Blog of a Teenage Superhero

Ten hours of Chill-fi "Human Music" above.

You don"t need superpowers to defend truth, justice, and the American way. You just need a pallet that doesn"t turn at the words "breaking and entering."

Take right now, for instance. I"m at the edge of the Silver Dollar Strip, where the city turns to rust and gnarled tree roots and the moon sinks low in the sponge of gray clouds. I skim my fingers over the dozen or so "No trespassing" signs scattered throughout the forest, hopping the loops of barbed wire half-buried in the mud.

"Monet!" Finn shouts in the left ear of my headset. "Kai"s bullying me!"

"I am not!" Kaito shouts in my right. "He"s so freaking delicate. It"s like I"m riding shotgun with a Cattleya Orchid."

"He took my calzone, Monet. You know how I feel about him taking my food."

"You know how I feel about Finn in general." Kai huffs. "He"s a pathetic, little-"

"Yeah! Well, you"re a jerky little emo brat, and I-I"m taller than you!"

In case you"re wondering, no, I am not a mother and no, these are not my derpy kids. These are my best friends. Finn, seventeen, the guy with the intel and Kaito, also seventeen, the guy with the Pizzastar delivery car.

"Guys, we"re about to see a supervillain." Me, this time. "I"m not your mom. Cut it out."

"Mon-neet!" Kaito whines. I click him off and click on a chill-fi ten-hour edit of "Human Music." I stumble onto the driveway and drag my feet across the gravel to clean off the mud. It"s a cute little cottage, with a front porch and a swinging tropical-print love seat. Vines climb up the yellow siding. The windows are boarded up with red shutters, the planter boxes filled with tiny white flowers. I slap the crowbar against my thigh, notepad tucked neatly under my arm as I step up onto the creaking porch. I crouch below the window, ear pressed against the wall. Low voices murmur and laugh.

I rise, adjust my starched collar, and knock on the faded pink door. "Mr. Preston?"

The voices silence. I exhale a holed-up breath.

"Mr. Preston! I"m glad you"re here! I was texted an anonymous tip about your meeting with a Masquerade tonight." I pull out the notepad and fumble with the pencil tucked behind my ear. It makes me feel like one of the old reporters, the ones with "Press" stuck in the bands of their pork-pies. "As in, the villain Masquerade. The one wreaking havoc and terror. You wouldn"t know anything about that, would you?"

The silence is so thick my dubstep gives it a heartbeat.

"Okay, great. I"m just going to pry these shutters open and snap some pictures myself."

"Monet!" Finn shouts. The chill-fi zaps off. "You can"t just cut us off like this. We"re on a mission."

Kai cuts in too. "Yeah, hasn"t anyone taught you about stranger danger or anything?"

Precisely. "And that"s why I"m doing this alone." I drop my voice into a whisper and step to the side, the porch creaking under my feet. "The mayor already knows me and my dad. If you guys get involved, he"ll hurt you to shut you up."

"And he won"t hurt you, too?" Finn"s voice is quiet and shaky.

"Yeah, Mo"," Kai says, "this is kind of stupid. Even more than it usually is."

The guys are at my command. I make them the best coffee to be had by the Silver Dollar Shore and they follow my plans. Easy. "Yeah, well, if I end up in tiny slivers at the bottom of the Silver Dollar Surf, everyone"s gonna know who did it."

I crouch low in front of the window and pry the shutters open with one, two, three tugs of the crowbar. It makes a croaky little sound. The panes beneath are frosted blue. I lift my camera. The room is average enough, luxury Americana, straight from the catalogs. There"s a chestnut coffee table with a fruit bowl on top, pastel paintings on the back wall, and sure enough, a balding, pot-bellied mayor sitting on the couch. Beside a hooded figure.

I wave, smile, and take as many pictures as my giant old camera will allow. It"s a beaut, this camera. I fished it out of a dumpster somewhere and it"s got a good, heavy feel in my hands. Plus, I love slapping prints down on my boss"s desk. The mayor catches my eye and smiles.

And that"s when it hits me that maybe the boys are right.

"Guys, guys, I"m going." I spin around on my heels. Glass explodes behind my head, shards whipping out behind me. I duck, but not fast enough to avoid at least a dozen or so nicks to the back of the head. I can"t help a little cry of pain.

"Monet, what"s happening?" Finn. His voice is calm. "Are you okay?"

I open my mouth to respond, but a hand grasps around my throat. I"m yanked back through the window, kicking and screaming. I grip the fingers and try to pry them off my neck, but they just sink deeper into the delicate flesh.

"I take that as a no. Locking in on your location. Stay strong."

"What"s happening?" Kai, again. "Monet, answer me! What"s going on?"

I"m dying, Kai, that"s what"s going on. "Choking, for the most part."

"What should I do with her?" Masquerade asks, dangling me a couple inches off the shag carpet. Mayor Preston stands up from the couch and sets his Coke on the table. The man gives me a hard appraising look as I scramble and scream, arms flailing, legs kicking out. Then I drop, limp against the villain, too tired and weak to breathe.

"Ms. April O"Neil. What a pleasant surprise." He sniggers this. I never pegged him to be much of TMNT fan. "Or Ms. Jackson, I should say. You share a remarkable resemblance with your father."

My throat is scratchy and raw. "Flattered," I say, "Would you mind answering a few questions? Or do you usually have supervillains attack your house guests?" I can barely choke out the words, gasping even to breathe.

"Look." Masquerade huffs. He has a young voice. "Should I kill her or do you want to monologue at her?"

"I"ll kill you!" Kai screams as Finn cooes at him in hushed, mothering tones in the background.

The mayor shrugs. "She has friends. They come here or she dies. Tell them that."

Masquerade drops me. I hit the floor in a wheezing puddle, the headset wrenched out of my ears. "Really, sirs." My chest heaves. "I just wanted you to answer some questions, is all. The superheroes are gone. What happened to them? If you"re innocent, I can clear your name."

"A junior reporter." The mayor steps forward with a catty yawn. "The apple doesn"t fall far from the tree. Did your father send you? Or are you all prying scum?"

"My job is to learn the truth." I rise shakily to my feet. "And I"ll do anything to get it."

Masquerade groans. He"s wearing skinny jeans, half in costume and half in casual dress. His hair is tied in a neat blonde bun to the nape of his neck and he"s giving his cloak a rest for a hoodie. He"s still wearing his usual white mask, though, the one with the curved slits for eyes and a grin set into the bottom half. "Your friends are stupid, Monet. And so are you. It"s best to keep out of the affairs of beings higher on the evolutionary scale than you. Didn"t your dad tell you that?"

"Quit spewing your crap." My fists are trembling. "And what are you? Thirteen, fourteen-"

"Sixteen!"

"Interesting. Taking your hormonal stress out on the city. Sounds completely healthy." I spin the pencil through my fingers and wrap it across my knuckles. I touch my aching throat, tracing each swelling bruise on my neck. Then I scribble illegibly in my notepad and back toward the door. "I"m sixteen too. Care to help a friend out and let me go?"

Masquerade pounces. I hit the ground beneath him. My heeled shoe slams into his stomach, my curled fists thrown in rapid-fire uppercuts. It gives me just enough space to worm free of his caging arms. My laces are already half-untied by the time I take off running down the hall. I race past the kitchen, and past the shut up doors. There"s a window at the end of the hall. Masquerade breezes past me and leans against the curtains, that eternal grin burning on his mask. "Going anywhere, Miss Jackson?"

"Back off!" I kick off my heels and lunge for the door to my right. Just a little bedroom, maybe meant for a child. The walls are painted a soft shade of pink, a quilt drawn up over the bed. White furniture. A little bear tucked against the pillows. I suck in a gasp and race for another curtained window.

"Running like a rat in a maze." Masquerade snorts behind me. His young voice has taken on a deep quality, low and throaty. I whip around, backed against the nylon drapes. My shaky fingers fumble with the locks on the bottom of the glass. This was a bad idea. I should"ve been sneakier, stealthier. But I never thought the man would try to kill me.

The Prestons and the Jacksons have always feuded. The mayor is a wealthy politician, and my father is a reporter who has his salary slashed every year because the Journal can"t afford him. Or any of its employees, really. I"m not even on the payroll. Mayweather just slips me twenties in pink envelopes and I cover zoning meetings. Is it legal? Probably not.

But is it necessary? Absolutely.

"I suggest you not jump." The voice becomes a low, sultry purr. My heart slams against my ribs. The window won"t budge. "If you want a lead, I can give you a lead. That warehouse out back, there"s some bad stuff happening there." He lifts his mask up by the chin, just so I can make out the twitching smirk on his lips. "It isn"t safe behind here for you mortals. Chemical pollution. The swamp is contaminated."

"Good one." He steps forward. I point my crowbar at his chest. "Don"t come any closer."

"Or what? You gonna pry me to death?" Another step. The smirk widens.

"I"ll bash your brains in, that"s what." I whip around and slam the crowbar into the glass. Again and again. A crack shows in the surface, long and slender. Nothing for me to work with. Now, I could pry the window open. That"s a crowbar"s function, after all. But I was hoping to break the glass since the whole process would have been that much quicker.

Now Masquerade"s got his gloved hands around my wrists. I wriggle and bash the crowbar against his stomach and thighs, kicking, screaming. Maybe you"ve never fought a supervillain before. Maybe you don"t know the feeling of being held by someone who wants to hurt you and has all the crushing power of a locomotive. My stomach locks up, my voice pitches up into a perpetual cry, and all my strength goes into my twitching hand. I swing and swing and swing. He grunts. His grip tightens. Bones bend and creak. Stars explode in front of my eyes. "Quit fighting! Stupid mortal-"

"Hey, hey!" Kai"s voice. Not from the headset this time, but from the other room. "Let her go!" My heart sinks that much deeper in my chest. I"ve endangered them, just like I said I wouldn"t do.

"Please?" Finn adds.

I swing around, faint and bleeding, and hit the floor. I drag myself back to the window on my knees with the last of my strength. My jeans tear. My shoulders strain at my blazer, arms yanked taut behind me. The pain is sharp and sudden.

"I"m going to break your wrists," Masquerade says coolly, "unless you chill out."

"Do it, then." My socked feet graze the window. I jerk my hand to the side and wrench it out of the divot between his thumb and forefinger. A little trick Lady Self-Defense taught me when Dad sat me in front of all those martial arts training Vhses so if someone tried to hurt me, I could fight back. Smart planning on his part! "Who needs wrists anyway? You can"t type with them. You can"t even dial 911 with them."

I swing the crowbar at his throat. The sharp edge cuts his skin, and he recoils with a yelp. This time, I bash the window open with a few hard whacks. No wire screen. "Guys, guys, guys! Go! Now!" I throw myself out of the open window, but Masquerade grips me by the coattails of my blazer.

"What did I just say, Monet?" His voice is measured and clipped. "You see all that. That"s all dangerous chemicals down there." And sure enough, when I look down, the watershed is half-submerged in a milky swirl of red and white. The goo surrounds the warehouse like a moat. It"s much deeper than a swamp. It"s a little more of a lake.

"What is it?" The curse of having an inquisitive mind. The goo pulses and snaps, bubbles brewing on the surface and popping when they reach the air.

"None of your business," he snaps. "If I drowned you, no one would know. It would be an unfortunate accident."

I squirm. The acrid fumes make my head spin. Kai and Finn need time to escape, time I have to buy them. I drop the crowbar into the spitting brew and watch it sink. "You have a bad attitude."

"I"m deciding whether or not to drop you, Monet." He sighs from deep in his throat. "Don"t speed up the process, okay? Now, if you"ll behave, maybe I"ll drag you back into this house and brew you a cup of hot tea."

"Yeah?"

"So long as you beg for mercy."

I know this tactic. It"s a way to demoralize the victim and make the attacker a straw-hero in the victim"s mind. Look how merciful he is. He saved me when all I could do was beg. This can lead to all sorts of bad destinations. Stockholm Syndrome, for instance.

"No thank you." I wrench my blazer out of his grasp and catch the shutter with my sweat-slicked hands. Masquerade leans out the sill, his glove pressed against his masked cheek. He sighs dreamily.

"I gave you a choice, Juliet."

This isn"t even happening on a balcony, so his reference game is pretty off. I reach out to grasp one of the loose siding slats. He slaps my hand away. Joints snap. I yelp. He snatches up my free wrist in his glove, his masked face edging toward mine. The other hand dangles limply at my side. My vision has gone spotty, and all I see are stars.

"Beg, or die."

I shake my head.

He lifts me higher, and just when I think he"s taken pity on me, he drops me into the hissing bog below.

***

Working on a new superhero story between Stolen Souls and Damsel[ed]. I haven"t worked out an update schedule, but I"m thinking along the lines of something weekly, like every Monday. Anyway, I hope you like this and would love to read your comments!

xMichelle

Now, this would be a crappy origin story if died. You"d probably ask for your money back, which is what I would do, but you"re not paying for this. Which is good economic sense on your part.

But I digress.

The universe doesn"t care what makes a good origin story. People die. Sometimes by perfectly normal means, sometimes by drowning in illegal rivers of chemical pollution.

Would this be a bad time to say I don"t know how to swim?

Goop oozes through my blazer and shirt. It fills my head with twittering birdies and fills my lungs with acid sludge. It burns. And It"s heavy. It pulls my ankles and tugs me deeper into the bubbling pit. I splash and scream, but the brew is so thick my desperate splashing only yanks me deeper into the bog. The milky swirl drips down my forehead, hissing against my skin. Masquerade looks down at me and waves. I flip him off with the last of my strength. The darkness creeps up my face and drips into my eyes. I hold my breath. You"re tough, Monet. You can get yourself out of this one. Sure, you live by the beach and can"t swim because water is scary, but you"ve got this. You can deal.

This is before I"m pulled under.

If a galaxy had a texture, this is how it would feel. The swirl of colors around my head. The darkness. The sting of broken rocks against my body like burning, poky, stars. My nostrils are sealed shut, my cheeks pufferfished with acrid air.

Could this honestly be the end?

I hope not. Drowning is already a bad way to go, and it only makes it worse I"m being passively murdered by a supervillain to cover up what I"ve seen. And I"m a freaking reporter.

No, an ironic twist isn"t a great way to go, either. Leave that for the authors.

I don"t get to see my life flash before my eyes. I just see darkness. My arms sink below me in the bubbling goo, my fingers twitching with the last of my nervous energy.

I find the crowbar, smooth and slimy, at the bottom of the lagoon.

My brains are about to explode in my head from the pressure, but I think of Kai. I think of Finn. I think of Dad.

I think of dangling helplessly in Masquerade"s grasp. That grin on his mask, eternal in its cruelty.

I hack at the choppy, slimy waters. The soup clings to my skin and sizzles under my clothes. But I can"t let go.

That mask.

All I see is that mask.

And all I can think about is what it stands for. That boy. Someone has to fight back, someone has to...

I burst through the blackness. Goop clings to my face like a mask and hangs off my arms in slimy strings. I rub my eyes, filling them with the chemical brine. I suck in a gasp. The air, though acrid, is delicious to my burning lungs. Then I upchuck my stomach. I wade through the sludge and stumble up into the grass.

"Monet!" I jump. I can"t tell if it"s Kai or Finn or even Masquerade. Everything sounds like it"s underwater. A hand pats my arm. I gasp, and sputter, and wheeze. The squeeze of who I hope is a friend has all the crushing-force of a steel claw on my now brittle body. I heave up a little more of my stomach, my skin still burning, my brains melting in its skull cavity.

"We need to get her checked out."

"No." I wheeze, spitting out strings of vomit and sludge. "I just need coffee. And a hot shower."

"We should probably call 911."

I shake my head. My hair is slicked to my forehead and neck with chemical grease. "I need to get these pictures to Mayweather-"

"Your camera is ruined, Monet." Rough fabric scrubs my face and eyelids. Steadying arms wrap around my waist. I wobble, squirming my toes in my heavy socks. When I cough, blood and sludge comes up. "We need to get out of here," the voice so helpfully adds. I glare, though all I can see are little black dots.

I do some more spitting. "Where"s Masquerade?" I ask, lifting my sleeve to wipe the corner of my mouth before thinking the better of it.

"He left. We hid in the bushes for a little while, you know, like you told us to." The words blur together into mush, incomprehensive to the untrained ear. "I practically had to drag Kai. Masquerade shot off and the mayor sort of disappeared. I think he had a car idling somewhere. But are you okay?"

"My camera can"t be ruined." My heart flutters in my chest though my eyelids have begun to droop. "I got pictures. People-"

"Are you kidding me!" Kai shouts in my ear. Not in the headset, this time. I flinch. "You just took a dive in... in whatever that is. Who cares about the pictures? You"re going to the doctor. The question is, do you want to go to Patience First or should we call up an ambulance?."

"I really like that camera." I yawn. All the feeling has gone to my wrists and shoulders. That feeling, specifically, is pain. And though the thought of the evidence"s destruction makes my insides hot and jelly, I can"t fight the sleepiness that"s come over me. "Isn"t tomorrow, like, the first day of school or something?"

Kai pulls me back. My heels drag in the grass, my head leaned against his shoulder. I blink my eyes open, wiping my dripping face with my sludgy sleeve. The night is still pitch and the stars are blurry and white. Finn frowns down at me, his round glasses flashing in the moonlight.

Picture a coat rack in glasses and a hoodie. That"s Finn. His golden-blonde hair sticks out of his gray beanie in unruly feathers. He hasn"t taken off that beanie in weeks. I think he just took up my offer to go on this adventure to postpone the inevitable back-to-school shampooing.

He pats me on the shoulder, his green eyes dancing. "What is this stuff?"

"Deadly, probably." Kai cuddles me against his chest. I roll my burning eyes. He"s the strong one of the group, and also, the short one. Finn is over six feet tall and I"m at least 5"8 or "9. But Kai? He"s been shut up in more lockers than I can count. The thought of it makes me snicker even now.

I snort out a bubble of red and white. "I feel fine," I say, "really. It"s the drowning stuff that gets you, not what you"re drowning in." I pick up the camera and knock his squeezing arms away. He grunts.

"You"re still going to the doctor."

"I"m going to run down to the 24 hour CVS and have these prints developed. Or I"ll do it myself in my basement." I stumble back around the house with the guys trailing behind. I touch my toe to my footprints, wobble onto the path I kicked up, and brush sludge off my camera. It won"t boot. I"m fiddling with dials even though I"m not supposed to, my heart pounding desperately in my chest.

"It"s ruined," Kai says again. Finn throws me his hoodie. I throw my blazer to the ground then take off my shirt. Kai chokes. But I don"t have time for sensibility. The hoodie goes on, the socks come off. I briefly contemplate taking off my jeans, too, but there"s a breeze and even Mindy, the chillest cashier I know, will ask questions if I race into a CVS in the middle of the night in nothing but boy shorts and Finn"s hoodie. And then she"ll kick me out of her store until I put some pants on.

Every sharp stone and stick cuts my feet. Every owl hoot and wolf whine sets me on edge, ready to fight, the crowbar now shaking in my grasp.

Finn grasps my wrist. I yelp and pull away. "Are you okay?" he asks again.

I nod. My fingertips tingle, thrumming with new energy. The night air is crisp. The stars are bright and glistening against the tar-black of the night sky. Tree branches and roots intertwine above and beneath me. Moss and lichen hang from branches, filling the air with a sweet honeysuckle smell. Glo flies flicker and buzz.

The world is alive, pulsing with vibrancy and heart. And Masquerade tried to pry it all away from me. My clenched hands shake.

The sound of twisting metal and crunching plastic pulls me out of my thoughts. When I look down, my camera is a balled up hunk of broken plastic. My heart stops. The lens is bashed in, the dials I was fiddling with crushed flat looking a little like smashed soda caps.

A wail catches deep in my throat.

My baby, I killed my baby. And the negatives.

"Super-strength!" Kai shouts. "Hey, cool!"

It"s too much, all at once. And it hits like a punch in the gut. A supervillain tried to murder me, the mayor is up to no good, my evidence is crushed, and my camera is destroyed.

I sway.

The chemicals must"ve done it. They must"ve. And they must"ve had something to do with the missing superheroes. The mayor, too.

My stomach churns. The forest spins. I stumble back.

"Monet?" Kai shakes my shoulders. "Monet!"

Someone has to fight back. Someone has to save this city.

Masquerade, I vow, the boys" voices murky and far away, as I fall, fall, fall into the blackness, I"m going to make sure you never hurt anyone ever again.

But it"s so much, and the world is spinning too fast. I hit the ground, my head a swirl of blackness. And the last thing I see before I fade away is that white, smiling mask.

***

I"ll be updating this book on Mondays and Fridays. Thanks for reading and I hope you"re having a great summer!

I wake up to a slap in the face. And then another. And another.

"Ow, ow, ow, OW!" I flail and kick the dashboard of Kai"s Subaru. He yelps and flings his arms over the wooden paneling, lovingly stroking the built in cassette tape player. I clutch my face and sink down into the cracked leather seats, wool tufts floating up into the darkness around me.

Finn sighs. "So are we going to school tomorrow? Today?"

I glance down at my broken camera and scream. Head slammed into the headrest, face shoved into hands. I give your long, drawn out, Luke Skywalker "Nooooo..."

Kai grunts. "I don"t think Monet can handle-"

"Have you ever not seen her acting irrationally? Honestly, I think she"s right. I think she"s fine."

Tears spring to my burning eyes and race down my face. I suck in a breath, dry myself off with Finn"s hoodie, and lean against the cool windshield. "Okay, okay." I bite my quivering upper lip and puff out my chest. "So I broke my favorite camera. So the mayor is conspiring with Masquerade. Okay. Also, thanks, guys."

"You owe me ice cream," Kai says, the engine gargling as he backs the car out of this mud pit. Brown splatters the window and hides the streaks of gold in the sky. "I"m crashing at your house. After we go to the doctor."

"Oh, man." I cough, sinking even deeper into the seat. "School. Why? Why did this have to happen on the first day of school?"

"Let"s hope Masquerade is a high schooler." Finn crosses his ankles on the console, thumping his dirty Converse on the faux leather lid. Kai yelps at this, too, fumbling over me for the duster in the glove compartment. "We could identify him by the bags under his eyes. Also, quit whining. This is your own fault, Monet, all "Hey! This will be a fun way to end summer. This can"t end badly. Nope. Not dangerous at all."

"Point taken." I pick up the half-dry highlighter in the glove compartment and mark the back of my wrist. It"s a habit, scratching down every time one of my merry band knocks me a peg or six. I"ll have tally marks tattooed on my back when I"m old enough, just as reminders.

I got this. "Born leader" ought to be my memoir title, right behind "Defender of the universe" and "He-man."

"But yeah, yeah, sludge. Dangerous."

"Dangerous," Kai repeats, flicking Finn"s ankles off the console with a swat of his feather duster. "You crushed your camera with a bare hand, Monet. And...and you don"t look weird or anything, just kind of sludgy, but we should still take you to the doctor." He shuts the feather duster back up in the glove compartment and places both hands back on the steering wheel, where they should"ve always been.

I sigh. "I gotta think of a plan. And I gotta take a shower. Let"s just go home. Then I can have a real cry, with ice cream."

Kai grunts again, glaring at me over his shoulder. His black hair is ruffled under his Mets cap, shorter than Finn"s mess but still a little shaggy. Eyes, a dark brown. Skin, an even tan of the sun-kissed variety most guys here sport. He even smells of sea salt, as opposed to Finn"s and my own smell of... sweat, mostly. Not all of us can be the sea"s gift to Silver Dollar.

"Seriously, Mo", are you sure-"

I pick up his cap and slap it back on his head, mussing his perfectly imperfect waves. He groans. That"s forty percent of his communication, grunts and groans.

"Drive! Drive, my chauffeur, we must hurry home to cry and plot and make coffee for tomorrow. "Cause school sucks, and your backpacks are with me. They"re my hostages." I rub my hands together, forcing a mua-ha-ha even though this is poor timing for a mua-ha-ha. Kai frowns down at the steering wheel. "Look," I say, "if I start throwing up like crazy, I"ll hit the clinic. M"Kay? But we gotta think of something..."

Finn yawns. "In case you didn"t notice, it"s, like, three in the morning." The car pulls out of the forest roads and onto the paved, smooth ones. "Smooth" is a term I use generously here. The car thumps, again and again. The city street is pot-holed enough to beat out the moon in sheer crater numbers. "Monet is fine-"

"No one asked you!" Kai shouts, gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles go white.

"Yeah, well, no one asked you to be her bodyguard!" Finn crosses both feet back on the console, driving a shriek from Kai that makes my stomach turn up as the car swerves into the next lane. City buildings and murals fly by. Seagulls perch on the street lamps and caw down at us like crows. The city is otherwise silent. Of course, it is. The heroes are gone, the only trace left of them the mural on the tattoo parlor wall where I plan to get my tally marks done. Five heroes. All gone. The cracked green Patients First flies by, and I lean my head back with a relieved sigh.

"At least I care about her! All you care about is getting some stupid material for your stupid video game so you can-"

"Oh, and you"re so great. You"re just a domineering piece of-"

"Shut up!" I shout. My voice has gone shot. "I"m not your freaking mom! Learn to talk to each other like human beings, huh?" My hands flail up and my fingers skim the ceiling. The metal screams and felt flakes tumble down on my head. My heart stops. Kai squeaks. Finn howls and howls and howls with laughter so maniacal it belongs in a Bond movie.

I"ve left fingertip sized dents in the roof.

"Oh, my gosh, Kai! Your car! I"m so sorry...I...I"m..." My palms are sweaty and my face is flushed. If my camera is-was-my baby, then this car is-still is- Kai"s.

He purses his lips, swings the car back around, and pulls into the Patients First parking lot.

***

So it turns out there"s no diagnosis for super strength. I could"ve told you that myself. And after a quick check-up from a perky nurse on her fifth fizzy energy drink of the morning, I was cleared. Medically healthy, a pity about the almost drowning part though, and you may want further testing to make sure those chemicals didn"t bind to your DNA and give you, like, cancer by unhealthy mutation. Though they probably did do some of that binding since you are starting to mutate, what with the super-strength and all, but otherwise, you seem perfectly healthy. And ought to donate your body to science.

I was shaking by the time I stumbled back to the car. Still am. I"m exhausted, and sleepy, and beginning to wonder if any of this is happening and oh my gosh school. Tomorrow. I thunk my head on the dash and groan, just when someone taps on the window the way you tap a fish bowl to scare the bejeezus out of goldfish.

"Hey, Monet!" Masquerade waves at me, back to business in his usual cloaked black cape. "It looks like someone escaped a watery grave. Care to let me try again?"

I lift my head, blinking sleepily. Kai is screaming and revving the engines beside me. I glance into the rearview. Finn is trembling in the back seat, so pale he looks like he"s gone into rigor mortis. I lift my fist, mouth my apologies to Finn, and bash out the passenger window. Glass whooshes in Masquerade"s face, which has about as much an effect on him as party confetti.

Kai"s scream has become a choky squeal. I offer him a measly pat, the only thing I can think to offer. He hisses like a little cat.

"No. I got school tomorrow and you"ve got school tomorrow," I say into Masquerade"s long wooden mask. That grin still gives me chills. "I"ve got nothing on you and the mayor yet and you know it. Go to bed."

He whines, crossing his arms as the car barrels past sixty, seventy, even eighty miles an hour when the speed limit is forty-five. "I gotta kill you." The car trembles underneath my feet. The seats have begun to shake and whir. My knees knock, my teeth rattling. My heart is pounding, but more out of the self-preservation fear that the vehicle will self-destruct than whatever Masquerade"s trying to pull. I clap my hands.

"School! Go to bed right now, young man. You won"t even be able to function in Trig tomorrow if you kill me tonight. And that"ll be suspicious."

Masquerade laughs, a little low, a little deep. "You"re weird," he says. He reaches in, props two fingers under my chin, and jerks my face out the window. I yelp. Wind whips my hair back and stings my eyes. A tear splatters the villain"s mask. "Oh," he says, tugging my cheek hard. "I think I"ll toy with you before I kill you."

"Hey!" Kai shouts. "Back off!"

I shrug at him and knock his fingers away with a shaking fist. "Whatever keeps the hormonal stress at bay."

"You"re not clever," he tells me, fliping Kai off over my shoulder. And just like that, he poofs. A flash of white mask and a flick of black hood. Kai"s still screaming. The engine shudders as a panicking Kai slows the car to a more legal speed. Finn squeezes his arms around his chest, shuts his eyes, and bashes his head into the console. Repeatedly. Then he sighs, which sounds a little more like a moo. When I look back, his eyes are red and puffy.

"Oh, man, oh, man oh man," says Kai as he pulls into the parking lot of my apartment complex.

I snap my seat belt loose and pop the door open, half my face shoved in a shaking, cupped hand. Sweat greases my fingers and eyelids. "So we"re being hunted by a supervillain. Great. What else is new?"

"Oh, I don"t know." Finn gives another moo-like sigh. "We"re dead meat?"

Very optimistic, that Finn.