Dinner that night tasted like pure surrealism.
Sitting in front of my plate of mac and cheese, I stared into space, my ears still ringing slightly from the sonic boom.
I finally spilled the beans.
Obviously, I carefully censored the official version: I cut out the diabolical cat that had humiliated me, and above all, I omitted the part where my backpack was actively trying to turn me into a weapon of mass destruction.
“I just slipped on a branch,” I said, poking at my pasta.
“Flipped backward. And then, voouch. Nova appeared out of nowhere and caught me before I splattered onto the sidewalk.”
My mom, Elena, froze with her fork mid-air.
Under the yellow kitchen light, the dark circles under her eyes looked even deeper than usual.
“Owen. You’re seventeen. What were you even doing in a tree? And don’t tell me it was training for your stupid boxing club.” (Right, I’d had to invent an excuse for my mom to cover my absences too).
“I was… I was trying to fetch something.”
She let out a soul-crushing sigh and rubbed her temples, visibly too tired to dig for the truth.
“You’re going to give me a heart attack. If it’s not that club breaking your bones, it’s your own stupidity. Thank goodness that heroine happened to be passing by.”
But on the other side of the table, the vibe was radically different.
My little sister—who had literally called me a pathetic loser in front of the toilet bowl the day before—had completely lost her mind.
Her jaw was on the floor.
She was an absolute fanatic, the kind of kid who knew the stats of every single Super in the country by heart. New chapters come out on g.com first.
“Wait, wait!” she squealed, slamming her fists on the table and rattling the glasses.
“You saw Nova?! The real one?! The Crimson and Silver Angel?! Number two in the national rankings?!”
“Yeah,” I replied, shrugging.
“In the flesh, in costume, hair flying in the wind and everything.”
“Did she talk to you?! Why didn’t you take a selfie, you useless idiot?!”
She was bright red with jealousy, bordering on hyperventilation.
For the next twenty minutes, I underwent an interrogation worthy of the secret service.
She wanted to know everything: the texture of her suit, the scent of her perfume (no idea, I was sweating too hard from sheer terror), and the exact speed of her takeoff.
When the dinner torture finally ended, I cleared my plate and bolted up to my room.