Priya leaned against the door frame and watched her sister kill a dragon in the snow. Kess’s hulking computer, its tower whirring with cooling fans and glowing with blue spaceship light, made both her and her room look small. Kess hunkered in the desk chair, staring at the screen with unnerving focus.

Giant, the family’s ordinary-sized brown cat, was poking his nose at one of Kess’s shoes, abandoned on the floor. The sole was riddled with little holes. Kess really needed to learn when to throw things out.

“You played that game all yesterday,” said Priya.

“That is a true statement.”

“So maybe today do you want to, I don’t know, accomplish something?”

“I am going to accomplish something. I’m going to level up.”

“That’s not an accomplishment.”

Giant, bored with the shoe, abandoned it and jumped onto the desk.

“Priya, Priya, grab him, he’s going for the keyboard, Priya—”

But Giant had already jumped onto Kess’s hands and gotten her character roasted by dragon fire. She swiveled the chair around to face her sister. In her too-large sweater with holes in the sleeves and her blonde hair standing on end, she looked like a twelve-year-old boy with a drug problem. “So what specific thing do you want me to accomplish today?”

“I wasn’t suggesting a specific thing, I was suggesting a general thing.”

“You don’t suggest general things. You always have plots. You have a plot a week, like a Saturday morning cartoon villain.”

“I’m going to lunch with Danny and his friends in an hour. You should totally come.”

“How is that accomplishing something?”

“It’s building human relationships.”

“Leveling up is more of an accomplishment than that. If I level up I can kill a blood dragon with one lightning bolt. That’s progress. Besides, I can’t go out. My eyes are burning.”

“Of course your eyes are burning. You’ve been staring at a screen for forty-eight hours.”

Kess waved at her own face. “No, it’s not like that. It’s the surface of my eyes, the retinas. They’ve been burning since the day after the party. I can’t go out into the sun.”

Priya sank to her knees and grabbed the arm of Kess’s chair. “I promise the sun will be good for your eyes. I promise you’ll like Danny’s friends, and they’ll like you, and you’ll have a good time. I swear.”

“Alright. Alright. You always get so desperate when your plots go awry.”

Priya beamed. “And you’re going to wear a dress.”

#

A little later, Priya had to stop herself from cramming all the French fries in front of her into her mouth at once. She was hungry, a hunger so strong she could feel it in her feet. She’d been eating too much for days, and she’d hoped eating an apple and a box of crackers before they left would keep her from completely pigging out in front of Danny.

But she was still hungry.

This table was only meant for four people, but Priya, Kess, Danny, Rod, Connor, and the boys’ friend Lorraine had all pulled up chairs. Their elbows knocked together.

In Priya’s peach-colored dress, Kess looked pretty like an orange crème cupcake. Now if she would just open her mouth and speak and be funny like she was at home, Danny’s friends would have to like her. Specifically, Connor the pleasant red-head would like her. Then she and him and Priya and Danny would go on double dates.

“So next time you come to my house,” Danny said, “we have to go next door and see Lorraine’s statues. She goes to thrift stores and gets tinker toys and erector sets and Legos and puts them together in, um, ways. It’s really cool.”

Priya didn’t understand why Lorraine was friends with these guys. She was a tall, willowy black girl with long, indigo-blue braids and red-framed cat’s-eye glasses. She’d ordered a tofu burger for complicated reasons having to do with factories and hormones, which she’d explained to Priya in a low-key, matter-of-fact way. She seemed like she should be hanging out with scrawny musician guys instead of Danny and his short-haired soccer-playing buddies. But apparently she’d lived next door to Danny since they were little kids, and they were now two platonic peas in a pod. Even if Kess and Connor didn’t go out, maybe Kess and Lorraine would like each other and the three of them could do girl things together.

“I’m not sophisticated enough to get Lorraine’s art,” said Connor. “There’s this one she says is a soccer player, but I can’t see it.”

“It’s not supposed to look like a soccer player, dear heart,” said Lorraine. “It’s the essence of a soccer player. That’s why it has moving parts.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Is it based on Danny?” asked Priya between carefully spaced-out bites of French fry.

“Maybe,” said Lorraine. “Or maybe it’s based on the barbarian spirit within us all. I haven’t decided.”

“She’s making more of them,” said Danny. “And she’s going to tie them together with string so that when one moves, the others move. Like a team. Isn’t that a cool concept?”

“Me and Kess would love to come look at your stuff. When we were little Kess had this erector set she was obsessed with. Right, Kess?”

“Right, Kess?” said Rod in his mocking-voice. “She doesn’t have to talk if she doesn’t want to, Ya-ya.”

Danny sighed. Connor ducked his head as if to excuse himself from whatever unpleasantness was about to happen. Lorraine leaned forward, interested.

Beneath the table, Priya’s palms tingled. “Of course she doesn’t have to talk.”

“Hey Kess,” said Rod, nudging her shoulder with his own. “Your sister wants you to participate in the conversation. She wants you to be engaged.”

Kess shrank into her seat.

“Leave her alone,” said Priya.

“What? I’m drawing her out of her shell. It’s a public service.” He reached toward Kess’s face.

It wasn’t as if Priya made a decision. It was an automatic motion, like swatting a fly. She grabbed Rod’s wrist and yanked his hand back, and to her surprise, she pulled him out of his seat. His whole heavy boy body lifted up, his elbow knocking Kess’s soda over so that it gurgled out onto Lorraine’s French fries. The two of them froze with Rod stretched out over the table and Priya holding his arm in front of her face.

Her hand was tiny compared to his, her fingers not even close to ringing his thick wrist. But as she squeezed, her fingers sank into his flesh and she knew she’d leave a circle of bruises. She could feel the hard ridge of his bones and suddenly knew that if she wanted she could break them.

She looked up at his face, and he was staring at her. He had this strange smile plastered on, sort of angry and confused and curious all at once. She let go of his arm.

Rod settled back into his seat, shaking his head. “Danny, dude,” he said, “your girlfriend has man-hands.”

Priya looked down at her hands beneath the table. Her palms and the fronts of her fingers were covered in dots of dark metal, evenly spaced across the skin.

#

Kess felt stupid in Priya’s peach dress. It was too short. It shouted “Look at me and my legs.”

At least she’d convinced Priya to let her wear her own shoes. The metal was on Kess’s feet now. It dug its way slowly through whatever shoes she wore, poking holes through the soles to reach the ground. If that happened with a pair of Priya’s pretty colored flats Kess wouldn’t know how to explain it.

Rod and Lorraine had already gone, and the rest of them stood in the diner parking lot by Kess and Priya’s car. Danny had his arm over Priya’s shoulders. “I’m not saying I blame you for wanting to respond to Rod with violence. But in the end that just encourages him.”

“Everything encourages him,” said Connor. “I thought it was awesome.”

Priya leaned into Danny, but otherwise didn’t participate in the conversation. She had her hands shoved into her pockets, and she stared down at the pavement with pursed lips and crinkled eyebrows. It wasn’t like her, but neither was yanking a six-foot-plus guy out of his chair.

Even without Priya joining in, Kess could tell the conversation wouldn’t be ending anytime soon. Danny and Connor would stand there in the parking lot just… just saying stuff until their feet hurt, and it would be hours before Kess could get home and put in eye drops. To help things along, she climbed into the driver’s seat without saying anything and closed the door.

Priya joined her in the car a moment later. “You seem weird suddenly,” said Kess as she pulled out of the parking lot.

“Hmm,” said Priya.

“See. That was weird. You’re normally talky. Do you think… Does it have something to do with what you told me the other day, about Mom’s wedding ring?”

Priya shifted in her seat and squeezed her hands between her knees. Then she spoke in a bright, subject-changing tone. “So Connor’s pretty cute, right? I bet we could get him to ask you out.”

Kess laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“It’s just that I’m supposed to be the one who doesn’t understand people.”

Priya sighed. “Sometimes I don’t know what you mean.”

Kess turned onto the highway, and suddenly she felt great.

It was bizarre. She’d been sitting there, concentrating on the road, and then a wave of wonderful hit her. Like chocolate or copper or kissing. She had to catch it, to keep it as long as possible—she squeezed the steering wheel until her fingers went white.

And then Kess saw… something… out the car window.

A power line ran along the road, cables swooping between towering wooden posts. And the wires were glowing. They shone with a light that was almost red. The cable itself was a dazzling bright line, and the light that washed from it thinned out and faded invisible in the air. She blinked, and it was gone.

Kess turned off onto a smaller road, and as they drove away from the highway, the wonderful drained out of her body.

The power line. That’s what had felt so good.

“It’s different than I always thought,” she said.

“What is?” asked Priya.

“Everything.”

“Okay…”

Suddenly, light flooded through the trees. It was almost red-gold and it came from some distant point and it poured through the tree trunks, turning them glassy and translucent.

“Priya,” whispered Kess, “there are lights and colors.”

There was a long pause as if Priya were thinking about that, and then she said, “You know, sometimes your weirdness is more charming than other times.”

The light flickered and went out, but then another appeared shining from a different direction and grew brighter and brighter until it hurt her eyes.

“Kess!” shouted Priya. “Turn, turn!”

The light blinked away just in time for Kess to force the car around a curve.

Priya groaned. “I’m never going to let you drive again.”

“You’re mad today. Why are you mad?”

“I’m not—”

A man was standing in the road.

Kess yanked the car to the side and slammed on the breaks. She and Priya lurched forward, their seat belts snapping against their chests as they strained to hold them back.

The man in the road didn’t even flinch. Smooth as choreography, he shifted his feet to avoid the car. It rushed by him so close his tie and suit jacket flapped in the wind. When the car stopped he stood inches from the right front bumper with his hands behind his back. He was tall and very pale-skinned against his black suit. His hair was black and slicked-back, and he had a small-eyed, fine-boned, well-bred sort of face. He looked like he should be riding show horses or leading the hazing at a Harvard social club.

“I know that guy,” said Priya. She sounded as if she were still shaken from the sudden stop. “How do I know that guy?”

He walked around the hood and knocked on the driver’s side window. Kess rolled the window down, but it was Priya who spoke. “Is something wrong?” She’d shaken off her shock and sounded, in true Priya form, polite and pleased-to-meet-you and not at all weirded out.

The man pointed a gun at Kess’s face.