by Sarah Kuhn
Most eleven-year-olds would’ve taken that as “awesome, there’s finally a character I can play while everyone else is Spider-Man and Wonder Woman.” Aveda took it as, “I can be that. And I’m going to.” Finally she found a goal to channel all of her considerable energy into, something that combined everything she was good at: charisma and fashion and athletics and protecting the downtrodden.
Even though she didn’t get her power until years later, her life mapped itself out from that point, sitting in a dust-mite-infested theater and crushing my hand. From then on we were “The Heroic Trio . . . except there’s only two of us.”
While Aveda connected with the kicking ass/taking names/wearing awesome leather bodysuits with matching accessories parts of the movie, I was all about a more intimate bit involving Invisible Girl, the member of the Trio played by Michelle Yeoh, who we later witnessed being amazing in Supercop and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and tons of other Yamato favorites. In the scene I replayed in my head, Invisible Girl held her cute, bespectacled love interest as he died. A single, beatific tear slid down her cheek . . . and then just like that, she was back to the business of saving the world. One tear was all she needed.
To me, that was more badass than a perfectly executed roundhouse kick—or the stylish boot doing the kicking. Because as happy as I was to have someone like Aveda as a protector, I was still a bona fide wuss. I cowered behind her like nobody’s business. I started sniffling whenever bullies so much as looked at us. I cried at the drop of a hat, and it was never that winsome-eyed situation that makes kids look so adorable. No, when I cried, it was an ugly, scrunched-up, snotty red face type of deal. I wanted to be brave like Aveda, but when the chips were down, I could never keep it together. Not even a little bit. I still retained the memory of that deep humiliation welling up inside of me when those kids started in with the “human meat” chant.
So while Aveda decided in that moment to be a superhero, I decided I would never cry again. That was how I could be brave. That was how I could fight back. Of course, Aveda and I had an ongoing argument about which of us was actually Michelle Yeoh, since she was clearly the coolest.
I usually let Aveda win.
But in my heart of hearts, I knew it was me.
From that day on, whenever I felt my face start to scrunch up and go red, I simply thought of Michelle and her badass single tear. And that was that. I even remained stoic—my eyes barely misting over—during the entirety of my mom’s funeral.
That’s why, when confronted with something as gut-churning as being forced to impersonate my superheroine boss at a party, I didn’t allow myself the possibility of tears. Instead I breathed deeply as I climbed the rickety stairs to my apartment and focused on using my Soothing Inner Voice—the one I superimposed over my thoughts on those rare occasions I allowed myself to get stressed. Soothing Inner Voice was cool and modulated and never wavered from the same disaffected monotone. She sounded like she’d be adept at everything from guiding you through jury duty to delivering GPS instructions.
It’s just a party. It’s. Just. A. Party. Justaparty. Yoga. Flowers. Oprah.
Ah, yes. Soothing Inner Voice also liked tossing in references to things that were generically calming.
I unlocked the door and charged toward my bedroom, only to collide with one very angry sixteen-year-old girl.
“Bea!” I exclaimed at my younger sister/roommate. “What are you doing home?”
“Apparently I’m waiting for my babysitter,” she seethed, her eyes narrowing as she towered over me. Bea had gotten all the leggy genes from our Irish mother. “Seems I need to be watched over like a toddler—or a prisoner—while you go out and party.”
Her gaze hardened into a glare. The Tanaka Glare. Our mom had had it perfected: narrowed eyes that seemed like they were shooting tiny judgment lasers into your very soul. I never mastered it, never quite internalized my mother’s will of steel. But when Bea made that face, she looked so much like Mom that I always stopped breathing for a second.
“It’s a work thing,” I said, taking a step back from her. I willed myself not to back away any further. She would pounce on any smidgen of vulnerability like a mountain lion tearing into a gazelle. But it was tough to stand my ground. When she was really mad, Bea’s anger swirled around her in an almost tangible cloud of teenage resentment.
And she was mad a lot lately.
I decided to go on the offensive. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school right now?”
She huffed over to our thirdhand couch and collapsed onto it, her cap of purple-streaked black hair swaying back and forth as she shook her head. She’d added the streaks recently, an attempt to piss me off. I actually thought they were kind of cute.
“Toddlers don’t have to go to school,” she said. “And neither do prisoners.”
“Actually many prisons do have educational enrichment programs . . . okay, not the point,” I said hastily as she opened her mouth to retort. “But, seriously, tonight is a boring, just-for-work type thing. And I only invited Scott over so you wouldn’t have to be by yourself.”
That was at least half a lie. I wanted someone around to keep Bea from breaking the lock on our liquor cabinet, inhaling half the contents, and stumbling down to The Gutter, the hole-in-the-wall piano bar where Lucy and I often indulged in an after-work beer. Last week she’d done that very thing—and then proceeded to serenade the disinterested crowd with a few drunken verses of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep.”
“You guys can play Xbox or something,” I continued, trying to sound cheerful.
“We don’t have an Xbox!” She sprang to her feet and stomped toward her room, then stopped in her tracks and turned, Tanaka Glare zeroing in on me.
“God, I love it when you try to parent,” she growled. “I suppose I should be grateful for those few seconds when you unglue your lips from Aveda’s ass and pretend to pay attention to me.”
“Yes, I have a job. That’s so we can eat. And you don’t have to live in a cardboard box on Telegraph.” And so you can go to college and have a fighting chance at turning out normal. Unlike me.
“A-ha!” she shrieked. “Now we’re on to the Martyr Technique. Totes effective.”
“What’s effective?”
I turned to see a familiar figure leaning against the doorframe, lopsided grin bisecting his boyish features.
“Hi, Scott,” I said. “Bea and I are just . . . chatting.”
“Hey, Bug,” he said, inclining his head in Bea’s direction. He was the only person who could get away with calling her by her childhood nickname. “Are you ready to kick my ass on Xbox?”
Bea’s face turned deep red and for a second, I wondered if she was going to pull the classic “I’m gonna hold my breath ’til I get my way!” trick. All things considered, she really was kind of a toddler.
“We. Don’t. Have. An Xbox!” she spat out, lobbing each word like a grenade. Then she turned on her heel and stomped off.
“So.” Scott loped into the room. “I shouldn’t have texted her about me coming over, maybe? I was trying to position it as not a babysitting situation. Even though that’s what it is.”
“It’s not you. Ever since she turned sixteen, it’s like she’s realized she’s supposed to resent me for every single thing that’s gone wrong in her life.”
Like Mom dying of cancer when she was only twelve. Like Dad leaving two months later.
Really I was the only one left to resent.
He smiled back, but his eyes were laced with concern. “Do you want to—”
“Talk about it? No. I’m just saying: if you like, you can lock her in her room and call it a day. I have other things to worry about right now.”
Peace, said Soothing Inner Voice. Pictures of baby animals.
Ugh. I needed to dissolve the gigantic ball of anxiety that had taken up residence in my stomach, press
ing against my insides and forcing my breath out at a pace that was starting to recall hyperventilation. I briefly cursed myself for turning down Aveda’s long ago invitation to move into Jupiter HQ. Lucy and Nate lived there, but I wanted to have a “normal” living situation for Bea. But running home and tangling with her and then having to run back to HQ . . .
Well. It was only adding to my Anxiety Ball and increasing the odds of hyperventilation. I could practically hear my boss snitting in my head: Aveda Jupiter does not hyperventilate!
But how did normal people get rid of stress?
Soothing Inner Voice piped up with an uncharacteristically enthusiastic comment: Alcohol!
That wasn’t a bad thought. Maybe if I took the edge of my mood off, I’d be able to float through the party without incident.
“Come on, Scott,” I said. “Let’s have a beer.”
I headed into the kitchen and fiddled with the all-new, supposedly durable lock on our liquor cabinet, liberating a pair of Coronas.
“Why, Evelyn Tanaka.” Scott hoisted himself onto the kitchen counter in one fluid motion. “Are you boozin’ it up at . . .” He glanced at his bare wrist, as if a watch might magically appear. “Something like four in the afternoon?”
“I’m relaxing.” I passed him one of the beers.
“Relaxing with warm beer? Not terribly delicious.”
I shrugged, popped the cap off, and took a swig. I wasn’t a fan of warm beer either, but locking it in the liquor cabinet kept it from Bea’s grabby hands.
As I felt the crisp tang on my tongue and the burn in my belly, I realized the me of three years ago would’ve so disapproved of this casual bit of afternoon alcohol consumption. Then again, the me of three years ago was always stressed out beyond belief: wrapped up in the halls of academia, never subverting the dominant paradigm, exactly, but talking about it a whole lot. Studying her ass off, working toward a PhD, hoping to become a universally lauded professor of popular culture studies. Never really thinking about where all that stress might lead.
If she had been thinking, like, at all—
Well. It was best not to dwell on that. After all, the me of today had managed to organize her life into a series of compartments, all with manageable stress levels.
She knew how to handle every step of an Aveda Jupiter Tantrum.
She knew how to kick a demon cupcake across the room without losing her cool.
She knew how to adhere to a humdrum routine: keeping her to-do list bulletin board up to date, eating the same bowl of Lucky Charms for every meal, and wearing the same outfit every day.
And, I thought firmly, she could certainly handle one little party.
“So what’s Annie making you do tonight?” Scott asked. “Extra patrols? Extra boot-polishing? Extra telling her she’s extra beautiful while she gazes at herself extra long in the mirror?”
I realized the fingers of my right hand were drumming a manic beat on the countertop and curled them into a fist.
“You know plain old ‘Annie’ hasn’t existed for years,” I said.
He shrugged, blue eyes sparkling impishly. “She’ll always be little Annie Chang to me. The only sixth-grader in history who managed to get elected seventh-grade class president.”
He took a long pull on his beer and leaned back farther, propping himself up with one elbow. He was sprawled all over the countertop, yet managed to look perfectly comfortable.
Then again, in our fourteen years of friendship, I’d never seen Scott look anything but perfectly comfortable. Back in sixth grade he’d been absorbed into the inseparable duo that was me and Annie-Aveda after cracking us up with inappropriate comments during the sex ed section of biology class. He was our mascot, our surfer dude sidekick, our goofy big brother who reveled in running a destructive hand through our gelled-into-submission hair-don’ts.
“I actually need another favor,” I said, remembering the other reason I’d asked him over.
“Oh . . . ?” He waggled his eyebrows at me and leaned back farther, his frayed T-shirt riding up to reveal a swath of tan ab muscles.
“Not that,” I said, rolling my eyes extra hard at him. “The one time was enough.”
“I maintain that prom night shouldn’t count. We were both virgins, drunk on the heady cocktail of spiked punch and formalwear. And the backseat of my mom’s dog-scented Volvo isn’t exactly the most romantic locale.”
“And I maintain that panting your way to not-quite-orgasm amid a pile of golden retriever hair is enough to render the person you’re panting with hopelessly unsexy forever.”
He grinned, but I knew he agreed with me. One night of teenage pseudo-passion had done nothing to change the warm, sibling-like vibe between us. I could acknowledge he had matured into an objectively gorgeous man—all lean, golden muscle and sandy hair that was just long enough to fall over his forehead—but I appreciated his abs in the distant way one might admire fine art in a museum. They inspired no visceral reaction that might prompt me to take a closer look.
Though if I was being honest, I sometimes wondered if I had trained those responses out of myself entirely. Wild sex didn’t go with my well-ordered approach to life, so I had simply cut it out. Lucy often suggested I was wired with a Dead-Inside-O-Tron, which controlled my lack of lustfulness.
Anxiety stabbed at my insides again, sending a wave of nausea spiraling through me. I gripped the edge of the countertop. I had to make this stop.
“I need a glamour,” I blurted out.
Scott’s expression shifted, concern passing through his eyes. He sat up straight, regarding me keenly.
“You never answered my question. What is Annie making you do?”
I took a swig of my beer and manufactured a quick smile. “It’s this party thing she wants me to go to. Not a big deal, but she’s freaking out extra hard today.”
“A party,” he said, sounding out each syllable. “Is that really the best idea? For you?”
I toyed with the discarded cap of my beer bottle.
“I can handle it. Whatever she wants, I always handle it.”
But even as the words spilled out of my mouth, a sliver of doubt niggled at me. Could I handle this?
“You know,” I said. “I might be able to handle it better if you’d just try that spell already.”
I tried to make my tone light. But he saw right through me.
He slid off the countertop and rested his hands on my shoulders, the concern overtaking his expression entirely.
“I’ve told you over and over again: it’s too dangerous,” he said. “Everything I do magic-wise is basic, simple—enough for people to pay me a few bucks for a fun party trick, but hardly earth-shattering. That spell is outside of the realm of anything I’ve ever tried before. You could end up hurt. Maimed. Or worse.”
I shrugged out of his grasp. “I was kidding.”
I wasn’t. Someday I’d convince him to try that spell.
Someday I’d be normal.
“You can say no to Annie,” he said. “You know that, right? You don’t have to go along with every single thing she says and put up with every single demand she piles on top of you just because she’s . . . her. If she wants you to do something that’s going to put you in danger . . .”
“No.” I shook my head a little too vehemently. “It’s nothing like that.”
“I don’t understand why you stick with her,” he continued. “Why can’t you find another job, one that’s not so—”
“I like this one just fine,” I said firmly. “I’m good at it. And you know I need stability.”
“‘Stability’ equals a crazy boss who orders you around in an increasingly crazy manner?”
“Stability equals dealing with a brand of crazy I know.”
He blew out a long, frustrated breath. I knew he didn’t understand. Though Scott could still remin
isce about pre-fame Annie Chang with affection, the two of them had experienced some sort of falling out when Aveda started making a name for herself. These days they could barely stand to be in each other’s company. I’d never pressed either of them for details, but I knew it had to be bad: mentioning Aveda’s more outlandish behavior was the only thing that shocked Scott out of his relaxed state.
There was no way I could explain to him that, in a weird way, I found it comforting that I could always depend on Aveda to be so . . . Aveda-like. We’d known each other so long, we were practically part of each other’s DNA. And with Mom and Dad gone and Bea well into her unpredictable teens, she was the closest thing to stable family I had.
So yeah, maybe her latest request was sending me into an Anxiety Ball–inducing tizzy. But no one else would’ve gone to bat for me with that greedy-ass funeral director. No one else would have eaten all those spam musubi. I knew that in my bones.
“Scott,” I said, trying to get us back on track, “this is really no big deal. It’s a small party. In a large space. And very well-ventilated, I’m sure.”
“And you need the glamour for . . . ?”
I shrugged, schooling my features into as passive an expression as possible. “She wants me to look nicer than usual. That’s all.”
He studied me for a long moment, then finally nodded and reached into his pocket. “This one will work.” He held out a wooden token about the size of a nickel. His features had relaxed, which meant he’d bought my lie. Anxiety Ball pressed against my internal organs again, as if to scold me for deceiving one of my oldest friends.
“When you’re ready to use it, hold it in your palm and visualize what you want to look like,” he said. “But remember, it only lasts for three hours. And keep it safe: it’s for you and only you to use.”
“Of course.” I nodded, trying not to make my sigh of relief too obvious. Scott tended to keep a tight rein on the glamour tokens so people wouldn’t use them for nefarious purposes. Like, say, disguising themselves as someone else and robbing a bank or something. The fact that he trusted me with one made me feel even guiltier. “Thank you.” I accepted the token and slipped it into my pocket. “And you know, Aveda’s always saying she’d love to have someone with your talents on staff. Maybe the two of you could talk about—”
