I’ve heard that hell is the absence of hope.

I think that’s interesting, because I just called it high school.

Let me tell you about the second worst day of my life.

I was sixteen. It was prom. An upperclassman named Dane Jenner had invited me. Dane was popular and cute. He played football. He was the first boy who had dared show interest in me since high school began.

The reason for that was a girl named Judith DeVore. Judith was a bully in the same way that Godzilla was a lizard—technically true, but as a description, wholly inadequate. Judith regularly committed felonies in her pursuit of social dominance and had done things to me in particular that would probably get the movie of my life pulled from theaters for being too controversial. And the system…ignored it. She got the occasional token detention, but she was pretty and rich and excelled academically, so she got a slap on the wrist and I got to learn the hard way that nobody was going to save you, no matter how obvious the abuse was.

Until Dane, anyway.

Dane was the school’s star linebacker. I knew less than nothing about football—I believed it involved swine in some capacity—but I understood the status being on the team brought you. And Dane didn’t just have status, he had a full-ride athletic scholarship to one of those Deep South colleges that was just a football stadium with a school attached. He was basically royalty.

It should have been my first clue.

I was just so relieved that the pain stopped. Or, lessened. Dane couldn’t do anything about my stepfather, or about my malfunctioning psychic powers, but at least school was an escape instead of a crucible. Now Judith walked by me in the hall and pretended that I was invisible, and coincidentally, no dead animal or bodily waste found its way inside my locker.

Oh, yeah, I have psychic powers. They don’t work very well. That’s a pretty important part of the story.

Sorry, I’m not good at this. It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything. I’ll try to keep the story on track, but I can’t promise it’ll work. Or that I won’t take pointless detours for stupid jokes that are just for me.

Anyway.

People like me were called "rogues." Superpowers came in all shapes and sizes, and metahumans were treated with an omnipresent undercurrent of distrust that occasionally flared into violent disdain. That’s when their powers actually worked. If they don’t—if you couldn’t control them for any reason—you got slapped with the rogue label. If you’re lucky enough not to be dragged to a metahuman asylum, then you got the novel experience of living the life of an untried war criminal publicly flouting justice, minus the part where there was ever anyone on your side to begin with.

It could be why Judith targeted me. Judith herself was psychic, fully functional, and it felt sometimes like she was redirecting the occasional bit of anti-metahuman sentiment she faced at me, a target that absolutely nobody would step in front of.

For my part, I was harmless. I simply couldn’t turn off my psionic information intake. It wasn’t dangerous to anyone but me, and I had learned to live with it, insofar as you could learn to live with a million other peoples’ thoughts blaring constantly in your ear, or swimming in against a thick, semi-gelatinous river current of other peoples’ emotions. Or walking through a bubble of psychic residue where someone had been shot the previous night and feeling what they felt as they died. Or getting blasted by random tsunamis of terror when there was a kaiju attack Downtown.

Surviving was my specialty, because if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be. Not at this point.

What happened to me that night, unfortunately for this narrative, isn’t really the big, bombastic bucket of pig’s blood that Carrie White had to deal with in her eponymous novel. Stephen King won’t be getting any royalties from me. It was, instead, the culmination of a long and unrelenting campaign of mostly psychological violence waged by a superpowered psychic sociopath who had spent years and years learning exactly the best ways to hurt me.

Judith was a grade above me, and on the prom committee. The rest of the committee could be summed up as "Judith’s friends" and "Judith’s lackeys," a Venn diagram that most people would recognize as one normal circle. She had complete control over that year’s theme and decorations, and the theme she ended up choosing was "Superheroes." For a high school in Sanctum City, the city with the longest and strongest tradition of costumed heroism on the planet Earth, it was somewhere below "Under the Sea" and "Casino Royale" on the scale of originality.

Even knowing the mind that spawned the idea, I couldn’t help but be a little excited. I was a total cape nerd. I dreamed of the day my powers would spontaneously start working, and I would don spandex and take off into the sky, possibly to the sound of trumpets and a swelling orchestral score. I had a million different costume ideas sketched in my diary, most of them variations of the Guardsman’s outfit, but purple. I’d written page after page of daydreams, collected inspirational quotes, floated ideas for catchphrases. Twenty pages of my diary were devoted to a very, very bad first issue of my future comic book series, in which I saved the city from the dastardly villain I’d dubbed "Psycho Bitch." No points for guessing who she was based on.

I got very good at daydreaming. Sometimes the ability to disconnect from reality and inhabit my fantasy world where I was a superhero was the only thing that kept me alive.

Dane picked me up in a limo. He came up to the door, probably intending to let my family get some pictures. It was sweet, but laughable. My mom was working, as usual, and my stepfather had passed out in his recliner, as usual. I took Dane’s arm and steered him back down the walkway. He was confused—now is probably a good time to mention that he was as dumb as bricks—but he took it in stride. He was Dane, and life didn’t have to make sense when you were rich, pretty, and stupid.

On the drive there, he told me I looked good, and I agreed. I did actually look good for once. I had gotten a relatively decent dress from the discount bin at the local thrift store and washed it until it didn’t smell like the dirty socks it had been wrapped around. It was purple, mildly frilly, and the skirt poofed out nicely when I twirled. On top of that, this was the first time I had worn makeup since an ill-fated experiment as a freshman. It had ended with me cutting class and sprinting home in tears because of Judith, only to get caught by my stepfather, who wasn’t nearly as insensate as I had hoped he’d be. He had hit me, called me a whore, and took a brillo pad to my face.

Dane saying I looked good probably shouldn’t have inspired as much dread as it did, but to be fair, it wasn’t the comment so much as the things that stirred in him as he said it. I couldn’t shut off my powers. I knew exactly what he was thinking and feeling. He had been thinking and feeling it since day one. I figured, for the month-and-change of peace he’d given me, he probably deserved it by now. I’d been putting it off for as long as possible, but I knew eventually I’d have to pay up or lose my subscription to the marginal comfort I’d found.

Long story short, I lost my virginity in the back of a moving limousine on the way to prom. I wasn’t religious, so I had never really put much stock in the concept of virginity, but I also hated being touched, hated intimacy, hated my body, hated anyone seeing it, hated the fact that I hated all of that, and most of all, hated that I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I would die before I let things go back to the way they were, and since I didn’t want to die, I needed to make Dane happy.

So I did.

The act itself is a big blank spot in my memory. I felt nothing in particular, aside from some sharp discomfort when it began. I mostly just laid across the bench seat on my back and daydreamed for five minutes.

In this one, needle-nosed alien spaceships penetrated the thick cloud cover over the Downtown skyline, pointing their plasma beams at Pharos, the Sentinels HQ tower. It was a scene of utter despair and hopelessness until, behold, a hero. I arrived slinging mighty blasts of luminous telekinetic force. I swept through the sky, pushing the destroyed ships out over the lake so they didn’t fall on the city—oh, I also had super strength in my daydreams—and flew up to the alien mothership to fight the improbably humanoid war leader of the extraterrestrial armada. Don’t worry, I wasn’t a total Mary Sue—I put up a valiant effort, but he was empowered by Bullshitonium, which made him only slightly less powerful than the Guardsman. Which was narratively convenient, because the Guardsman chose that exact moment to return from his nonspecific away mission and join me in the fight. Together, we triumphed over the alien admiral, and not a single invader set foot on land.

Then it was over, and I was pulling my underwear back up my legs while Dane slumped in his seat and took a swig from the flask he pulled from his jacket. He offered it to me, and I declined. Sex was one thing, but drinking? What would my mother think.

My second clue came as we pulled up to the rec center the school had rented for the event. There was a feeling of mirth in the air, and I mean that literally. It wafted in to greet us when Dane opened the limo’s door. I would expect an event like this to be electric with excitement, anticipation of the night to come, and more adolescent sexual frustration than Dane had just vented on me. We climbed out of the limo and joined the line to get in. Of course, everyone had to stop and get pictures for the yearbook.

I wasn’t totally oblivious, but I didn’t catch on immediately. I noticed a familiar starburst emblem on the backdrop of the picture station, but chalked it up to coincidence. So what if it looked like the starburst emblem I’d drawn a million times in my diary? I mean, really, stars and superheroes are about as cliche as you can get without committing direct copyright infringement. Dane and I got our pictures taken, and I even smiled. As far as I was concerned, the hardest part of the night had already gone flaccid. When in Rome, smile as the Romans smile.

It wasn’t until we entered the building proper that the reality of what I was seeing started to hit me. Purple and gold were the dominant colors, which didn’t really scream superhero. Or rather, it did, but only to me, because those were my favorite colors, and featured prominently in most of my costume sketches. Red, white, and blue were the archetypal colors. White and gold, maybe, for the Guardsman and the Sentinels as a whole. But purple? Purple was a morally neutral color on the hero-slash-villain alignment chart.

Then I saw the banner across the entrance hallway. In metallic gold letters emblazoned across purple fabric, it said, "STARS BURN BRIGHTEST AT DAWN."

It wasn’t a good catchphrase, but it was the one I had written on the inside cover of my diary. I had come up with it when I was twelve.

For a wild moment, I thought she had telepathically plundered my brain, but there was no possible way. Not without me noticing. I wasn’t much of a psychic myself, having no active control over the ability and all, but on the rare occasions anyone had ever tried to get into my head, they usually ended up shutting off contact in a hurry. All the extra noise tended to be a shock to the unprepared.

It wasn’t possible. None of this was possible. If no one had gotten into my head, then someone had to have gotten ahold of my diary, but there had only been three people in my room in the past eight years: me, my stepfather to yell at me, and—

I looked up at Dane.

He was grinning, and without an ounce of malice, he said, "April Fools!"

It was June.

"I’m going to go get us some drinks," he said, and left.

I stumbled into the gymnasium alone and saw the actual scope of what Judith had done.

It was a me-themed prom. I mean, not directly. She hadn’t been quite that blatant. But I saw my costume sketches reproduced, blown up, and added to superheroines on the covers of mockups of famous comic books. I saw more of my catchphrase ideas printed onto banners, and most of them were worse than the first. That’s what all the people were laughing at. What comedic fiend had sat around and thought up a hundred of these terrible things?

There was a table with a thousand little gift baskets for everyone to take. They came with hand sanitizer, starburst-emblem cookies, and a single miniature laminated page of a comic. There was a different comic in each basket, and each page had a number associated with it. I looked through several and saw that she really had reproduced the entire thing. If you put them all together, they told a story. It wasn’t directly the one from my journal—she had had someone redraw them to be, first of all, PG, but also depicting her in my costume. They had changed the villain to the kindergarten-approved "Stinky the Unwanted" who failed laughably to conquer the world from her crumbling garbage lair on the wrong side of the tracks. It, again, wasn’t directly attributable to me, mostly because Stinky was indiscernible through a cloud of dirt, but there was one pretty overt line—Stinky admits she smells so bad because she spends all her time in the bathroom during lunch. That’s where Judith had initially caught me hiding, before I learned to go to the library.

It was all so silly, and so, so stupid, and it hurt. She had taken my dreams, my private, desperate fantasies, and she had shown them to the world. And people thought they were cheesy and dumb.

And I felt it. I couldn’t not feel it. They thought the designs were ugly. They thought the catchphrases were stupid. They wished the prom committee had gone with Casino Royale.

Dane had helped her. He’d gotten my diary to her somehow. It had been a setup from the start. And also he had just banged me in his limo and ditched me at the door, so, you know. That sucked.

I broke. I ran into the bathroom, grabbed a stall, and vomited in the toilet. There wasn’t much, and it was mostly clear, mostly water. Stinky the Unwanted didn’t go to lunch. Or breakfast. And she only got dinner if stepdad got plenty of vodka. And half the time she purged that too.

I heard the door open, and I felt her in the same instant. Judith. She must have seen me come in. Or she had sensed me. Didn’t matter.

I certainly sensed her. She was angry. Furious. I didn’t know why, but I could feel why she was here, and it wasn’t to gloat.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

I saw her shadow move under the stalls and stop in front of mine. She had two friends with her. I kept quiet and barely dared to breathe.

"Anna," she said, voice poisonously sweet. "Did you see the decor? I hope you approve, you being the superhero expert and all."

I said nothing.

"Anna, I know it’s you. Come on out."

I felt my stomach roiling. I would have puked more, but there was nothing left to come up.

She banged on the stall and snarled, "If you make me come in, you’re drinking that toilet water, cunt."

There was no way out of this. No way except through.

I unlocked the door, and let it swing open.

Judith was there, blonde and perfect in a slinky red dress. She was smiling. There was nothing happy or friendly or even particularly sane about it. She was eerily backlit by the weak, greenish fluorescents above the mirrors behind her. I recognized her friends, but I didn’t know their names. They were upperclassmen.

I could only shake my head and ask, exhausted beyond words, "Why?"

Her smile widened. So did her eyes. "Because you deserve it."

And then she beat the shit out of me.

I came out swinging. I’ll give myself that much credit. I rushed forward and thrust my fist in the general direction of her face. But I was short, too skinny to be healthy, and had the fighting experience of a punching bag. Judith was tall and athletic. She was on the soccer team. And apparently, she’d taken a few kickboxing classes.

She dodged my clumsy swipe like I was stupid for even trying, and then she punched me. Pain exploded from my nose into a shockwave that made my limbs go loose. I rubber-legged, and she kicked me in the ribs. I doubled over, breathless, and she kneed me in the jaw. I went down.

After that, she just hurt me. I laid on the ground, turtled up, arms over my head, and she pressed her knee into my ribs while she punched me in the head. Every time I moved and wriggled and writhed to try to block her or avoid her, she targeted a new spot. I didn’t cry out, didn’t scream. It hadn’t worked the first hundred times, it wouldn’t help now. Her friends weren’t joining in, they were holding the door. Probably to make people think it was locked.

She got annoyed with my feeble attempts to ward her off and started scratching my arms, pinching me, pulling my hair. I saw a fistful of it drift to the floor, platinum cobwebs that left fire where they’d been yanked free.

I didn’t daydream. That was for the aftermath. You never daydream while the danger is still there. You wait until you’re safe, until the only things left are the emotions. Yours, and theirs. I think even non-psychics feel it when they’re that close to someone who wants to hurt them. But we definitely have it worse. I didn’t just feel her rage, her contempt, her disgust. I understood it. I empathized. I couldn’t not. I had no choice.

Eventually, she got bored. Honestly, it probably didn’t last thirty seconds, but it felt like forever. She stood up, and I could breathe again. I didn’t look up at her, but I knew what she felt as she looked down at me.

Pride. Like I was a work of art.

She spit on me. "Dane said you fuck like a dead fish, you ugly bitch."

To be fair, he wasn’t wrong.

She and her friends left.

I sat up and leaned back against the wall. Every part of my body screamed in pain. I didn’t waste time gathering myself. I stood and looked in the mirror.

I looked almost as bad as I felt. My nose fountained blood. My dress was ruined, ripped and covered in bathroom floor slime. My face was already bruising. My eyes were hollow, brown and dull and bloodshot. My hair, pure platinum, more white than white-blonde, was a mess, and clumps that had been pulled loose drifted in a weirdly disturbing way around my head and shoulders. My makeup was ruined. Arson, murder, and jaywalking, I know.

At this point, what should happen is my powers should come online, right? A rush of fury, a surge of power, and then I go full Carrie. That was actually the term for it, by the way. It was common enough that it had a derogatory shorthand. Steve, you asshole.

That’s not what happened. I instead calmly yanked some paper towels free from the dispenser, cleaned most of the blood off myself, left my loose hair in the sink, and left the bathroom. I even threw the paper towels away. Isn’t that weird? Like, yeah, I just got beaten and humiliated by the person I hate second most in the world, but I’d hate to be the inconsiderate jerk who litters.

The dancing was in full swing by the time I emerged. I barely had to glance around the floor to see Judith’s posse. They commanded the space right in front of the stage, presumably where the prom king and queen would be crowned. I already knew who they’d be.

They were dancing together. Judith and Dane. She saw me emerge from the bathroom. He didn’t. He only had eyes for her. I felt her malice radiating over everything else. She pulled him down into a kiss featuring more tongue than was probably appropriate for a school function. Nobody seemed to mind. Least of all Dane.

I left.

Nobody stopped me. Barely anyone looked at me. There were chaperones, sure, but it was pretty dark inside and dusk outside. They didn’t see the bruises, the rips, the blood. I’d only been at the prom for maybe fifteen minutes. Nobody questioned me. I had probably forgotten something in my car, right?

It was a few miles through the darkening city. I didn’t experience any of them. In my head, I crossed the intervening space between prom and my house through the spontaneous development of superspeed, or teleportation. I didn’t feel like flying. I didn’t want anyone to see me right then.

Or, almost anyone.

I looked up and saw Pharos. You could see Pharos from anywhere in the city. It’s a mile high skyscraper—on a clear day, you could see it from Canada. It stood above the streamlined chrome and glass of the rest of the city's skyline, it's closest rival barely half its height.

They say the Guardsman waits at the very top, standing sentinel over Sanctum City, his keen eyes scanning for threats, his ears listening for cries. When I was littler, I used to go to a place with a clear view of the top of the spire and wave, hoping he’d see me. I’d tell him about my day, and ask him to come and get me. Take me to an orphanage. I didn’t know that orphanages weren’t a thing anymore, and they sounded fun. I’d read a book about them.

Eventually, I’d replaced him with a diary, and with daydreams, but for a second, I thought, maybe this time, he would see what had happened to me. He was supposed to be able to count the hairs on your head from space. I looked up and waved.

Nothing happened. Maybe he was napping on the job.

I blinked, and I was home. I had supersped my way there. I always preferred superspeed to teleportation, and flight to both. I wanted to move. Wanted to soar.

I walked around back, because even if he was passed out, I didn’t want to walk through the living room where my stepdad would be. I hopped the gate into our small yard, heedless of the view I might have just given the neighbors. There wasn’t anything special to see down there anymore anyway. Dane had made sure of that.

Light shined through the window. I saw Mom inside, doing dishes. Smart. If my stepdad woke up and saw the dishes undone, he’d get the belt, and then it was just a matter of who he came across first. I wish I could say I had never bolted to hide somewhere in the house when I heard him coming, waited until I heard him start on her, then slipped out of the house. But I’m not allowed to lie to you.

Mom and I didn’t have a good relationship. We didn’t have a bad relationship either. We both just kind of survived. I think I maybe hated her for bringing me here after dad died. For not having the strength to leave. Almost as much as I hated myself for not running away. Surely the streets couldn’t be worse than this. Sure, it’d probably put the kibosh on going to superhero school once my powers were fixed, but surely it couldn’t be worse than this, right?

I took one last look at Pharos and went inside.

Mom looked up from the dishes as I came in, not urgently. She couldn’t have seen who was coming—I could have been anyone coming through the door, because I certainly wasn’t supposed to be home yet—but she wasn’t particularly concerned.

Until she saw my face.

Her eyes widened, slightly, and her face drained of color. And she didn’t move. She didn’t say anything. She only looked at me, moderately aghast.

I felt my throat seizing and realized it was trying to speak, trying to sob, something. My eyes were hot and stung but no tears fell.

I heard outrage, just the tiniest bit, in my otherwise broken voice as I said, "Mommy. Help me. Please."

I can’t believe I actually said mommy. Jesus.

The spell over her, the apathy that had frozen us both for so long, cracked, and suddenly she was ushering me to sit down at the kitchen table. Suddenly she was getting me a glass of water, and pills to swallow. Suddenly she was deciding to be a mom. Sixteen years too late, but I guess it’s slightly better than never.

She sat down across from me. It was a small, square table, for breakfast or something. It had been the cheapest at Goodwill. Still, she could have sat next to me. God forbid she be in danger of hugging me, or even touching me. There still needed to be a gap between us, a distance. She needed it.

She was terrified. I heard her thoughts, jumbled and confused, centered on the snoring alcoholic in the living room. She was afraid of him seeing me. Not because he cared if someone beat me up—he did that for funsies on the regular—but because any change, any shift in the status quo, anything at all, could set him off. He could see my ruined dress, think he paid for it, and fly into a rage. Hell, if he saw her comforting me, it could provoke him. Unapproved amelioration? Not in his household, by God.

"What happened, Abie?" she whispered across from me. She looked and sounded so tiny. Weird to think I was still smaller than her.

"Don’t you dare call me that," I snapped, equally quiet, because in the end I was just as terrified as she was.

She blinked and looked down. "Anna. What happened?"

I looked at her, not looking at me. I had read somewhere that the bond between a mother and daughter was supposed to be the most powerful bond there was. We were supposed to be on the same emotional wavelengths, have our own system of unspoken communications, be able to read each other better than anyone. And maybe we did. Maybe, beneath all the scar tissue, there was a connection between us. Maybe there was one last lifeline there, and maybe I could dig it up with my words.

You’re probably tired of my fantasies by now, but I really thought it could be true.

So I started to tell her about my night. I turned the cap on the release valve and, for once, prepared to share what I was feeling with someone else.

I got as far as Dane taking my virginity in the limo before I realized what was wrong.

The snoring in the other room had stopped.

And a bonfire of pure, uninhibited rage was standing just outside the kitchen, listening.

That realization struck me like lightning, and it was still almost slower than him.

He surged into the room like a charging gorilla with a beer gut, already glistening with sweat. That was the only detail I had time to take in before he simply bodied me out of my chair. I hit the floor for the second time that night, except this time, I heard something inside me snap.

Mom screamed for him to stop, but she pressed herself backwards instead of in his path. That too was smart. Her instincts were on point. I wanted to fucking choke her to death.

My stepdad reached down, grabbed a handful of my hair, and simply hauled me back upright like I weighed nothing—which wasn’t far off. I was pushing ninety pounds. It still didn’t feel like nothing on my scalp. He grabbed my face and squeezed, opening every single cut I’d gotten in the fight earlier, re-bloodying my nose. He slammed me into the wall. The wood paneling cracked.

He leaned down and put his nose an inch from mine. His eyes were white—well, red, either from the alcohol or rage or both—all around. He had been handsome once, but now he was puffy and unshaven, with burst veins all over his face. His pores were huge and gross. He smelled sour and stale, like beer and body odor. Mom called his name, but her voice sounded like it was being forced through a straw.

He snarled, barely able to form words, "You disgusting slut. You let some fuckboy stick his cock in you?"

I think something in my mind finally broke at that point. I’m not really sure why I did what I did next. I wonder how things would be different if I had cowered, cried, and otherwise appropriately submitted to his sweaty tantrum.

I didn’t.

I grinned and rasped, "What? Jealous?"

It wasn’t a bad choice. Eating candy for dinner is a bad choice. Not wearing a seatbelt is a bad choice. Applebees is a bad choice. It’s more accurate to say it was a choice that was incompatible with life. It was having a choice between two paths in front of you and, instead, jumping off a bridge.

He hit me, but I guess that goes without saying. What could stand to be said was that he took my hair in one hand and slammed his fist into my mouth with the other, breaking several of my teeth. I didn’t have time to spit them out before he did it again, and I barely registered him doing it a third time.

He let me fall forward. I caught myself on my hands and knees, which sent sickening pain through whatever in my body had already broken. I heard the teeth I hadn’t swallowed plink on the linoleum.

The first kick hit the soft tissue of my waist, which was better than the ribs but worse than the hips. My internal organs probably had a different opinion, but only my liver had any will to protest. The second kick hit my ribs, so I lost that warm fuzzy feeling of triumph. The third hit with more force than the other two combined—I think he’d taken a step backwards and gotten a running start. It lifted me into the air and flipped me over onto my back.

Maybe I would’ve survived that. Possibly. If I’d gone to the hospital. Or, hey, people are surprisingly resilient sometimes.

What I had absolutely no chance of surviving were the stomps that came.

Kicking someone when they’re down is rage. Stomps are intent to kill. The first one crushed into my chest cavity, robbing me of the ability to breathe—and popping my back pretty nicely. Strange thing to notice, but I did. I threw my arms in front of my face to stop the next stomp, but at best, I gave myself enough of a buffer that he didn’t pop my skull like a grape. He switched back to the body, and the world dissolved into agony and repeated crunching noises. I heard him yelling about how he would not raise my kid because he knew, disgusting whore I was, I let that boy shoot off—his words, not mine—inside me. To be honest, I had no idea if I had or not. It didn’t matter. All of that—the night, the noise, the pain—was growing more distant by the second as I started to disappear.

The danger passed, replaced by inevitability.

I daydreamed that the Guardsman finally heard what was going on and burst through the ceiling at a thousand miles per hour to save me. He blasted my stepdad to smithereens on the spot, scooped me up, and flew me back to Pharos, where their ultratech medical equipment didn’t just heal me, but also fixed my psychic abilities, and they felt so bad for what I’d been through they offered to pay for a full ride scholarship to Aurora University, the Forge of Heroes. I took their offer, trained up, inexplicably gained superstrength (because what kind of superhero can’t benchpress a spaceship, honestly) and eventually one day I joined the Sentinels themselves and saved the world a couple dozen times.

I daydreamed that my dad burst through the back door, slugged my stepdad, and healed me. See, he hadn’t died. He was a member of a hidden, magical race of superbeings, a secret order of healers from ancient times, and he had simply needed time to regenerate after what had happened. And, wouldn’t you know it, my powers were actually a quick fix too. He still needed to train me in how to use them, though. Again, can’t be a Mary Sue. Nobody sympathizes with someone who’s too good at everything without earning it.

I daydreamed that Dane appeared, pulled my stepdad off of me, and punched him out. Then he bent down and scooped me up—I was fine, actually, just bruised—and told me that Judith had mind controlled him, he hadn’t meant to hurt me. He knew how much someone’s first time should mean to them. It should be special. He kissed me, which of course fixed my powers.

It’s amazing how much material your brain can cover when it’s dying. You really learn to cut the filler.

I daydreamed that a man with no face waited for me beneath a willow tree. He held out a hand, and I reached out to take it.

None of that happened, though.

The last image of my life was much, much stupider than any of that.

It was the blurry, fading sight of my mom throwing her arms around my stepdad’s neck, trying to wrest him off of me.

I would have laughed if my body was taking requests anymore. Way too little, way too late, Mom. Sixteen goddamn years too late. Guess I get to watch him kill you too before I go. One last funny joke in the life of Anna Jones.

I was wrong, though. I died first.

And then my fucking powers started working.

Remember what I said about stupid jokes that are just for me?

The Aristocrats!