《Rivals》


 Page 1

    "When are you going to start rebelling, kid?" Brent''s father asked. He shifted his pack on his back and started clambering down a rough-walled ravine, where a flash flood had cut through the desert like a knife after last month''s storms.


    "I''m not really sure what I''m supposed to rebel against," Brent answered. He reached forward with one boot and found a rock that didn''t shift when he put his weight on it. It was easy enough going, but you had to be careful. Brent grabbed at the tough roots of a juniper bush and stopped still when a scree of pebbles started shifting under him. "It seems to me we have it pretty good - you look at some of the people in this world who don''t have anything to eat, or their government forces them out of their homes, and - "


    At the top of the ravine, Brent''s older sister Maggie appeared silhouetted against the sun. "Would you two hurry up?" she whined. "I want to get back to civilization. You know, where people have cell phones that actually get a signal?"


    Brent''s eyes narrowed. He started thinking of the perfect reply, something really nasty, but then his dad put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. "Don''t," his father said. "I wish you two wouldn''t fight so much." He wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. "I thought this trip would do her good but I don''t know. She doesn''t seem to be having a good time, does she?"


    "We''ll just have to hit the outlet mall on the way back," Brent said. He was pleased when his father actually smiled, though he knew he would never get a laugh. Their dad was always scrupulously careful not to favor one of them over the other, and that included never saying a bad word about Maggie.


    Even when she deserved it.


    "Come on down, kid. It''s not too much farther. I saw the sun shining on something this morning. It looked like there might be an oasis out here. Maybe we can go for a quick swim!"


    "I didn''t bring my bathing suit," Maggie answered, but she started carefully picking her way down the rocks. For all her lack of enthusiasm she had no trouble with the climb down. Brother and sister were both experienced rockhoppers. That was entirely thanks to their parents, who had dragged them out into this desert for hikes every year since they''d been old enough to walk. Now that their mother was gone, the hikes were even more frequent.


    Brent didn''t mind at all. He loved how quiet it was when you got more than an hour''s walk away from the highway. He loved the shade at the bottom of ravines like this, and the thin breezes that dried all the sweat on your skin. He thought maybe when he was older he would like to live out there, and just watch the clouds go by overhead everyday until the sun turned them a million shades of red and orange.


    "Hey," Maggie said. "I think I see it. But that''s no oasis. God, what a stupid goose chase. It looks like an old car somebody left to rust to death."


    Dad rushed down the bottom of the ravine, where the footing was a lot more stable. Brent hurried after. This would have been a bad place to be when the rain came through - millions of years'' worth of mud and sand had been washed away in a foaming wall of water - but now the ground had dried out so much it shrank away from itself, making a fine pattern of cracks like a gigantic spider web. Tiny flowers surrounded by thick spiky leaves sprouted up through some of the cracks, thriving on whatever moisture remained. The flowers'' petals were soft, delicate colors you couldn''t find anywhere else in the desert.


    "Is it even worth checking this thing out?" Maggie asked.


    For his father''s sake, Brent held his tongue. Maggie had been like this ever since their mother died a year ago. Dad claimed it was because he didn''t know how to talk to a teenage girl so he wasn''t doing a good job helping her through her grief. Brent thought otherwise. He thought Maggie was just a jerk. The two of them had never gotten along very well. There had been a brief time, after the accident, when the two of them had hugged a lot and cried on each others'' shoulders. But that had ended all too quickly.


    "I hate to tell you this, Mags," Dad said, "but that is no rusted-out car."


    Brent came up around a bend in the ravine and saw what he meant.


    Cars weren''t fifty yards long, for one thing.


    It was funny, though. He could see why Maggie had been confused about its size. If you didn''t look right at it, it seemed smaller. And it got bigger as he got closer to it - much bigger. It was almost like it couldn''t decide how big it really was, or what its real shape might be. But that didn''t make sense, he thought.


    Whatever it was, it was made of metal and yes, a lot of it had rusted away. But parts of it were still shiny, even though it had clearly been buried in the sand for a long time. The flash flood must have uncovered it, or at least, uncovered part of it. It looked like the top part of something much bigger that was still buried.


    Brent thought it might be a crashed airplane. It had a roughly cylindrical shape. Part of the top of it had been eroded away but the side walls still rose up like steepled fingers to form a series of huge arches. The surface of the object was pitted and scratched by time and weather, but it looked like it had once been very smooth, even aerodynamic.


    It lay across the ravine running perpendicular to the course of the flood. It looked like the water had tried to go around it, failed, and then just gone over it instead. Looking down through one of the arches Brent saw puddles of water inside that hadn''t even evaporated yet. "What is it?" Brent asked.


    "I don''t know," Dad confessed. He moved closer. Brent started to follow but his dad put up one hand to stop him. "Just let me check it out first."


    Maggie came up beside Brent as Dad stepped through one of the arches, into part of the cylinder that was still mostly intact.


    "Is this going to take long?" she asked, but before Brent could answer a hundred dusty-winged birds came swooping out of the cylinder and flapped vehemently away. One came close enough to brush Brent''s cheek with its wingtip.


    "Dad!" he called. "Dad!"


    He rushed forward, through the arch - and immediately stopped.


    And shivered.


    The air under the arch was at least twenty degrees cooler than the air outside. Shade in the desert was always a startling thing, but this was different. It felt like he''d stepped into an air conditioned hotel lobby. Yet the arch was open to the outside air, and he could still feel the sun beating down on his shoulders.


    He couldn''t explain it. He couldn''t even begin to think of how that might be possible.


    "Dad?" he asked, and stepped further inside.

 Page 2

    Maggie waited outside. You would not catch her climbing around inside some ancient airplane hangar the military had built out in the desert and then left to collapse under its own weight. It just wasn''t safe. The thing didn''t even look normal. It looked like it kept changing shape, but then if you stared at it, it wasn''t moving or anything. Weird, she thought, as in, too weird to be part of my life.


    Of course stupid Brent had to stupidly run inside. He was only two years younger than she was, fifteen to her seventeen, but he could be such a child. And the way he followed Dad around like a puppy made her roll her eyes. He was just like a puppy - exactly like a puppy. He lived for that moment when someone called him a good boy and patted him on the head.


    Maggie decided she would wait ten minutes. That was fair, right? More than enough time to let the two of them have their little boy adventure and realize there was nothing inside more interesting than maybe some brown recluse spiders - the kind that gave you that horrible disease. Then she would demand that they come back out so the three of them could head back to camp. She just got one flickering bar of reception on her Sidekick if she went up on the bluff overlooking their campsite. It was just enough to send and receive short texts.


    She kicked at some pebbles and they bounced off the side of the thing. Instead of the muted clangs she was expecting, they made a sound like they were hitting the stretched skin of a drum. That was kind of weird.


    Had it been ten minutes yet? She wasn''t sure. Maggie never wore a watch. That was what the clock on her Sidekick was for, and she''d left it back at camp. No point hauling it around out in the desert, she''d thought. It would have just been more weight to carry in her pack. Her mom had taught her to always travel light.


    Mom -


    Maggie thought about her mom a lot. Several times a day, in fact. Sometimes she would think about the times they''d spent together and she would cry. Sometimes she''d think about the accident and get angry. The other guy had been drunk. He had absolutely no right to be driving, no right at all to be driving that fast. He''d taken away Maggie''s mom because he was too stupid to be allowed to breathe. He had ruined Maggie''s life in a split second.


    Mom.


    Maggie sighed theatrically - she was working on a new sigh, a long, drawn-out exhalation that told the world she was so over this - and then stepped down into the shady interior of the old building or whatever it was. It had to have been ten minutes, right? She was startled when she felt how cold it was inside, but at least that explained the birds. Animals in the desert would take any shade they could find, any way of cooling themselves down. There were probably jackrabbits and kit foxes inside as well, and maybe even coyotes. Now that would be stupid. Titanically stupid, to get eaten by coyotes because two little boys (one of whom happened to be her forty-year old dad) had to play explorer in the desert.


    Beyond the arches was a section where the ceiling hadn''t been worn away. It looked pretty dark back there. She stepped over some puddles of stagnant water - probably full of insect larvae, yuck - and reached into her pack to get her flashlight. When she flicked it on she saw that the cylinder went on farther than she''d thought. It sloped downward, as if most of it was still underground. Maybe it was the entrance to a mine or something. Maybe the weird chill in the air was just a breeze coming up from some deep cavern.


    Of course, she couldn''t feel a breeze. The air inside was perfectly still. But whatever. She just had to find the boys and convince them to leave. It wouldn''t be easy. They almost never accepted that she knew what she was talking about, and if she said this place was dangerous that would most likely make them want to explore deeper.


    She saw a little light up ahead. It looked like another flashlight, almost identical to the one she carried. She swung her light around and saw that Brent was pointing his own light at Dad, who was bent over something she couldn''t see. They had stopped in front of a row of big tubes set into the wall of the cylinder. A smaller tube stuck up out of the ground, like a pipe, or the top of a well. Dad was looking into its mouth.


    "Guys," she said. "Come on - " but then she stopped. She could hear her own voice, kind of. It sounded very faint, though. It was like the cylinder was absorbing sounds. She picked up a rock and threw it at the wall. She saw it hit, but didn''t hear anything.


    "Guys!" she shouted, as loud as she could. It sounded like a whisper. The boys didn''t even turn around.


    This place was weird, and creepy. Two very good reasons to leave. She headed towards them, intending on grabbing them and dragging them out if she had to. That was when she noticed she could see her father''s bones, his skull, his rib cage, the two thin bones in his forearm.


    It was like he was being x-rayed. It was like in a cartoon when someone sticks their finger in a light socket. Then she realized she could see his bones because they were burning bright green - and because his skin and most of his flesh was already gone.


    She rushed forward, not even thinking about what she was doing, and grabbed Brent. He was staring at Dad and didn''t seem capable of moving. His eyes looked strange and his skin was glowing. Whatever had happened to Dad was starting to happen to him, too.


    Maggie looked down at her hands. Green fire covered them as if she were burning up. Yet she didn''t feel hot at all - it just tingled.


    She picked Brent up and threw him over her shoulder. Then she ran.


    Dad was dead. He was dead. He was dead! She thought he had to be. Because if he wasn''t -

 Page 3

    "Oh my God, we have to go back for Dad," Brent howled, beating on his sister''s back. She had thrown him over his shoulder and he could see behind them - all he could see was the dark mouth of the cylinder, and a hint of green fire inside. "We have to go back!"


    "Brent," Maggie said, very quietly.


    "We have to! He could be really badly hurt! Turn around, Mags!"


    "Brent."


    "He probably can''t walk, but we can make a travois, it''s only a couple of hours back to the car and then, and then we can drive to a hospital, it''s a long way, but - "


    "Brent!"


    "Just put me down, and I''ll go back for him, I know he was really hurt, I know it looked really bad, but you gotta - Mags - you gotta go back and - "


    "Brent, please," she said, and stopped running. She knelt down and laid him gently on the ground. "Please stop. Please just stop and think for a second."


    He fought her. He fought as hard as he could, because his dad''s life depended on it. "No," he said, and shook his head. He felt like a baby refusing to eat mushed peas. He felt immature and like he wasn''t being realistic, but - Dad! Dad was back there!


    "He''s dead," Maggie said. Over and over until he started believing it. "Dad''s dead."


    When he opened his eyes again they were walking through the desert. The sun had set and the moon was up. He shook himself, unable to understand how he''d gotten there - a lot of time had to have passed but it felt like he''d just closed his eyes for a second. It was like his brain had just shut off, turned itself off because it couldn''t handle what was going on, and he had just started walking, his body moving by autopilot.


    He stopped in his tracks. After a second, Maggie, who was a couple strides ahead of him, stopped too. "Where are we going?" Brent asked.


    "Back to the camp. I need to make a phone call. Listen, Brent, you need to let me be in charge right now, okay?"


    "I want to go back." When she sighed he shook his head. "I know he''s dead, now. But I want to find out why. You and I got burned too, but I don''t feel like I''m hurt, and you look just fine."


    She stared at him for a while. Then she said, "Better than fine."


    He didn''t understand.


    In a slow, steady voice, the kind adults use when explaining complex things to children, she said, "I had a pimple. On my neck. It was there this morning. It was almost ready to pop, but not quite. It kind of hurt, especially when I got out in the sun and started sweating." She lifted her hair away from her neck and showed him the clear, unblemished skin there. "No pimple now."


    "That green fire - burned off your zit?" he asked.


    "Something did. And I had blisters on my feet, too, because these boots are a year old and my feet got bigger since we bought them. The blisters hurt like hell."


    "And?"


    She rolled her eyes. "They''re gone now. My feet still feel squashed. But it doesn''t hurt anymore."


    Brent touched the underside of his chin. He had cut himself shaving there the day before. It was one of his first times shaving and he hadn''t gotten used to it yet. The nick and the razorburn had been agonizing in the desert heat. Now they were gone.


    "What does it mean?" Brent asked.


    "I have no clue!" Maggie shouted. Her voice rolled across the landscape, echoing off a line of cliffs. "Let me be in charge, okay? I promise I''ll keep you safe. I''ll get you home."


    Brent''s throat closed up suddenly and he wondered if it was a delayed reaction to the green fire, if he was suddenly dying. But no. A tear worked its way out of the side of his eye. "Home," he croaked. "We don''t have a home anymore. We''re - "


    "Orphans," she said. "Yeah. Which means we have to stick together. And because I''m the oldest that means I''m in charge and you do what I say. Got it?"


    He nodded carefully.


    They didn''t go back. Instead they pressed on, toward the camp. The desert by moonlight was made of silver in a million different shades. There was enough light to see where they were putting their feet, but they stayed clear of the long shadows that were impenetrably dark.


    It was a long hike. They should have been asleep by now, safely wrapped up in their sleeping bags. Even when they got to the camp, they would just load everything up in the car and head back to town, to civilization. To a lot of questions they couldn''t answer. Brent kind of wished his brain would shut down again, but it didn''t.


    He heard a rock collide with another rock in the darkness, a soothing Tchok! and then a rattle as the rock bounced and rolled and settled down. He looked ahead and saw Maggie holding a handful of small stones worn perfectly smooth by the water that had left the desert behind thousands of years ago.


    She threw another one, underhand. It went farther this time and the sounds were less clear.


    "What are you doing?" he asked.


    "Scaring off coyotes. I don''t know! I''m just - it helps me not think."


    "Can I try?" Brent asked.


    "You''ve got two hands. Get your own rocks."


    He bent and picked up a pile of smooth stones for himself. He tossed one at a cactus plant about fifty yards away. One arm of the cactus creaked and then fell off.


    "I didn''t mean to do that," he said, putting a hand over his mouth.


    "It''s just a cactus," Maggie said. "There are lots of them." She threw one of her own rocks at the plant and another arm came off. Water trickled sluggishly down its trunk, brilliant in the moonlight.


    "Hold on," Brent said. There was something weird about this. He picked up a slightly larger stone, about the size of a golf ball. He picked another cactus, wound up, and threw the stone as hard as he could.


    There was a noise like a gun going off. He had missed the cactus by a few yards. Instead the stone hit the ground in front of it. Dirt and sand flew up in huge sprays and the stone dug a deep crater in the ground. Brent ran over to the hole in the ground and reached inside to find the rock. It was buried a foot down, and it was hot to the touch when he brought it up into the night air.


    "Maggie," he said, "I think we - "


    He looked back and saw his sister holding a rock as big as a beach ball. It must have weighed a hundred pounds, he thought, at least. It occurred to him that he hadn''t wondered at all how she was able to throw him over her shoulder and carry him out of the cylinder when he was, in fact, a little taller and a lot heavier than she was.


    "Mags, don''t hurt yourself," Brent said.


    Maggie spun from the waist and hurled the boulder out into the night. Brent watched it fly as far as he could before he lost it in the darkness. It hadn''t started coming down again when he lost sight of it. Neither of them heard it land.

 Page 4

    They made it back to camp a few hours later, but it was more than a week before they got to go home. When they arrived back in town, Brent demanded that they go to a hospital and get checked out, even though Maggie insisted that she was fine and had never actually felt better.


    It turned out that going to the hospital was a mistake. The doctors there had lots of questions. Once they started answering them, they never stopped coming up with more. Maggie said very little about their rock-throwing contest, or how they had been able to hike through the desert for hours without getting tired. The two of them had agreed that whatever had happened to them, however they had changed, they should probably keep it to themselves as much as possible.


    Soon enough reporters started coming around, well-dressed, very nice people who wrote down everything the two kids said. After that a man in a dark blue suit arrived. He sent the reporters away. His name was Special Agent Weathers, he told them, and he was with the government.


    "Can I see some ID?" Maggie asked.


    Weathers frowned, but then he took an FBI badge out of his pocket and showed it to her. Brent had never seen one before and asked if he could take a look, too.


    Weathers had a lot of questions, and they were very similar to the questions the kids had already answered. "Where exactly was this cylinder located? Could you find it again if we took you out there, or at least show me its location on a map? Did you hear, see, or feel anything unusual when you were inside? Please tell me again, exactly how your father died. Please tell me one more time. I just want to be clear, exactly how it happened, exactly how your father died."


    He asked that one so many times even Brent looked like he couldn''t stand it.


    "That''s enough," Maggie said, finally. "You''re going to make my little brother cry."


    "No he won''t!" Brent said.


    "Alright, never mind. I think I understand, anyway," Weathers said. "I have a team of scientists out there right now looking for this place. When they find it we''ll try to recover your father''s body. Then you can have a funeral and this will all be over."


    "No it won''t," Maggie said. "I know exactly how this works. You''re going to watch us from now on. You''re going to have people watch us for the rest of our lives. God, I hate this."


    "Mags, take it easy," Brent said. "He''s trying to help."


    "Help? By asking the same question over and over, like he''s waiting for us to catch ourselves in a lie? We didn''t do anything wrong!"


    "No one said you had," the FBI man told her. He looked like he was afraid she was going to get violent. "Just take it easy. We''re not in the habit of watching American citizens twenty-four seven like that, that''s just something from the movies - "


    Maggie grabbed the arms of her chair. She didn''t trust this guy - hadn''t, from the first second she saw him. Brent had, of course. Brent trusted everyone.


    "You think," she said, very slowly, "that we''re making this all up. You think we killed him and we invented this story to cover it up. Don''t you?"


    Brent stared at her as if she''d gone crazy.


    Weathers, however, just settled back in his chair and wove his fingers together. "In a case like this," he said, "it''s our official policy to investigate the last person who saw the deceased alive. It''s just routine. Whatever I may or may not think is immaterial."


    "We loved him," Brent said, very loud. "We would never - "


    There was a loud splintery snap as the arms of Maggie''s chair snapped off in her hands. She hadn''t realized she''d been squeezing them so hard. She held up the two pieces of wood and stared at them.


    Weathers reached up and loosened his tie. Then he pointed at the pieces of wood Maggie was holding in her hands. "Do you want to talk to me about that?"


    "No," Maggie said. "I want you to leave."


    The agent stood up slowly from his chair. He was kind of fat and he grunted every time he stood up or sat down. The top of his head was shiny where he was going bald. These things made Maggie strangely happy. They made her want to grin wickedly and laugh.


    But then he spoke again and her blood ran cold.


    "I know you came back from that desert... changed," he said. "The doctors saw some things. Well. They saw you doing some things that children like you should not be capable of. Do you understand me?"


    Maggie bit her lip. She didn''t look at him, but she nodded.


    "If this is real, if you have... new powers. That''s going to need to be handled very carefully. I''d like you to not talk to the media about this. Alright? At least not until we know what we''re up against."


    "I really want you to leave," Maggie said, but he ignored her.


    "We''re going to need to do some tests," he said instead. "Now would be the best time, actually, while you''re still in the hospital. I''d like to do some stress tests, maybe put you two on treadmills and see what your endurance is like. If you - "


    Someone had come up to stand in the doorway. It was a little old lady, no more than four and a half feet tall, with silver hair parted severely on one side and thick glasses over her eyes. "The young lady told you to go," she said.


    "Hi, Grandma," Brent said weakly.


    Grandma scared Brent. There was a good reason for that. Maggie knew she wouldn''t scare Weathers. At least not yet. He didn''t know her secret.


    "Hello, ma''am," the agent said. "You must be Mrs. Reynolds, the children''s guardian, is that correct?"


    "I''m seventy-one years old, young man, and it seems I have better hearing than you do. Get out. Now. Or I''ll call the police."


    Weathers tried to smile. "Ma''am, I am a law enforcement officer."


    "Then I''ll call your boss and tell him you were harassing a senior citizen and a tax-payer of over fifty years. I would imagine they frown on that sort of thing where you come from, hmm?"


    Weathers'' smile disappeared. "Very well," he said. He glanced over at Maggie. "We''ll talk again. Count on it. But for now, just try to keep a low profile, okay?" Then he left.


    "Good, he''s gone." Grandma came hobbling over toward the two kids on her cane. "I imagine you two are surprised to see me here. I was very surprised when they told me I was now your official next of kin. I''ve come to take you home. I''ll be moving in with you since you don''t have anyone else to look after you."


    Maggie nodded slowly. "Okay," she said. "But, honestly, we can probably look after ourselves. I mean, I know how much you enjoy your time in Florida - "


    Grandma came closer and reached down to put a hand over Maggie''s. "Margaret Reynolds Gill, your eighteenth birthday isn''t until next July. When that day comes, I give you my full permission to tell me to go to hell. Until then, you will do as I say. You will do exactly as I say. And if you try to argue with what I say, I will give you the back of this hand across your cheek. You''ll notice I''m wearing my diamond engagement ring, the one your mother''s father gave me forty-nine years ago. I put it on today extra special because I knew I was coming to see you." Grandma turned her head to the side. "Hello, Brent, dear," she said.


    "Um, hi," Maggie''s brother managed.

 Page 5

    It took forever for the two of them to get discharged from the hospital. Pretty much every doctor in the place seemed to want to come and talk to them one last time. To ask them more questions. Finally one doctor came in who said he wanted to give them some answers. "Except," he said, "I''m not sure we have any. Not any that mean much, anyway. You both check out fine, physically. Better than fine, really. Um, Brent - your chart says you broke your arm last year?"


    "That''s right. I was jumping off a diving board into a pool and I hit the bottom with my wrist. It was in a cast for six weeks."


    The doctor consulted something on a clipboard. "You see, normally that would show up on an x-ray, even after it healed. But I don''t see so much as a hairline or a shadow here." He looked up and smiled at them. "Whatever happened to you in that ravine - you came back healthier than when you left. Now, we''d love to do some more tests - "


    "Not on my dime," Grandma said. She lead the two of them down to the parking lot, where Brent got a surprise. A hundred and five pounds of teenaged girl came flying at him like a bullet out of a gun, trailing balloons.


    "Oh my god oh my god oh my god you''re alright," Lucy said. Lucy Benez had been Brent''s best friend since they started high school together and met at an anime festival. He was truly, truly glad to see her and he actually kissed her on the cheek, something he''d never done before.


    She stepped back and looked at him. She was so excited her face was flushed. She wore her hair in two pony-tails sticking out at angles from the top of her head and she had braces. Not just on her teeth, either - she had braces on her legs as well, metal contraptions she had to wear because one of her legs was two inches longer than the other. The doctors were slowly but surely trying to fix that by stretching out the shorter leg. She said it hurt a lot but she didn''t let it get to her. "When I heard I just about died," she told him. "But I knew you would be okay. You''ve been out in that desert a million times. And oh my God. Oh my God. I''m so sorry about your Dad. He was so great. Oh, Brent. Brent! Here! These are for you!" She handed him the balloons. They all said GET WELL SOON on them.


    Lucy could only walk at a sort of fast hobble, but she easily compensated for it by talking twice as fast as everybody else. He''d asked her why, once, and she said that she had twice as much to say as anybody, and anyway half of what most people said was just dumb, just hello, what a nice day, I see you''re getting taller when you really weren''t, and she figured she would get that half of every conversation over with in the first couple minutes and by the time the conversation wound down she would have gotten to the really important stuff, the stuff people actually wanted to hear.


    Listening to Lucy talk made Brent out of breath. Still. There was no one he wanted to see more. He was scared, to be honest, and really worried, and he was still screwed up about losing his dad. He needed her friendship more than ever.


    "I am totally here for you. You can count on me, whatever you need, whether that''s someone to talk to, or a shoulder to cry on, or who knows, maybe you just want to go to the movies some time and pretend like things are still normal and nothing has changed and that it''s okay to just go and, say, see a movie. If you want that, I am here."


    "Grandma?" Brent asked. "Can we give Lucy a ride?"


    "I''m not sure if there''s room," Grandma said, unlocking the driver''s side door of her station wagon.


    In the back seat, on the ride home, Brent confided everything he''d been secretly thinking to Lucy. He knew he could trust her. He started small. "I don''t think I''m really going to like living with the two of them," he said, nodding discretely toward the front seats. Maggie and Grandma were talking to each other, loud enough to drown out anything he said. "They argue all the time - it''s awful. It''s been going on for years now, but before, at least they didn''t live in the same house. We only saw Grandma on holidays. They would always get in a fight and Grandma would end up slapping Maggie because she used a curse word or because she said she was a democrat or an atheist or whatever. Most of the time it wasn''t even true, she would just say it to get a rise out of Grandma. I think she wanted to get hit."


    "But why?" Lucy asked. "Why would anyone want that? Other than a masochist, I mean, and from my experience masochists are pretty rare. I mean, actual masochists. Lots of people do things that hurt them, but - "


    "Because," Brent said, because he knew Lucy didn''t mind being interrupted, "then Mom and Dad would have to take us home early. But now, where are we going to go if there''s a problem? And Maggie''s already starting in on her."


    "Your sister is really pretty," Lucy said. "And very smart, which is a rare combination. Only a very few of us - I mean, of us females, I''m speaking for us as a group here, not for my own self - can say that much. It''s a shame she''s also - "


    "Listen, Luce. There''s something else." He had been thinking about how to put this. He had failed to come up with the right words, though, the words that would make it sound real. Whenever he said it out loud it made him laugh, even though he knew it was true. "Whatever happened to us, it changed us."


    She nodded solemnly. "Sure. Losing both parents would have to change somebody. I can''t even imagine what I would do if my dad - "


    Brent shook his head. "Not - psychologically. I don''t mean it changed my personality. I mean it changed me physically. Lucy - I think I have superpowers."

 Page 6

    Once inside the house Maggie went straight to her room and slammed the door. Grandma went to the kitchen. When Brent and Lucy headed for his room, however, she leaned around the corner of the doorway and scowled. "This your girlfriend, boy?"


    Brent''s eyes went wide. He stared at Lucy, then back at Grandma. "No!" he said. "We''re just - friends, we study together sometimes, it''s - "


    "I''m holding you to the same rule I gave your mother twenty-odd years ago. When there''s a girl in your room, you keep the door open at least one foot, and you don''t play any loud music. I know perfectly well why boys your age listen to their music so loud."


    "You do?" Brent asked. He didn''t know whether he played his music particularly loud or not.


    "I do," Grandma agreed. "I may look old to you but I was sixteen once."


    "We''re fifteen, Mrs. Gill," Lucy said, with a huge metallic smile.


    "Reynolds," Brent corrected her.


    "Mrs. Reynolds. I mean. I guess you were Brent''s mom''s mother? I mean, of course, you still are. Except she''s - but you don''t stop being somebody''s mother, that''s not something you can - "


    "We''re just going to sit in my room and talk," Brent explained.


    Grandma blinked, every flicker of her eyelids magnified by her huge glasses. "Yes, I imagine you will." Then she stepped back inside the kitchen and out of view.


    Brent went into his room with Lucy. She unstrapped her leg braces, then flopped on his bed while he put his balloons in the corner. Brent always thought better while he was pacing, so he started a circuit of his room, going from his computer table over to his poster of Edward Abbey and then over to his closet door before starting over on the same path.


    When he didn''t say anything for five or six laps, Lucy sat up on the bed and grabbed at his arm as it went by. "Hey. Hey. Talk to me."


    "You don''t believe me. I understand that," he told her. "I wouldn''t believe me either. It''s a ludicrous thing to say. Nobody in the real world has superpowers, nobody in history has ever had - "


    "Brent," she said, interrupting him for once. "I do."


    "What?"


    She smiled. "If anybody else said it, then, maybe, yeah. I would be kind of skeptical. But this is you. I believe you. I always do."


    He ran his fingers through his hair and started pacing again, then thought of something and hurried to his closet. He threw the door open and started rooting around under piles of dirty clothes.


    "What are you looking for?"


    "Research materials," he told her. He pulled a plastic bag out of the closet and threw it to her. She caught it easily.


    She opened the bag and spilled out a couple dozen comic books with bright, lurid covers. They all showed men in various muscular poses, most of them punching something or about to be punched by somebody else. They wore elaborate costumes, some with masks, some with capes.


    He picked one up and stared at it. "I haven''t looked at these in years. I used to really love these but then after a while they seemed kind of dumb. Look, I remember this one. It''s about a guy who got bitten by a radioactive aardvark, right?"


    "Um, let me see - no, that''s the one whose experimental airplane crashed on this totally deserted island, right, and he found a cave, and inside the cave were all the gods of world mythology, and it turned out, right, he could summon any of them to help him out if he just said the right word."


    "Oh, yeah," Brent said. "Is this what I am now? Am I going to have to start beating people up?"


    "Hopefully only the ones who deserve it," she told him. "You know, criminals, and dangerous types, and - and oh my God, you could fight supervillains, that would be so cool, except there aren''t any, are there? Because you''re the only one who - hey, I just thought of something, your sister, did she? I mean, I assume you both - but - but - "


    He rolled the comic book into a tube in his hands, rolled it tighter and tighter because he didn''t know what else to do. It was only after he''d rolled it as thin as a pencil that she noticed and stopped talking.


    "Brent!" Lucy said. "Stop! Those are highly collectable!"


    "It is kind of old," he said. "Do you think it might be valuable?"


    Lucy stared at it in numb horror. "Not anymore," she said.


    "Oh my God, that was stupid," Brent said, smoothing it out as best he could. He put it down on his desk.


    "This isn''t just about superpowers, is it?" she asked him. "You have something else on your mind. I mean, if I had superpowers, that would be the only thing I could think about. I''d be concerned with finding out what my limitations were, and whether I had a fatal weakness to something, like, my powers didn''t work against the color blue, or if there was some special kind of radioactive rock that could hurt me, or - " She stopped. "There is something else. I can see it on your face."


    "Yeah."


    "And it''s big. It''s bigger than the existence of superpowers." Her eyes went wide. "Bigger than that?"


    "Yeah."


    When he said nothing more she made a rolling motion with one hand, to suggest that he get on with it. She looked like she was dying to hear his big news.


    "There''s one more thing else I have to tell you. Except I don''t want to."


    "But - "


    "But I have to. Because I have to tell somebody. And of all the people in the entire world, you''re the one I can trust the most."


    Lucy pressed her lips together. She knelt on the bed and folded her hands in her lap. Then she nodded, to indicate she was ready to hear it.


    "I think I killed my dad," he told her.

 Page 7

    Maggie turned on her iTunes and sank down into the chair in front of her makeup table. The music throbbed through the room like fingers massaging her neck, but that just made her jumpier, like someone kept touching her on the shoulder telling her to turn around and look when she knew there was nothing there. She couldn''t seem to relax, couldn''t seem to think straight.


    She stared in the mirror and grabbed a mascara and started doing her lashes. She''d read an article in Cosmo about how to give yourself a smoky eye and she''d been wanting to try it out. Applying makeup was still a relatively new thing for Maggie. She''d been a tomboy and a jock for most of high school, and it was only when she started her senior year that she started really taking care of her appearance. It was right after Mom died, in fact. She''d figured out that it took total concentration to do your makeup effectively, and that while you were busy applying just the right amount of blush and eyeliner, you couldn''t think about -


    I killed Dad.


    - anything else. Well. That didn''t work. She threw the mascara down in disgust and started crying into her hands, big noisy sobs that no one would hear over the music.


    I could have gone back, like Brent wanted.


    Maybe Dad was still alive.


    "I didn''t know that we were okay!" she told the mirror. "I thought Brent was still on fire. I thought we had to get to a doctor ourselves. I thought - "


    She rubbed away her tears with the balls of her thumbs and grabbed for a tissue. When she looked back in the mirror she got a shock. She had managed to rub mascara all over her cheeks and temples and up onto her forehead. It was like she had taken a paintbrush full of black paint and swiped it just right across her face at eye level. It looked...


    Well, it looked like she was wearing a mask.


    She didn''t know whether to laugh or cry so she did both and she must have made a lot of noise because eventually there was a knock on her door and then Grandma came in. "I didn''t give you permission to enter my room," Maggie said, rubbing at her face with the tissue. Where was the cold cream? She couldn''t let Grandma see her like that. The old biddy would think she was playing dress-up or something.


    "Young lady, turn off this music right now," Grandma said, loud enough to be heard.


    Maggie reached over to her computer and turned it up, slightly.


    "You''re certainly your father''s daughter," Grandma said. "Wild."


    "Dad was a good man," Maggie insisted.


    "He was a hellion. Never worked an honest day in his life. All he wanted to do was traipse about in the desert all the time, probably half-naked like a little boy!"


    Maggie spun around in her chair. She couldn''t believe this. "He was an engineer! He worked harder than you ever did."


    "He ruined my little girl. Your mother. Made her crazy, too. Neither of them ever understood what family really means. Well, I''m not going to let that happen to you. Now you and I have had our differences over the years - "


    Maggie snorted.


    " - but that ends now. You kids need a parent around here. The Lord knows I''m too old for the job. And He also knows I don''t want it. But I am going to keep you on the straight and narrow. Something happened out there in the desert and now you''ve got the papers calling, and the government watching you. That is not acceptable. Not at a time when you need to focus on your studies. I am going to make sure that you both get off to college, where you''ll study nice, respectable subjects. And if I have to tan both of your hides to get you there, I will."


    Maggie rolled her eyes. "Why are you always such a hardass, huh? My father just died. I just got out of the hospital. Be nice to me!"


    "Nice," Grandma said. She brought her hands up where Maggie could see them. She showed her the engagement ring on her finger, with its tiny little diamond. That ring was one of her favorite threats. Always, when she slapped Maggie, she turned the diamond around so that it was inside her palm, and then she would hit Maggie with the back of her hand. She had threatened many times to hit her with an open palm - which would rake that diamond across Maggie''s cheek and cut her, maybe even leave a scar.


    "Before she died, your mother told me about you," Grandma said, when they were both clear that niceness was not going to be part of their relationship. "She told me about your little problem. About your sticky fingers."


    Maggie blushed despite herself. "She didn''t. Mom would never do that."


    "She told me how worried she was about you. She told me you had stolen a bag full of makeup from a store downtown. Or at least, that you tried. She told me she had to go down there and talk your way out of the store, had to grovel in front of a security guard to keep the store from pressing charges. Do you know what I told her?"


    "No," Maggie said. "I''m not psychic."


    Grandma leaned forward. Her eyes were very large and very bright behind her glasses. "I told her she should have let you rot in jail. But since that''s not an option this time, I need to make sure nothing like that every happens again. I came in here to lay down some ground rules. First off, no boys."


    "Excuse me?"


    Grandma scowled at Maggie. Nobody could scowl like Grandma. "I called the school and I know what kind of grades you''re getting. You can go to one movie with a boy of your choice the day they tell me you''re working on straight As. Rule two is, no friends."


    "What?"


    "I know what kind of friends a girl like you is likely to have. Smokers. Giggling little no-brains. Probably a couple of drug users. That ends now. After school, you''ll come straight home and do your chores and your homework. Then you and I are going to watch television every night from eight until nine thirty."


    Maggie''s lips pressed together. "What happens at nine thirty?" she asked.


    "Bedtime," Grandma said.


    Rule three was no allowance. What would Maggie need money for, anyway, since she wasn''t going to be hanging out with her friends and would have all her meals at home?


    Rule four was no talking back.


    It went on from there for a while. Maggie stopped listening. She pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them there. She closed her eyes and just let the words wash over her, mixing with the music until it all just felt like wind in her hair.


    "Which brings us to rule seventeen," Grandma said.

 Page 8

    "No, no, no, you didn''t," Lucy said, cradling Brent''s head against her chest. She ran one hand over his hair, over and over. "You couldn''t possibly have."


    He was crying openly now. The events of the last week had totally undercut any idea he ever had about being a tough guy. "He said it wasn''t safe, that we should probably just leave. And it was so weird in there - I could barely hear his voice. It was the last thing he ever said to me! And then I found that well or - or whatever it was. It was closed off, there was a lid on top. But it looked kind of loose, and I thought I wanted to see if there was anything inside. I don''t know what I expected to find. But when the lid came off there was something green and glowing down there and it was getting bigger - like it was coming up from a long way down, coming up really fast."


    Lucy kissed him on the top of his head. Which was a little weird but he didn''t mind. It felt kind of good.


    "Dad came rushing up behind me. He was shouting but there was no sound at all, everything was perfectly silent. He looked down into the well and then he grabbed the lid and tried to put it back on but - but it was too late. It was just too late. He was on fire, he was..."


    "You didn''t do anything."


    "Yes, exactly! I didn''t stop him! I didn''t even try!"


    "No, no, no, no," Lucy said again, and pressed her lips against his forehead. There was so much comfort in that kiss. It was amazing how good it felt just to have a friend right then. "You didn''t know. You couldn''t possibly know."


    "Oh my God, Luce, it was so horrible. He - he melted while I watched. I would have stayed there and just watched and probably got killed myself if Maggie hadn''t come along. She saved me. If I''d been as smart as her, or as fast, maybe I could have - I could have done something for Dad."


    "No, no, no, no," Lucy repeated. "It wasn''t your fault." She sat down next to him, so close their thighs were touching, and wrapped her arms around him. She held him tight while he shook and cried and got it out of his system.


    "Now he''s gone," Brent said. "I don''t know what to do. Everything is different - I can''t talk to Grandma about this stuff. I keep thinking about what Dad would want me to do with these new powers. He would want me to do good things, I think. If I do good things, if I help people, maybe that''ll make up a little for killing him. Do you think so?"


    "Shh," she said. "You didn''t kill him. And I think he''d be proud of you whatever you do. I heard him say that like, a million times."


    When his sobbing had slowed down a little, when he wasn''t sucking in breath that he couldn''t seem to swallow, he turned slightly in her arms and looked up at her. She was smiling bravely. Like she wanted to show him she didn''t think he was a bad person. It meant so much, to see her smile like that, her face just a few inches away from his. Her mouth so close to his. He leaned in just a little closer, and she did, too.


    "You rock, Lucy," he breathed.


    "Thanks," she said. One of her hands tangled in the hair on the back of his head and she started pulling him even closer. Their lips grazed each other and he felt her braces underneath.


    He pulled back hurriedly. He had just almost kissed her! That wasn''t cool. Desperately, he tried to think of something to say that would smooth over what had just happened. "Best friends forever, that''s what the girls say, right? BFFs?" he asked her.


    He didn''t understand the look in her eyes. It was hopeful and terrified and lost and disappointed and burning with triumph all at the same time. He had no idea what she was thinking, or feeling.


    Then she lifted her arms away from him and reached for her leg braces. "I have to go home," she said. "I forgot that I have to get dinner ready tonight, Mom is working late and if I don''t get the pork chops started right now my Dad isn''t going to have anything to eat, and he''ll just laugh, and then he''ll say forget the pork chops let''s order a pizza, which would normally be cool, except his cholesterol is up again and the doctor says he can''t have any cheese, and anyway I can''t eat pizza because it makes me break out but I want you to know, I''m totally your BFF, and I will always be here for you if you want to, to, to talk, yes, to talk, or you know, just hang out. Chill. Be cool, together, just two friends hanging, we don''t even have to talk, we can just be quiet sometime and see how long that lasts which, you know perfectly well, for me is not going to be that long. But we could try that."


    "Thanks," he told her, as she hobbled out the door. She didn''t reply or even look back. He really hoped he hadn''t screwed things up by nearly kissing her. It wasn''t like they''d ever thought of each other that way before but she was a girl and he was a teenage boy and sometimes you couldn''t help yourself, and -


    "Oh God," he thought. "What if I made her feel so uncomfortable she won''t be my friend anymore?"


    A scratching sound on his window scared him half to death. He jumped up and ran to the window, throwing it open to see what was outside. It was Maggie, crouched on the roof looking in at him. She had a lot of eye makeup on and it made her eyes look huge.


    "You''re not the smartest brother anyone ever had, are you?" Maggie asked. "And you don''t understand other people at all."


    "If you wanted to insult me you could have just come to my door," Brent told her. He climbed through the window and into the chilly night air. You could see half the neighborhood from up there, rows of two-story houses curling in on themselves on meandering dead-end roads. In the distance the mall was a smudge of light on the dark blue horizon. "When was the last time we were up here?" he asked, feeling like the roof had gotten steeper or maybe his center of gravity had changed. It didn''t feel nearly as stable as it used to. "Before Mom died, I know, but how old were we?"


    "When I was your age." Maggie skipped easily up the slope of the roof to stand on the very top of the house. "That''s probably how long it''s been since we did anything together without complaining about it."


    "Without you complaining about it," he corrected her. He wished she would come down from there. He didn''t want her to fall. He didn''t want to lose another family member for some stupid reason that didn''t make any sense. "Why did we stop hanging out together, anyway?"


    She shrugged. Then she stood up slowly on the toes of one foot, balancing herself by stretching out her arms. "I guess we didn''t have anything in common. But now we do again." Then she dropped to a crouch, pumped her legs - and sailed out across the darkness towards the roof of the house across the street. He could just hear her call back, "You''re it!"

 Page 9

    Brent ran across the roof and jumped after his sister, still convinced somehow that it wouldn''t work, that he would fall crashing to the street below and shatter every bone in his body. But the muscles in his legs seemed to wake up as he moved, pumping harder and faster than he''d ever gone before. He pushed hard with his left foot and suddenly he was up in the air, hanging there it seemed - weightless, almost flying. Then he started to come back down and he saw the other rooftop beneath him. His feet pedaled in the air and then came down hard on the shingles, knocking a few of them free. He looked down to watch them spiral toward the gutter and nearly lost his balance. He threw his arms out and they wheeled through the air and he actually felt like he was going to take off, that he could flap his arms like wings and fly. He settled down and looked at his feet and saw the two dark holes he''d made when he landed. "Oh, crap," he said. "I think I broke their roof."


    "Please, don''t be such a drama queen! It was just a couple of shingles."


    "Are you sure this is okay?" Brent asked. "We''re not supposed to use our powers. Weathers said - "


    "Who cares? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life pretending you''re still just like everybody else? Come on! If somebody can throw a baseball faster and harder than everybody else, they give him a multi-million dollar contract. Now we can do all kinds of things - and all the FBI wants to do is threaten us. Don''t you want to know what we can do? Haven''t you been thinking about it all day? Well, here''s our chance. Nobody will see us. How far do you think I can jump?" Maggie laughed and ran away from him, jumping to the next roof. He followed and barely touched down before he was aloft again, flinging himself out into the darkness. This is so easy, he thought - he could jump fifty feet without even really trying. He wondered, just like she''d said, how far he could go if he pushed himself and as Maggie leapt to the next roof in the row he dug down hard with his feet and pushed with everything he had. He flew right past the roof she''d landed on and kept going, crossed the shadowy gap between that house and the next, and as he started to come down he saw the chimney of the next house come up to meet him like a brick wall.


    His face smashed across the bricks of the chimney, his arms flapping out to wrap around it. His chest made contact and bright pain flashed through his body, even as he felt the bricks crumbling, felt them shift and start to fall apart beneath him. He reeled back and gasped as the chimney fell, bricks bouncing off the roof and clanging off the gutters.


    Maggie dropped out of the air beside him. "Oh my God, Brent! Are you okay? You just hit that thing face first!"


    "I''m... okay," he said. He shook his head as if to clear it, but honestly, he felt fine. "I think we''re tougher than we look, now."


    "Didn''t it hurt?" Maggie asked.


    "Yeah. Yeah, it did," he admitted. "But only for a second. Then my body just kind of... shook it off." He turned to look at Maggie with a huge smile on his face. "We''re like, indestructible!"


    "Yeah, okay," Maggie said. "Let''s not get carried away." But the look on her face suggested she believed him.


    "Oh, there is one thing, though," he told her.


    "What?" she asked, concerned.


    "You''re it!" And then he laughed out loud and jumped for the next roof.


    He jumped from roof to roof barely feeling the shingles under his feet. He stopped for a half a second to pull his shoes off - it was easier to grip the uneven surfaces with his toes. It was an amazing feeling to be up in the air, for those few seconds when gravity couldn''t touch him, when he might as well have been up in space, and then exhilarating to watch the next roof come up toward him, unable to change his course, looking for the best place to grab on with his feet.


    Maggie chased him around the mall and up toward the west side of town. He could hear her laughing behind him, calling out mock threats: "I''m going to get you! You''re mine now!" He couldn''t remember the last time he''d heard her laugh.


    She tagged him in mid-air, grabbing his foot as she streaked past him to land ahead of him on the flat top of a hardware store. Flat roofs were almost harder to land on, because you tended to slide, and after she grabbed his foot she pulled upwards, giving him a wicked spin. He tumbled down onto the hardware store roof and did a face plant right into a metal ventilation hood that crumpled up under the weight of his impact. He was a little bummed to see that it didn''t mold to the shape of his face. Instead it just bent in half and the fan inside clanged to a stop. Brent climbed back up to his feet and looked around for Maggie but he couldn''t see her. They were closer to the downtown section now, and there were plenty of streetlights, so even the darkness shouldn''t have hid her, but no matter what direction he turned he couldn''t her anywhere.


    "Over here," she called, leaping toward him from across a parking lot that had to be a hundred yards wide. Surely it was too far to jump, he thought. But then he''d been wrong every time he thought he knew their limits before. "Are you blind as well as stupid?" she mocked, rising high up in the night air.


    Brent rushed forward, intending to catch her as she came down, but then he saw in horror that she was descending too fast. It had been too far - she was never going to make the rooftop. "Mags!" he shouted, "look out!" But there was nothing he could do but watch. She came in fast and too low and instead of landing on top of the hardware store she hit the side of it, her whole body smashing against the side wall and then sliding down three stories, bouncing off signs, window casings, satellite dishes and clotheslines on the way down. He saw her head smack against a brick windowsill and flop around on her neck as if she were a rag doll.


    "Mags," he said, taking a step back from the edge of the roof. "Oh, no. Mags. Mags - "


    She popped up over the edge of the roof and landed right in front of him. Her skirt was torn a little at the hem and there was a greasy stain on her t-shirt. Her hair was a little messed up. Otherwise she looked perfectly fine. "I guess we know one thing about our powers now," she said.


    "What''s that?" Brent asked.


    "We can''t fly." Then she tagged him on the shoulder and jumped across the street, bouncing off the row of buildings there like a stone skipped off the surface of a lake.

 Page 10

    They jumped to the far side of town and they weren''t even tired. Maggie lead Brent over to a junkyard on the far side of a quarry and for a while they tried out their new strength by picking up old rusted-out cars and playing catch with them. Brent would run backward, his feet stamping down on broken glass and old orange sharp pieces of metal, feeling as if he were running on a pebbly beach, and then as the car came flying at him out of the night he would hold up his arms and catch it with both hands, grabbing at exposed engine parts or axles or the edges of windows that had lost their glass long before. Then he would wind up, swinging from the waist, and throw the car back. That lasted until Maggie missed a catch and the car Brent had thrown landed on a pile of old washing machines and a couple broken-down carnival rides, which exploded in a cloud of rust and flying springs and cogwheels and dryer doors that went spinning up into the air and then came down hard, digging long furrows in the dirt. The noise was immense, deafening, and Brent wasn''t surprised when he heard a dog barking and saw someone with a flashlight come running toward them.


    "Whoops," Maggie said. She ran up to the top of a stack of long pipes and gestured for him to follow as she jumped back into the air and away. The flashlight speared upwards after them but they were already gone, half a block away and accelerating.


    Brent was still "it", jumping from the top of the elementary school to the complicated roof of the local industrial bakery when he noticed Maggie wasn''t chasing him anymore. He skidded to a stop before he fell through a bunch of skylights and then looked back. This time he could see her just fine. She was perched like a bird on the edge of a roof, two or three blocks back, looking down. She wasn''t laughing anymore.


    Brent jumped back the way he''d come and found her staring down into the street at a line of very small houses across the way. The houses had unkempt yards and a chain-link fence running around each little plot of land. In most of the windows he could see the flickering blue light of television sets. Some of them were dark.


    The house that Maggie was staring at had a yellow light in one window. Brent could see a man sitting at a kitchen table inside, hunched over some papers. He looked like he was doing his taxes or something, and having trouble.


    "Mags?" he asked, coming up behind her. "What are you looking at?"


    "Dad took me out here, once," she said, very quietly. "He didn''t want to. He didn''t think it was appropriate but I asked and asked until he gave in and said yes. I wanted to meet him," she said, nodding at the man in the window. "I wanted to ask him some questions. I thought you should come, too, but Dad said you were too young. I''ll never forget this house. We drove up and parked over here, and then Dad and I stood in the street just looking at the house for the longest time. It scared me. It scared me so much I couldn''t move. I memorized every detail of what it looked like while I was trying to muster the courage to go up and press the door bell. Dad wouldn''t do it for me, he said. If I really wanted it I had to do it myself."


    Brent was afraid he knew who the man was, now. He didn''t want to say it out loud, though. "Did you ring it?" he asked.


    Maggie wrapped her arms around her knees. "No. I chickened out. I just wanted to ask him why, you know? I wanted to ask him why he killed Mom."


    "We know why," Brent insisted. "The lawyer said. He was drunk, and he lost control of the car. It was just an accident. Sometimes people make bad choices, and other people get hurt." It was not something Brent understood very well, himself. He had never seen why anyone would get in a car if they knew they were drunk. Dad had suggested that when you drank, sometimes you couldn''t tell how drunk you were, and sometimes it seemed you were fine when you really weren''t. Brent, who had never so much as tasted alcohol, didn''t know.


    He started to say something more when Maggie stood up straight as a knife and dropped into the street. She landed effortlessly and walked across to the fence around the man''s house. Brent started to follow but he didn''t know what she was going to do. Maggie tore open the man''s trash cans and then threw the lids back on with a clattering noise. Then she grabbed the blue recycling bin and held it up so Brent could see.


    Brent looked up and saw the man looking out of his yellow window. His face was scared, Brent thought. Really scared. He didn''t know what Maggie was going to do next, either. But he recognized her. Brent could see it in his face. The man knew exactly who Maggie was.


    "Vodka," Maggie said, picking a bottle out of the bin. She hurled it at the house and it shattered against the wall with a tinkling rattle. "Gin," she said, and threw another bottle. This one was plastic and it just bounced off with a clunk. "Beer. Plenty of beer." The bottles crashed on the side of the house like machine gun bullets. "You''re still drinking!" she yelled. "How can you still be drinking!"


    Eventually, Brent managed to pull her away before she could do anything worse. They headed home, jumping back the way they''d come but it wasn''t a game anymore. When they made it back to their house and climbed back in through Brent''s window, Maggie was shaking. She stood in the door of his room and looked down at her fingernails.


    "I wanted to kill him," she said.


    "I know," Brent told her.


    "After all this time I haven''t forgiven or forgotten anything. I don''t think I can. I think there''s something wrong with me."


    "No," Brent told her. "That''s not true."


    "I could kill people, now, pretty easily," she said. "With these new powers? I could have punched him a couple of times and that would have been all it took. I could have picked him up, jumped to the top of the bank building downtown, and dropped him over the side. I could have - "


    "But you didn''t," Brent told her.


    She went back to her room without saying more.

 Page 11

    In the morning Weathers was waiting for them when they came downstairs.


    Brent and Maggie were already dressed, already had their backpacks on. Maggie had been working her Sidekick hard all morning, texting with one thumb while she brushed her teeth - making contact with her friends whom she hadn''t seen since before Dad died, figuring out who she would eat lunch with at school. Brent had already started worrying about how far behind he was going to be in Algebra, having missed more than a week of classes. Both of them were in a hurry to get to school.


    School was just going to have to wait.


    Grandma had made a pot of tea, and set out a simple breakfast. Toast and jelly and a platter of scrambled eggs. Weathers was sitting at their kitchen table dabbing at the corners of his mouth with a napkin.


    "You two have fun last night?" he asked, as they came into the kitchen.


    Maggie took off her backpack and set it by the door. She knew what that tone of voice meant. Dad had never been much of a disciplinarian but he was a parent and he could always let you know when you were in trouble with a single look or a few softly-spoken words. This felt exactly the same as that.


    "Oh, come on!" she said. "We were just getting some exercise. There was a whole presentation at school last year about how the President wants us to get more exercise outdoors. Don''t you work for the President?"


    Even Brent couldn''t help but smirk at that. He quickly pulled himself together, though.


    "There are damaged roofs all over town. One house lost its chimney last night," Weathers said. "The owner said it sounded like a bomb hit his house. The owner of the Gilbert Brothers Junkyard tells me he doesn''t know what happened, but it''s going to cost him good money to repair all the damage."


    "What?" Brent said. "That''s not fair! That was all broken down junk we were playing with. We couldn''t possibly have damaged it any more than it was already."


    "So you admit you were there last night? I wasn''t sure, I was just hoping you might have some information," Weathers said.


    Maggie''s heart sank in her chest. Smooth move, bro.


    "We don''t admit to anything," she said, before Brent could get them in any more trouble. "If you have any questions for us, we want a lawyer here before we say anything else."


    Weathers sighed and took another bite of eggs. He chewed very slowly and then took a newspaper out of the inside pocket of his jacket. He unrolled it and threw it on the table where they could both see it. The front page was taken up almost entirely by a grainy black and white picture of Maggie holding a broken-down car over her head while Brent raced backwards to catch it. The headline read simply WHO ARE THEY?


    "The picture was taken with a cell phone camera in poor lighting conditions. There''s not enough detail for the local police to identify either of you," he said, reaching for a tea cup. "I kept your names out of it. But that''s just delaying the inevitable. Sooner or later - probably in the next twenty-four hours - someone is going to come forward and say they recognize the clothes you''re wearing in that shot. Or maybe somebody else saw you two last night jumping around like monkeys. I won''t be able to stop them all. And then the world is going to want to talk to you, all at once. You''ll have no privacy after that. The media will hound you constantly. And that''s just the start of it."


    "I don''t suppose the FBI runs a Secret Identity program," Maggie tried.


    "No, we do not. We do, on the other hand, enforce the law. The owner of that junkyard - or that chimney - may press charges and then I''ll have to arrest you. I don''t want that. I think there are other things we can do with you two."


    "What, like dissect us in a lab somewhere?" Maggie asked.


    "Margaret Reynolds Gill!" Grandma said. "You will not take that tone in the presence of company."


    Company, Maggie thought. Yesterday at the hospital you told him to get out. Now he''s your best friend. As usual Grandma''s behavior made no sense to her.


    Weathers finished his breakfast and left. Grandma wrote Brent a note so he could get into school late and then sent him off. Before Maggie could go, however, she had one more thing to say.


    "You made a mess of things, young lady, and there''s consequences for that. When you get home from school today your hi-fi will be gone from your room."


    "My... hi-fi?" Maggie asked. "What''s a hi-fi?"


    "That overly loud music system you were listening to yesterday! I don''t know where you hide the record player," she said, and Maggie''s eyes went wide - apparently Grandma had never heard of iTunes, "but I''ll find it and confiscate that, too. No music as long as you continue to act like this!"


    "Don''t you dare," Maggie said. The music was the one thing that could calm her down. Without it she thought she would go crazy. "And what are you going to do to punish Brent?"


    "Nothing. I know that last night''s rumpus was your idea," she said to Maggie. "You leave your brother alone. It may be too late to save you, but he''s a good boy and I won''t have him corrupted."


    "That''s not fair!" Maggie whined. "Always when Dad punished us he punished us both equally. He made sure we both knew what we did wrong."


    "I am not your father," Grandma said.


    Which was just painfully obvious. Maggie grabbed her backpack and stormed out of the house, not even waiting to get her note. If the vice principal at the school gave her trouble about coming in tardy, she would - well - there were lots of things she could do.

 Page 12

    For Brent that first day back at school was... interesting. It became clear very early in the day that everyone had seen the paper - and that they knew exactly who was shown in that photo. His teachers all made a point of acting like nothing had happened. In English class Miss Holman didn''t even look up when he slipped in and took his seat. For every class after that it was much the same. The teachers barely acknowledged his existence. When he held up his hand they called on somebody else. When class ended, they bent quickly over their desks and made a show of working on papers. The teachers knew something had changed but they didn''t want to acknowledge it.


    The students, however, reacted differently.


    In every class - in every hallway - in the lunchroom - he was the center of attention. At lunch he got his macaroni and cheese and his chocolate milk like everyone else and went to sit down. Normally, because your popularity was determined by who you sat with and what table you had, it was next to impossible to find a good seat. That day when Brent looked around for a place to sit, an entire table opened up. It wasn''t that kids got up to make room for him. Everyone just seemed to slide down a space or two and suddenly there was a whole table that wasn''t being used.


    He sat down and unwrapped his plastic knife and fork. He bumped his tray and it made a clinking noise as the plate jumped. The cafeteria fell silent.


    Which was weird. Normally you couldn''t hear yourself think in there. A couple hundred kids who had been quiet all morning in class suddenly had a chance to talk to each other and the resulting noise was, well, loud.


    Now you could hear every time somebody shifted in their seat and their clothes rustled.


    Brent looked up and around at the people sitting near him. A lot of them were looking down at their own trays. A lot of them were looking at each other. Which was how it should be. But then - a sizeable minority of them were looking right at him. Staring at him.


    As if they thought he might do something interesting, and they didn''t want to miss it when it happened.


    He finished his lunch as quickly as he could and headed for his locker. Lucy was waiting for him there, but before he could reach it he had to pass by a group of girls who were all walking together, clutching their books against their sweaters. He saw the way their hair shone as it bounced with each step. He could see their white teeth gleaming as they smiled. One blonde girl turned and whispered something to a brunette, who promptly blushed. They were popular girls and they had never looked at him before, but now their eyes followed him as he walked toward them.


    "Hi, Brent," the blonde said. Her name was Jill Hennessey, and she was the richest girl in the school. He knew she was also dating the captain of the soccer team. And now she was smiling at him.


    She was a senior. It did not make any sense. He was a sophomore, and therefore did not exist yet in the school''s social ladder.


    The brunette giggled. Her name was Dana Kravitz and she was the captain of the school''s color guard. She was only a junior but Jill had taken her on as a protege and now she was the second most popular girl in school. A week ago he would have bet good money she didn''t even know his name. Now she caught his eye for just a fraction of a second, blushed again, and looked down at her boots.


    "Hi," he said, and every pair of eyes went wide. Some of the girls, hangers-on in Jill and Dana''s circle, straightened up as if they were coming to attention. The girls didn''t stop walking but it seemed to Brent they had slowed down to a lazy stroll. He had no idea what he was supposed to do.


    "Uh, how''s it going?" Brent asked.


    "Us? We''re fabulous. And you? Are you glad to be back among us?" Jill asked. She and her friends were even with him now and they had to turn their heads to keep looking at him.


    Brent shrugged. "Sure. Well, um, I guess I''ll see you around," he said.


    "Definitely," Jill said, and walked past him. The circle followed - but Dana Kravitz glanced back over her shoulder and made eye contact with him again. And blushed. Again.


    When he got to his locker Lucy was bouncing up and down in impatience. "I have to get to social studies," she said, "but I have so got a mission for you."


    "A mission?" Brent asked. He had no idea what she was talking about. "Did you just see - that was Jill Hennessey and Dana Kravitz, right? I didn''t just think it was them?"


    "Yes, I did see. I saw how shameless they were, definitely. I think you''re absolutely right that they were looking at you, and that that''s something they would not have done before, which I think should tell you something very important about girls like that."


    Brent shook his head as he worked the combination of his locker. "It''s amazing, isn''t it? I mean, I haven''t actually done anything. I still feel like the same person. But everybody''s acting so weird."


    "Yes, those girls are weird," Lucy confirmed. "But you know how it is. School can be very boring and we all get excited when something new happens, and now you''re the flavor of the week. I wouldn''t get your hopes up about Jill and Dana, Brent. They''re interested now, but how long could that possibly last? If I were you I would focus more on girls in your own social circle, you know, girls who have known you your whole life and always found you interesting and attractive, even before you became a celebrity, girls who - "


    "Oh, come on, Luce," Brent said. "There aren''t any girls in this school like that. You''re right. I''m just - " he thought of Weathers sitting in his kitchen, " - front page news. In a week or so they''ll probably walk right past me again and not even say hi. So what''s this mission?"


    "Mission?" Lucy asked. There was something wrong with her face. Her mouth was all bunched up and she had her eyes closed. Like she was about to cry, or sneeze or something. Then she opened her eyes again and nodded and got back to business. "Yes. Your mission. Should you choose to accept it, ha ha ha. Yes. I thought - I mean I''m not sure how you want to handle this, but you are who you are now and there are certain things that will be expected of you, certain stereotypes you''re going to be measured against and I figured it might be good to get started right away - "


    "Started with what?" Brent asked.


    "Fighting crime, of course."


    Brent laughed. Then he looked at her face. And laughed again. But she was serious. "Crime. Here at the school? Is somebody stealing extra composition notebooks out of the supply closet?"


    "It''s a little worse than that," Lucy told him.


    Completely serious.

 Page 13

    Classes ended for the day. Maggie changed and headed out to the practice field, watching the football players go through their drills. Her first day back to school had been a little different from Brent''s. She had made plans to see all her friends at lunch, but when she got to the cafeteria not a single one of them was there. Maggie was a high school senior. She knew exactly what that meant.


    Perhaps even worse, not a single boy had looked at her all day. Which was unusual, but she''d kind of expected it. Most of the cute boys were complete brain-dead twits and they looked for girls who were just as stupid as they were - girls they could take advantage of. Maggie was used to being stared at, especially when she was wearing her field hockey uniform which showed off a serious amount of leg, but she knew the football players weren''t looking for a girl who could run faster than they could and beat them up without trying if they got a little too affectionate.


    So they were ignoring her. It wasn''t just that they didn''t say hi. They never had before. But they weren''t whistling at her. They weren''t making rude comments to each other about her body. And they made an all-too-obvious show of not meeting her gaze for so much as a second. As if she wasn''t a girl at all. As if she were some weird species of sea creature that was probably slimy to the touch.


    So when one of them threw a pass that went a little too long and the ball bounced crazily across the grass toward her, she dashed over and grabbed it before Mark Hockenberry, the starting quarterback, could reach it.


    He stared at her in confusion, then glanced back at the other players. "Little help?" he asked, when she just stood there smiling at him, balancing the football on her index finger.


    "Sure," she said. She pulled her arm back and threw the ball at Hockenberry as hard as she could.


    Because he was a jock and because he had a reputation for never flubbing a pass in his entire athletic career, he made the mistake of trying to catch it. She''d known he would. The ball hit him in his armored sternum and knocked him backwards across the lines painted on the grass. He slid ten yards before he came to a stop. And lay there, groaning.


    Maggie frowned. She hoped, sort of, that she hadn''t hurt him.


    But then he sat up and held the ball in the air. The rest of the team cheered and rushed over to help him up and pat him on the back. And still, they didn''t so much as glance at Maggie.


    "That was unnecessary, Maggot," someone said behind her.


    She whirled around and saw Jill Hennessey standing there, with Dana Kravitz close by but just a few steps behind. Maggie and Jill were not exactly what you would call friends. They were both on the field hockey team, and they had worked together to win a lot of games. But they never went out for pizza together after a victory. More tellingly, they did not have each others'' numbers in their respective phones.


    "It amused me, Pill. And I crave amusement. What do you want?"


    "Not a thing for myself," Jill told her. "However. An associate of mine had a question that I thought you could answer. If you''d like to earn a little goodwill from the student body."


    By which, of course, Jill meant her circle of stuck-up friends. They were the only ones, in Jill''s opinion, whose goodwill mattered.


    "Whatever," Maggie shrugged. "Shoot."


    Dana Kravitz looked over her friend''s shoulder at Maggie. She looked scared.


    Maggie kind of liked that.


    "It''s only of passing interest, but this associate of mine, who shall not be named, wanted to know something about your brother. She was curious - just curious, mind you, we are not brokering any kind of social arrangement here - whether he''s seeing anyone."


    Maggie laughed out loud. "What, my little dweeb brother? Be serious. I doubt he''s ever seen a girl with her shirt off. Oh, I suppose there''s Lucy Benez."


    "Who? You mean the cripple?" Jill asked. "He''s dating that?"


    "She''s painfully obvious about being in love with him. But I don''t think they''ve even held hands in a romantic fashion." Maggie smiled wickedly. "Not that I would know. I don''t exactly keep tabs on his love life."


    "No, of course not," Jill said. She turned around. "Alright, Dana. You may go now. Maggot and I have practice in a few minutes. I''m sure you have some batons to twirl to keep yourself entertained until I''m done."


    Dana Kravitz nodded primly and fled the scene.


    "You really are a vicious animal, aren''t you, Pill?" Maggie asked.


    Jill hefted her stick in the air. "I''m a competitor."


    Coach Peters blew his whistle and the girls'' field hockey team lined up for orders. Maggie had been on the team since freshman year and though she''d never been a star player the others had learned to rely on her. She was great on defense, usually serving as the team''s sweeper, and she was always willing to smack an opponent in the shinguards at the right moment, even if it meant taking a penalty.


    The coach had always liked her, she thought. She put everything she had into the game. She honestly loved it, in a way she loved very few things. Yet as he walked down the line toward her, his face was scrunched up with worry and he had trouble meeting her eyes. Just like the football players.


    "Maggie, you can go change," he said, finally. He was speaking in a voice barely louder than a whisper. She was used to him shouting commands at her - she liked it when he did, because things made sense when you were out on the field with your stick in your hand and somebody was telling you what to do. Now he sounded apologetic and she felt very lost.


    "Why? What''s going on?" she asked.


    He grimaced and looked at the rest of the team. They were disciplined, winners all, and they looked straight ahead. Of course, Jill couldn''t resist the urge to whisper something to the girl who stood next to her, who started to laugh and then controlled herself. Coach Peters shot a nasty look at Jill and then put his hand on Maggie''s shoulder.


    She shrugged it off. "I want to know what''s going on," she repeated.


    "Do you want to maybe talk to the principal? Because I need you to understand this wasn''t my decision. But there''s no way we can let you play this season. It wouldn''t be fair to the other grils - or the other teams, for that matter. Not now that you''re... enhanced."


    "I''m not taking steroids!" she insisted. "This is ridiculous!"


    "I''m sorry," he told her. "The decision is final."


    She grabbed her stick hard enough to make the fiberglass creak and then took her mouthguard out of her pocket. "Here," she said, and shoved it in the coach''s hand. "I wouldn''t want anyone to think I was stealing school property. You can have my stick if you can find it."


    "It''s in your hand," the coach said, looking puzzled.


    She spun from the waist and flung it into the sky. It would probably land in the next town over. "Whoops," she said.


    "Maggie!" he said, suddenly angry. "What did I teach you about self-control?"


    "I can''t remember. It must have been the day I wasn''t paying attention - the same day you gave us the speech on how everyone should get a chance to play." She pushed past him and walked down the line of her former fellow players, trying to get a reaction out of any of them. Hoping at least one of them would protest, or even just say they felt bad. The only one who would look at her was Jill.


    "Maybe they need someone in the pep squad," Jill suggested.


    Maggie told her exactly what she could go and do.

 Page 14

    "Okay," Lucy said, quietly. "That''s the guy. You see him?"


    They were sitting on a hill overlooking the school parking lot. Classes had let out a few minutes ago and normally Brent would be on his bus headed home but Lucy had assured him this would be worth his while. He wasn''t so sure yet. "Yeah, I see him just fine." Lucy had brought a pair of binoculars and had pointed out a kid, just a freshman, walking along the edge of the parking lot. Brent could see him just fine - apparently his eyesight had been improved as well as his physical strength. The kid had his head ducked down and his arms were around his backpack as if someone might try to steal it from him. He looked scared.


    "Now - the target. He''s coming up from the gap in the fence, there."


    The target was a senior. Brent knew him, or at least he''d been pointed out to Brent very early on when he got to high school. It was Matt Perkins, the notorious bully. Perkins was overweight and not particularly tall. He had hair that fell down over his eyes and bad teeth. For the last two years he''d been preying on the incoming freshman class, always choosing one or two new kids to pick on. He would harass them until he grew bored and then he would pick a new one and start in on them. He''d never bothered Brent - Perkins only went after the scrawny kids, the little ones who couldn''t fight back.


    "You want me to beat him up?" Brent asked. He had to admit the idea was kind of exciting.


    "Yeah, but you have to do this right. He has to know why he''s getting beat down," Lucy explained. "He has to know it isn''t cool to prey on little kids."


    Brent frowned. "Hey," he said. "This isn''t personal, is it?"


    "I don''t know what you mean," Lucy said. "If you''re trying to suggest something, such as, I don''t know, maybe last year Perkins and I had a run in, you know, maybe he shook me down for my lunch money every day for three weeks in a row, and maybe he knocked me down and I couldn''t exactly fight back with these braces on my legs, well - no. That has nothing to do with anything."


    "Uh-huh. Okay. They''re about to cross paths."


    "Good luck," Lucy said, and squeezed his bicep. "Go be a hero."


    Down in the parking lot Perkins was leaning against the side of a car, smiling so hard his teeth flashed in the sunlight. The freshman was trying to back away but Brent knew exactly how this was going to happen. If the freshman ran, Perkins could chase him down easily. If he stood his ground Perkins would just beat him up. The kid didn''t have a chance.


    Which was where Brent came in. Right? He knew that was how it was supposed to work. He was supposed to protect the defenseless. Stand up for those who couldn''t stand up for themselves. Nothing had ever looked so pure, or so easy.


    He dug his feet into the ground and jumped. He could hear Lucy cheering as he dropped through the air, down the side of the hill, to land not more than ten feet away from Perkins.


    The bully jumped in place as if he''d seen a ghost. "What - ?" he had time to ask, before Brent grabbed him and lifted him off the ground with one hand.


    Perkins struggled, kicking at Brent''s face and shoulders while his hands grabbed on to Brent''s shirt and pulled. It was easy for Brent to fend him off, though. Perkins wasn''t even particularly strong, just massive, and his weight meant nothing to Brent''s new muscles.


    He looked down at the freshman, who had fallen over backwards and landed sitting on the sidewalk.


    "What''s your name?" he asked.


    "Ryan," the freshman said. "I mean, Ryan Digby."


    "This guy giving you a hard time?" Brent asked.


    The freshman just nodded. He looked like he couldn''t believe this was happening.


    "You want me to teach him a lesson?"


    Ryan Digby got up slowly and shrugged. "I - I don''t know, I just want him - I want him to stop. Every day he''s here. I live just over there," he said, pointing at some houses on the other side of a chainlink fence. "This is the fastest way for me to get home. I tried taking the long way but he was just waiting for me there, too. He kept telling me he was going to kill me. He said if I gave him money he would let me live a little longer. I tried telling my Dad but he just said I should learn to stick up for myself. I tried that, and he - Matt - beat me up pretty bad."


    "Okay," Brent said. "I''ll take it from here. Why don''t you go home, now? I don''t think he''ll be here tomorrow."


    The freshman nodded and ran off. He looked terrified - but maybe that was just the shock of seeing the tables turned on the bully.


    "You''re dead," Perkins said, up in the air. "When you put me down, you''re going to be dead."


    "Interesting," Brent said. He put Perkins gently back down on his feet. "You going to kill me now?"


    The bully roared like an animal and came charging at Brent. He was faster than Brent had expected for someone so heavy and Brent had no doubt he could have seriously hurt a normal freshman. To Brent it felt like he was being attacked by a chipmunk. As Perkins punched and kicked at him, Brent just picked the bully up again and then walked over to a patch of grass and dropped him on it.


    Perkins collapsed with an unpleasant "Oof," as the wind sagged out of him.


    "Are you going to leave Ryan alone, now?" Brent asked.


    The bully''s eyes were burning with hatred as he propped himself up on his elbows. "That depends. Are you going to be here tomorrow? Are you going to walk him home every day?"


    Brent dropped to one knee and made a fist. He raised it high and prepared to bring it down. He would have to judge this carefully - he needed to hurt Perkins, but not permanently. He thought about what Maggie had said the night before. We can kill people pretty easily. Way too easily.


    If he hit him just hard enough, though -


    "Go on," Perkins said.


    "What?" Brent''s concentration faltered.


    "Just do it. I want you to."


    Brent shook his head. "I don''t understand. You want me to hit you?"


    "You think you''re the first person to ever hit me? I can take a punch like a man. That''s what my dad says. It''s important, taking a punch like a man. You don''t cry. You don''t whine about how it wasn''t fair. The bigger the guy, the stronger the guy who hits you, that just makes you tougher ''cause you took it like a man. So go ahead. Whatever you got, I''ll take it."


    "Your dad... hits you?" Brent asked, horrified.


    "Just when I deserve it. I''m not telling you my life story."


    Was it possible? Brent had been to an assembly on bullying his freshman year. The teachers had claimed that bullies were people looking for control over their own lives. That they hurt other people because they were being hurt themselves. And Brent wasn''t so naive as to think there weren''t dads out there who hit their kids. Grandma hit Maggie sometimes, didn''t she?


    "Get up," he said.


    Perkins looked confused. "You''re not going to hit me?"


    "I''m not sure yet. Just get up."

 Page 15

    Maggie stormed into the house and slammed the door. Grandma was waiting for her, probably with another list of rules, but she went straight to her room and slammed the door there, too. As she had been warned Grandma had removed the speakers from her computer desk. There were bare wires hanging over the edge of the desk - instead of unplugging them properly, Grandma must have cut them with a pair of scissors. Maggie howled in rage and tore open her desk drawer looking for her headphones.


    If she didn''t get some music soon, something to channel her rage, she was going to explode. It was that simple.


    There was a knock on her door. Maggie ignored it. She found her headphones and shoved them into her ears, hard enough to hurt. Sat down at her desk and booted up her computer. She had twenty-three emails waiting and new friend requests on Facebook but she didn''t want to talk to anybody - she needed to be alone, more than she ever had before in her life.


    Grandma knocked on the door again. Louder this time.


    Maggie found the track she was looking for, an old cut of thrash metal, and dragged the volume slider all the way up. The music surged into her head, driving everything else out, filling her up with darkness, somebody else''s darkness, anybody''s darkness but her own.


    It was good. It was pure. It didn''t hurt anybody.


    And then as soon as it had begun it stopped. Maggie whirled around in her chair and found Grandma staring at her through those huge glasses. She held the ear phones in her hands and as Maggie watched she pulled them apart until the plastic insulation split and the wire inside tore.


    "I thought I made myself clear," Grandma said. "No music."


    "You can''t do this to me right now," Maggie said. She would try to be reasonable. She would try to talk Grandma through this one. She promised herself that much. It was going to be hard.


    "You may not understand why I do the things I do," Grandma said, and Maggie could see the old woman was about to launch into a whole speech. Probably about how she knew what was best for Maggie, and that was all she wanted. How all the horrible effed-up things she did were really just gestures of love.


    I hate you. I hate you, you miserable old dried-up piece of -


    "I''d like your help," Grandma said, and Maggie realized she''d missed the whole speech. A tight ball of heat and fury was turning and turning inside her brain and it had blacked out the whole thing. "Brent still has a chance at a normal life. But if you and I are going to be enemies, then - "


    "There''s a radio in the car," Maggie said, and jumped up from her chair. She ran to the kitchen and the rack where they kept the car keys. They were missing, of course. Maggie spun around and saw Grandma tottering toward her. She had the car keys in her right hand. On her left hand, she''d already turned her engagement ring around so the diamond was on the inside.


    "You can''t do this," Maggie said. She had promised she would try to work this out calmly and rationally. The problem was she wasn''t calm or rational inside. It was really, really hard to fake it on her face. "I have just had the worst day of my life and I need to listen to some music. I have a right to that!"


    "There''s a difference between a right and a privilege. Your generation always has had trouble knowing where the line is."


    "Please give me the car keys." Maggie lowered her head and stared at the floor. If she had to look at Grandma''s prune face one more second - "I need the car, right now. I need the car, and I''m going to have those keys in a second. One way or another."


    "Is that a threat, little girl?" Grandma asked. She was so close, suddenly. Well within arm''s reach. Maggie tried to grab the keys out of her hand.


    Instead Grandma''s open palm smacked her on the face.


    "Ow!" Maggie shrieked. She reached one hand up to her cheek and felt the heat there. Grandma had finally hit her with the diamond, just like she''d always threatened to do.


    Heat and light filled up her brain.


    I could kill you. It would be so easy.


    Instead she grabbed the car keys. Grandma''s hand was in the way. Maggie squeezed until the keys came loose, and then she ran for the door.

 Page 16

    It was kind of tricky holding on to Perkins the bully. He squirmed a lot and he knew how to throw his center of gravity around, so that Brent had to keep grabbing his arms or his legs to get him back under control. Brent managed somehow to get him up the hill to where Lucy was sitting with her binoculars.


    "Get him away from me!" she squeaked as they came closer.


    Brent dropped Perkins heavily on the grass and then sat down on him. That seemed to do the trick - as much as Perkins tried to heave and buck to get free, it was easy for Brent to keep him from getting away.


    "You didn''t beat him up," Lucy said, once she''d gotten over her fright. "Because you see I was thinking that you should beat him up, so that he won''t beat up any other kids, because - "


    "Yeah. I got it." Brent stared at the cars in the parking lot. This didn''t make sense. It should be easier. Cleaner. "Except it wouldn''t work. Do you know why Perkins bullies freshmen? Tell her, Perkins."


    The bully grunted and heaved but couldn''t get his knees under him. "Because it feels good," he said. "Because I''m bigger than they are."


    Brent rolled his eyes. "No. It''s not that. It''s because his dad beats him up. That makes him angry but he can''t fight back against his dad - apparently the guy was a football player in college and he''s huge. So that''s what Matt learned at home. That if you''re bigger than somebody else, it''s okay to beat them up and take their stuff."


    "That''s messed up," Lucy said.


    "Yeah. But it raises an interesting question. Which is what I should do with him. See, if I beat him up - that just proves he''s right. That just because somebody is bigger, or, in my case, stronger, then they can do whatever they want."


    "But it''s different! You''d be helping people! Do you know how many kids want to see him get hurt? Do you know how much misery he''s caused? You''d be getting revenge for a whole generation of underclassmen!"


    "Does that make it okay? Should I beat up everybody those kids want me to beat up?" Brent shrugged. This was getting so complicated. "Who decides when it''s okay to beat somebody up? Me? You? I don''t think I have the right to make that decision. And even if I do beat him up, then what? Do I have a responsibility to beat up his dad?"


    Perkins growled under Brent. "You could. You could take him!"


    "That seems kind of... messed up," Lucy agreed. "Beating up somebody''s dad."


    "Even if they are a bad person." Brent rubbed at his eyes. "I don''t know, Luce. I keep thinking about my dad. I keep thinking he wouldn''t want me to do this. It wouldn''t make him proud. And I owe him, a lot."


    Lucy frowned. "What are you going to do?"


    Brent stood up. Perkins took the opportunity to jump to his feet and try to dash away. Brent stopped him by grabbing his shoulder before he could escape. "Listen," Brent said, "I''m not going to hit you. But if I hear that you''re hassling any more kids, then - "


    "Then you''ll beat me up?"


    Brent shook his head. "No. But I''ll stop you. Just like I stopped you today. I''ll be watching you from now on and if you try anything, I''ll stop you. That''s all. You''ve seen I can do it."


    "You can''t watch me all the time," Perkins said.


    Brent let him go. He ran around the side of the school and disappeared.


    "I need to get home," Brent said. "I need to talk to my sister about this. Maybe she has some ideas about what we''re supposed to do with these powers. She''s smarter than me, maybe she''s already figured this out."


    Lucy walked with him. Normally he took the bus home but it had already left without him. It was a good half hour walk back to his house, and part of it was along the highway where there wasn''t any sidewalk, just a narrow little path worn down in the grass. Cars honked at them as they rocketed past and twice he had to pick Lucy up and get her out of the way of a driver who was too close to the curb. With her legs in braces she couldn''t jump away as fast as he could. After the second time he just slung her across his back and carried her piggyback. She didn''t seem to mind and her weight didn''t bother him at all.


    As they walked they tried to think of ways Brent could actually help people with his powers that didn''t get morally complicated. "What if you saw somebody stealing somebody''s wallet on the street. It would be okay to hit them, wouldn''t it?" she asked.


    "I guess," Brent told her, "but when was the last time you actually saw that happen? You hear about crime all the time but it tends to happen in dark alleys and really late at night."


    "You could rescue people who get lost in the desert," she tried. One of her hands was absently rubbing his chest. It felt good so he didn''t tell her to stop.


    "Sure. If I could find them." He thought about it for a second. "I could spend the rest of my life patrolling the desert, looking for people in trouble. But that would get pretty boring. I mean, how often does somebody actually get lost out there? Once or twice a year? I kind of wanted to go to college instead."


    "I guess you could carry little old ladies across the street. Or carry their groceries for them." Lucy laughed. "They''d probably like that." She leaned her head on his shoulder and he wondered if she was getting tired.


    "I don''t seem to get tired," he said, because he had suddenly realized this fact. "I suppose I could go to the power plant and turn a big crank on one of their turbines and generate electricity all day. That would use less oil and it would be good for the environment."


    Lucy chuckled. "I could bring you sandwiches every day. And maybe read to you while you turned your crank, so you didn''t get bored."


    Brent grinned. That was hardly how he''d seen his life going. But it was a cute thought.


    "Here we are," he said, when they finally got to his house. He climbed up the steps to the porch and stopped before the door. "Um," he said, "maybe you should get down now."


    "Oh, sorry," she said, and slid down off his back. "It was just so comfortable up there."


    "I''ll give you a ride anytime," Brent said, searching in his backpack for his key. "You want to come in, maybe have a snack or something before you head home?"


    She didn''t get to answer him, though. Before she could open her mouth to reply they both heard Grandma screaming for help.

 Page 17

    The music was the only thing that could save Maggie. It was like a prism, taking all of her anger and her doubts, her fears and frustrations -


    your friends aren''t answering your texts


    they won''t let you play the game you love


    you hurt grandma


    you killed dad


    - gathering them up and bringing them together, like different colors combining to form a single ray of pure white, narrowing down all the chaos and bewilderment into one stream of energy she could release by screaming along with the lyrics. It didn''t matter much what kind of music it might be, punk, metal, industrial, techno, as long as it was fast and loud and dark, storm winds driving through her, sweeping away everything that didn''t make sense.


    The car radio was loud enough. The local college station played enough metal to keep her sane. She drove through town, barely paying attention to the road, singing at the top of her voice and pounding on the steering wheel to the beat.


    When she arrived at her destination she stopped the car but she just sat there for a long time, howling out her aggro, until another set of speed metal was done. When the station broke for commercials she threw her head back against the headrest and pushed her fingers through her hair.


    When she reached for the ignition key she saw she''d battered the steering wheel all out of shape. She was surprised she hadn''t accidentally released the airbag. Whatever. She could just bend it back to normal again later. She grabbed the keys and pushed herself out of the car, up the walk to Mandy''s door. She rang the bell and stood there drumming one foot on the porch, craning her head around to watch everything that moved on the street.


    Eventually, finally, Mandy opened the door and looked out. Mandy Hunt was the closest thing Maggie had to a BFF. Both of them would have gagged to hear that term applied to them but they had a real connection. A bond. They''d been together since way back, back when they still thought it was cute their names were so similar.


    "You''d better come in," Mandy said, and pulled Maggie inside. The house was big and airy and sterile, full of tasteful ornamentation and white paint and austere leather furniture. The house was spotlessly clean and it looked like no one had ever lived there. Mandy''s parents had some money, enough that even Jill Hennessey treated Mandy with a certain level of respect.


    Without a word Mandy lead her upstairs, into the bedroom Maggie had slept in many times back when they were both young enough for sleepovers. The wallpaper still had a pattern of Palominos galloping past desert mesas but in recent years Mandy and her friends had taken turns cutting out pictures of celebrities from magazines and pasting them on the horses as if they were riding them while showing off their engagement rings, their trophy spouses, their fashion accessory babies.


    "Why are you wearing that?" Mandy asked, after she''d closed and locked the door. "Did you just come from practice?"


    Maggie looked down at herself. She was still wearing her field hockey uniform. She''d been so upset about being kicked off the team that she hadn''t thought to change. "They won''t let me play," she said. "God! What a stupid thing to get upset about, right? But it just totally triggered me."


    "You''re one of their best players," Mandy said. "How is that fair? Remember last year, you were like, what, runner up for MVP? And the coach said - "


    "We were supposed to have lunch," Maggie said. "We made a plan."


    "Yeah," Mandy said, reaching for the pearl necklace she wore. She held it out away from her throat and twisted it nervously. "I guess we did. Well, there''s a funny story about that - "


    "Tell me your story later. After you have time to make one up," Maggie said, diving onto Mandy''s bed. "I didn''t come here to make you feel bad. I came here because there''s nobody else in the world who can help me right now. I''m in trouble, M. I''ve got the police after me. Maybe the FBI."


    "I see," Mandy said.


    "I''m not crazy. You know what''s been going on with me. What happened to me out in the desert. You think the government doesn''t want to know more? You think they''re not looking right now to find out how Brent and I survived when my dad died? They would put me in a lab if they could. And I may just have given them the excuse they needed. I can''t go home again. Do you - do you have a top I could borrow, or something? I can''t even go back to get my clothes."


    "Of course," Mandy said, because that was something she could handle. She went to her dresser and started pulling out tank tops and sweaters. Maggie stared at the clothes as they piled up on the bed, wondering how she could possibly say what she was going to say next.


    "A while back," she began, "you said you wanted to kill yourself. You even showed me all the pills you had saved up."


    Mandy stopped with her back to Maggie. Stopped as if she''d forgotten how to move. "They were just - aspirin. They wouldn''t have even given me a headache. And you know I got into therapy after that. You''re the only one who knows that, except for my family."


    "Yes. And I don''t want to open up old wounds. Really."


    Mandy''s shoulders lifted and then fell again. Was she crying? "I assume you have some reason to bring it up, though."


    "Yeah. This one''s nice," she said, holding up a black halter top with a wide teal stripe running down the middle. "It matches my skirt, too." It was an attempt to get Mandy to turn around, to look at her, but it didn''t work. "Back then. When you told me. Do you remember what I said?"


    "Yes. ''Don''t do it yet. If you absolutely have to, come find me. We''ll run away to Europe together instead.'' Just like that."


    "I would have done it, too. I would have taken you anywhere, rather than see you destroy yourself. Now I''m asking - "


    Mandy turned around then and Maggie saw there were definitely tears in her eyes. She didn''t look angry, though, or sorry. She looked terrified. "When was the last time we hung out?" she asked.


    "What?"


    Mandy ran the back of her hand across her nose. "When was the last time we went to a party together? When was the last time we sat down and watched a DVD? Or talked about boys? Or went shopping at the mall? When was the last time you asked me how I was doing? When, Maggie?"


    Maggie''s brain spun around in her head. "I know I''ve been kind of distant, lately, but - "


    "It was more than a year ago! You turned into something weird after your Mom died. You deserted me, even though I could have been such a good friend to you, even though I wanted to help you through your grief, you just deserted me. And now you come here, today, less than a month before Homecoming and you want me to run away with you? Just like that?"


    "It''ll be just like old times. M and M against the world."


    "I won''t do it. I just won''t. I know I owe you. I know you need me right now. But I won''t do it. Give me that!" Mandy grabbed the halter top out of Maggie''s hands and threw it behind her. "I can''t do it. I''m not strong enough. I''ve already been accepted at Northwestern for next year! I can''t be homeless. I can''t be broke all the time. I don''t have superpowers like you."


    Maggie stood up and took a step toward her friend. She just wanted to hug her, to tell her she understood, that it was really okay - anything to get her to stop crying, even lies. Like, I''ll be fine on my own, or, I''m sorry, it wasn''t fair even to ask.


    But when she got close enough to touch Mandy shrank away from her. Mandy''s eyes went very wide as she backed right into her bureau and knocked a set of silver hairbrushes to the floor.


    "Please don''t hurt me," she said, in a very small voice.

 Page 18

    Brent would have driven Grandma to the hospital, learner''s permit or not, but Maggie had taken the car. He didn''t know what had happened between her and Grandma but it had to have been bad.


    Really bad. Grandma''s fingers were sticking out in random directions. He was pretty sure all of them were broken. "I''ll carry her," he told Lucy. "I''ll just pick her up and run to the hospital - I can get there faster than with the car, anyway."


    "Sure," Lucy said. She was very calm. "Except, when you were carrying me before? You were just walking, and still I bounced up and down with every step. If you run with her, she''ll be shaken up like a bottle of soda. I don''t think it would help."


    "There must be something I can do! What good are these powers if I can''t help my own family?"


    "Chill, Brent," Lucy said, and pulled her cell phone out of the outside pocket of her backpack. She dialed 911 and told the operator what was going on. An ambulance was there five minutes later.


    Grandma was screaming the whole time. She couldn''t seem to stop. She was in a lot of pain. When Brent climbed up into the ambulance beside her, she lifted her head and looked down at Lucy, who was about to get in, too.


    "Your little girlfriend should go home, Brent," Grandma gasped. "I don''t want her seeing me like this. It''s bad enough the doctors will see me."


    Brent apologized to Lucy with a look. "I''ll see you there," she said. She shrugged good-naturedly and started hobbling home as the paramedics slammed shut the rear doors of the ambulance.


    There was more screaming. A lot of it - until the paramedics gave Grandma something for the pain. When she settled down and her eyes started drooping behind her thick glasses, she reached for Brent''s hand with her good left hand and he felt the diamond scratch his skin.


    Oh no, he thought. Oh no. Not today - not when Mags was so upset already.


    Grandma must have hit Maggie with the diamond. Just like she''d threatened to do so many times. What had Maggie done that was so awful to deserve that? Brent supposed it didn''t matter. It could have been anything. As far as Grandma was concerned Maggie couldn''t do anything right. "Grandma," he said, softly, "you have to forgive her."


    "I''m going to press charges," she told him. "You saw what she did."


    Yeah, but you hit her first. Except - that wasn''t good enough, was it? Perkins the bully had hit Ryan Digby first. That hadn''t made it okay for Brent to beat him up. Still - it was his sister this time. That made it different, somehow. Not in a way that was fair, but a way that mattered nonetheless. "If you don''t forgive her, how are we going to work as a family? You don''t know what she''s going through. Please."


    "I won''t have her in my house anymore," Grandma insisted.


    Our house. Not yours.


    "She''s wild. Like an animal. Just like her father."


    Our father. Our father who just died.


    "She''s a spoiled little brat and she needs to learn discipline or she''s going to get herself in a heap of trouble," Grandma finished.


    Too late, Brent thought.


    The ambulance reached the emergency room and there was more waiting, and the pain medication wore off and Grandma started screaming again. Eventually, though, a doctor came and took her away. A nurse took Brent by the arm and lead him toward a waiting lounge. "Your friends are already here. They''ll take care of you," the nurse told him. He pushed open the door and saw Lucy inside - talking to Weathers.


    "Brent," she said, and jumped up to hug him. He gently pushed her away.


    "What are you doing here?" he asked the FBI man.


    "Investigating an assault on an elderly woman. That''s the kind of crime I take pretty seriously," Weathers told him. "I might have to make an arrest."


    "Not unless she presses charges. That''s - that''s how it works, right? She has to actually accuse Maggie of a crime."


    "So you''re definitely certain it was your sister, Maggie Gill, who broke your grandmother''s hand?" Weathers asked.


    Brent frowned. That was a weird way of putting it.


    "Are you recording this?" Lucy asked.


    The special agent smiled and opened up his jacket to show them a miniature voice recorder in his breast pocket. "Yes," he said. "Very astute, Ms. Benez. I have a terrible memory, you see, and this helps me recall everything exactly as it was said. In case, say, I need to provide evidence in a court of law."


    "Don''t tell him anything, Brent. Not until you have a lawyer," Lucy said.


    Brent shook his head. "It doesn''t matter. It''s not like he doesn''t know exactly what happened. The question is what happens next. Look, Weathers, I can fix this. I can talk my grandmother out of pressing charges. And I can talk to Maggie, make her understand that we can''t go on like this. I''m the only one she''ll listen to. But you have to help me, too. You have to promise you''ll go easy on her."


    "I just want to make sure nobody else gets hurt," Weathers told him. "Alright. You have a deal. If you can defuse this situation, if you can bring your sister in so I can talk to her, I''ll make sure she gets full marks for cooperation."


    That wasn''t what Brent had been asking for, but maybe it was the best he was going to get.


    "Of course, you''ll have to find her before you can talk to her."


    Brent scowled. "You don''t know where she is?"


    "As I''ve said before, the Bureau don''t waste its time following around American citizens. Though in Maggie''s case that may have to change, now. No, I have no idea where she went after leaving your house today."


    Brent bit his lip. He had no idea, either. He tried to put himself in her shoes. Where would Maggie go if she felt like everything was crashing in on her? Mom''s grave? Starbuck''s? Nothing seemed right.


    Lucy put a hand on his arm. "Where would you go, if you''d just hurt your Grandma?" she asked.


    He closed his eyes and tried to imagine it. He had to fight his own instincts, which told him that he would never, ever hurt a member of his family. He had so few of them left. But when he got past that, the answer was clear.


    "I''d go see you," he told Lucy.


    She nodded. "So who''s your sister''s best friend?"

 Page 19

    Special Agent Weathers drove them straight over to Mandy Hunt''s house - or what was left of it. Brent could see right away he''d picked the right friend. Maggie had been there, and she hadn''t left through the front door.


    Not that he could see a front door. The entire front side of the house had collapsed inward, broken boards and sheared-off rebar sticking up at crazy angles, the roof slumped over a gaping hole where the front wall had been. Water sprayed diagonally across the street from ruptured pipes and fires were starting to smolder in the heaps of shingles and broken plaster that spilled across the driveway and into the road.


    If Maggie had dropped a bomb on the place, it might have done less damage. But Brent knew instantly what had really happened. She had been in such a rush to leave she had punched her way out right through the house. It didn''t surprise him that she was capable of wreaking such havoc. He knew her strength, since he shared it.


    "Stay in the car, I''m calling the fire department," Weathers announced, but Brent had already pushed his door open and jumped out onto the sidewalk.


    "Come back here, Gill," the FBI man shouted, lowering his window. "I can''t let you go in there! It''s an insurance nightmare."


    "There might be people in there, and they could be dead by the time the firefighters get here. Stay with him, Luce," Brent said, and in the backseat Lucy nodded. Her face was wide open, her eyes locked on the destroyed house.


    Finally, he thought. A chance to do some real good. Nobody could debate that saving people from a collapsing house was heroic, or noble, or worth doing. Standing by and waiting with Weathers would be unthinkable.


    Brent jumped into the mess and grabbed a steel beam that had fallen across the front of the house. Straining a little, he pushed it up over his head and then jumped inside. It fell back behind him and the whole house swayed, but he was inside, in what might have been a living room once though it was hard to tell. Ahead of him was the kitchen, still largely intact but wreathed in flames.


    "Hello!" he shouted. "Is there anyone in here?" He would feel pretty stupid if there wasn''t. There was no answer, but anyone in the wreckage might be unconscious. He pushed through the kitchen, flames licking at his clothes. Part of his sleeve caught on fire so he slapped it out. To his left was a stairway leading up, to the right an empty bathroom. He headed for the stairs - and then jumped back as half a ton of bricks and girders came crashing down from the upper floor, smashing the risers and filling the air with red dust that made him cough.


    He didn''t have much time. The ceiling above him was sagging, water dripping across the plaster and then down the kitchen wall. He bent his knees and sprang upward, smashing through the ceiling and the hardwood floor above, grabbing at anything he could hold onto and pulling himself upward through the hole he''d made.


    He found himself in a master bedroom, pale blue paint on the walls and satin curtains covering the windows. The floor sloped to one side and the bed had rolled down to smash against the far wall. It was partially blocking the doorway so he grabbed it and hauled it out of the way, then jumped out into an upstairs hallway. There were doors on three sides of him, then, and they all looked like they''d jammed inside their crooked frames. He kicked one open and found a bathroom with no ceiling - the floor was littered with broken wood and burning shingles. The next door was a linen closet with all the towels and sheets in a pile on its floor.


    One more door to go. He got a good run up and hit it hard with his shoulder. It collapsed instantly under his momentum and he rolled through into a girl''s bedroom with horses on the walls.


    In one corner of the room Mandy Hunt was curled up in a ball, wheezing and shaking. She didn''t react when he shouted her name.


    Brent took a step toward her - and the house shifted over to its right. The wall above Mandy tilted inward and started to collapse, while all the furniture in the room started sliding across the floor, squeaking as it ground its way down toward the lowest part of the uneven floor.


    Plaster and sheared-off sections of lath showered down on Brent''s head. He could hear nails popping as they were pulled free of the floorboards, and downstairs he heard a whoomping roar that he thought might be a gas line catching fire.


    At any second the house was going to collapse under its own weight. He could hear the sirens of a fire truck in the distance but he knew it would never arrive in time. "Hold on, I''m coming," he called, in case Mandy could hear him.


    The wall above her kept collapsing piece by piece. A huge chunk of plaster pinwheeled down from the ceiling and struck her on the shoulder, striping her pale skin with blood. Brent dove across her just as the entire wall gave way and came crashing down.


    He was instantly buried in broken plaster and roof shingles. A length of metal guttering whipped across his back and cut his shirt open but it only hurt for a second before his body got its strength back.


    Beneath him Mandy wasn''t breathing.


    Oh, no, he thought. No. I was so close.


    But maybe - if 911 had sent an ambulance as well - maybe she could be revived. Brent scooped her up in his arms and staggered upright to his feet, shedding hundreds of pounds of dusty plaster and broken boards. He had to struggle to breathe himself. The air was so thick he couldn''t seem to get any oxygen. He couldn''t see anything and his ears were ringing.


    He could jump straight up in the air, through the collapsed roof, but if he did he would have to drag Mandy up through the rafters with him and she might get hurt. He pushed through waist-deep debris instead, holding her up so her feet didn''t drag in the jagged and broken mess, and shouldered his way back out into the hallway.


    The fire had spread while he was in Mandy''s room. It was racing up the walls, following the wires hidden behind the plaster, and was dripping from the ceiling. There was plenty of fuel to feed it and he knew if he wasted another second he would be engulfed in flames. The bathroom, he thought - he had seen blue sky through the broken walls of the bathroom. He rushed forward, holding Mandy well clear of the burning walls, and didn''t even stop to look when he got through the bathroom door. He just ran and leapt and hoped he could find a soft place to land once he was outside. Behind him the house shifted again, walls falling in on themselves, the entire stairway collapsing and taking most of the upstairs hall with it. By then, though, his feet were pedaling at empty air and he was soaring, gliding across the street to land in a row of bushes that felt a lot harder than they looked.


    Just before impact he lifted Mandy up in his arms to keep her from being crushed. When he had his feet back underneath him he laid her down gently on a freshly mown lawn and dropped to his knees beside her.


    Her clothes were torn. Her hair was a mess. She had streaks of white dust across her face and her bare arms. Blood welled from dozens of cuts and abrasions all over her exposed skin. And she still wasn''t breathing.


    "Get back," Weathers said. He pushed Brent away and bent over the unconscious girl. Putting his hands together on her chest he pushed down rhythmically as he blew air into her mouth. Looking up for a second he said, "Pinch her nose shut. Yeah, just like that." He bent to blow air into her lungs again and then repeated his chest compressions. "Come on," he said, and scowled at her.


    Mandy reached up one hand and slapped weakly at Brent''s fingers. He let go of her nose and she made a horrible wet gagging sound. She rolled over on her side and was violently sick, but then she pulled her knees up tight to her chest and started gasping for air. "Maggie," she croaked. "Maggie Gill - she''s gone crazy."


    "Don''t try to talk. You," Weathers shouted, gesturing at a firefighter standing in the street. "Over here!" He looked back down at the girl as the firefighter brought over a silver survival blanket and wrapped her up in it. "Was there anyone else in the house? Any brothers or sisters? Were your parents home?"


    Mandy managed to shake her head no before the firefighter put a mask over her face and started pumping her full of oxygen. Two more firefighters came up with a stretcher and lifted her up gently, then wheeled her at top speed toward a waiting ambulance.


    "Holy hell," Weathers said. His tie was shoved over to one side, and he fixed it with one hand while he stared at Brent''s face.


    "What?" Brent asked. "Did I do something wrong?"


    Lucy was hobbling toward him. "Not at all, Brent. He''s just never seen anything like you before."


    Brent shook his head. He felt like he''d eaten an entire box of chalk and his eyes were burning. His clothes were in tatters, barely hanging off of him. Otherwise he thought he felt fine. "Huh."


    "It''s official," Lucy said, grabbing Brent around the chest and leaning her head on his shoulder. "You''re a hero!"

 Page 20

    It''s official, Maggie thought, staring at her face in a gas station restroom mirror.


    You''re a villain.


    "What a stupid thing to think," she told herself. But it was getting harder to deny. She''d stolen food that morning. She''d been so hungry she hadn''t even thought about it. Just walked into a bakery, asked for a half dozen croissants, and then refused to pay once the clerk handed them over.


    A kid about Brent''s age had been standing by the door, sweeping dust out into the street. He''d had freckles, she remembered, and he was wearing a really stupid paper hat. He tried to stop her. Told her she was a thief.


    She had flung out one hand and knocked him into a row of tables hard enough to snap his broom. She only used one hand because the other one was holding a half-eaten croissant. If both hands had been free she probably would have crippled him.


    With the door clear, she just walked out and down the street an no one tried to stop her at all. And the croissants tasted so good.


    Of course, anything will taste fantastic when you haven''t eaten in days.


    Maggie washed out her field hockey uniform in the sink with some of the nasty pink soap from the dispenser. She used some more of it to scrub under her armpits and wash her face. There wasn''t much she could do about her hair - the soap would just make it more tangled and nasty, so she left it. God, what she wouldn''t give for a shower. And her own bed. She''d been sleeping in the bus station with all the other homeless people and it was getting very old.


    It had been nearly a week since she''d smashed her way out of Mandy''s house, so angry and hurt she couldn''t think at all, could only punch and kick and scream. Once she was outside she''d just gone jumping from roof to roof until she wound up somewhere downtown, just wandering the street with her head full of fog. When she went back to get the car it was gone, along with her purse and her sidekick - most likely Brent drove it home. Brent, who was in all the newspapers now. Everybody loved him. He had saved Mandy, after all. Maggie hadn''t given a single thought to whether her friend was in danger when she left. She''d just wanted to get away and had thought of nothing but herself.


    She was glad Mandy was okay. Apparently she was still in the hospital but would make a full recovery. Maggie told herself over and over she was glad for that. Even though there had been a moment there, after Mandy told her she wouldn''t keep her promise, when Maggie could have - she might have -


    It wasn''t worth thinking about what she might have done. The things she had done were bad enough.


    There''d been nothing in the papers about Maggie so far, which she figured was something Special Agent Weathers must have arranged. She was kind of grateful to him for that. She did know the police were looking for her. Twice so far a cop had seen her on the street and shouted for her to freeze, but both times she''d just jumped up onto the rooftops and gotten away without any problems.


    She dried her clothes with the old battered hot air hand dryer in the gas station restroom. No matter how long she held her skirt under the wheezing vent, though, or how vigorously she rubbed at it, she knew it would still be soggy when she put it back on. It was also a dead giveaway whenever the cops spotted her. How many homeless girls could there be wandering around downtown wearing field hockey uniforms?


    Maggie needed a change of clothes. She needed money. And she needed to get out of town.


    None of that should be too hard, she thought, for a notorious supervillain.

 Page 21

    Brent poured Grandma''s tea and cut a sandwich in half - egg salad, just like she liked. She was propped up on the couch on a mound of pillows, watching television and she grunted acknowledgement when he put her plate and her tea cup down in front of her.


    Her right arm was in a cast that covered all but her thumb and ran almost up to her elbow. No one had signed this cast. Lucy had asked if she could, and got a nasty look in exchange. The doctors said it would be at least a month before the cast could come off and Grandma could use her hand again.


    Brent had volunteered to play nurse until she was back up to full speed. Every day when he got back from school he made her dinner. At night he helped her into bed and then tucked her in, as if she were the kid and he the guardian. It still felt pretty weird, especially when she yelled at him for not doing things right. He was pretty sure that it didn''t matter if he made her bed with hospital corners every morning, or if her tea had a drop too much honey in it. He got the sense she just needed to yell at somebody.


    She was angry. She had a right to be angry. Most of the time he left her alone.


    "The phone was ringing again all day," Grandma muttered. "More reporters."


    "You shouldn''t pick it up unless you know who''s calling," Brent told her. "That''s why we have Caller ID."


    "I can''t figure out how to use that thing. Anyway, I gave them the same old song and dance. That you''re too busy being a hero to talk to anyone."


    Brent had changed the voicemail message so it said much of the same thing, though it didn''t use the H word. It asked that the reporters respect his privacy and not call back. So instead they emailed - he dreaded turning his computer on in the morning before school because he knew he would have to sort through dozens of requests for interviews and photo shoots and product endorsements before he could find any messages from Lucy or Special Agent Weathers.


    He deleted all the emails, even the ones offering money for his life''s story. He deleted all the voicemail they got - people he actually wanted to talk to knew not to call his house unless it was an emergency. But he couldn''t do much about the photographers who followed him around all day. Some of them were parked down the block, with telephoto lenses sticking out of the back of a van and following his every move, constantly trying to get a look through the curtains over his bedroom window. More of them were camped out outside the high school. A judge had said they couldn''t come within five hundred feet of him, but they were always trying for four hundred and ninety-nine.


    Maggie had worried about being followed around by the FBI all the time. It turned out the government was the least of Brent''s problems.


    Speaking of which - the doorbell rang, and Brent went to answer it. He was expecting Special Agent Weathers but he had to be careful, so he twitched aside the curtains and peered out at the porch. No smiling, shouting reporters appeared so he let the FBI man inside and closed the door behind him.


    "Have you found her yet?" Brent asked.


    "Hello to you, too," Weathers said, and hung his coat on a hook by the door. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Reynolds," he said to Grandma. She waved her good hand at him without bothering to turn around.


    Brent apologized and lead Weathers into the kitchen, where he poured him a Diet Coke - it was all he had other than Grandma''s herbal tea and water. "I''m sorry if I was abrupt. But I''m really worried about her."


    Weathers frowned. "We''ve had reports. She''s been seen around, but - "


    "But you can''t catch her. She runs away too fast." Brent nodded and drummed his fingers on the table. "I understand. I''ve been looking for her, too. Patrolling, I guess you could say. I haven''t spotted her yet, though. You''ll call me on my cell the next time someone sees her, right?"


    "Sure." Weathers reached into his jacket pocket and took out a folded piece of paper. He carefully smoothed it out on the table and looked into Brent''s eyes. "There''s actual news on another front, if you want to hear it. We have not managed to recover your father''s body."


    Brent gulped. It had been a long time. There hadn''t even been a funeral yet. He''d hoped that if he had a body, he''d have something to bury. Maybe if he put a memorial service together, Maggie would feel compelled to come, and then he could talk to her there. If he could just talk to her, figure out what was going on with her -


    But no. If she thought the FBI was watching, she wouldn''t come anywhere near.


    He rubbed his face. His father was dead (you killed him, a nagging little part of his brain reminded him) and he needed to be buried. That was the only important thing. "Do you at least know how he died?"


    Weathers took a sip of his drink. "You don''t want to know that."


    "Okay," Brent said.


    "I''ve got a whole team out there in the desert studying that thing you and he found. I''ve got people watching it round the clock. A lot of what they''re finding out, you don''t want to know. I''ll tell you one thing anyway. I asked them to send in two guys in hazardous materials suits to get your father''s body. They couldn''t do it. They made it back out themselves, but just barely. They both died within an hour. They were good men, Brent."


    "I''m... so sorry."


    Weathers shrugged. "You didn''t ask them to do it. I did. I thought the hazmat suits would be enough to protect them, but I was wrong. Whatever that green fire stuff is, it kills anyone it comes into contact with. Except you and your sister. You want to hear some more interesting facts?"


    Brent stared at Weathers through his fingers. He wasn''t sure how to answer that question. "Okay," he tried.


    "We''re pretty sure the thing, the cylinder you found, was buried for at least sixty thousand years. They did radiocarbon dating on it and that''s the farthest back that particular test can go. Which means human beings didn''t build it. Sixty thousand years ago human beings were still figuring out how to make bows and arrows."


    "So it''s a crashed alien spacecraft?"


    "Sure," Weathers said. "Maybe. Those are the facts. You want some more, well, all I have are theories. Which means I can''t prove any of it. Now as for what that green fire is, I don''t have the foggiest notion. All I know is that it heals you if you''re exposed to it - you said it healed Maggie''s blisters and your razorburn - so maybe it was an automatic medical station or something."


    "But it''s killed three people!"


    "Three people, yes, all of them over age eighteen. I have a bunch of scientists trying to figure out why teenagers come out of there stronger than when they went in. The best thing they can think of is that it must have something to do with your pineal gland. That''s a little pinecone-shaped thing in the middle of your brain. It produces melatonin, or at least, it does until you finish puberty."


    "Then what does it do?"


    Weathers scratched his left eyebrow. "Then it turns into a lump of bone that does absolutely nothing. By the time you''re twenty-one it''s completely calcified. Nobody''s exactly sure why it does that. Nor do we have any idea how an active pineal gland protected you and your sister from certain death. Again, I don''t have answers. In this case I don''t even have a theory."


    Brent nodded. He squirmed in his chair. He didn''t want to know any of this. He really didn''t want to know about the two men who died trying to recover his dad''s body.


    "You won''t send anyone else in there, will you?" he asked.


    "Oh, no!" Weathers let go of a bitter laugh. "Hell, no. I''ve got a call in for every available ton of quick-setting concrete in the state. I''m going to cover that thing over until it looks like a big parking lot. A parking lot no one will ever again be allowed to set foot on."


    Brent squinted at him. "No way. I thought you would want to study it. Take it to pieces and figure out how it works. Isn''t that what you do with UFOs?"


    Weathers looked at him for a while before replying. Just looked at him. "You may be under the impression that the government is one big conspiracy. That we''re always scheming and plotting away behind the scenes. But that''s not who we are. We''re just people. People who work very hard, for not much pay, to try to protect American citizens. We''ll make sure nobody else dies, Brent. That''s my job."

 Page 22

    School was becoming a hassle. Brent couldn''t ride the bus anymore - reporters kept trying to sneak onboard, for one thing. For another he had to keep an eye on Matt Perkins. He had to walk over to Perkins'' house every morning before Matt even left for school, and at the end of the day he had to follow the bully all the way home. Occasionally the kid''s abusive dad came out onto the porch and yelled at Brent to leave his son alone, but really, there was no option. The very next day after Brent''s original confrontation with the bully, Perkins had tried to shake down Ryan Digby again. The only way to stop that was to always be there whenever the two of them met.


    "I don''t think I can do this forever," he told Lucy. She had started patrolling with him, usually while riding on his back. It was nice at least not to be alone when he rambled all over town like this. They were walking home from school along a busy side street, just off the highway. A news van with a satellite dish on top was crawling along behind them, holding up a lane of traffic, and he had to raise his voice over all the honking horns. "And anyway, he''s just one bully. There are others out there and I''m not doing anything about them. A lot of freshman have been leaving notes in my locker asking me for help - but I can''t be in two places at once. If only Maggie was still around she could help me."


    "You''re kidding, right?" Lucy asked, leaning her head over his shoulder. "She would probably organize the bullies and hold the whole school up for protection money."


    "Hey!" he said. "She''s still my sister."


    But he was getting used to it, unfortunately. Nobody believed in Maggie anymore. Nobody wanted to give her a second chance. The newspapers had been merciless after she destroyed the Hunt house. They claimed that she had been trying to kill Mandy. It didn''t help that Mandy seemed to think so too, and had told every reporter she could find just how awful her ordeal had been.


    The police were pretty clear on the fact that they were going to arrest her as soon as they found her. Weathers had said there was nothing he could do. But Brent knew there was still some good in her. Before Mom had died she had been a pretty cool sister. Even afterwards she had always looked after him. She had saved him from the green fire - didn''t that count for anything?


    "If I could just talk to her," he started, but even to himself he felt like a scratched CD skipping over the same line over and over again. "Maybe, then - "


    He stopped because he saw two girls standing at the street corner ahead. It was Jill Hennessey and Dana Kravitz, and it looked like they were having an argument. Or at least - Jill was having an argument, and Dana was just agreeing with everything she said, her head bowed as if she deserved whatever nasty things Jill had to say. Jill was holding on tight to Dana''s arm and Brent wondered if he should intervene.


    But no - that wasn''t right. That wasn''t what he was supposed to be doing. Dad wouldn''t have wanted him to intrude on everyone''s personal lives, he was pretty sure. "When I saved Mandy Hunt I didn''t have to think about it," he told Lucy. "I didn''t have to wonder whether I was doing the right thing. I didn''t have to calculate what would happen every time I broke through a wall or kicked a pile of bricks out of the way. I just did it. If every problem was so clear-cut this would be so much easier!"


    "But they can''t be, Brent. The world is complicated, and that''s why heroes are so rare. Superheroes have to make the right decision every time, and - "


    "Hold on," he said. Something looked wrong. Out of place. There was a line of cars coming toward them. Dana and Jill had a DON''T WALK light. But they were stepping out into the street, Jill''s hand on Dana''s back, right between her shoulder blades.


    "Jump down," he told Lucy, and felt her weight fall off his back. Then he was off like a shot, sprinting toward the two girls. They weren''t looking where they were going, and the cars were getting awfully close -


    He could see them perfectly as he ran. It was as if time had slowed down. Jill still had one foot on the curb. She had turned slightly to face the oncoming traffic and it looked like she was about to jump back. Dana, on the other hand, was all the way out in the street and was falling forward, her hands out to catch her. She was going to land on all fours right in front of the cars.


    The car in front had already slammed on its brakes - the driver saw Dana. But Brent just didn''t know if it would stop in time or not.


    He dashed up between them, one foot forward sliding across the asphalt. He started turning sideways before he''d even reached them and momentum took him the rest of the way. He saw the news van coming up behind him, swerving hard to pass a car that had stopped short in the middle of the crosswalk. Brent reached out one hand and pushed Jill, as gently as he could, backward, back onto the sidewalk. Dana was just about to fall.


    He wasted a fraction of a second thinking about the best way to grab her, the way that wouldn''t involve touching her anywhere inappropriate. Then, one hand scooping low under her stomach, the other wrapping around her shoulders, he picked her up and then kicked hard to launch them both across the street, toward a patch of green grass that looked like it would soften the impact.


    The news van hit him in the shoulder, hard enough to make him see stars. He twisted around to take the impact across his back, protecting Dana as the van''s grille buckled under his weight. The blow knocked him sideways, but only a little, and then he was falling, rolling, and time sped up again, became a blur -


    Then he was sliding on his back across the grass, Dana on top of him as if she were riding a sled. They came to a stop just like that, with her lying full length on top of him, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck.


    He was a fifteen year old boy so he noticed at once how soft her body was, how perfectly she fit into his arms. He was also Brent Gill so the thought embarrassed him enough to make him blush.


    "How''s my hair?" Dana whispered. It was the first thing she''d ever said to him.


    "It''s beautiful," he said, honestly. Then he looked over her shoulder and saw a portable video camera staring back at him. He tried to smile. Then he tried to sit up, thinking he would gently roll out from under Dana and get back on his feet.


    Instead she clutched him hard. He could feel her shaking and he realized she must be terrified - she could have been killed back there.


    "It''s okay," he said. "You''re safe now." There were reporters everywhere, and people with cell phone cameras, and a man carrying a garden hose - Brent thought it must be his lawn they''d landed on. It was all happening so fast. He saw Jill come running up, and Lucy pushing her way through the crowd, her eyes wide.


    Slowly, carefully, he lifted Dana off of him and set her down in the grass. She was breathing very hard, almost hyperventilating.


    The reporters all started talking at once. "Brent! Brent! Do you have some kind of super senses, that let you know when danger is near? Brent! How does it feel to save a pretty girl? Is she your girlfriend? Does Brent have a girlfriend? Is she going to kiss him anyway? Mr. Gill - could you just look this way and give us a thumb''s up?"


    "Get back!" Lucy shouted. "Let him breathe!" Then she grabbed the garden hose and put her thumb over the end so she could spray any reporters who got too close. Soon she''d cleared a circle maybe twelve feet wide around Brent and Dana. "Get back, all of you! Give him some room!"


    Brent got to his feet and brushed off his clothes. He was covered in blades of freshly mown grass. He looked down and saw Dana still sitting there, hugging herself. He reached down and gave her a hand up.


    "I don''t have a date for homecoming yet," she blurted out.


    He opened his mouth but he had no idea what to say in reply.

 Page 23

    Back at home Brent and Lucy hid out in his room, with the blinds down and the door locked. Despite the court order that was supposed to keep reporters away from his house there were people all over his lawn, some of them with cameras, some just holding notepads and pens, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for him to come down and tell them how he felt about saving people.


    He''d already learned they didn''t want to know how he really felt. They wanted him to say something like, "All in a day''s work!" or "Anybody would have done the same." They didn''t want to hear that he was struggling to get his homework done or that Grandma still couldn''t get dressed by herself in the morning.


    "Hold still," Lucy said. She had a measuring tape in her hands. He lifted her arms and let her loop it around his chest.


    "Are you going to tell me what that''s about?" he asked, nodding at the tape.


    "No. It''s a surprise." She smiled up at him, then measured the length of his leg from hip to ankle.


    "I mean, I can probably guess - "


    His cell phone rang. He sighed and pulled it out of his pocket. Most likely the screen would say UNKNOWN CALLER or just list some local phone number he wouldn''t recognize. He''d learned never to answer those calls. Instead, though, this time it said the call was from Ryan Digby.


    He frowned. Why would the freshman be calling him? How had Ryan even gotten his number? But it could be trouble. Maybe Matt Perkins was at it again. "Hello?" he asked, flipping the phone open.


    Lucy wrote some measurements down in her Chemistry notebook, then brought the tape up to measure around his neck.


    "No," Brent said. "I''ve got nothing to add." He held the phone away from his ear. "This is a new one. A reporter stopped in at Ryan Digby''s house to interview him, then asked if he could use his phone. He knew I would answer if it was from Ryan''s number." He put the phone back to his ear. "What? No. Dana''s not my girlfriend. No. I don''t have a girlfriend! Well, of course I like girls. That''s a - that''s a really personal question, but no, I''m fifteen years old and I''ve never - wait. Wait, I didn''t say - "


    He growled and started to throw the phone at the wall. Then he thought better of it. It might go right through the wall and hit somebody out in the yard. So instead he tossed it lightly onto the bed.


    "What''s tomorrow''s headline?" Lucy asked.


    "''Super Kid is Saving Himself... for Marriage.''" Brent scowled. "Probably. I don''t think they would run with ''Brent''s Still a Virgin!''"


    Lucy brought her hands down. She turned her face away but she couldn''t stifle the laugh bubbling up out of her mouth.


    "Ha ha. Very funny. This media stuff is getting out of control. It''s not like I''m getting anything out of it. Grandma won''t let me do commercials or let them make a movie about me, and honestly, I don''t want that either. Why should I bother talking to them at all? Who even listens to the things I say? Who - "


    He stopped in mid-rant and stood very still for a second.


    "Brent?" Lucy asked, when he didn''t say anything more.


    "Wait here," he told her. Then he headed out of the room and down the stairs. Grandma called out to him but she just wanted the TV remote - he found it for her, then headed for the front door.


    Nobody was standing on the porch. There were maybe two dozen reporters on the front steps, though, and a pair of news vans were parked illegally in the street. When the reporters saw him come out they all flooded in, moving closer to get a better look at him, to get pictures, to ask him questions.


    He held up his hands for silence. For once, he got it. "I want to say something," he told the reporters. "Can we get some TV people up here? I want this to go out on every network tonight." He felt like an idiot as he waited for them to set up their blinding lights and all their microphones. He felt like a pompous jerk, acting as if the whole world was just waiting, holding their breath to hear what he said next. But they kind of were - and anyway, this was important.


    He needed to talk to Maggie, but he couldn''t find her. Maybe there was another way to get through to her.


    "Are we ready?" he asked. One of the camera men gave him a thumb''s-up. He chewed on his lower lip for a second, then he looked right at the cameras and started.


    "As everyone is aware by now my sister Maggie has run away from home. She''s not showing up for classes at school and she avoids anyone who tries to talk to her. I think she''s scared, mostly. I think she''s worried about what will happen if the police catch her. And maybe she''s ashamed of what she''s done. I hope she is, because that means there''s still a chance for her to make it all okay."


    He turned to face a different camera. "Maggie. If anybody knows what you''re going through, it''s me. If anybody could understand, I''m the guy. I really want to talk to you. I need someone to talk to about what''s happened to us. About what happened to Dad. About what you did, and how we can make it okay. It won''t be easy, but I think that together we can work everything out. Come to some kind of solution."


    He looked over at a reporter from the local newspaper. He wanted this to go out in print, as well. "Just come home, Maggie. Or if you''re not willing to do that, come find me somewhere. Somewhere neutral. So we can just talk. I''m not going to cause trouble for you. I just want us to be a family again. I want us to be okay."


    Brent lowered his head. Would she listen? He didn''t know. But he knew it was what Dad would have wanted. Dad had believed in giving people second chances.


    "Thank you," Brent said. "That''s all I have right now." As the reporters surged up the steps and started climbing over the porch railing, he stepped back inside the house and closed the door behind him.


    Please, Maggie, he thought. Just come talk to me. Mom and Dad are gone. I can''t lose my big sister, too.

 Page 24

    Maggie was amazed at how easy it was to hide in plain sight. You''d think a girl in a rumpled plaid field hockey skirt with a look of desperate villainy in her eye would stick out on the street, and that every person she passed would turn and point and scream, "There she is!" But in fact all she had to do was spend five minutes shoplifting at the Gap. She put her hair up under a baseball cap and threw a lightweight hoodie and a backpack over her jersey and suddenly she was invisible, or close enough. No one gave her a second look. No one shouted for the police.


    Even when she walked into the bank building, right past the security guard.


    As she surveyed the red marble lobby of the bank - the rank of ATMs on her left, the four teller windows on her right, people streaming in and out, carrying out their business, living their happy safe normal lives - she told herself over and over again that this was going to be the last time, the last bad thing she would ever do.


    She had spent most of the day psyching herself up for this. Convincing herself she had no choice. There were some things, after all, that you couldn''t just steal. She needed to find a place to stay, for at least one more night. She needed a car. Sure, you could steal a car, but she didn''t know how to hotwire one and carjacking seemed too risky. It would be too easy to hurt somebody that way.


    She needed money. She told herself if she could get some money together then she could leave town. Drive off into the sunset. Find some place where nobody knew who she was and start life over. Do it right this time.


    But first, she needed money. She''d chosen the bank for a pretty simple reason. If you were going to get in trouble for a robbery, it seemed to make sense to rob the place where all the money was.


    This would only take a minute, she told herself. And then she would be free.


    She waited until one of the teller lines emptied out. Then she headed over to the window and smiled at the woman behind the bulletproof glass. The teller was maybe forty-five years old, pretty in a commonplace way. She had a mole on the side of her nose. Maggie couldn''t stop staring at it.


    "What can we do for you today, miss?" the teller asked.


    Maggie pulled off her baseball cap and dropped it on the floor. Then she unzipped her hoodie and let the teller see her jersey, with the team logo and her number on the front. "Do you know what this means?" she asked.


    The teller screamed. Which Maggie guess meant that yes, she did.


    A second later an alarm started going off, a bell ringing in the back of the bank. More people screamed. All around Maggie people started running, heading for the revolving door behind her. She figured that was for the best. The teller tried to duck under her counter. Maggie punched the bulletproof glass window that separated them and it cracked in half. She punched it again and one piece fell away to thunk on the floor behind the window. Then she reached over across the counter and dragged the teller back up to her feet.


    "Just give me some money," Maggie said, "and I''ll go away. Nobody needs to get hurt, okay?"


    There was a dull impact on the back of her neck. Maggie spun around and saw the security guard standing there. He had a wooden baton in his hand, and he was pulling it back for another swing.


    "Seriously?" Maggie asked. "That''s the best you''ve got?"


    The baton came whirling around toward her face. Maggie had plenty of time to grab it as it came around. She flipped it in her hand and then jabbed the guard in the stomach with its rubberized grip. His face went pale and he slumped to the floor, gasping to get his breath back.


    He would be fine, she told herself. She hadn''t hit him hard enough to damage anything vital. She turned back to the teller, who was pulling a long metal drawer out of her counter. "I''m so sorry," the teller said. "I''m sorry. Please don''t hurt me."


    "It''s not your fault they didn''t give him a gun," Maggie said. "What are you sorry for?"


    "I - I just started my shift, and they only." She stopped talking.


    Maggie raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"


    "I think I might be sick," the teller said. She definitely looked a little green.


    "Look," Maggie said, "you''re not going to get hurt, as long as you give me the money. I don''t have any reason to hurt you."


    "It''s the beginning of my shift," the teller said again, slowly, "and they only bring out cash as we need it. It''s all controlled downstairs, in the vault."


    Maggie frowned. "I''m not getting the point, here. Help me out."


    The teller held up the metal drawer. There were a couple of twenties in there, and a handful of fives and ones. The slot for ten dollar bills was completely empty. It looked like there was less than a hundred dollars there. That wouldn''t get Maggie very far at all.


    "People don''t do cash transactions like they used to," the teller explained. "Most people go to the ATM for withdrawals, and when they make a deposit I send it downstairs right away."


    "Down to the vault."


    The teller nodded.


    "Which I''m guessing is locked. Okay," Maggie sighed, "who has the key? Or the combination, or whatever?"


    "The branch manager. But he."


    Maggie waited patiently for the teller to start again.


    "He ran out of here as soon as I screamed," the teller finished.


    Maggie turned around and looked for a way to get down to the vault. There was a stairwell leading off the lobby, with a red velvet rope strung across it. A pair of security cameras watched the stairs and anyone approaching them, but Maggie wasn''t afraid of cameras. She looked down at the security guard on the floor and saw him slowly recovering. His right hand was reaching shakily for his baton. She kicked it away from him, into a corner of the lobby, and jumped over the velvet rope.


    This was only supposed to have taken a minute. If she took too long getting into the vault, the police would surround the bank and she''d have to deal with them on her way out. Well, she thought, as she ran down the stairs, I''ve come this far.


    There was no point in turning back.

 Page 25

    Brent had reached the point of no return.


    On his last algebra test, he''d gotten a twenty-five. Out of a possible hundred points. He''d been holding out hope that if he just tried really hard, really hard, he could bring his grade back from a D to a C. Now it looked like he would be lucky if he didn''t fail the class.


    It was just so hard to focus. So many other things were occupying his mind and even at his best he found algebra confusing and difficult to keep straight. There were all those variables and you never knew what any of them were, it was like playing solitaire except you weren''t allowed to see your own cards.


    Clutching the test paper in his hand he wandered through the halls, wondering what he was going to do. At least his next period was lunch. He was pretty sure he could get through his sophomore year without failing lunch.


    He picked up his tray - meatloaf today, with stewed carrots and apple juice to drink - and looked up to see where there was a place to sit. He didn''t often have trouble finding a seat in the cafeteria these days, but for once it looked like the place was packed. All the usual tables he frequented had students crammed into every available inch of space. He couldn''t see a single open - wait. Over there.


    There was a space right between two girls. They turned to look at him over their shoulders and he saw it was Jill Hennessey and Dana Kravitz.


    "Did you ask everybody to fill up the tables so I had to sit here?" he asked, sliding his tray onto the table between the two of them. He saw that Dana was eating the meatloaf but had a salad instead of the carrots. Jill was eating sushi out of a tiny black plastic box.


    "Do you believe in willpower, Brent?" Jill asked him. "I do. I believe that through the sheer power of my will I am capable of getting what I want. I find if I want something badly enough, I never have to actually ask for it. Please sit down. We have something to discuss. A mutually beneficial partnership you''d be very foolish to refuse."


    "O-kay," Brent said, climbing onto the bench. "You want to - what? Ask me for help with something? If you want me to beat somebody up, I have to tell you I don''t do that. I don''t hit anyone who''s weaker than I am, which is everybody."


    "Fascinating. But no, that''s not what we''re looking for here. We''re looking to help you, Brent. We''re looking to help you reach your potential."


    "So, um, hi," Brent said, turning to Dana. "Does she ever let you talk?"


    "Hi," she said back. "Of course she does. I just find that - well - she''s better at it than I am. She''s better with words."


    "As I was saying," Jill went on, shooting Dana a nasty glance, "you''re a star, Brent. You''re a celebrity. Every boy in this school wishes he was you. And every girl in this school wants your tongue in her mouth. That''s a wonderful opportunity but you need to think carefully before you decide who you want to be with. You could make a horrible mistake and spend all your time with Lucy Benez - "


    "Don''t," Brent said, squinting. "Don''t you dare say anything about Lucy or - "


    " - or, you could do the sensible thing. You could do the appropriate thing, and date a girl who is already popular. Someone who can enhance your reputation. People in this school can be very judgmental, Brent. I should know. And a man is often judged by the quality of his significant other. It is very important that you be with someone who will make you look good. Now, the most popular girl in this school," Jill said, and placed one hand over her own heart, "is taken. But the second most popular girl is still available."


    "I''m not sure I have time for dating," Brent said, not wanting to hurt Dana''s feelings.


    Jill sighed dramatically. "Listen. I''m a sympathetic and considerate person, so I''ve tried to be subtle and preserve everyone''s dignity. I gave you a chance to ask her out on your own. I tried talking to your sister about this. Big mistake. And yesterday Dana went so far as to embarrass herself by admitting she doesn''t have a date yet for homecoming, and yet you failed to rise to the occasion. What is it going to take, Brent? Do I have to offer you money? Because I will."


    "Woah," Brent said, starting to get up from the table, his lunch completely forgotten, "this is going too far - "


    "Brent," Dana said, and he sat back down because she had placed her hand on his arm. "Please. Jill can be - overly enthusiastic sometimes. But she''s actually just trying to help me out. I told her I thought you were cute. That maybe I liked you."


    "You... do?"


    Dana smiled. She had a great smile. "Let''s say it''s a possibility. I''d like to get to know you first before I fall in love with you or anything."


    "That sounds a little better," Brent said, "but seriously, I just don''t have the time."


    "You have to eat, don''t you?" Dana asked. It sounded like she wasn''t sure, as if she was wondering whether having superpowers meant Brent no longer had to do normal things like sleep or breathe or ingest mundane foodstuffs. "Let me make you dinner. I owe you at least that much for saving my life. Don''t I?"


    "I guess it would be rude to say no," Brent admitted. Wow, he thought. She smells pretty good, doesn''t she? And he remembered how she''d felt lying on top of him when he pulled her out of traffic... "I guess - that would be okay. Maybe - "


    He stopped because out of the corner of his eye he''d seen a paunchy, middle-aged man weaving his way through the cafeteria tables. It was Special Agent Weathers.


    "What''s he doing here?" Brent asked.


    "Tomorrow night. Seven o''clock. You know where I live? I can text you the address," Dana said, but Brent barely heard her. He was getting up from the table and turning to face the FBI man.


    Weathers looked sweaty. Like he''d run some distance to find Brent. The look on his face could only mean one thing - and then he said it out loud.


    "We''ve got her," he said. "We found your sister."

 Page 26

    Maggie knew how to swear. She supposed every kid did, but back when she and Mandy Hunt were in middle school together, they''d had a game where they challenged each other to come up with the worst thing you could possibly say. They started with "you are a pus-dripping donkey anus," and worked their way up from there. You got extra points if you could say it like you actually meant it.


    Maggie had usually won that game. She was a champion at being frustrated, if nothing else. But maybe not good enough to express exactly how she felt about the bank vault door. It was proving to her something she''d suspected but never experienced before: there were limits to her new super-strength.


    "Festering eye socket of a month-dead syphilitic warthog!" she screamed.


    It was ten feet high and just as wide. There was no good way to get her fingers around its edge because it sat flush with the wall. The hinges were on the inside, so she couldn''t just tear those off, either. She tried pounding her way through it with her fists. It made her knuckles bleed but at least she was making progress of some kind, in that she had seriously dented the metal door.


    "Lice-encrusted scalp of a bastard pornographer!"


    After about five minutes of that she stood back and examined her progress. She had put a three-inch deep dimple in the surface of the door. It would take hours and hours to get through the door like that. By the time she did, every cop in town would be down there with her, probably shooting her repeatedly in the back.


    "This isn''t fair!" she shouted, and her words echoed in the marble basement that housed the vault. When the echoes died away, silence returned - silence, except for the sound of police sirens wailing away upstairs.


    She cursed a few more times, then she just gave up. There had to be easier ways to get money.


    She headed upstairs carefully, keeping an eye out for anyone waiting for her with a shotgun. The bank lobby was empty, though. Red and blue light was flashing off the walls, throwing weird shadows across the marble, but there was not a single person to be found. Even the teller with the mole on her nose was gone - she probably ran away the second Maggie headed down the stairs.


    Maggie took a deep breath. Then she turned around and looked outside. Through the revolving doors she could see the street. A line of police cars stood out there, their lights whirling angrily. Men in uniform were crouched behind the cars, and they all had guns. All the guns were pointing at her.


    "Crap," she said, which wasn''t very inventive but it expressed her emotions perfectly. She started to run back toward the stairs - maybe she could get out by way of the roof - when the glass doors shattered and something much bigger than a bullet came sailing into the room. It hit one of the ATM machines hard and then dropped to the floor.


    Maggie picked it up. It looked like a spray can of whipped cream - except it was painted a flat black. There were holes all down its sides. As she studied it, bright yellow smoke started oozing out of the holes.


    Tear gas, she thought - even as her throat started to close up. She wasn''t invulnerable to tear gas, apparently. She turned and threw the grenade back out through the shattered glass doors and smiled as the cops there all scattered.


    Something was popping and crackling behind her. She turned and saw the ATM that the grenade had hit. The screen was shattered, exposing the machine''s guts - wiring and circuit boards and a security camera dangling by one wire. Little flames were popping into life inside the machine as sparks jumped back and forth.


    Maggie felt like palming her face. Duh, she thought. Everyone uses the ATMs these days for cash withdrawals. The teller had told her as much.


    She swung around and kicked the ATM hard. It fell to pieces and money started spilling out all over the floor. Some of it was on fire. She left those bills and grabbed as many undamaged twenties as she could, stuffing them inside her backpack. There were a lot more of them than she''d expected and she didn''t have time to stack them properly so they got crumpled up in the pack but it didn''t matter. It was money - she had her money, the money she needed to -


    "Margaret Gill," someone said, their voice amplified by a bullhorn. It was the cops. "We want to end this peacefully with no one getting hurt. Your brother is on the way - he says he wants to talk to you before we take you into custody."


    Maggie stopped what she was doing and looked up, as if Brent would be right there in front of her. "Crap," she said again. She had taken too long.

 Page 27

    Weathers parked his car as close to the bank as he could get. The police had already closed down the road that lead past the bank building, stringing up yellow tape and parking cars lengthwise across the street to keep anyone from trying to get in. There were plenty of reporters already who were trying to cross the barricades anyway. They''d been waiting for this, Brent knew. Waiting for Maggie to do something bad.


    "If I can talk her down, if I can get her to surrender," Brent said, "will you let her come home?"


    He knew the answer, of course. But he waited for Weathers to sigh and say, "It''s gone too far for that. I''ll need to arrest her - it''s better if I do it than the local cops, probably. I can take her some place safe."


    "Like a - " Brent swallowed painfully, " - a psychiatric hospital? So she can get some help, work out her problems?"


    "Maybe, eventually," Weathers said. "I was actually thinking that the local jail wouldn''t be able to hold her. She could just punch her way through the walls. I have an idea about a place we can put her she can''t escape from." He sighed again and turned to look Brent in the eye. "She''s broken a lot of laws, and she''s hurt people. You have to understand, Brent, that society has a responsibility to people who - "


    "I understand that she''s my sister, that''s all," Brent said, and he got out of the car before Weathers could say anything more.


    There was a policeman standing at the roadblock pushing back the reporters but when he saw Brent he lifted up the yellow tape and let Brent duck underneath it. Beyond the tape cars were parked in a semi-circle around the bank''s front door. A few tendrils of yellow smoke were rolling along the gutters - Brent had no idea what that was about. The flashing lights and the squawking of so many police radios disoriented him. Cops with handguns and rifles were crouched behind the cars. They didn''t look at Brent as he walked out into the middle of the street. Behind him a police captain with a bullhorn called Maggie''s name. The amplified voice made Brent wince.


    "Margaret - your brother''s here. Do you want to talk to him?"


    Brent stared at the police captain, then back at the revolving doors of the bank. This wasn''t going to work, he thought. There was too much chaos, too many people strained to the pitch of desperation. He needed to talk to Maggie alone. He looked back at the police captain and said, "I want to go inside."


    "No way, kid," the captain told him, holding one hand over the mouthpiece of his bullhorn so what he said wouldn''t be broadcast to the whole neighborhood. "It''s too dangerous."


    "I wasn''t asking," Brent told him, and walked over to the revolving door. It was shattered, its glass broken, but the metal frame was intact and when he pushed it, it turned and let him inside.


    Maggie was waiting for him there. She grabbed him and then jumped back, away from the door and the windows. She pulled him over a counter and down into a narrow space behind the teller windows.


    "You shouldn''t have come," she said.


    "Jeez! That hurt! My head bounced off a cash register," he told her, rubbing the back of his skull. The pain faded almost instantly, but still he was annoyed. "Why did you do that?"


    "They''ve got snipers out there. If I show myself in the windows they''re going to shoot first and ask questions later."


    Brent took a long look at her. The light wasn''t great but he could see how tired she looked. Her eyes were narrowed and her hair was a mess. She looked even more desperate than the cops outside.


    "Mags, what''s been going on with you?"


    "I''ve just been trying to keep out of trouble." She glanced up at the white painted wall behind them. It turned blue, then red, then blue again as the police flashers outside cycled. "Didn''t work. Listen, I''m going to run away. Leave town. You''ll probably never see me again. I''m sure that''s what everyone wants."


    "Not me," he told her. He stared into her eyes. She looked away but he kept watching her face. "Did you see the message I sent you? It was on TV all day. And in the papers."


    "I''ve mostly been avoiding the news. It''s all about how awful I am and how everybody''s scared of me." She shrugged. "But yeah. I saw it. It was... really nice of you, Brent, to say those things. It''s nice to think there''s one person out there who might believe I had excuses for everything I did. I wish I could say it mattered, though."


    "Of course it matters! That''s why I did it. I want you to come home. We''ll straighten everything out with grandma. I''ll even talk to her about not hitting you anymore. Mandy Hunt probably won''t press charges, if you just explain - "


    Maggie laughed at him.


    Brent felt his cheeks getting warm. He didn''t like that laugh. It said he was just a little kid, still, and he couldn''t possibly know how serious things had become.


    "I admit it won''t be easy to come back," he said.


    "Easy," she said. She wasn''t avoiding his gaze anymore. Now she was just blowing him off. "Easy. Everything''s easy for you now, isn''t it? Everybody loves you. The big hero. Brent, if I go out there right now with you and turn myself in, what do you think is going to happen? Do you think they''ll give me a chance to explain? Or do you think they will just take me off to jail and let me rot there for the rest of my life?"


    "You... may have to go to jail for a while," he admitted.


    "A while. I''m seventeen years old. By the time I got out I would be as old as Grandma. Bank robbery, Brent. Attempted murder - that''s what the papers are saying about what I did at Mandy''s house. Assault and battery, on Grandma. Who knows what else they can think up?"


    Brent shook his head. "So you won''t come with me. You won''t come out of here peacefully."


    "Actually, I will," she said.


    He blinked. "You will?" She didn''t sound as if she meant it.


    "I''m going to walk out that door with you, arm in arm. That way, they won''t shoot at me. They''ll wonder if maybe, just maybe, I''ve decided you''re right and that I should just give up. Take what''s coming to me. Reform and become a model citizen. They won''t believe it. But maybe they''ll think it for just a second. Which is all the time I need to get away."


    "Please, Maggie. Just consider coming home, for real. For me."


    "Let''s go," she said, and stood up. She hauled him up to his feet. Together they jumped over the teller counter and headed to the door. "I''ll know if it''s working in a second."


    "How?" he asked.


    "If they start shooting the second I appear in the window, then they aren''t buying it. Come on. This way."


    "And what if I refuse to help you?"


    "Then," she said, "you can watch the police gun down your sister in cold blood, and you can spend the rest of your life knowing you could have stopped it, and you didn''t."


    Brent squeezed his eyes shut. That was exactly how he''d killed Dad, wasn''t it? By watching it happen and not doing anything. He had no choice.


    "We''re coming out together," he shouted. The police had to be listening.


    Together they approached the revolving door. They couldn''t both fit through at once, so Maggie pulled the metal frame out of the way and they squeezed through where the door had been.


    "Maybe we should put our hands up," Brent said, when he saw all the guns pointed at them.


    "Brent!" Special Agent Weathers said, then, "hold on to her! But get your head down!"


    Brent looked the other direction, to his right, and saw a policeman in riot armor standing with his back to the wall of the bank, just outside the doors. He had a shotgun and he was bringing it around to point at Maggie''s face.


    It was a setup. From start to finish.


    Brent started to scream "Maggie, jump!," but before he could get her name out, the policeman fired.

 Page 28

    Shotgun pellets whizzed through the air, smashing across Maggie''s face and shoulders. One of them went past her head and hit Brent in the ear. It stung worse than any pain he''d ever felt and he dropped her arm and went down on one knee. He reached up and grabbed at his ear, then looked at his fingers, expecting them to be covered in blood. But apparently whatever the green fire had done to him and to Maggie, it had made them tough enough that the pellets couldn''t break their skin.


    Maggie roared in pain but she didn''t go down. For a second her hands were on her face, scrubbing at it as if she could wash away the pain. Then she brought her hands down and looked back at Brent.


    No. She glared at Brent. She thought he must have been in on this. That he had betrayed her. She reached out to grab him and he saw her face was unmarked, that she had taken a shotgun blast right in the head and it hadn''t really harmed her at all.


    It had, however, pissed her off.


    She grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off the ground. He tried to squirm out of her grasp as she pulled her arm back, but he felt weak and queasy, his body rebelling against him. Then she punched him right in the nose.


    Blood squirted down the front of his shirt. His ears rang and his skull felt like it was spinning around underneath his scalp. He fell backwards, unable to stop himself, and landed flat on his back. The pain of the shotgun pellet hitting his ear was nothing compared to this - he thought he might throw up. He thought he might pass out.


    "Turn around and put your hands against the wall," the policeman said, pumping his shotgun. "I will shoot you again."


    All around them cops were running out from behind their cars, weapons drawn and pointed at Maggie. One of them had a taser, a flat white plastic gun with two prongs sticking out of its front. He fired and the prongs turned into darts that punctured her shirt. A pair of very thin wires were attached to the darts. There was a crackling sound and Maggie''s head jerked back for a second, but still she didn''t go down.


    It seemed to Brent that she moved very slowly as she stepped toward the policeman, the one with the shotgun who had fired at her first. Brent saw him turning as if he was going to run away. Maggie didn''t give him a chance. She grabbed him by the straps of his bulletproof vest and swung him around as easily as if he was a toy. When she let go he flew through the air, his legs and arms flailing. He hit one of the police cars hard enough to crumple its hood. Brent could hear bones snapping inside his body and saw his face go slack as he slid down to the ground.


    He wasn''t moving.


    He looked back at his sister. Her eyes were very wide. She looked scared - terrified - by what she''d done. But she didn''t stick around to apologize. The other cops were starting to shoot at her, pistol bullets and rifle rounds zipping through the air, the smell of gunsmoke filling up Brent''s nose -


    And then she was gone. She had jumped over the line of police cars and was running away. After a moment Brent couldn''t see her anymore.


    He got up carefully, worried he might have broken some bones himself when she hit him. His nose felt like it was stuffed up and it was still bleeding, a trickle of wet blood running down his lip and into his mouth. He wanted to touch it, to feel if the cartilage in there was shattered, but he thought that might not be a good idea. What if he made it worse.


    "What are you doing?" Weathers demanded. He ran up and grabbed Brent''s arm and shouted in his ear as if he was trying to wake Brent up. "She''s getting away!"


    Brent stared at the FBI man. If he could have shot lasers out of his eyes he would have, then and there.


    "You have to go after her," Weathers said. "Nobody else can keep up with her. What are you waiting for?"


    "You set us up," Brent said. His voice sounded like a growl.


    "There''s no time for this," Weathers told him.


    Brent shook his head. "We''ll make time, then. You told me I would have a chance to bring her in peacefully. But you just wanted to kill her!"


    "Oh, please, kid. With buckshot? We knew it would barely hurt her. What were we supposed to do, shoot her with BBs?"


    "You betrayed me. You tricked me into betraying my sister."


    Weathers grunted in annoyance. "She is getting away. Right now. You need me to draw you a diagram? She''s hurting people, Brent. I told you my job is to make sure people don''t get hurt. Innocent, honest people. She''s already decided she''s not one of them, so I have no problem if she gets hurt, because that''ll protect a lot of people who do deserve my help."


    "And what about me?"


    "Oh, did I hurt your feelings? Well, pardon me. I''ve got a girl who''s knocking down houses and breaking an old lady''s arm because she''s so full of hormones she doesn''t know right from wrong. If I need to lie to you, some teenage boy whose biggest contribution to society is that he refuses to beat up the school bully, so be it."


    "I quit. I don''t work for you anymore. Do you understand?"


    "You never did. I don''t pay you. I''d actually be happier, and my life would be easier, if you did not exist, Brent. But right now you have to go chase your sister and hit her until she stops running. Because as of right now, she has nothing to lose. She just hurt a cop pretty bad. What''s next? Is she going to kill someone?"


    Brent tried to think of a reply. But he couldn''t. Weathers was right. Maggie''s behavior had been getting worse and worse. Who knew how low she would sink before she was through? She had to be stopped, one way or another. Either the cops could try shooting her with bigger and more deadly guns, or it could be him. Brent could chase her down and bring her in.


    "Well, get to it," Weather said.


    Brent wanted to spit. He wanted to punch the FBI man in the face. Instead, he jumped over the cars and hit the ground running, zooming like a rocket down a crowded city street.

 Page 29

    The sidewalks were too crowded - people had gathered as close as they could to the bank, anxious to see what was going on. If Brent tried to run on the sidewalk he was going to collide with somebody, fast enough to knock them down and maybe really hurt them. He couldn''t let that happen. So instead he ran up the middle of the street, slipping between the two rows of cars. Motorists honked their horns at him but there was nothing he could do - Maggie was way ahead of him, and he needed to gain some ground if he wanted to catch her.


    The road ran ahead of him as straight as an arrow, pointing at some distant mountains to the west. He could just see her up ahead, maybe a quarter of a mile away. He could see her just fine - his eyesight had grown stronger, just like the rest of him - but she wasn''t too hard to follow anyway. He just had to follow the path of destruction.


    She had knocked down a newsstand, scattering the pavement with magazines and packs of gum. She had crossed an intersection with Fulton Street, leaving cars stalled and honking in frustration in her wake. From the dents in their hoods it looked like she hadn''t even slowed down, instead just running over the cars as if they were minor bumps in the asphalt. Further along, at Gallup Street, a driver had swerved to avoid hitting her and had instead driven up on the curb and smashed a fire hydrant. Water fountained high in the air: Brent felt a few drops on his shoulders as he pumped his legs, trying to pour on more speed.


    He was gaining on her, definitely - only a few hundred yards separated them now - he could see her straight ahead, see the cleats on the soles of her field hockey shoes flashing left then right then left. She glanced over her shoulder to look at him -


    - there was a squeal of brakes, an insistent blaring horn - a sickening crash -


    Maggie reeled backwards, momentarily stunned. A car, a Volkswagen, had hit her head on. The car looked like its front had had been folded in half. The driver released his seat belt and stepped out of the car, one hand on his bald head. "Are you alright?" he asked, sounding far louder than he probably meant to be. "Miss?"


    Maggie growled and then leaned forward, slamming her hands down on the hood of the car. The driver hesitated for half a second, then ran off.


    Brent hurried to close the distance. To get to her. What he was going to do when he reached her he wasn''t sure. They would probably fight.


    There was something organic about the thought. He was a superhero. She was a supervillain. They were supposed to fight, weren''t they? According to every comic book Brent had ever seen, the answer was yes.


    Except - one of the last things Dad had said to Brent was that he wished the two of them wouldn''t fight so much. The memory of that, of his dad''s voice saying that, nearly made him stop running.


    The Volkswagen came soaring through the air at him. Brent shook his head. He''d gotten distracted. Maggie had picked the car up and threw it at him.


    Brent jumped out of the way in the nick of time. The Volkswagen hit the intersection and burst open with an enormous, terrible noise, spitting out broken glass and hubcaps and pieces of fender, bouncing up on its tires and then coming down again hard enough to grind sparks off the pavement. Traffic from either side swerved and skidded into the mess and somebody screamed in panic.


    Hanging by his hands from a traffic light, Brent looked down on all the chaos and breathed a sigh of relief. If he''d been underneath the car when it hit... but that didn''t bare thinking about.


    Maggie was moving again. She was turning down a side street, Houston Street, headed toward the town''s rusted-out industrial district. Brent dropped down on top of the demolished Volkswagen and dashed after her, cutting close around the corner and jumping straight up in the air to avoid colliding with a baby carriage. The woman pushing it shouted something he didn''t bother listening to. Maggie was up ahead, at another intersection, taking a right turn. She was trying to shake him, trying to get where he couldn''t see her, behind one building or another. Maybe he could cut her off. Across the street was a fast food restaurant, a two-story building with a covered drive-thru. Brent used the back of a parked convertible as a ramp and launched himself up onto the concrete slab that formed the roof of the drive-thru, then leapt again to grab the top edge of the restaurant''s front wall with one hand and swung himself up onto the flat roof while people down in the street pointed and gasped.


    He dashed to the far side of the roof and looked down. Maggie was there, running at full speed down the empty street. She looked over her shoulder but she didn''t see him running along the rooftop just above her. He could leap down, he thought, and land on her shoulders, knock her down and then hold her there, wait for the police to arrive. He was just about to do it when he noticed his shadow. The sun was just going down behind him and it cast long sharp shadows everywhere it touched. Brent''s shadow was sweeping along the street just in front of Maggie. If she looked down -


    She looked down. Then she looked up, and scowled at him.


    "Leave me alone, Brent," she called up. She wasn''t out of breath, despite the fact they''d been running at more than thirty-five miles an hour.


    The rooftop ended in front of Brent. He leapt easily to the next one, a tire store with a tarpaper-covered roof with only a slight incline. The next building down was an electronics store with a gravel-lined roof that sprouted dozens of air ducts and satellite dishes and the three flat white rectangles of a cell phone receiver tower. Instead of trying to navigate that mess, Brent tried to jump diagonally across the street, to the bare roof of a motel.


    Tried - except Maggie pegged him in mid-air with a razor scooter.


    She threw it hard enough to hurt him, but clearly that wasn''t her main intention. It hit him right in the chest and sent him into a bad tumble, so that when he was close enough to grab the roof of the motel instead he slammed up against its wall, cracking the concrete there and dropping him hard into a stand of bushes.


    Out in the street a little girl was staring at him, a look of total incomprehension on her face. Maybe her parents had never told her about superheroes. Brent got to his feet, brushed a few evergreen branches off his torn shirt, and handed the scooter to the girl. It was dinged up a little but it looked like it would still work. Brent ran back out into the street and looked around for Maggie.


    "Brent," she called, from half a block away.


    He pivoted around to face her.


    "Catch," she told him. And threw a Volvo at him.


    With his super-strong vision, Brent had no trouble seeing the screaming woman in the front seat - or the child''s car seat in the back.

 Page 30

    Brent didn''t have much time to think about what to do next. He could catch the Volvo easily, but it was coming at him so fast and at such a steep angle that even if he kept it from smashing into the street, the shock of his catch would probably throw the car''s occupants right out of their seatbelts.


    So instead of just catching it, he had to slow it down before impact. He ran forward, the muscles of his legs screaming as he pushed them harder than he ever had before. When the Volvo was still ten feet up in the air he leapt right at it, smashing into the front end with his shoulder. The car shook and rattled from the impact but not enough to hurt the people inside. As Brent started falling back, away from the mid-air collision, he grabbed at the fender, the hood, even the windshield wipers trying to get a good grip. A moment later his feet touched the ground. His knees bent under him and threatened to collapse, but he managed to keep his legs under him as he gently, slowly, lowered the car to the ground and set it down on its tires.


    He rushed around to the driver''s side and pulled the door open. "Are you okay?" he asked.


    The driver, a woman who kind of looked like his mom, was pale and shaking but she didn''t seem to be hurt. Brent glanced over her shoulder at the child safety seat in the back. The boy in the seat couldn''t have been more than three years old. He looked up at Brent curiously, then picked a piece of cracker off his shirt and ate it.


    "I think you''ll be alright. I''m sorry if I damaged your car," Brent said, trying to meet the driver''s gaze again. She was staring straight ahead, holding onto the steering wheel with both hands as if she was ready to drive off. "It was the only way. Listen, the police will be here soon - you may want to wait until they can check you out, make sure you weren''t hurt."


    "Thank... you," the woman said. Then her head fell back against the headrest of her seat and her eyes fluttered closed.


    "Damn," Brent said.


    He stood up and looked around for Maggie. She was gone, of course. Throwing the Volvo had been a diversion, a trick to get Brent to stop chasing her. It had worked. He couldn''t leave this woman and her baby, not until he was sure they would be okay. Maggie could be blocks away by then, and he had no idea which direction she''d gone. He would never catch her.


    A police helicopter came buzzing overhead first. Brent was sitting on the crumpled hood of the car. He looked up and saw it hovering in the darkening twilight air. He waved it away, trying to tell the pilot he needed to look for Maggie, that everything was under control where Brent was. Instead the helicopter just stood there in the air, not moving. Brent could barely hear sirens over the whirring of its rotor.


    A cop car came racing around the corner and nearly hit the Volvo. Brent started to get up, intending to push it back with his hands if he needed to, but the driver was able to brake in time. Two police officers got out and came running toward him with their guns drawn. "You can put those away," Brent said, shouting over the noise of the helicopter. "But do either of you have any medical training?"


    "I know first aid," one of them said. She knelt down by the open driver''s side door and reached in to take the unconscious woman''s pulse. Her partner moved quickly to string up yellow police tape to block off the road.


    "She got away," Weathers said when he arrived a few minutes later. "She had to smash up half the town but she got away."


    "Yeah," Brent said. "Well, now that you''re here I''ve got better things to do, so I''ll just be going - "


    "Not so fast. We''re going to need an official statement from you. A detailed account of everything that happened. Do you know how much paperwork I''m looking at? There are going to be lawsuits enough to keep a judge busy for years."


    "Forget it," Brent told him. "You can figure it out on your own."


    Weathers grabbed his arm. Brent looked down at the FBI man''s hand, then up at his face. Brent tilted his head to one side and frowned.


    "Don''t try to intimidate me. I know your secret weakness, now. So does your sister?"


    "You do?" Brent asked. He wasn''t aware he had one.


    "Yeah. You always do the right thing. That makes you predictable. Maggie knew you wouldn''t let this woman or her baby get hurt. That you would give up chasing her if that''s what it took to save them. That''s a dangerous precedent, you know. What happens next time? How many people will she endanger to throw you off her trail?"


    "Maybe there won''t be a next time," Brent said. He shrugged off the man''s hand. "Maybe after today, doing the right thing doesn''t look so good anymore."


    "Like you have a choice," Weathers said. The he sighed. "Alright. You can go. But stay by a phone. I want you where I can reach you at all times."


    "I already told you! I don''t work for you," Brent said.


    "No. In a way, you could say that I work for you. Because you''re on the list of those honest, innocent people I work to protect. Make sure you stay on it," Weathers said, and then turned away, done with him.

 Page 31

    Helicopters circled the city all night, looking for her. Maybe they thought she had no place to go, and that she would be out on the streets. Maybe they thought she wouldn''t be foolish enough to find a place to lie low. Maggie was too tired to be smart, though. She found a mid-price hotel at the edge of town, out by the airport, and decided to treat herself. If they caught up with her, if the management turned her in - she would just have to fight her way out. It was worth it to have a real bed, a real shower, and maybe even a radio. Maybe she could get some music, and drive away the darkness in her head.


    At the front desk she told the clerk she wanted a room for one night. She had taken the precaution of putting her disguise back on - hoodie, baseball cap, and even a pair of sunglasses, though outside the sun had already gone below the horizon.


    The clerk was a guy not much older than herself. He had long sideburns and the bored, tired eyes of somebody working a job they didn''t take very seriously. He gave her a momentary smile and shoved a book at her. "Sure. Just sign in here and give me seventy-nine dollars."


    Maggie took a pen and signed herself in as Greta Garbo, because she just wanted to be left alone. The clerk didn''t even look at the name.


    "I''ll just need to see your credit card. We don''t charge you yet, not until you check out, but - "


    "I want to pay cash," she told him.


    He shrugged. "''S cool, but I still need a credit card. So in case you trash the room or something we can bill you later." He looked at her face for the first time, but because he didn''t go pale or run away, she assumed he didn''t recognize her. "You aren''t planning on trashing the room, are you?" he asked, and gave her a smile. It lasted longer this time. "If you are, confidentially," he said, "I''ll be glad to help. This place could use a little redecoration. And if you want to party, I can get you anything you want - "


    "Look, here''s the cash, upfront," Maggie said. She laid four twenties on the counter between them.


    He looked down at them and stopped smiling. "It''s our policy. We need a credit card. Everybody has one, right?"


    Maggie sighed. "Sure," she said. "It''s right here." She put another twenty on the counter.


    He licked his lips. "You got some ID? Maybe a driver''s license?"


    Another twenty. She had plenty of them.


    "Passport? Birth certificate? Green card?"


    Each time he named a type of ID she laid another twenty on the counter. Then she held up another five of them. "This," she said, "is a tip." When he reached for the hundred dollars in her hand she said, "I''ll make sure you get it tomorrow. When I check out." Hopefully, if the police came sniffing around he would say he hadn''t seen her - because if she had to run again he wouldn''t get his tip.


    He handed her a key and she went up to the room and took a very long, very hot shower. She shampooed and conditioned her hair with the little bottles the hotel staff provided and went through most of a bar of soap that smelled like vanilla and cinnamon.


    There was a bathrobe in the closet. She happily took her field hockey uniform and her disguise clothes down to the hotel''s laundry room and put them all in for the longest possible wash cycle.


    Back up in the room she sank her toes into the plush carpeting and then fell back on the starchy maroon coverlet of the bed. The air in the hotel room tasted of stale air conditioning and ancient cigarette smoke. It was too cold and too dry but - unbelievably, after the conditions she''d been living in the last week or so - she could change that. She could turn a couple of knobs and make it perfect for herself.


    It was like heaven. Room service was more than happy to bring up a steak dinner that cost her another three twenties, including tip. The minibar was full of alcohol she decided she didn''t want - she''d been to parties before where kids her age drank so much they got sick, but Maggie had always been a jock and she''d tried to treat her body right. There was no reason to change that now, so she dug a diet coke out of the back of the little refrigerator and sat down to watch some TV.


    There wasn''t much on. There never was, but it seemed especially bad that night. There were plenty of sitcoms on about normal happy families laughing their way through problems. There were reality shows about people in situations that had nothing to do with her reality. She almost started watching a show about how wood screws were made, but then caught herself and decided that if she was going to be that bored, she might as well go to sleep. She flipped through one more time and caught a news broadcast. When she saw Brent''s face she turned up the volume.


    Despite what she''d told her brother, Maggie had been following the news pretty closely. She''d watched for any sign of his exploits - despite herself, she''d been proud of her little brother - and any indication of what the police were doing while trying to catch her. She had seen Brent''s speech to her several times, and it looked like they were running it again.


    Maggie sighed deeply and had to fight to keep tears out of her eyes. As always when she saw the video it made her think of when they really had been brother and sister. When Mom and Dad had both still been alive, and Grandma was an unpleasant social obligation she only had to meet once or twice a year. A time when she''d been normal. When everything had been normal.


    She''d planned on going to college, once. She''d planned on having her own family. Now it looked like neither of those plans were ever going to work out.


    " - not going to cause trouble for you. I just want us to be a family again. I want us to be okay," Brent said.


    "Oh, baby bro," Maggie said, letting herself weep a little now. "If only it was that simple. If only it were - "


    On screen the face of Special Agent Weathers appeared. "As of tonight she''s still at large. I don''t want to minimize the danger, but I don''t want to cause panic either. If you see Margaret Gill please, please, stay away from her. Don''t under any circumstances try to apprehend her yourself."


    The tears dried on Maggie''s face. "They''d better not try," she said. She could feel the anger coming back, but it was almost welcome this time. Weathers - if he was in her hotel room right then she would have grabbed him by the throat. He''d tried to kill her!


    "I have every reason to believe we''ll take her into custody shortly," Weathers went on. "Especially now that we have Brent working with us. He''ll do whatever it takes to bring his sister to justice."


    The television set exploded, because Maggie shot across the room and kicked in the screen. Broken glass and sparks glittered and flashed on the carpet, all around her bare feet. It didn''t matter. Her feet were tougher than anything she could step on, now.


    Baby bro, she thought. Oh, Brent. You''ve sold me out. You want us to be okay, do you?


    Next time, I''m going to break more than your nose.


    There was more to the newscast, however, and it made her sit up on the bed and pay very close attention.

 Page 32

    BRENT''S BIG BLUNDER!


    SISTER GETS AWAY


    Cops curious: did he let her run?


    Brent read the headline again. He was still too mad to read the full text of the front page story in the morning paper. The picture showed him standing next to the Volvo. It was taken from a high angle, maybe even from the helicopter he''d seen hovering over the scene, so you couldn''t see the mother or her baby inside the car. You could see the blood that splattered downward from Brent''s nose and stained his shirt, and the way his nose was kind of tilted over to one side.


    Lucy came over and touched his nose gently. "It doesn''t hurt any more, does it?" she asked.


    "No, it''s completely healed. It felt kind of weird for a while but then I figured out why. It was bent out of shape when she punched me. The cartilage had to shift back to the right position. The paramedic who checked me out nearly had a heart attack when he saw it crawling across my face like that."


    "Yuck," Lucy said.


    "He said normally noses don''t do that. He said that when somebody gets their nose flattened like that, normally the doctors have to break it again to put it back in the right shape."


    "Okay, stop," Lucy told him.


    He was angry enough, though, to enjoy grossing her out. "I could feel it moving inside my head all night. Rebuilding itself."


    "Stop! I know I said I would always be there for you, and yes, I guess that''s true, but if you tell me one more nasty detail I will totally walk out the door, and I know for a fact that you don''t want that, so be quiet, okay, cease and desist, be still, for me?"


    He frowned and sat down next to her on his bed. "Sorry," he told her. "I''m just fed up. I did everything I could and the newspaper acts like I dropped the ball. ''Cops curious''. I mean, seriously? One of them did ask me if maybe I let her go, but then Weathers threatened to have him demoted on the spot and he backed down. Everyone who was there saw me go chasing after her at top speed. If I had caught her, if I hadn''t had to catch that car - "


    "Would you have beaten her up?" Lucy asked.


    "I - I don''t know," he admitted. "I probably would have tried to talk to her again. And she would have run away again." He thought back to the moment when Maggie had hit him. "Except, there was this one moment, when I was convinced that suddenly everything made sense. That my whole purpose, the point of my entire existence, was to get in a serious fistfight with Maggie. How messed up is that? My dad would have been ashamed. But if she had stuck around, I think I would have hit her back. She''s my sister, Luce. Why did I feel that way?"


    "Let me ask you something," Lucy said, running one hand up and down his back. "Before you got your powers - you and she fought a lot, right?"


    "Well... we called each other a lot of names. And one time, when we were pretty young, I was building this tower out of Legos, like, this enormous thing that I spent days on, and she knocked it over like she was Godzilla."


    Lucy laughed. "But you never, even once, wanted to hit her?"


    Brent stared down at his feet. He could see where this was going. "Yeah. I guess I did. Maybe about a hundred times a day, some days. But I would never have actually done it. Mom always said I should never, ever hit a girl."


    "Which is good advice. Except maybe if the girl is throwing cars at you. Don''t punish yourself for being human, Brent. I know you think you''re supposed to be some paragon of virtue now because of what happened to your dad, but don''t be so hard on yourself! And don''t let total strangers tell you what you''re worth. You''re always going to be my hero. You always have been, even before all this."


    He leaned over and gave her a big hug.


    For a while they just hung out, the way they had been doing for years. Lucy tried to help him with some of his algebra homework but mostly he just wanted to chill, listen to some music (not too loud) and surf the web. It was actually really nice, the kind of thing he hadn''t had the chance to do for ages, and when Lucy said she had to get home he was sad to see her go. At the front door he waved at her dad, who had come to pick her up in his Jeep. Lucy''s dad was a really nice guy who had the loudest laugh Brent had ever heard and who always wore a cowboy hat, indoors and out. Brent liked him a lot. When they''d gone, Brent turned around to head back to his room - and found Grandma standing right behind him, watching him intently.


    "We should talk," she said. She lifted her cast and gestured for him to follow her to the kitchen. She sat down with a grunt and let her broken arm rest on the table.


    "Do you need anything before bedtime?" he asked.


    "I need," she said, and stared at him through her huge glasses, "some peace of mind."


    "I''m not sure I can help you there," he told her.


    "Maybe," she went on, "you think I was too hard on your sister. Look at me, boy. You answer me now, and be honest."


    Brent nodded. He didn''t like to say it, but - "Yes. I think you really pushed her. I don''t blame you for her running away. That was her choice. But you made her life pretty miserable."


    Grandma nodded agreeably, as if she could see his point and was giving it ample consideration. Then she said, totally surprising him, "I love that girl."


    He could do nothing but sit there and wait for her to explain. What she''d said sounded frankly impossible.


    "Don''t be so surprised. She''s all I have left of my daughter. Oh, don''t pout like that. I know I have you as well, but you take after your father. Maggie has your mother''s eyes and her hair - that beautiful hair. I used to brush out your mother''s hair for her, when she was little. And then, until she was five years old, I brushed Maggie''s, as well. Did you know that? No. You didn''t."


    "But you hit Maggie! A lot!"


    "I hit your mother, too, when she needed it. Because it was the only way to keep her on the straight and narrow." Grandma waved her good hand in the air. "I suppose things are different now. But in my day, we had a saying: ''spare the rod and spoil the child''. It was how you taught your children discipline and respect."


    Brent thought there had to be better ways. He thought that society must have come pretty far since then. "They don''t say that anymore," he told her.


    She looked unconvinced.

 Page 33

    The security guards were checking IDs at the front door of the hospital, so Maggie went around to the back and jumped up to the second floor and crawled in through an open window. Then she had to wait near the nurse''s station until no one was around, which felt like it took hours. Once she had access to a computer it was easy enough to look up what room Fred Wallace was in. She''d gotten his name from the news broadcast she''d seen in her hotel room. He was the cop who had shot her in front of the bank while Brent distracted her. He was the cop she''d then picked up and thrown, hard enough to fracture half the bones in his body.


    He was a twelve-year veteran of the police force. He had a wife and two kids. She had swatted him away from her like a pesky fly. It was true, he had shot her. In the face. But she had shrugged off the pain of that in a second. His pain was going to last a whole lot longer.


    No one noticed when Maggie slipped past a nurse''s station on the fifth floor and worked her way down a semi-darkened hallway. It was late and the hospital felt all but deserted. Visiting hours were long over but in some of the rooms she passed people were still sitting next to quiet beds, holding pale, battered hands or reading magazines or just staring into space. Machines kept beeping softly to themselves and the soda machine at the end of the hallway rumbled and buzzed for no one.


    She found the room she wanted. The door was open and she could see Wallace lying in the bed. There were bandages wrapped around most of his head and on both of his hands. He was asleep. Maybe that was for the best. Maggie slipped into the room and stood at the foot of his bed.


    It was amazing how fragile human bodies could be. The ones without superpowers, anyway. She hadn''t thought about what she was doing. As usual, she had just reacted - to her anger, to the darkness inside of her. When he shot her, she''d figured that made it alright to strike back. No, even that was giving her too much credit. She hadn''t figured anything. Everything had looked red, and she had just lashed out like a wounded animal.


    She didn''t think she should wake him. He probably needed his rest, and, anyway, what was she going to say to him? I''m sorry I nearly killed you? The newscast had said he was in serious but stable condition. That meant he wasn''t going to die. But what if he had? It could have happened easily enough. If he''d hit his head instead of his back, if she''d thrown him slightly differently... there were so many ways.


    All she could do, she decided, was leave the money and go. She slipped off her backpack and looked for a place to set it down. She was giving him half the money she''d stolen from the bank. It might cover his medical expenses, though she doubted it. She''d started to count it earlier and realized that there just wasn''t that much of it. After paying for her ridiculously expensive hotel room and a cheap car, she might not even half enough left to pay for gas and food on her trip out of town. It didn''t matter, though. She would give Wallace and his family as much as she could spare.


    She was about to put the backpack on a chair by the bed when she heard a toilet flush. All the hair on her arms stood up and she slowly turned around to see someone coming out of the room''s private bathroom. A middle-aged woman with short, frizzy hair. Her face was red and worn as if she''d been crying for a long time. It must be Wallace''s wife, Maggie decided.


    "I don''t want you here," she said, her voice firm. Not, what are you doing here? Not, did you come to finish the job? That was what Maggie had expected.


    "I only came to say I''m sorry. And to try to help," Maggie told her.


    "Don''t. Don''t try. You can only make things worse. I know about you. I went back and read all the things they said in the newspaper. You hurt people, and then your brother comes in and saves the day. Except he doesn''t save anything. He just cleans up. He''s like your janitor."


    Maggie looked down at her shoes. "I have some money, here, I thought it could help pay for the hospital room, and - "


    The woman grabbed the backpack out of Maggie''s hands. She rummaged around in the twenty dollar bills crammed inside. "Where''d you get this?" she asked, holding up a handful of twenties.


    "From the bank."


    "It''s stolen? Do you even understand what you''re doing? He''s a cop. I''m a cop''s wife. I can''t take this. It would be my duty to turn it in." She threw the bills at Maggie and they fluttered across the floor. "Here. I don''t want it," she said, and handed the backpack to Maggie. "Stupid little twit. Bringing stolen money here."


    "I was only trying to say I''m sorry!" Maggie protested.


    "Help? Do you even know what you did? It''ll be months before he walks again. Fred will probably never be able to go back to active duty - they''ll have to give him a desk job. He''s going to hate that."


    Tears were crowding in the corners of Maggie''s eyes. "Please. Let me help, somehow. Just tell me what you want. Because I don''t know what else to do."


    The woman grabbed Maggie''s face in her hand and stared into her eyes. "Just go away. Just go somewhere and die."


    Maggie fled the room, then. At the nurse''s station someone shouted for her to stop, but she ignored them and kept running. Eventually she was outside again and still running and she didn''t stop for a long time.

 Page 34

    Weathers was waiting for Brent the next morning when he was on his usual patrol, heading towards school and another day of failing algebra. When Brent first saw the FBI man he kept walking, but Weathers just followed after him.


    "Leave me alone," Brent said. He knew it wouldn''t work, but what else was he going to do? Hit the guy?


    It was tempting.


    "I''m not here to ask you for anything today," Weathers told him.


    "Are you here to apologize for using me?"


    Weathers chuckled. "No. That was just part of my job. It''s also part of my job to provide you with information you may find useful."


    Brent scowled. "Did you find my sister again? You want me to go trick her into getting run over by a tank?"


    Weathers grabbed his shoulder. Brent spun around, as angry as he''d ever been in his life. The fingers of his right hand curled into a fist. Both of them looked at it. Eventually Brent managed to relax his hand, to let it fall loose at his side.


    Weathers seemed intent on pretending he hadn''t seen it. That he had no idea what Brent had been thinking. "Yesterday wasn''t a complete fiasco. We actually managed to gather a lot of useful data."


    "What? You were - huh?"


    "I wanted to know how powerful the two of you were, so I had some of our techies rig up some video equipment in the helicopter you saw. We got excellent footage of the two of you fighting and my analysts spent all night going over it."


    "So now you are watching us, just like Maggie said."


    Weathers shrugged. "Studying you, you could say. As long as your sister is at large my job is to know everything I can about her. Especially about her limitations and weaknesses. It turns out the two of you have similar, but not identical powers. She''s about ten per cent stronger than you are - but you''re faster, by the same margin."


    Brent frowned. "We''ve got different powers? Why?"


    "Who knows? I still don''t have a good answer as to why teenagers can survive the green fire in the alien spaceship but adults are killed instantly. Maybe it''s because you two have slightly different DNA, or maybe it was because she''s a little bit older than you. Honestly, I have no clue. My analysts were very surprised by the results. They assumed that it would be the other way round. Normally, men tend to have stronger muscles while women beat us at endurance and quickness. But your sister is the tough one in the family. This is the kind of thing you should know, Brent, for next time."


    "If I ever go up against her again - "


    "When you do," Weathers told him. "It''s inevitable you''ll clash again. The police gave it their best effort but she got away from them easily. You could have caught her - if you weren''t distracted. You''re the only real threat to her right now. Which means she''s going to want to neutralize you."


    "And if I refuse to fight her?" Brent asked, fuming. "I''ve got better things to do."


    "Like what?"


    Brent looked up the street. Matt Perkins should be coming along any second now. "There''s a bully, who picks on the little kids at school. I watch him. I make sure he doesn''t do anything to hurt anybody. Maybe that won''t save the world. But it makes life easier for somebody. It makes life better for somebody."


    "Matthew Perkins was expelled from school yesterday afternoon," Weathers told Brent. "After the local police had a chat with your principal. Bullying is a crime. Did you know that? Perkins'' parents agreed to remove their son from the school in exchange for a written promise from the school that no charges would be filed."


    Brent stopped breathing for a second. "You did that?" he asked.


    "Like I said, it was the local police. Who perhaps were acting on information I provided them. That''s what I''ve been reduced to now - providing information."


    Brent shook his head. "But that''s a terrible idea. Matt''s life will be ruined. And anyway, he was only a bully because his father abused him - "


    "When the Perkins family got home," Weathers went on, "they found a case worker from Child Protective Services waiting for them. Most likely Matthew will be removed from his parents'' custody and go live with a foster family."


    Brent rubbed at his face in frustration. "Oh my God. You broke up an entire family - "


    "A dysfunctional family. You really think Matthew was better off under his father''s care? You really think that was a good outcome?"


    "I don''t know. It''s not my right to judge people."


    "Nor is it mine. It''s up to the courts what eventually happens. Because the courts only exist to judge people. There are institutions in place, Brent, to take care of the little things. You don''t need to fix all the bullies and bad parents in the world. Matthew Perkins was a distraction. I took that distraction away. You''ve got far more important things to do."


    "Like betray my sister?"


    Weathers touched his forehead as if he were doffing a non-existent hat. "Have a good day at school. And, hey, kid? Don''t start rebelling just yet. The human race still needs you."


    He turned around and walked away, then. Brent roared in frustration, then headed to the next block where he was meeting Lucy to walk the rest of the way to school together. "I can''t believe he said that," he told her, after he''d recounted what the FBI man had said. "He knew exactly what it would do to me. That was one of the last things my dad ever said - ''When are you going to start rebelling''."


    "How could he know that?" Lucy asked.


    Brent shook his head. "Back when we first came out of the desert - the first time I met him - he had us tell him everything that had happened before Dad died, made us repeat every word either of us said. God! I should never have trusted him. You know what? I should start rebelling. I mean, I''ve got plenty to rebel against right now. You know what I should do? I should walk into the convenience store over there and take a pack of gum. And not pay for it. Just refuse to pay for it no matter what happens."


    Lucy laughed. "I have some gum right here if you want it," she told him.


    "That''s not the point! The point is to show the world that I''m not perfect. That they can''t expect these things from me all the time."


    "Brent, Brent, Brent - if you tried that, you know what might happen? The owner of the store might just give you the gum. He would probably assume you needed it for some totally good reason, like, there was a dam somewhere and it was going to burst, right, and you needed the gum to seal up the crack."


    "I could tell him otherwise. I could explain what I was doing."


    "I''ve got a better idea," Lucy said. "How about you just take a day off? Blow off a little steam. There''s a really good old movie on TV tonight, it''s called Omega Man, have you seen it? It stars that guy who ran the NRA, and it''s about the future when - well, I won''t spoil it, but we could make some popcorn and you and I could turn off our phones, and just kick back, and not worry about Maggie, or Matt Perkins or Ryan Digby or Weathers or your grandma or your dad or - "


    "Um."


    She turned and looked at him. "What?" she asked.


    "I kind of... can''t. I have a date."


    "A date?"


    Lucy walked over to the curb and sat down. Her leg braces clanked on the concrete.


    "A date," she said. "With Dana Kravitz?"


    "Uh, yeah," Brent said.


    Lucy put her face in her hands. He wasn''t sure but he thought she was crying.


    "Hey! Hey, Luce, it''s okay," he said, trying to put an arm around her. She shrugged him off. "Look, I know, I know - she''s friends with Jill Hennessey, who''s a total ass, she''s part of the popular clique and I know we''ve never gotten along with them, but - but Dana actually seems kind of nice, when you get to know her. I mean, she just wanted to thank me, see, for saving her the other day. It''s nothing serious. Just dinner, at her family''s house. That''s all."


    She dropped her hands into her lap and looked up at him. He''d seen the look on her face before. That night in his bedroom when he''d almost kissed her, she had that same look of despair and confusion. He had no idea what she was thinking, and he was afraid to ask.


    She dried her eyes and just breathed for a while. Then she asked, "What shirt are you going to wear?"

 Page 35

    He showed up at the Kravitz house ten minutes early, because his mom had always taught him you shouldn''t keep people waiting. He didn''t want to look too eager, though, so he walked around the block a couple of times before ringing the bell. Then it occurred to him that someone in the house might have seen him wandering around and wondered what he was doing.


    He was nervous. Brent wasn''t sure why, exactly, but something about this - this date - had him all worked up. He was even sweating a little. He pressed the doorbell again and heard it ring inside the house, but still nobody answered.


    Which just made him more nervous. What was going on? Maybe something had come up, and Dana couldn''t have dinner with him tonight, he thought, which would be okay, honestly. He took out his cell phone and started to dial her number but had barely got into his phone book when the door opened.


    "Hi," Dana said.


    Brent had no idea what to say in response.


    She was beautiful. She was always beautiful, even in the casual clothes most kids wore at school. But now she was wearing a dress, a short black dress with a scoop neck, and she had just a little makeup on, and her hair was - wow. Her hair was almost glowing. It fell in dark waves across her cheeks and it swung from side to side as she turned to look up the street.


    "There''s a van following you," she said.


    Brent spun around and saw a newsvan creeping up the street toward him. A camera man was leaning out of the passenger side window, focusing on him.


    "You''d better come inside," Dana told him.


    She lead him into a foyer full of dark wood furniture. All of it was polished and the glass and mirrors and brass was shining. He thought of Mandy Hunt''s house, which was immaculately clean and tastefully decorated but in the end just felt sterile and unlived-in. This was something else. He felt like he''d stepped back a century into a more elegant age. Dana''s family had money, he knew that. Brent''s family didn''t - at the moment, he and Grandma were just scraping by on money from Dad''s life insurance policy. It was hard not to feel like he''d come to the wrong house.


    "Come on through. We''re going to eat in the kitchen, if that''s alright. The dining room''s just not cozy enough." She turned and smiled at him over her shoulder. "I hope you''ll like what I made."


    I''m sure I will, he thought. And then realized he hadn''t said anything yet.


    "You look gorgeous," he said, which sounded stupid when it came out of his mouth. She gave him another smile, though, and it was warm enough that he felt like he might get a suntan just from the light coming off her perfect teeth.


    She lead him into the kitchen, which was bigger than he''d expected but at least the furniture didn''t look like it cost more than his college fund. There was a simple table with straight-backed chairs. Two plates were already laid out with silverware and cloth napkins. Too much silverware, it looked like. There were three forks - what did you need three forks for?


    "Aren''t your parents going to eat with us?" Brent asked, when he''d processed the fact there were only two plates.


    "Oh, no," she said, and her eyes were very wide. "You didn''t think - " She recovered herself. "Brent," she said, "this is a date. They were kind enough to go out for the evening so we could be alone."


    "Oh," he said.


    He sat down and she served him a salad - that was what the first fork was for. The salad was delicately dressed and full of fresh vegetables. It was at that point he realized that he wasn''t hungry at all.


    "This is really nice," he said, and pushed a forkful of microgreens and chopped mushrooms in his mouth. He chewed with determination. "You really didn''t need to go to all this trouble, though."


    "It was no trouble, believe me," she told him, waving her fork in the air. "We have a cook who comes in. I gave her an extra twenty dollars this week and she whipped all this up. Anyway, I really did want to thank you for saving me. When I was in your arms - "


    "I don''t think," he said, interrupting her, "that you were in any danger. Really. I just didn''t want to take the chance."


    She took a drink of water and studied him across the table. "You would have done it for anyone, is that how it works? Anybody in trouble? Why is that? What makes you want to save people? It''s not like they''d do the same for you." She shrugged an apology. "Sorry, that''s a weird question, I guess."


    "No," he said. "No." She got up and removed his salad plate - and his fork - and replaced it with his main course, a salmon filet in a creamy dill sauce. "It''s just... complicated. I have these powers and I guess I feel I have a responsibility to use them for... well. For good. My dad, you see - "


    - who I killed -


    " - he would have wanted me to help people. He believed that if you have the ability to help people, if you''re lucky enough to have something when other people don''t, then you always should." I could have put that better, he thought.


    "I can understand that," she told him. "My mom is really into charity. She''s always throwing parties to raise money for cancer research, or to help homeless people, or whatever. Of course, what she spends on the parties is sometime more than she collects for the charities, but I think her heart''s in the right place." She smirked. "Parents, huh? They try their best. But you can''t spend your whole life doing what your parents want."


    "You can''t?" he asked. He took a bite of the salmon. It really was delicious, he thought, but in his mouth it felt like indigestible plastic. He''d barely touched the salad but it was filling up his stomach as if it had expanded in there, making him dread finding out what the third fork was for.


    "No way! My dad wants me to become a systems analyst. Just like him. Whenever my computer goes down he says I have to fix it myself, because I need to learn how. But that''s what techies are for, right? I don''t want to spend the rest of my life looking at page after page of code. I want to travel and see the world. I thought maybe I should be an airline hostess. They can travel for free, did you know that?"


    "No," he said. He put his fork down on his plate. Dana moved quickly to remove the plate and replace it with dessert - cheesecake with real strawberries on top. He picked up the third fork and studied it. It was shorter than the others, and one of its tines had a sort of claw on the end. He''d never seen anything like it before in his life.


    "I think you should go to Hollywood," she told him, her eyes shining. "You could be in the movies. You''re cute enough, in a scruffy kind of way. If we just fixed your hair you''d be a knockout."


    He blushed. "I guess I could do my own stunts."


    "Oh my God, yeah!" she laughed. "This is really fun, isn''t it? Look, I don''t want this dessert. It''s just empty calories and who needs those, right? Let''s go in the living room. Do you want to watch a DVD?"


    He stood up and started picking up the dishes. "I''ll wash if you dry," he told her.


    Dana stared at him for a second. Then she shook her head. "Don''t worry about it. We have somebody for that, too. Come on!"


    She took him into a living room full of green leather couches and the biggest plasma TV he''d ever seen - it filled up half of one wall. She started gathering up remote controls and pointed, indicating he should sit on one of the couches. He sat down but before he could get comfortable she was on top of him, shoving in next to him so there shoulders and thighs touched and her head was lying on his shoulder.


    "Do you drink?" she asked.


    "Not really," he told her.


    "That''s so good to hear. My last boyfriend was a total alcoholic. He never saw a keg he didn''t like. I think you and I are going to get along a lot better. Kiss me."


    Alarm bells went off in Brent''s head. He felt a drop of sweat roll down the inside of his shirt collar. "What?"


    "It''s going to happen eventually," she said, looking up into his eyes. "Why not now? Kiss me. Please?"


    "I''m not sure I''m comfortable with - "


    "Brent! It only feels awkward because you''re not doing what you''re supposed to. Kiss me, and if it still feels weird, then I promise I''ll let you go home, okay? But first we have to find out. We need to know if we have chemistry."


    She was - she was right there. She smelled great. She was a beautiful girl. Brent was a fifteen year-old boy. He spent all day, every day, thinking about how great it would be to kiss a beautiful girl. Well, kissing wasn''t the only thing he thought about doing with girls, but it was a good place to start. He leaned his head down, just slightly, and let his lips meet hers. They were ridiculously soft. He pressed a little harder and felt her lips open a little bit beneath his.


    "There," she told him. "That feels right, doesn''t it? It feels exactly right."


    He kissed her again.


    It felt good. It made his head spin, in a good way. It made his whole body tense up, in an amazing way. Whether it felt right or not suddenly felt less important than it had before.

 Page 36

    On the other side of town Maggie stopped with her finger over a doorbell and wondered if she should even announce her presence. Maybe it would be more effective to just tear the door off its hinges and storm inside.


    No, she thought. That might attract attention. By the look of the houses on either side, with their dying lawns hemmed in by chain link fences, she doubted any of the neighbors would want to get involved. But they might call the cops. So she leaned on the doorbell until she could hear it buzzing inside, and didn''t let up until he opened his front door.


    It was almost worth coming all this way in the middle of the night just for the look on his face. The color went out of his cheeks and his eyeballs quivered in their sockets. His jaw fell open, as if he wanted to say something but was too scared to breathe and form the words.


    "Just let me in," she told him.


    He recognized her. He knew her all too well. From the day she and Dad had driven out here, when she''d been so intent on confronting him, on demanding answers. And from the night she and Brent had stood outside and she threw the empty liquor bottles at his wall. The guy who killed Mom knew exactly who she was, and what she could do to him. He probably thought he knew why she was there, too.


    Maybe he was right.


    He stepped back and flattened his back against a wall. She closed the door behind her, then walked into his living room. There wasn''t much furniture, just a patched corduroy couch and a tiny little television set with a cable box on top. She flopped down on the couch as if she owned the place and just stared at him for a while.


    "Are you going to kill me?" he asked, in a small voice.


    Maggie was a bad girl. Maggie was a villain. It turned out there wasn''t a lot to be said for villain as a career choice. But you did get to hurt people, even people who deserved it. It was expected of you to get revenge. She could kill this guy, and it would be easy. It would probably feel a lot better than when she hurt the policeman. Or even when she broke Grandma''s arm.


    "I want to talk, right now," she told him.


    "Talk to me?" he asked.


    "Duh." She stared at her nails. The paint on them had mostly chipped away but they were smooth and round. They didn''t seem to get any longer than they were when she got her powers. That was weird. Thinking about stuff like that was safer than thinking about what she was actually doing in the guy''s house. Sighing, she said, "Look, if you''re honest with me, if you answer my questions and you don''t lie, I promise I won''t actually kill you. That''s the best offer you''re going to get tonight, so I think you should take it."


    He nodded readily.


    "You live alone?" she asked. He nodded. "Anybody coming over tonight?" He shook his head. "That''s a good start. You killed my mom."


    He paused, then, as if thinking of the best way to answer her question. Finally, he sat down on the floor next to the television set and said, "Yes."


    He wasn''t a big guy. He didn''t look like he was all that smart, either. What had his life been like, she wondered? Since the accident. "You went to jail for a while, on a felony charge. I guess it''s tough to come back from that. Hard to find a job."


    "It''s been difficult," he admitted. "Plus, you get a parole officer who comes around at random times. Checks up on you, makes sure you aren''t breaking any laws. It can get pretty intrusive. Look, Margaret, I regret what I - "


    "Don''t say my name," Maggie told him. "Especially that name. Only my grandmother calls me that name anymore. Do you remember what my Mom looked like?"


    "Yes," he told her. He put a hand over his mouth, then took it away again. "I only saw her the one time, of course. After the - the accident. I went over to her car to see if she was hurt, and, well, she was. But she was beautiful, just like you. Even with the blood and the steering wheel jammed into her - "


    "I didn''t ask for gory details." There was no way Maggie wanted to know what that had looked like. "How can you remember what she looked like? That was over a year ago. And you only saw her for a minute, right?"


    "I''ll never forget. You don''t."


    Was this what Maggie had come for? To find out what it felt like to have killed somebody? But she already knew that, didn''t she? She''d killed Dad. Just as certainly as this guy had killed Mom.


    "You keep thinking that maybe, today, it''ll be better," he told her. "You wake up in the morning and for a second, just a second, you''re a normal person. A good person. Then you remember what you did, and that the woman you killed had two kids. You think long and hard about why you lived through that accident and she didn''t. You wonder if maybe there was some reason for it, but you know there wasn''t. It was just stupidity, your stupidity, and a dark corner of a road that was a little too narrow. You go over the accident in your head, every little detail, all the ways you could have avoided what happened, you obsess over those chances, as if you still had them, as if you still could stop it from happening if you just imagine it hard enough. But you can''t."


    "No," Maggie agreed.


    "It''s like glass. Time is like glass. Once it''s broken, you can''t put it back together. It''s always going to be broken. You get stuck, reliving the same moment for the rest of your life, and you can''t ever fix it."


    "No."


    "Is that - what you wanted to know?" he asked her. "Why you came?"


    "Maybe," she told him. She was still having trouble identifying her motivation herself. Unless - unless she''d come to see if there was any hope. Hope for herself, hope that things could get better again.


    Or maybe she''d just wanted to talk to the one guy in town who might actually know how she felt. The one who understood that for her it was too late, that she''d crossed some dark boundary and now she was a bad guy, and there wasn''t anything she could do to change that. Turning herself in wouldn''t make the cop better, or heal Grandma''s arm. Going to jail wouldn''t do anything, except ruin her own life.


    But in the end talking to the drunk didn''t help her feel better. Because he still had one thing she didn''t. He could remember what her mom looked like. Maggie couldn''t.


    It was tearing her up inside. She couldn''t remember what Mom''s voice sounded like, or what her birthday was, or what clothes she used to wear. All those memories had drained right out of her. She could see Dad''s face just fine. It was like the drunk had said - she would never forget Dad''s face. But Mom was a hole where memories used to be.


    There were pictures she could look at, back at the house, but she couldn''t go there. Her memories of Mom were broken, just like her innocence, and the pieces didn''t fit together anymore.


    She got up off the couch. She didn''t want to be there anymore.


    "What do you do for fun?" she asked the drunk. "You have a girlfriend, or any friends you hang out with?"


    "No," he told her. "Mostly I just come home from work and watch TV. It helps, kind of, watching TV - your mind stops working, and you just focus on the pictures in front of you. You can forget, for a little while."


    "Hmm." She strode across the room and put her foot through the glass screen of his TV set. He threw his hands over his head as glass and bits of wiring crashed all over his carpet. "That''s for my family," she said.


    She left through the back door.

 Page 37

    When Lucy came over the next day after school, Brent was getting Grandma''s dinner ready: minestrone soup and chicken salad just the way she liked it, with plenty of mayonnaise. Normally he didn''t like cooking but he was bubbling with excitement and when Lucy came into the kitchen he grabbed her up in his arms and swung her around the room, her leg braces clanging off the legs of the table and the chairs.


    "You''re in a good mood," Lucy said, laughing along with him. "Which is very good, I wanted to give this to you when you were feeling good about things, because you might take it the wrong way if you were feeling down, and - "


    "What are you talking about?" Brent asked. Then he noticed that she had brought a cardboard box with her. It was tied up with green ribbon. "A present? For me?"


    She nodded bashfully but couldn''t keep from laughing again.


    "Hold on, let me just turn this down. It needs to simmer a while anyway." He left the soup bubbling gently on the stove and headed up to his room, pulling her along by the hand.


    "What''s got you so happy?" she asked, as he pulled the door almost closed behind him. He was careful to leave it open a full foot, as per Grandma''s rules. "The last time I saw you, you looked like you were going to start an emo band."


    "Huh?"


    "You looked like you felt pretty sorry for yourself," she explained.


    He picked up the box and shook it. It made a soft rustling noise. He had no idea what was inside. He wanted very much to open it but first he had to tell Lucy what had happened. "I think I have a girlfriend," he told her. "I wasn''t really sure, at first, but when I kissed her, it all kind of came together and - "


    "You kissed Dana?" Lucy asked. Her face was expressionless, as if she was unsure exactly what he''d meant and was waiting for confirmation before she started to react.


    He bit his lip. Maybe this was something he should keep to himself - you weren''t supposed to kiss and tell, after all - but he really wanted to talk about it and Lucy was his confidante. "Yes," he said. "I kissed Dana."


    "Oh. That''s - "


    A laugh bubbled out of him. He paced around the room, not in agitation but just because he had so much energy. "Several times."


    "Okay, well, the details probably aren''t - "


    "With tongues." He went to the window and glanced outside, looking for newsvans or reporters, then pulled down the shade. "And then she let me touch her... well... her..." He turned around. He couldn''t see Lucy anywhere.


    He looked at the door but it was still open the mandatory one foot. She hadn''t gone out that way. He opened up his closet but it was so full of stuff even Lucy couldn''t have squeezed inside. Finally he looked in the space between his bed and the wall. She was there, curled up with her knees tight against her chest. She wasn''t looking at him. He squatted down in front of her and smiled at her but she just looked away.


    "Too much information," she told him. "Okay? I don''t want to hear the grotesque details."


    "I thought you''d be happy for me," he told her.


    "You thought that, huh?"


    Brent stood up and went over to his desk where he''d set down the box. He couldn''t understand what the problem was. They had talked about sex often enough before - both of them had been surprised to realize the other one thought about it so much, they''d wondered together what it was like, and they''d even confessed all to each other, pooling what little experience they had on the subject. She''d even told him once about the boy she''d fooled around with at camp the summer before he met her, and the details then had been more graphic than anything he could have said about Dana.


    "Okay, change of subject," he said, figuring if she was suddenly going to get squeamish he could at least be sensitive about it. "Let''s see what this is, shall we? It''s not even my birthday!"


    "Maybe now''s not the time," she said, but without much force behind the words.


    "Nonsense! There''s never been a better time." He pulled open the box and pushed back a piece of tissue paper that hid its contents. Underneath was a carefully folded suit of clothing. It was sage green. He pulled it out, thinking it was a shirt, but more and more of it kept unfolding and he realized it was a kind of jumpsuit. It zipped down the back and had a high, stiff collar of a much darker green cut in a pattern of flames that ran down the shoulders and part of the way down the chest. Underneath the jumpsuit, inside the box, was a pair of gloves of the same darker green color, ending in more of the spiky flames, and a pair of soft boots to match.


    "Holy cow," he said, holding the jumpsuit up against his body. The fabric was soft but felt very strong. This was why she''d been taking his measurements, he realized.


    She''d made him a costume.


    "You can''t be a, a," she said, waving her hands in the air, "superhero, right, without dressing the part. Can you?"


    He picked up one of the gloves and pulled it on over his left hand. It fit perfectly. He made a fist and it just looked right, like a superhero''s fist.


    "Oh my God," he said. "This is amazing. It''s - it''s green flames. Green flame, like the flame that gave me my power."


    Lucy glanced up at his eyes, then looked away again. "I thought you could call yourself the Green Flame. Except there''s two problems. One is, you might not want to constantly be reminded that the green flame also killed your dad, and the other, is that it would be kind of easy for mean kids to call you the Green Flamer, so maybe we need to work on the name. But I really liked the way it came out."


    "You made this?"


    "My mom helped some. Well, a lot. But I designed it. It''s not a big deal."


    "Not a - Luce! This is unbelievable! This is way, way beyond the call of duty. I have got the single best friend anybody ever wanted," he said, truly blown away.


    "Well," she said, and she started to smile, even though she still wasn''t looking at him. "I figured, every time you save somebody you end up ripping your shirt or getting blood all over yourself or whatever, so maybe this would be - "


    "Dana is going to flip when she sees me in this," he said.


    He might as well have dropped a live grenade on the floor.


    Suddenly a hundred pounds of Lucy Benez was leaping through the air at him, leg braces and all. Her small fists bounced again and again off his chest and her face was contorted in rage. She was hitting him, he realized, punching him like crazy. He tried to grab her arms but she just yanked them away from him and fell over onto the bed.


    "You stupid, you dumbass, you jerk!" she shrieked. "You freaking assface! You piece of - "


    "Lucy! What are you doing?" he asked, trying to grab her again. She writhed like a snake on the bed.


    "I worked for weeks on this! I had to save up every cent of my allowance to buy the fabric! I drew maybe a hundred sketches for what it should look like, I bought special color pens so I could show the ladies at the fabric store so it would be the perfect colors, I must have jabbed myself with needles and pins a million times because it had to be perfect, and yes, I did it myself because, whether you believe it, or not, I have, talent, I have so much, talent!" She was sobbing and gasping for breath at the same time. "I have some, some brains, in my head, unlike your, poor little, rich girl, brain-dead, girlfriend, who thinks she, can just, buy everybody, thinks, she can buy you, but she will never, love you, a millionth as much, as I''ve loved you every day, since I met you!"


    She rolled off the bed and hit the floor hard, her leg braces clanking against each other. He reached for her again but she waved a hand like a claw at his face and then she pulled herself up to her feet and hobbled out of his room, hobbled down the stairs, out the front door.


    He started to chase her - he could catch her easily - but Grandma was already there at the door with her plaster-wrapped arm held up to stop him.


    "Did you hear what she said?" he asked.


    "Half the neighborhood did, for my money," Grandma told him.


    "I have to go after her!"


    "If you do," she said, "it will be the biggest mistake of your life."


    "But - but - "


    "More importantly, I believe that my soup is burning. Go turn it down, dear. That''s a good boy."

 Page 38

    "Come on in," the stoner said, holding the door open. He kept scratching at the sparse goatee on his chin. "We were just watching a movie on cable," he told her.


    Maggie stepped inside an apartment that stank of old stale pot smoke. It was one of the cheap student apartments down by the local community college, a place where you were always likely to find somebody sitting outside on the lawn playing an acoustic guitar, but unlikely to find anybody playing one well. There were guys in the park playing hackey-sack and girls two years older than Maggie wearing no make-up and ponchos. Every time she''d been to this part of town, Maggie had wondered what they knew that she didn''t. What secrets she was going to learn, when she got to college.


    It looked like she would never find out.


    Whatever, she told herself. Buy the car. Get moving. Get out of town.


    "So how old are you?" the stoner asked. "You look kind of young."


    "I''m eighteen," she lied. She''d gotten his name out of the local free paper, out of the want ads. He was selling a car for twelve hundred dollars and the ad suggested he needed to sell it as soon as possible. It seemed like her best chance. Maggie had wasted a lot of time going to used car lots. Places like that wanted to see some ID up front, and they had not been impressed when she started laying out twenties to smooth things along. One place had even called the cops on her, while the salesman tried to convince her that whatever her parents had done, it couldn''t be so bad that she needed to run away. Rather than telling him the truth she''d just run.


    "Listen, can I see the car? I''m kind of in a hurry."


    The stoner was watching the TV on the other side of the room. Three other guys, all of whom had beards and the dull, glazed eyes of stoners, were sitting around the TV in various states of consciousness. "Yeah, hold on a sec." The advertisement on the TV ended and a newscast came on. "You know about the super kids? The brother and sister who keep fighting, right, but they''ve got super powers and - "


    "I''ve heard about them," Maggie said.


    "Well check this out. The brother snapped and totally attacked a reporter last night."


    "What?" Maggie stepped over toward the couch, intent on seeing the television. "Turn it up for a second," she said.


    The guy with the remote had laid his head back on the top of the couch and was looking up at her with a huge smile. He wasn''t blinking. She grabbed the remote out of his hand and turned it up herself.


    " - unprovoked outburst, leaving one vehicle badly damaged and this reporter scared for her life. We met up with Brent Gill at around seven last night as he was coming out of his suburban home. He looked agitated, but when we asked him what was making him upset his reaction was like nothing we''d seen before."


    The reporter''s face cut to a video shot of Brent walking straight toward the camera. His eyes were wild. Maggie had never seem him so angry. The reporter asked him a couple of questions Maggie couldn''t really hear - something about his girlfriend, which surprised her (what else had he been up to that she didn''t know about?) and he said, "No comment. No comment, okay? I don''t want to talk to you right now!" The reporter said something else that Maggie couldn''t make out at all. Then Brent came right up to the camera until his face filled the entire screen. "Leave me alone. All of you. Just leave me alone. Leave me alone, and leave Dana alone." (Dana Kravitz! Maggie thought - so Jill Hennessey is behind all this!) His nostrils flared. Then he said, "I''m not asking anymore."


    The camera pulled back as if the cameraman was running backwards to get away from Brent. The scene widened out and Maggie saw Brent standing in a circle of reporters, some of them backing up themselves, some pressing in closer with microphones or tape recorders or just notebooks and pencils. There was a news van very close to Brent, its headlights painting broad yellow stripes across his shirt and pants.


    He punched it.


    Just swung around and hit it with his fist. It jumped up off the ground and then fell back on its tires, bouncing a little. One of the headlights shattered and steam shot out of the broken grille on its nose. Its passenger-side door popped open and a cameraman fell out, then quickly got up and ran off. Brent punched the van again, darkening its other headlight. And again. And again.


    The camera cut back to the studio where the same reporter as before said, "Channel Seven news is still debating whether or not to press charges against the boy who, until very recently, we were calling a hero. More on this story as - "


    There were other stories on the news but she didn''t listen to them. It''s finally happened, she thought. The world in all its suckiness has finally caught up with the golden boy. She wasn''t sure how that made her feel, actually. Maggie switched off the TV. Suddenly four stoners were looking at her. None of them recognized her, though. Her disguise worked, as usual. "Now I''d like to see that car," she said.


    "Um, sure. It''s just downstairs."

 Page 39

    As Maggie had expected, the stoner college boy was easily distracted. When she handed over the money he just asked her if she didn''t want to test drive the car first, but he didn''t press the issue - he was too busy counting the twenties to pay her any real attention. He muttered something about title transfers and needing to change the car''s registration, but when she said she was in a hurry and they could take care of all that later, he just handed over the keys. She told him her name was Greta Garbo and he didn''t even shrug. He wanted a phone number for her but it was easy to make one up.


    Five minutes later she was on the road in her brand new broken down much used, oft-repaired Honda. It was gray, sort of, where it wasn''t rust colored. The interior stank of pot smoke but if she rolled down all the windows she could breathe enough to drive. She got on the road and headed toward the highway. There was nothing to hold her anymore. Nothing to stop her from making a clean getaway.


    Except...


    Except there was one thing she wanted to get first. She would leave all her clothes, leave all her things at the house rather than face Grandma again. But in her locker, at school, there was one thing she couldn''t just leave behind.


    Taped on the inside of her locker door was a picture of her mom.


    If she could just see it, one more time. If she could take it with her, and look at it every time she started forgetting what Mom looked like - it would help a lot. It would make her feel like she wasn''t going crazy. That the guilt she felt for the things she''d one wasn''t going to take her whole life away, just like she''d taken the drunk''s TV set.


    It was a mistake, she knew. Going to the school would put her at risk. Her disguise probably wouldn''t fool any of the kids there who knew her. And most likely Brent would be there. But if she was quick, if she didn''t take any unnecessary chances, then... maybe. Maybe it would be alright.


    The school was barely two miles away. It was an easy drive, and when she was done she could get right back on the highway from the school''s feeder road. She could be halfway across the state by lunch time.


    "Let''s do it," she told herself, and threw the car in gear.


    There were plenty of available spaces in the school''s parking lot. Theoretically if you didn''t have the correct permit you could be towed for parking there, but she didn''t plan on sticking around long enough for that to happen. She got out of the car and headed for the main doors of the school, the doors she''d passed through every weekday for the last three school years. There was no one around - classes were in session and the hallways would be empty. That was good.


    She passed right underneath a security camera on her way in. She considered grabbing it and tearing it off the wall, but the damage was already done - she had already been taped going into the school. Whatever. By the time the police saw the tape she would be long gone.


    She didn''t see anyone until she was passing the Home Ec rooms. There was a girl, a freshman Maggie didn''t know, using the drinking fountain to wash off her retainer. When she saw Maggie the girl pressed herself up against the wall and stared in terror.


    "Grr," Maggie said, and scratched at the air like a cat.


    The freshman girl squeaked in panic. She turned her head to one side as if she really expected Maggie to attack her, as if she couldn''t bear to watch the blow coming at her.


    "Oh, just beat it," Maggie said, and the girl was running before she''d even finished her sentence. The girl would probably go and tell her teacher, and the teacher would call the principal''s office, and the principal would call the cops. Whatever. That would take time, and her locker was just up ahead. When she reached it she wasted a few seconds trying to remember the combination, then realized she didn''t need it. She grabbed the locker''s handle and pulled. The whole door came away with a nasty screeching noise that made Maggie''s teeth hurt, it was so loud. Up and down the hall classroom doors popped open and kids looked out, wanting to see what was going on. It didn''t matter. She would just grab the photo and walk out, and if anyone tried to stop her she would just -


    The picture wasn''t there.


    There was nothing on the inside of the door. The locker itself was completely empty. It didn''t even smell like her locker anymore. It smelled like someone had scrubbed it out with disinfectant, a nasty smell that managed to be sweet and acrid at the same time. Not willing to believe it, Maggie turned the bent locker door over in her hands and checked the number, but it was the same number she''d always had.


    "You bastards," she growled. They had cleaned out her locker.


    Well, of course they had. The police had probably insisted on it. They would have wanted to know if there was anything in the locker that could lead them to her. She imagined one of the vice principals sorting through her stinky gym clothes and disassembling the ham sandwich lunch she''d left in there the day before she ran away. They probably went through all her textbooks and read all the notes in the margins. And they had definitely taken her picture of Mom away.


    "Oh no, you didn''t," she said. She couldn''t manage to put as much ironic sneer into her voice as she would have liked, though.


    Maybe they still had her stuff in a box somewhere, if they hadn''t just thrown it out. Maybe it was in the principal''s office. The smart thing to do, of course, would be to just walk away. She''d already taken too long here - any second now, somebody might -


    "We all get PMS sometimes, Maggot. It''s nothing to be ashamed of."


    Maggie turned slowly, a very nasty grin forming on her face. "Hello, Pill," she said. "It''s been so long, and I''ve barely missed you at all."


    Jill Hennessey stepped out of the student lounge just down the hall. "I''ve been keeping up with your press clippings. You know, the news reports, the articles in the paper. The wanted posters. I have to admit, I''m becoming a fan. I mean, I always believed in you. I knew from the start that you had the makings of a first rate sociopath. But you really sunk to new depths faster than any of us imagined. In just a few short weeks you went from beating up defenseless old ladies to robbing banks. Kudos to you!"


    Maggie frowned. This felt wrong. Jill was cruel, yes, and even sadistic. But she didn''t sound right. She was talking too fast, almost as if she were nervous about something. As if she was scared.


    If that were the case - at least there was going to be one bright spot in Maggie''s day. But still, she needed to know what was going on. She ran over to where Jill stood and grabbed her by the throat. "What do you think you''re doing? Don''t lie to me."


    "I''m stalling you, you stupid child. I sent Dana to get your brother and I don''t want you to run away before he gets here."


    "Big mistake," Maggie said.


    "I don''t know. It seems to be working."

 Page 40

    "Lucy! Please. Just stop a second. Stop and talk to me," Brent said. He''d been looking for her all morning. He wanted to discuss what she''d said the night before, but every time he saw her in the hall she had hobbled away from him. He was starting to get really frustrated. "What you said - "


    "There are some places even superheroes aren''t allowed to go," she told him.


    "What?"


    She glanced to her left. She was standing next to the door for the girls'' bathroom. "Give it a rest, Brent," she told him, with a sigh. "I acted pretty stupid last night. I said some things I didn''t... mean." She looked down at the braces on her legs. "Anyway. I know I can''t compete with Dana. Just - give me some time, okay? To get over what was really just a childish infatuation anyway."


    "I need to tell you how good it made me feel when you said... that," he told her. "How special it - "


    "Oh just shut up!" Lucy clenched her eyes shut as if to hold back tears. "Shut your stupid face and leave me - "


    "Brent!" someone called from down the hallway. "Brent! Thank God I found you!"


    It was Dana.


    "Hey," Brent said, his stomach churning. "This isn''t a great time."


    Dana shook her head and ran over to grab his arm. "It''s your sister. She''s here. Over by the Home Ec rooms."


    "No way." He felt his hands make fists by pure reflex. "No, she wouldn''t..." He shook his head. "But I guess she did. Lucy, please, just - " he began, but when he looked at his best friend he only saw the girls'' room door swinging shut behind her. "Damn it! Okay, okay. We need to be careful here." He turned back to Dana. "Go get a teacher, any teacher, and tell them what''s going on. They need to start evacuating the school. Maybe she''ll just leave quietly, but we can''t take that chance."


    Dana nodded. She was still holding his arm.


    "You should do that right now," he told her, gently.


    She nodded again. Then she ran toward the nearest classroom.


    Brent went the opposite direction - toward the Home Ec rooms. The hallway turned a corner up ahead. He was running by the time he got there and he couldn''t slow himself down in time, so he didn''t even try. His momentum carried him into the far wall, hard enough to crack some of the bricks there. He bounced off and kept running. By the time he got to the Home Ec rooms he was running so fast that the classroom doors on either side flickered as they whooshed past him.


    "Mags!" he shouted, when he saw her. "Stop right where you are."


    She was holding a locker door like a club. She had it lifted over her head, and somebody was down on the floor in front of her. It looked like she was going to play golf with their head. Jesus, Brent thought. That''s Jill.


    "Not right now, baby bro," Maggie said. She was breathing hard and her eyes were bright. The prospect of hitting Jill Hennessey was clearly exciting her.


    How do you talk somebody out of killing the most popular girl in school? Half the kids in Brent''s class would probably cheer.


    "Brent," Jill said, sounding far calmer than the situation indicated, "will you be an absolute doll and kick Maggot''s ass for me? I''ll make Dana let you have your way with her. Whatever you want."


    "You never did know when to shut up, Pill." Maggie looked up at Brent. "I don''t suppose you''d be willing to turn around for a second and not look?"


    "Put that thing down," Brent told her.


    "Do you remember the last time I let you tell me what to do?" Maggie asked. "No? Me neither. Because that never, ever happened, and it''s not going to start now. Hit me if you''re going to hit me - or stand back and watch."


    So he hit her.


    Digging his heels in hard enough to leave small craters in the linoleum floor tile, Brent launched herself at Maggie with everything he had. He shot toward her with his arms wide, planning to grab her around the waist and knock her down with his momentum.


    The problem was - as always - that she knew exactly what he was going to do. He might be faster than she was, but she already had the locker door up high, held like a baseball bat. She swung around as he came toward her and hit him right in the chest with the door''s jagged edge. Brent went spinning away from her, totally out of control, and as he struggled to get his feet underneath him she grabbed him by his belt and his collar and body slammed him against a row of lockers, face first. The lockers caved in, their doors popping open one after the other. A shin-high avalanche of gym shorts and three ring binders slithered to the floor.


    "Start fighting back now," Jill commanded.


    "Get out of here," Brent shouted. He would have said more but Maggie chose that moment to grab his hair and haul him backward, out of the ruined lockers, and throw him against the far wall.


    He felt the bones in his shoulder separate with a drawn-out cracking noise that made him feel instantly nauseous. He dropped to the floor and thought about how nice it would be to never get up again.


    He could just turn his head. He could feel his broken bones knitting themselves back together, felt the muscles in his neck and arm sliding across each other. It hurt like hell to look down the hall and see Maggie walking away from him.


    Without turning around, she gave him the finger.


    That''s it, he thought, anger filling him up, drowning out the pain. He pushed against the wall behind him with his good arm. Shoved himself upward until he was standing. There were no moral quandaries in his head just then. No worries that he was doing the wrong thing.


    He jumped through the air and came down with both feet on Maggie''s back, right where her spine met her pelvis. She cried out and bent away from him, dropping to her knees. He grabbed her under the armpits and hauled her back up to her feet, intending on spinning her around and knocking her out with one powerful right hook.


    Instead she brought her head back way too fast. The back of her skull connected with his nose, smashing it flat. Then she kicked out with her feet and launched both of them backwards with incredible force, straight toward the wall of the AV Department.


    Maybe she''d planned on crushing him against the wall. Instead, the two of them went right through it in a shower of bricks and pulverized mortar.

 Page 41

    Brent''s head spun. He tried to stand up and just fell down to one knee. He rubbed at his eyes - they were full of brick dust - and tried again. This time he managed to stand up.


    Then Maggie came at him, swinging an overhead projector like a club. He swerved out of her way and tried to sweep her legs out from under her on the way down. Instead she hopped over him and broke through the room''s door with her shoulder.


    "No," he said, and dashed after her.


    Out in the hallway there must have been a hundred kids standing there, gawking at her. Their mouths were open. Their eyes were wide. They weren''t moving. The biology teacher, Mr. Armitage, was trying to lead them away but all they could do was look.


    Maggie just laughed. "Go Panthers!" she said, and pumped a fist in the air. Then she turned around to face Brent and brought her hands up like she would grab him and throw him into the crowd.


    "Mags," Brent said, picking his way through the ruins of the door, "just hold on a second, okay? Let them go."


    "Why?" she asked. "What do I owe them? When I was in trouble, when I was hurting, they all turned on me. They wrote me off, Brent. They gave up on me."


    "I didn''t." He glanced at the crowd and saw that it was, slowly, moving down the hallway, toward a fire exit. "I tried, again and again, to help you. But you wouldn''t let me."


    "You couldn''t do anything. You were too busy doing dirty work for Weathers. And then you betrayed me."


    "I did not! He used me!"


    "What. Ev."


    The hallway was almost clear. Only a few stragglers had stayed behind to watch, and teachers were pulling them away. He just had to stall a couple more seconds.


    "I wanted you to come home. I wanted to fix everything. But you kept hurting people. You kept making it worse!"


    The anger drained out of her face. Maggie''s shoulders slumped and she suddenly looked very, very tired. "You get to this point," she said, "when it''s all broken. When you''ve gone too far. And after that, everything you can think of just makes it worse. But you keep doing it because you don''t have any choices left."


    "That''s bullshit. You always have choices."


    The hall was empty, except for the two of them. Okay, Brent thought. Okay, whatever happens now, it''s alright. Nobody gets hurt but us.


    "Stop making it sound so easy!" Maggie came stomping toward him. "Stop making it sound like I ever had a chance." She swung at him, and he ducked under her fist. Then he kicked out with one leg and caught her in the stomach.


    She went flying, arcing through the air to smash into a trophy case outside the entrance to the gym. Plate glass smashed and glittered through the air and she screamed as the shards of broken glass cut through her hoodie and jabbed her in a hundred places at once. She slid out of the display case and sat down hard on the floor. Then she reached up and picked a three inch long sliver of glass out of her hair.


    "Give up," he said.


    Knowing she wouldn''t.


    She reached up and grabbed a golden statue of a football player from the case, then flung it at him with all of her strength. He managed to dodge to one side, but the statue smashed a crater into the wall behind him.


    Next came a championship cup for baseball. It grazed his shoulder and went skittering down the hallway. He looked down and saw a deep gouge in his arm, welling with blood.


    She grabbed a smaller trophy next, a piece of granite and chrome that she started to chuck at him - then stopped. "This is for field hockey," she said. "I helped earn this one. How about golf instead?"


    Brent threw himself to the left and then rolled back up to his knees and got to his feet. She had plenty more trophies to go through, and he knew he couldn''t dodge them all. He pushed through the doors to the gym and hoped she was mad enough to follow him. She most definitely was - the doors flew off their hinges as she burst inside.


    He''d had a second or two to prepare. As she spun around looking for him, he wound up his arm and then pegged her in the head with a softball.


    "Gah!" she screamed, probably more from surprise than pain. She grabbed her head and for a second she wasn''t watching him. He charged her and knocked her backwards into a rack of baseball bats that clattered around her feet. When she tried to get up again she tripped on the rolling bats and fell in a heap.


    Now, he thought - this was his big chance. He wrapped an arm around her throat and hauled her upwards, leaning back to get her feet off the ground. She was stronger than he was, he knew, but if she couldn''t get any leverage all that strength wouldn''t help her. He could choke her until she passed out.


    "Just stop," he shouted in her ear. "Stop! That''s your choice. Stop what you''re doing and let somebody else help you for once!"


    Her face was turning blue. He eased up, a little, not wanting to choke her to death. Her eyes rolled toward him and he saw pure hatred there. She wouldn''t ease up if their roles were reversed.


    "I''m so sorry," he told her, and tightened his grip. He could feel her trachea start to collapse.


    Then she reached up with one flailing hand and grabbed his left ear. And pulled.


    He felt the skin tearing, felt the cartilage in his ear crush under the pressure. She was going to pull his ear right off his head. He felt something give way and blood poured down the side of his neck. Horrified, he released some of the pressure on her throat and then -


    Then he blacked out for a second.


    He came to and saw a baseball bat swinging toward his face, right at his eyes. Pain exploded inside his head and all he could see was blood. He heard the bat whistle through the air again and the side of his head felt like it was caving in. She hit him again on the chest, again on the legs - it was like she was smashing him to a pulp.


    His vision cleared a little as his skull reshaped itself under his skin. He looked around wildly and saw a white painted wall coming toward him - and then he was through it, he could hear himself scream as she kept pushing him forward, driving them both forward as hard as she could, another wall - he saw the inside of the girls'' locker room for a second, then another wall - there was so much noise, so much confusion, dust everywhere in the air and bricks falling all around him, and then she threw him and he hit the floor face first, there was pain, there was a lot of pain, and then he collapsed, his shoulders hitting the tiles, his legs kicking out meaninglessly behind him.


    "Do you think," she said, sounding like she was a long way away, "that I won''t kill you, just because you''re family?"


    "Weathers - said you would - neutralize me," he tried to tell her. The words that came out of his mouth sounded like mush.


    "It''s not like it would be the first time," she said. She grabbed a handful of his hair and lifted his head up so he could look at her face. Only one of his eyes seemed to work. "I killed dad, after all. And I liked dad."


    She picked him up, shoving her shoulder into his armpit. She was going to carry him somewhere. What was she doing?


    And... wait - what had she just said?


    Ahead of him he saw the wall of the AV room. The first wall she''d pushed him through. "You - " he said, but there were teeth in his mouth and he almost swallowed them. He spat them out instead. "You - "


    Where the wall of the AV room had fallen away it had exposed broken concrete with a length of steel rebar poking out of it. The bar stuck out at an angle, pointing right at him. She was dragging him toward the bar. He knew exactly what she had in mind.


    "You didn''t - " he moaned.


    She was going to impale his head on the bar. He was pretty sure that would do it. That would kill him.


    "You didn''t kill Dad," he managed to say.

 Page 42

    "I did," Brent told her.


    She paused.


    "I killed Dad," he mumbled.


    She looked at the spike sticking out of the wreckage. Above her the ceiling was sagging and plaster dust spilled down like fine white rain. She''d really made a mess of the place. The darkness inside her, the dark wind of her anger, thrilled at the thought. It throbbed along with her heartbeat like thrash metal. Yeah, yeah, destroy the whole school! Kill your brother! Let''s see how low you can go - let''s see what you''re really capable of, villain.


    For a second, she froze. She could have sworn she heard something. A sort of metallic tapping sound. She looked up and around and saw nobody in the hallway. Except - yes - there. Over to her right, the hallway turned a sharp corner. Just at the edge of the corner she could see someone standing there, hiding. She couldn''t see much of them - just some hair, a ponytail that stuck out past the edge of the wall.


    It didn''t matter. Nobody could stop her now. Brent had been the only real threat, and Brent - yes. Brent.


    Kill Brent, the darkness whispered. Finish this. Make it all be over, now.


    She hoisted him up, planning on finishing him off before he could say anything more. But it was too late.


    "I opened that thing," he whispered. "I let the green fire out. I could have put the lid back on, before he got there. But I didn''t. I was too scared."


    She growled at him. She seethed inside. She couldn''t do it.


    "I killed Dad. I killed him. I killed Dad," he said, over and over. Like he wanted to make sure she heard it even over the noise in her head.


    "Shut up!" she told him. She dropped him to the floor. He rolled over and curled into a ball. "That was a stupid accident. You had no idea what was happening. I did - I saw you both on fire. I could have grabbed him and pulled him clear, and maybe we could have saved him. I killed Dad! Don''t you get it, you damned idiot? That''s what this has all been about! I killed Dad!"


    "I killed him," Brent muttered.


    She kicked him, hard, to try to make him stop. But he just kept saying the same thing, over and over. Like a scratched CD flickering back and forth over a half second of really stupid music.


    "Be quiet," she commanded. She willed herself to pick him up again. To point his head at the spiky piece of rebar.


    Under her hands Brent''s body was putting itself back together. Shattered bones were shifting under his clothes, knitting themselves back into one piece. He was healing all the damage she''d done. "I didn''t do anything. I could have stopped it. I could have saved him but I didn''t. I thought if I saved other people, if I helped people, it would make it better. It would make up for killing him. But look at us now. This isn''t what he would have wanted. He didn''t like it when we fought, back when it was just calling each other names. He wouldn''t like this at all."


    Maggie sighed. "He''s dead, Brent. He can''t see us now. He''s in a grave somewhere and - "


    "No," he told her.


    "No what?"


    "He isn''t... buried. They - couldn''t," he sighed. "They couldn''t retrieve his body."


    "What?" she demanded. She shoved the picture in her pocket. "What the hell? You mean Weathers just left him there?"


    "I - I guess - "


    Maggie roared and grabbed him, hauled him up off the floor and shoved his head toward the spike again. But she couldn''t do it. She couldn''t kill her own brother. A minute earlier things had been different. With the darkness surging inside of her, she could have done it without hesitation, without a second thought. But now...


    She threw him down on the floor. "Brent," she said. "Brent!"


    "Whuh - ?"


    "We''re done, Brent. This is over. Alright? We make a truce, right now. You leave me alone. You don''t try to get up. And I won''t kill you."


    "I can''t - I can''t do that, Mags."


    "Why the hell not?"


    He shook his head. "You''re out of control. You''re hurting people. I can''t - "


    He stopped talking. He lifted his head and she saw his nose was back in the right place and his ear was whole again. He pushed himself up on one arm.


    "Someone''s coming," he said. "Hey! Whoever you are, get away!"


    Maggie spun around to see what he was looking at. Instead she heard a clacking sound, a rhythmic clicking on the floor. Lucy Benez came around the corner, hobbling on her leg braces. She was crying.


    "Please don''t kill him," the crippled girl said.


    Maggie stared at her.


    "Lucy, get out of here," Brent shouted. He was healing so fast. In a second he would be standing up again, and the fight would start. Again.


    "I have to do this!" Maggie said, even though she knew she couldn''t. "If I don''t kill him right now he''s going to keep coming after me. He''s going to send me to jail, and I''ll never get out. Doesn''t anyone understand? One of us has to die!"


    One of us has to die, Maggie thought. Funny - why did she put it that way? Obviously, Brent had to die. So she could be free. She couldn''t possibly have meant - anything else.


    "Please," Lucy said. "I love him. Does that - does it mean anything?"


    "Something," Maggie told her. There was an idea, a real thought growing in her head, struggling up through the clouds of darkness. A rational thought, for once. "Yeah. It means you''ll make a great hostage."


    Everyone stopped moving when she said that.


    The darkness rose to a crescendo inside Maggie''s head. She raced forward and grabbed the girl''s arm. Lucy tried to fight her off but it was easy - effortless - to swat her other arm away. It wasn''t like she could do any harm to Maggie.


    Brent was the only one who could hurt her now. He was the only threat she had to deal with. She could just kill him, of course. She''d demonstrated that already. But there was another way to neutralize him, and it didn''t entail taking on any more guilt. Well, maybe just a little more.


    "I''m going to go now, Brent," she said, over her shoulder. "I''m taking Lucy with me. If you don''t want her to get hurt, you''ll let me go. If you want her to live, you won''t follow me."


    "Let me go," Lucy said, wobbling back and forth on her leg braces. Maggie ignored her and started walking toward the parking lot, toward her car.


    Something resisted her. She looked back and saw Brent leaning up against the wall. He was holding Lucy''s other arm. He didn''t want her to take Lucy away.


    Well, there was a solution for that, too. "Brent," she said, "I''m going to walk away now. I''m not going to stop. One of us really needs to let go of her. Otherwise this is going to be messy."


    He had no choice. For once, she thought, he could know what that felt like, when you had no options left.


    He let go.


    She''d known he would. That was the problem with being the hero - everyone knew exactly what you would do in any given situation. When you were the villain, you were allowed to be surprising and spontaneous.


    So she kicked the wall next to him, hard enough to send the whole second floor of the school sliding, crumbling, bouncing and pouring down on top of his head. He looked appropriately shocked as he threw his arms up to protect his head - but only for a moment, before he was completely buried in the debris that kept thundering down.


    Lucy screamed as Maggie dragged her away.

 Page 43

    "You - you can let me go now," Lucy said, when they were out on the highway and well clear of town. Maggie hadn''t seen any police cars - maybe she''d gotten away in time. "You don''t need me anymore. Why don''t you just let me go?"


    Not yet. Maggie had her reasons.


    She turned up the music and let the darkness surge through her. She had to be careful not to drive too fast - the last thing she wanted now was to be pulled over for speeding. But this thing inside her, this evil thing she''d nurtured and grown kept calling out for more, more destruction, more freedom. She couldn''t fight it, she''d learned that much. She could try to calm down, try just to breathe but always something would happen, something would trigger her and the anger would roar.


    In the seat next to her Brent''s little friend was curled up and whimpering.


    "Stop looking at me," Maggie growled. She checked the speedometer and saw she was going eighty miles an hour, so she forced herself to let off the gas a little. Outside the desert whirled by, red rock and sunshine. At this speed it looked empty and almost featureless. A blasted landscape where her anger could stomp free, hurling itself against the rocks, leaping from crag to crag and tearing the stunted trees out of the ground by their roots. "I said stop looking at me!"


    Lucy turned her face into the stained fabric of her seat. "I''m sorry," she said.


    Maggie smacked the steering wheel, not quite hard enough to bend it out of shape. "It''s... alright," she forced herself to say. If she hurt this girl she knew it would be a mistake. Brent would never forgive her.


    Though if she was honest with herself she knew she''d already crossed that bridge. He had betrayed her to the police. He had tried to choke her into submission - and he had stolen her guilt. He was going to bring her down, eventually, unless she finished him off first -


    No.


    She squeezed her eyes shut. Then opened them again because she was driving and she needed to see the road. No. She would not kill her brother. She''d come close, definitely. She would have impaled him on that spike, if he hadn''t said what he did. If he hadn''t made the anger clear away for a second, made her think rationally for the first time in a while. She needed that clarity again.


    "I''m not going to hurt you," she told Lucy. "So don''t be so scared, alright? Just... don''t be so scared of me."


    "That''s kind of hard," Lucy said.


    Maggie hit the steering wheel again. This time it bent. "None of this is what I would have chosen. Do you believe that?"


    Lucy shrugged. Her face was still buried in the seat.


    "I guess it looks bad, if you don''t know everything that happened to me. If you can''t see that I didn''t have any choices at all."


    She turned the music down, a little. The darkness threatened to flood back into her soul but she couldn''t think straight, couldn''t fight her anger with the bass line throbbing like that, with the drums pounding out the rhythm of her accelerated heartbeat. "It''s almost over. I have one last thing to do and then I''m leaving. I''ll go somewhere no one will ever find me."


    Lucy stirred. "Where''s that?" she asked.


    "I can''t tell you, obviously. I''m going to create a new identity. A secret identity. Nobody can know where I went."


    "No - I just mean, where is it you think you can go, where they won''t try to follow? The police, I mean. That weird FBI guy. He''s never going to give up looking for you. How is this supposed to end?"


    Maggie bashed her head backwards against her headrest until it started to crumple under the blows. "I told you. I get out of here, and - "


    "Um, sorry, no," Lucy said.


    Maggie froze up. The car''s speed sagged as her foot came off the gas pedal. After a second she recovered and went back to driving. Keep a consistent speed, she told herself. Don''t weave in and out of your lane. Someone might be watching.


    "I don''t think that''s what you want at all. Just to run away? You could have done that like, a long time ago."


    "I had things I had to do. I needed money, and a car. I had to talk to the idiot who killed my mom. I had to get something out of my locker - "


    "That sounds like a lot of excuses," Lucy said. "It sounds to me like you''ve been sticking around, even when it wasn''t safe, because you were afraid to leave. Why is that? You didn''t want to leave your family behind? Maybe some part of you thought that everything could be okay again. That it really could all be fixed."


    "Hah!"


    "Okay. Then maybe you just needed an audience. You needed everybody to know how much you hurt. In a different town, where nobody knew you - nobody could feel sorry for you, either."


    A storm of darkness crashed and thundered inside Maggie''s head. It came on so suddenly, with no warning at all this time, that she was defenseless against it. She slammed on the breaks and swerved off the road, pulling to a hard stop on the shoulder. Lucy flew forward, throwing out her arms to brace herself against the dashboard - she hadn''t been wearing her seatbelt.


    "Say that again," Maggie snarled. "Try to psychoanalyze me one more time. Come on! Do it!"


    Lucy pushed up against her door. Trying to get as far away from Maggie as she possibly could in the cramped space of the little car.


    "You''re so damned smart, come on! Say one more thing, and then I''ll hit you. I''ll hit you so hard - you''re half-crippled now, you pathetic infant. You want to spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair? You want to be dead? Say it. Come on. Say it!"


    But the girl was silent.


    Eventually Maggie pulled herself together, and got back on the road.

 Page 44

    Brent couldn''t breathe.


    There was a ton of bricks and broken masonry and girders on his chest, compressing his lungs. His body, enhanced by the green fire, fought valiantly to rebuild his broken bones, to grow new muscle tissue to replace what had been torn or crushed. He could feel every cell in his body straining, urgently reaching for health, for strength. His arms twitched as his hands pushed and heaved at the weight on top of him. A few bricks toppled down from the pile. Then a few more. A broken girder clattered away and there was a puff of plaster dust as he exhaled a stifling breath from his battered lungs.


    His fingertips broke through, into open air. He shoved his hand out and reached for something, anything he could grip. He got hold of the twisted piece of rebar his sister had almost impaled him on, and pulled.


    Like a snake emerging from its old skin, he slithered out of the rubble. Exhausted, used up, he dragged himself on top of the pile and just lay there for a while, breathing, healing, not thinking at all.


    When his eyes finally opened again he saw nothing but destruction. Half the school had collapsed under its own weight. It was like Mandy Hunt''s house but on a far greater scale. He saw what his sister had done, and he knew what he had to do next.


    When he pushed his way through the buckled fire doors at the back of the school his clothes were in tatters and his face was filthy with his own clotted blood. He thought he must look monstrous, like some creature out of a mad scientist''s lab tortured into abominable life. He didn''t have time to worry about how he looked, however.


    His entire class of students was standing in the parking lot, watching him. Some of them gasped when they saw him come walking out of a cloud of dust and smoke. Some of them screamed. He saw the teachers and the vice principals trying to maintain order. He scanned the crowd and found Jill and Dana, standing near the back. They had been among the first to escape, he supposed.


    He walked over to them and the crowd parted around him. A few cheers went up but very few of the students joined in. They didn''t understand what had happened, or what any of it meant.


    "Brent," Dana said, staring at him. "Oh, Brent. You''re alive."


    "Yeah," he said, and tried to smile at her. "And I need a favor. You''ve got a driver''s license, right?"


    She did. She even had a car in the parking lot. So much the better. When the three of them (Jill insisted on coming along) climbed in and she turned the key, he lay back in the seat and closed his eyes, desperately needing a few moments of rest.


    Then someone slapped the hood, and his eyes shot open. It was Weathers, who was coming around to his side of the car. The FBI man looked angry.


    Wearily, Brent lowered his window.


    "Where do you think you''re going?" Weathers asked.


    "Home," Brent told him. Which was true, as far as it went. He needed to stop there before they got back on the road. He figured he knew where Maggie was headed and he had to get there before she could hurt Lucy. He didn''t tell Weathers any of that, though. "I need to take a nap." Which was also true, though he knew he wouldn''t have the chance. There was no time to waste.


    "Uh-huh. I bet you do. You and I need to talk," Weathers insisted. "This has gone way too far."


    "Later."


    Weathers started to pull open the car door but Dana locked it before he could raise the handle. She stepped on the gas and Weathers jumped back as she sped out of the parking lot and onto the highway.


    "Thanks," Brent said.


    Dana glanced over her shoulder at him. "No problem. But shouldn''t you have told him what you''re going to do? I mean, the police could take care of this, couldn''t they?"


    "I''m not really crazy about the police right now," Brent told her. "And as for Weathers, I don''t trust him as far as I can - um." He reconsidered what he was about to say. "I mean, I don''t trust him as far as he can throw me. He wouldn''t try to capture Maggie. He would just try to kill her, at this point."


    "Sounds like a happy ending to me," Jill said.


    "Jill!" Dana scolded.


    "If there''s a way I can finish this without anyone dying, I''m going to find it," Brent muttered. "Is that really what you want, Jill? For Maggie to get killed? You put yourself in danger back there just to buy me some time. I didn''t know you hated her so much. I mean, you two aren''t friends, but - "


    "We''re rivals," Jill told him. "I''m in competition with every girl in school, including your sister. And when I compete, I always win, one way or another. Helping you send her to jail will be an acceptable conclusion. You can''t be popular when you''re in prison."


    "They have to wear those ugly orange jumpsuits," Dana said.


    "Exactly. You can''t be popular in an orange jumpsuit."


    As they headed up the on ramp, Jill craned over the back of Brent''s seat and pointed through the windshield. "Look at it," she said. Brent saw what remained of the high school, the entire gym and the assembly hall fallen in like impact craters, a few jagged walls sticking up from the foundations where classrooms had been. "She smashed up half the school." She grinned wickedly. "Now who''s the hero?"

 Page 45

    When they reached the right spot, Maggie just turned off the highway and drove into the desert. The car jumped and rattled and started shaking itself loose as she drove over rocks and plants and potholes and gullies but she didn''t care - if the car broke down out here it didn''t matter.


    Of course it matters, she thought. The part of her that wasn''t darkness thought it, anyway. I need the car for my big getaway. I''ll need it for when I start my new life.


    The darkness just laughed.


    She reached the ravine where she''d gotten her powers - the place where her father died and all this began - and brought the car to a stop in a plume of smoke that could probably be seen for miles. She was still a half mile from the cylinder. She turned to Lucy, who looked like she''d been shaken up pretty badly by the wild ride through the desert. "Stay here," Maggie said. "I suppose you could try to run away. But it''s an hour''s hike back to the highway for somebody with normal legs. It would take you all day. You don''t have any water." She shrugged. "I think you''re probably smart enough to understand what that means."


    "So - what? You just leave me here? So I can die of thirst in the car instead of out in the desert?"


    "I''ll come back for you," Maggie said. She sighed and turned on the air conditioning. Otherwise Lucy might fry inside the car as the sun beat down on it. Unfortunately that meant she had to leave the key in the ignition. To keep Lucy from driving away, she yanked off the steering wheel and threw it like a discus out into the depths of the desert.


    So much for the getaway, her rational brain thought.


    She left Lucy behind and headed down into the ravine on foot. She had a good reason to do so. She was pretty sure the ravine was going to be swarming with FBI, and she didn''t want her hostage to get killed when they inevitably started shooting at her.


    It wasn''t long before she could see the cylinder up ahead. Her eyes were stronger now, in the same way her arms and legs were, and she could see a lot farther and a lot more clearly than she used to. Except that with the cylinder, her super vision didn''t really help. Its weirdness hadn''t changed, she saw. She still couldn''t get a good sense of how big it was, or even what shape it was other than long and round.


    She could see other things very well. The FBI had surrounded the cylinder with a ring of chain link fencing maybe five hundred yards in diameter. Inside the fence they''d parked a bunch of construction trailers, generator trucks, bulldozers, backhoes and cement mixers. Men and women in body armor and carrying assault rifles patrolled the fence, while others operated a satellite dish or waved weird bits of scientific equipment at the cylinder.


    None of them, she saw, came within a hundred yards of it. They''d even planted little neon red flags in the ground around the entrance to the cylinder, probably to warn people not to come any closer.


    They were afraid of it. They were afraid of what the green fire could do.


    They should be, the darkness thought.


    Maggie came at the fence fast and hard, grabbing up handfuls of it and ripping it away. Barbed wire had been strung along its top but it didn''t even scratch her skin. Someone started shooting instantly but the bullets felt like hailstones on her skin - painful, but nothing she couldn''t just shrug off. There was shouting, and people running back and forth. She ignored it.


    She identified the trailer that looked like the command center - it was covered in antennae and small satellite dishes and even a cell phone tower - and headed toward it. On the way she picked up a forklift. She lifted it over her head and threw it overhand into the command center, which buckled under the impact, spewing broken glass and screaming people.


    An FBI agent in a bulletproof vest and a navy blue baseball cap came running at her, screaming, his rifle spitting out bullets and fire. She grabbed the barrel of his rifle - it was hot enough to scorch her hand, but she didn''t care - and before he could let go of the weapon she swung him around by it and then let go. He flew through the air and crashed down in the sand near the cylinder, with his head just inside the dangerous perimeter of the red flags. He looked around to see where he was and then got up and ran away screaming - not in outrage this time, but in blind panic.


    "All of you get out," Maggie shouted. "This place is mine. Get out!"


    Some of them did as she said. Jeeps full of scientists and technicians started up and raced for the gap in the fence. Meanwhile the guards in their body armor and special agents in black suits started grouping up in formations, ducking behind cover, finding good firing positions. As if they could stop her with bullets.


    What came next took a while. She took their guns away, plucking them out of unwilling hands. Those who tried to hang on to their weapons or who were dumb enough to try to fight her hand-to-hand were thrown through the air, had their arms broken, were hurt badly enough that their friends had to carry them away. But eventually - one way or another - they all left.


    When she was sure she was completely alone in the site, she went back to the car and fetched Lucy. The disabled girl fought like a wet cat, but Maggie managed to bring her down to the cylinder by slinging her over one shoulder and squeezing her - hard - every time she tried to wriggle free.


    "Now," Maggie said, "I need you to just be quiet for a while."


    "How long?" Lucy asked. "I''m not really good at it, I mean, I talk a lot when I''m nervous and right now, well, this is beyond nervous, I think I might be verging on like a breakdown or something, I''ve never been able to control my mouth for very long and - "


    Maggie raised one finger to her lips. "Shh," she said.


    Lucy shut up.


    Maggie found a shady spot behind the wreckage of the command center trailer and plunked Lucy down in it. Then she grabbed a bunch of chain link fence and wrapped it around the girl, tight enough that she couldn''t move.


    "Just chill a while," Maggie said, and headed into the cylinder.

 Page 46

    The interior of the cylinder was even colder than Maggie remembered. The air still sucked away every sound, until her footfalls sounded like whispers and then stopped making any sound whatsoever. The puddles on the floor still hadn''t dried up, and there were birds roosting inside in silent, watchful flocks. The place creeped her out, just as it had the first time she''d seen it.


    This time around she could observe more details, but very few of them made any sense to her. The cylinder seemed very large inside. In fact, it seemed bigger on the inside than it had looked from up in the ravine. Its interior was not smooth at all but lined with pipes and tubes, some thicker across than her waist. Many of them were broken open and she could see they were hollow inside. Others were still intact. Some had water condensed on them, and when she touched one of these she could feel a faint vibration travel up her arm. Whatever had happened to the cylinder, whether it had crashed on Earth thousands of years ago or if it had just rotted away over time, clearly parts of it were still in perfect working order.


    Like the well full of green fire, for instance.


    There was, she supposed, a certain amount of danger involved in going back inside. She had survived the green fire once, and in fact it had made her stronger. There was no guarantee that it wouldn''t kill her though if she remained too long inside the cylinder. It had killed her father without any trouble, after all.


    She''d come to find his body. As villainous as she may have become, regardless of how much the darkness inside her had eroded the good little girl she''d once been, she still owed Dad this much. He shouldn''t have to rot away inside some weird alien artifact. Yet when she actually found the body - or rather, his bones, which were all that remained of him - she found herself so repulsed she had to turn away rather than be sick.


    His remains were curled around the well that was the home of the green fire. His hands were still clenched around the manhole cover-sized lid as if he were still trying, from beyond his own death, to close the well and save his children.


    That meant something to Maggie. It meant something so horrible she couldn''t stand it, and this time she was sick, and had to pause to throw up on the floor. It meant he hadn''t died instantly.


    It meant there had been a chance, even if it was just a small one, to save him. To pull him out of there, just as she had dragged out Brent.


    He could have survived.


    She could have saved him.


    She dropped down beside him, unable to help herself. She pressed up against the bones as if curling up with him on a couch back in their house, and put her arm around his rib cage, just wanting to hold him. It was morbid of her, she supposed, but in her head it was just a way to say goodbye to him.


    While she lay there green flames came peeking over the edge of the well like snakes looking for something to bite. She didn''t run away. They came down and ran over her skin for a while. She thought they were probing her, or maybe checking to see if she''d already been changed. Eventually they withdrew once more into their well and their green light flickered out of the dim space.


    She didn''t have a lot of time, Maggie decided. She needed to get moving. She got up and brushed herself off, then set about picking up the bones, even the little finger bones she had to pry away from the lid. There was no way to carry them all in her arms, so she took off her hoodie and tied it into a kind of sack she could use to hold the various pieces. The bones were scorched and covered with a black residue that stained her hands, but the work didn''t make her feel ill. This was her father. A man she had truly loved, even if she never really showed it.


    When she had all of the bones she went back outside, stepping into desert heat that made sweat stand out instantly on her skin. Dad had loved the desert, more than anyplace else in the world. Maybe he would have wanted to be buried in the cemetery next to Mom, but Maggie thought that the desert would make a perfectly acceptable alternative resting place. She hiked out into the scrub trees and creosote bushes a ways and then set down the bag of his bones. With her fingernails she dug a hole in the ground deep enough that coyotes wouldn''t be able to dig him back up, and then she placed the bones inside with much love and care. She tried to arrange them in the right order, with the skull at the top and the leg bones at bottom, but some of the bones were shapes she didn''t recognize. She did the best she could.


    When she''d filled the hole back up, she looked around for a suitable large stone. She found a flat broad piece of shale three feet long and two feet wide. With another rock she carved his full name on the stone and underneath it she put the years he was born and died. Then she put the stone across his grave and knelt down beside it.


    And had no idea what to do next.


    She supposed she should say some words. Maybe make a vow to reform, or to not hurt Brent. The darkness wouldn''t allow that, though. In the end all she could think to say was goodbye.


    She headed back toward the cylinder then, feeling very calm and at peace. The darkness inside her had settled down for a moment but she knew it wouldn''t last. Something would happen. Some horrible thing would set her off again and the anger would take control. But for the moment she could simply walk in the desert and notice for once how sublimely beautiful it really was. How unspoiled, how alive.


    She realized with a shock then that for these few fragile seconds, she wasn''t actively unhappy. It was a weird feeling, and one she was unaccustomed to. She actually cracked a smile, and reached down to pick a pink flower and put it in her hair.


    Then she heard the sound of a car engine, very far away. Her ears had become as sensitive as her eyes and she knew the car had to be miles away still. She knew as well that Brent would be inside of it.


    She had expected him to follow when she kidnapped Lucy.


    She had looked forward to it. And now it had come to pass.


    She just had time to prepare for his arrival.

 Page 47

    "Grandma," Brent said, peering out through the car windows at the desert, remembering every landmark. "I''m calling to tell you that I''m about to go fight Maggie. Probably for the last time."


    On Brent''s cheap cell phone Grandma''s voice was very faint and kept breaking up. Some of her words were lost to static. "You''re going to - hiss - finish off that little - crackle - now? That''s - beep - time."


    Brent frowned. He could barely hear her. "I don''t know if this is the right thing to do. But she has Lucy and she might... well, she might do something actually evil. I can''t let that happen. I''m the only one in the world who can stop her, and - "


    "Boy," Grandma interrupted, "if you need to - snap - her - sigh - up, then you do it. If anyone - rumble - her, she broke my - pop."


    "I just wish Dad was here," he told her. "He would know what the right thing to do was. All I know is what feels right to me, right now." The phone beeped three times in his hand and he realized he''d lost the connection. Dana''s car must have passed beyond cell phone range. There would be no more parental advice.


    It meant they had almost arrived. "I really want to thank you for your help," he told Dana, sitting back in his seat and closing his eyes. "I suppose I could have just run down here but I would have been exhausted when I arrived."


    "I would do a lot of things for you, Brent," Dana told him. "You rescued me. I owe you, big time."


    He blushed and looked out the window. "Here," he said. "This is where I get out." He recognized a butte on the horizon and a stand of nopal cactus. This was where they had set up their camp. It was where they''d started hiking into the desert. The car couldn''t get him any closer. "I don''t know if I''m coming back or not," he told the popular girls. "Can you wait an hour? If I don''t show up by then, just go home and - and tell the police. They won''t be able to stop Maggie. But maybe they''ll find somebody who can."


    "Brent," Dana said, "just be careful. For me?"


    He couldn''t promise that. He smiled at her anyway and started to get out of the car.


    "Wait," Jill said. She leaned over his seat and grabbed his hand. "Just one thing before you go."


    "Yeah?"


    "Something you need to consider."


    "Alright," Brent said, wondering what she had in mind.


    "If your sister kills you, Dana won''t have a date for homecoming. Okay? So come back to us in one piece. Otherwise it will be incredibly awkward if I have to find her a replacement at the last minute."


    Brent closed the door softly behind him and started off into the desert, moving as fast as he could. Maggie had a considerable head start and he had no idea what she was up to. He ran on the flat desert floor, then reached the head of the ravine and started leaping from rock to rock, getting as much air as he could so he could survey the destruction ahead of him. He didn''t need super-eyesight to tell he''d come to the right place. The trailers and construction equipment near the cylinder were trashed, torn apart or picked up and cast aside like toys the day after Christmas. He didn''t see any sign of Lucy. Maggie, on the other hand, was in plain view. She wasn''t trying to hide. She stood near the cylinder, out in the sun. She was holding something big over her head. It looked like a portable generator, though Brent was too far away to make out much in the way of detail.


    Then Maggie threw it at him and he got a much closer look than he would have preferred.


    The generator came sailing through the air right at him. He jumped aside as it shattered on the rocks, showering him in fuel oil and machine parts. He looked up just in time to see a forklift following close behind. Then a half of a construction trailer. The noise was incredibly loud as he leapt from rock to rock, never more than half a second ahead of the incoming projectiles.


    A backhoe hit just behind him. Its digger arm snapped off on impact and went spinning through the air. He tried to duck but it struck him in the arm, sending fiery pain shooting up into his shoulder.


    "Damn," he shouted, as he spun around and dropped into the ravine. Maggie must have known he was coming. He moved as quickly as he could down the dried-up wash, keeping his head down as more pieces of equipment came raining of the sky. A satellite dish dug into the dirt in front of him, nearly tripping him. A Geiger counter went whizzing past his head like a bullet, trailing its wand behind it. A truck tire smacked him right in the chest. It was too soft to break any of his bones but it had enough momentum enough to knock him over on his back and drive the breath out of his lungs.


    As he lay on the dirt staring up at the sky, he saw a jeep come screaming out of the blue, on a ballistic trajectory right for his head. It took every ounce of energy he had to get his feet under him and throw himself to the left before it hit, sending up enormous plumes of dirt and small rocks. He covered his face with one arm as the ejecta came showering down all around him, stones the size of softballs bouncing painfully off the back of his head.


    When the dirt settled he moved. He pushed himself, dug his feet into the ground and threw himself forward, accelerating with every step until the wind was howling past his ears. Maggie kept throwing things at him - a spotlight on a tripod, surveying tools, the engine block of a jeep - but he was moving so fast he blazed right past them. He didn''t even feel the ground shake with the impacts.


    He came out of the ravine so fast the world around him blurred. He shot right toward Maggie as she picked up something else, a new weapon to use against him, but before she could throw it he grabbed it away from her. Unable to shed his momentum he ran right past her, skidding and plowing deep furrows in the ground as he tried to slow himself by digging his heels into the ground.


    It was only when he''d stopped completely, when his dust cloud caught up with him, that he looked down and saw what he''d grabbed out of Maggie''s hands.


    It was a hand grenade, and the pin had already been pulled.


    "Oh, sh - " he had time to say before it went off. His brain didn''t have time to react. His arms moved anyway, throwing the grenade away from him as hard as he could. It went off in mid-air, only a dozen yards from where he stood. Fragments of metal and burning gunpowder spattered his face and chest and his body screamed.


    He dropped to his knees and curled his arms around himself, trying to shake off the pain. Eventually he could breathe again. Eventually he could think. He looked down and saw that he was still intact, all his parts accounted for. The beautiful costume Lucy had made for him, though, was ruined. Parts of it were burned, and in some places it was still smoldering. The front was full of holes.


    He stood up, more angry than he''d ever felt before in his life. The wrath inside of him was like white fire. He turned to look for his sister.


    Maggie was standing nearby, leaning against the side of a white construction trailer that had been partially trashed. She was wearing her field hockey uniform - the same costume she''d worn when she committed all of her crimes. It was fitting, he thought. They were dressed for the part. They were supposed to be here, supposed to fight. That was what was expected of them.


    "Where is she?" Brent demanded. "Where''s Lucy?"


    "Don''t have an aneurysm, baby bro," Maggie said. She looked bored.


    Bored. She had the gall to be nonchalant at a time like this. He would pound that blase look right off her face, he would -


    "She''s just over here," Maggie said, and walked around the side of the trailer. "I stashed her in the shade so she wouldn''t even get sunburned. I''ve got no reason to - "


    Brent stomped around to the back of the trailer and saw a coil of wire on the ground. It looked like someone had been tied up with it, but there was no one inside the coil. Lucy''s leg braces lay on the dirt next to the coil. They were twisted out of shape and one of them was broken in half.


    "Oh," Maggie said. "That''s strange, she was here a minute ago - "


    Brent hit her with everything he had.

 Page 48

    Maggie reeled backwards, her jaw erupting in violent agony. She staggered and nearly fell, one hand grabbing at the ground behind her. She hadn''t expected him to come at her so fast.


    She cleared her head and started to get up, but he was already on her again, smashing at her face with a vicious left hook. She spun around, just trying to get her balance, and tripped over her own feet. She landed face down in the dirt, coughing and gasping for breath.


    He kicked her in the back of the head, hard enough to force her face into the soil until she couldn''t see or breathe. She tried to control herself, tried to hold back the pain, but her body rebelled and tried to breathe in. Her mouth filled with loose wet dirt and her brain started to scream in panic.


    That wouldn''t do.


    She had left a ten pound sledge hammer propped up against the glaring white side of the trailer. Her left hand flailed out and felt the rough wood handle. As he stomped on her head, pushing her down deeper into the dry earth, she got a grip on the hammer and swung it around blindly behind her, just hoping it would connect enough to startle him.


    Instead it caught him in the side hard enough to knock him five yards through the air. She twisted around on the ground and spat up dirt as he bounced off a patch of hard-packed dirt corrugated with tire tracks. In a split second she was up, standing with her feet well apart in a solid stance, grasping her sledge hammer with both hands.


    If she could catch him before he had time to get back up, before he -


    - but he was fast, so fast. He came at her out of her blind spot, holding a length of iron rebar like a samurai sword. He swung wide and low, his blow intended to catch her in the stomach. She just had time to bring the sledge hammer around to parry his strike. Metal hit wood with enough force to send painful vibrations all the way up Maggie''s arms.


    "You''re quick," she said, as she stepped backwards, breaking contact.


    "Faster than you," he said, bringing his bar up for another attack, this time aiming at her head.


    She caught the attack just in time, catching the iron bar in the angle between the handle and the metal head of her sledge hammer. The rebar dug a nasty gouge in the wooden handle, but in return it bent in his hands, forming an obtuse angle. He pulled back to try another swing. She was ready for it this time, and rather than parrying his blow she ducked under it and swept his legs with her hammer, spilling him onto the ground.


    "I''m still smarter, apparently," she said, dancing backwards and bringing up her hammer. She swung it back behind her head and started to bring it down - except the damage to the handle must have been worse than she thought. The heavy head went flying to ricochet off the side of the trailer with an ear-shattering clang.


    He laughed bitterly as she stared at the length of wood in her hands. She noticed, however, that what she was left with was a two foot long club with a sharp and jagged end. She switched up her grip and stabbed downward with what had become a pointed stake, intending to drive it right through his heart. It worked on vampires.


    The jagged wood splintered and shattered against his tough skin. The handle split right up the middle, driving inch-long splinters into both her palms.


    He groaned in pain - the impact would still have hurt him, she thought - and raised his iron bar as if to ward her off. She kicked it out of his hands and then jumped up on top of the trailer.


    He roared and slammed into the side of the trailer like a bull.


    It was working.


    He was made enough now. He was pissed off enough to not be able to stop himself, when the time came. When he had her down and defenseless, he would not just tie her up an wait for the police to arrive. Oh, no. He wouldn''t be able to help himself - he would take this to its logical conclusion, and kill her.


    Which was exactly what she wanted.


    She needed an end to this. She needed to stop running. She couldn''t make excuses for her behavior any more, couldn''t forgive herself for the things she''d done, and -


    "Come down," he shouted, and hit the trailer again.


    "Why don''t you come up here and make me?" she told him.


    As she''d expected he grabbed two handfuls of the metal side of the trailer and hauled himself upward, threw his body into the air to come crashing down right next to her. The impact caved in the metal roof of the trailer. She stepped backwards and leaned to the side to avoid his flying fists.


    She couldn''t let on that he was being set up. He had to believe he had no choice. He had to think she was fighting back as hard as she could. So she stuck out her leg and let him trip over it, let him fall face forward onto the trailer''s roof, denting it further.


    He pushed himself upward on his arms. She aimed a kick at his face but made it just slow enough that he would see it coming. He grabbed her foot with both hands and twisted, and she went flying. She hit the roof of the trailer with her back and it hurt. It hurt a lot. She cried out. He loomed over her, his hands balled into fists so tightly his knuckles were white.


    She reached down, grabbed the metal roof with both hands, and tore.


    The roof had been damaged when they started fighting. It had come close to caving in every time one of them hit the other. It couldn''t take any more abuse. As she''d thought it might, the roof collapsed as she pulled and twisted at it, spilling them both into the trailer''s interior.


    She saw him slam against a side wall, his head flopping against his shoulder. She hit a desk that caught her right in the small of her back, folding her in half the wrong way. The incredibly painful way. She felt her vertebrae pulling apart, felt every muscle in her back screaming as it was stretched beyond its limit.


    She shrieked in agony and flailed around her with her arms and legs. Leaning over to one side she struck out with both fists and one of them went right through the trailer wall. She could have freed it easily, of course, but she saw him standing up. Saw Brent watching her.


    She made a show of pulling at her arm, trying to get her fist out of the hole she''d made in the wall. As he came closer, his shoulders tight, his head slightly bowed, she rolled her eyes in simulated panic.


    This is it, she thought. This is my last chance.


    Stop me, Brent. If you don''t, the darkness will win. It will take over completely and there will be nothing left of Maggie Gill. There will just be the villain.


    Finish me off.

 Page 49

    Brent watched Maggie struggle with a sense of profound detachment. That wasn''t his sister with her hand stuck in the wall. It was some evil creature that didn''t deserve to live. Who knew what she had done to Lucy? He wouldn''t put anything past her anymore. She''d had a chance to redeem herself. She''d had plenty of chances, and she had refused every time to do the right thing.


    He felt like something enormous and powerful and right was growing inside of him. A creature of pure light, of justice. Whatever he might do to Maggie was less than she deserved. He looked down at his feet and found a broken computer monitor lying there, its cord twisted around it like a broken tail. Its screen had cracked in a million pieces, each of them triangular and sharp like a tooth. He plucked one out of the broken machine and held it in both of his hands.


    "Come on, then," Maggie said. "What are you waiting for?"


    Brent wondered as much, himself. He took a step toward her and he felt like he was getting stronger with every moment that passed. When he brought the shard of glass down his arm would be strengthened by the sheer correctness of the act.


    He lifted the glass knife over his head. She had stopped struggling and seemed to be just waiting for him to strike. Perhaps she had come to accept that this was necessary. The fitting end to their rivalry. Their sibling rivalry.


    How could we turn out so different? I can''t believe you are my father''s daughter, he thought, and started to bring the weapon down on her head -


    - and caught himself in mid-swing.


    But you are.


    "Dad," he said out loud. "Dad wouldn''t - "


    "I killed Dad! You should avenge him," Maggie said. Her eyes were filling with tears, he saw, and that made him feel very strange. "You should do it for him."


    "Did you - did you find him in there? In the cylinder?" Brent asked. His own voice sounded like it was coming from someone else''s body.


    "Yes! He was still there. So I took him out and buried him. Out in the desert where the FBI can''t dig him up to study his corpse."


    Brent felt as if he were watching her from above, as if he were floating up near the ceiling looking down at her - and at himself. His body was down there, frozen in place, as if time had stopped for it. "Was it... bad?" he asked. "I mean, was he all messed up?"


    Maggie turned her face away from him. "You don''t want to know." She sighed. "You can''t do this, can you? You''re not strong enough."


    "He asked me not to fight so much with you. Right before he died. And here we are, doing exactly what we always did." Brent shook his head, and below him he saw his body shake its head, too. He could feel the piece of glass cutting his fingers and he let it go. It crashed on the floor and the noise was loud enough to jar him, to make him blink. Suddenly he was back in his own body. It hadn''t been real, he knew. He hadn''t ever left it. He''d just gotten so worked up, so angry it had felt that way. He wondered if that was how Maggie felt all the time. Now he was back in his body the thought made him shiver. "Just tell me where Lucy is. Tell me what you did to her."


    "And then what? You''ll let me go?" It didn''t sound like she even wanted that. But then, what did she want?


    "No," he said. "It''s gone too far for that. I''ll turn you over to Weathers. He promised me he would get you the help you need."


    "How absolutely gracious of him," Maggie said. And then she pulled her hand out of the wall. She hadn''t really been trapped - it had been an act. But why? Brent was still trying to figure that out when her foot came up and smashed him across the face.


    "I''m sorry, bro, but only one of us can leave here today," she said. He was still spinning around, trying to figure out where she was. Then she just appeared out of his blind spot and grabbed him, picked him up and threw him through the wall of the trailer. "If it has to be me, then so be it!" she called as he sailed through the brilliant desert sunlight. He hit the side of a boulder with his face and dropped in a heap.


    A moment later her hands grabbed him under the armpits and she hauled him upright - just to throw him again. He hit the side of a bulldozer hard enough that it rang like a bell. His vision blurred and his brain felt like it was spinning inside his skull. He needed to get his bearings, he knew, he needed to get up on his feet and be ready for her before she -


    With no warning at all she hit him in the chest with a rock as big as his head. The breath exploded out of him and he saw little lights go shooting through his vision. She hit him again, this time in the stomach, and pain blossomed inside his abdomen as something vital burst open. Instantly he could feel his body putting itself back together, felt his guts grow warm and then hot as they tried to slither back into their appropriate places. But he was sagging to his knees and he knew if she hit him again he wouldn''t be able to get up.


    She hit him again. And again. His head slumped forward and she smashed the back of his neck with her rock. This was all it would take, he realized. She could kill him this easily, by grinding him to a pulp, one blow at a time. He felt as powerless and insubstantial as the faint warm breeze that played through his hair.


    She''s stronger than you, Weathers had told him. He was faster, but that didn''t matter if he couldn''t get up on his feet, if he couldn''t dodge her attacks. He saw the rock coming toward his face and he tried to weave over to one side, but he barely moved enough that the rock caught his cheek and ear instead of his nose. The pain was just as intense. The noise of bones breaking was just as loud in his inner ear.


    She lifted the rock again, lifted it high in both hands. She was going to bring it straight down on the top of his head, he knew. It would be the last thing he ever felt. Everything would go black, and it would finally be over.


    "Wait," Lucy said.


    The rock didn''t come down. Brent had thought maybe he''d just heard Lucy''s voice in his own head, as a kind of hallucination, but apparently Maggie had heard it too. She dropped the rock and it thudded in the sand.


    "Where the hell have you been?" she asked.


    Brent''s eyes weren''t focusing very well. He looked over to his side and saw Lucy standing there, but there was something wrong with the image. She wasn''t wearing her leg braces, he could see that much. Well, no, of course not - he''d seen them, they were twisted out of shape and one of them was broken. But Lucy couldn''t stand like that without the braces. Her legs were different lengths - she should only be able to balance precariously on one foot. Instead she was standing in a classic fighting stance, her feet braced against the ground.


    There was something else weird about her, too. She looked kind of... well, green. Green light was flickering on her shoulders and the top of her head. It disappeared as he watched it. His eyes were starting to reshape themselves, to heal from the injuries Maggie had given him. He could see a little better now.


    "I got tired of being a hostage," Lucy said. "When you tied me up, you wrapped that wire around my leg braces. It was easy enough to slip out of them, though I think I might have messed them up a little."


    "No," Maggie said. "Tell me you didn''t."


    Didn''t what? Brent wondered.


    "I had to crawl, but that was alright, it wasn''t - " Lucy''s mouth twisted in a nasty grimace. "Wasn''t - wasn''t far. Excuse me for - for a second." Then she reached into her own mouth and grabbed something. She pulled it out with a grunt. A double length of wire with assorted bits of hardware dangling from it.


    No way, Brent thought. She just pulled out her own braces!


    "I think my teeth just fixed themselves," Lucy said. "That felt... weird."


    "You did," Maggie said, sounding horrified.


    "Uh huh," Lucy told her. She dropped the twisted bits of wire on the ground and then wiped her hand on the leg of her jeans. "I did."

 Page 50

    "Would someone please tell me what just happened?" Brent asked.


    Maggie spun around and saw her brother kneeling on the ground next to her. There was blood on his face but he looked a lot better than he had a minute earlier. Then he''d been about to die - now he was seconds away from getting up and starting the fight all over again. And now there were two of them - two people on Earth who posed an actual threat to her safety and freedom.


    Whatev. I''ll just have to kill them both, the darkness said.


    "Your little friend went inside the cylinder," Maggie explained. "She went to the well of green fire. It might have killed her, but it didn''t. You know what that means?"


    "I think so," Brent said.


    "Um, excuse me," Lucy said, walking toward them. "I don''t want to break up your little moment, but it seems to me we''ve got some business to attend to over here. I mean, if you''ve got a second. If it''s not too great an inconvenience."


    "What on Earth are you talking about?" Maggie asked, turning to face the girl again.


    "I need to kick your ass," Lucy said, and hit Maggie across the mouth with a right hook that sent her spinning backwards. Brent tried to grab her as she fell - maybe just to help her up, but probably to try to subdue her. Maggie threw herself to the side to avoid him and landed on a pile of construction tools.


    I''m stronger than they are. They''re just kids, the darkness said. I''m smarter than they are, that''s for sure. She looked up and saw the two of the approaching her. Wait for them to come closer.


    Her hands moved through the pile of tools, looking for weaponry. They found what they needed.


    Lucy must have seen what she was doing. "Be careful, Brent, she''s got - "


    Maggie whipped up her arm. She was holding a nailgun. Before Lucy could finish her sentence she squeezed the trigger and a volley of nails snapped out at Lucy''s face. The girl fell backwards, swatting at her face as if she were being attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes.


    Then Brent knocked her sideways, hitting her hard enough to send the nailgun flying out of her hand.


    "I''m okay!" Lucy shouted, but Brent didn''t seem to hear her. He was on top of Maggie, pounding her face and shoulders with his fists. Maggie struggled up to her feet as her ears rang and her vision blurred. He kept hitting her, again and again, so she grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and threw him over the top of a construction trailer.


    Then she spun around looking for Lucy - but the girl was nowhere to be seen.


    "What''s the matter," Maggie roared. "Did you get scared and run away?"


    She spun around when she heard the noise of a diesel engine grumbling to life. A puff of black smoke shot up from the exhaust pipe of a bulldozer off to her right. She squinted and saw Brent sitting in the driver''s seat, pushing levers and knobs and trying to get the thing moving.


    "You think you can get away in that? I can outrun that thing, Brent. I can chase it down and tear you out of there. You haven''t got a chance!"


    The bulldozer lurched forward and then stopped suddenly. Brent scowled and slapped the steering wheel. Maggie laughed.


    Until Lucy came out of nowhere and jumped on her back. Maggie whirled around and bucked madly trying to get the girl off of her, but Lucy tugged at her ears, her nose, her shoulders, always pulling her hands away before Maggie could grab them. The younger girl wasn''t particularly strong - not by Maggie''s standards - but she was faster even than Brent.


    "Play fair, you little twit," Maggie screamed.


    Lucy kicked Maggie in the back of the head.


    Enough, the darkness said, and anger flared inside Maggie''s brain. She waited for an opportunity, then she reached up and snagged one of Lucy''s ankles. Digging in her heels for balance, she pulled Lucy free of her back and then swung her around and around. Lucy''s arms and her free leg flailed but Maggie had her now. She swung her around in a wide arc and let her go.


    Lucy shot away from her like a cannon ball. The younger girl flew through the air as fast as a comet and hit the side of the cylinder with a noise like a bass drum, then bounced off and landed face down in the sandy soil.


    Lucy tried to get up but she was badly hurt. It was all she could do to push herself up on one arm and stare in blind panic as Maggie stormed over toward her.


    "Brent," Lucy called. "Now!"


    The bulldozer''s engine screeched and its tires spewed up great fountains of dust as it shot forward. Its blade caught Maggie square in the back and knocked her down, but it didn''t stop coming - instead it rolled right over her. The giant tires barely missed crushing Maggie''s bones beneath the weight of the construction vehicle and she thought Brent had made a big mistake - until the bulldozer vibrated to a stop, right on top of her.


    Its undercarriage pressed her down in the sand. Maggie tried to get up but the weight of the bulldozer was on her back. She tried to beat at the sand with her hands, tried to push upward with every ounce of strength she had.


    But it wasn''t enough.


    "Come on, damn it," she said through gritted teeth. "Come on!" She begged the darkness to lend her strength and felt the anger coursing through her veins like dark magma, felt her muscles push and heave and shove -


    But it was no use. She could pick up a car and throw it like a ball. She could punch her way through the wall of a house. But the bulldozer must have weighed ten tons and it was just too much for her. She couldn''t get any leverage - her arms and legs were pinned and the ground under her was too soft to let her push very hard against it.


    She could just turn her head to the side. She looked over, and saw two faces peering in at her. Brent and Lucy were down on the ground watching her intently, watching to see if they''d finally got her. If they''d pinned her enough that she couldn''t get up. It looked like they had.


    "Brent! They''ll send me to jail forever," she said. The darkness was leaking away, her anger and her negative emotions fleeing her now that she couldn''t give them the destruction they wanted any more. "Please! You can''t let that happen! You''re my brother. Doesn''t that mean you owe me something?"


    "Yeah," he said, very softly. "It does. It means I''ll come and visit you often, and make sure they''re treating you okay. It means I''ll make sure you get the help you need."

 Page 51

    "I''m serious," Brent told Special Agent Weathers, later on. "I''ll be keeping an eye on her. If I see any sign that you aren''t taking care of her properly, you''ll have to answer to me."


    "And what exactly will you do, then?" Weathers asked. He sounded as if he was just curious. "Will you spring her out of jail because we''re being mean to her?"


    "I''ll - I guess I''ll - "


    "He''ll make a stink," Jill Hennessey said. "He''ll go to the TV news and tell them you''re performing illegal experiments on her. Or that you''re defying the Geneva convention. Brent''s a celebrity, and the media will love him after this. You''re with the government. They already expect you to mistreat people."


    Weathers'' face grew dark but he clearly knew she was right. He raised his hands in surrender.


    "Thanks," Brent said. "I didn''t think of that."


    "Yes, I know. Thinking isn''t one of your superpowers."


    "Jill!" Dana said, shocked.


    Jill and Dana had done what he said and waited an hour, then went and got the police. A whole fleet of jeeps with flashers and sirens had descended on the cylinder site. SWAT teams with heavy weapons had set up perimeters. The FBI had sent snipers and hostage negotiators. Men in bulletproof vests and baseball caps were everywhere, collecting evidence in little plastic bags or photographing pieces of equipment and vehicles that Maggie had turned into weapons. A whole medical team had showed up to check out Lucy and make sure she hadn''t been hurt by the green fire.


    None of it was necessary. Lucy was fine. Maggie was trapped and couldn''t get out. Every once in a while she would scream in rage but that just meant she was alright down there, so Brent didn''t mind. The police would have to figure out a way to hold her once they moved the bulldozer, but that wasn''t Brent''s problem. Maybe they could sedate her until they could move her to some kind of jail cell she couldn''t break out of.


    "It''s over, detective. Can we take Brent home now?" Dana asked.


    Weathers sighed deeply and took out his notebook. "I''ve still got a lot of questions. Brent, I need you to tell me again exactly how this happened." He gestured at the ambulance parked at the edge of the perimeter fence. Lucy was sitting on its tailgate while a paramedic shone a light in her ear. "But maybe," Weathers said, shrugging, "maybe it can wait until later. I''ve got a bad headache right now. A new one. I used to have two headaches, and now I have three." He wandered off muttering to himself.


    Jill and Dana grabbed Brent''s arms, one on either side.


    "It''s over," Jill said. "And we won."


    "Brent won," Dana said, and leaned her head on his shoulder.


    Over at the ambulance Lucy looked up at him and frowned. Then, slowly, her face brightened. She shrugged and smiled at him as if to say it was okay.


    "Everybody won, because we''re all safe now. Brent, you saved the day. There''s only one thing left to do."


    "What''s that?" Brent asked.


    Jill clucked her tongue. "You''re supposed to kiss the girl, stupid."


    "Oh, yeah." Brent looked down at Dana''s expectant face. "Sorry about this," he told her. Then he pulled free of the popular girls'' arms and jogged over to sit down next to Lucy.


    She looked surprised.


    "Hi," he said.


    She opened her mouth but for probably the first time in her life she was at a loss for words. So he leaned over and gently kissed her. On the lips. For real.


    "I just wanted to say I''m sorry," he told her. His best friend. The girl who loved him. "I was so blind - I had feelings for you too, I think I always have. I was just worried if I said anything it would ruin our friendship."


    "Dummy," she said, and leaned into him. Her arms went around his neck. He put his hands on her waist. "You look good in this," she told him, and rubbed her chin against the costume that covered his chest.


    "We''ll need to make one for you," he told her. "You''re a superhero now, aren''t you?"


    She laughed. "I guess so, maybe."


    He pulled her close and asked her, "Can I be your sidekick?"