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- MARVEL GIRL
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- SQUIRREL GIRL
WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG
By Matisse Mozer
Kamala Khan walked around the block a third, fourth, fifth time. She’d seen the bank close. She’d seen the tellers, the security, and finally the manager leave for the night. That was two hours ago; the sun was setting, the streetlights were coming on, and sooner or later, her parents would wonder where she was. Kamala crossed her fingers.
Maybe she was wrong.
Maybe the last two banks that had been robbed—in this two-mile radius of Jersey City alone—weren’t connected.
Maybe this was all paranoia.
Kamala whispered a prayer. Please, universe. Don’t make me have to fight people.
I have homework.
Because if there was one constant between Kamala’s life pre-powers and now, it was homework…
The car doors opened.
Kamala counted four men. One was smaller, wearing a suit and a mask. The others were ripped like wrestler action figures.
Kamala watched from across the street, sitting on the curb, her blue hoodie up and her backpack tucked in the alley behind her.
Kamala was fifteen years old. She’d spent her whole life in Jersey City.
And very recently, she’d had to fight superheroes while she had been experimented on, whilst being brainwashed into thinking they were the villains.
You’d think that would prepare a girl for possibly foiling a bank robbery…
But no.
Kamala wondered, were there, like, rules to hero-ing? Something like a code of conduct?
One of the muscleheads came up to the front door of the bank. Kamala knew from a cursory Internet search that it would be wired with electricity, set to fry the first person to try and crack the lock. Something to do with Rand Corporation’s investments. Jersey City bank robberies weren’t a thing because of Rand Corporation’s investments.
Or, at least they used to be.
The musclehead gripped both door handles. Kamala watched the flashing, red-light alarm blare from the bank’s lobby.
When was she supposed to make with the superheroics?
Was she supposed to jump them…now? They technically hadn’t committed a crime yet.
The other two Olympian-wannabes gripped the front door handles as well. Kamala’s eyesight wasn’t perfect, but she saw the gloves they all wore. Jet-black, almost inky. Something to do with rubber.
Something to short out the electricity.
The men gave the door a good solid yank. The door tore off the hinges. The glass shattered on the sidewalk and spilled into the street. It was strength beyond normal gym rat, or even Olympian strength, if those Michael Phelps memes were any indication. These guys were powered.
…But so was she.
Police sirens sounded. Still miles away, at least.
The three men walked into the bank. Behind them, the shorter one pulled his mask a little tighter. He reached into his jacket and removed his .45mm pistol. He clicked the hammer, then followed his men inside. Even all the way across the street, Kamala could hear the clack clack clack of his well-to-do black shoes against the bank’s tile floor.
Police wouldn’t get there before the men were gone. There would be no witnesses.
Kamala could go home.
She could never use her powers again.
And anyone she hurt while she had been a weapon of evil…they would never know justice.
Kamala would never know redemption.
Kamala Khan, age fifteen, pulled the sleeves of her hoodie up. She stood straight—all five-feet-five-inches of her—and she walked toward the bank.
“Hey there, fellas!” Kamala Khan said. She stood in the door frame with her hands on her thin hips, and she puffed her chest out, like she’d seen the heroes do on the news. “Nice night for a bank robbery, ain’t it?”
Sirens were coming closer all the time.
The thief with nice shoes and a mask groaned loudly. “What in the hell is this?” He asked.
Kamala waited for the men to answer him, but then he addressed Kamala. “No, really, kid. What the hell are you doing here?” He waved the gun. His voice was deep. Gravelly, even.
“See this? See my men here?” Behind him, Kamala swore she saw the Olympians flex their biceps on cue. “They’ve killed mutants. They break police. I’m being nice, now. Be a sweet little brown girl and go home.”
Kamala swore. Now she couldn’t go home without being complicit to racist…stuff.
“Fat chance,” Kamala said, and the man in the mask shrugged.
He raised the gun and took aim, and BLAM BLAM BLAM—
Kamala wasn’t entirely sure how her powers worked.
Sometimes she’d be able to shape-shift into other people; sometimes not.
Sometimes she’d only be able to grow her fists or feet; sometimes she could become a giant.
The only thing she could count on? Her powers were 100% her, and that meant they wanted her to survive.
They moved on instinct.
Kamala’s body stretched and contorted on its own, weaving around the bullets that her eyes couldn’t see. The bullets landed against the brick building facades across the street. She bent back into place easily.
The man in the mask gave an approving “Huh.” He turned back to the Olympians. “She’s got spunk. Take her. Ten seconds.”
The Olympians didn’t waste a millisecond. The first one barreled for Kamala, sprinting full-speed ahead, and she rolled out of the way with a strange combination of fear and muscle memory. She stood up quickly, but the second man was already there, his fist cocked, then rocketing forward.
Kamala’s neck extended, her head following the trajectory of the blow until the man’s reach was over-extended. He paused, with a look of genuine confusion. He looked to be almost as old as her father, Kamala thought. Maybe he had kids? Was there a good reason for this heist, or—
Come on, she chided herself. Hit him!
The man pulled his fist back and aimed another blow, but Kamala was ready. She aimed an uppercut, and her stretching powers responded, growing her own fist to the size of a gallon of milk, and WHAM, it connected right in the chest!
Her arm extended upward with the blow, and the man was thrown clear through the air. His head crashed against a desk, followed by his melon-sized arms shattering the computer and monitor.
One down.
The second man tackled her, hard. Hard enough to knock Kamala’s hood off, splaying her black hair across her vision as they tumbled. The man gripped her by the throat and got to his knees, pinning her down. He watched Kamala squirm.
“You should’ve gone home, girlie,” the man said. He made a fist and took aim.
Kamala’s instincts took over again. Before the blow could shoot down, Kamala’s hand covered her face, and the hand grew to the size of one, two, maybe even three of her open textbooks. The man’s fist landed painlessly in her palm.
Kamala gripped the man’s entire upper torso. She got her feet back from under her, heaved the man off the ground, and threw. He hit the far wall, and not like, crater-in-the-wall-like-an-Anime hard, but hard enough. He collapsed like a ragdoll.
The police cruisers arrived. Three of them, each drifting down the middle of the street, sirens blaring. Officers tumbled out of the doors like a clown car act.
The last of the muscle-men placed the gun on the ground and went to his knees. Probably a repeat offender, Kamala guessed.
The man in the mask was nowhere to be seen.
Kamala pulled her hood back up. (Secret identities and all that.)
She may not have remembered her training after being kidnapped…or how to properly use her powers…or what their limits were…or if they were even permanent…but she was an Internet person, and the Internet always had the same annoyance at villains who got away. There was only one place bad guys went to get away.
He was getting away by going to the roof.
Kamala ran outside, past the police cruisers and the shouts of “Hey, you!” and “Young lady, hands in the air!” She had been right: the masked man was watching the scene from the rooftop, a phone in his hand.
“There’s the guy!” Kamala shouted to the officers. They were pre-occupied, half of them handcuffing an Olympian, and the other half with weapons drawn, surveying the interior damage. One of them aiming at her, even.
Useless.
The masked man looked down at her.
And if she didn’t know any better, she would say that he was laughing. Mocking her. How was the wanna-be superhero gonna get all the way up there?
It was time to use her powers on command.
Kamala knew she could stretch far enough to get her arms on that roof and pull herself up, and then she’d put the hurt on him, for sure. She reached up for the roof…
Nothing. She tried again, even straining. Her arms remained her teeny teenage-girl arms.
“Nice try, stretch,” the man said. “The Tinkerer sends his regards.”
And then he was gone. The officer watching her saw the man leave and shouted into his walkie-talkie, then hurried into the bank.
Kamala ran back to the alley for her backpack, and she was gone before the officers even noticed.
Three out of four guys down…that wasn’t too bad, right?
…But who was The Tinkerer?
Kamala got home late. Her parents were sitting on the sofa, the TV on with a breaking news report.
“Third one this week,” her father said. Kamala joked that her dad always had a slightly-surprised expression, as though he went to sleep last night as a young man, without a care in the world, and he woke up to be in his fifties, with a gut, a wife, two kids, and a mortgage. “’Nothing happens in Jersey City’, they said. ‘New York and Los Angeles, sure, but not Jersey City’. Isn’t that what your parents said, honey?”
Kamala’s mother sat at the dining room table, spending the night the same way she spent every night: poring over bills. “I hate to break this to you, my love,” she said, “But we do still live in the world, and the world happens to have insanity from time to time.”
“Time to time, sure, but three robberies in three days?” He threw his thick hands in the air. “What are my taxes paying for?”
“Public schooling by the finest teachers in suburbia?” Kamala said, closing the front door behind her.
“You missed dinner, Kamala,” her mother said. “Dinner’s in the oven. And I hope you got some of your homework done at Nakia’s.”
Kamala’s standing excuse was that she was with Nakia, either volunteering at their mosque, or at her home studying.
In reality, Kamala and Nakia hadn’t spoken in months.
Not since Kamala had come back.
Kamala found the tin-foil-wrapped plate in the oven, as promised. Salmon, green beans, and rice…the Khan Household’s meal four nights out of the week. Kamala thought of it as the Meal of Hate.
Her mother called it the Meal of Health.
Tom-a-to, tom-ah-to.
Kamala took a fork and sat at the dining room table, across from her mother.
“What in Allah’s name is this?” Her mother asked.
“What?” Kamala asked through a mouthful of rice. She glimpsed a Visa bill on the table. “Oh! So, Dad gave me the card that day. He said the limit was $50, and okay, so maybe that action figure was $55.99, but…”
Kamala’s mother reached over the table and gently gripped the hem of Kamala’s hoodie. There was a hole large enough to fit three fingers through.
Bullet holes.
“What happened to you?” Kamala’s mother asked.
“I…it was nothing.”
“What was nothing?” Her father paused the TV and entered the room, and when he sat next to her mother, Kamala groaned. For the last two months, they’d done this every time something not ‘normal’ happened.
“Look at this!” Her mother pulled the hoodie, and Kamala’s neck, farther across the table. “Kamala, what’s happening now?”
Her father folded his arms and waited.
Ugh.
Two months ago, Kamala came home after being kidnapped by a bunch of supervillains calling themselves ‘Control’, and she’d been missing for three months before that, while Control experimented on her and a bunch of other kids.
People had straight-up thought she was dead.
People including her parents.
Some Avengers Avenging later, and Kamala was rescued by the good guys. She was brought home, and Nick Fury had his people de-program her, which was a fancy way of saying ‘getting the evil out of her psyche so she didn’t become a bad guy for real this time’.
He even went the extra mile and gave her an alibi: that Control had kidnapped her, and the Avengers had stepped in.
…Which was the truth, except with the ‘Control gave Kamals superpowers and we didn’t take them away’ part conveniently scrubbed out.
Not even Nick Fury could stop parents from worrying about their kid. Kamala had to be fair. If her daughter was presumed dead for months and brought back by the Men In Black, she’d flip out every time something weird happened, too.
It didn’t make dealing with her parents’ said flip-outs any easier.
“It was nothing. Really,” Kamala started. “I…missed my mouth. When I was eating.”
Her parents furrowed their brows simultaneously.
“No, I’m being serious. Nakia and I got lunch, but I was like, starving, so I missed my mouth and my fork went through my hoodie.” She shrugged. “It happens. You know?”
Kamala didn’t have enough friends to play the game, but she watched Dungeons and Dragons sessions on YouTube every night.
She narrated the scene: Kamala rolls for Deception. -2 to Charisma for having a bullet hole.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, Beta,” Kamala’s mother said. “If you’re going to lie to our faces, at least—”
“What was for lunch?” Her father asked sternly.
“Orange chicken?” Kamala said.
He smirked. It was a loud SNRRK, like sinuses grinding on rusted metal. “I keep saying, this is what happens when you keep serving the Meal of Hate…”
“Don’t you start,” Kamala’s mother said, jabbing a pen at her husband. It was too late; Kamala’s dad was already laughing at his own joke.
Kamala was in the clear.
She finished her dinner, washed the dishes, and escaped into her bedroom for the night. She did her homework quickly, and just as planned, Kamala was done right when her parents gave the ‘lights out’ and shut the house down for the evening.
The punchline?
This was totally a bullet hole in her favorite hoodie. Kamala laid it on her bed, sat in her chair, and stared at it.
So much for instinct carrying her powers…she’d been grazed. It was a miracle she wasn’t bleeding.
This superhero thing wasn’t going well.
Not that she hadn’t had successes so far. There’d been that old woman who had been caught in an alley between one guy with a gun, and another with a knife. Kamala had saved the day with the ole one-two stretchy-punch combo.
And before that, there was her first outing, where she’d jumped right into a gang fight, just to see how many guys she could take at once. Going just off of instinct and muscle memory alone. (The answer: seventeen, but only because the gang ran out of members to punch.)
Kamala spun in her desk chair.
Nick Fury had tried to act like bye-gones were bye-gones, that the past was the past. That she’d been innocent in the whole Control deal.
Not that she’d had her own reason for being where she was, that time of night, in a scuzzy part of town, ripe for the kidnapping.
Kamala would never confess to that.
She bunched her knees up to the seat and hugged them, and she swore: nobody would ever know. Especially not Bruno.
Bruno, who she had to see in school tomorrow.
Bruno, her used-to-be-best friend, even if he thought he came second to Nakia.
Nakia, who also wasn’t talking to Kamala.
She could punch criminals until her hoodie was riddled with bullet holes, but Kamala couldn’t put her life together that easily.
Even when you had stretchy powers, life sucked.
But in the morning, it could be better.
There were things about Kamala Khan’s world that she still appreciated. Nick Fury repairing her life extended all the way to enrolling her back at Coles Academic High School.
The school even kept her in the same grade.
There was just the problem of catching up three months’ worth of missed assignments and homework.
But even then, it was nice to get to be normal, even if it was only for eight hours, surrounded by actual normal kids.
Kamala walked to school alone. She continued through the school’s double-doors, up the main staircase, and went on all the way to her locker.
All the while, she felt a sad smile form on her face. Those cartoons where someone runs away quickly and leaves a blinking outline? Nakia and Bruno’s blinking outlines had been blinking for two months and counting.
Kamala stopped when she got to her locker.
There was a girl in front of it, trying to shove a paper through the metal slits. Kamala hadn’t seen this person in her life before. It wasn’t because Kamala didn’t know any bottom-heavy white girls like this one, or any girls who wore pants pulled up all the way to their waists like she did. It was the girl’s blue hair that got her; who wore blue hair, then pulled it back with a bandana?
The girl turned around. She saw Kamala and her soul nearly jumped out of her body. The blue-haired girl had been holding a small pile of papers, and they all went flying.
“OHMIGOSH!” she yelped. “You scared me! So bad!”
“Sorry,” Kamala said. “I just…that’s my locker. I didn’t wanna interrupt you with…whatever you were doing.”
The girl jabbed a thumb back at the locker. She pointed a finger at Kamala, then back again. “OH!” She finally said. “You’re Kamala! Kamala Khan! Bruno’s friend!” She took Kamala’s hand and shook it firmly. Kamala’s dad would have approved. “I’m Michaela, but everyone calls me ‘Mike’. It’s neat to finally meet you!”
Mike knelt down and started collecting her papers, but she continued, “I kept seeing you in class, and I always wanted to say ‘hi’, but you looked super serious and I didn’t want to interrupt whatever you were thinking, so I waited and waited and waited and Bruno said I was being an idiot, but I kept waiting, and now, well…here we are, right?”
…What was Kamala supposed to say to that?
“You’re probably wondering what I was putting in your locker,” Mike said. She glanced up and down the hallway. “I’m not supposed to have seen it, and if I act like I peeked then I’ll probably lose my work-study job in the office, but I want you to know that it’s not bad at all, and it’s actually actively good.”
Who talked like this?
“What…is it?” Kamala asked.
Mike inched out of the way and nodded to the locker. Kamala stepped forward and put in her combination.
The paper was on school letterhead, signed by the principal. There was another emblem on the page, right next to the school’s one. An emblem Kamala had never seen before.
Kamala squinted and read the letters on the symbol. “Empire State University? I’m not even close to college. What are they…”
“Keep reading!” Mike slapped a hand to her mouth, then mimed a zipping-the-lip movement. She took her work-study job pretty seriously, Kamala noted.
The rest of the letter was a lot of jargon, buzzwords like ‘diverse campus life’ and ‘STEM-preparation for tomorrow’s career readiness’. Kamala glossed over the first few paragraphs and got to the middle section, where the bold text hit her like a brick.
“I’m being sent to mandatory tutoring?!”
“It’s not all bad!”
“Michaela—”
“It’s ‘Mike’.”
“Mike. Fine. Mike, I have a life. I have parents who will literally murder me if that life is interrupted by bad grades, and this is going so far past bad grades that I might as well put myself in the ground.” Kamala felt her eyes bugging out of her face.
Mandatory tutoring.
How was she supposed to explain that?
“It’s not that your grades are bad,” Mike said, continuing to keep a lookout for this absolutely top-secret information. “The principal nominated kids who do good work, just…who need a little leg up.”
“A ‘leg up’.”
“Yeah. Like, I know I’m in it, and Bruno actually wanted to be in it, but his grades are too good, believe it or not…he’s such a goofball.” Mike paused. And grinned at the thought.
Huh.
“It’ll be fun! I mean, I don’t know who else is going, but at least we’ll know each other,” Mike said. “I’ve gotta drop the rest of these papers off–different teachers’ mail and whatnot–but I’ll see you around!” Then she was gone, and Kamala could swear she heard the girl whistling.
Bruno’s friend Michaela.
Sorry.
Bruno’s friend Mike.
What was that all about?
The rest of the day went by fast enough.
Kamala had never sat in the cafeteria for lunch. Three-month gap in education or no three-month gap in education, she still wouldn’t be caught dead playing the which-lunch-table-is-popular game.
The only thing that sucked was, apparently Bruno and Nakia were playing that game, now. Kamala sat under the trees by the teacher parking lot and watched the clouds, solo.
Then it was back to classes she could just barely follow, filled with people she remembered from before Control, but for the life of her, couldn’t be bothered to care about now.
The last bell of the day rang, and Kamala scanned the paper from her locker again. She trudged her way to the school library, as per instructions, and ran over the information one more time.
She’d been assigned a tutor from Empire State University.
This was a partnership between ESU and Coles that totally wasn’t targeting troubled kids, or kids who couldn’t hack it academically. (As if her parents would buy that for a second.)
Kamala got to the school library. Its heavy blue door was closed.
Was this her get-out-of-tutoring-free card?!
She immediately rehearsed the alibi. I’m sorry, Mister Principal, sir. The library seemed locked up, so I went home. I’m pretty sure there’s a mistake anywho.
I’m not supposed to be tutored after school.
I’m supposed to be getting shot at.
And in this fantasy, the principal asked Kamala, why do you feel you’re supposed to be shot at?
And Kamala answered, I deserve it, don’t I?
I was a weapon. An evil weapon.
So…don’t I?
She retreated from the school library door.
She’d make up some excuse about not going to tutoring. She’d—
WHAM, she’d slam right into Bruno! He was taller than her, and not by much. Enough for his stubble-covered chin to jab into her forehead. (Was ‘stubbled’ a word?)
Kamala got to endure being stabbed in the face. Bruno narrowly caught himself from tripping over her.
“Yeesh, watch where you’re going,” Bruno said. “You’re like a human speed-bump.”
“Am not. You’re just abnormally tall….And even taller than before,” Kamala noticed. “Did you somehow gain, like two feet in two months?”
Bruno shrugged. “Probably,” he said. “All the free milk from working at Circle Q these days, I guess.” He smiled that crooked smile that made her heart jump. “Hey, Kamala,” Bruno said.
“Hey, Bruno,” Kamala said.
Bruno wasn’t the first boy Kamala ever crushed on.
Heck, she didn’t even crush on him when she first met him.
Lean like a Gumby figure, with a mop-top of straight brown hair and stubble that couldn’t be tamed, Bruno was more of the hipster-who-stays-in-the-background kind of guy. (He even said so once, when Kamala asked why customers at Circle Q never noticed him behind the register.)
Bruno had been sorta serious, back when they first met. He wasn’t a funny guy.
Kamala had brought out the goofy side of him. That was how they became friends: busting up to get through the day’s monotony.
And the more she made him laugh, the more he made her want to spend time with the mysterious Bruno Casterelli.
…But then Control decided to step into the Life and Times of Kamala Khan.
“Were you, uh,” Kamala struggled to remember the basic word, “library’ing? Going to the library, I mean.”
“There’s a friend of mine here,” Bruno said, tone noncommittal. “I just needed to drop something off before I head to work.”
“A friend?” Kamala asked. “You don’t mean Mike, do you?”
“She told me she ran into you today,” Bruno said. He held back a chuckle. “She said you were kind of awkward—”
“I was awkward?!”
“Yeah, but the great Kamala Khan is always awkward,” Bruno said. It wasn’t a lie. “I told Mike that you can look in the dictionary under ‘awkward’ and find that picture of The Sandwich.”
“Ah.” Kamala remembered The Sandwich. She remembered how subsequently learned that the human mouth couldn’t fit seven vertical inches of food. “Please tell me you didn’t show her the picture…”
“No way. It’s our secret, remember?”
“Right,” Kamala said. “Our secret.”
“Yep,” Bruno said. He gestured to the blue door before pulling it open. The air conditioning and smell of old books wafted outward. “Ladies first?”
“Ladies first, punks last,” Kamala remarked, and Bruno smirked.
It was almost like old times.
The library at Coles Academy had the distinction of being managed by an actual librarian, and that was only because the school principal fought tooth and nail to keep the institution around. The books didn’t get replaced all that often, so the good novels were worn-down and the nonfiction was severely outdated, but it was a quiet place in the hellscape that was high school.
Stacks of library books lined the far wall, then extended along the windows facing the streets. A few computers—which weren’t as ancient as you’d think!—had stations in the back, and a few long tables filled the space. The information desk ostensibly had the librarian staffing it, but Kamala had only ever seen student volunteers running book check-out.
Bruno followed Kamala inside. There were a few kids sitting at the farthest table, and Kamala immediately recognized Mike’s blue hair. She had been staring at the door when Kamala and Bruno entered, and Mike stood up and hurried to them.
“Kamala!” Mike said in the most excited library-whisper. “You made it!”
“Yes,” Kamala said. “I did totally make it here. Didn’t even get stuck at the door.” Unfortunately.
“Hey, Mike,” Bruno started. He opened his backpack and took out a deep green hoodie.
“My sweater!” Mike whisper-shouted. “Where was it?!”
“You left it in my locker again,” Bruno said. “It’s supposed to be cold out tonight. Be careful, you know?”
“Will do,” Mike said. She gave a mock sailor’s salute. “We’re about to start. Thanks again, Bruno.” She clenched her fists and brought them to her hips. “Let’s do it, Kamala!”
“Yeah, why not?” Kamala said.
Bruno flashed a wave at the two of them before leaving.
Mike…Bruno’s new friend.
His new friend who leaves jackets in his locker…
Which Bruno then makes sure to bring to Mike before he went to work…
Oh, no.
They weren’t…they couldn’t be dating, right? Right. NO way.
Kamala had been gone for a few months, but she and Bruno had been in that will-they-won’t-they phase for like, a year.
There was no way on Earth that Bruno was dating someone else.
Right?
Right.
…Right?
Kamala pushed the thought to the way, way back of her mind. Somewhere between ‘superheroics’ and ‘dinner’.
There were only two other kids besides Kamala and Mike at the table. One of them was a girl who looked a little older…maybe a junior or senior, if Kamala had to guess. She was heavier, like Mike, but the girl’s arms looked more muscled than chubbed-out. Her auburn hair was in a short braid that wrapped around her neck and ended at her shoulders, but her bangs kicked out, almost like individual cowlicks.
The other girl, Kamala recognized immediately. The sensation of outright loathing returned to Kamala just as fast.
“Hello, Kamala,” said tall, popular, blond, rich, and white Zoe Zimmer. “Last to get picked for the program, last to arrive. That sounds about right to me.”
“Hello, Zoe,” Kamala said, taking a seat across from the red-headed girl and next to Mike.
“Wait, so does everybody already know each other?” That was the red-headed girl. Her voice was almost cartoony, with a high-pitched quality. Kamala did her best to be polite and not stare at the girl’s front two buck teeth. “I’m the only knucklehead left out? Whack.”
“Kamala and I know each other,” Zoe said. “As much as it pains me to admit.”
“What’s wrong with Kamala?” Mike asked.
Zoe laughed. “I’m just concerned, is all. It’s like I told her last year: someone who eats so much curry like that will definitely have to watch out for premature aging.”
Mike bit her lip. Kamala rolled her eyes.
Typical Zoe.
The new girl stood up abruptly. “Nope! Nope, nope, nope.”
“Nope, what?” Zoe asked, paying more attention to her manicure than the other three girls.
“Nope, we’re not gonna be having weird micro-aggression side remarks in our tutoring group.”
“Good luck with that,” Zoe said. “I’ve got it on good authority that our college student tutor has more important things to deal with than sticking up for…whatever Kamala is.”
“I’d better introduce myself, then,” the red-headed girl said. “I’m gonna be your tutor from Empire State University for the semester.”
Kamala had to clamp a hand over her face to keep from laughing. Way to step in it, Zoe.
“The name’s Doreen Alene Green, age eighteen. If I had to guess from what they told me,” Doreen said, putting a finger on her chin, “You’re Zoe Zimmer, the one who’s here because she’s in danger of losing her academic eligibility for the winter formal…Whoops! I wasn’t supposed to say that out loud!”
Zoe’s glare intensified enough to put Medusa to shame. “You’re only eighteen? Seriously?”
“College freshman,” Doreen said. “Totally still counts.” She folded her arms and nodded. “And with me on your side…well, sides, since there’s three of you, your grades are gonna increase with intensity!”
Kamala glanced at the empty library around them. “Is it…just the four of us?”
“Nope! It’s actually just the three of you.” Doreen said. “I don’t count.” She put a hand to her mouth and loudly whispered, “you guys are an exclusive club.”
“Wonderful,” Zoe groaned.
Mike raised a hand, and Doreen pointed to her. “Yes! Girl with the Sonic the Hedgehog hair!”
Mike shrank into her chair at the attention. “Um…I don’t want to get anyone mad at me for asking, but…are you supposed to assign more homework for us, or something?”
“Nah. You’re sorta here because you couldn’t handle the homework you already have, right?” Doreen said.
“I think that was another not-out-loud part,” Kamala said.
“Probably.” Doreen nodded. “But if we’re meeting here every day after school for the next few weeks…”
Zoe slammed her hand on the table. “Every day?!”
“Shush!” Doreen said. “This is a library!”
Mike and Kamala nodded in agreement.
“I figure,” Doreen continued, “If we’re meeting every day, we should get to know each other. It’ll make the time go faster if we’re all…I dunno, at least simpatico, right?”
Neither Mike, Zoe, nor Kamala said anything.
“Howsabout we get the elephant in the room out of the room,” Doreen said. “Let’s go around and talk about what we’re missing out on by being here.
“Kamala!” Doreen beamed. “Why don’t you start?”
Kamala had to admit, even being stuck here with her life-long bully and Bruno’s…new…maybe-girlfriend wouldn’t be awful if Kamala at least got to complain about it. “I’m missing out on…”
Fighting super villains?
“…My mom’s dinner. It’ll be cold salmon leftovers for me again,” Kamala said. “Hooray.”
“That’s gonna be a ‘yikes’ from me,” Doreen said. “But I don’t knock cold food. I’m missing out on being with my best friend, Tippy-Toe, and she loves cold snacks.”
“Tippy-Toe?” Zoe asked.
“Tippy-Toe’s the best friend I’ve got,” Doreen said. “Kinda the only friend right now, since I’m new here in Jersey. Tippy’s kinda tiny, and she doesn’t always know how to act when we go out together, but she has this cute little bow, and she does the funniest things when she’s hungry.”
Mike was the brave soul to ask. “Funny things…like what?”
“Well, this morning, I forgot to get breakfast for her, so she climbed up this tree and started singing! Or screaming. I couldn’t tell. She can have moods.” Doreen shrugged. “Also she’s a squirrel.”
Kamala felt like Doreen could’ve led with that.
Mike lingered as the group packed up for the day, and she tried to get Kamala’s attention, but Kamala didn’t have any more time to lose. It helped that Doreen had to leave in a hurry, too.
“I’ve got a…date! Yes, that’s it.” Doreen nodded. “And that’s why we’re leaving early. No further questions! This is not at all a cover-up.”
Doreen Green, age eighteen seemed like she needed a tutor, herself.
Along with a shrink.
Anyway.
Kamala had checked her phone’s maps app at lunchtime. The first three banks to get robbed were all on the same street…and there was a fourth one untouched.
And right around this time yesterday, the third robbery had commenced.
Time for some superhero’ing.
Kamala left the school and ducked into the first alley she came across, where she dialed for home.
Kamala hated lying to her parents.
But it was either “yes, I’m at Nakia’s again but the Koran study group is so engaging tonight!’ Or “I’m going out to bare-knuckle box with thieves and also I have stretchy powers.”
Kamala figured lying was the lesser of the two evils.
The bank wasn’t a far walk away. Kamala had time to switch from her school outfit into ole’ Hoodie McBulletHoles, and even better, she had time to come up with a plan.
What was the endgame, here?
Kamala could fight the robbers, and maybe win, and keep doing this forever and ever. And she’d basically be getting nowhere. Beating up bullies into infinity.
…But last time, that guy had mentioned a name.
‘The Tinkerer’.
Kamala didn’t have to be the best student or the smartest kid to know: anyone with a ‘The’ in the name? He’s the big shot.
Well, he or she. Kamala didn’t want to assume.
So, that was the plan. Go in, beat the stuffing out of the robbers, and get information about the named supervillain who might be scheming to rob the daylights out of Jersey City.
Seemed about heroic enough.
The first two banks had been caught unaware when the robberies started. Security had been light at the first one. The second bank hadn’t even closed up for the night. There had been casualties.
The fourth bank was taking no chances.
There had been contract security guards posted at the front exits, all four of whom were armed with handguns, tasers, handcuffs, one even packed his own set of brass knuckles…
None of it had mattered. All four men lay on the sidewalk, either dead or severely concussed.
In addition to electrifying the door handles, this bank went ahead and staffed after-hours guards inside. These ones had put up more of a fight, what with the light body armor and shotguns.
For all the good it did them, as they bled out on the white-tile floor.
The masked man waited as the rest of his posse–more muscle-men, as before–shattered the bank teller glass and removed the valuables from the various safes.
Watching them from the sidewalk, Kamala wasn’t sure how the man’s five lackeys were strong enough to break the metal safes open with their bare hands. She had assumed they were powered last time, but busting open high-grade combination locks? That went clear into possibly-evil-mutant territory.
Kamala jumped through the shattered front doors and landed in a fighting pose. (Her collection of Anime figurines would absolutely approve.)
“Hey!” Kamala called out. “Masked-guy. It’s me, again. I’m here to bring you and your buff buddies back where they belong.” And then: “Hey, alliteration! Neat.”
The masked man drew his handgun. “I don’t have time for this tonight. Guys..?”
The five men were all behind the teller desk, stuffing items into black sacks, engrossed in the work.
The masked man put his gun back inside his jacket. He cracked his knuckles. “You were warned last time,” he said. “When I was young, I would have appreciated such mercy.”
“When you were young?” Kamala taunted. “Aw man, are you one of those geezers who doesn’t understand how the Tweeter works?”
The man removed the head-covering.
Half of his face belonged to an older black man, with a few wrinkles around the mouth and a tired eye. Nothing unusual.
The rest of his gruesome mug was something out of Terminator. A metal endoskeleton covered his features. His sterling-silver teeth glistened against the overhead light. He even had the glowing red eyeball. Just to make it complete, Kamala mused.
He took a stance.
When he shot out for a punch, his arm must’ve been enhanced with rocket fuel. The blow connected with Kamala’s gut before her instincts could react.
Her feet came up off of the floor, her vision blurred, the air left her lungs…
The follow-up was a right hook that slammed into Kamala’s face, with the same impossible speed. She flew headfirst into the receptionist desk, shattering it on impact.
There was pain, Kamala mused…and there was pain. This was a million times worse than getting cavities drilled, or bumping into Bruno’s stubble-chin. This was a pain that she felt in her skin, in her bones…
Terminator appeared beside her. How had he closed the distance so quickly?
He took her by the neck. Kamala’s powers finally woke up; she stretched her fist up and over, but nothing landed.
“You shoulda stayed down, brown girl,” Terminator said. He lifted Kamala up neck-first, holding her high enough that her feet dangled. She struggled to breathe. Struggled to move. He lifted her up another inch, and then brought her back down at Mach speed.
So this was what being slammed into the ground like in an Anime feels like, Kamala thought. Not fun.
Thinking was all she could do. Kamala tasted blood in her mouth. She couldn’t stand, couldn’t move a limb.
How long had the fight lasted? Seconds?
“Believe it or not,” Terminator said, kneeling beside Kamala and keeping his grip on her neck. “I actually warned The Tinkerer about you. Here I thought Jersey City was gonna have one of those teenage vigilante-types.” He sighed. “Your corpse is gonna make me look like a fool. And if there’s one thing I hate…”
Terminator stood up, dragging Kamala’s broken, bleeding body upward once more.
“…It’s looking like a fool.”
He pulled Kamala up another inch, readied to slam her into oblivion. Kamala closed her eyes.
Well…At least I don’t really have regrets. I’ll never get caught up on my shows, but that’s life.
There was a gust of wind, the sound of something tearing, and Terminor shrieked, as though he’d been pinched. “Ow!” He yelled. “What in the hell?”
Kamala rolled to the cracked floor. Another body rushed to her and slung Kamala over their shoulder.
“Go limp,” the person said. “I’ve got you.”
Kamala felt the person jump, then land gracefully, without any resistance. Her savior lay her on the ground. There was a breeze, and the pavement was cold. Were they outside? Kamala struggled to open her eyes.
“Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god,” Kamala’s rescuer said. She had a high-pitched, almost goofy voice. There was something familiar in it.
The savior shook Kamala gently. “Come on, Kamala. Don’t be dead, don’t be dead, don’t be dead! Open your eyes! Abre los ojos!”
Kamala managed to open her right eye. The left one felt swollen shut.
“YES!” The other girl cheered, pumping a fist in the air. Her auburn bangs bounced with the motion. From what Kamala could see, her outfit was something else: a green vest on a dark-green shirt, round animal ears on her head, and…was that a squirrel on her shoulder?
Was that a squirrel tail coming out of the back of her?!
“Who,” Kamala struggled, but her throat chafed and screamed.
“Stay down,” the girl said. “Just keep breathing for us, yeah? Tippy and I are on this.”
Staying down…Kamala figured that was for the best.
The other girl faced Terminator, who had been watching from a few feet away.
“More teenagers with attitude?” Terminator groaned. He snapped his fingers. His gym-going sidekicks threw their loot into the lobby and gathered around him. “I hadn’t planned on killing this many people tonight, but…what’s that saying? When life gives you lemons?”
“OOH!” The girl said. “OOH, we’re doing food banter! I love food banter!”
There was a lone chortle from the muscle-men.
Terminator clenched his fists. “This is absurd. What are you supposed to even be?”
“I’m the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl! I’m here to eat nuts, and kick butts.” Squirrel Girl went into a fighting stance. “…And I’m allllllll outta nuts.”
To Be Continued
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