Edie bent over her tablet, stylus in hand, reviewing her sketch. Vigor, the super-strong heroine of the Protectors, stood on the edge of a building, her fingertips bloodied from clawing a hewn stone in half. Edie had dotted Vigor’s nose and furrowed brow with freckles as an homage to the fanfiction writer whose work she was adapting into fanart.
It was almost done. She just had to get Vigor’s cape to look like it was fluttering.
After the day she’d had, she was glad to have a distraction. She had been asked to prom—twice. And though her friend Arianna insisted it was a “nonblem”—a problem that wasn’t really a problem, like having too much money to fit in your wallet—Edie still felt short of breath. And not in a good way.
She shaded the underside of the cape, the corner tipping up in the wind. Vigor was one of four superheroines in the Protectors, a line of comics featuring Edie’s favorite superheroines. Vigor was half of a duo with her sister, Vim. They developed superpowers after being exposed to a radioactive explosion. Separately, Vim had boundless energy, never requiring sleep, and Vigor had super strength, but together they could summon a crackling, destructive energy they called the Charge.
Her phone buzzed against the desk. She leaned over to read the new message. Arianna, of course.
Arianna: Pros for going to prom with Evan: Good-looking, smart, good conversationalist. Cons: pretentious. Totally corrected my grammar that one time.
Edie scowled at her phone. Arianna was just trying to be helpful, but she had been hounding Edie about her decision all day. She had a point about Evan, though. Their flirtatious friendship formed around smoke breaks in the field across from the high school, during their lunch hour. He was the only person who would talk to her about the human brain for more than five minutes. But the only stories he read were about listless men who didn’t care about anything or anyone, and he had asked her to prom between two puffs of a cigarette.
Edie: Well, you did use “between” instead of “among.”
Arianna: Shush.
Arianna: Pros for Chris: Hot. Funny. Allegedly a good kisser. Cons: you dated him for a year, so high potential for drama.
She had loved Chris Williams once. Or at least, that was how it had seemed, in the dark in the back of his car with his hands on her, or swimming in the lake behind his house in the heat of summer. She had loved the glow of his smile against his dark skin, and the way he always opened doors for people, even if it made him late. But their relationship had been like a house with no foundation—one little storm washed it away.
Well, maybe it was more than a little storm.
It had been a heap of twisted metal and a wooden box lowered into the earth.
Edie’s stylus wobbled on the tablet screen, and she swore, hurriedly erasing the stray line that ruined Vigor’s cape. She had that hot, tight feeling in her throat again. She’d gotten another text, and it sat open on her desk, waiting for a response.
555-263-9888: Hey! It’s Lynn. Want to go with us to see the Vim and Vigor movie tonight?
Lynn had attached a selfie, and in it she was wearing Transforma’s signature purple lipstick, her lips pouted in an air kiss.
Lynn was one half of what was left of the Protectors Comics Club Edie had joined in middle school. Originally, there were four members—Edie, Kate (the founder), Lynn, and Amy—just as there were four superheroines in the Protectors—Vim, Vigor, Transforma, and Haze—so they had each taken on a superheroine name and identity. It was cool at the time.
They had been all but inseparable for four years. Then Kate, who was always full of questionable ideas, suggested they drive to the local 7-Eleven for slushies one night, even though she only had a learner’s permit. It was supposed to be a twenty-minute quest for sugar, and it ended in a car crash.
Amy was gone now, her resting place marked by a simple headstone in the Serene Hills Cemetery just outside of town, with a little slot for her data next to her name. At such a young age, her “data” amounted to a few files of childhood artwork and her school records.
555-263-9888: Opening weekend! (!!!!111!)
At one time, the Protectors Comics Club had talked incessantly about a movie based on Vim and Vigor coming out, but it had looked unlikely until last year. Kate had even texted Edie when the movie’s release date was announced, but Edie hadn’t known what to say back to her. And now it was here, and she didn’t know what to do—not about prom, not about Kate and Lynn, not about anything.
Deep breaths, she told herself. Her therapist had told her not to fight the anxiety when it happened, to just count her breaths and accept it. She tried that. When her heart was still racing a few minutes later, she fished around in her purse for the little tin of pills that had been prescribed for exactly this purpose. Her fingers felt clumsy, almost numb. Edie popped one of the pills in her mouth and swallowed it dry.
Then she typed a reply to Lynn.
Sure. Time and place? Gotta support the cause.
They had always talked about the Protectors like that, as more than just a bunch of comics. They were a cause, because they were stories about women being heroes, not just spunky reporters or love interests who were sacrificed to the latest villain.
After the text sent, she picked up her stylus and started to draw again.
Edie waited outside the theater for Lynn and Kate, her little purse clutched close, feeling self-conscious. She spotted Kate from a distance because of her huge, baggy Protectors sweatshirt, with the symbol of the group on the front, curved and blue. And Lynn was easy to find because she was wearing her bobbing, horned Transforma headband. Transforma could shapeshift into any animal or alien the Protectors came across, though in her “human” form she always had red horns. And purple lips.
Kate stuffed her hands into the center pocket of her sweatshirt and gave Edie a frown as she approached. Her freckled nose scrunched a little.
“Hey,” Edie said. She wondered if Kate knew that Edie still read her fanfiction. She definitely didn’t know that Edie still sketched it. Would she like it, if she knew? Or would she think it was pathetic?
Edie didn’t know why she still kept up with the Protectors, or with Kate’s work. She didn’t know why she stored all her Protectors stuff in the closet instead of tossing it. Or why it was easier to let go of Kate herself than the thing that had brought them together.
“Hi!” Lynn said, a little too cheerfully. “Well . . . shall we? We want good seats, right?”
They went in, scanning their tickets at the entrance. Conversation was sporadic, at best. It was like they were all leaving space for a fourth party to contribute, only that fourth party wasn’t there. Amy had always been critical of the comics, more so than Edie, Kate, or Lynn. Edie had thought Amy didn’t even like them, for a long time, before she saw Amy’s bedroom, and all the posters tacked to the walls there, and the stack of Protectors-themed T-shirts in Amy’s closet. It was just Amy’s nature to pick at things.
They settled themselves in the middle of the theater, in the middle of the row. The floor was sticky under Edie’s shoes. She’d smuggled a box of candy into the theater—chocolate-covered raisins, her favorite. She buried her fingers in the box, and Kate eyed her for a second before sticking out her hand, silently asking for some. Edie provided them, automatically, her muscles remembering how to be Kate’s friend even if the rest of her didn’t.
“I’m excited to see how they portray the Charge,” she said to Kate, across Lynn’s body. Lynn was a good mediator, and she had trouble taking sides. Amy had started fights, and Lynn had smoothed them over, time and time again. But Kate and Edie weren’t having a fight now, not exactly.
Edie ran her fingers over the dark red velour that covered the seats, worn where most people’s legs pressed against it, and watched the little screen as she waited for Kate to respond. It was so early that the theater was playing trivia instead of coming attractions.
“I’m nervous about that,” Kate said. “The budget wasn’t that high for this movie. You know, because it’s not a sure thing.”
“Yeah, we all know lady-hero movies don’t make money,” Edie said, rolling her eyes. “Except, say, that Wonder Woman movie . . .”
“And Black Widow!” Lynn piped up, her horns bouncing on their springs.
“They’re just looking at the facts,” Edie said with false firmness. “Don’t get so emotional about it, ladies. Are you PMSing, by the way?”
Kate laughed.
“Shh,” Lynn said suddenly. “The lights are dimming.”
And it all came back in a rush, that breathless feeling when all the expectations and hopes and fears formed over years were balanced on a knife’s edge. When you had loved something for so long and for so many reasons that all you wanted was for that love to expand inside you.
She clenched a hand around the armrest and watched, forgetting about the chocolate-covered raisins spilling into her purse, and the tension that had driven her farther and farther away from Kate until they couldn’t even speak to each other anymore, and the way Lynn chewed so loudly Edie could hardly hear the quieter lines.
She watched Vim and Vigor stumble out of uncertainty and embrace their heroism and save the city.
She watched them grow up together, then break apart, and come back together again for the sake of something greater than either of them were alone.
And in the climactic moments, where it looked like Vigor might be lost in the power of the Charge, directing it to destroy instead of to heal, she locked eyes with Kate and smiled.
“And the part where Vim was double-fisting coffee cups with all those stacks of paper around?” Kate laughed.
“Classic Vim. Can’t go anywhere without making a mess,” Edie said, almost proud, for some reason. After all, Vim had been hers.
“The final act was a little fast, pacing wise,” Lynn said. “But I liked the rest. Wonder if it’ll do well.”
“Hope so,” Kate said. “I really want a sequel.”
“Yeah, me too,” Edie said, a little wistful. By the time a sequel came out, they would all be in college, and what if she didn’t find anyone to share the Protectors with there? Would she have to pretend like she was over it, like she did with Arianna?
Kate checked her phone. “It’s still early. Want to go back to my place?”
“Sure,” Edie agreed, though a second later she regretted it. Lynn had that look on her face, the one that said she was about to say no.
“I have to head home,” Lynn said. “I didn’t finish my physics homework, and it’s not like I’m acing that class.”
Kate gave her a knowing look that made Edie realize how little she knew about Lynn’s life now. She had no idea if Kate or Lynn were acing their classes, or if either of them were dating anyone, or if they had had their first drink, their first grope, their first anything.
And Edie had already agreed to go to Kate’s house. If she backed out now, it would be obvious that she didn’t feel comfortable alone with Kate anymore.
“Um . . . meet you there?” she asked Kate.
“Sure,” Kate said, sounding just as uncertain.
Edie couldn’t help but think that everything would be easier if she could just say what was going on. Look, you and I clearly aren’t comfortable around each other without Lynn there, so maybe another time? But that just wasn’t what people did.
Edie was always running into the barriers between people, wishing they were easier to break.
Kate’s house was stark and modern, pale floors and white walls and stacks of glass blocks instead of windows. When Edie got there, she walked straight to the kitchen, where she knew Kate would be, dumping popcorn into a bowl and rustling in her white refrigerator for another can of soda.
“Want one?” Kate asked her.
“No, thanks,” Edie said. “Where are Dr. and Dr. Rhodes?” Her affectionate names for Kate’s parents, one of whom studied brains and the other, history.
Kate’s dad—the famous Dr. Russell Rhodes—had invented the Elucidation Protocol, simulated reality technology that aided in clarity of thought and decision-making for people in high-stress fields. It essentially used extensive research and psychological and sociological principles, as well as personal beliefs, to reveal the likely outcomes of particular decisions through virtual reality. He had envisioned it being used to help world leaders make decisions, but it was the legal sector that had taken to it the most. It was currently used in prisons, to rehabilitate criminals, and in crime prevention with high-risk populations.
“On a date.” Kate’s mouth twisted. “They do that now. They make out in the kitchen too.”
Edie grinned. Her own parents slept in separate beds these days, claiming that her mother’s snores were the reason, but Edie knew that wasn’t all.
“So.” Kate turned her soda can around in a circle. “Did you notice the Haze cameo at the end of the movie?”
As if Edie could have missed the Haze cameo. Haze was the youngest superheroine in the Protectors, and the movie had set up her origin story, showing a teenage girl staring on from the crowd as Vim and Vigor claimed their victory over the supervillain.
“Haze” was what they had called Amy. She had been the youngest of the four of them too.
“Yeah,” Edie said. “Good casting, though. That red hair.”
“Remember when Amy tried to dye her hair red in her bathroom and stained the tub permanently?” Kate smiled at her soda can. “Her mom was so mad. . . .”
“Yeah, and it turned her highlights pink,” Edie pointed out. “Which I could have told her would happen, if she had asked, but no . . .”
“You always were best at that kind of thing,” Kate said. “I guess it makes sense you’ve gone pro.”
Edie looked down at her clothes—nothing special, just red jeans and a blazer with a little pin on the lapel. A skull and crossbones, to match the ones on the toes of her flat shoes. But it was more stylish than Kate’s baggy sweatshirt. “Are you referring to my outfit?”
“Yeah.” Kate shook her head. Her freckled nose twitched. “Sorry, I . . . I think it’s cool, that you know about all that stuff. I still remember the day my mom presented me with a hairbrush instead of a comb, like ‘Oh, I guess this might be easier for you.’”
Kate’s mother had a short, practical haircut, and the most makeup Edie had seen her wear was a dab of concealer under her eyes. But Kate’s hair was wavy and thick, frizzing close to the scalp so it glowed when light shone through it, and she had the kind of long, curled eyelashes other people pined over. No need for mascara.
“I remember that too,” Edie said. “We were fourteen, and the comb just broke in your hair.”
She laughed, and so did Kate, and that was how they ended up in Kate’s bathroom, with her mom’s old cosmetics spread over the counter and Kate perched on a stool with Edie standing in front of her, talking to her about eyeliner.
After giving up on the sparkly eye shadow (“If I wanted to look like New Year’s Eve threw up on my face, I have a bag of confetti I could use,” Kate had remarked. “Why do you have a bag of confetti?” Edie had asked, laughing), Edie and Kate sat on stools in the kitchen, tossing popcorn into their mouths. Then Edie thought to check her phone, which had been on silent since she got home from school that day.
There were three missed messages.
Arianna: Don’t leave me in suspense!
Chris: ???
Evan: Up for a smoke tomorrow during lunch?
Edie stared at Chris’s question marks, and her heart began to pound. “???” was right.
She didn’t know why it was so hard to make this decision—it was prom, after all, not life or death—but the thought of the way Evan’s eyebrows would pinch in the middle, half disappointed and half critical, or the way Chris’s eyes would avoid hers in the hallway again, as they had since the breakup, was just . . . too much. Right now, before she decided anything, all the different parts of her life were suspended in midair. And once she did, everything would come crashing down, she just knew it.
Kate must have seen the panic flash in her eyes, because she let the popcorn kernel fall on the floor and asked, “You okay, Vim?”
The casual use of the nickname—probably unintentional—made tears prick in Edie’s eyes. And then she had an idea.
“Hey, you know that prototype your dad has in the basement?” she asked. “For the Elucidation Protocol? Do you think he would mind if we . . . used it?”
Kate raised her eyebrows.
“Let’s see. Would my dad mind if I touched the thing he’s always telling me not to touch under pain of death and the removal of my bedroom door?” She scratched her chin. “Yeah, Edie, pretty sure he would. Why?”
“I just . . .” Edie closed her eyes. “There’s a decision I need to make, and it’s kind of a big deal, and I just . . . I thought the EP could help.”
“That is what it’s designed for,” Kate admitted. “Um . . .” She chewed her lip, the way she always did right before she suggested something stupid. This time was no exception. “Let’s do it anyway.”
Edie brightened. “Really?”
“Yeah, Dad’s not going to be home until late,” Kate said. She paused, tilting her head as she looked Edie over. “It really is important, right?”
Edie hesitated.
“Yeah,” she said finally. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.”
The prototype of the Elucidation Protocol was a little disappointing when you came face-to-face with it. The first time, Edie had narrowed her eyes and said to Dr. Rhodes, “This is it?” It looked like a headband with a bunch of wires attached to it, running along the floor to a little computer. The device wasn’t the revolutionary part, Dr. Rhodes had explained. The substance that triggered the program was. He had made batches and batches of it, to the point that the other Dr. Rhodes, his wife, insisted he stop bringing it home, particularly when the protocol moved to its next stages and the original formula was no longer viable.
So she wasn’t surprised when Kate plucked a vial of the stuff from a shelf in the—completely packed—closet of identical vials, without a second thought. She even tossed it to Edie, who caught it, thankfully. She sat in the padded chair—ripped across the seat from overuse—and buzzed with nerves as Kate arranged the wired crown atop her head like she was some kind of sci-fi prom queen.
“Wrap that heart monitor thing around your arm, will you?” Kate said. She was in scientist mode now. She had never been into science the way Edie was, but she was capable enough, growing up under her father’s watchful eye. It was Edie, though, who knew how to attach the heart monitor to her arm so that it would pick up her pulse, who untangled the wires and made sure the leads were secured to her temples.
“You know the drill, but I’m going to give you the whole speech anyway, okay?” Kate said as she sat behind the computer to set up the program. “The protocol will run twice, once for each of the options you’re considering. It doesn’t see the future; it just helps you to see what you think would happen in each of two scenarios. The prototype is flawed in that it can’t account for any other factors aside from the knowledge that you yourself possess, though it does assist in clarity of thought.”
Edie nodded. She knew all this. Her hand was getting sweaty around the vial of substrate. She was worried it would tremble when she brought it up to her mouth to drink, and Kate would see it and know how terrified she was. About prom dates, of all things.
But it was more than that, wasn’t it? Evan was intellectual, daring, opinionated. Chris was kind, openhearted, enthusiastic. And when she was with either of them, she was those things too; she was more than she could ever be alone, like Vim and Vigor and the Charge. It was a choice between dates, sure, but it was also a choice between Edies.
Wasn’t it?
“I’ll cue you verbally to start the second phase,” Kate said. “So drink up, and it should set in after ten seconds. Don’t be alarmed when your scenery shifts, it’s perfectly normal.”
Edie nodded and tipped the vial’s bluish contents into her mouth.
Edie twisted her arms behind her back to push up the zipper on her black dress. It was simple, hanging from off-the-shoulder straps and clinging just enough—not too much—to her belly and thighs. She tucked a stray curl into the twist at the back of her head; then, making sure that her little brother wasn’t anywhere nearby, sniffed under each armpit to make sure she had remembered deodorant.
“Edie!” her mother sang from the first floor. “There’s a boy here for you!”
“Coming!” she crowed back. She checked her winged eyeliner one last time in the mirror, stuffed a Band-Aid in her silver clutch in case her shoes gave her blisters, and made her way downstairs.
Evan waited by the door. He wasn’t carrying a corsage, and she hadn’t expected him to, but it was still vaguely disappointing, like he couldn’t be bothered to do something silly even if it was just a nice gesture. But she pushed that thought aside as she went down the steps, particularly as his lips twitched into a smile.
He wore a black suit, white shirt, black tie. Classic. And at least he wasn’t wearing flannel. His hair had just as much product in it as it usually did, and it looked so thick she wanted to bury her hands in it.
“Let me get a picture of you two!” Edie’s mother said, and she rustled in her purse for her phone. Poking at it like it was a typewriter, she found her way to the camera app and held it up. Evan pulled Edie close to his side, grinning.
She smiled back, and with a click, the moment was captured.
After a hug that lingered a beat too long, Edie broke away from her mother and followed Evan to his old green Saab. She loved the way the car smelled, like old tobacco and men’s deodorant. She wondered what she would find if she opened the center console, and made a list of guesses. A tin of mints, a lighter with half the fluid gone. Maybe, if she dug deep, the stub of a joint and a button from a winter coat. People’s scraps said so much about them.
They didn’t talk much on the way there, as Evan parked and they piled into one of the buses with everybody else. Edie loved seeing all the people in their formal wear stuffed between bus seats, some of the skirts so big they fluffed up by a girl’s face. Evan chose a seat in the back, next to an open window, and he sat a little closer to her than was strictly necessary.
“You didn’t want to sit near your friend? What’s her name?” Evan asked. “Arianna, right?”
“She went on the early bus—yep, it’s Arianna,” she said, inordinately pleased that he remembered Arianna’s name. “You corrected her grammar once, remember?” she added, on a whim, a little smile on her lips.
“Did I? God, she must hate me.” Evan laughed. “It’s a reflex. My mom used to make a horrible sound every time we made a grammar misstep. I think it was her attempt at classical conditioning.”
“What was the sound?”
Evan’s face contorted, and he let out a loud “EHH!” Like a warning buzzer mixed with an old car horn. There was a rustle of skirts as some of their classmates turned toward the sound.
Edie mimicked Evan’s expression of horror. “She did that every time?”
“God forbid we used the word ‘like’ as a filler word,” he replied sourly. “My parents split up when I was twelve, though, so her influence wasn’t as strong after that. But you know what they say about the formative years.”
“They form you,” Edie supplied. “You lived with your dad then?”
“He’s the responsible one,” Evan replied, nodding. “So to speak. He hasn’t noticed my unexcused absences yet, but I’m not complaining.”
He was complaining, Edie knew. The same way she complained about her parents avoiding each other’s eyes when they were in the same room together—by pretending it was better that way.
She wasn’t sure where the question came from, but it was bubbling from her mouth. “Why did you want to be my friend, Evan?”
She had wondered more than once. And the answers she came up with ranged from “because I wanted to get in your pants” to “because your knowledge of cutting-edge neuroscience is downright alluring” and everywhere in between, but what he said surprised her anyway.
“You seemed as lonely as I was,” he said, and he looked away, his hair tousled by the wind.
The bus rattled and rocked all the way to the Holiday Inn ballroom, which was decorated with different kinds of strings of lights, stars and roses and tiny lanterns. A folk-pop song with a twangy guitar was playing over the sound system, and there were a dozen round tables arranged next to the dance floor. A buffet table held deep trays of food, covered to keep them warm.
She spotted Arianna and her boyfriend, Jacob, already cuddled close at one of the tables, a plate of finger food between them. A hint of movement caught her eye on the side of the room, and she spotted Kate gesticulating wildly to Lynn. Edie blinked. Kate was wearing black pants and a glittery shirt that caught the light when she moved, and Lynn was in a red knee-length dress.
Kate’s eyes found hers. Then looked away.
“Wow,” Edie said. “This is a teen movie nightmare.”
“You said it,” Evan said. “I think I need a smoke. Want to?”
“A little early to bail, don’t you think?” she said.
“I came, I saw, I prommed,” he replied. “We can always come back. Come on, there’s a place I want to show you.”
They ended up a few blocks away, at the boardwalk. The smell of salt and seaweed was on the air, as well as the occasional whiff of cigarette smoke whenever the wind blew just so. The cigarette itself dangled from Evan’s fingers like he was about to drop it, just like Edie’s shoes dangled from hers by their little black straps.
He did put out the cigarette then, smashing it against the inside of a little tin he kept in his jacket pocket. A second later she thought she saw him pop a mint into his mouth, but she couldn’t be sure. She ducked her head to hide a smile and followed him at his gesture. Then he was hopping off the boardwalk, drawing a gasp from her lips and a laugh from his own.
“Don’t worry, there’s a sandbar here at low tide,” he said, and his pale hand stretched out around the boards beneath her. She set down her shoes, hiked up her skirts—all the while sparing a few choice words for boys who didn’t understand how much harder it was to maneuver in a slinky dress than a pair of loose pants—and jumped down.
She splashed a little on the landing, but since her dress was black, it didn’t really matter. She kept her skirt out of the sand, though, draping it over her elbow as she turned to face him. Yes, he had definitely eaten a mint—even from a foot away, his breath was fresh now, with a hint of tobacco.
“If we weren’t in formal wear, I’d suggest we sit down and listen to the waves,” he said. He ducked his head and, to her surprise, blushed a little. Or she thought he did—it was getting dark, so it was hard to tell. “Guess I didn’t think this through very well.”
“You know, it would probably be creepy if you had,” she said, and he laughed, with less control than he usually had, so it came out like a bark.
And she realized, suddenly, that Evan—journal-carrying, smoking-behind-the-shed-on-school-grounds, pep-rally-ditching Evan—was nervous. That for all that he pretended to know himself and what he wanted, he was just as clueless about the whole thing as she was.
So she let her skirt drop to the sand, threw an arm around his neck, and tilted up on her bare toes to kiss him.
She felt his fingers digging into her waist, and the grains of sand between her toes, and the firm pressure of his mouth. Then, at the nudge of a tongue, parting, giving way, the tension thrumming through him releasing. Salt and mint and cigarette. Waves caressing the shore, and the moon now emerging, and she was exactly the daring girl she wanted to be.
“Second phase in five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .”
Edie twisted her arms behind her back to push up the zipper on her red dress.
“I got it, don’t dislocate anything,” Arianna said, coming up behind her. She was already wearing her dress, a yellow gown that almost glowed against her brown skin. She had gathered her thick hair into a knot just behind her right ear, and there was a flower pinned there, just as bright as the dress.
Edie’s friend zipped up the dress, and she smiled at her reflection in Arianna’s bedroom mirror. They had picked Arianna’s house for its huge staircase—perfect for prom pictures.
Edie had tried to buy a normal, simple dress, but Arianna had forbidden it. “This is one of the only times in your entire life that it will be okay to wear a huge monstrosity,” she had pointed out, and after a few repetitions, Edie agreed. Consequently, her red dress was a gown, with a full skirt.
And pockets.
She beamed when she moved in it and heard the layers swishing up against one another. Making sure her phone was secure in one of the pockets, Edie followed Arianna out of the master bathroom. A group had gathered at the bottom of the grand staircase, all the boys in their tuxes and the girls in bright dresses in almost every color of the rainbow. They were Arianna’s cross-country teammates, and Edie liked them but didn’t really know them. It didn’t matter—she knew Arianna, and she knew Chris, who was laughing by the door with Arianna’s date, Jacob.
When he spotted her, Chris’s face—if possible—lit up even more, and he broke off his conversation to go to her side.
“Nicely done, Robbins,” he said.
“You too, Williams,” she replied, making a show of looking him over. He did look good. Unlike the penguinlike boys around him, he was in a navy blue tuxedo with black trim, his bow tie so straight it was like he had tied it with a level on hand. And he was holding a white wrist corsage. An orchid.
She grinned as he slipped it onto her, then caught his hand, and squeezed.
“I see you’re committed to this occasion,” she said. “Corsage, nice suit . . .”
“When I was a boy I used to dream about my prom night. . . .” He folded his hands under his chin and gave an exaggerated blink. “And about the gal who would sweep me off my feet, et cetera.”
She mimed throwing up.
“Really, though, my granddad always says cynicism is unattractive in a young person,” he said, a little more seriously. “Well, actually, he says, ‘What do you have to be cynical about, boy? The whole world is at your feet.’ And something about a war, I don’t know.”
“Meanwhile, there’s my mother, who started to warn me against bad prom night decision-making and gave up halfway through,” she replied. “Like, literally gave up. Sighed heavily and went into the living room.”
Chris laughed. They took their place on the steps with the other couples. He stood close behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist. They smiled, stiffly, for the first few shots, and when commanded to be silly, Edie put on a comically deep frown as Chris pretended to collapse against the banister.
Before pulling away, he bent closer to brush a kiss against her cheek. She flushed with warmth.
They piled into a stretch white limousine that took them—in a cloud of vapor from the smoke machine—to the high school, where they got on one of the buses instead. They rode in the back, raucous enough to get scolded multiple times by the chaperone. Edie’s stomach ached from laughing so hard, and they weren’t even at the prom yet.
When they arrived, she and Chris paused in the doorway to marvel at the strings of light that crisscrossed the ceiling, and the luminous gauze that made up the centerpieces of the tables. There wasn’t a soul on the dance floor yet, though the lights were already low and the music was playing. So she knew what Chris was going to do before he did it.
He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the dance floor. “Someone’s gotta get this started!” he said, by way of explanation, but she didn’t need it. Her cheeks were hot as he pulled her into the empty space, and she felt the eyes of everyone in the room like fingers brushing over her, but then Chris was going through his repertoire of stupid dance moves, trying to get her to laugh with him: the cabbage patch, the shopping cart, the sprinkler. . . .
Edie sighed, bobbed her head to the music, and pretended to be holding a fishing pole. She cast her invisible line, and Chris became the fish, flapping wildly as she pulled him in. Then she fell against him, so embarrassed she couldn’t help but bury her face in his shoulder. But it was all right, because in the middle of her spasm of humiliation, Arianna and all her friends had come to join them, and now she was camouflaged by a whole crowd of fools.
It took another song to get comfortable, and then Arianna was spinning in circles around her, and Jacob was dragging a handkerchief across his sweaty forehead, and Chris was trying to teach her how to do the electric slide, even though it didn’t work with the music. She kept tripping over her skirt, and her legs were sticky with sweat, but it didn’t matter, none of it mattered except how widely he smiled at her.
Sometime in the middle of one of those songs where they shouted commands at you—Edie’s favorite, because she didn’t have to think of her own moves—she spotted Kate at the edge of the dance floor, trying to coax Lynn to join her. Kate was in silver—no, not just silver, but a dress made of duct tape that wrapped around her from chest to knee. Lynn was in red, like Edie.
Edie caught Kate’s eye, pointed at the duct-tape dress, and gave her a thumbs-up.
Kate gave her a confused look.
And Edie stepped to the left and turned, as commanded by the music.
The song slowed, and the lights went low, so only the starry strands glowed in a net above them. Chris’s hands found her hips, and she put her arms around his neck. They swayed, leaning on each other to recover from the fever of the past few dances.
She touched her forehead to his, and he was sweaty, his skin radiating heat, but she didn’t mind.
He had made her feel light, for once. So she tipped up her chin to kiss him. He cupped her cheeks, and they stopped swaying. She crushed the corsage against his chest, toying with the buttons of his shirt, with the perfectly straight bow tie.
This was it, she knew. The feeling people meant when they talked about love. And it was so easy to love him, so easy to love the person she was when he was around.
“You look happy,” he said to her softly, over the hum of the music. “For a while, after the accident, it was like . . . like you didn’t feel much of anything. And I didn’t know what to do. But . . . it’s nice to see you happy again.”
It was nice to feel happy again.
But she couldn’t get rid of the unsettling thought: What happens when I stop being happy again?
Kate did not count down her exit from the Elucidation Protocol. Edie jerked from the vision, startled to find herself sitting instead of standing and wearing jeans instead of a red gown. She ran her hands over her arms, feeling bereft. Lost.
Such a weird thing to have in your basement, she thought as she looked around for something to anchor her. Along the far wall were bookcases stuffed with books, sometimes two rows deep. This was a house of curious people. Kate’s parents didn’t even mind her comic obsession. Her mother had even called it a “feminist undertaking.”
Kate stood in front of her and ripped one of the wires away from Edie’s forehead. Her movements were sharp, her brow furrowed. Edie blinked up at her as Kate eased the crown off her head and set it aside. Then Kate took a phone out of her back pocket and thrust it at Edie.
“Here. Take it, it wouldn’t stop buzzing,” Kate said. She folded her arms.
“What is it?” Edie said, still feeling out of it. Had she mumbled something while she was under the influence of the EP? Something about Kate?
“Oh, no, this conversation can wait until you’ve checked your texts. Go ahead,” Kate said.
Edie touched the screen, bringing up the last few text messages. They were all from Arianna.
Arianna: Well?
Arianna: Did you choose a boy yet?
Arianna: Tell me soon, because we need to go dress shopping together.
She looked up at Kate, still not sure what was going on.
“Tell me,” Kate said, her voice shaking. “Tell me we didn’t just break my father’s rules, risk me getting in serious trouble, and potentially damage highly expensive equipment so you could pick a prom date.”
“It’s not . . .” But what? How could she explain that it wasn’t about a prom date, wasn’t about Evan or Chris or dresses or dances? How could she possibly tell Kate about the whirl of panicked thoughts chasing themselves through her brain every second of every day, and the deep ache she felt every time she thought about the future, the past—hell, even the present?
“God.” Kate closed her eyes. “When you agreed to come tonight, I thought it was because you actually gave a damn about me still. That maybe we could be friends again. And now I find out you would take advantage of me like this, for something so . . . so vapid and shallow and—”
“You’re so judgmental, god,” Edie snapped. “If you’re not ragging on me for liking makeup, you’re insulting me for caring about prom. Well, excuse me for not waging some kind of eternal war against The Man!”
“You don’t listen, do you?” Kate’s eyes filled with tears. “I thought we could be friends again! And it’s like you don’t even think of me, don’t even see me anymore, not since . . .” She blinked the tears away. “Do you even like Vim and Vigor anymore? Or did you just come so you could ask me for this?”
“You’re the one who doesn’t even make eye contact in the hallway,” Edie said. “And you must not know me very well if you think I’m just some airheaded idiot who’s agonizing over a prom dress.”
“Just go, okay?” Kate shook her head. “Just go, and choose a boy, and go back to pretending I don’t exist.”
She turned and walked across the basement. Edie listened to her footsteps on the stairs, and above her head, as they crossed the living room. She heard a door close upstairs and knew that Kate would be in her room by now, probably playing music louder than she should, and wouldn’t answer the door even if Edie pounded on it.
So Edie got her bag, put on her shoes, and left.
They had been the last ones at the funeral, Lynn, Kate, and Edie. They helped Amy’s aunts clean up, then sat on the couch in the living room, sucking down the last of what Edie mentally referred to as the funereal punch. All day she had been suppressing the horrible urge to laugh. Everything was funny—the priest’s hobbling gait as he went up to the pulpit, the face Amy’s grandmother made when she cried, the off-balance way the pallbearers carried the casket.
She felt like some of the wires in her brain were crossed to trigger the wrong reactions at the wrong times. As people stood around weeping, she got so angry she thought she might explode, and excused herself. By the time she made it to the couch with Kate and Lynn, she was so exhausted from the wild swells of the wrong emotions that she was numb.
Then Lynn’s parents came to pick her up, so it was just Kate and Edie, waiting for their rides together, and Edie still couldn’t look Kate in the eye.
Kate put down her mug, her hand trembling, and said, in a voice so small and so broken Edie almost didn’t believe it belonged to her friend:
“Do you think it’s my fault?”
She knew why Kate was asking. Because it had been Kate’s idea to drive to the 7-Eleven, and Kate who had been behind the wheel, and Kate who hadn’t gotten out of the way of the drunk driver in time, and Kate whose whole body was shaking now.
Edie threw her arms around her best friend, held her tight, and forced herself to say, “No. Of course not.”
But oh god, maybe she did, maybe she did.
That night Edie opened the Vim and Vigor folder on her tablet and scrolled through the images one by one. Kate had been writing this most recent Protectors story for almost a year. It was longer than most books, and she updated it weekly on FandomWorks. Every time Edie thought about giving it up, she found something that made her hold on—a phrase she recognized, a revelation about a character, something small.
Then a few months ago, she had discovered something bigger.
Kate had always teased Edie for being conventional in her “ships”—the couples she was most rooting for in fanfiction, even if they weren’t together in canon. Kate was more interested in nontraditional interpretations of Vim and Vigor—Vim with other women (Transforma, mostly), and Vigor as asexual, or demisexual—and Edie liked to hear about those too, curious about all the possibilities. (Though it had been difficult to explain to her mother why she had so many sketches of two women kissing on her tablet.)
But Edie always went back to Vim and Antimatter, the son of their evil nemesis. The early comics showed them potent in their hatred for one another, almost killing each other every now and then. But then Antimatter’s mother had died, and he started to shift, and the passionate hate turned to attraction. Enemies to lovers—one of Edie’s favorite tropes.
And Kate had written it into her story.
Her Vigor was asexual, of course—that was Kate’s favorite interpretation of all. But Vim and Antimatter were there, in her fic, the one she had been building for a year. It was almost like she was speaking directly to Edie.
That was when Edie started sketching again. Trying to talk back.
Edie paused on a drawing of Antimatter’s gloved hand in Vim’s slender one, their fingers twisting together as something exploded behind them. Maybe she didn’t need to find the right words to say to Kate, or even any words at all.
Edie opened a blank email and attached the Vim and Vigor folder. When it uploaded, she typed in Kate’s email address and wrote “I’m sorry” in the subject line.
Sent.
It was prom night.
Edie twisted her arms behind her back to push up the zipper of her black skirt. It was high-waisted, hitting her right below her ribs, and made of a stiff material that disguised the cell phone and lipstick she carried in the pockets.
She leaned close to the mirror to check the border of her lipstick, which was a vibrant orange-red.
“So you’re really set on that getup, huh?” Arianna said from the doorway, her arms folded.
“Not much choice now, is there?” Edie smiled a little. “Come on. Let’s go make precious memories.”
There were strings of lights across the ceiling, just as she had imagined during the Elucidation Protocol, but none of them were shaped like stars. Instead, they were your standard Christmas light variety, little and twinkling and white. And the centerpieces on the round tables were just white flowers, lilies and carnations. Kind of hideous, actually.
Edie stood in the doorway and tucked her hands into her skirt pockets. She was scanning the hotel ballroom, at her leisure, watching Chris and his date—one of the cross-country girls, a short, sweet junior named Tonya—do the shopping cart, shoulder to shoulder. Evan was nowhere to be found, probably smoking under the boardwalk, if he had come at all.
Arianna turned back, her arm still looped around Jacob’s elbow. “You coming?”
Edie waved her on.
Then she spotted them, standing at the edge of the dance floor, and she remembered the text she’d sent to Lynn and Kate a few days after the incident at Kate’s house.
Edie: Protectors reunion at prom? <3 Vim
She unzipped her leather jacket and tossed it over the back of a chair. Underneath it she wore a garish purple T-shirt with an illustration of Vim on it. The superheroine was flying through the air, her cape rippling behind her and her fist outstretched, jagged energy lines radiating from her body.
Across the room, Lynn spotted her and waved. She was wearing her Transforma horns and an acid-green dress that clashed horribly with them. She looked like a bottle of radioactive waste, and her lips were dark purple.
Kate turned, and when Edie recognized the Vigor costume for what it was, she almost cried with relief, because it meant Kate had forgiven her. From the back, the costume just looked like a rippling black coatdress, but from the front, that bright red bustier was unmistakable. As was the sparkly red eye shadow on Kate’s eyelids.
They looked insane. Ridiculous. And fantastic.
She crossed the room just as a fast song started playing. When she was close to Kate and Lynn, she struck the classic Vim pose, and all three of them laughed.
“Look, I brought something,” she shouted, over the music. And she took a tiny picture of Amy out of her pocket. It was attached to a Popsicle stick and decorated with the neon-yellow Haze headdress. And glitter.
She knew it was weird. She hadn’t really brought it for them. She’d brought it because she thought it might feel good to remember Amy. Also terrible—she knew it would feel terrible to remember, but sometimes good and terrible could coexist, right? They had to.
“That is . . . ,” Lynn started, eyebrows raised. “Dark,” she finished. “Very dark sense of humor you’ve got there, Edie.”
But Kate was laughing. “Oh god, she would have loved it.”
And Edie realized: Evan only liked her when she was lonely. Chris only liked her when she was happy. But Kate . . . Kate just liked Edie.
Edie didn’t blame her for the accident, then, not even a little.
“Let’s go,” she said. “I love this song.”
And they danced.