Wonder Woman is an Amazon, Thor is one of the gods of Asgard, and wasn’t Storm from X-Men some sort of African deity?”
Malik sat back, shaking his head. “You know, I kinda hate when you do that.”
“Do what?” Her innocent expression was not convincing and she didn’t really intend it to be.
“When you pretend not to know something and then kneecap me.” For a boy who supposedly hated it, he was smiling pretty broadly.
Shade laughed delightedly, something she rarely did. “But it’s so fun.”
His face grew serious and he leaned forward across the tiny table. “Are you really going to do this, Shade? You know it’s a felony, right? A federal crime? Worse, this is national security we’re talking about.”
Shade shrugged. They were at the Starbucks on Dempster Street, in Evanston, Illinois. It was busy, jammed with the usual early morning crowd—college kids, ponytail moms, two women in the fluorescent vests of road workers, high school kids like Shade, college kids like Malik, all breathing steam and tracking wet in on their shoes, all stoking the caffeine furnace.
It was noisy enough that they could talk without too much concern for being overheard, but Shade wished Malik had not used the word ‘felony’ because that was exactly the kind of word people had a tendency to overhear.
They sipped their drinks—grande latte for Malik, tall Americano with a little half-and-half for Shade—checked the time and left. Malik was a tall, lithe black boy, seventeen, with hair in loose ringlets that had a tendency to fall into his eyes, the endearing effect of which he was quite well aware. Those occasionally ringleted eyes were perpetually at half-mast as if to conceal the penetrating intelligence behind them. His expression at rest was benign skepticism, as if he was not likely to believe you, but would keep an open mind.
Shade was a seventeen-year-old white girl with auburn hair cut to give her the look of someone who might be inclined to curse, smoke weed and just generally be trouble. Only two of those things were true.
She had brown eyes that could range from amused and affectionate to chilly and unsettling—effects she deployed quite consciously. She was tall, five foot eight, and had the sort of bone structure that would have caused people to say, “Hey, you should be a model,” but for the impressive scar that ran just beneath her jaw on the right side and behind her ear and gave her a swashbuckling air. If there were ever a movie role for Blackbeard’s pirate niece, Shade would have been a natural for the part.
Shade was effortlessly charismatic, with a hint of something regal about her. But despite the charm and the cheekbones, Shade was not a popular kid at school. She was too bookish, too aware, too impatient, too ready to let people know she was smarter than they were. And beyond that, there was something about Shade that felt too old, too serious, too dark; maybe even something a bit dangerous.
Malik knew where that feeling of danger came from: Shade was obsessed. She was like some online game addict, but her obsession was with a very real event, with fear and death and guilt. And it was no game.
It was chilly out on the street, not real Chicago cold—that was coming—just chilly enough to turn exhalations to steam and make noses run. The little business section of Dempster—Starbucks, pizza restaurant, optometrist, seafood market, and the venerable Blind Faith Café—was just west of the corner with Hinman Avenue. Hinman—where Shade lived—was a street of well-tended Victorian homes behind deep, unfenced front lawns. Trees—mature elms and oaks—had already dropped many of their leaves, gold with green accents, on lawns, sidewalks, the street, and on parked cars, plastering windshields with nature’s art.
Shade and Malik walked together down to Hinman where the bus stop was. There were six kids already milling around.
“Well, I’ll see you, Shade,” Malik said. There was something off in the way he said it, a tension, a worry.
Shade heard that note and said, “Stop worrying about me, Malik. I can take care of myself.”
He laughed. He had an unusual laugh that sounded like the noise a hungry seal made. Shade had always liked that about him: the idiot laugh from such a smart person. Also the smile.
And also the feel of his arms and his chest and his lips and . . . But that was all past tense now. That was all over and done with, though the friendship remained.
“It probably won’t work,” Malik said.
“Are you rooting against me?” Shade asked archly.
“Never.” The smile. And a sort of salute, fist over heart, like something he’d probably seen on Game of Thrones. But it worked. Whatever Malik did it generally somehow worked.
“I’m going to do it, Malik. I have to.”
Malik sighed. “Yeah, Shade, I know. It’s called obsession.”
“I thought that was the name of a perfume,” she joked, not expecting a laugh and getting only a very serious look from Malik.
“You know you can always call me, right?”
Shade lifted her cup to tap his and they had a cardboard toast. “You should not be hitting on high school girls,” she said.
“What choice do I have? Northwestern girls aren’t dumb enough to buy my line of bullshit,” he said, and started to go, walking backward away from her toward the Northwestern campus just a few blocks north. “Anyway, you’ll be a college girl next year.”
He was six months older than her, always a year ahead.
“Also, wasn’t the Sandman basically a god . . .?” Shade called after him.
“I’m going to class now,” Malik said and covered his ears. “I can’t hear you. Lalalalala.”
But Shade’s focus had already shifted to the new kid at the bus stop. A Latino boy, she guessed. Tall, six-two, quite a good-looking kid.
Wait. Nope. Maybe not a boy exactly.
Interesting.
He or possibly she looked nervous, the new kid. His dark eyes were wary and alert. And made up, with just a little eyebrow pencil and a delicate touch of mascara.
The others at the stop were a pair of freshmen boys who looked like they should still be in middle school; a black kid named Charles or Chuck or something—she couldn’t recall—who had never yet been seen without earbuds; and two massive, muscular members of the football team, one white, one black, neither in possession of a definable neck.
“That is going to be trouble,” Shade muttered under her breath. Both of the Muscle Twins were eyeballing the new kid with a bored, predatory air.
No one spoke to Shade as she positioned herself a little apart, on the sidewalk, where she could watch. She sipped her coffee and waited, watching the football guys, noting the nudges and the winks. She could smell violence in the air, a whiff of testosterone, sweat, and pure animal aggression.
She noticed as well that the new kid was quite aware of potential trouble. His eyes darted to the football players, and when they moved behind him, Shade could practically see the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
Evanston had always been the very epitome of enlightened tolerance, but a perhaps gay, perhaps trans kid and bored football players with their systems pumped full of steroids did not always make for a good mix. And lately Evanston had begun to change, to fray somehow, to fade a little as if it were a movie being shown on a projector with a dimming bulb.
“Hey, answer a question for us,” the white player said to the new kid. Shade saw the newbie flinch, saw him withdraw fractionally, but then, with a will, recover his position and face up to the player who was an inch shorter, but heavier by probably a hundred pounds of muscle.
“Okay.” It was a distinctly feminine voice. Shade cocked her head and listened.
“What are you?”
There