I’m lying on my back, short of breath, my chest heaving with erratic gasps.
Just above me, barely inches away, is Maya’s face.
Her hair brushes against my cheeks, and her gaze plunges directly into mine.
You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.
Well, believe me… so am I.
Thirty minutes earlier.
The walk from the old high school alleyway to my neighborhood had been at a… snail’s pace.
Maya walked beside me, hands buried deep in the pockets of her oversized jacket, casting occasional glances at my battered face.
When we finally reached my driveway, she stopped.
“Are your mom or Lily home?” she asked.
The school incident had obviously made the rounds at school and monopolized every news channel.
Rumors were flying down the hallways, but nobody knew the uncensored version—the one keeping me awake at night.
I shook my head, slipping the key into the lock.
“No. My mom pulled a back-to-back shift to make up for her absence yesterday, and Lily is staying with relatives. The only slug present in this house today is me.”
Maya smirked and walked in right behind me without needing an invitation.
Heading up to my bedroom on the second floor, she didn’t even bother taking off her shoes.
She tossed her backpack into a corner and went straight to sprawl out on my bed with a sigh of relief, stretching out completely.
“Wow,” she exclaimed, staring at the ceiling.
“It’s been forever since I came to lounge around here. The last time, we must have been ten, and Aamir threw up on your rug after eating too much candy.”
“Right,” I sighed, closing the door, “and you blamed the dog even though we’ve never owned a dog.”
A volley of our signature cynical banter followed, heavily criticizing the decor of my room, the school system, and the blatant lack of comfort of my mattress compared to her holy bed in the nurse’s office.
It was lighthearted.
It was normal.
It was exactly the kind of carefreeness I desperately needed to forget that I had literally embedded a terrorist into a wall the day before.
But Maya’s natural self eventually took back over.
The sarcasm faded from her voice.
“Seriously, Owen,” she said, turning her head toward me as she lay on her stomach.
“Are you doing okay, with everything that happened to Lily?”
I froze for a fraction of a second, my back turned to her.
The image of the teacher’s skull exploding under Grizzly’s hand flashed behind my eyelids.
“Me?” I replied with a fake cheerful tone to dodge the gravity of the moment.
“Perfect. I love getting my face rearranged by thugs and stressing out over my little sister. It’s my brand-new hobby.”
Maya didn’t laugh.
She turned around, sitting cross-legged on the edge of the bed, her back slightly to me as she looked out the window.
“Do you think they’re really out there for us?” she asked suddenly, her voice strangely thoughtful.
“The Supers. Do you think they really work for justice, like they say on TV?”
The question hit me like a punch to the gut.
If only she knew.
If she knew the truth about Zenith, the contracts, the blood of innocents used to boost ratings.
I stared at Maya’s back, fighting to keep my anger and disgust from boiling over.
“Probably,” I finally answered in a chilling tone, far colder than I intended.
“But still… knowing there are beings walking around out there with the destructive capacity of a small army inside them, it always sends a shiver down your spine. Especially when they decide to step in.”
Maya nodded slowly, her shoulders relaxing a bit.
“I think so too,” she murmured, still facing the window.
“Those guys creep me out. We’re just ants to them.”
It was at that exact moment, sweeping my gaze across my own room during this moment of deep shared vulnerability, that my heart skipped a beat.
Then two.
On my desk.
Right out in the open, half-resting on a pile of manga and a stack of crumpled school papers.
The mask.
The fucking white mask from Hope’s suit, quietly watching me.
Panic flooded me with the violence of a tidal wave.
If Maya saw it, it was game over.
I couldn’t explain this to her.
I’d be written off as a lunatic, or worse, the monster that had gutted the Northbridge primary school.
Without thinking, my brain short-circuited and I launched into a maneuver of abyssal stupidity.
I literally dove for the desk.
In a disjointed ballet blending the urgency of a soldier under enemy fire and the grace of a drunk penguin, I grabbed the mask, colliding with my swivel chair in the process, and immediately hid it behind my back.
The racket made Maya startle.
She turned around, her brow furrowed.
Very quickly, her intrigued look gave way to a playful, devilish smirk.
“Ooh…” she purred, slowly getting up from the bed.
“What are you hiding behind your back, Owen?”
“N-nothing!” I stammered, my voice going up an octave.
“Just a… a school thing!”
“A school thing?” she repeated, stepping toward me like a cat, eyes sparkling with mischief.
“That’s a new one. Let me guess… Dirty magazines? A weird toy you definitely don’t want me to see?”
“You’re imagining things, Maya, I swear! Stop!”
But she didn’t plan on stopping.
She kept coming forward, amused by my distress, trying to peek over my shoulder.
“Come on, show me! I promise I won’t mock you too much!”
Completely thrown off by her sudden approach and my vital urge to protect the mask, I took a step back.
I had forgotten that the edge of my bed was right behind my calves.
The back of my knees hit the mattress.
I lost my balance.
In a purely stupid, human reflex, one of my arms (the one not holding my torment) flailed to catch me… and snagged the sleeve of Maya’s jacket.
I fell backward onto the bed, dragging her down with me.
BAAAAM—
And here we are, back in the present.
I’m lying on my back, pinned against my own bedspread.
Fortunately, the mask is slipped beneath my body, out of sight, but that’s the absolute least of my concerns right now.
Maya is sprawled all over me, her hands placed on either side of my face to keep from completely crushing me.
Our faces are just inches apart.
Her hazel eyes, usually so jaded, are wide with surprise.
I can smell her perfume.
A subtle blend of vanilla and the laundry detergent on her clothes.
My heart accelerates with insane violence, pounding in my chest so hard I’m convinced she can hear it.
It’s not the adrenaline of a fight to the death.
It’s not the symbiote reacting.
It’s just me, Owen Frey, a seventeen-year-old high schooler, having a cardiac arrest for entirely different reasons.