Over dinner Jia’s completely unable to concentrate. Her dad’s pork chops are good, slightly sweet with a salty after taste. She can’t stop thinking about the attic and how much she wants to go back up and explore whatever was in those boxes. It could be nothing, maybe just one of her parents rearranging their terribly overstuffed attic. It doesn’t feel like nothing though. The old articles and the Serenity boxes in particular being pulled out seems significant.
After finishing her meal Jia makes an excuse about turning in early to get some reading done. She refills her glass and grabs the half bottle of rosé she stuffed in the fridge. On the way to her room, she notices the attic’s still open. She wants to go back up but decides now isn’t the time. Once her parents fall asleep she can make her move.
Trying to concentrate on her novel proves pointless, no reading’s getting done. Mostly she sips wine and plays on her phone. After a half hour she lays down and starts to doze off. It’s been a long day and the soft mattress under her feels amazing. She’s roused about an hour later when she hears a light knock at her door. It’s mom telling her that she and Jia’s dad are headed to bed. A quick good night later and Jia’s back in bed.
She gives them a twenty minute head start on falling asleep before deciding to do recon. She goes to the bathroom and on the way sees the attic’s closed. She thinks about heading up now but there’s always a risk she’ll make noise when pulling the stairs down and her parents probably aren’t asleep yet.
Heading back to her room she’s mostly just staring at the clock at this point. The minutes tick by slowly. Finally she decides enough time has passed and she can safely make her way to the attic. A part of her thinks this whole thing is stupid. If her parents really didn’t want her to find something they wouldn’t leave it sitting in the middle of the attic with the stairs down. Then again, maybe they just forgot to put the stairs up and didn’t expect she’d have a reason to go up there.
Creeping down the hall, Jia’s as careful as she can be when pulling the stairs down. She doesn’t hear much noise when they hit the ground and she breathes a sigh of relief. Tiptoeing up each step, she realizes she’s never been up here so late at night. There’s a small window on the far side of the room, but no real light is coming in at this point. It’s a cloudy night and even the moon isn’t around to help.
She has no idea where the light switch is up here. The light was on earlier but she didn’t pay attention to it since she decided to leave it on. Usually the window provides enough light for her to grab something. Luckily she brought her phone and the flashlight on it helps her navigate around. After a minute or two of searching she finds a switch on the beam right next to the stairs. Of course it was that simple.
Before going further, Jia decides she needs an excuse for why she’s up here if she gets caught. Her parents’ bedroom is on the first floor so it’s unlikely they’ll hear her but you never know and if she gets caught she wants to be ready.
She searches until she finds a box of her old awards from high school and sets them in the middle of the floor. Opening the box, the nostalgia of these trophies and medals comes rushing back at her. These all represent important moments in her life when she succeeded. She spends too long looking through them before catching herself and realizing this is definitely not why she’s up here late at night. If she really needs to catch up with this stuff she can come back another time.
Finally Jia makes her way to the Serenity boxes. Lifting the lid off the first one, she starts digging out a variety of folders and old scrapbooks. Grabbing the first folder she sees, she finds it’s mostly full of old newspaper clippings from between 1943 and the mid to late 50s. It doesn’t take long for Jia to make the connection between what these articles are about and the label on the boxes. They’re all about the masked vigilante Serenity. Every kid who’s taken history class knows at least the basics of the five allies who helped save the world during World War II. She hasn’t thought about them in years but one of them was definitely a guy named Serenity.
Glancing through the other folders, she finds article after article about his exploits during the war, mostly filled with rumors and innuendo. She’s glad these are well maintained in scrapbooks because unfolding and holding the individual articles would be terrifying. At this age they’d be liable to fall apart in her hands. They talk about missions during the war he may have gone on, people he may have killed, things he may have accomplished.
What’s really interesting are the articles from after the war. There’s a gap of about two or three years and then articles start popping up about Serenity reappearing in the San Francisco area. Jia doesn’t remember learning that in school.
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Vigilantes have been on a lot of people’s minds lately. A couple of months ago a reporter asked Richard Hughes, one of the candidates running for president, what his thoughts on vigilantism were. They brought up those who saved the day during World War II. He immediately launched into a long diatribe about how those men and women were the absolute best ever and how we all needed to learn from them. Most shocking of all, he promised to make vigilantism legal again if he’s elected president.
Again might not be the right word. If these articles are to be believed it was never legal. At first Serenity was tolerated around San Francisco since he was a popular war hero and he was taking down bad people. Drug busts, prostitution stings, bank robberies, a few bombings. There’s even a story about a Nazi sleeper group he personally tracked down and stopped, capturing a high ranking Nazi official who got away at the end of the war.
The tone of the articles is positive, though there are a lot of quotes from the police chief at the time that basically amount to thanks for the help, but go away and let us do our job. One article specifically mentions how San Francisco was actually quite easy going about this. Many cities across the country had started arresting, or even shooting vigilantes on sight if they were caught interfering with the police. Other cities were more or less tolerating people who were trying to do good and whose only crime was going after those committing more serious crimes. It seems like a power struggle and not one going the vigilantes’ way.
Most of the folders contain articles but Jia comes across a few filled with pictures. There’s Serenity, just as she’s seen him in the famous group photo from the end of the war, only a lot closer up and maybe a few years older. He’s clearly a relatively young man and while he’s wearing a brown and blue costume with a mask, his features that are visible look Asian. Things are starting to make sense. Her grandpa and later her mom must have been inspired by having an Asian hero running around and trained to be fighters as a result. After their talk the other night, her mom probably got nostalgic and came up here to look at the scrapbooks she kept in her youth.
Digging further into the articles she finds some from the late 50s where the San Francisco police finally cracked down and advised Serenity if he continued, they would arrest him. There are a few later articles but most of them don’t actually claim to see him. They’re about cases and situations that fit his style which the newspaper speculated may have been him operating in secret.
Opening another book, Jia finds the articles contained here are a lot more recent. Mostly from the late 70s. They talk about a teenage girl dressed a lot like Serenity showing up in San Francisco and involving herself in police investigations.
Since the crackdown in the late 50s there hadn’t been much vigilantism in the city, certainly no one who made a big name for themselves. The same police chief was still in place all those years later and advised that they still had a no tolerance policy against vigilantes. Reading through the articles, it seems this girl wasn’t active for long. Just a couple years. There are a couple articles from the late 80s and early 90s in here as well but nothing mentioning Serenity, which turns Jia’s blood cold. As she reads the articles, they fit the sort of case she’d expect to see Serenity involved in but no one made the connection to either the original Serenity or the female copycat. No one except whoever collected these scrapbooks.
Having skimmed through the first box, Jia opens another. Inside she finds items she assumes are souvenirs. What appear to be the pins to a few grenades lay on top of a few drawings. Beneath that what looks like part of a costume is wadded up. If it were brown and blue she’d probably run screaming from the attic but it’s purple and looks nothing like the one she was afraid of finding. Maybe someone related to Serenity?
The more she thinks about it the more she rationalizes finding this in her attic. It’s weird but clearly either her mother or grandfather were very into Serenity. Maybe they collected stuff related to him over the years. The same way others collect autographs, or things from a musician’s concerts, or in weird cases a celebrity’s hair. It doesn’t make a lot of sense but she tells herself that has to be it. She moves onto another box.
Opening this third box her eyes practically bug out of her head. She finds herself staring into a box filled with a variety of outfits, all brown with blue highlights. Pulling them out, she realizes they’re definitely costumes and they look like Serenity’s, or at least some of Serenity’s as there are pictures of him in various outfits. Jia tells herself these must be something her mom or grandpa bought on the collector’s market at some point. There’s a lot of them though and that really doesn’t make sense. There’s one that’s a lot smaller than the others and a few face masks sit in the bottom of the box. She starts coming to terms with the more obvious reason for what she’s seeing.
Lost in thought and already considering running away and pretending she never saw this, Jia almost jumps through the roof when she hears a throat clear behind her. Spinning as fast as she can, she sees her mother standing by the stairs, staring at her with a mostly expressionless look. “So, you found my stuff. I guess now’s as good a time as any to have a little chat about it.”