CLAIRE

“Oh, there you are, we were just talking about what happened this weekend!” Charlotte tugged the edge of my jacket to yank me down into the chair where I usually sat in the library.

“What?” It took me a minute to get my bearings, as I had just literally been yanked into this conversation.

Monday morning had passed by so quickly, in a kind of blur of lessons and lectures and the motions of high school. God, I couldn’t wait to get out of there and go to college, wherever that ended up being.

“You saw the news, didn’t you?” Stephanie was practically giddy, bouncing up and down in her seat, much to the annoyance of Grace and Leta next to her. “There’s a new superhero in town!”

“There’s no need to say it so loudly, everyone saw it on the news,” Leta grumbled, pushing around the cafeteria’s lasagna with her plastic fork.

“Oh, yeah, I heard about it,” I said.

Charlotte frowned. “I would’ve thought you would’ve seen her. Weren’t you at the Winter Festival with Malcolm McQueen?”

My face turned bright red as Leta and Grace perked up at this set of news.

“So you finally went for a boy on the football team,” Grace muttered.

Leta let out a low whistle. “Our girl’s got some game!”

“No, I didn’t go with him.” I paused. “I went with someone else.”

“Atta girl!” Grace clapped me on the back.

“That’s even better, two guys after you in the same week?” Leta crowed.

I didn’t think it was possible for my face to turn redder than it had at that moment. If only you knew about the third. Since when did my life turn into a dating sim?

I focused as much as I could on the motion of unlatching my bag, of removing the vegan lunch that Holly had made for me.

No wonder Julien leaves so early every morning.

Still, I couldn’t avoid these questions forever. I decided I might as well get things over with.

“Yeah,” I said, looking straight at Stephanie, because honestly, superheroes were much less complicated than my love life. “I was there, at the festival, when Tenebrous attacked. I was lucky to get out alive.”

In the corner of my eye, I saw Tristan look up from whatever he was typing on his laptop, but I ignored that for the time being.

“Did you get to see her in person?” Stephanie’s eyes were intense, she leaned forward, almost standing in her seat.

“No, I was in the bathroom the whole time.” This wasn’t helping the situation with the color of my face. “Lady problems.”

Stephanie shrank back into her seat, disappointed, but understanding. Grace, Charlotte, and Leta all gave me sympathetic looks.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“But what was he like?” Grace asked.

“He was a nice guy.” I wanted to be as close to honest as I could. But I didn’t know how to break it to them. “He was there with me when the villains attacked—he actually shielded me when we were escaping.”

“How romantic!” Stephanie swooned. Her lower lip stuck out in a pout. “I want a guy that would try to save me from a supervillain attack.”

“I would’ve thought you’d want to date the supervillain.” Leta slurped her carton of milk to hide her snark.

“Oh come on, I do have some boundaries,” Stephanie whined. “Besides, none of them are hot in this city.”

“You clearly have no taste,” Grace declared. “Black Phoenix is hot stuff. Literally.”

“Not my type.” Stephanie’s cheeks turned pink.

“Then Glitch or Tech Wizard—they’re both guys, and are cute.”

“I thought you only liked girls.” I frowned.

“Look, I can appreciate the male form and recognize when other people find them attractive.” Grace shrugged.

Charlotte wrinkled her nose at that.

“Come on, I think Warlock’s pretty cute,” Stephanie said. “Much cuter than the villains—“

I heard a snort—out of the corner of my eye, Tristan was doing something with his laptop as he ate in his usual table, but one earbud was out.

“Can we not talk about dating villains?” I groaned, placing my head in my hands.

“Sorry,” Stephanie mumbled. “You know, she started it.”

“Whatever.” Leta rolled her eyes. “Besides, we still don’t know who our girl went out with.”

Oh no.

“Are you going to go out with him again?” Grace’s blue eyes locked onto me, looking strangely hawklike.

“I don’t know.” I lowered my voice—Tristan didn’t need to hear that. “Maybe.”

Grace sighed dreamily, while Charlotte gave me one of those looks that could see right through me, or so I thought.

“You don’t sound like you’re all that into him,” she accused.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “But I want to try. He is such a good guy, and I could do so much worse. But I wonder if I got my signals mixed.”

“He took you to the Winter Festival, that’s like the most romantic thing ever.” Grace smirked. “I don’t know how anyone could get that mixed up. Then again, it so tracks that you’re just as bad at love as the rest of us.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Leta scolded. “At least it’s not Tristan Turner, that kid’s a creep.”

“Uh-uh.” I stabbed my vegan lasagna leftovers, which weren’t too bad cold, much to my surprise. “You know he’s five feet away from us, right?”

“Let him hear me.” Leta laughed. “He’s always on about conspiracy theories about Atomic Energy being this big bad force of evil that’s taken over the government or some stupid shit.”

“He’s so paranoid, and he dresses like he’s in the Trenchcoat Mafia,” Grace added.

“No,” I said, starting to pack up my lunch. “We’re not doing this. I’m not gonna let you talk shit about him.”

“What?” Leta was still laughing. “You’re just doing a stupid project with him in Mrs. Jennings’ class! I know you two used to be friends, but it’s not like you’re in love with the guy!”

I was wrong— my face had gone redder.

“Oh my God,” Charlotte said, looking at me with the surprised rapture she reserved for the season finales of her favorite CW dramas. “You are! You so are!”

“Shut up.” I snapped— all I wanted was for all the prying to stop.

“That’s why you don’t like the dreamboat of the school—“

“That creep, ew—“

“Shut up! Shut up!” I clapped my hands on the table, and silence resounded through the library. My ears were ringing as they stopped.

“Whoa,” Leta said. “It was just a joke, dude.”

“It’s okay, we didn’t mean anything,” Grace assured me.

“Are you alright?” Charlotte frowned.

I tried desperately to wipe my face off with the sleeve of my jacket. I didn’t even want to think about Tristan overhearing that.

“I’m fine,” I said, even though I didn’t feel like I was the one that was saying it, even though my voice sounded like it was someone else’s and it was all a million miles away from here. . .

The bell rang, as my salvation from this awful conversation. I focused on the motions of getting up, packing up. The other girls left, but Stephanie approached me.

“Hey, I just wanted to apologize,” Stephanie said. “I shouldn’t have joined in, and I can’t imagine— what you must be going through. I was wondering— it’s weird, isn’t it?”

“What is?” I managed to force a more pleasant expression onto my face.”

“Psyche returned after we found her costume, and the new one is wearing that same one,” Stephanie said. “Or at least, that’s what I saw on SuperTube—“

“You mean that she resurfaced after we went looking for her, then,” I clarified.

“Yeah, but it’s making me think—“ she looked around nervously and then leaned in, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Are you Psyche?”