DC – I am Batman

Age 11.

Takahashi on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reyes on Mondays and Wednesdays for judo. Paulie on Fridays for boxing.

Takahashi he knew. Reyes was new. Short, thick through the shoulders, moved like she expected the floor to try something. She taught judo at a gym on the East End that didn't have air conditioning and smelled like rubber mats and effort. She was recalculating after the fourth session. She adjusted the intensity of her throws, testing where the ceiling was and not finding it where she expected.

Paulie was the opposite of careful. Paulie had cauliflower ears and a nose that had been broken at least twice and he called everyone "kid" including Thomas, who was paying him. He hit the pads like the pads owed him money. He was the best teacher the boy had because Paulie didn't watch and assess. Paulie watched and corrected. "Hands up, kid. Elbow in. You're dropping your right, kid. Again." He smelled like gym chalk and coffee and he wore the same gray sweatshirt to every session and it had a stain on the left shoulder that the boy was reasonably sure had been there since before he was born.

The east wing ballroom was empty. It had been empty for as long as he could remember, a long room with hardwood floors and tall windows that Martha used for storage and Thomas used for nothing. He asked if he could have it. Thomas said sure. By October it had mats on the floor and a heavy bag in the corner and a pull-up bar bolted to the door frame and it smelled like canvas and chalk. The tall windows faced east and the morning light came through them in long slats and when he trained at dawn the dust motes hung in the light and didn't move.

He trained at dawn more than he should have. Paulie's combinations before school. Takahashi's kata after. Reyes on the mats until his shoulders ached. He kept a log in the coded journal, which now had two sections: threats and training. The training section was longer.

Thomas watched through the gym window one evening. The boy was working combinations on the bag, Paulie's combinations, three-two-three-hook, and he'd been at it for forty minutes and his hands were taped and his shirt was soaked and he didn't stop. Thomas stood at the window. The boy saw him in the reflection of the glass and didn't adjust.

"He's dedicated," Thomas said at dinner. The dining room was warm and the roast was good.

Martha put her fork down. "He's obsessed."

"Those aren't the same thing, Thomas."

Thomas opened his mouth. Closed it. Picked up his fork.

She was right. The boy ate his green beans and didn't look up.

Age 12.

Zatanna came in March.

She was taller. An inch past him, maybe more, and she checked by standing next to him in the hallway and putting a flat hand from the top of his head to the top of hers. "Still taller," she said, and the grin was the same gap-toothed grin from the gala except it was on a different face now, a face that was rearranging itself from kid to whatever came next. Her hair was longer, past her shoulders, dark and thick. She was twelve now and changing in directions nobody had asked for.

Giovanni was with her. Same cape, same mustache. He was teaching her, he said. "Small things. Foundational." He said it to Thomas but looked at Martha. They stayed for three days. The second night, Giovanni and Thomas played chess in the study and Giovanni lost twice and won once and was gracious about all three and Martha said to the boy, "Zatara is the only person your father plays chess with for fun."

The sugar bowl levitated during lunch.

Nobody was talking about magic. Zee was telling a story about a school project involving a papier-mache volcano that had "really erupted, like, for real erupted, the fire department came and everything" and the sugar bowl drifted off the table. Three feet up. Slow. Rotating slightly. It hung in the air and then settled gently in front of her plate.

Zatara said something in Italian. Sharp, fast, the tone of a parent who'd had this conversation before.

Zee looked at the sugar bowl. Looked at the boy. Grinned.

"Did you see that?!"

He had. In the back garden after lunch she showed him more. A light-spell rabbit, gold and translucent, with a nose that twitched and ears that swiveled. It sat in her palm and she held it out to him and the rabbit looked at him with eyes made of nothing and he said "that's an excellent bunny" and she laughed.

Her hands. He watched her hands while she worked the spell. Her fingers moved in small precise patterns, shaping something invisible, and the gold light followed her fingers like thread following a needle. Her hands were longer than they'd been at seven, the fingers thinner, and there was a freckle on her left wrist he'd never noticed before. The spell made her concentrating face. Whole face pulled slightly to the right, one eye narrower than the other, tongue touching her upper lip.

He watched the freckle on her wrist and his chest went tight and he looked at the rabbit and didn't think about the rest. He was twelve. She was twelve. The rabbit was gold and nose-twitching and he focused on the rabbit.

"You're getting good at this," he said.

"I know." She closed her hand and the rabbit dissolved into gold sparks that hung in the air for a second and went out. "Dad says I'll be better than him by sixteen. I think he's scared of that and also really proud and he doesn't know which one to be so he just yells at me in Italian."

"He doesn't yell."

"He raises his voice with intent. That's just Italian for yelling."

A birthday card from Sofia arrived in June. White envelope, careful handwriting, no return address. Happy birthday, Bruce. - S.F. He put it in his desk drawer with the ones from the year before and the year before that. Same handwriting. Same two sentences. Every year.

Age 13.

Paulie bought a new grip dynamometer because the old one was broken.

That was the explanation, anyway. The boy had squeezed the old one during a warm-up and the reading was eighty-seven kilograms, which was roughly the grip strength of a professional rock climber or a grown man who did manual labor for a living and not the grip strength of a thirteen-year-old who did boxing on Fridays. Paulie looked at the number. Looked at the boy. Shook the device. Had the boy squeeze again. Eighty-nine. He bought a new one the next week and the new one read eighty-five and Paulie said "huh" and put it away and didn't mention it again.

Takahashi told Thomas that Bruce was the best natural athlete he'd ever trained. He said it in the hallway outside the dojo and the boy heard it through the door he was supposed to have closed. Takahashi had trained competitive fighters for twenty years. He knew what natural looked like.

Reyes stopped pulling her throws. She'd been calibrating for two years, giving him progressively harder resistance, and at some point in the fall she stopped holding back and he still landed clean and got up fast. She stood over him after one session, her hands on her hips, sweat on her forehead, breathing harder than he was.

"You're not tired," she said.

"I'm tired."

"Your heart rate says you're not tired. I can see your pulse from here."

He made himself breathe harder. She saw it. She didn't say anything else about it. The next session she came in with a new set of combinations that would have been aggressive for someone twice his age and he learned them in twenty minutes and she stood there with her hands on her hips watching him hit numbers that shouldn't have been possible and she said "huh" the way Paulie had said "huh" about the dynamometer and the boy was starting to collect a lot of people who said "huh" and moved on.

Alfred came to his room on a Tuesday night in November.

He knocked. He never knocked. He always knocked. What was different was that this time the knock was followed by Alfred standing in the doorway holding a manila folder.

"May I come in, sir?"

The boy was at his desk with the coded journal open. He closed it. "Yeah."

Alfred sat on the edge of the bed. He put the folder on his lap and opened it and the boy could see the contents from where he sat. Handwritten pages. Dated. The handwriting was Alfred's, small and precise and perfectly level without ruled lines. The first date was from when the boy was five.

"I have maintained a record," Alfred said. His voice was the same dry-warm voice it had always been but there was a carefulness in it tonight, each word placed. "Since shortly after your arrival."

"My arrival."

"Your arrival. In the sense that the child who woke up in this room at age four was not entirely the same child who had gone to sleep the night before."

The boy's hands were flat on the desk. He didn't move them. The coded journal was under his left palm.

Alfred turned a page. Read from it. "'Advanced kata sequence introduced fourteen minutes prior. Typically requires six weeks of incremental instruction. Performed to standard in a single session. Noted.' That was last month." He turned back several pages. "'Chess. Won in twelve moves. Lost in twenty-two. The losing was better-performed than the winning. Noted.'" He looked up. "That was when you were five."

Every entry ended with Noted. The boy could see that from where he sat. Noted. Noted. Noted.

The room was quiet. The grandfather clock in the hallway ticked.

"I am not asking you to explain," Alfred said. "I don't require an explanation. I require you to know that I see you. That I have seen you. And that whatever you are preparing for, you are not doing it unobserved."

The boy's throat was tight. His hands were still on the desk. The journal was under his fingers.

"You are a good person doing a necessary thing," Alfred said. "I don't need to know what it is."

He picked up the tea Alfred had brought earlier. It was too hot. He drank it anyway and it burned going down and the burning was useful because it gave him something to do with his face.

"Thank you, Alfred."

Alfred closed the folder. Stood. Straightened his vest. The manila folder went under his arm and he walked to the door with the same unhurried pace he'd had since the first morning, since the jam and the juice and the breakfast tray.

"Goodnight, sir."

"Goodnight."

The door closed. The grandfather clock ticked. His tea was still too hot. He drank it again.