by Melissa Wong
“What if it was me that brought her back?” Blue Caracal asked, “After all, she didn’t appear until my spell ended!”
As the group continued to talk, Green Jaguar looked down at his medallion. He didn’t feel right letting those two go off on their own, especially with Vetrina on the loose.
“Hey guys, I’m gonna de-transform and join them,” he announced. They fell silent.
“That’s the worst idea ever,” White Lion said, “They’ll figure you out for sure.”
“It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing for me to be hanging out at the school,” he protested.
“After dark?” Red Panther asked.
“I already told them we rescued me. It’ll be fine. I promise.”
He didn’t wait for an answer before he leapt up the side of one of the buildings lining the alleyway. He bounced from rooftop to rooftop before ending up on the far side of the school. He scanned the area with his lenses, but found no traces of petroite.
It was strange that there were no police cars or fire trucks present. Either their fight was incredibly quiet, or the neighbors all thought that someone else must have called it in, so no one did. Green Jaguar shook his head and went over to the door to the room they’d had detention in. It was covered in yellow police tape, so they had been here. Maybe the cops mistook any later calls as being about the earlier incident with Vetrina.
He pulled it off and used his lenses to pick the lock. Once inside he picked up the ancient phone from under the yellowed analog clock and pressed the code to dial out before calling the police.
“Hello, Sweet Step PD?” he asked, disguising his voice with the lenses. “I’m calling to report a possible gas leak at Twin Tides Academy. I live in one of the fancy houses next door and I just heard an explosion. Please come quickly!”
He hung up before the operator could respond, the loud ring of the receiver hitting the metal catch echoing through the room.
“That oughta do it,” he said to no one before removing his medallion and deactivating his transformation. At least this way the damage to the school was explained and they wouldn’t be blamed for blowing up the room or anything like that.
Once he was back in his uniform, he ruffled up his hair and pressed his palms into his eyes before slapping himself in the face several times. He had to sell it, right?
Ryan caught a glimpse of his reflection in the tinted glass window of the classroom and untucked his shirt. It would have to do.
The night air made him shiver as he stepped out into the darkness. Just a few minutes ago he’d been running around in a long-sleeved suit, and his short-sleeved uniform shirt was a stark contrast from that. Warm days and cold nights... spring was so stupid!
He wasn’t standing in front of the school long before his friends arrived, leaning heavily on each other. One of them lifted their phone up with the flashlight on, blinding him.
“Ryan?” Mike asked in disbelief.
“Who else, your mom?” he called out smugly.
“Your mom!” Mike yelled back. He couldn’t help but smile a bit—despite all he’d just been through, he was still the same Mike he was before.
“Ah, you made it out!” Maria exclaimed, squirming away from Mike and causing him to nearly fall over as she ran towards him.
“Yeah, I got lucky—I must’ve hit my head pretty hard, ‘cause when I woke up you two were gone.”
“You’re never gonna guess who saved us!” Mike told him, blinding him again with his phone’s flashlight.
“Dude, shut that thing off!”
“Huh? Oh, sorry. Maria’s phone got cracked when the flippin’ Feline Warriors rescued us!”
Ryan forced his eyes to widen. His face felt as fake as the masks that his dad used to collect. “The Feline Warriors? No way!”
“It’s true,” Maria confirmed, hooking one finger over the neckline of her shirt as she held a hand against her chest. “Though I feel like there’s something they didn’t tell us. I know something happened and I distinctly remember the angel.”
“Angel?” Mike and Ryan asked.
“Yea, it told me it wasn’t my time yet. I was someplace sparkly and warm, and it was just a voice—but I could feel it was an angel, ya know?”
“Well, it was a gas leak,” Ryan shrugged. “People see all kinds of stuff when they’re like that. Some guy online wrote notes to himself and didn’t remember it when he had a leak.”
Mike and Maria looked at one another.
“D-did we tell him it was a gas leak?” Mike asked.
Ryan held his breath. Crap!
“I think so?” Maria said uncertainly.
“You did! When you told me the Feline Warriors rescued you,” Ryan lied. “Besides, I saw one of them myself—Green Jaguar got me out before the building exploded! He was awesome!”
“I... I kind of remember him carrying me,” Mike said thoughtfully, his hand covering his mouth. “Like... how you carry a bride.”
Of course he remembered that part!
“Ay, how embarrassing!” Maria laughed.
Ryan rolled with it. “What color was your dress?” he teased.
“Both of you are jealous! He was a real life superhero!”
“I’d rather get saved by a hottie in a low-cut vinyl cat-suit,” Ryan said wistfully. She could carry me to safety between her thick thighs and—”
“You two are dogs,” Maria declared, turning her back on them.
“What did I do?” Mike cried as a black car with tinted windows pulled up in front of them.
“Just get in the pinche car, Michael!”
“Hey Maria?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah?”
“Could I get a ride home?”
“Fine,” she sighed, sliding into the backseat next to Mike.
“Thanks.”
As they left the parking lot, he could hear sirens in the distance and he slumped back against the leather seat in relief. It was finally over. Well, the aliens were still out there, but Evil Mike and Evil Maria were defeated at last.
Chapter 6
Regular Teenage Girls
Melissa pulled hard on the sides of the sleek black evening gown, trying desperately to get it to go over her hips.
“You said you were my size,” she grunted quietly to the dress as she tried—and failed—again. “You lied!”
As she sat to remove the dress there was a large thump on the wall next to her, making an empty hanger rattle on its hook. She could hear muttered swearing from the next stall over.
“Sable, are you okay in there?” she called out as she removed the ill-fitting gown.
“Yeah, just enjoying the struggle of having a large chest in a world where designers pretend most of us don’t have anything up here larger than frickin’ oranges!”
“It’s because they’re designed for models who empirically don’t have a lot of body fat, so—”
“Not helping, Sara!” Sable interrupted her.
“Does it help that my last dress wouldn’t go past my hips?” Melissa asked tentatively.
Sable was quiet for a moment. “Kind of?”
Melissa threw the black dress on the bench as a punishment for not fitting, then pulled a raspberry-colored number from the next hanger on the hook. The skirt was fuller than she would have liked, but since the invitations had gone out all the local dress shops were picked-over wastelands—not even the bridal shops had escaped unscathed. So here they were in an department store outlet at the mall, rifling through what was left of their formal dresses.
She pulled out a paper clip on a string her mother had made for her and attached it to the zipper on the back of the gown before stepping into the skirt. It went up easily, and she was slipping her arms through the straps above the bardot sleeves when she heard multiple hangers hit the floor over in Sable’s room. She kept quiet as she heard her picking them up, grumbling to herself.
As she used the string to pull up the zipper of the dress she heard her phone go off in her messeng
er bag and she leaned forward to fish it out. Her mom had been a bit paranoid since the alien abduction that they’d only partially been able to keep secret, so she was used to random texts checking in on her.
As she unlocked the screen she saw Cobalt’s name staring back at her from the notification.
“What are you wearing to the Trap?” it asked. It took her a moment to register that he meant the Claravon’s party. They’d discussed it as a group since the initial phone call, but it mostly just sat in the back of her mind, making her wake up in a cold sweat from bad dreams that she couldn’t quite remember.
She reached for a random dress from the reject pile, a yellow corset-waisted thing with way too many rhinestones and beads adorning it that she only took to make the pushy saleswoman happy. Melissa moved it to the front and took a picture before sending it as her reply.
“Please tell me you’re kidding...” came his response, making her laugh through her nose.
“Ah! I’m leaving glitter everywhere,” Sara cried from the dressing room on the other side of Sable.
“Oh man, it’s getting on the floor in my booth now!” Sable laughed.
“You should wear it just to force them to clean it after all we’ve been through these past few weeks,” Melissa shouted.
“Oooh, that’s evil. I like it.”
“No, I can’t... mama would kill me.”
Melissa’s phone chimed again and she looked down at it.
“What color is the real dress?”
She glared at the screen as she sent, “Why so many questions about my dress?” then tossed the phone into her bag. What was his problem? It’s not like he had any say in what she’d be wearing anyway!
She turned in the mirror, checking the gown out from different angles. The full skirt hid her whole lower body while the off-shoulder look seemed like something a famous person would show up to a fancy party in. She had to admit that it looked much better on her than it did when it was on the hanger, but she was still disappointed that it didn’t come in blue.
“I think I have mine. Are you two ready to come out?” Sara asked.
“Nope,” Sable replied, thumping some body part against the wall between them as she tried on another dress. At least she wasn’t having as much trouble as Sable seemed to be!
Melissa picked up the offensive black gown from earlier and placed it back on a hanger before adding it to her discard pile along with the other failed prospects.
She held one hand forward as if she were holding the Lapis Strobe, giving an experimental swipe with the imaginary rod to feel out her range of motion. Hopefully she wouldn’t be in a situation where she couldn’t access her medallion and had to somehow fight in the dress! That being said though... it was comfortable. With the right shoes she could probably run in it if needed.
“Okay, I think I finally have one,” Sable exclaimed breathlessly, “I’d like a second opinion though!”
“How about you, Melissa?” Sara asked.
“Huh? Oh, yeah I’m probably getting this one.”
She stepped out into the carpeted sitting area that faced the four dressing rooms, watching the other stalls. Sara exited first, wearing a form-fitting red evening gown that flared slightly starting halfway down the leg, the thin straps at the edges of the sweetheart neckline crossing over her back twice. It was an amazing find, and even with her long brown hair in a high ponytail she looked stunning.
“I’m so jealous of you right now,” she said, meaning every word of it. “You look fantastic!”
“Really?” Sara asked, placing a hand against one pink-tinged cheek. “You don’t think it’s too revealing?”
“If I looked like you do, I would wear that dress forever—to school, to my wedding, to my—”
She was cut off by the sound of the stall door opening with a slam beside her, and she turned to see Sable, red-faced and sweaty, in a white empire-waisted dress that tied behind her neck.
“Oh my god...” Sable lamented, “You two look amazing and I look like a bride someone tried to drown!”
“I’ve always wanted to be a bridesmaid in a ghost wedding,” Melissa said.
“Tried to drown. Tried!” Sable protested, “I am so done! Just tell me it makes my chest look smaller and hides my butt so I’ll buy it and we can go.”
She heard her phone go off in the stall as she peered at the back of Sable’s dress. “I can’t even see a hint of your butt, so you’re good there.”
“It does minimize your chest,” Sara added. “White is a good color on you, and the bead work on the hem is really pretty!”
“There are beads on the hem?” Sable asked, looking down.
“I’m with Sable here. This is the third store we’ve hit, and the only one where we’ve found anything worth buying. Plus there’s this crepe and gelato place back by the front entrance that I’ve been wanting to try...”
“You sound like Ryan!” Sable and Sara exclaimed in unison. They turned to one another in surprise before erupting in laughter.
“Leader decision! I’m changing, buying this dress, and getting myself a crepe!” Melissa declared, turning on her heel and heading back into the changing room.
“You know what?” Sable said as she re-entered her stall, “I’m pissed that the boys don’t have to go through this crap! All they have to do is decide whether they want a black or white tux!”
“It can’t be helped,” Sara said.
Melissa unzipped herself as the two of them continued talking over their shared wall. Her phone beeped from inside her bag, reminding her that she’d missed a message. She sat on the bench with the bottom of the dress still on and checked it.
“I know we’re not going together but we might be near each other at times and I feel that our colors clashing would make us stand out.”
It took him all that time to write that? He was choosing his words carefully.
“If your plan is to secretly match me or something, I will kill you,” she replied, adding a knife emoji for emphasis.
He almost instantly sent back an emote with a sweat drop. “It’s not like that!”
Melissa sighed and switched to the camera while holding the skirt out, taking a picture of the color of the dress only and sending it to him.
“So it’s brownish-red?”
“Raspberry,” she sent. She intended to give short answers until he took the hint, but something clicked in her brain and she quickly followed it up with another text. “It’s really a shade of dark pink. So you should get a pink tux to match!”
Thinking better of how that might come off in text, she tried to soften it by sending an emoji with a large grin before putting her phone in her bag and changing back into her normal clothes.
She exited the room with her dress over her shoulder and found Sara already outside with the red gown draped over one arm. Sable let out an aggravated growl from inside her booth before both of them heard her hit the side again.
“Are you sure you don’t need help?” Melissa asked.
“No, I just need this dress to—” There was a clatter, then silence. “Never mind. I got it.” After a few minutes Sable finally appeared, the white dress over her shoulder.
“Okay! Let’s buy these stupid things!” she said, storming off towards the cashier.
Sara looked at her with a shrug, and she put her hands on her hips. “Someone definitely needs crepes and gelato after this.”
“Is it you?”
“Of course. How did you know?”
“I’ve been friends with Ryan way too long! How could I not see that coming?” Sara said with a little laugh.
Melissa glanced around the patio area and spotted an older woman leaving a table. She raced over to it, trying hard not to spill the contents of her crepe or drop her shopping bag.
“Guys, over here!” she called.
“Oh wow, right near the fountain. Was that there before?” Sable asked as she dropped her bag and slid into one of the metal chairs.
�
�They must’ve added it when they remodeled.”
“The koi fish are a nice touch,” Sara said as she unwrapped a spoon, “They’re relaxing.”
“It’s just koi,” Melissa and Sable said flatly. Sara scooped a bite of bright pink slush into her mouth and looked at them questioningly.
“In Japanese the word koi already means fish. So when you say koi fish, you’re saying fish fish and it sounds odd,” Sable explained.
“I did not know that,” Sara exclaimed. “I’ll try to remember for next time. I had no idea you spoke Japanese, Sable.”
“Well, I’m not fluent in it,” she said, gesturing with her spoon, “I just know a few things I picked up from anime and manga, but I have been to Japan before! It was back before my parents divorced, but I was too little to remember it. My mom still has a picture of me in a little kimono that hung in the hallway of our old house. Come to think of it, we still haven’t finished unpacking yet. I guess being pregnant takes a lot out of you.”
“When is she due?” Sara asked.
“Around the fourth of July.”
“Oh man, what a crappy place for a birthday!” Melissa commented, working an ice-cream softened cookie from her crepe cone. She had just put it in her mouth when she noticed Sable was holding her phone up. She put her hand up to try and block any pictures she might be trying to take of her eating.
“Are you excited?” Sara asked.
“Eh, kind of? It’s weird though,” she replied, typing something on her phone, “It’s gonna be my step-whatever so it’s only half related to me.”
“It’s still gonna be a baby, and babies are so cute with their squishy faces and baby powder smell!” Melissa said.
“I think you’re the only one our age that feels that way, Mel,” Sable laughed.
“I loved helping mama with my little brother when he was born,” Sara said fondly, taking another scoop out of her slush. “I even volunteered to change diapers!”
“Why’s your thing part orange?” Melissa asked, pointing at Sara’s cup. “I thought I heard you order watermelon.”
