The chair was too big for her, and the blanket was scratchy. It was the wooly sort that could be used to scrub dishes, warm but not nice. Someone had given her their jacket, earlier, a shiny badge on the front breast, and it bunched up in an awkward way behind her. She would have sat forward to try and rearrange it or fix it, but then the blanket on her lap might have fallen to the ground.

She’d talked about a lot of things, sometimes telling the same story over and over again, until she’d gotten annoyed with how forgetful they pretended to be. Then she’d gotten to the point where she had started to doze off, and they’d left her alone. The problem was, she’d started to doze but she hadn’t made it all the way there. Now she was just tired and half-asleep without really being able to be full asleep.

Adults milled around her, and every time someone showed up, she was nervous it would be one of her parents, and that she would be in trouble.

When the superhero showed up, she thought it was a dream, because she was half asleep and it was a man with wings built into his blue and red costume, connecting wrist to ankle. He had a weird cape thing, too, and a mask with a headband built in.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” she responded.

“Can I sit?” he asked.

She nodded with a fierce sharpness.

He took the seat next to her. She shifted position, grimaced, and he seemed to notice. He helped with the bump at the small of her back, and then he took the blanket, refolding it, draping it across her lap in a way so most of it wasn’t on the ground.

“Snack?” he offered. He produced an assortment that were probably from the vending machine.

She touched and then took the bag of chocolate covered pretzels.

“I’m Aerobat,” he said.

“I’m Kanzi.” She opened the bag.

“You know, superheroes like me go out in costume every night. A big part of what we do is try to help people in trouble. So as part of that, we’ll visit police stations like this or we’ll go to hospitals.”

“I’m not that important,” she said.

“You never know,” he replied. “Can I try one?”

She held the bag out for him. He took a chocolate covered pretzel.

“Mm, that’s good,” he said.

She took one herself, tried it, and nodded. “Very good. Thank you.”

“Part of what we do when we reach out to people who need help is we try to let them know that if they ever need help, they can call us. Especially if it’s because of powers or weirdness.”