Another person had entered the room. A boy, Caucasian, with shoulder-length brown-blond hair. He had a cut under one eye and another cut on the bridge of his nose. His jeans were ripped at the knee and his shirt was baggy, a size too big for him. The sleeves were long, red where the torso was white, and they had been rolled up to the elbow. His sneakers had seen a lot of abuse, by the looks of it. The white parts were brown and gray in a way that made me suspicious that even a thorough cleaning wouldn’t get them purely white again. He looked sixteen or seventeen.

“But yeah, damn, I don’t look good enough in a dress, so I have to concede. Hey Rain,” Tristan said.

“Heya,” the boy who was apparently called ‘Rain’ said. He took the empty seat next to Tristan. “Why are you wearing a dress?”

“Just joking around.”

There were still two empty seats. One would be Jessica’s. There’d be one more, then.

“You made it here okay?” Tristan asked.

“Yeah. I got a ride.”

“How are things?” Kenzie asked Rain. She gestured at her head in a way I didn’t see, with her head blocking my view of the hand on the other side.

Rain seemed to take a second to ponder it. He frowned a little. “Not great.”

“Better or worse than last week?” Kenzie asked.

“Let’s save the therapy-relevant stuff for the session,” Mrs. Yamada interrupted. “Small talk and catching up for now, please. We don’t want to get started before everyone’s here, and I want to go over ground rules and expectations before we ask anything too personal.”

Kenzie smiled and shrugged, settling back into her seat, hands in her lap.

“Alright,” Rain said. He turned his attention to me. “This is the heroine?”

“Ex-, kind of,” I said. “But yeah. Victoria.”

“Hi. I’m Rain. Spelled like the water that falls from the sky.”

“Cape or civilian name?” I asked.

“I hate that you have to ask. Civilian. And before you comment on it, yeah, I know. It’s unusual, I’ve heard the jokes.”

He’d said it as if his patience on the subject had run short a long time ago. I threw up my hands in mock surrender, my mouth firmly shut.

He said, “You said ex, but you didn’t sound sure. Are you taking a break? Or…?”

“Trying to get back into it after a break, but ended up taking another short break to focus on some background stuff. Getting a handle on things.”

“Yeah,” he said, as if I’d said something very heavy, and he’d felt part of that weight. “I feel like I’ve been trying to get a handle on things since I got my powers.”

“For a while now, then? If I can ask?”