My name is Gonzalo Lopez. At least that much is true; I didn’t lie about that! How could I? It’s also obviously true and not a lie that I live in Williamsburg, a borough of New York City, with my Mom and that I attend Williamsburg Heights high school.

But you’re right. What is not true is that I have superpowers.

Nobody has superpowers in real life, do they? Real life is a shitty, bitter, depressing disappointment. Real life sucks.

It really is true that back in September I got into a fight with Bill Jackson. Of course you know that—you were there, for the start of it at least, even if you couldn’t hear everything that we said to each other. Of course he’s real too—you know him. Apparently you’ve even started ‘hanging out with him’, or at least hanging out near him. Anyway, I say I ‘got in a fight’ with him; actually what happened is that he was bullying me as usual.

He was bullying me, threatening to beat me up and take my lunch money in the Science corridor—but this time you were there. The new girl in school, who didn’t know that I was a weakling with no friends yet. You were there, Ali, and you were beautiful. I hope that doesn’t make me sound like a weirdo or a stalker or…well, I hope that doesn’t make me sound ‘creepy’. It’s true. You’re beautiful. But I’m sure you know that.

You were there, and I noticed you, and Bill Jackson was there, and he was bullying me, and I felt humiliated.

And what did Bill do?

What really happened on that day in September is that...

...he beat the shit out of me.

He didn’t break his hand on my face because of my superpowers because I don’t have superpowers, do I? Nobody has superpowers in real life.

Instead, he beat me up so badly that he broke his knuckles on my face and he put me in the hospital.

That’s what really happened.

He put me in the hospital so I had to spend some time away from school. The teachers sent me work to do there, and later at home, so I wouldn’t fall too behind.

In hospital—and I’m really coming clean now, here we go—I had a lot of time to myself, even with the work our teachers sent me to do.

It was too painful to think that I’d had the shit kicked out of me again, and in front of a pretty new girl that I liked, at least until you left the corridor, so I made up a story about how I’d developed invulnerability and super strength and how Bill Jackson had broken his hand against my face.

It was just like something out of my comic books.

It was way better than what actually happened.

It was fun.

I know it’s not real; I know it’s all made up.

When I eventually came back to school, imagine my joy when I discovered that I was still going to be paired as lab partners in Physics class with you! I couldn’t believe my luck.

I’d spent quite a lot of time constructing my imaginary story in my mind by that time. And, yes, if I’m honest, a part of me started to let myself believe it, to let myself become convinced by it….

And it was much more fun than the truth; much less humiliating and pathetic and weak...

So I pretended with you in Physics class that I had superpowers. And a part of me really started to believe that I did have them, to think that I really did have superpowers.

And what did you do?

You believed me!

Or at least you pretended that you believed me...

I guess now that you were just pretending to believe me because you didn’t want to hurt my feelings, or because you thought it would be harmful to my mental health not to go along with me or something. That’s quite kind, I guess. You agreed to go to a coffee shop with me and talk about them some more.

‘Just a poor little nerdy kid with mental health problems’...

It makes so much sense now. I should have seen it coming much earlier. I should have spotted the hints.

I really did go to the doctor’s, that’s true. Mom took me when I started talking too much about having superpowers, after I punched a hole in my bedroom wall (it made a hole because that part of the wall in our apartment is hollow).

Doctor Black isn’t a general practitioner, though, I changed that. He’s a psychiatrist. And although he really has started dating my Mom, because he stopped seeing me and she wasn’t his patient, he never said those horrible things to me in the restaurant. I just made those things up because I hate him and I hate that my Mom is dating someone.

It was Doctor Black who referred me to the school for kids with special educational needs and mental health problems that I’ve been going to. Of course there was no secret black notebook, no phone call with Abram, no… no Miracle Force...

I really did meet Sam in the waiting room at the psychiatrist’s though. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you that. I guess Sam’s got her own problems. And she really did invite me to her party. I couldn’t make that part up! I would never have thought that that would happen. Two super lucky things in as many weeks! You saying you’d go for a coffee with me, and getting invited to a party. It was enough to make me start believing that I really did have superpowers, or that God was on my side or something.

You were so kind to me after detention in the coffee shop. You really listened to me and it seemed like you really believed me. You believed that I had powers and you were impressed by it. It made me feel like I was King of the Universe. It made me feel like I could do anything.

I guess now that you were just going along with it all to be nice.

I guess that explains why at the party you didn’t want to be associated with me and why you separated from me as soon as you could.

Why you said…

Well, we both know what happened next, don’t we?

I had got it into my mind that I needed to give Sam a present. It was her birthday party, after all. Stupid, stupid little boy.

I gave her one of my Dad’s old CDs, and Bill saw, and of course he wasn’t happy.

I didn’t know that they were going out at that time, Ali! I didn’t know that he would be there. But of course he was there. Anyone who was anyone was there. Again: stupid.

Bill couldn’t lay a finger on me because he had been warned by his football coach and the principal after the last time. That made me feel kind of powerful, like I was twice the size I really was.

Bill couldn’t lay a finger on me, but his teammates could.

That was when he let them loose on me.

I received the worst beating I’ve ever received in my life that night.

They put me in the hospital again. They completely decimated me. You might hear otherwise from some quarters, but that’s just because people like to spin rumours, especially since that first time Bill broke his hand on my face. I had bruises all over my body, concussion, five broken ribs, a broken arm, a dislocated hip, and I lost a tooth. I still walk with a slight limp. You’ve probably noticed it. It makes me look even more special needy and disabled.

But worse, way worse than any of that, in the middle of my receiving the beating, you turned up again.

And what did you say?

We both know what you said.

‘Stop it! You shouldn’t be beating on him. He’s just a poor little nerdy kid with mental health problems.’

‘Covering’ for me. Ha. That was clever. I should have guessed. I should have seen this coming a mile off.

How could I have been so stupid?

That was my real delusion: that you actually believed me about my superpowers.

Then you ran off and the team finished beating me up. They left me half dead. The police did actually turn up at the party. You wouldn’t know because you had left by then, though I am sure people told you at school. I don’t know if they came because of the underage drinking or the drugs or because there was a kid who had been beaten half to death in the back garden. It doesn’t really matter, does it?

When the police turned up, everyone scattered.

I didn’t run away—I couldn’t; I wasn’t in a fit state to crawl anywhere by that time, let alone run.

So yes, you’re right. Of course you’re right. All the other stuff that I wrote happened after that: Me running through the city, the terrorists at my apartment, meeting Abram in the car, being taken to The Base, being recruited to Miracle Force, meeting Mute, the training, the mission…

It’s all made up.

All of it. I’ll admit it.

I made it all up.

Oh, except for the incident with my Dad. That did actually happen, but later. I had another stay in hospital, much longer this time, and then I started going to the school for kids with special needs and mental health issues full-time. Mom forced me to go. I tried to run away from her once to go live with my Dad, but he didn’t want me, so I was forced to go back to my Mom. My Mom who was dating my stupid psychiatrist after they hit it off the first time he saw me. So that’s that.

All of the other stuff, I made up.

Oh, and except for...well, except for you.

I couldn’t make you up.

You came back. You came back to visit me at home.

Why did you come back, if you knew I was making it up all along?

I guess it was pity. I guess now that you just felt sorry for me. Well, that makes me feel just on top of the world, doesn’t it? Sorry—sarcasm.

You kept talking to me like you believed me. Maybe somebody told you to. Maybe Mom and Dr Black told you to. At the very least, you never contradicted me or told me that I was being dumb. Why didn’t you tell me earlier that you knew I was making everything up? How could you string me along for so long like that?

What a fool. What a weakling.

You asked to read the story I was writing. Why did you do that if you didn’t believe any of it was really real? Maybe you really did think it was ‘cool’ and ‘creative’ like you said. Maybe you wanted to read it to check up on just how ‘deluded’ I really was. Maybe you had an inkling that I liked you—well, you must have known that, it was so obvious—and you wanted to see if I was writing anything ‘creepy’ into the story.

Well, I guess I was.

Sorry.

But that doesn’t matter now, does it?

None of that matters.

I’m quite pleased with Mute, I suppose. Now that I think about it, he makes perfect sense as an imaginary friend for me: He can’t talk, except inside my mind. He lives at The Base, so he’s never around. And it is true that I always wanted a British friend. I guess by inventing a teenager who was even more socially awkward than me, who struggled with even worse social anxiety and low self-esteem, it gave me someone to compare myself to and to feel better than, at least in my imaginary fantasy world, or something.

I’m pathetic, aren’t I?

And then there’s Djinn.

Djinn.

Ok, fine, I’ll admit this too. You got me. You spotted it.

Djinn was meant to be you.

Djinn is your age, female, dark-skinned and a modern moderate Muslim (despite appearances)—just like you. Eventually we were going to find out that she was Syrian too.

And the burqa...in my mind that was the perfect way to hide your secret identity. In my imagination what had happened was that you secretly had superpowers, you found out about Miracle Force from me, then you teleported over to Iran and got yourself into an incident so that Abram would track you down and recruit you, all without giving away to me that you had powers too and that you were Djinn. I guess I thought you were shy about that or something.

I thought that was quite clever.

The only missing piece of the puzzle is Djinn’s real name, ‘Amina Amari’. But you can so easily tell that that’s a fake name, can’t you? I mean, it’s alliterative and uses two pairs of iambic syllables, for goodness’ sake, like nearly every made-up superhero’s secret identity name. Peter Parker. Bruce Banner. Thomas Tarrance. Ali Carter is much more believable—well of course it is, because it’s your actual name! An Americanisation of your Syrian name, Alianna Khan.

So there you go. I’ve explained.

I’m not crazy. I’m not so deluded that I really thought I had superpowers and had been recruited to an anti-terrorist UN crack squad. Not deep down, anyway. Nobody’s so delusional that they actually think they have superpowers and hallucinate that they’re part of a superhero team, are they? You’d have to be...well, severely deluded and practically schizophrenic to actually think that. Which I’m not. As far as I’m aware.

My real mental health problems, according to the other psychiatrist that Dr Black referred me to after he decided that he wanted to date my Mom, are that I have post-traumatic stress from the beatings, very low self-esteem from the bullying, moderate depression, and chronic generalised anxiety disorder. Oh yeah, and fair enough, a healthy dose of dissociative fantasy and defensive detachment too.

But you probably knew all that, didn’t you?

So...

Now what?

What do I do now?

Where does that leave me?

I’ve lost the thing that mattered the most to me.

I’ve lost the person that mattered most to me.

I’ve lost you.

Goodbye, Ali.