The others retreated as I landed, some folding up umbrellas. I knew it was to give me room to land, and to get back to where it was dry—no reason to stay in the wet outdoors. I was aware, I knew the rationale, and I couldn’t shake the idea that they were getting out of the way of the Wretch.

I was no stranger to distorted thinking. Even before… before everything, I’d been swept up in it. As a child, wanting to belong to my family, being the odd one out, until I got my power. I’d later realized how lonely powers were.

The flip side of the coin applied too. Being the odd one in.

Amy had been the odd one in more than I had. Purely average in appearance, quiet, she hadn’t been passionate about hobbies or about anything in particular. She’d liked movies from Aleph and when she was twelve she’d break her usual reserved, quiet composure to get way too excited if she checked the change slot of a vending machine or pay phone and found a quarter. And yet when we got to high school, she was automatically included in the group of popular students. The group with Dean, who was supposed to take over his dad’s company, and with the star athletes and the star athletes’ boyfriends and girlfriends.

I’d eventually looked beyond my bubble of thinking my sister was great because she was my sister and I fucking loved her, wondering why she was included in the group of popular students when she wasn’t popular. Then I’d had to draw the eventual, inevitable conclusion, and wonder if I belonged to that group. Was I there just because my parents wore costumes and had flashy powers?

I’d settled in despite that. Amy had settled out—hanging out to keep me company, but not going out of her way to stick with the group. It had been easy for her to move in that direction, after I’d gotten powers. I’d been grateful for my earlier realization about the nature of the group, because it kept me real and provided a starting point for realizing where Dean was coming from, having come from money. I’d loathed it at the same time, because it cast doubt on every normal interaction.

My perspective had been distorted by anger, by the fact that I’d been young and I was being confronted with some of the uglier sides of my town. A classmate had confided in me that she had trouble seeing her path to a happy future because every adult she knew seemed miserable, and I’d sat back, thinking that I couldn’t see a way for our whole city to have a happy future because my parents, aunt, and uncles had sacrificed nearly everything and there were still racists, addicts, murders, theft, corruption, and pain.