SHERMAN DROPS ME off after we split with the Captain. The bike’s rear light glows red. Red as Kool-Aid, as blood, as fire …
I flinch: a full-body shudder so intense it leaves me cramping. So far this week, I’ve had front row seats to a murder, lied to my bestie, and discovered that my sort-of dad is a borderline criminal, same as me. In short, I’m not ready to face three flights of stairs.
I slide until my ass meets our front stoop. Cobwebs gather over a mound of Mr. Beauvais’s cigarette butts (he’s not allowed to smoke in the house). I scratch miserably at my bandaged arm and sigh.
The bike engine cuts off. Why’s Sherman still here?
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” I reply.
“You going inside?”
“Considering it. I could also sit here for the rest of my life.”
Sherman taps her nails (chewed, black-painted) on the buckle of her belt. Ting, ting, ting. The metallic noise screws into my brain, like that tuning-fork hum from the observatory. I’m about to tell her to quit it when she climbs off her bike and plonks down next to me, knee bonking mine.
“Uh,” I say. Sherman, initiating contact? Did every planet just go into retrograde? “What’re you doing?”
“I can go, if you want.”
I don’t, despite everything. I shut my mouth. Sherman rests her helmet on the step, finger-combing her gelled-down curls.
Silence stews. I put us out of our misery. “You got questions.”
She exhales, long and low. “You got more.”
Damn right. “Why’d a Super join Hench? And why come back again, after you got fired?”
I can’t imagine crawling back to Artie’s on my knees, even if every other option fell through. Well—maybe then, but I wouldn’t enjoy it, and … Wow. Sherman’s initial shitty attitude makes way more sense.
She treats me to a brow rise. “You wanna hear my sob story?”
“That’s the next level of friendship, right?” I stretch out my legs. “Actually, I wanna compare notes. Bet it can’t beat mine.” She snorts. I point at her. “Laugh or scoff?”
Sherman looks me over. Not in her usual scathing way, like how bougie folk eye up the graffiti that brightens Bridgebrook’s concrete walls. Softer, somehow. Her gaze is sticky toffee, molten and sweet, drizzling over my curves. “Totally a scoff.”
“Yeah. Totes.” My heart beats double, triple time. A spark bounces beneath my skin, wanting to leap out and lick. Just physics, right? Not chemistry.
But Amelia blazes in the back of my mind, like the fire left a permanent scar on my retinas. I shiver, swallow, look away.
“Okay, question time. Superpowers. You wake up on your thirteenth birthday, and…”
Sherman looks disappointed. Still, she plays along, settling with her back against the step and her long legs striping the sidewalk. “Thought I was a Normie for five whole minutes. Then I tripped and fell down the stairs.”
“You cast that bubble?”
Sherman nods, though she won’t meet my eyes. “Surger-Shaper discipline; never presents above D-class potency. Draws on local sources of electricity and heat to freeze air molecules. Notice how everything went cold around us, back in the observatory?”
“Figured that was just me being terrified. Back to baby Sherm—what happened next?”
Her gaze drifts far away. “Well, I ran to show Mom and Pops. They couldn’t believe it. Never had a Super in the family before.”
“That’s possible?”
“Uh-huh. Spontaneous mutation. We did a bunch of research—turns out it’s real. Doesn’t get talked about much, but it happens.”
“Don’t let my sister hear. Swears she’s gonna be the next big Wind-Type Summoner.” If what Sherman says is true, she might be—but I have too many other things to worry about right now. “So, you turn Super at thirteen and get fast-tracked, yeah? Usual story?”
Sherman nods. Super kids are trained for military deployment and civilian defense from the day their powers emerge. It’s a stable gig and a well-paying one. Pretty much every Super tries it out. Those who don’t cut it as heroes or sidekicks segue into a variety of high-flying careers, from stuntmen to bodyguards to circus performance.
You don’t see ’em stacking shelves at Walmart or waiting tables at Artie’s. And you certainly don’t find Supers in Hench uniforms.
“What went wrong?” I ask. “Allergic to white holographic spandex?”
Sherman doesn’t answer. Just tilts her face toward the slice of sky visible between the rows of tenement houses that line our end of Sloan Street. Light pollution coats the city in a greasy orange film. Our night is a constant twilight. You could forget the stars existed down here on street level, though Sherman’s piercings glitter bright enough to compensate. Medusa, spider bites, nostril studs, eyebrow rings: her own tiny constellation. I wanna keep probing, but something—a fracture in her expression, a fault line in her resting bitch face—holds me back.
“It’s weird,” she grumbles eventually as I jiggle numbness from my butt. “Supers are … what? Five percent of the global population? But they make so much noise, it’s like they’re everywhere.”
She talks about them like they’re different from her. I can’t figure it out. “You’re still my hero.”
Sherman’s grip on her helmet tightens. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why? Scared someone’ll hear? If you wanted your powers to stay a secret, you could’ve kept them that way.”
“And watch you get zapped? No way.”
That’s such a Super thing to say. Does Sherman know what happened to Amelia? Does she think there was nothing I could do, or that I didn’t really try?
I stood by while Amelia burned. Sherman’s more of a hero than I am, that’s for sure.
Silence smothers us again, until Sherman heaves a sigh. She delves into her pocket to retrieve a pair of squashed earbuds. She holds one out, not quite looking me in the eye. “Hey. Wanna…?”
A diversion. One I’m glad to follow. I take the offered headphone and plug in to a funky Afrobeat. “What’s this?”
“Kuduro.”
“Uh-huh.”
We listen for a minute, me bopping my head to the rhythm. Sherman gives my thigh a light, bro-like punch. “You have no idea what kuduro is, do you?”
“None whatsoever.”
“It’s Angolan dance music. Mom was born there. But Pops is Puerto Rican, and a total dork, so my library stocks plenty of Enrique Iglesias and Ricky Martin, too.”
She’s sharing something else with me. Something precious, about the girl behind the mask. I shut my eyes, let my ears drink it in. “I like it.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not! It’s … It’s good.” I grin. “I’d share, too, but I only listen to Hayley Kiyoko and trashy pop, and something tells me that ain’t your scene.”
Sherman neither confirms nor denies, though the corner of her mouth does this funny twitchy thing, like her facial muscles are fighting a civil war, before curling into a slow half smile. Her music—kuh-doo-roh—crescendos in a thunder of percussion, then drops to silence before the next track starts. My thigh rests along hers in a hot line. This must be the longest we’ve spent in each other’s company without throwing shade.
“Hey, Jones,” she says after several minutes. I look at her, which is a mistake at this distance. I can count her long, dark eyelashes, play an imaginary game of dot-to-dot with the tiny freckles sprinkled over the bridge of her nose. Kuduro, fed into my left ear and her right, races my rattling heart. Stupid symmetrical Supers.
“Uh. Hey, yourself.”
Sherman chews her lip. Then she stops the music.
“Remember how everything went wrong?” she asks. “On our job at the observatory?”
“Kinda hard to forget, what with it being literally last night.”
Sherman winds her earbud wire between her fingers, over and under and over again. “Henchmen got hurt. Like, a lot of them. Real bad, too. This one guy from my old crew, Delmar, he had an eye out.” Her expression sours. “Not every Captain has an Aaron. Del’s gonna be out of action a long time.”
“Sounds like the exact opposite of fun.”
“Right? Missions with high body counts hit Hench at least once a month. The villains treat us like we’re disposable, and this mysterious boss of ours doesn’t give a fuck. Some of us…” She lifts one shoulder higher than the other, a stunted half shrug. “We figured it’s time we did something about it.”
My pulse thumps my eardrums like a wrecking ball. “Like what?”
“Like joining that big living-wage protest in the town square.”
I know the one. Jav did a piece about it on her podcast, praising homegrown activism. The organizers are all Bridgebrook, born and raised. Real awesome stuff, aimed at uplifting service workers, cleaners and fry cooks and retail workers from across the city. Not criminals.
I laugh, like you’re supposed to when a cute girl makes a joke. It’s disconcerting when Sherman doesn’t join in. “Um. You’re serious?”
“Deadly.”
“Sounds it! You mean you’re going to tell the world that us henchmen are mad at how we’re treated by the freaking Villain Council? A bunch of evil Supers who are literally conspiring to take over the world?”
“Yup,” says Sherman, poker-faced. “You know them?”
“You’re not allowed to use sarcasm. That’s my thing. But seriously, wouldn’t we get arrested if we joined the march?”
“No law against wearing a Hench costume. Or even against being a henchman, technically. If they can prove you committed a crime, that’s different, but there are plenty of loopholes.” Sherman shrugs. “Delmar studied for the bar. He knows this shit.”
She’s actually thought this through. Sure, what happened at the observatory was messed up. Sure, knowing Normies in Hench uniform can be mutilated and killed by heroes with zero repercussions freaks me out. But making a big thing of it, publicly? For the world—and the Villain Council—to see? Viva la revolución and all that, but I don’t want to be on the front lines.
Taking stock of my nibbled lip, Sherman averts her glare to the sidewalk. “Didn’t tell you earlier because you’re new. Wasn’t sure I could trust you not to snitch to the Captain.”
I’m not sure I trust myself. “Why can’t we tell him?”
“Cap’s been at Hench for, like, ever. He looks out for his crew and he messes with the villains’ plans, but he never rocks the boat with our boss.” Her fist tightens, resting on her lean, jean-clad leg. “We’ve been planning this for over a year, and it’s getting big. Hundreds of henchmen have signed up to create a grassroots union. I don’t need him trying to bust it.”
Perhaps this faceless boss of ours ordered him to fire her. I wonder if the Captain told them she’s back.
“You really think this’ll work?” I ask.
Sherman stands, thumbs tucked in her waistband. “Someone’s gotta do something, Jones. The more we let the Supers use us like we’re nothing, the more they believe it.”
Her wording bugs me. She’s one of those Supers, after all. But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s right.
I imagine Amelia Lopez again. Skin cracked like desert mud, hair crisping to cinders. I should stay out of this. Keep my head down. But maybe I’ve had enough of Rule Number One.
“Well?” Sherman prompts. “You in?”
I know fuck all about marches, unions, et cetera. But henchmen can’t continue like this. Normies can’t continue like this. That I know for sure.
I stand, too, so we can make it a proper moment, the two of us bathed in the glow of the streetlight like flies caught in amber. Unfortunately, my legs are full of pins and needles, so I wind up leaning on the railing, styling it out, playing it cool. But I mean it when I tell her, “I’m in.”