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“Oh my god,fine.Thenyoushould keepyourdoor open because it’s Cap and… okay, that doesn’t totally make sense since you’re in the living room, but the point remains the same.”

“Regret saying that yet?” Dad asked Cap.

“Not even a little,” Cap said, grimacing after sipping his beer.

“Have fun with your boring sport that takes forever for anything to actually happen!” Nick hollered as he made his way to the second floor.

“They all wear tight pants,” Dad called after him. “Seems like it’d be right up your alley.”

Nick tripped on the stairs. “Ow, you son of a— We just had a discussion about how you’re not supposed to try and have a sense of humor!”

“I made you, didn’t I?”

“Whatever,” Nick grumbled, rubbing his shin. He glanced back at Seth. “You coming?”

Seth was flushed, but then, their air conditioning was on the fritz again, so Nick didn’t question it as Seth stared up at him. “Are you actually going to reach the top of the stairs anytime soon?”

Nick scoffed. “I don’t know why people think you’re not sarcastic. It’s all I hear from you. It’s like you’re two separate people sometimes.”

“You have no idea.”

Nick threw open the door to his room and dramatically collapsed on the bed, giving his shin time to heal. He didn’t think it was broken, but it was probably a close thing. He needed to stay off his feet if he was going to go through with becoming an Extraordinary. He had to be in tip-top shape to pull this off.

“What is that?” Seth asked, eyes wide.

“What?” Nick looked to where he was pointing. “Oh, that’s my idea board. I read onCosmothat having an idea board helps to make planning easier.”

“Why were you reading articles onCosmo?”

“I don’t even know. One moment, I was reading about diamond mines in Latin America, and the next, I’m following step-by-step instructions on making an idea board onCosmo.”

“I don’t think you know how you get to some of the places you do.”

Nick shrugged. “That’s pretty much the story of my life. You sound like you’re judging me. AndCosmosaid that people who judge my idea board aren’t going to be supportive in the long run. Also, I took a quiz onBuzzFeed,and apparently, my ideal sandwich has Manchego on it and I should be an airline pilot. I don’t even know what Manchego is, and I don’t know if I want it on my sandwich. And planes have too many buttons that I’d have to press.”

“It’s a Spanish cheese made from sheep’s milk,” Seth said, studying Nick’s idea board.

Nick frowned. “I don’t know if I want to eat cheese made from sheep. And I feel like we need to talk about dairy in general. Who was the first guy that decided to squeeze the thing hanging off an animal and drink whatever came out? Because youknowit was a guy. A woman would never be that dumb. Do you think he was dared to do it by his caveman friends? Like, they started with cattle and then worked their way to a saber-toothed—”

“Nick.”

“Right,” Nick said, relieved. “I don’t know how much longer I would have gone with that.” He pushed himself up from the bed, testing his weight on his grotesquely injured leg. It barely caused a twinge. Maybe his power could be super healing. “It’s pretty amazing, right? IfCosmohas proven anything, it’s that I have the best ideas to put on idea boards.”

And he did. Nick could humbly admit that his idea board was a thing of beauty. It was a corkboard that used to hold up pictures and articles of Shadow Star that he’d kept hidden in his closet andabsolutely did not pull out when no one was home and sigh dreamily at it.

(It was. It was that same board. He’d taken down the Shadow Star stuff and placed it in a shoebox on a shelf, next to the autograph.)

Now, there was a sheet of paper at the top of the board emblazoned with:OPERATION TURN NICK INTO AN EXTRAORDINARY AND LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER WITH SHADOW STAR IN A VILLA OFF THE COAST OF ITALY WHERE WE FEED EACH OTHER GRAPES BY HAND. The font was small because that was a lot of words.

Underneath, there were printouts of all the world’s greatest superheroes. Spider-Man. Superman. Batman. Wolverine. The Hulk. Wonder Woman. Shadow Star. Psylocke. Captain America. Midnighter. Batwoman. Flash. Rorschach. Northstar. Krypto, though he was a dog, and by that point, Nick had been printing off everything just because he could.

“What do all of these beings have in common?” Nick asked.

Seth waved a hand at the board. “Aside from Shadow Star, they’re all fictional?”

“What? No, that’s not—well,yeah,that’s true, but that’s not—ugh. Why do you have to be so literal all the time?”

“I’m literally telling you what I see.”