Begin Arc 5: Mayfly
It's not just the shards of sunlight skipping off the windows, or the scent of fresh paint mingling with the aroma of spring that's got me grinning like an idiot—it's the sense of normalcy, like nothing ever went pear-shaped. I'm standing on the newly paved walkway, flanked by Mom and Dad, soaking in the absurdity of it all. April 18th, 2024, and our house—once a gnarly tangle of debris courtesy of Mr. Tyrannosaurus' really, really bad day—looks almost... inviting. Not to say I'd ever invite Mr. T-Rex back for tea or anything, but you get the picture.
"You'd think it was always like this," Mom says, sweeping an arm out like she's showing off on one of those home makeover shows. "Can you believe it, Sam?"
I arch an eyebrow at her as I cross my arms. "You mean if I squint really hard and forget the past... six months of earsplitting construction noises? Yeah, totally."
"You weren't even here listening to them. We were here every other weekend to check in on things!" Mom says, trying to reassure me, with a gentle slap on the back. I wince, for more than one reason, and she mumbles a quick apology.
Dad's giving the door frame a discerning look, all furrowed brows and faint mumbling to himself. Something about the workmanship or symmetry, I'm not following, but when does he not have a critique about craftsmanship?
"Ben, it's fine," Mom chides gently, as always steering Dad from his tangent back into the moment.
He blinks, readjusting his focus, and catches me snickering at him. "What? It's off by like a sixteenth of an inch, I can tell," Dad asserts. And I believe him. I mean, if Dad were a superhero, his power would be, I dunno, Laser Precision Eyes or something. Super City Planner. No, how would that get you out of a life-or-death situation? I guess if someone had a gun to your head and said ZONE THIS CITY PARK! NOW!
Mom shakes her head, her lips curving upwards with that 'what are we gonna do with him?' smile that's seen a lot more mileage lately.
The breeze picks up, ribbons of air that weave through our little unit, and I can't help but ride the wave of giddiness. "I went back to school today," I muse aloud, my backpack straps suddenly feeling way less strangle-holdy than they did this morning. "Some guy in my math class gave me a high five. I didn't even know people knew I was gone, let alone care enough to—"
"Sam, you're kind of a big deal," Mom interjects with her go-getter grin that could disarm the grumpiest of cats, "Surviving a supervillain attack? That's one for the history books."
"That's... they don't know that!" I protest, rolling my eyes, although the buzz of pride doesn't let up. "I think this is just how they treat you if you're in the hospital for a while?" It's funny how a building made of bricks and mortar can be so much more. It's a pin on the map of my life, and right now it's shining like a beacon. Home, finally. The idea almost feels alien, like something you'd read about in a book and think, 'Huh, wonder what that's like?'
"That's called 'empathy', darling," Mom teases, ruffling the short little buzz cut of hair growing out of my radiation inflicted scalp.
"Come on," Dad nods to the front door, sliding out of whatever mental calculations had nabbed his attention, "Let's go in. These guyses got nothing on the Small family fortress."
"Not even a gigantic prehistoric pain in the tail?" I ask, deadpan.
"Not a chance," he grins, and there’s that warmth, that goofy sense of triumph that I know means we're okay. We're all okay. Mom hooks her arm through mine as we step toward the door together. The sunlight isn't the only thing that's bright here today.
The threshold crosses underfoot and the whole place smells like plaster and possibilities. A sweep of my gaze takes in the foyer—just a tiny cubby of a space really, for coats and dreams to hang. Still, I marvel because, holy mackerel, we have a foyer.
"Here, Sam, your mom put these cushions here, you know, for sitting and changing shoes," Dad points out, the pride in his voice practically radiating off of him. "She thought of that." Mom offers an 'aw shucks' tilt of the head and Dad beams at her like she's just reinvented sliced bread or something.
"Yeah, I can see that," I tease, collapsing onto a bench I don't remember owning. The way it wobbles under me is both alarming and hilarious. "Stable as my social life," I joke, but catch the concerned glances exchanged over my head. My laughter dwindles into a cough. Right, collateral damage isn't always about bricks and drywall.
Mom crouches beside me, her hand resting lightly on my knee, the medicated part of her that checks, and double-checks, symptoms and smiles. "How are you feeling, hon? Too much too fast?"
I shake my head, easing up. "Just getting the lay of the land. It's all... shinier than I remember."
The living room is next, an arm's stretch away—no walls in between. So open plan that I can see into the kitchen, where stainless steel reflects light from the shiny new hood over an oven that looks too swish for us. Where'd the old one go, the one with the wonky burner? Some things you miss in odd ways.
"I want to see my room!" I declare, pushing up to my feet with determination. As I pass the kitchen and its odd absence of the usual fridge-art and cookbooks strewn across the counter, I overhear Mom in a murmur that follows me up the stairs.
"Ben, should she be...? It's her first day back and—"
"Rachel, she's a tough cookie, you know that," Dad cuts in, his voice the kind that tries to be a blanket. "Let her have this."
Their words drift to me, stinging sweet, as I reach the top stair and lay my hand on a banister that feels foreign under my touch. There's supposed to be a nick here, where I dragged my backpack up and down to a hundred school mornings, but it's gone now. It's a different kind of wood. It's a different shape.
My excitement picks up a notch as I slip into the second bedroom—mine. Dad must've measured twice and cut once because everything is just so, from the level shelves waiting for my books and trinkets to the desk, a clear span of wood with all the potential of unwritten homework and midnight doodles. A gleaming floor where I can already see myself spread out with projects and plans.
An empty canvas, that's what this room is. Not mine, not yet, but it could be. There's not a single poster to be found along its walls, and there really should be at least two dozen more. Maybe a poster of Chi Cheng and another one of Mia Hamm. And Allen Iverson.
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I pause, hand on the doorframe, catching snippets of conversation floating up from downstairs. Something about what to hang on the neutral walls, what to put where.
"So she's back in school," Dad says, a rumble of worry beneath his words, "back home, but—"
"Let's just give it time, Ben. She's still healing," Mom replies, her tone as soft as the new carpet under my feet.
And I am. Healing. Different. But as I hear Dad's footsteps thudding up to join me, and he can't stop talking about the finished basement (like he's a kid who just discovered the final level of a video game), I feel a piece of something slot back in place. "Come on, kiddo, you've gotta see it. We've got space for a real entertainment center down there."
And I let him lead me, basking in the normal dad stuff that feels so out of place now, yet desperately wanted.
We step together into the basin of our house, where walls are still bare and everything echoes like a promise. The basement, can you believe it, Dad had said a hundred times over the phone. He's practically hopping from foot to foot, giddy. Turns out there was a ton of space under there that the contractors just knocked into like opening up an ancient Mummy's tomb. The concrete is smoothed over, and there's nothing else besides a carpet and a well-worn shopvac, but it's better than the not-basement we didn't have.
"I can set up all my stuff here, and, Sam, maybe you can have your friends over, watch movies. It's—"
"—perfect," I finish for him, a laugh escaping as I swing around in the newfound vastness. The air here is cool, tinged with the scent of earth and concrete, but it hums with something like beginnings. Or maybe that's just the dusty shopvac in the corner.
I run back upstairs, grabbing my backpack on the way up, remembering that there's stuff in there that needs to be unpacked. A lot of my stuff is still with Lily, so we just grabbed the essentials. Oh, I'm so excited to hang out with Lily. And have our parents eat dinner together, but, like, in person! The stairs feel so strange under my feet, from the sheer raw newness of it all.
There's a moment—a stretched out, thick silence sort of moment—where I'm just sitting there on the edge of a bed that's too springy to be mine. I'm in my room, sort of, surrounded by white walls that don't know me from Adam. They’re an uncomfortable contrast to the vibrant posters and sticky-taped photos that used to be my backdrop. It's not the futon from the hospital or the recovery house. It's not comfort, not yet.
My backpack hits the floor with a muffled thud, and it's like a punctuation mark, ending the sentence of my rambling thoughts. As the zipper rasps open, I peel back the fabric to reveal the guts of my current life—a half-full water bottle, my crammed-to-bursting science binder, my still-shiny laptop that didn't get smashed in the attack.
The things that kept me company.
Next comes the costume. I fumble with it, unsure if the material can be considered a second skin or the first one. It still carries the faint smell of sweat and blood, even if I haven't been wearing it for months. I'm recovering, supposedly. No more vigilante stunts, no more testing how my 'Shark Powers' stack up against the city's worst at night with Jordan. At least, not yet. Not till the doctors say so, and maybe not even then. The cash I pull out next feels dirty, even rolled up neat as it is. Where'd it come from? This cellar or that warehouse? Which fight or fray? I slide the rolls under the bed, quick and furtive, a squirrel with her nuts.
I have to turn my back to my stash as I unpack the medicine bottles, my daily choreography of pills. The sound is louder than I remember, the rattling—a morose maraca right by my pillow. The bottles array on my nightstand like tiny soldiers. They're a reminder of my own fragility, a crude counterattack to the rush of strength that courses through me sometimes. The iron tang of blood in my mouth, that punch-drunk sense of invincibility. But those bottles—they whisper the truth.
Truth is ugly, sometimes. I like lying when it helps.
I sigh and let my fingers dally on the sleek laptop. Fire it up, why not? It purrs to life, and I see my own face reflected in the dark screen—more wearied than I remember, framed by hair that’s too short, too unruly. That's Chernobyl's legacy on me. Did the old Sam survive him or did she get burned away like everything else? At least the microwave damage healed fast. I don't think I ever want to experience a sensation like that again.
In the shadow screen, there's a room—my room?—waiting to be filled with life and noise and color again. The new Sam has to tackle that, along with algebra homework and the now-alien ritual of text messaging friends about nothing and everything. I can't think too hard about the future without everything going a little blurry at the edges. Fear is a live wire in my heart.
But somewhere under the old hoodie that used to fit and now hangs off me, there's the thrum of hope, that stupid, stubborn spark. Tomorrow, I can pin a new poster to the wall—make my first declaration that this space is mine. One day, I'll feel right in this bed, and the pills will fade from an army to a memory. My bone marrow will work correctly, and we'll be done with that. Maybe the lithium can stay.
There’s also this growing, gnawing thought. I’m not just Sam Small anymore, am I? Every wince from Mom, every furrowed brow from Dad, they're because of me and what I've chosen to do with my life. There’s a weight there that my shoulders feel ready for, but my gut isn’t. Not yet. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe it's okay to not be okay yet, to sit with the fear and the hope swirling like the world's lamest superhero smoothie.
From somewhere down below, Mom's calling that dinner's nearly ready.
But first, I tuck the costume back into the depths of the backpack. Hidden, but not gone. Just waiting.
The smell of Mom's brisket, the kind that's been simmering in a slow cooker until it practically falls apart if you look at it funny, leads me downstairs. We all squeeze in around the modest table sandwiched in that hybrid space between kitchen and not-kitchen. I never knew a table could feel both empty and crowded until this moment. There's just us, a few elbow nudges too many, and too much air where clutter used to be.
"So, the Hendersons next door have been asking about you, Sam," Dad says after a too-long silence, his voice a bulldozer through the awkward quiet. "They wanted to send over some sort of casserole. I told them maybe next week."
I try to imagine a week from now, a tomorrow that isn't stitched together with doctors’ appointments and physical therapy. "Tell them... tell them thanks, yeah?" It's easier to be gracious about hypothetical casseroles than to face the question in Mom’s eyes, the one that's asking me if I’m really sitting here with them or if I’m a thousand yards away.
Mom chimes in, keeping it light, a magician with the art of distraction. "Samantha, your teachers have been so understanding, sending work home, accommodating..."
She's looking for my buy-in on this conversation like it's a contract I'm not sure I signed. "Yeah, they’ve been great. Mostly. I mean, Mr. Strickland still doesn’t quite get the 'no heavy lifting' part, but..." I shrug, managing a half-smile, and spear a piece of brisket that’s all but begging for mercy on my plate.
The laughter that trickles in feels normal, like it used to. And I cling to it, because this, right here, is the most un-super part of my day. A dinner that's trying so hard to be routine it's practically overacting. So, I join in the script, playing the part of the daughter. G-d's in His heaven, all is right in the world.
Dad's cutting his brisket, but his eyes are on me, not the meat. "Sam," he starts, stops, then, "how’s... How’s everything, really?"
He’s as good at this subtle stuff as I am at pretending the whole world hasn’t flipped on its head since I got Shark Teeth™. Mom’s attention sharpens, her fork mid-air in some sort of arrested development. I chew for a second too long before answering.
"It's like the first day of school all over again," I mutter finally, watching them relax, like it's the answer they hoped for.
"And how was that?" Mom prods gently, and her eyes are soft around the edges, hopeful.
I give in, spinning a thread of truth into the tapestry we’re weaving tonight. "Weird. Like everyone suddenly knows your name because you missed the last pop quiz." There's humor there, a protective layer around the too-raw bits I can't share. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Dad grunts, a sound that's part agreement, part I-love-you, and entirely Dad. "As long as they treat you right."
The conversation drifts, into safer waters, about school gossip and Dad’s latest pet projects, that maybe now he can actually convert part of the basement into his dream workshop.
I sneak a glance out the window at the setting sun, painting new shadows on the home I’m rediscovering, and think, yeah, maybe this is exactly where I need to be right now.