Marvel novels - Ant-Man E-Book

Jason Starr

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Marvel novels
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 305

Beschreibung

Fifth title in Titan Books' Marvel fiction reissue program, featuring the classic Ant-Man story: Natural Enemy.SCOTT LANG'S CRIMINAL PAST COMES BACK TO HAUNT HIM!Scott Lang — the Astonishing Ant-Man — has a new life in New York City with his daughter, Cassie. Scott's determined to make it work: Cassie's in a good school, he's got a steady job, and he's finally ready to explore that wide, safe, non-spandexed dating world. But despite his best intentions, Scott just can't stay out of the spotlight — or magnifying glass — and it doesn't take long for his new life to fall apart. When an old partner-in-crime goes to trial, Scott and Cassie are stuck with federal bodyguards. Scott is convinced the protection is unnecessary, but he hasn't calculated the teenager factor! When trouble finds Cassie, Scott throws caution to the wind and dons the suit. But what is the villain really after?Award-winning crime writer Jason Starr (Twisted City, Wolverine MAX) spins a thrilling tale of desperation, secrets, and microscopic adventure.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

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  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

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  9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

NATURALENEMY

AN ORIGINAL NOVEL OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE

NATURALENEMY

AN ORIGINAL NOVEL OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE

JASON STARR

TITAN BOOKS

Ant-Man: Natural EnemyPrint edition ISBN: 9781785659881E-book edition ISBN: 9781785659898

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First Titan edition: July 201810 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

© 2018 MARVEL

Ant-Man Created By Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby

Stuart Moore, EditorInterior Design by Amanda ScurtiCover Art by Greg HornVP, Production and Special Projects: Jeff YoungquistAssistant Editors: Sarah Brunstad and Caitlin O'ConnellManager, Licensed Publishing: Jeff ReingoldDirector, Licensed Publishing: Sven LarsenSVP Print, Sales & Marketing: David GabrielEditor in Chief: C.B. CebulskiChief Creative Officer: Joe QuesadaPresident, Marvel Entertainment: Dan BuckleyExecutive Producer: Alan Fine

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Chynna Skye Starr

NATURALENEMY

AN ORIGINAL NOVEL OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE

JASON STARR

“The world flatters the elephant and tramples on the ant.”— Indian proverb

PROLOGUE

WILLIE DUGAN was crawling in the dark tunnel— on his way to escaping from Attica State Prison in upstate New York, where he’d been holed up for nine years—when Keith, one of the guys busting out with him, said, “I’m stuck, bro.”

“What?” Willie had heard him—just didn’t want to believe it.

“I said I’m stuck,” Keith said. “I can’t move at all.”

“Try, man,” Willie said.

“I am trying, bro. I can’t move. I can’t, I can’t.”

Willie tried to push him forward, but it was so cramped in the tunnel that he couldn’t get much leverage. Something had to have happened to the roof; it must’ve caved in. Keith was a big guy—six-two, maybe two-twenty—but he wasn’t fat. He should’ve fit through the tunnel easy.

“You gotta move,” Willie said. “Dig into the ground, make more space.”

“Tryin’, bro. But the ground’s like steel here.”

“Try harder.”

Willie counted to ten in his head, trying not to panic or think of worst-case scenarios. Then he said, “Okay, try again.”

“I still can’t move, Willie.” Keith sounded like he was crying. “I’m sorry, bro, I’m sorry.”

“Just shut up and try,” Willie said.

“I can’t. I can’t, man, I can’t.”

“Try, goddamn it.” Willie summoned up all his strength to push. “Move, come on, dig!” he kept saying, but Keith didn’t budge.

Now the worst-case scenario was hitting Willie. There wasn’t much air in the tunnel, especially with Keith clogging it up, so there was a chance Willie would suffocate to death. Or worse: What if they found him here alive and dragged him back to prison? They’d put him in max solitary for organizing the break, and he’d have zero chance of ever getting out.

This was it, his one chance—do or die. If he didn’t escape tonight, his life would be over; he’d die in jail an old man, unless he figured out a way to kill himself.

Yeah, if they brought him back alive, suicide would definitely be his only way out.

Willie tried to shove Keith again. Then Willie felt something hit his head—a chunk of dirt from the roof of the tunnel.

Keith said the words that could’ve been Willie’s own thoughts: “It’s caving, it’s caving!”

Was this how Willie was going to die? God’s last laugh? Given the choice between getting buried alive or going back to jail, Willie would’ve taken buried alive. But he wasn’t planning to have to choose either of those options yet.

He hadn’t spent nine years on that tunnel—all that planning, all that work—to go down like this. He used all his strength to somehow shove Keith forward.

“Go! Faster!” Willie shouted.

The tunnel was crumbling; there must’ve been an inch of dirt on his head. Willie had no idea how much farther they had to go. If they were a minute away, maybe they had a chance. Maybe. The tunnel was caving so fast now, he could hear it, like the beginning of an avalanche. Then the crash came, behind him, where Keith had been stuck just moments earlier. They’d be buried now if they’d stayed there, but Willie wasn’t thinking about that. He was just thinking about moving ahead, getting out of the darkness.

“Faster!” he shouted again. “Come on!”

There was more crashing behind them. The whole tunnel was caving now. There was dirt everywhere— all over his body, in his mouth, in his eyes. And then he felt the ground beneath him begin sloping upward.

He kept clawing at the dirt. If he could still claw, that meant he was still alive.

And then, as the tunnel collapsed, he felt something different—grass, actual grass. The hole was about four feet wide, a bigger version of a groundhog’s hole. His hands slipped on the dew a couple of times, but finally he was able to hoist himself up and out. He ignored the stinging in his eyes and saw light: It was coming from a lamppost, maybe fifty yards away. He didn’t stop to marvel over his close call. Although his body was stiff as hell and he could barely see in front of him, he knew he couldn’t waste any time. He spotted Keith and the other three guys scattering ahead of him, and he took his pre-planned route: He ran along the road for about a quarter mile, then made a left down a narrow street and a right two blocks later. Finally he reached the corner and waited.

Two minutes later, he saw the headlights of a car approaching, right on schedule. After the near-disaster in the tunnel, everything was working out. He had plenty of money put away—money he could live on for the rest of his life. It would be about five hours till wakeup time, when the guards would find out about the break. He had time to get to Canada, then use a fake Canadian passport to fly to Belize, then Kuwait, and then to that island in the South Pacific.

He could do all this, but he wouldn’t. He’d spent too much energy over the past nine years dreaming about this day. Freedom was great, but there was one thing that would make everything right, that would give him real happiness.

Yeah, it was time to get some payback.

ANTHONY HAWKINS, twenty-two years old, in a black ski mask with one wide slit for his eyes, entered the bodega on Third Avenue and 128th Street, took out his piece—a nine-millimeter Glock, same gun he’d used during his entire spree of holdups in the New York City area—aimed it at the old guy behind the counter, and said, “Give it up, yo.”

“Come on, kid,” the guy—Spanish accent, sounding tired—said. “You ain’t gonna get rich off me.”

Anthony noticed the camera, aiming right at him from the corner near the door. He shot at it, missed. He shot again, hit it this time, and the camera shattered.

A woman in the back—he didn’t know anybody else was in the store—screamed.

Anthony, nervous, shouted down the aisle, “Hey, you come out here now!”

The scared, crying Asian lady walked toward the front of the store with her hands up. Then Anthony thought he saw the old man reach for something behind the counter—maybe a gun.

Anthony aimed the Glock at him and yelled, “The register! Clean it out right now, or I’ll kill both of you, I swear I will!”

Then Anthony heard, “Drop the gun, Anthony!”

The voice was loud and clear, but where had it come from? Still aiming the gun at the guy behind the counter, Anthony’s eyes shifted toward the door. He expected to see a cop, but there was nobody there.

“Who said that?” he shouted. Then to the old man, “There somebody else here in the store?”

“No, I swear,” the old man said.

“Well, somebody’s talkin’ to me,” Anthony said. “Somebody who knows my name.”

“Leave them alone, Anthony,” the voice said. “Put the gun down, let the man call the cops, and you won’t get hurt. That’s your best option right now. Actually, that’s your only option.”

The voice sounded closer now, a few feet away, but there was still nobody near him. What the hell? Now Anthony was scared, his gun arm shaking.

“What’s goin’ on, yo?” Anthony asked. “Somebody else in here? You hidin’ someplace?”

“This is the last time I’ll ask you.” The voice was even closer now. “Put the gun down, and you can go back to jail and serve the time you deserve to serve. Don’t put the gun down, and you’re still going back to jail, but you may spend a couple of weeks in the hospital.”

Anthony was thinking, So this is what being crazy’s like? He was hearing voices. What the hell else could be happening? They were gonna lock him up—not in jail this time, in a mental home.

“Shut up!” Anthony screamed, maybe at himself.

The old man and Asian woman were staring at Anthony like he was crazy.

“What you lookin’ at?” Anthony said to them. Then his mask suddenly came off his head, as if somebody had pulled it off—but nobody was there. Anthony, shocked and confused, said, “What the—” as he felt a pain in his face, like he’d just been sucker punched. And then he was tumbling back into the shelf, cans of food falling on his head and to the floor.

He had dropped the gun. When he tried to reach for it, it slid away from his hand, all the way toward the entrance to the store—as if somebody had kicked it. But nobody was there.

So it wasn’t just voices anymore. Now things were moving on their own, and he was imagining getting hit in the face? But if he was just imagining things, how come it hurt so bad? And, damn, why was his nose bleeding?

“Hey, I gave you a chance,” the voice said, “but you wanted to do it the hard way, so you’re getting the hard way.”

“Who—who said that?” Anthony asked, his voice trembling. Then his head jerked to the right, as if somebody had just shot his left cheek with a BB gun at close range.

“Hey, over here,” the voice said. It sounded like it had come from near his stomach.

Anthony looked down, and something hit his chin. His head snapped back into the cans again.

“I mean over here,” the voice said from—it sounded like an inch in front of his face. Then something hit his forehead, and he felt dazed, the whole bodega spinning.

“This was what you asked for,” the voice said.

Anthony wanted to say, “I didn’t ask for nothin’,” but he couldn’t get his lips to move.

Every time Anthony tried to get up, something hit him and he fell back down again. Then he heard sirens, getting louder and louder.

“I’d love to stick around,” the voice said, “but I have another date downtown.”

* * *

LEAVING the bodega, Scott Lang—from his perspective as a half-inch-tall man—saw the police cars pulling up to the curb. As the cops rushed out, Scott darted across the sidewalk, which, from his tiny perspective, was the size of a large plaza. Then he jumped off the curb, which felt like jumping from a second-story window. He landed on his feet and continued, passing between two humongous parked cars.

Scott had promised Hank Pym that he wouldn’t abuse the Ant-Man technology—which meant not using it for trivial reasons, like to beat the evening rush. But once in a while, when he was in a hurry, why not?

When a cab approached, Scott leaped onto its front end and held on with his super-strong hands and feet. Hopping from car to car as Ant-Man was the fastest way to get anywhere. He clung to the roof of the cab until it started to make a right onto 125th Street, and then he leapt onto the windshield of another car—a white SUV. He stared right at the huge, angry face of the driver, who thought a bug had just landed in front of him. It was always dangerous for Scott to remain so close at another person’s eye level for too long—the person might notice that he wasn’t in fact a bug, but a miniature human being in a red-and-gray suit. He heard a loud squeaking noise and turned to see the tremendous blade of the windshield wiper heading right for him. Just before it could reach him, he jumped up and landed on the SUV’s roof.

He rode on the SUV to 116th, and then jumped on a car headed east toward FDR Drive. There was no traffic. The car took him all the way downtown to the East Village. Then, jumping along the tops of cars, trucks, and buses, he made his way to the Starbucks on Astor and Lafayette.

Although he’d made great time, he was still running late. He couldn’t resume normal size in public, so he ran into the coffee shop, dodging the oncoming shoes, sneakers, and boots like a real-life game of Frogger. There was a line for the customers’ bathroom, so he darted under the door of the bathroom labeled “Employees Only.”

He had a set of clothes, pre-shrunk, in a pouch attached to the Ant-Man suit. He put on his jeans, workboots, and flannel shirt, then activated the Pym expanding gas. Soon he was back to human size.

A Starbucks barista—a young Asian woman— entered the bathroom and did a double-take.

“How’d you get in here?” she asked.

“Uh, the door was unlocked,” Scott said.

“Customers can’t use this bathroom,” she said.

“Sorry, won’t happen again,” Scott said.

He rushed out to meet his date.

AT A TABLE up front near the windows facing Astor, Scott’s date said, “My name’s Anne with an e, but my friends call me Annie.”

Scott had met her on Tinder—yep, super heroes were dating online, too, nowadays. How else was a busy single dad supposed make a connection in the big city? Scott had liked Anne’s pics—she looked hip, in a not-trying-too-hard kind of way, with dark hair, short bangs, big, trendy glasses from Warby Parker—and they seemed to be at a similar place in life. She was recently divorced, had a twelve-year-old son—two years younger than Scott’s daughter Cassie—and she had written in her profile that she was looking for “something light, yet meaningful,” which pretty much summed up Scott’s idea of the perfect relationship. It had been a few months since Scott’s last relationship—with Regina, the manic-depressive hypnotherapist—had ended, and now he was getting back out there, trying to meet some new people.

Scott was happy that Anne had a strong resemblance to her photos, which wasn’t always the case with Internet dating. Since his divorce, Scott had gone on dates with women who’d claimed to be around his age, but turned out to be older than his mother. Things took a sharp turn for the worse when Anne spent the first ten minutes of the date taking about her bad divorce and how much she hated her ex-husband, and the next ten minutes going on about the businesses she was planning to go into “someday”—jewelry design, real estate, Reiki—and of course how she wanted to write a memoir of her divorce because she had “so many crazy stories to tell.” Currently, despite all of her grand plans, she didn’t seem to be doing much of anything— well, except hating her ex.

Scott had barely said anything about himself. He was trying to come up with a good excuse to get away, but she was only halfway through her iced coffee. He thought it would be rude to make some excuse and leave now, but it would be so easy. He had his Ant-Man suit on under his clothes, which gave him the perfect date-going-bad escape hatch: He could activate the suit’s Pym Particles and poof, practically disappear.

“Okay, biggest fears,” she said.

“Excuse me?” Scott asked.

“What’s your biggest fear?” she said. “Go first.”

Scott didn’t feel like playing this game—he just wanted to get home, hang with his daughter. But at least they weren’t talking about Anne’s divorce anymore.

“Hmm, that’s a tough one,” he said. “I guess you don’t want to hear the obvious ones like death, nuclear holocausts, alien invasions.”

“Are you afraid of those things?”

“No, not really.”

Scott smiled, but she remained serious. Apparently, she didn’t get sarcasm—strike two. He took a big sip of his coffee, hoping it would encourage her to drink hers faster, but her coffee was stuck at the same level like a clogged hourglass.

“Then what are you afraid of?” she asked.

“Okay, failing,” Scott said. “I’m afraid of failing.”

“Ooh, good one,” she said. “Like those dreams you have when you’re in high school and there’s a big test and you’re afraid of failing. I hate those.”

“I was thinking about it more psychologically,” Scott said. “Like failing as a man, failing as a father.”

“Oh,” she said, and then, brightening: “You wanna hear my biggest fear?”

“Go for it,” Scott said.

“My biggest fear is that the next guy I marry will be exactly like my ex.”

So much for not talking about her divorce anymore.

“Really?” Scott asked. “That’s your biggest fear?”

“You mentioned psychology,” she said. “Well, I believe people fall back into old patterns. Date the same people, make the same mistakes again and again. I mean, take you, for instance. What do I know about you? I know your name’s Scott, you have a daughter, and you’re kind of cute, but what do I really know? You know what I mean? You could be hiding something, some dark secret. I mean nobody tells everybody everything on the first date, right? So there could be, I don’t know, like some big bombshell, a deal-breaker, that you tell me about on date five—and by that time I’m getting in deep, emotionally involved, and kicking myself for not realizing it sooner. Red flags, that’s what I’m talking about. I’m afraid I won’t pick up on the red flags. What about you?”

Scott was distracted. Kind of cute? What’s up with that? He said, “I’m sorry, what was the question?”

“What’s your darkest secret?” Anne asked.

Had that been her question?

“Um, wow, that’s a tough one,” Scott said. He had a suit under his clothes that gave him the ability to shrink to the size of an ant while gaining superhuman strength. That qualified as a pretty big secret.

“Come on,” she said. “I know when a man has secrets. You definitely have a past. I can see it in your eyes.”

Oh no—she wasn’t a psychic, was she? After a fling with Emma Frost from the X-Men last year, he’d made a pact with himself: no more mutants, and no more out-there, new-age women. He wanted someone normal, with no drama. Good luck with that in New York, right?

“Okay, I can tell I’m making you uncomfortable,” she said. “I’ll phrase it a different way. What are you hiding? What’s your biggest regret?”

This was easy—his past life of crime. Lately, he’d been doing a good job putting that troubled part of his past behind him, trying to redeem himself by fighting the good fight. But he still felt guilty about some of the things he had done when he was younger, and he preferred not to dredge up those memories—especially on first dates.

“Um, how about you go first on that one?” Scott asked.

“Okay,” she said. “I once stole money from a homeless guy.”

“You’re kidding me,” Scott said, trying to imagine this neurotic downtown mom stealing money from a guy on the street. For the first time in the date, he was intrigued.

“Nope,” she said. “I’m serious. It happened in Amherst—you know, where UMass is? That’s where I went to college. Anyway, I was drunk with my friends, and one of them dared me to take a dollar out of the guy’s cup. So I did it and ran away and felt incredibly guilty. I looked for the guy the next day, but I couldn’t find him. I thought I’d see him eventually—but, nope, I never saw him again. I still carry the dollar with me wherever I go, just in case I run into him.”

“Wow, that’s, um, really unusual,” Scott said.

“How about you?”

“Nope, never mugged a homeless guy. I hope to check that one off my bucket list someday.”

She didn’t laugh or even smile. Sarcasm definitely wasn’t her forte. Strike three.

She asked, “Have you ever stolen anything?”

There were times in life when honesty wasn’t an option.

So he went with, “Hasn’t everybody?”

“Not everybody,” she said. “I’m sure, like, Mother Theresa never stole anything.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Scott said. “When she was six years old there was probably a cookie jar with a cookie she wasn’t supposed to eat inside it, and I bet she ate it.”

“Cookies don’t count,” Anne said.

“I think stealing cookies should definitely be countable.” Scott smiled. “Can I be honest with you about something?”

“I love honesty,” she said.

Of course she did. Everybody loves honesty until they hear something they don’t want to hear.

“I don’t think this date’s going very well,” he said.

“You don’t?” She seemed hurt.

“Come on,” he said. “You don’t honestly think this is working, do you?”

“Well,” she said. “I’m not really sure.”

“You can’t connect with somebody if you’re looking for red flags from the get-go. Connections just happen.”

“You’re right. I’m so sorry,” she said. “I always do that, get too pushy. I mean not always and not too. It’s not that being a little pushy is good, either. I don’t know what I mean. I don’t go out on a lot of dates—I guess that’s the problem. Actually I haven’t gone out on any dates at all since my divorce, so maybe that’s part of the—”

“Totally understandable,” Scott said. “Also, I’d suggest not talking about your divorce so much. I mean not upfront. To be honest, it’s kind of a turnoff.”

“I do talk about my divorce a lot, don’t I?” she said. “I just said it again. I don’t know why I do that. I mean, I’m totally over my divorce. I just did it again. Oh my god, I can’t stop. I messed up the whole date, didn’t I? It’s just nervous energy. I’m on Xanax. I know that means I should be less neurotic, but normally I’m even more neurotic than this. That’s what my ex used to say. Oh my god, I just did it again. Can we start over?”

“Fine,” Scott said. “Let’s start over.”

“My name’s Anne with an e but my friends call me Annie.”

Scott laughed.

“See,” he said. “Now that was natural.”

Maybe she’d been right about her nervous energy getting the best of her, because now she seemed much calmer. They started to have an actual conversation. They shared stories about their kids, talked about movies and plays they’d seen lately, art exhibits they’d checked out. Scott wasn’t monitoring the level of her coffee anymore—he was having a good time.

“Well, it seems like we got off to a rusty start,” he said, “but can I be honest with you about something else?”

“Oh no, not again,” she said.

“I’m really starting to like you,” he said.

She blushed a little and said, “That’s sweet.”

He reached across the table and took her hand. Wow, talk about going from zero to sixty. This date had gone from life support to one of the best dates Scott had been on since he’d split with his ex. He was already thinking about their next meeting—he would suggest that they get together again later this week. Maybe he’d take her out to his favorite tapas place in the West Village.

Then Scott noticed the ant crawling along the table near their interlocked hands. He wasn’t surprised. For reasons he didn’t fully understand, ants were attracted to him when he had on his Ant-Man suit, even when he wasn’t shrunk down. And lately ants came over to him even when he left the suit home, locked in a safe. He wasn’t sure how or why the ants wanted to be around him. Perhaps it was because he’d been exposed to so many Pym Particles—the main component in the shrinking gas that allowed him to become Ant-Man—that the gas had had a permanent effect on him. Or maybe the ants simply were able to sense an ant-friendly nature in Scott’s essence. Scott was continually amazed by the intelligence of the tiny insects. He didn’t get why society as a whole scorned ants, associated them with filth and infestations, and considered them an overall nuisance.

Anne noticed the ant, grimaced, and said, “Oh my god, this is so disgusting! Starbucks is a huge corporation; they should have standards.” Then she took a napkin and raised her hand to squash it.

Scott grabbed her wrist before she could kill the ant and said, “Don’t ever do that.”

“What?” Anne sounded confused.

“Knowingly kill an ant,” Scott said. “I mean, it’s one thing if you step on one on the street by accident—some tragedies can’t be avoided—but when you do it on purpose, it’s like murder.”

“You’re kidding, right?” she asked.

“Do I sound like I’m kidding?”

“Let go of me, please.”

Scott let go of her wrist. Well, so much for this being a great date.

Scott knew that his reaction had to seem bizarre to her, even crazy, but he couldn’t help asking, “What do you have against ants?”

“Excuse me?”

“You were about to murder that ant,” he said.

“Murder?”

“Kill, extinguish—however you want to put it.”

“It’s just an ant.”

“Is that what you’d say if I went up to your dog or your cat and tried to kill it? It’s just a cat? It’s just a dog?”

“Please tell me this is a joke,” she said.

Scott, more upset now, said, “So you were lying on your profile when you said you love animals and believe in—how did you put it? Oh right, ‘kindness to others.’ This is how you express kindness? I mean, stealing the dollar from the homeless guy—okay, you were a drunk college kid. But now you’re an adult, a mother. What’s your excuse this time?”

“If this is a joke, it’s not funny,” she said.

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

“Making such a big deal about some stupid ant.”

“Ants are not stupid!”

Now all of Starbucks was their audience.

“They’re not?”

“Ants have bigger brains, proportionally to their weight, than humans.”

Scott didn’t know whether this was true, but he’d said it with assurance.

“A lot of good that does them,” Anne said. “Who cares about ants?”

“I’d rather read a memoir of an ant than a memoir of your divorce,” Scott said.

People in the coffee bar were looking over, wondering what the fuss was about. Now there were a few more ants crawling on the table. They had sensed the tension and possible danger, and were coming to help Scott and their fellow ant.

Anne noticed the ants, too, and stood up, putting on her jacket. She said, “You have serious problems, you know that?”

“You almost murder an innocent ant, and I have problems?”

“An innocent ant? That’s it—I’ve had it. This is officially the worst date ever.”

“You got that right.”

“I’m going home.”

“Yeah, well, don’t kill any ants there, either.”

She was about to leave, but then she turned back toward Scott. “See? I was right about patterns,” she said. “Thank you. Thank you so much for revealing your true self on date number one. Saved me a lot of time.”

She was rushing toward the exit.

“Never hurt an ant again.”

“Freak!” she shouted.

“Assassin!” he shouted back.

RIDING home on the 6 train, Scott knew he’d gone too far. Yeah, it had been wrong of Anne to try to kill that ant, but probably tens of thousands of ants were killed every day in Manhattan alone, stomped on and exterminated by pesticides. Scott couldn’t save them all. Still, watching an ant die—or almost die—was always emotional for him, and sometimes he lashed out.

When he got out at Seventy-Seventh Street, he texted her:

Sorry for blowing up like that. That was wrong of me.

A couple minutes later he sent another one:

Really enjoyed meeting you!!

Who was he kidding? She probably thought he was a total psycho/weirdo—there was no way he could turn this thing around. He knew he’d never hear from her again. If anything, the apologetic texts would probably make him seem even more unstable.

Well, he’d have to put this behind him—chalk it up to experience. He obviously wasn’t ready to have a girlfriend again, anyway. Next time he’d try to keep his pro-ant emotions in check.

As he walked, he texted Cassie to ask whether she’d had dinner yet. Scott hadn’t, so he picked up takeout Chinese—pepper steak for him and Cassie’s fave, shrimp chow fun—and then continued to his building on East Seventy-Eighth Street between First and York. Scott had moved to the Upper East Side from the East Village several months ago, before Cassie began her freshman year at Eleanor Roosevelt High School. “El-Ro” was one of the top schools for science in the city and, like Scott, Cassie was a technology geek. She loved computers, video games, and learning about the brain. Scott hadn’t gone to college, so he wanted Cassie to get on a good track and stay on it. She wanted to be a neurologist, which sounded like a great idea to Scott; hopefully she’d make enough money to support him in his old age.

Another great thing about the school—it was only a couple of blocks from their apartment, and the location was convenient for Scott, as well. He was working as a cable technician for NetWorld, a computer-networking company in Midtown. It was a nice low-key job that kept him out of trouble—and out of the spotlight. Those were his main objectives these days.

Cassie’s mom—Scott’s ex-wife, Peggy—had moved to Portland, Oregon, to take care of her mother, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s. Scott already felt tremendous guilt for missing time with Cassie while he’d been in prison, and then putting her through a divorce. He was grateful for the time he had with her now. He had to hand it to her—she was a tough kid and was doing great in school—but he wanted to provide a stable home, to devote himself to being a good father.

Scott set the table and called for Cassie to come out of her room. As always, he had to yell a few times to get her attention, but then she came out and joined him at the table. She had long blonde hair and was effortlessly pretty. Part tomboy, part geek, she wasn’t really into girly things, like shopping and wearing lots of makeup. She wasn’t into sports, either, which was fine with Scott. One of their favorite father-daughter activities was to take apart computers and other electronics, and then put the devices back together. She and Scott used to love playing video games together, building crazy cities on Minecraft, and assembling intricate model airplanes and spaceships. But lately, since she’d started high school, Cassie had stopped hanging out with Scott as much, and she spent a lot of her free time at home Skyping and Facetiming with her friends. Normal teenage behavior, of course, but Scott missed his little girl.

“So,” Scott said, as they started eating, “how was your day?”

“Fine,” she said, looking at her cell. She tapped out a text message.

“Let’s go,” Scott said. “Hand it over.”

“Dad, come on—”

“The phone, right now.”

Cassie rolled her eyes and handed Scott her cell phone. Scott had a rule at the dinner table: If you text at the table, the other person reads the text out loud.

“Thank you, and don’t roll your eyes,” Scott said. He read the text out loud: “I think I’m in love with Tucker McKenzie.”

Cassie was blushing.

“Okay, who’s Tucker McKenzie?” Scott asked.

“Just a person,” Cassie said. “Can I have my phone back?”

Still holding the phone, Scott said, “A person. Okay, that narrows it down. Is he a person who goes to your school?”

“What difference does it make?”

“He doesn’t go to your school?”

“Yes, he goes to my school…oh my god…can I have my phone back?”

“Is he in one of your classes?”

“No, okay? He’s like a tenth-grader.”

“A tenth-grader?” Scott was horrified—a tenth-grader was practically a man. “Isn’t that a little old for you, Cassie?”

“It’s only one year older than me, Dad.”

“It’s a big deal to date someone one year older than you, especially in high school.”

“To what?” she asked.

“Date,” Scott said.

“Huh?”

“Date.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“You don’t know what date means?”

“People don’t date anymore, Dad.”

“They don’t? Then dating is just a concept I imagined? I’ve been hallucinating for, well, my entire life?”

“I mean people people. People-in-high-school-type people.”

“Ah, real people,” Scott said. “I get it now.” He had a feeling she was missing his sarcasm, just like Anne had. For a moment he wondered whether maybe he was the problem. “So what’s dating called these days for real, high-school people?”

“I don’t know. Nothing.”

“It’s called nothing?”

“Just, like, hanging out.”

“Okay, well, if you and this Tucker McKenzie start hanging out, I want to meet him, okay? By the way, I don’t trust that name—Tucker McKenzie. He sounds like a total player.”

“It’s just a name,” she said, “like any other name. And we’re not going to start hanging out. We’re not going to start anything.”

Scott stared at her.

Finally, she said, “Okay, Dad.”

Scott smiled. It felt good: parenting, creating boundaries. All those self-help books he’d read on single parenting were starting to pay off.

Then Cassie said, “What about you?”

“Me?” Scott asked.

“How was your date?” she said, making date sound like something silly that only divorced dads would do.

“How did you know I was on a date?” Scott asked.

“You’re wearing a nicer-than-normal shirt and shoes, not Nike Airs. You might as well be holding a sign.”

Scott had to smile.

“Don’t think I made a love connection,” he said, remembering how Anne had called him a freak.

“Oh well,” Cassie said. “She probably isn’t worth it, then.”

After dinner, Cassie went to her room and shut the door, and Scott heard the lock click. A sign on her door warned, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Scott accepted that Cassie was a teenager now and sometimes needed her space, her alone time. He was glad that her rebellion had manifested as a quote from The Inferno on her bedroom door, instead of drugs or sex. But how long would it be till the full-blown rebellion started? Was Dante only the beginning?

Scott cleaned up, did the dishes, took out the garbage. The hardest part of being a single dad was having to do everything—all the parenting, all the chores—on his own. But there were pluses. Scott and Peggy used to bicker all the time about doing housework, and it was nice to have relaxing evenings at home now. He put on some jazz, flipped through a Time Out New York, watched some BBC detective show on Netflix. At ten o’clock he turned to the news.