Atomic Rebooted

35. Realization

CLAIRE

"Oh, there you are, we were just talking about what happened this weekend!" Charlotte tugged the edge of my jacket to yank me down into the chair where I usually sat in the library.

"What?" It took me a minute to get my bearings, as I had just literally been yanked into this conversation.

Monday morning had passed by so quickly, in a kind of blur of lessons and lectures and the motions of high school. God, I couldn't wait to get out of there and go to college, wherever that ended up being.

"You saw the news, didn't you?" Stephanie was practically giddy, bouncing up and down in her seat, much to the annoyance of Grace and Leta next to her. "There's a new superhero in town!"

"There's no need to say it so loudly, everyone saw it on the news," Leta grumbled, pushing around the cafeteria's lasagna with her plastic fork.

"Oh, yeah, I heard about it," I said.

Charlotte frowned. "I would've thought you would've seen her. Weren't you at the Winter Festival with Malcolm McQueen?"

My face turned bright red as Leta and Grace perked up at this set of news.

"So you finally went for a boy on the football team," Grace muttered.

Leta let out a low whistle. "Our girl's got some game!"

"No, I didn't go with him." I paused. "I went with someone else."

"Atta girl!" Grace clapped me on the back.

"That's even better, two guys after you in the same week?" Leta crowed.

I didn't think it was possible for my face to turn redder than it had at that moment. If only you knew about the third. Since when did my life turn into a dating sim?

I focused as much as I could on the motion of unlatching my bag, of removing the vegan lunch that Holly had made for me.

No wonder Julien leaves so early every morning.

Still, I couldn't avoid these questions forever. I decided I might as well get things over with.

"Yeah," I said, looking straight at Stephanie, because honestly, superheroes were much less complicated than my love life. "I was there, at the festival, when Tenebrous attacked. I was lucky to get out alive."

In the corner of my eye, I saw Tristan look up from whatever he was typing on his laptop, but I ignored that for the time being.

"Did you get to see her in person?" Stephanie's eyes were intense, she leaned forward, almost standing in her seat.

"No, I was in the bathroom the whole time." This wasn't helping the situation with the color of my face. "Lady problems."

Stephanie shrank back into her seat, disappointed, but understanding. Grace, Charlotte, and Leta all gave me sympathetic looks.

"But what was he like?" Grace asked.

"He was a nice guy." I wanted to be as close to honest as I could. But I didn't know how to break it to them. "He was there with me when the villains attacked—he actually shielded me when we were escaping."

"How romantic!" Stephanie swooned. Her lower lip stuck out in a pout. "I want a guy that would try to save me from a supervillain attack."

"I would've thought you'd want to date the supervillain." Leta slurped her carton of milk to hide her snark.

"Oh come on, I do have some boundaries," Stephanie whined. "Besides, none of them are hot in this city."

"You clearly have no taste," Grace declared. "Black Phoenix is hot stuff. Literally."