AS I HEAD down the stairs and exchange waves with Mr. Beauvais, I realize I still haven’t sent Jav any confirmation of our library totally-not-a-date. Guilt makes me fish out my phone again—then cramps up my thumbs before I can tell her I’ve got a new gig, and that I’ve branched out from hospitality to henching.
Jav’s always been there for me. Just like how I’ve always made myself available for hugs when she scores less than an A-. Neither of us have dads. Hers died when she was a baby from some cancer I can’t pronounce, while I have a shortlist of fifty potential candidates, each less desirable than the last. But the one thing we know we can count on is each other.
I just can’t count on her to understand why I’m working for Hench.
In the end, I send a flood of heart emojis (there can never be enough) and step through the front door. Our street’s never deserted, even at dusk. Two old guys swap gossip around a weathered table outside the building a few doors down, and several kids lounge on their stoops, lazily pecking at their phones.
Then there’s the guy in the suit. He saunters along the road, feeding letters through one door after the next. I assume Jehovah, but when he gives us the same treatment, I spot the blue Blair Homes logo, half hidden by his hand.
Too late for me to snatch the letter and stomp on it. The guy gives me a friendly smile. It goes unreturned.
Time trickles by. Blair Homes guy makes it to the end of the block without getting decked, though I can’t be the only one tempted. Ten twenty-eight. I lurk beneath the overhang, watching the digits shift on my phone.
Ten twenty-nine. I ask myself what would happen if I went back inside.
Ten thirty. A horn grunts. A stumpy black city car swings onto the street, coasting to rest against the sidewalk. It’s like one of those old Western movies where an outlaw comes to town. Everyone hurries inside as the car passes, parents calling to kids, the old men’s cards abandoned to the wind.
I wait until the last door slams, then twist the silver disc on my neck. Feathers tickle every inch of me. I would squirm, but the sensation vanishes as fast as it starts. My green-suited arms don’t look like a part of me. I’m not entirely sure they look human.
“Get in,” says the Captain through the open window.
“Hi to you, too.”
“Oh, sorry. Didn’t realize I was paid by the fucking pleasantry. Hurry up, Jones; we’re burning night.”
The crumpled figure in the passenger seat must be Birnbaum, making holographic rubber look droopy. I guess he called shotgun, pleading his arthritic knees. All six-foot-something of Turner is folded onto the back seat. He waggles his gloved fingers. The Captain must want me to slide in next to him. Not quite where I’d been during the crash, but close.
I haven’t been in a car since. Judging by my locked-up legs, that won’t change tonight.
I don’t wanna say I have PTSD. Not without a diagnosis. I’m way better than I was in the months after the accident, when every loud noise sent my adrenal glands into overdrive. Most likely, this is some sort of residual anxiety disorder. Still, it’s like someone’s got a gun on me 24/7.
Some days, that gun isn’t loaded. It makes me nervy, but it doesn’t feel like a threat. I might go months without issues. Hell, I might forget the gun exists.
Other days, the gun’s cocked. I walk on tiptoes, tense as piano wire, anticipating pain—but the finger on the trigger stays still.
Then we have the bad days. The days when the slam of a door, the squeal of brakes, the sour hint of gasoline on the breeze makes that gunman shoot. The days my mind splinters out of itself and the entire world registers only as threat.
And okay, maybe putting myself on the front lines of the ongoing hero/villain conflict isn’t the best self-care choice. But things have been chill lately. I haven’t had a full-scale panic attack in ages. I faced Cooper without needing a pants change, right?
But the one thing I can’t do, the one thing my body won’t let me (heart racing, head buzzing, sweat crawling down my neck), is get in the Captain’s car.
I stall: “Where’s Sherman?”
A motorcycle glides up behind me. Cyanide blue, purring low as a panther.
“Reporting for duty,” Sherman drawls from inside the helmet, putting two fingers to her visor in a mocking salute. I don’t know if it’s directed at me, the Captain, or the world in general.
The Captain answers with a one-fingered salute of his own. “Enough chat. Jones, quit acting like a spare lamppost. I’ll explain our job on the way.”
Turner pops the door. All I have to do is sit down. Fasten the seat belt. Breathe. Can’t be that hard. Right?
“She isn’t moving,” says Birnbaum. The Captain groans.
“Why isn’t she moving?” When I don’t reply, he holds out his hand. “Whatever. Deactivate your hologram. Twist counterclockwise to detach.”
“You’re firing me?” Ouch. I’d hoped to last longer than Sherman.
“No. You’re quitting.” His goggles are empty wells. “Aren’t you?”
Yes. No. I don’t know. “I’m not getting in that car.”
“Then you quit.”
“I wanna come! I need…” I need the money. I can’t say that. Too pathetic.
Sherman kicks out her prop and folds her arms, like she expects to be here awhile. Is she wearing leathers under her uniform? Probably not—too hot. The summer night settles drowsily on my skin. I chose a basic tee to go beneath my hologram, which is a safe bet should our job carry through to the morning.
If I ever make it to this job in the first place.
“I can’t deal with cars,” I tell the Captain. “I’m sorry. I want to, I really do, but I…” I grope for words. “… can’t.”
I expect more sarcasm, but he just gives another of those expressive, two-handed shrugs. “So, hop on Sherman’s bike.”
“What?” says Sherman.
“What?” I echo.
The Captain hooks his elbow out the open window. “You won’t ride with me—which I take personally, by the way—and Sherman has a bike. Do the math.”
“Do I get a say in this?” Sherman asks.
“Nah. Be grateful I let you take your bike out on jobs in the first place. It’s way too recognizable, I told you before.”
“I offered to bring it! Because it’s way too cramped for all of us in your tiny-ass clown car!”
“My clown car has a soundproof box in the trunk, and don’t you forget it.” The force of the Captain’s glare pierces his mask. “You’ve ridden with a passenger before. I’ve seen you.”
“Yeah, a passenger who knew what they were doing. You ever been on a bike, Jones?”
“Nope.”
“Then no,” Sherman tells the Captain. “She’ll get us killed.”
“Not if you drive to the speed limit.”
“You can stick the speed limit up your…”
I don’t find out what anatomical explorations Sherman has planned, because the Captain rolls up his window and her voice trails away. The car putters off in a cloud of exhaust, its belly low to the road. I suspect that the Captain is smirking.
I know he didn’t do this for my sake. Rather, it appears to be part of his ongoing mission to aggravate Sherman until she resigns. But if I have to choose between climbing into a car and snapping every bone in my body if I fall off Sherman’s bike …
I pick bike.
Sherman’s still fuming. Her shoulders rise and fall beneath her costume, accompanied by the whoosh of angry breath. “Should leave you here,” she mutters.
“But you won’t, out of the kindness of your heart?”
Sherman crosses her arms, balanced astride her seat with one boot on the sidewalk.
“Right,” I correct myself. “You’re a badass henchman. You don’t have one of those.”
I edge closer until I’m standing behind her. Waiting for her to rev and roar away. When that doesn’t happen, I rest my hands on the second seat and tentatively sling over a leg.
Not my most graceful moment. Which is to say: I knee Sherman hard enough to pop a kidney. She makes a sharp, pained noise. I squeak an apology and settle to the grind of her teeth.
The passenger seat has a squishy backrest. I find myself wondering who else’s been where I am. Who she wants where I am.
Useless thoughts. I push them away.
“Okay. What do I do?”
Sherman sits so stiff her muscles quiver. “Lean into corners with me, or we’ll tip. And here.” She yanks off her bike helmet and jams it over my head, almost shaving off my nose.
“Ow! What the hell?”
“You’re more likely to fall.”
“That’s reassuring. What about you?”
A sulky snort. “Don’t need one.”
“Yeah, I think every licensed bike instructor would disagree.”
“Don’t need one of those, either.”
“Which makes me real confident in your abilities.” I twist from side to side, testing the shift of my weight. “This can hold both of us, yeah? Not exactly Tinker Bell here.”
Sherman’s blank Hench mask swings to appraise me. “This,” she says, after an ominous pause, “is a heavily customized Harley-Davidson Low Rider.”
“Good for it?”
“Hydraulic jacks, twin-cooled engine. Eighty-seven horsepower.”
“You probably think that answers my question, so I’ll nod along and pretend I speak your language.”
Sherman blows air through her mask. “You’ll be fine, Jones. Just hold on tight.”
Night crawls over the skyscrapers like a swarm of black flies. Sherman kicks up her prop, guns the engine, and we’re off. I grab the nearest thing. It happens to be Sherman. I crush myself to her back, a limpet unto a rock on Sunnylake’s tourist-stuffed beach.
“Too tight!” she yells.
I barely hear over the roaring exhaust. Still, I relax my death grip, locking my thighs around the seat. Sherman might struggle to steer if she can’t breathe.
Vibrations rattle up through my pelvis. It’s weirdly okay, though. No metal box to trap me. If we crash like this, I’ll die quick. Not like back then: screaming, coughing, trying to reach Lyssa and Mom, choking on the thick gasoline-stink of the fire …
Wind rushes against us, battering away the past. The Captain’s car glows ahead, a monster with rabid red taillights for eyes. We glide in its wake, the city slipping around us like it’s moving and we aren’t, Sherman’s body a tense line against mine.