All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault

by James Alan Gardner

  OMFG.

  NINETY-NINE WAS AWESOME

  These days, “awesome” doesn’t mean very much. We tell kids they’re awesome if they can tie their own shoes. But Ninety-Nine literally inspired awe.

  Superficially, I saw a young woman in an all-black hockey uniform. I’d seen Jools wear that outfit plenty of times, but my brain refused to connect this amazing vision with Jools. The idea made me laugh—Jools was just my roommate. Ninety-Nine couldn’t possibly be the same person.

  Ninety-Nine wore black Reeboks instead of skates. She had padding and fiberglass guards on shoulders, elbows, knees, and shins, making her look even more imposing than she was without them. (This heroine couldn’t be Jools; Jools wasn’t that big and majestic.) Ninety-Nine wore a black fiberglass helmet, but she’d also smeared black greasepaint around her eyes in the shape of a mask. On the back of her jersey was the number 99, made with glossy black satin that seemed to shine.

  You may think you have a mental picture of what Ninety-Nine looked like. No. Unless you actually saw her, you can’t imagine her Halo.

  Ninety-Nine was inspiring. Uplifting. One look, and I wanted to be so much more than I was. Why wasn’t I working to perfect my body and mind, or inventing new ways to feed the hungry? No, wait, I was a geologist; I knew that was my calling. So I should be studying day and night to develop skills that would let me save innocents from earthquakes, floods, and other natural disasters.

  I wanted to be as pure and good and strong as Ninety-Nine. I wanted to help her in every way I could. Then, together, we’d make the universe perfect.

  SHE KNOCKED AGAIN

  I raced to open the door, eager to stammer out apologies for keeping her waiting. But I couldn’t talk. I just stared.

  After a moment, she said, “What?”

  She waited. I still couldn’t speak.

  “Have I got a booger or something?” She raised her hand to her nose and searched a bit. When she didn’t find anything, she looked at me again. “What? What?”

  THAT WAS WHEN I SMELLED THE VODKA ON HER BREATH

  Noticing the smell didn’t completely counteract Ninety-Nine’s Halo, but it took the edge off my hero worship. I shifted my viewpoint straight up through the roof so I couldn’t see Ninety-Nine at all: just clear fresh air and the stars. I breathed for a moment, then said, “Take something off before I wet myself.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Take something off. Your helmet—that should be enough. Anything to reduce the effect.”

  After a moment, I heard grumbling and the sound of the helmet being unstrapped. I counted to five, then shifted my viewpoint back into my head. The helmet was off and Jools was where Ninety-Nine had been standing.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Wow what?”

  “Your Halo,” I said. “It packs a punch.”

  “Really? What’s it like?”

  “Like meeting a goddess.”

  “You mean I’m hot?”

  “No. It’s totally different.”

  Jools made a face. “Kim, not to be rude, but would a guy think I’m hot?”

  I smiled. I would have kissed her on the cheek, but I couldn’t have reached, not even on my tiptoes. “Yes, I’m a total expert on how guys think,” I said. “Not. But I guarantee they won’t be able to take their eyes off you.”

  “I can’t take my eyes off spiders,” Jools muttered, “but I don’t think they’re hot.”

  “YOU’LL BE AS HOT AS A VOLCANO,” I ASSURED HER

  “We’ll all be supermodels, and have such rock-hard abs we’ll crack walnuts with our belly buttons.” I ran my fingers dramatically through my brush cut. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll be a six-foot-tall redhead.”

  “That’s not what your wish fulfillment wants,” Jools said. She looked at me thoughtfully. “Actually, I’m hella curious what your wish-fulfillment look turns out to be.”

  “You and me both.” I felt a stab of discomfort talking about such matters, even with Jools. Not good at sharing, our Kim. “Did you want something?”

  “I wanted you to tell me I looked hot,” Jools said. “Instead you went all weird.”

  “Sorry. Your Halo hits like a battering ram.”

  “Well, good; then I’ll knock guys off their feet.”

  “Wayne Gretzky, but with thirty-six triple-Ds,” I said. “The total guy-magnet package.”

  “You really don’t understand guys,” Jools said. “If I want action, I’d be better off rubbing myself with bacon.”

  “Instead of smelling like vodka?”

  The words came out without a thought—as if someone else had said them. I gasped and covered my mouth with my hand. I never said things like that.

  “Ouch,” Jools said. “Busted.”

  “Oh, Jools,” I said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”

  Green light flashed around her head. “Personality changes are common when people become Sparks. Especially increased impulsiveness.” She tried to smile. “Maybe my personality will change and I’ll stop drinking.”

  My face was burning. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Kim,” Jools said, “I’d rather get hassled by you than Shar or Miranda. And now that I’m a Spark, maybe everything will be great. Olympic-level willpower. Olympic-level common sense.”

  I nodded, not saying the obvious: that despite her superpowers, Jools had raced to belt back a drink the moment she got home. I mumbled, “Do you want to talk about this or something?”

  “Fuck, no,” Jools said. “But,” she added after a moment, “I’ll help you make a costume.”

  “What makes you think I need help?”

  “Three years of looking at your wardrobe.” She smiled. “Dude, I know why you wear what you do, and I’m a fan, truly. I admire you for going your own way. But you don’t have the kit for the costume thing. I do. I have my own sewing machine, tons of thread, stuff I can use for lining—all that shit. And on top of that…”

  “You’re an Olympic-level costume maker?”

  “Preee-cisely. And a big part of that is knowing what the customer wants and needs. I promise not to deck you out like a cheerleader. I’ll be sensitive as fuck to who you are—”

  “I don’t know who I am,” I said. “If my personality is changing … if my body is changing…”

  “Blah fuckity blah,” Jools said. “Have your identity crisis after we’re done. Right now, Zircon needs threads.”

  I hesitated, but I wasn’t really thinking it over. Kim 2.0 (or maybe Zircon) was simply having a knee-jerk bout of ego.

  “All right,” I said when the resistance subsided. “Come in. Make me look super.”

  “FIRST THINGS FIRST,” JOOLS SAID

  “We have to know the constraints. Put on something different and see if it shrinks when you do.”

  “I told you,” I said, “I have an omnimorphic field. It includes my clothes and anything I’m holding.”

  “First rule of science, dumbass: Hypotheses don’t mean shit until you do the lab work.” Jools tapped the side of her head. “I’ve checked for info on Sparks who change size, and let me tell you, they aren’t all omnimorphic. There’s this chick in Denver, grows ten stories tall. (Calls herself Mile High. Inevitable, but yuck.) When Mile High gets big, her clothes rip to shreds unless she’s wearing exactly what she had on at the moment she got her powers. Every day, she has to squeeze into the same pair of jeans and Diet Sprite T-shirt. Otherwise, when she grows, she ends up naked. And ten stories tall.”

  “I don’t grow,” I said. “I shrink.”

  “Same difference,” Jools said. “If your costume has to be made from what you were wearing in the lab, let’s find that out now, okay?”

  Grumbling, I pulled a shirt at random from the closet. I put it on over what I was already wearing and tried to shrink.

  The transition wasn’t easy—like when you think too hard about swallowing and your throat cramps up. I forced myself to relax, and swish! I was ant-sized on the fl
oor. The new shirt shrank exactly as much as I did. Omnimorphic field FTW!

  “Whoa!” Jools said. She squatted for a closer look, towering above me like King Kong.

  “I told you my clothes would shrink.” At least, that’s what I tried to say. It was the first time I’d spoken while miniaturized. My throat and larynx were ridiculously small, so the vibrations had proportionally tiny wavelengths. (Basic Physics 122: fundamental frequencies.) My voice was so high it was way past dog whistles. Even my minuscule ears couldn’t pick up the sounds. It made me wonder how I could have a normal human hearing range no matter how small my ears were. Maybe my omnimorphic field shrank incoming acoustic wavelengths to match the size of my eardrums. I mentally kicked myself for not claiming that omnimorphism would adjust my voice to an audible pitch, whatever size I was.

  But that boat had sailed. If I was right about how Spark powers worked, my too-high voice had just gotten locked in.

  How big did I have to get before I could speak comprehensibly? I started repeating, “Testing, one, two, three,” while growing. I reached six inches high before I finally became intelligible. My voice still sounded like Pikachu, but at least I wasn’t past the end of the piano.

  Jools stared down at me. “You’re so adorable! I want to cuddle you and make you play with my Barbies.”

  “Ick!” Completely as a reflex, I shot back up to normal size. Unfortunately, Jools was still leaning over me with an “Aren’t you precious?” expression on her face.

  My head clocked her jaw and knocked her out cold.

  I WAS AS TOUGH AS STONE AND COMPLETELY UNHURT

  Jools, on the other hand, had essentially been smashed in the face by a fast-moving rock. She sprawled unconscious on the ground.

  I rolled her onto her back and checked her over. She’d lost her two front teeth. If I hadn’t been so horrified, I might have laughed. Jools had kept her teeth intact through hundreds of hockey games; I was the one who’d finally wrecked her streak.

  The teeth had snapped off at the gumline, leaving jagged, bloody stumps poking out. I couldn’t see where the teeth had gone. Down her throat? Where she’d choke on them?

  It was for times like this I’d learned to swear in Mandarin.

  I COULD SEE JOOLS’S MISSING TEETH BY SLIDING MY VIEWPOINT DOWN HER THROAT

  The teeth were too deep to reach with my fingers, so yes, I had to climb in and get them.

  When you’re the size of an insect, carting a tooth up someone’s esophagus is like carrying a lightweight but awkwardly big box up a hill made of meat. Slobbery meat. The glamorous life of a superhero.

  And all the time I was clambering up Jools’s tongue, I kept thinking, “She regenerates, she regenerates, she regenerates.”

  I shoved the first tooth out between her lips and saliva-skied back to get the other. As I tried to haul the second one up her throat, the tooth began to glow green. I quickly dropped it, asking, “What fresh hell is this?”

  Hairline fractures spread across the tooth’s surface, like mud developing cracks. The enamel made twig-snapping sounds as the fractures grew wider. Simultaneously, the broken roots on Jools’s upper gums began extending into full teeth again—as if the enamel and pulp from the detached teeth were teleporting back to where they belonged. Erosion, deposition. The new teeth grew at the same speed that the old ones decayed. Both the old and the new shone soft green, like Christmas lights.

  JOOLS GROANED

  I was still in her mouth. I hurriedly pushed past her lips. By the time her eyes opened, I was back to full size and kneeling beside her.

  “Ow.” Jools sat up. “Illegal body contact.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “How do you feel?”

  “Like someone head-butted me.” She gingerly fingered her face. “You’re lucky you didn’t break something.”

  “I broke two of your teeth, but they fixed themselves. Better than before: I think they’re straighter.”

  “They may be fixed, but they still hurt like hell.”

  “Negative reinforcement,” I said. “So you won’t completely ignore injuries, even if all of the damage heals.”

  Jools grimaced. “Does the Light think I’m so fucking stupid, I won’t be careful unless it makes me feel like shit?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Yeah, okay, the Light knows me.” Jools laid her head on her knees. “Ow.” She glanced at me. “I seriously want a drink.”

  “A drink likely won’t make the pain go away.”

  “It would make the wanting go away,” Jools said. “For a while.”

  “STAY HERE,” I SAID; “DON’T MOVE”

  I ran downstairs, and came back with a dozen cookies. “These are better than liquor,” I said.

  “No, they aren’t. But give ’em here.”

  Jools took the plate of cookies. Chocolate chip. I watched as she tried to eat one; she chewed with the side of her mouth so she wouldn’t have to use her tender front teeth. “Got anything to wash these down?” she asked.

  I looked at my desk. “A liter of three-day-old Diet Coke.”

  “I was thinking of something that rhymes with Smirnoff.”

  “Not gonna happen.” I took one of the cookies for myself. “I’m surprised that drinking affects you. If you recover from injuries so fast…”

  “Then my body should purge itself of foreign substances?”

  “Right,” I said. “You should be immune to poisons, disease, parasites…”

  “As it happens,” Jools said with a sly grin, “I have my own omnimorphic field. It neutralizes toxins and infestations, but it knows that alcohol is medicinal. So booze has its usual effects on me until it dissipates naturally.”

  I winced. “You’re going to regret saying that.”

  “Probably,” Jools admitted. “But aren’t all Sparks supposed to have some Achilles heel?”

  I said, “I have no Achilles heel.”

  Immediately, I thought of Nicholas.

  And Elaine.

  And my general obsession with Darklings.

  Shut up, brain.

  “CAN WE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE?” I ASKED

  “Your costume,” Jools suggested. “How ambiguous do you want it?”

  “Ambiguous isn’t the point,” I said. “Ambiguous can just be a tease. I want out of the game completely.”

  “Got it,” Jools said. When she saw I wasn’t sold on her ability to pull this off, she said, “Seriously, Kim, I won’t jerk you around. You’re my roomie. And my friend. I’ll do this right.”

  I felt the sting of tears … which felt so stupid, almost crying just because someone said something nice to me. “Okay,” I told her. “Use any of my clothes. Cut them, sew them, whatever you need to do.”

  I practically ran from my own bedroom.

  I WENT TO HIDE IN THE BATHROOM

  The basement bathroom, where the others wouldn’t hear me sniffling.

  Jools had called me her friend. She probably meant it.

  I thought of Ninety-Nine’s Halo: that inspirational goodness. I knew it was just a trick—Jools herself couldn’t live up to such an aura of sainthood. But if Spark powers were wish fulfillment, Ninety-Nine’s Halo showed who Jools aspired to be.

  I was terrified of what Zircon’s Halo would say about me.

  AFTER A WHILE, I WIPED MY TEARS

  My eyes were still red and I didn’t want to be seen. Besides, I couldn’t do anything else until the costume was finished, so I took off my clothes to see if I had changed.

  With Spark-o-Vision, I could examine myself in ways I’d never done before: ways no one had ever done. I may be the first human who’s ever seen their own back directly. I could inspect parts of me I’d only looked at in mirrors and badly-aimed selfies, and I could do it without having to twist like I was auditioning for Cirque du Soleil.

  As far as I could see, nothing was different. Same face, same body, no edits.

  Except my hair. I’ve mentioned I dyed it white, and had recently sprayed it pink.
The pink was gone. So were the tiny bits of black at the roots. Considering how long it had been since I’d touched up the color (too busy studying for exams), I figured my wish-fulfillment changes included permanently white hair.

  I could live with that.

  And yes, of course I’ve sometimes dreamt of being taller. I’ve sheepishly imagined being some jaw-dropping package whose life would be full of open doors. Maybe a blond Caucasian bombshell like Miranda, or dark-skinned perfection like Tigresse. In the summer between high school and university—between Kimmi and Kim—I mulled over dozens of options.

  I knew what wasn’t working. It took time to get my head around what would.

  I’ve read about people who “just know.” I would have loved to be like that. But self-knowledge is not my strong point. I was all about denial.

  Blame it on my obsession to get good grades. For seventeen years, I’d worked my tail off doing all the extra assignments and getting top marks. That’s what good girls did—they mastered what they’d been taught. They did not drop the course. They definitely didn’t think about chucking the whole curriculum.

  If not for Nicholas and Elaine, I might have stayed stuck for a long time. But between the two of them, they kicked me off a cliff. Being in free fall can give you a wide, clear view of everything.

  I chose what I finally chose because it felt like the true, honest me. It still feels right. But it’s thought-provoking to see yourself from a point outside your body, and know you could transform with a simple “I wish.” I was still in the Spark transition stage; if I wanted to be different, I could be. An omnimorphic adjustment.

  But.

  I hadn’t run crying into the bathroom because of my body. Or my hair, or my clothes, etc.

  Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke. Quietly, I got dressed again.

  MOST OF MY CLOTHES FIT LOOSELY

  But good socks are snug—you don’t want them slopping around in your boots. Snugness, however, makes them a chore to put on. As I was struggling, I had the brilliant idea to shrink just a little and make my feet smaller so the socks would go on more easily.

  Nope. The socks got smaller too. (Omnimorphic field. Duh.) But the important discovery was that my skin turned to the same polished rock I was made of when I was insect-sized. Useful information! At full-size I was normal flesh and blood, but experiment showed I went rocky even if I only shrank a millimeter down from normal. I could be 99.9 percent of my usual height, but armored up … and since mineral me was the same color and shape as the bio-version, Zircon could pass for human, at least in bad lighting.