Apparently, the bastards planted the empty bottle of oil in my locker and a sheet of paper, laying out “my plan”. It told how I was dumping the oil to get back at all the rich jerks who’d been terrorizing me. It wasn’t even written in my own hand and who writes out their evil schemes. These guys had no originality. But of course, the Dean believed them; he had no choice. Their Daddies paid his salary and I was a free ride. I got detention for two months and was ordered to mop up all the oil. Have you ever tried wiping up oil with water?

I planned my retaliation. There was no way I was going to let it slide.

Have I mentioned Brenda and Paco yet?

No, I didn’t think so. They’re my best friends. Brenda and her father used to live next door to me but Brenda moved after it was discovered her father was beating her. She now lives in a huge house with her super rich Tia---that’s aunt for all you newbies. I’ll get to all that later. Paco lives down the street from me. His real name is Francisco but who wants to be called that. They were a part of the neighborhood committee who greeted our family when we moved in. Both were pretty psyched to see me. There weren’t a lot of kids their age around. Paco was the oldest of five; he had three younger sisters and a little brother. Brenda was an only child and the closest kid to their age was Paco’s sister, Soledad, who was about ten. So you can imagine how happy they were to see me.

Brenda and Paco go to the local high school, Star City High. How cool is that? According to Brenda, it’s named after a meteorite that fell nearby. Everyone in the city kind of nicknamed San Francisco star city because of it. Brenda’s kind of full of useless trivia like that. She kind of a whiz and a know-it-all. She’s not as smart as me---sorry but it’s true---but she’s pretty damn close. Paco is a big guy, he looks like a linebacker and people are kind of afraid of him. But he’s the gentlest guy I know. His father used to play for the Raiders back when they were good, but he died in a car accident several years ago. Paco worked a couple of jobs now to help his mom pay the bills.

When I told both of them what the jerks did, they vowed to help me get revenge. Brenda’s father used to work for a computer security firm but that was before her mother died and he got drunk and nasty. Now he does nothing. When her aunt took her from her house, she managed to swipe his laptop. It still had all his old accounts, including the old access codes and information on all the clients. Mr. Del Vecchio---Brenda’s Dad---catered to a lot of the super rich, which happened to include a lot of my classmates.

So our plan was simple. We used Brenda’s laptop information and some dead rats from Paco’s exterminator job and set about on our revenge. We used the security codes to disable all the security systems in their cars and I used my father’s electrician’s key to unlock all their car doors. Then we put dead stinky rats in their back seats, hiding them were the bastards couldn’t find them. It was an ingenious plan, one that took us a few days to plan and only a couple of hours to execute.

We did it a couple nights ago, sneaking off to all their rich homes and did the deed. It was the greatest revenge I ever concocted and would have worked wonderfully if not for the stupid security cameras. We forgot to disable them when we jumped one of the bastard’s fences. It caught all three of us on film and they were able to put two and two together pretty quickly. When the cops came to my door last night, I thought my mother was going to have a heart attack. My father talked to them and tried to explain the situation but the police were pretty hard on us. They wanted to take us all down to the station and press charges for vandalism. Brenda’s aunt saved us all. She had a lot of pull in the city and was able to talk a judge into giving us all a break, seeing, as it was our first offense and all. I’m not sure but there might have been some money that exchanged hands but whatever happened, it seemed to work. We were off the hook as far as the law was concerned.

But I was far from off the hook with my father. Now I had to report to Queen Tower every day after school and work off my “debt to society” as he called it. I had to work as his grease monkey and I didn’t even get paid for it.

But back to the problem at hand, I suppose.

“Mr. Reyes, no running in the hall” shouted some unknown teacher as I ran by. I think it was Mr. Donovan but I’m not really sure because I was running so fast. I’m just glad it was the end of the school day. I’ve been dodging these bastards all day. Even though the police settled things, they apparently still wanted some pay back. The dead rats were in their cars long enough to leave a residual odor and you can imagine how that went over. The ringleader of the group, Spencer Marks, was also the richest. His Dad was some big wig insurance executive, he paid for a good portion of the new math wing; in fact, it was actually named after him. So every day I went to class I passed under a picture of a smug looking Sherman Marks, knowing damn well, where his son got his assholeness from? Is that even a word, well, it is now.

The front doors were well in sight. I smiled and laughed, knowing that I might make it to live another day. I was almost there when one of the jocks stepped out in front of me. Though he wasn’t one of the ones I nailed, they were all friends. He stuck his arm, in an attempt to clothes-line me. I tried to slow but there was no way I’d be able to in time. He started laughing, expecting he was about to clobber me. He would have too if not for the large hand that landed on his shoulder. He spun around, expecting to deck whoever it was. But when he looked and saw it was Paco, all the color drained from his face. Me, I wanted to cheer. Their school let out about fifteen minutes before mine and he and Brenda usually rode their bikes here to meet me.

But they never came inside; they said the squeaky clean interior freaked them out too much. I think it was because they were afraid to get ridiculed as much as I did. Whatever the reason, I was glad that Paco decided to forego it today. The jock in question, Marty Blake, was a big guy. He was six foot two, weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds. Which was big but it had nothing on Paco’s six foot five, nearly three hundred pounds of pure muscle. Even Marty couldn’t compare to that and it showed. He looked like he was about to cry when Paco slammed him into the locker.

I skidded to a halt in front of my gargantuan friend. I wanted to jump up and kiss him but that would have been wrong on so many levels. So instead, I smiled and quickly slipped behind him. Spencer and his gang arrived a couple of seconds behind me. They were running pretty hard too but as soon as they saw Paco, they all slid to a halt as well. They tried to put on brave faces but let’s face it, Paco even made some police officer’s shake. Spencer’s face turned green and he kept his distance but that still didn’t keep him from firing out an insult:

“I’ll catch up with you later, Bug.”

He and his cronies turned and walked away.

“They still call you a bug,” asked Paco in that gentle tone of his.

I nodded. “Just drop it.”

He shrugged and the two of us walked out of the school.

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“They’re still giving you problems after that?”

Brenda was all for stating the obvious, it was kind of one of things I loved about her. She liked to tell you how it was and didn’t give a damn if she offended you or not. She was a sassy chica and we both loved her for it. She liked to bust our balls a lot and we liked her for that, too. She may have been the odd man out of our little group but gender ratio never seemed to bother her much. She was as far from being a girly girl as I was from being tall. I think I might have mentioned being little---I was five foot five---and that bothered the hell out of me. Especially seeing as even Brenda was taller, by a couple of inches but it felt like feet to me.

We were on our way from school now, taking the back way. We liked riding down the back alleys because it took us past the old junkyard. They weren’t too keen on it when I discovered the route a couple of months ago but they tagged along because it benefitted me. Did I mention I was an amateur sculptor? I guess it must have slipped my mind. I liked taking old junk and trying to turn it into art. It was kind of a hobby of mine; I started when I was five or six. My father used to have a lot of spare parts lying around the garage at home. One day I took a hubcap and an old muffler and started tinkering with them. I’m not exactly sure what I made out of them but I called it my masterpiece, in hindsight it looked like crap but I was only six.

My talent got a little better as I got older and especially when my father showed me how to use the arc welder. It’s pretty cool when you can take a piece of junk and use a white hot flame on it and mold it into something amazing. I’ve made several sculptures now, most of them space oriented. But the last few have been interpretations of the different heroes that have been cropping up lately. Call it what you will but it’s a bit of hero envy I guess. It ties in with my whole astronaut thing. Astronauts are national heroes and that’s what I want. I want to go to space too but I also want people to look up to me one day and think I’m great and special.

My mother seems to think I can do that as a doctor but that’s always been her dream and not mine. My father wants me to do what I believe is right, my little sister, Milagro, doesn’t really care; she’s only eight.

The junkyard was half way between our houses and my school. I kind of discovered it one day by accident. I was riding by myself because I got out of class early and they didn’t have any class because of a holiday, go figure. Anyway, I wanted to find a quicker way home instead of having to go three blocks over so I found this alley between two old buildings and slipped through. It was just big enough for my bike and me. When I came out on the other side of it, the junkyard was right there. It wasn’t really what one would call a junkyard per se. It was really an old disused lot where people threw all their old junk. A lot of it was crap but there were some good pickings now and then. When I found it, I thought it was fate. I grabbed a couple of good things and rode back home the happiest kid alive.

Ok so I need a life, so what. I called Brenda that night and told her my find. I was kind of surprised that not only did she know about it but she didn’t care either. She told me I was a nut to go rummaging around in someone’s trash. Paco thought it was pretty cool when I called him but he called me a nut, too. It didn’t really matter what the two of them thought anyway. What mattered was that it was a gold mine for me. Since then, I’ve been dragging them through the alley every day. It works to their advantage too because it is a shorter way home after all.

We were approaching our alley now. The two buildings it was wedged between used to be a part of an old glue factory. There were still a lot of old barrels in there but no one had used it in years. But it made headlines a couple of months back; it was at this very place that Green Arrow had a fight to the death. The three of us thought that was pretty cool and were kind of bummed that we missed it, but that’s how it goes. We had to stay away from the area for a whole week after that though because the police had it all taped off and stuff. My art really suffered then but I survived. The area was still considered off limits but that didn’t stop the three of us from sneaking through.

Today was no different from any other day. I went first, as usual followed by Brenda and finally Paco. Because Paco was so big he had to turn sideways and walk his bike through, holding it over his head as he did. He didn’t complain though, he said he liked the exercise. The alley wasn’t very long and it was surprisingly clean but that’s only because most adults would have problems fitting down it. When we got to the other side though, there was something different today. I couldn’t quite place it but it looked like someone had been here. In fact, it looked like a couple of some ones. There was what appeared to be burn marks on the wall and there was a red stain that looked like blood.

“It’s red paint” groaned Brenda when I bent down to touch it.

I ran the tips of my fingers in the “paint” but it was dry. We missed coming down the alley the last few days because we were so busy plotting. We decided to do the plotting at Brenda’s house so first her aunt picked her and Paco up and then me. For a whole week, the three of us had avoided using the alley. It was kind of cool to see the “paint”, it made our little refuge all that more exciting. Paco was right down there with me, his bike leaning against the wall next to mine. Brenda was now sitting on hers, huffing. She wasn’t mad; she was just annoyed. She was cute when she got like that, especially with her red hair and freckles---yes she’s Hispanic but her father was half Irish, go figure.

“Would you two stop playing in the dirt, it’s getting late and you know how Amparo doesn’t like me being out this late.”

It wasn’t getting dark; it was only about three in the afternoon. Brenda’s biggest fear was Posse. A local gang sprang up about a month or so ago. There were a lot of gangs in this part of town that sprang up like weeds but this one was different. It boasted of being the only gang full of Metahumans. I’d never actually seen them but their tags were all over the city. Most of them were invitations as long as you had the right skills to join. Word on the street was that they were only looking for Metas with magic abilities. The cops were at their wits end trying to catch them and without the Green Arrow patrolling the streets; Posse pretty much controlled this part of the city. The La Dama controlled the rest but people didn’t talk about her.

No one did. She even sent shivers up my spine. She’s like Voldemort I think, if you even mention her name it’s like you’re cursed or something. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

We reluctantly got back on our bikes; Brenda had that effect. Besides her honesty, she had this overbearing nature that was hard to ignore. My mother liked to call her the “Red Headed Firecracker” because she was always so spontaneous. My sister liked to bug us about kissing; she was convinced that Brenda and I were dating. We weren’t and I don’t think we ever would. She was a pretty girl but she was like a sister to me, maybe even a brother sometimes. When she gave you a Charlie Horse it hurt like hell and when one of us---meaning Paco or myself---said something sexist shed kick us so hard in the shins it’d hurt for weeks. So I guess she was a boy/girl, whatever the hell that is.

We rode away from the entrance of the alley and started toward the disused lot. I stopped as usual, poking around the pile nearest the road. I saw a couple of things that piqued my interest and jumped off my bike. Brenda groaned and Paco got off to rummage too. He wasn’t really looking for anything; he was just trying to be supportive. Every once and a while he’d find something but it was usually junk. I took it to make him happy though. I poked around in the road pile for a few minutes and then moved onto one further back. There were a lot of piles in the lot, more than a hundred. Some were real small but several were towering. There was this rickety old wooden fence that surrounded the lot on three sides and a lot of the piles were taller than that. On any given afternoon, I spend about an hour searching and then usually the others finally drag me away.

Today though, Brenda was increasingly insistent. “Your father is going to kill you if you don’t get to work on time.”

I groaned and looked at my watch. I’d only been searching for a few minutes, fifteen at most. But she was right. Today I had to mop up grease stains and help him change oil. It wasn’t like his job back in El Paso where he actually owned and ran his own place but it was just as good. Widespread unemployment kind of killed our garage back home; it’s what forced us to move here. A friend of my father’s, Luis, got him the job with the Queens. We were well off in Texas but when people didn’t have money to pay for custom jobs, it kind of fell through. In California, according to my father, we’d have a new start at life. “Mr. Queen has connections, big ones, and he’s willing to help me.” He did help us but in order for my father to get enough money to open a new shop, he needed the capital. So Mr. Queen promoted him to head mechanic and made him in charge of the whole garage.

Things went bad about four months ago, when my father’s friend Luis became angry. He felt Queen had overlooked him and screwed him over. He caused a bit of an uproar and was fired. He came back a few days later, late one night intending to rob the place. He never expected anyone to be there but my father was working late. He caught Luis and Luis shot him. It wasn’t extremely serious but my father was in the hospital for about a month recovering and when he went back to work now he had to use a cane. Luis didn’t get away scot-free though. A couple days later, he was found in an alley, pinned to the wall by a green arrow. I think it was one of the last things she did before she disappeared.

I helped him out from time to time when he couldn’t get any help but I was no mechanic.

“Give two more minutes, Brend,” I said, moving onto another pile.

Paco followed me. Brenda sighed, tired of sitting on her bike. She got off it and bumbled over to. The three of us started searching through this new pile. It was pretty fresh, most of it consisted of cardboard boxes, stacks of newspapers and magazines bounded in twine and lots of beer cans. I did say this was a dump spot after all. I rifled through the trash, hoping to find something of use. I was about to give up because there was no metal when something caught my eye. At first, I thought it was a green glass beer bottle. I reached through the rubbish for it and when my hand circled around it, I snapped it back quickly. It was hot. I shook my hand, cursing. Brenda gave me a worried look. I shook my head, I’d be damned if I was going to let something like that stop me.

I reached back into the pile, wrapped my hand around it again and braced for the burn. But the heat was gone. I sighed and pulled the thing up. When I opened my palm and showed my friends my score, all of us were speechless. It was a bright blue stone of some kind, in the shape of a funky bug. I hefted it in my hand; it just fit in my palm and weighed about the same as a baseball. It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen and I knew then there was no way I was trashing this.

“What is it?” asked Brenda, reaching forward as if to poke it but stopping a few inches from it.

“Some kind of bug” I said, staring mesmerized at it.

“It looks like a paperweight,” said Paco, bent over so he was almost as tall as I was crouched.

I numbly nodded and slid it into the pocket of my coat.

“What the hell are you doing that for?” asked Brenda, clearly annoyed again. “That thing is freaky, you should put it back.”

I shook my head. “No way. I’m going to put it on my desk at home; it’ll look really cool there.”

That was the end of the discussion. I didn’t poke through any more of the piles because when I made a promise I kept to it. I walked back over to my bike and hopped on. Brenda and Paco followed onto their bikes as well. We left the lot, Brenda kept giving me a disapproving look all the way back to my house.

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My mother was in the kitchen when I got home.

I parked my bike in the back and secured the lock around the storm drainpipe on the side of the house. This isn’t the greatest part of town to live in. My mother was at the sink when I came inside. She worked strange hours so we ate whenever she could cook it. Tonight she had the graveyard shift, she was even dressed in her uniform, her hair pulled back in the tight bun she wore it in for work. Dinner was already on the table, it was tacos, a staple in my household. I dropped my backpack on the chair by the door, walked in and sat at the table. My mother didn’t even look at me, but Milagro did. She stuck her tongue out at me, taco sauce all over her face. She was at that age where she tried to do anything possible to annoy me.

You could tell we were family. We all had hair as black as coal and were all pretty short. Milagro wore her hair in pigtails all the time and I kept mine neatly trimmed to my shoulders; it was as far as I could go at being rebellious.

‘You have another date with Brenda, your girlfriendddd” She overemphasized the “d” on the end of girlfriend.

“She’s not my girlfriend squirt,” I said, reaching for my taco.

‘Jaime Enrico Reyes, you wash your hands before you touch” snapped my mother, her back still to me, the sink still going.

How do mothers do that, they must have eyes in the back of their heads or something.

I got up and walked over to the sink, kissing her on the cheek as I squinted dish soap onto my hands and scrubbed them together under the water for a few seconds. When I took them, out they were all red but at least they were clean. I went back over to table and picked up my taco, I ate in a hurry. I heard my mother and sister groan. My mother made a comment about growing teenage boys and their eating habits. As I was finishing it up, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the bug shaped stone. I set it on the table and stared at it.

“What’s that?” asked Milagro “it's pretty, can I have it.’

She reached for it but I snatched it away. “It's not for you.”

My mother looked over her shoulder. “You better not have put that dirty thing on my clean table.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘It’s clean. I found it in the lot; I think I’m going to use it as a paperweight.”

My mother groaned and cursed in Spanish. Milagro giggled, she was still learning. My parents used to speak it fluently when I was younger but only because my grandfather used to live with us and he liked it spoken at all times. He spoke very little English, he was a first generation Mexican, snuck into the country illegally. My mother---his daughter---was born here, so Milagro and I were as legal as can be too. My father was second generation like my mother but his parents went back to Mexico after my father graduated from high school. I rarely saw them but my parents visited them whenever they could. My abuelo---grandfather---died a year after Milagro was born so we didn’t speak Spanish much when she was growing up. She knew a little bit, thanks mostly to Dora the Explorer but her expertise in the language was truly lacking.

My mother finally stopped washing the dishes. She turned around, drying her hands on a dishtowel. She walked over to the refrigerator and opened it up, handing me a brown bag. It was for my father, she probably made it for him earlier. I left it on the counter and left the kitchen, taking the steps two at a time up the stairs to my room. Our house was kind of on the small side but it was big enough for us. There were two bedrooms on the second floor and they belonged to Milagro and me. My parents had their room in the basement. It cost quite a penny to do the conversion but my father got paid pretty well.

When I got to my room, I didn’t bother to turn on the lights. I just opened my door, slipped inside and went over to my closet. I didn’t normally put clothes in there; most of my stuff was in the dresser. But my mother made me hang a few things, like my church clothes and the jumpsuit I wore when I helped my father in the garage. I kicked off my shoes, pulled on the suit in question and paused before leaving. I reached into the pocket of my coat, set the blue stone on my dresser and locked my door before I left. Milagro liked to sneak in there sometimes when I wasn’t home and I know she’d try to get her hands on that stone.

When I got downstairs, Milagro was in the living room watching TV with our neighbor, Mrs. Cruz. She was an elderly woman who lived next door and agreed to watch Milagro for a couple hours until my Dad and I got home. Usually that was my job but seeing as I was being punished for the next few months, I was free from the torture of watching back-to-back Hannah Montana. What Milagro saw in her I’d never know!
My mother was standing by the door, holding her workbag and wearing her jacket. She tapped her watch when she saw me walk into the living room. “You want a ride?”

I nodded. Usually I walked three blocks to the bus stop. But every once in a while, if my mother had to run into the city, she took me. We lived a few hours outside the city and so it took a while to get there. Anything was better than riding in a bus that smelled of pee and human body odor. I said bye to my sis and Mrs. Cruz and followed mom outside. I groaned, disappointed because I was hoping to ride in the ambulance. Instead, the old beat up Dodge Ram was there. It was technically my father’s truck but he liked to drive the new Prius to work, he said it made him feel richer than he was. So on those rare occasions my mother actually had to drive the truck.

“No ambulance?” I asked as I got into the passenger seat and buckled myself in.

“Terry has it tonight.”

Terry was her partner; the two of them took turns driving.

My mother started up the engine and watched like a baby chick waiting for the worm. I wanted to drive so bad that it was killing me but I was still a little ways off. Well a lot actually, I just turned fourteen a few months ago. My mother told me when I was old enough she’d teach me herself, adding that it was better to learn to drive from an ambulance driver than someone like my father. He told me the same thing because he was a mechanic and knew cars better. My parents had a very heartfelt and loving relationship, which grossed me out all the time.

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My mother dropped me off out back, managed a quick goodbye before she drove off. Her shift didn’t technically start for another couple of hours but she and the guys she worked with had a standing poker match. My mother was a card shark and liked to take those suckers for every penny they were worth. She went to college on a mathematics scholarship but had to drop out because she got pregnant with me. She didn’t go back until after Milagro was born. Her goal in life had been to become a doctor but she settled for being a paramedic, she said as long as she was saving lives she didn’t care what kind of job she had.

At the backdoor, the Creepy Guy was waiting for me. I didn’t know his real name so that’s what I called him. He was tall and bald, with sunken eyes and a face that only a mother could love. He was backdoor security and he was definitely scary enough to keep people from trying anything. He looked at me as I approached, stared for a second then opened the door. The back entrance was right next door to the huge garage doors in the back of the tower. There were only a few people who knew they were actually back there, my father and I among them. Mr. Queen had an extensive collection of cars in the basement of the tower, most were antiques and didn’t run but my father’s main job was to restore them. He didn’t let me help on any of those. He made me stay in the main garage, cleaning up mostly but every once and a while I got to polish some of the sports cars. I say some because there were over thirty cars for the Queens to choose from.

The back door led to a little hallway. At the end was a door that only two people had a key for, me and my Dad. I opened the door and stepped into the garage. I sighed; I loved the smell of gasoline and motor oil. My father was in the work area, I could hear the Mexican music blaring from the loud speakers. The work area was in the back, it was a little room built in a glass enclosure. I liked it when he was back there because I got to love the cars without him noticing. I checked to see if he was back there and saw him with his welding gear, working on a new muffler for something. I looked around and saw the car in question, up on the lift.

With him preoccupied, I went right for the usual. It was a 2008 Dodge Viper SRT-10, in snake-skin green. It was absolutely the most gorgeous car in the lot. There were a lot of other cars, much more expensive and fancier ones but this car was the main attraction. Every time I was in here, I spent every moment I could staring at that car. I walked slowly over to see, salivating as I did so. I got within a few feet when I heard a sound of clicking from behind me. I snapped around and gulped. I’d only seen Olivia Queen briefly and only in passing. She was the new IT Girl, even if she was the Hard to Get Girl. She was pretty camera shy apparently but that was not without trying. Ever since her grandfather died a couple of months ago, she was the talk of the town. She was only a couple of years older than me and already a multi-billionaire.

She was hot too, seriously ice melting hot.

She was dressed in a pair of skintight jeans, tall knee-high boots with a stiletto heel and a top that showed things off rather nicely. Her long blonde hair was worn in what was now called the Queen Twist---named after her of course---it was really only a long French braid but the tabloids liked their nicknames.

She looked at me as she walked over and smiled. I nearly collapsed; Olivia Queen just smiled at me.

“Hi there” she said, her voice was like that of an angel. “You’re Berto’s son, Jaime, right?” I nodded and she laughed. “You don’t have to be afraid of me; I’m not that different than you.”

Yeah right, you’re a billion times different than me.

She looked at the Viper. She walked over and touched the hood. She stroked it for a few seconds and then turned to me, smiling. “You want to sit in it?”
I could only nod. She opened the door and stepped aside. I numbly walked over and slipped behind the wheel. The seats were made of leather and the it smelled of that new car smell. It was like heaven. I closed my eyes and sucked it all in. She laughed. I think I actually sucked in. God I’m so embarrassed, she must think me a total dork. I opened my eyes; she was leaning on the door. I gulped and sat in the car for a few more minutes before I stepped out. Her lingering near me was making me very nervous. I think she sensed it so she backed off a little.

‘Is it true that you and your friends got busted sneaking into the Marks front yard?”

I nodded. “He was messing with me at school so we retaliated.”

She smiled and nodded. “I heard the story from your Dad” she leaned forward and whispered. “Between you and me, I would have slit the bastard’s tires too.”

We had a laugh. I couldn’t believe I was laughing and having a conversation with Olivia Queen, it was like talking to Paris Hilton but a hundred times better.

“Jaime!” My father’s voice shouted from across the room. I turned and saw him standing in the doorway of the workroom. “If you’re done flirting than we have some work to do.”

I blushed, my entire face going red. Olivia laughed but it was a sweet one. She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “It was nice talking to you, Jaime. Maybe you can come over some time and you and I can take this puppy for a spin.’

I nodded. She walked away from the Viper and went over to one of the BMW’s. It was a nice car too, but it was nothing compared to the Viper. She waved at me as the garage door opened and she drove away. I absently waved back, blushing more than ever. My father threw a dirty rag at me and barked at me, telling me to get to work. He was smiling though, so I know he wasn’t mad. The rest of the night I worked on turtle waxing all the cars, I did the Viper twice to make sure she really shined. After that, I mopped the floors and seeing as I was about to collapse my father called it a night. At about ten, the two of us locked the place up and trudged down the hall toward the door. Mr. Creepy Guy let us out and we walked over to the Prius.

When we got home a couple of hours later, I walked up to my room like a zombie. I was so beat that I stripped out of my jumpsuit and fell face first onto the bed. I was asleep before my head even hit the pillow.