Connor was dying. He was pretty sure.
He lay on his bed staring at the ceiling. For the past week or so, he’d been waking up in the middle of the night feeling numb all over and also incredibly hungry. The hunger kept pressing on his stomach no matter how much he ate. And yesterday morning he'd worked for twenty minutes tweaking a screw out of his desk and then ate it, and there was something seriously wrong with that even though so far it hadn't torn his stomach open and killed him. So he was dying and also insane? And then there were his hands and feet…
Someone knocked on the window. Connor didn't say anything, but Rod came in anyway, swinging through the window feet first. "The day is late," he said, "and you are pathetic. You need to get up, man. You need to activate your vital energies."
Connor sat up and pressed a hand to his head. "Have you seen Danny lately?"
"Nah."
"Do you think he's still dating Priya?"
"You mean that girl?"
"I mean that girl whose name is Priya, yeah. Do you think they're still going out?"
"How should I know? Maybe she figured out he has no vital energies." Rod dropped into Connor’s computer chair and put his feet up on the bed.
Connor tried to blink his slept-too-late headache away. "Wait, how did you get up here?"
"I climbed."
"You climbed? Up to my second story room?"
"Yeah. With my superpowers." And Rod held up his hands to show the small metal spots dotted across his palms.
Connor was too stressed out to be as surprised as he might have expected. He uncurled his own hands on his lap. "You have them too.”
“I knew it!” said Rod. “I knew it was both of us.”
“How could these give you superpowers? Where did they come from?”
Rod shrugged. “If you didn’t know about the powers, what did you think was happening?”
“I thought I was dying.”
Rod guffawed. "Oh man. Oh man. You are so intensely lame I can't even stand it. The lameness is oozing out of your creepy ginger pores and filling this whole room with lame-stench so strong, if a girl walked in she'd instantly lose her ability to be attracted to men or women. She'd go straight to a nun house and get a nun hat and be a nun, and if they asked her why she was there she'd say, 'Connor McKenna was so lame--'"
"Come on, dude, shut up."
"But seriously. How long have you lain here 'dying' instead of figuring out you have super strength?"
"You're lying."
"I don't lie about super strength. Look at this." Rod grabbed a soccer ball from a pile of clothes. He held one hand out flat, broad side parallel to the floor. The soccer ball hung there without him holding it, clinging to his palm.
Connor stared. He couldn't believe it. He couldn't—
“You try it,” said Rod, tossing him the ball.
He tried to copy what Rod had done. Stick? he thought at the ball as he opened his hand. It fell onto the bedspread. He tried again. Stick? But no, he couldn’t imagine Rod thinking question marks. Stick. And it did. It stuck to his skin and did not fall.
"They're on your feet too, right?” said Rod. “Congratulations, you're Spiderman."
"You said strength."
"Yes I did. Put on some pants, you pathetic excuse for a human. We’re going out.”
An image popped into Connor’s head—himself, punching Rod in the stomach. He allowed himself to enjoy the fantasy briefly before folding it away. He rolled out of bed and pulled on his clothes. Standing up, Rod gave a sarcastic military salute and jumped out the window. Connor ran to the window and saw Rod standing below, grinning. He waved for Connor to follow.
“If I break my ankle Coach will kill me in August,” Connor shouted down.
“Dude,” Rod shouted back. “You’ve got super-ankles now. Stop being lame and jump.”
So Connor jumped. He was surprised by how solid he felt as he landed on two feet. His knees barely bent, and it didn’t hurt at all. They drove off in Rod’s car, a brick-red and badly-bruised box of metal he called “Soldier.” When Connor asked where they were going, Rod ignored him, and when he tried to discuss where these superpowers had come from, Rod called him “Sally” and told him to calm down.
They ended up outside town, off the road, in a clearing. A line of cinderblocks was sunk into the dirt, mostly-covered with grass.
“I remember this place,” said Connor. “This is where we came that one time… That time with the gun. What were we, twelve?”
“Around there. And Danny was trying so hard to be cool but he didn’t want to do it.”
Connor laughed. “Yeah. He didn’t want to come out and say that he didn’t want to take your dad’s gun, so he kept suggesting other things we could do. I don’t really remember, but none of it sounded fun.”
“He wasn’t as good at navigating the line between good guy and killjoy back then.”
“How’d we finally get him to go along with it?”
“We invited Lorraine.”
“Yeah. Yeah, he’ll do anything Lorraine does.”
“Not just Lorraine,” said Rod, jumping up to balance on a cinderblock. “Any girl. You see, Danny has this thing about girls where he thinks they have extra goodness in them. Like goodness and rightness is part of their nature, so if a girl is going along with something it can’t be that bad. It’s a very condescending attitude if you think about it. I’m not like that, which is why I’m such a good feminist. Can you imagine how Danny would have freaked if you’d actually shot me?”
“I did almost shoot you. I can’t believe I forgot that.”
That was back when Connor was starting to get tall but the others hadn’t yet, and Rod was making fun of him for it, calling him “Stretch” and stuff like that. Ninety percent of the time nothing Rod said really bothered Connor, but that day it did, because… Because why? Because that was during the worst, most frustrating part of his year-long crush on Lorraine. Yeah, that was it.
Rod was making fun of him in front of Lorraine, and that made him so mad, and so instead of shooting the cans and bottles they’d lined up on the cinderblocks he shot the ground by Rod’s feet. It was all he meant to do. He didn’t want to actually hurt Rod or anything. But Lorraine had screamed (and, later, laughed, which was worse) and Rod had called him “psycho” and Danny had been disappointed. Twelve-year-old boys shouldn’t be disappointed in other twelve-year-old boys.
It made Connor sick thinking about it now, imagining what would have happened if he’d actually hurt Rod.
“What did you say,” Connor asked, “when I offered to be your slave for a month? I know somehow the whole thing wasn’t a big deal after that.”
“I said, ‘It’s cool, man. I don’t believe in slavery.’”
“And then we all just forgot about it.”
That’s how you could tell the difference between Rod’s friends and everyone else. He’d mock his friends, but if it ever boiled over into an actual fight he’d end it with a sentence.
“So what are we doing here?” asked Connor.
“Okay, so what I want you to do,” Rod waved at a tree with a trunk about as big around as Connor’s circled hands, “is punch this tree.”
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“What?”
“Punch the tree, man.”
Connor punched the tree, and nothing happened.
“You’re holding back,” said Rod, “because you think it’ll hurt. The secret to super strength is knowing it won’t hurt.”
So Connor punched the tree again, as hard as he could. And it didn’t hurt, and the bark split under his knuckles, and it left a star of cracks like a rock hitting a window shield.
“Again,” said Rod.
Again. The wood split deeper.
“Again. Take it down like a karate lumberjack.”
Connor punched the tree over and over and then he leaned back and kicked it as hard as he could. His foot stuck. He wobbled on his other leg, but managed to brace himself and rip the foot out. There was a groan and the tree tilted. He kicked it again and it fell backwards with a thundering crack.
Connor looked down at his hands. The skin over his knuckles was scraped and bleeding.
“Yeah,” said Rod, holding up his own hands to show the scabs on the back of his fingers. “We don’t have super skin, but you don’t really feel it. Do you wanna see how climbing works?”
Climbing worked, it turned out, about like Spiderman in movies. If you wanted your hand to stick to something, it did. The bottoms of your feet too, wherever the little metal dots were. Connor was suddenly flexible as well, so he could twist his ankles to set the bottoms of his feet flat against a tree trunk. Connor reached the top of a tree and then dropped all the way to the ground (another solid, satisfying landing), leaving Rod up in the branches. Rod leaned back against the tree trunk, looking out like he was contemplating, like he wasn’t paying attention to his friend for the moment, which gave Connor a great idea.
He yanked one of the cinderblocks out of the ground. It didn’t feel light, exactly. It felt like something that might get uncomfortably heavy if you had to hold it up all day, like a textbook maybe. He swung it at the end of his arms and flung it up at Rod.
It didn’t quite make it all the way up, but it did hit the branches below Rod’s feet and make him jump and almost fall out of the tree, which was hilarious. Rod leaped to the next tree over and grabbed a branch and swung from it and soared through the air in an arc to the ground, which looked pretty cool except that he stumbled when he hit. He grabbed up the cinderblock from where it had landed and threw it back at Connor who dodged, laughing. They ran back and forth, shouting joking insults and insulting jokes, ripping up cinderblocks and tossing them through the air, not trying to hit each other, not really, until Connor’s muscles ached like he’d been lifting serious weights.
He leaned against a tree. “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse. Or a… elephant? A big animal. Are you hungry?”
“Brother,” said Rod, “I could eat the world.”
#
They went to Jodie’s Diner and sat at the same table they had a couple weeks before, the last time Connor had seen Priya. Rod stared at the tabletop while they waited for their food. “I think I know how this started.”
“Yeah?”
“Danny’s girlfriend grabbed my wrist.”
“And yanked you out of your seat. It was awesome.”
“She was freaky strong. And her hands felt weird, man. Later on I noticed this nick on my arm. I think she scratched me.”
“So it catches, like a disease?”
“Maybe. Where else could we have gotten it?”
“So now you want to talk about where it came from? Whatever. It could be a mutation, like the X-men. There could be radiation in the water.”
Rod rolled his eyes. “That’s not how real mutations work, genius. And radiation just gives you cancer.”
“It’s not how diseases work either.”
After eating, they headed out. Danny was at the counter, picking up a brown takeout bag.
Connor froze, and Rod froze beside him. The two of them stared at Danny and he stared back. Connor was surprised to feel his fists clenching at his side. Finally Danny nodded, a bare minimum gesture of recognition, and left.
Connor felt as if someone had punched him. Or, maybe, shot the ground by his feet. "I think I hate Danny. When did that happen?"
"When you were dying," said Rod. "Duh."
#
Most nights, lately, Priya met Danny at Mill Park. The park was at the edge of Woodburn, which meant that it wasn’t quite as well-funded as the parks in Greenlake and the playground equipment was still made of metal instead of smooth-edged plastic in daycare colors. Once the sun was almost down and the light started to go, the two of them usually had the playground to themselves.
Tonight, Priya saw Danny from a distance. He was sitting perched at the top of the jungle gym like a guard on duty.
She liked liking boys. She always had, ever since first grade when she’d “married” Taylor Madden at recess and Kess, her bridesmaid, had thrown dandelions at their feet. And Priya especially liked liking Danny.
She walked around the edge of the weed-speckled tennis court, getting closer to him. He still hadn’t seen her. And then—
Between one step and the next, something changed. It was as if she hit a wall or crossed a line or remembered something. Her eyes were still fixed on Danny in the middle distance, but suddenly he… scared her?
Strange man, said some basic, brutish segment of her brain. Not one of your men. He’ll hurt you. Get away.
But Danny didn’t hurt people. She knew that.
He moved on top of the jungle gym—he’d seen her. He stood up, bracing himself on the metal bars.
Getawaygetawaygetaway.
Priya ran back to her car at full, furious speed. On the drive home she tried to process what had happened. She liked Danny so much. No. She had liked Danny so much, and now her feelings were gone, evaporated. It left her queasy with hormonal whiplash.
This wasn’t something that happened to people. She was sure of that. This had something to do with her freakish new strength, and the metal nubs on her hands and feet, and the odd cravings (she’d eaten every coin in the purple piggy bank her parents had given her for the first anniversary of her adoption), and her numb body when she woke up in the night, and…
Her phone buzzed. It was a text from Mom telling her to be sure to make it home in time for family dinner. If she had met up with Danny she would have had to leave after barely any time with him. That was funny in the almost-entirely-not-funny way of small coincidences.
When she got home, the dinner table was already laid out with saucy lasagna and garlic bread and grapes. Despite everything, Priya was glad to see the food. She was hungry all the time now, yet another strange symptom.
Mom was setting out silverware. “You got here quick,” she said when she saw Priya. “How’s your boy?”
“Healthy. Can we eat soon? I’m starving.”
Mom nodded and shouted up the stairs that it was time for dinner. Dad came in humming a song that had already been old when he was born. Kess came in—
Priya almost shrieked.
Almost. But actually she made no sound at all. She didn’t even breathe.
Kess was one of them.
Who? What ‘them’? Priya’s mind stubbornly refused to supply the answer. All she knew was that her sister was dangerous. Bad. Like Danny.
And from the way Kess was looking at her, she saw Priya the same way.
They all settled around the table. Mom and Dad didn’t seem to have noticed anything strange about their daughters. “We wanted to talk to you about my Colorado trip,” said Mom.
Priya forced herself to look away from Kess and speak normally. “Has Aunt Mary gone back to saying she doesn’t want you to come? Because ‘negative energy’ is bad for newborns?”
“Actually, she wants me to stay an extra week. I told her I’d do it. Also, your father is coming with me.”
“Um,” said Kess. “Don’t tell her I told you but Aunt Mary doesn’t like you, Dad. The negative energy will be overwhelming.”
Dad laughed. “No, I’m just sharing a plane ride with your mother. I won’t be helping with the birth or the baby. Grandma’s not doing well.”
Priya stared across the table at Kess and remembered the lightning flying from her sister’s hands, back on that road when they faced off against that strange stone-faced man. Was something wrong with Kess? Was she possessed? Corrupted? Maybe Priya had somehow gotten the good version of superpowers and Kess had gotten the evil version.
No. That was stupid. There were diseases that made you paranoid, weren’t there? Priya tried to will herself to feel about her sister the way she’d felt since they were little girls.
Love her. Love her. Love her now.
“You know I like Danny,” said Mom, “but he still can’t come over while we’re gone.”
Priya nodded. “Right.”
“And Kess,” said Dad, “if you do something other than play video games all day until we come back, we will be very proud of you.”
“He means get some sun,” said Mom. “And maybe work on college essays. You too, Priya. You’ll be glad once school starts if they’re already done.”
Priya realized, with a small embarrassed shock, that she’d been absentmindedly scratching the table surface with one of the metal dots on her fingertip. She’d left a small white circle scratched into the wood. She tried to pull her hand back but her fingers stuck, somehow, and wouldn’t come free from the table surface. She concentrated and the… suction, or whatever, released, allowing her to hide her hands underneath the table. She noticed that Kess was doing the same.
Kess.
Priya couldn’t do it. She couldn’t force herself to love her sister again. Her head was full of switches she hadn’t known were there, switches that turned emotions off between one moment and the next and replaced them with new, poisonous ones. Switches that she had no access to, that she couldn’t even touch.
“You don’t have to worry about us,” said Kess. “We’ll only burn the house down if we get really, really bored.”
###
TEXT MESSAGE CONVERSATION BETWEEN KSENYA CARPENTER AND ELIAS KAPLAN:
Unknown number: Hey. This is Elias.
Ksenya: Seriously?
Unknown number: Yeah, seriously.
Unknown number: I know you didn’t mean to shock me. I saw your face. You had no idea what was going on.
Ksenya: You’re right. I didn’t. I’m sorry.
Unknown number: Would you like to?
Unknown number: I mean would you like to know what’s going on?
Ksenya: Well yeah.
Unknown number: Are there stars on your hands?
Ksenya: You saw them?
Unknown number: No. I don’t even know what that means.
Unknown number: There’s this guy I met online. It sounds stupid but he says he knows what’s happening with you. He said you have stars on your hands. He’s probably crazy.
Ksenya: He’s not crazy.
Ksenya: I have these metal stars on my palms. The electricity must have come through them.
Ksenya: Are you going to say anything?
Unknown number: I didn’t expect him to be right. But he is, and I can find out what’s happening, and I’ll tell you.
Ksenya: There’s metal on my fingertips too. Coating the pads of my fingers. That only happened a few days ago.
Ksenya: I’d been exhausted for days. Just tired all the time no matter how much I slept. I only felt better around powerlines. And then I woke up with this stuff on my fingers and I felt like I should stick my finger in an electric socket. So I did. And it felt great. I think it recharged me.
Unknown number: Wow.
Unknown number: That’s awesome.
Ksenya: It’s scary.
Ksenya: Thank you. It feels good to tell someone. I can’t tell my parents or doctors or anything. My sister knows but I can’t talk to her.
Kesenya: You know what’s happening?
Unknown number: No. But we’ll find out.