16. Sapphire Routine

"Mom, that's the doorbell! He's early!"
"Relax. You finish getting ready."

"Oh, hello Ms. Barrett."
"Call me Gladys. I'm sure it's no surprise to you that Angela isn't ready. She's only been buzzing about for the last two hours."
"I heard that, mom!" Angela called down the hallway from her bedroom.
"Come in, Rick. Let me get you something to drink."

It wasn't a date, exactly. At least that's what Angela tried to tell herself. Well, it was a date, but it wasn't a *date*. Ricky was a friend, and almost two years younger than her. And she owed him dinner for fixing her computer. But still, it had been so long since Angela had been out with anyone at all much less a member of the opposite sex that she couldn't help but feel a nervous excitement.

It almost made her feel normal.

"...so it's still early, but at this point I'm thinking about a major in marketing and a minor in art," Ricky finished.
"Okay, I'm ready," Angela announced as she stepped into the living room.
"Wow," slipped Rick.

Angela had worked very hard at not looking like she'd worked hard on her appearance. A simple lavendar georgette-over-satin dress with spaghetti shoulder straps and a hem just below the knee (her boss had helped her with it), strappy sandals dyed to match, hair in a ponytail under a summery hat, light makeup (with maybe a little too much mascara, she told herself), and icy-pink lipstick. She was the perfect version of a girl dashing off to a picnic for two.

Gladys knew her daughter much better than she let on, but sometimes the elder Ms. Barrett could still be surprised at what a beautiful young woman Angela had become. The blossoming teen reminded Gladys so much of herself at that age.
"Wow, honey, you look prettier than I ever did."
"Oh, mom, cut it out," Angela said, blushing.
"I don't know, Ms. Barrett," Rick piped in, "from here it's a tough call. Angela, I just might have to ask your sister here out next week." Rick winked at Angela's mom.
"Watch yourself with this one, Angela," Gladys blushed, "he's quite the smooth talker."
"Sure, mom."
"Honey, are you sure you won't be cold? It'll be dark out when you come back."
"Oh, right." Angela disappeared for a moment, returning with a georgette wrap draped over her shoulders. "Okay, the reservation is for 7:30, so we've gotta go." She opened the front door and stood, looking back at her mom and her date for the evening, really noticing Ricky for the first time. Classy but casual loafers, clean pressed Dockers, white buttoned shirt with a contemporary cut, and a black leather jacket tossed casually over one shoulder. As he walked past her she brushed up against the leather -- soft as a baby's butt, she giggled. This boy knows how to dress.

Angela smiled at Ricky as he took another bite of his cheesecake.
"What?" he asked, covering his mouth as he spoke.
"Nothing," Angela blushed.
"What?" he repeated, arching an eyebrow in the cutest way.
"That's so cute when you do that."
"What?"
"That look."
"What look?"
"You did it again. With the eyebrow."
Ricky put his hand up to his eyebrow self-consciously. "That's not what you were thinking."
"It's just that I know this place is no big deal or anything-"
"Black Angus? It's great," Ricky interrupted.
"I'm glad you like it. I just mean it's not the fancy French restaurant I dreamed about-"
"I'm sorry, if I'd known-"
"No, no, this is fine. That's what I mean. It's really great. Because of the company." Angela reached across the table and squeezed Ricky's hand. She looked into Ricky's eyes and smiled. Now it was his turn to blush.

Angela fingered the scrunchie around her wrist. It was another slow day at the fabric store and she still had an hour to go. She'd already tidied up all the bolts, refaced the button aisle, sharpened all the shears, inventoried the ribbon. She'd even lettered a new "Synthetic Silken Microfiber - 50% off" sign. When it went to clearance she just might buy the bolt of black, or maybe the royal blue. Maybe it would hold up better than the five lycra-mesh bodysuits she'd burned through. After a three day recovery from the Josh ordeal, Angela had gone back to nightly patrols -- partly to stave off boredom, partly to remind herself why she'd put herself through Josh's torture, and partly to protect herself from whoever came looking for the sapphires. Wherever they'd come from, they probably wouldn't mess with her when she was "armed."

And to that end she'd fashioned the black velvet scrunchies on her wrists, the velvet bandana hair wrap, and the velvet bands over her shoe straps. The sound of releasing velcro marked Angela's fifth "test" in the last ten minutes. Angela noted with satisfaction that, once again, the scrunchie pulled free, exposing the sapphire dangling from a slim metal bracelet. No matter what happened, Angela could be powered up with her tiara and all four gemstones in two seconds, without having to walk around flaunting ostentatious jewelry (or risk it discharging prematurely -- she reasoned that if she didn't feel the gems' power when they were covered, they probably weren't burning any of their energy). This latest velcro test momentarily subdued her anxiety. She reattached the scrunchie meticulously and resumed fidgeting with it as she looked out the front windows to the parking lot, monitoring the strip mall's comings and goings.

Angela's fingers traced carefully over the soft velvet scrunchie wristbands on her dresser. She'd made them six days earlier -- the morning after being released from the humiliating ordeal with her very ex-boyfriend Josh. They covered her wrist sapphires. Angela looked down at the foot of her bed; though she couldn't see them, she knew her sapphire shoes were there, the velvet-top, plastic-bottom bands she'd fashioned covering the sapphire-topped straps. With this camouflage (and the focusing crown hidden in the lining of her purse) she could have her gems with her at all times. A quick tug on each piece and velcro let go to expose the mysterious power that was her only defense against whoever came looking for her.

She wasn't paranoid, exactly; just... prepared.

Last night's dinner had been a brief island of calm for the stressed girl. Scott (if it was him at all; if that was even his real name) had sent her daily emails alternately apologizing, begging her to chat, warning her of danger, and pressuring her to give him the whereabouts of the sapphires. It was like he was more than one person, none of them much like the man she'd fallen for, and it was freaking her out.

And there was The Article. She wished she could somehow buy up every copy, though she knew it was too late for that. She tried to tell herself that nobody believed any of the junk they published in the World News Weekly, but the deadly-serious look on the face of that woman in the checkout line that morning had said otherwise.

Angela pulled the tabloid out from its hiding place under the inventory clipboard. She stared at the cover again, though by now she had it memorized:

GOD SENDS ANGEL TO SAVE QUICK MART
Convenience Store Angel Stops Bullets, Beats Up Would-Be Thieves
Witness stores and PHOTO PAGE FOUR!

She'd panicked when she'd seen it there in the Express Lane at Chuckers Supermarket. Surely someone would recognize her and point her out right there, trapped between Smelly Sweatpants Buying Family-Size Fat-Free Pastries and Angry Veteran With Lowenbrau. But it didn't happen, not even as she grabbed her own copy. Once she realized the photo didn't reveal her face she breathed a bit easier, until she realized that whoever Scott was trying to warn her about would surely see it and start nosing around the QuickMart and the neighborhood and it was only a matter of time before someone put two and two together...

Angela shook her head as if to chase the anxious thoughts away. Her fingers resumed playing with a wrist scrunchie.

Angela's phone rang. "Hi, Ricky! What's up?" Talking with Ricky would take her mind off her troubles.
"I wanted to thank you again for the wonderful dinner last night."
"Don't be silly. It was my pleasure. I should have you fix my computer more often." Was she flirting with him?
"So are you free Tuesday?"
It caught her by surprise -- especially since she'd already made another date with him for Monday night, just two days away. "U-um, I-, m-maybe, I don't know, I might have to work. Why?"
"I was wondering if you could help me."
"I don't know but I'll try. What's up?"
"I've been trying to work out a new style, and I'm having trouble. My stuff looks too much like classic-era art, and I don't like it. Since I started drawing Sapphire I've been doing softer, smoother forms, but now the proportions aren't looking right. I need a model."
Oh. THAT wasn't what she expected. Images of the time she'd accidentally flashed him flooded her mind. He wasn't asking HER to model, was he? "Why don't you use pictures from the Internet or a Victoria's Secret catalog?"
"I've been doing that. Something's not right. I can't put my finger on it."
"So hire a model."
"I can't afford that."
"Can't one of your friends from school do that?"
"I'm afraid to ask. They'll think I'm trying to get into their pants or something."
"Aren't you?"
"You know I'm very serious about my art. I'm not going to risk fucking it up just to get laid."
She hadn't heard him speak so frankly before. "So..."
"So I'm asking you."
"You're asking me what?"
"To model for me. I know I can trust you."
That was weird, Angela thought. Shouldn't she be the one thinking about trusting him? But she knew she could. He might be a sixteen-year-old horndog but he *was* serious about his art. But posing for drawings of Sapphire was just too close for comfort. What if he figured it out?
"I know, Ricky, it's just that... I've never done anything like that before, and... it's kind of weird. Even with you." Especially with you. "And I don't think it's right for me to be posing as Sapphire. I don't think she'd appreciate it." One of these days she was going to forget to think of Sapphire in the third person.
"Well I didn't think the great and mysterious Sapphire would agree to pose for me."
"I'm not even sure she likes the idea of you drawing her."
"You told her?" then "Why not?"
"I don't think she wants to be famous. She wants to keep a low profile." She doesn't want anyone to find her. She doesn't want you to figure out her identity. She can't believe you haven't already.
"It's not like I'm publishing a comic book."
"Yet. You might someday."
"Look, Angela, if Sapphire wants to keep a low profile that's fine, but she's going to have a hard time doing it if she keeps flying around and showing off her telekenesis." Angela had heard that word before; duh, so that's what it's called. Why didn't I make that connection?
"She's doing it protecting you and Jimmy."
"I bet that's not the only time she's done it. Did you see the World News Weekly?"
Angela was silent with shock. This wasn't good. So much for 'nobody reads that junk.'
Ricky took Angela's silence to be waiting for an answer to an obvious question. "My Dad gets the World News Weekly when he buys groceries. Don't ask why."
"Why?"
"You're not supposed to ask. Anyway, there's an article inside on the Guardian Angel of Oak Valley. With a photo, though it's so blurry and doctored you can't really see anything. Still, if Sapphire wants to keep a low profile I don't think my drawings are going to be the thing that blows her cover."
"Okay, fine, whatever. I can't believe I'm talking to you about this."
"Well she's supposedly your friend, who nobody else has ever really met. Well, Jimmy did but when a girl appears out of nowhere and disappears just as fast, that's not exactly normal circumstances."
Angela had to stop talking to Ricky about Sapphire; she was just asking for trouble. "She likes to keep a low profile. I haven't even heard from her in days. I talk to you more *about* her than I talk to her. I just don't want to do anything to make her mad."
"You got that right," Ricky said; she could practically hear his grin. "So don't tell her. She doesn't need to know. These panels are just for me, anyway. They're... personal. They're practice."
"Well I still don't know about you staring at me for hours. Or using me as a model. You're NOT going to see me naked!"
That might actually be distracting. "Oh, no, no! Just wear something tight."
"Excuse me?!"
"I mean close-fitting, not baggy. Do you have workout clothes, like a leotard?"
"Nobody's ever seen me in that."
"What'd you wear to P.E. class?"
"The baggiest shorts and biggest T-shirt I could find."
"From what you're wearing when you come over here I had no idea you were so modest."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Angela was offended. Did he think she dressed like a slut?
"Just that the way you dress now is... cute. Not sexy."
"Not sexy?" Angela was modest, but she was still a girl.
Ricky was digging himself a hole and he knew it. Girls were so complicated! "Well, yeah, of course, just not... I mean, good-sexy, not, um, slutty."
"I better not be!" Angela said indignantly. As if her own appearance and behavior had nothing to do with it.
"Relax, you're not. You're very stylish. And very pretty."
Ricky could practically hear Angela's eyelids flutter.
"Now you're just kissing ass, Ricky."
The graphic image flashed briefly in his mind; he smiled, then shook it out of his head. This was Angela, his friend. He shouldn't think like that.
"So will you do it? Will you pose for me?"
"What kind of poses?"
"Just basic stuff. Nothing embarassing, don't worry. I'm not drawing a fetish comic. I just need a real person to look at as I work out some sketches and get a good working map of Sapphire's body in my head."
"I'm not Sapphire," Angela said, hoping to disassociate her image from Sapphire's in Ricky head, in spite of what she was about to agree to do. But despite her modesty, the flattery of the proposition clouded her judgement.
"Okay, but I don't know what Sapphire looks like exactly so I have to start somewhere."
"Gee, thanks."
"That's not what I meant." God, girls were so sensitive!
"I know, I'm just teasing. Okay, I'll do it."
A burst of gleeful energy gushed through the phone. "That's great! Thanks so much, I know you won't regret it. You are so great, Angela. Really."
"Okay, okay, stop thanking me before I change my mind."
"Sorry, it's just that I really need this to get over this hump." Bad choice of words. "So when can you come over?"
"Tomorrow I work a short day, til 2. How about I come over after that?"
"That's great, then I can do it outside. Daylight is always better."
Outside? That made her nervous.
"Don't worry, we'll be in the back yard. And you won't be doing anything that looks weird anyway. Relax."
"Okay, Ricky. See you."

Sapphire fluttered down effortlessly, landing in near-silence on the roof of the state college administration building. Perched on the crest of the hills east of the suburban sprawl that was her home, it served as an impromptu watchtower for the young heroine.

Not that there was anything to see.

It was Sunday night, but that was no excuse. Every night was the same. Crime-fighting was a boring business, long hours of patrolling night after night, and nothing to show for it except the rescue of one cat stuck in a tree. Sapphire was beginning to see that a superheroine's life wasn't anything like in comic books. Big-time crime was generally done out of sight under the guise of legitimate business. It was better fought by fastidious technicians and scrupulous accountants and relentless district attorneys than by superheroines. The super-villians of comic book lore just didn't exist in the real world. Smart guys knew there were many ways to get ahead, and none of them consisted of wearing costumes, and the only ones that involved spending millions on super-science formulas and mega-machines were those underwritten by the military.

Sapphire was growing tired of aimless wandering about the rooftops of her suburban world. Even small-time crime generally happened out of sight. And when it didn't, it was random enough and spread out over such a huge area that the odds of her finding it were worse than the odds of winning the lottery. Oh, what she wouldn't give to land on another holdup of a QuickMart.

Sure there was crime. There were even bad neighborhoods. But the kinds of things that happened there were hardly appropriate for the intervention of a scantily-clad superteen. Floating down into the middle of a domestic dispute or a couple of winos wrestling over a bottle was... awkward. Silly. Demeaning. Depressing. It seemed her first night out had been a fluke. It seemed there was just no call for a real superheroine.

Sapphire bent down to adjust her shoe, retying the improvised spaghetti strap wrapped under her arch and around her foot. They were fine when she was airborne, but she always seemed to land on them wrong. The ties kept coming loose. As her fingers worked the soft string, Sapphire noticed the way her gossamer wings billowed gently with her movements. She also noticed the way her breasts jiggled to and fro under the stretchy fabric of her top. She felt it give slightly under the strain; she regarded the deepening cleavage caused by the growing tear down the front.

The gradually-failing fabric served to remind her of the dark side of her gems' power. The unfortunate side-effect of her Sapphire force somehow ate away at whatever she wore, especially near her private parts. It was bad enough that the power only worked when she was scarcely dressed in the first place -- anything more than the most delicate fabric damped the stones' energy to a useless feeble glow -- but the dissolving uniform was a potentially-embarassing inconvenience.

Indeed, sometimes things seemed the other way around -- that her Sapphire force was a side-effect of the gems' real purpose: to force a young girl to expose her body to the world's lustful gaze.

Her top wouldn't last much longer. It was time to head home. Another wasted night. Perhaps tonight she could at least manage to get home and get to bed without... doing *that*. Sapphire's cheeks burned hot with embarassment even as a heat of a different kind swelled within her. The gems' appetite for outfits was nothing compared to the other appetite it inflamed. The longer she stayed out on patrol the worse it seemed to get. She knew it was the gems doing it somehow, but... well, it didn't seem to hurt anything, exactly, as long as she got home. She told herself it was just the price she had to pay for the privilege of serving the public, but a part of her wondered if she wasn't enjoying the "sacrifice" just a little too much -- if maybe the patrols were just an excuse to feel the fire the gems lit within her. If only the feelings didn't come with such... unsettling thoughts. If in reality Sapphire was powerful, ever vigilant in her readiness to defend the innocent against evildoers, in her fantasies she was helpless, defeated, a fragile nymph teetering on the edge of succumbing to the dark desires of dastardly, dangerous men.

Sapphire caught her fingers lingering on the arch of her foot, grazing it gently in a way that sent chills up her spine. No, not here. She had to get control. She had to get home. She stood up, running down a quick check of her "equipment" to make sure it would survive the journey home. Her shoes were intact, as were the wristbands and choker that secured her "wings." The gems on her wrists were secure as always, and the tiara nestled tightly in her flowing dark hair. She smoothed the skirt, a simple short silk wraparound; it seemed fine, and might even see a second use. Her hands cupped her breasts, ostensibly to make sure they wouldn't spill out of her top. Why couldn't she find any action? Oh well, maybe tomorrow night . . .

As a preoccupied Sapphire took to the sky, she hardly noticed the side of her string bikini panty snap. The garment slid down her smooth legs and floated down to the street below, the only evidence of the young girl's watch.

He'd been parked there for nearly two hours. From this corner spot, he could see down the street toward the development's main entrance through the back window of the rented van; out the side window he looked over the corner lot's brown crabgrass lawn to the worn-but-cheery house across the street and two doors down.

The house where She lived.

He was taking a huge risk being here. But he couldn't just leave her hanging. She wasn't like the others. There was something about her. It had surely contributed to him choosing her then, as much as it contributed to him regretting that choice now.

A car approached. Nine fourteen PM. This was the fourteenth car in the last two hours. He raised his binoculars and held his breath. A light-colored late-model Mercury Grand Marquis -- a favorite among septegenarians, Big and Tall rental customers, and law enforcement officers and agents of every type. This was the third suspicious-looking car, after the blacked-out Porsche Turbo that had circled the block twice before going out the way he came in at 8:15pm, and the older Mustang that had done the same thing at 8:35. The streetlight before the corner gave him a brief moment to scan the two occupants before they reached the intersection. The binoculars surveyed the driver first. Teenage Male, White or possibly Asian. The passenger looked female -- his heart skipped a beat -- but he couldn't quite get focused on her before they moved out of the streetlight's illumination and their headlights glared at him.

The car paused at the intersection, signaled left, paused some more, then swung into a lazy left turn and proceeded at well below the speed limit. The car pulled into Her driveway. His heart beat faster.

The streetlight across the street combined with the security light above the garage next door gave everything a pale orange glow but otherwise made seeing easy. The driver got out first, hustling around to the passenger side to open the door. What a young gentleman. He was of slight build, maybe 5'7" tall, short dark hair. The passenger stepped out. Hair up, slim yet curvy, definitely a woman. About the same height as her escort, who directed her with a flourish of his arm toward the front door of the house. It wasn't until they got around the car that he could see all of her. It took him a moment to frame her in the binoculars, seeing first that she was smartly attired in a form-fitting black dress before finding her face.

"My God." His heart skipped a beat. "She's even more beautiful in person."