I CAN’T TELL Sherman outright that she’s batshit. For purely pragmatic reasons that have everything to do with how she’s my lift to work, not just because that lift has become the high point of my evenings.
It’s a pretty awesome sensation. That’s all.
I’ve learned to relax into her lead when we’re together, swaying the motorcycle around corners like it’s an extension of the two of us. Something, something, shared centers of gravity … There must be a complex physics equation that explains why it feels like I’m flying as we glide around Sunnylake on two wheels, dipping down toward the road, then back up to the sky, and I press so close to Sherman’s back I can practically feel her breathe.
To me, it’s magic. Magic I don’t want to lose. But I don’t wanna be made into sashimi by a supervillain, either.
“Heading to Meera’s later,” says Sherman the next night. We’re installing appliances in a new villainous penthouse hideout. The utility room is bigger than my apartment. The smart fridge could fit our whole squad and keeps trying to strike up a debate on the optimal temperature for storing organic produce. “Running over logistics with my old squad. Wage pots, funds. Making sure strikers are covered for as long as possible. That sort of stuff. You, uh.” She scuffs the toe of her boot along the floor. “You coming?”
I check the fridge’s thermometer. My joints ache from heaving it out of the elevator, but after the observatory, I’m glad to work with anything that isn’t a weapon of mass destruction. What’s the AI gonna do if it turns evil? Give the villains salmonella? Tragic.
“Sorry,” I say as the fridge recites tips to maintain the crunch in your asparagus. “I’m whacked. Need an early night or whatever.”
Sherman looks disappointed, but she doesn’t push. “Whatever,” she agrees.
It feels oddly awful to watch her walk away from me (heading for the Captain, currently threatening the microwave into functionality). Like I’m in the wrong here. I glare at my shadow, cast by the dangling green glass light fixture. What do I have to feel guilty about? If Sherman told me her goal was to pick a fight with the VC, I’d have steered clear of her from the get-go.
I might still attend the march. That feels important. We deserve to be visible; we deserve to be seen. But strong-arming the VC hasn’t worked for the Supers, and they’ve been at it for decades. Am I supposed to believe henchmen have a chance in hell?
Worst part is, I’m tempted. I can’t deny that the trash-bag-swinging part of my psyche longs to stand in that picket line, at Sherman’s side. I just also can’t deny the other part, the sensible part, which has kept my ancestors alive long enough to procreate since they first climbed down from the trees.
“Did you know that you should always store bananas at room temperature?” asks the fridge. I have the weirdest sense it’s judging me, so I poke around until I find the mute button and stalk over to prevent Birnbaum from carrying in the new oven solo.
Sherman can’t be too mad. She waits for me at the end of our shift, and we fly together again. Her bike weaves through Bridgebrook, nimble as a kingfisher. In those moments, it’s easy to let all my worries drain away and pretend the streets belong only to us and the dawn.
HENCH TAKES US five nights the next week. Which means five nights spent dodging Sherman’s invitations to join her at Meera’s, and five nights of avoiding Hernando.
There are other things to fill my time, that’s all. Changing the bandage on my arm, which peels off to reveal pasty skin studded with shrinking red polka dots. Lyssa, gushing about the upcoming emergence of her nonexistent Superpowers. Tapping out message after message to Jav but wimping out before I hit send. Trying not to look like I shit bricks every time Sherman mentions her march prep: designing posters, passing word around different Hench teams. And welcoming Turner back to our crew, under Aaron’s advisement to take it easy.
He seems different. Quieter. Less quick to smile, crack jokes, talk back. He’s stripped the Supremia case from his phone. I should be glad about that, though I can’t quite bring myself to feel it.
We lug armfuls of sweaty villainous workout gear to the laundromat. We give Supremia’s signature blue convertible the full wax-and-polish treatment (Turner doesn’t swoon). Good timing, as it turns out. Mayor Darcy gets bundled into the trunk a few hours later, according to Sunnylake News. At least it was vacuumed and Febrezed.
We feed several cats, tidy two basement lairs, and even loom in the background while an A-class villain—a Shaper by the name of Mercury, who must airbrush his entire body silver before each gig—interrogates a hero with some inventively applied molten metal. Luckily, the Captain sneaks out and cuts the power before any red-hot steel can drip on the hero’s face. Darkness falls. We all do our best impression of headless chickens, pretending we don’t know how to turn the lights back on.
Even Turner joins in. Guess he’s learned his lesson. It’s our side or the villains’, and theirs only gets people hurt.
Mercury loses patience and stomps off to locate the light switch himself. The Super Squad bust through the roof with sidekicks in tow, giving us lowly henchmen an excuse to scramble for the exit. Out we tumble, into the night, an amorphous black blob that branches out in every direction like mold growing on fast-forward.
Mercury hid his lair under a run-down bowling alley. Asbestos walls, blacked-out windows. If it wasn’t condemned before this fight, it will be after—which brings all of Jav’s gentrification theories to the forefront of my mind.
I help Birnbaum across the lot and into the Captain’s nearby car, so he isn’t crushed by the stampede, then join the stampede myself, hightailing onto the street. I make it the entire length of the block, all the way to where Sherman’s parked, before I have to fold and wheeze.
“I vote next time, we split early,” I pant, bent double, hands braced on my knees. “Saving heroes is so not worth cardio.”
Sherman snorts. She led the charge, galloping along, graceful as a gazelle. Not even out of breath. She turns off her hologram. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, reaches over.
I freeze.
So does Sherman.
Until I tilt my head to one side. Letting her grasp the dial over my pulse point and twist.
The faint green shimmer dissolves from my vision. It sinks into my skin instead: this strange flickering sensation that spirals in and centers around that dial, over which Sherman’s fingertips still hover without quite touching.
“Jones?” Her voice is low and velvety. My breath sticks to the inside of my lungs.
“Mm?”
“You hurt? Your heart’s going real fast.”
I twitch away, cover my neck with my hand. It’s hot to the touch. Did I forget to slap on sunscreen this morning? “Just adrenaline. Thank our close encounter with Super-kind. And—I—wait, you can tell?”
Sherman shrugs. She shoves her hands deep into the pockets of her cargo pants, a faint pink tinge on her cheeks. Some quirk of her powers, I guess. So long as she can only sense the electrical impulses in my heart, not stop them, we’re cool.
“Awesome. Free Fitbit.” I point at the bike, double finger guns. “Shouldn’t we vamoose?”
“Don’t have to. Not yet.”
Sure enough, it sounds like the Supers are keeping each other busy. Every bass boom from the bowling alley is followed by a minor earthquake. Three sidekicks guard the entrance, presumably to prevent Mercury making a dramatic escape, but they don’t pursue the henchmen, and by now, Sherman and I are far enough away to pass as nosy civilians. Streetside Super battles are free entertainment in Sunnylake.
I don’t actually want to hang around and watch the demolition. Might start wondering about the bowling alley’s real estate value. But as Sherman and I have a moment to ourselves, I need a topic of conversation that doesn’t relate to marches and strikes.
“Okay. Sherman. Sherm. While we’re here, can I ask you something?”
“I doubt I can stop you.”
“Oh, the mortifying ordeal of being known.” I wave to the bike. “How’d you afford this on a henchman’s salary?”
Sherman runs her hand over the Harley’s side like she’s soothing an animal. “She’s my pop’s,” she says, more to the bike than to me.
I study the bike: the shiny chrome tubing, the details in bird-of-paradise blue. “He knows you’re borrowing it, right?”
Another of her long silences. Nowadays, it seems less like she’s judging me for asking, more like she’s running a million and one potential answers through her head. “Yeah.”
“Um, okay. You waited way too long. I call bull.”
Sherman groans. “Yeah, he knows I use it. Just not for Hench stuff.”
“For sneaking out at night, then? Like that’s not suspicious.” I jostle her shoulder, grinning. “Bet he thinks you’ve got a secret boyfriend or something.”
“Or something,” Sherman echoes. She glances at me from the corner of her eye.
My breath catches, like I’ve swallowed one of the gnats swirling around us, drawn to her glowing headlamp. Then she looks away, and I can inhale again.
Weird, that.
“He, uh. Did her up himself.” Sherman runs her fingertips over the sleek leather saddle. She sounds slightly strangulated. “He likes me to take her out. Doesn’t want her engine to get gummed.” She picks at the stitches, catches herself, and curls her hand into a knotted little fist. “He—he doesn’t leave the house much anymore. Only rode her a month before everything went to shit.”
She doesn’t elaborate. It must have something to do with why a D-class Super is here, rather than in sidekick uniform. I have this instinctual urge to ram my nose into other people’s business—Hernando calls it my “chismosa” gene. At Sherman’s words, it flares up from wherever it’s lodged in my DNA. But I’m not actually enough of an asshole to ask.
I stand back from the bike, hands on my hips, and give it—her?—a once-over. “Well, look at that. The least-gummiest engine I ever did see.”
“You have no clue what you’re talking about.”
“None whatsoever.”
Sherman rewards me with her usual scoff-laugh. I’m afraid I’m starting to like it. I’m more afraid she’s about to ask if I want to come to another meeting, but a boom from the bowling alley cuts her off.
The roof tiles flake like crust from a croissant. The streetlights flicker. Smoke plumes, pressing a thumb-shaped bruise into the sky. Whaddaya know—the one and only time I’ve been grateful to the Super Squad.
“Seriously,” I say, before Sherman can gather her words, “can we vamoose now? We probably got half a minute before shrapnel starts flying, and I should get back to my place.”
Sherman swallows whatever she was going to say. “Uh. Okay. Your place, sure.”
She shoves her helmet on, not quite fast enough to disguise her frown. I subject my lip to a thorough chewing. Should I talk to her about this? Tell her that if she gets Hench to go on strike, the only jobs she’ll protect are those of the Sunnylake coroners?
No. Her resolve was written all over her, back at Meera’s. I could say whatever I want, but it won’t matter if she doesn’t want to hear. Best I say nothing at all. I could use the practice.
I slip onto the bike, grab my safety handle—“the sissy bar,” according to Google, which is as rude as it’s accurate—and try to lose myself in the ride. Active word: try. It doesn’t work, and not just because of all my strike-shaped concerns.
Sherman’s dad talk turns my thoughts to Hernando. I’m pissed he lied to me. I’m more pissed he spent the past eight-ish years telling me he expected more from me than my mother, declaring to the whole world that he was going to set a good example for his girls. How does Hench factor in?
But if I peel back my anger, I find only misery.
Sherman drops me in front of my house and roars off without a word. I try to decipher the tangle in my chest as I slouch up the stairs.
I miss Hernando. I miss staying up to see him home, I miss his calloused fingers catching in my fine blonde hair. I miss his low rasp of mija. I don’t think I’m ready to talk to him yet—but then again, I’m not sure I’ll ever be.
The universe takes it out of my hands. I open the door and find the man himself waiting.
“Aw, hell.”
Hernando sits on the far side of our grotty sectional, arms crossed. “Morning to you, too, Riley Jones.”
I deactivated my uniform before I hopped off the bike. Hernando knows, though. I feel it in my core, like the bad stomach cramps you get on your period that squeeze you from gullet to asshole. He knows about me, like I know about him. At least we got that in common.
I sit on the couch cushion nearest the door. I don’t intend to make a break for it if this goes south, but it’s nice to pretend that’s an option. “You first?”
Hernando’s glare contorts into confusion. “Huh?”
“I know, okay? No point pretending otherwise.”
“This is about you, Riley. Not me.”
He’s gonna play this game? I’m not having it. “I was there that night. When you helped us unload the laser.”
Hernando frowns. Does he not remember? Did I pass so close to him, under my mask, and leave no impression behind?
“You work for Hench,” I say, pushing my hair aside so he can see the silver disc on my neck. “So do I.”
Hernando’s tired eyes widen. A moment later, the shock strikes the rest of his body and he jackknifes like I shot him with my stun gun. “Dios mío! Hench?”
“Am I wrong?”
“I thought you were seeing a boy!”
It’s my turn to look dumbfounded. “… What?”
“Vanishing at night … Quitting Artie’s … The motorcycle…” Hernando’s hands paint angry pictures in the air while he talks, a habit he passed to me and Lyssa. “Lyss was awake when I got home. I asked where you were, and she kept winking at me…”
Wow. Guess I was right, telling Sherman her late-night adventures look suspicious.
“It’d be a girlfriend,” I say faintly. “If I had one.”
Hernando’s eyes bug out of his head. He sags against the cushions like a deflating balloon. “Dios mío. We really gotta talk.”
Five more Dios míos escape him before I’m done with my side of the tale. Cooper Hanson. Leaving Artie’s. Joining Hench. Meeting the Captain, Turner, Birnbaum, Sherman … I tell him all of it—with the exception of Project Zero, Amelia Lopez, and the TMI stuff between me and Jav.
Even so, he must remember my line about a girlfriend, ’cause he holds up his hand once I’m done. “You … like girls, Riley?”
Hernando hasn’t been to church, in my recent memory—fell out of the routine after picking up Sunday shifts at the hospital. He keeps the faith, though, and that scares me, just a little.
I picture Jav, sipping our frappe. Every gorgeous actress I’ve ever daydreamed about. Even Sherman, a million sneers and eye rolls compressed into human shape. When I think of them, that fear feels far away.
“Yeah,” I say. “I do.”
“You never told me. Why’d you never tell me?”
Considering we’ve both revealed that we work for the same villain-affiliated organization, it stings that my sexuality is the sticking point. “’Cause people assume different. People always assume different. Straight until proven otherwise, right?”
“Riley,” Hernando says, like he’s pleading. I don’t know what for (me to take it back? To pretend I’m joking?) but I sure as hell ain’t giving it to him.
“I get it, you know.” I stand and turn away. I don’t want to watch any more expressions flow over his face. “It’s not something folks can see, unless I show it off. But then I’d be flaunting it. But if I keep it to myself, I’m hiding it from you. But if I tell you, I’m rubbing it in people’s faces. But if I don’t, I’m keeping secrets.” I shrug, arms tightening over my belly like I’m holding myself together. “It’s just easier, at the end of the day. To let people assume.”
Those assumptions still piled on me over the years, crushing me down. They stick my teeth together whenever strangers casually ask if I have a boyfriend, or Lyssa teases me about the mysterious man who whisks me away in the night like a pudgy Cinderella.
How do I explain all that? How do I make it so Hernando will understand?
As it turns out, I don’t have to.
Hernando’s quiet for a long time. He taps the tips of his forefingers together, and I see his gaze skirt to the pinewood cross, which hangs above the clock on the wall. Then he stands, wincing at the pops in his knees. He crosses to the microwave and produces a steaming bowl of sopa de fideo.
“Here,” he says, gruff. “Eat up, mija. You had a long night.”
I didn’t notice how famished I was, but hunger tears into me at his words. Only the tenets of basic courtesy prevent me from diving in face-first. The soup is a noodly olive branch, and I’m so grateful I could cry.
Hernando doesn’t say he accepts me. He doesn’t say he loves me. But with that one simple gesture, he doesn’t really need to.
As I chew, Hernando tells me about his warehouse job. About how a gringo foreman kept making cracks about bad hombres sneaking over the border. How he threatened to call ICE on a woman who dropped a package because she was on medication and so exhausted she could barely stand. Still coming to work, of course, because she needed the money. She ground herself to the bone just to survive and got called lazy for her efforts.
One day, Hernando had enough.
“Please,” I say, midway through my mouthful, “tell me you slapped him around the face with a bag of beanburgers.”
“I didn’t, and you and me are gonna talk real soon about the dangers of picking fights with Supers.” Still, a smile nestles in the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes, though he’s too tired to re-create it on his lips. He tells me how he quit on that foreman and marched to the warehouse next door. The warehouse that was always hiring.
I nod, I munch, I swallow. Every time I take a bite, I swear I taste the love.