CHAPTER 7

OUR LESSON ROSTER for the afternoon features such highlights as How to Fall Over Without Snapping Your Ankles and How to Play Dead When Sidekicks Approach. The Captain dismisses us afterward. Apparently, over the course of a single day, we’ve mastered the full henching skill set.

We leave the Crow Building in the early evening, the sun doing an excellent Eye of Sauron impression in the west. After muttering goodbyes to Turner and Birnbaum, I trundle home, tapping out a message for Jav. After deleting and restarting three dozen times, I finally settle on a generic hows the research that hopefully, through its dearth of wisecracks, conveys how seriously I’m taking my supposedly jobless plight while assuring her I haven’t committed seppuku with Hernando’s favorite kitchen knife.

She replies five minutes later with a long line of skull emojis and a really sweet lie about how it’d be better if I was there, though we both know I’d ask constant questions and throw off her groove. Still, the selfie she sends me—her melting dramatically over a plastic library chair and squashing her chin into her neck—makes my tummy flutter.

Yeah, that’s right. Her eyes-rolled-back, tongue-lolling, chinless-wonder worm impression gives me butterflies.

Teenage hormones. What even.

I’m at the age where I sometimes get red-cheeked from a) brushing shoulders with strangers, b) the fluffiest, shmoopiest G-rated fanfic, and c) the occasional inanimate object. The difference is, if I mention those instances, Jav will laugh and mock me for the rest of our existence on this Earth, like besties are supposed to. If I mention that she regularly makes the temperature of my face rival the surface of the sun; that every casual touch we share sets me alight; that when I imagine her applying today’s nail paint with a grimace of such intense concentration you’d think she was performing brain surgery, my heart does three backflips and a corkscrewing somersault … I might fuck up something that means more to me than all the butterflies in the world.

My phone bings again.

Meet me at the library, tomorrow lunch? I can help you fill in job apps, you can listen to me whine about Neil Smith’s revanchist city theory and pretend you know wtf I’m talking about.

Sounds perfect. I plan on telling her so, but more mail awaits on our front doormat. I keep my foot raised over it, just in case, but don’t spot a Blair Homes logo. Just a cylinder wrapped in white paper, the size of an empty TP tube, and my name.

“Huh,” I say. “Weird.”

I recall Maheen’s promise, but it can’t be my uniform—way too small. Unless it’s just the mask? Frowning at the package, I make my way upstairs, returning Mr. and Mrs. Beauvais’s waves on the way.

Lyssa lounges on the sectional, nose to her phone. Each message she receives makes a thwip noise, like a rubber ball bouncing off a wall. She’s technically too young to spend all day on Tumblr and TikTok, but Hernando’s not home often enough to stop her. I mostly let Lyss do what she wants. The more time she spends arguing with trolls, the less she spends arguing with me.

We exchange our customary greeting grunts. Then Lyssa’s magpie eyes latch onto my package. “What’s that?”

I know from her tone she hopes it’s one of her presents. No luck. Her birthday budget is negative five dollars until my first check drops from Hench.

“Mine.”

“Who sent it?”

No clue. “Secret admirer.”

“Who’d admire you?” Ass. Jav got lucky, not having siblings.

“I wish you had a twin who’d eaten you in utero,” I tell Lyssa, then sashay into the bathroom and drop the latch. No black goggle eyes greet me when I tear away the packaging. Instead, I find a cylinder of plastic, cut lengthways like a sub roll, with a chip sandwiched between the halves. The chip is circular and frilled like the cap of a beer bottle. Tiny filaments waft underneath. The overall effect channels some sort of cyberpunk jellyfish. Very Lovecraft meets Futurama.

I borrow Hernando’s mustache-trimming scissors from the windowsill. A snip along the tape seal and the cylinder cracks, chip dropping into my palm. I remove the folded black card from behind it, checking for instructions. They’re printed over the crease line in Hench’s noxious green block font. STEP 1: PLACE ON NECK.

What the hell. Today can’t get any weirder.

As the chip nears my skin, my scalp tingles like I’ve rubbed my head on a balloon. I swear the chip jumps the last millimeter, clamping on like a tick.

“Holy shit!” I don’t mean to blurt that out loud, but it happens anyway.

“Dad says we ain’t supposed to say that unless we’ve had a divine bowel movement,” calls Lyssa.

I’m too busy gawking at myself in the mirror to say something smart, like You fish it out, I’ll call the Pope. Or rather, too busy gawking at the henchman who’s taken my place.

A holographic rubber suit coats me head to ankle, camouflaging my billowy sleeves against the shower tiles. Who knows how that works. The dark green material follows the contours of my body, and I love every rounded inch. I look badass. I look powerful. For the first time, I look like someone who belongs at a Super fight.

I just don’t look very much like me.

No hint of an identity. No hint of Riley Jones. Even my ratty sneakers have been replaced by big stompy boots, in the same military surplus style the Captain wears. But it’s the mask I fixate on. My new face—or rather, the absence of one. No mouth. Only a faint outdent to indicate the presence of my nose. Those empty black goggles, hollowing out my eyes …

I reach out, watching the henchman in the mirror do the same. Our fingertips brush, cold glass between us.

This explains a lot. Always wondered how Super costumes never got ripped. Between this and the guns, Hench is packing serious tech. Our boss must keep plenty in the bank. Just, y’know, not enough to pay us over the minimum wage.

According to the card, I have to twist the disc counterclockwise twice to deactivate. First turn reveals my face, which is pink-tinged, sweaty, and unspeakably odd-looking when attached to a henchman’s neck. Second turn dismisses the rest of the hologram.

There I am. Same ol’ Riley Jones.

“Okay, you’ve been in there so long I’m starting to think you actually did find Jesus.”

… And same ol’ Lyssa Garcia.

I wash up that evening, following an insta-ramen dinner. Dzz-dzz. My phone rattles against the top of our fridge.

“I’ll get it,” chirps Lyssa.

“Like hell you will!”

Lyssa scoots to the edge of the sectional. I dredge my hands in the soapy depths and fling the sodden dishcloth in her face—to which she retaliates with a threadbare cushion. After we resolve our disagreement in a civilized manner (100 percent compliant with child safety regulations, minus yours truly yanking a fistful of my baby sister’s hair), I put the phone to my ear and compose myself. This is difficult, as my new seat is composed of too many jabbing elbows for comfort, but I do my best.

“Hi there,” I say, shuffling to sit cross-legged on Lyssa’s back and mashing her face into the couch. “Riley Jones speaking.”

“Lucky girl.” A moist Mississippi accent dribbles into my ear, punctuated with a snap of gum. “You got a job.”

“Right—um. What is it?”

“Does it matter?” asks McCarthy. “Active duty, conflict expected. Be outside with your uniform on in fifteen minutes if you want to get paid.” She disconnects before I can stutter out an affirmation.

I release Lyssa, who shows her gratitude by attempting to bludgeon me to death with the TV remote. I disarm her and head into our room to change.

“Where are you going?” she hollers after me.

“Out. Work thing.” Not a lie. Not technically.

“Artie’s shuts up early on Sundays.”

“You could learn a lesson from them. ’Bout shutting up, I mean.”

Lyssa’s dark eyes drill into my back. “Classic deflection. You’re meeting someone, aren’t you?”

“Am not.” I’m meeting several someones, and we’re gonna commit crimes of an unspecified nature.

“Is it your secret admirer?”

“No! Just—stay here, you goober. If Hernando gets back early, his leftovers are in the fridge.”

“My dad, you mean?” Lyssa always says that when she wants to piss me off. I’m so jittery at the thought of our upcoming job, I don’t have space in my heart for hurt.

“Yeah, your dad. Whatever.”

She taps her chin. “Maybe I should text him. See what he thinks about this. Unless…”

Blackmail: a time-honored form of sibling bonding. I can’t even be mad. Basic rule of the world. If someone wants you to do something, don’t do it for free. “What do you want?”

Lyssa’s demands come preprepared; she ticks them off on her fingers. “Full control of the remote every weekend. You tidy my side of our room—Dad’s nagging again. And I’m meeting Mackenzie and Shan at the park tomorrow. I want you to take me in the chair.”

That last part at least requires no persuasion; Lyssa’s at the age where she needs to be regularly peeled off the couch before she puts down roots. The chair is a cheap push-along model, hospital-style, too heavy and high-backed for her to wheel herself for long. Some people get weird about her using it, like as soon as she sits down she forfeits the right to make her own coffee orders and not be touched by random strangers. But those people are asshats, and don’t deserve teeth.

Take it from Lyssa: She doesn’t resent her mobility aids. They don’t stop her going into town. The elevator breaking every time there’s a Super attack stops her. The chair doesn’t stop her making more friends; people being dicks about her chair does. At the end of the day, she’s in dire need of a prosthetic refit and the chair’s comfier long-distance.

Still, I narrow my eyes. “Which park?”

“The bougie one, by the marina.”

Good. Magnolia Park is closer, but that’s back toward Shit Creek. I used to chase Lyssa around that square of dead grass and the ant-infested ball court, back before our lives rolled away from us in a ball of tortured aluminum and broken glass.

We haven’t been to that part of town in years. I intend to keep it that way. Some things are best left buried.

“You get one weekend a month,” I say, and Lyssa pretends to mull it over before sticking out her hand.

“Deal.”

After we shake on it, I head for the door. I tell Lyssa I’ll be back soon, but that’s a lie, too. I don’t know how long this’ll take. Honestly, I’ll be lucky to come back at all.