Subterfuge

Chapter 7

I am getting lunch with Max Everhart. The words sounded so surreal, being tossed around in Maggie's head as she left the pawn shop without a backward glance at August. How is this even reality?

Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was just a dream, just something her imagination had concocted while she lay on her mildew-covered bed, wrapped in her thin, moth-eaten blankets, and she was going to be sorely disappointed when she woke up.

That was probably the case, just like it had been that time when she was eight and she'd dreamed her vanished older sister had come to the Prodigy Children's Home and adopted her. Maggie had been devastated for a while after that, until she'd realized how much better off she was without anyone looking after her.

Well. If this day with Max turned out to be a dream, that would probably be better too. Maggie didn't need the distraction of hanging out with arguably the most famous boy in all of Gatlon City. She had a very important job to do.

But she could enjoy the dream while it lasted, at any rate.

"I feel bad," Max said suddenly as they turned onto Beltway Avenue. "I just realized you didn't have a chance to do whatever it was you were going to do in the pawn shop. Should we go back?"

"Oh," Maggie's hand subconsciously drifted to her purse, which today held a gold bracelet, a wallet, and a diamond necklace. "No, that's okay. I wasn't going in for anything important."

"Do you browse there a lot?" Max asked, cocking one eyebrow upward.

Maggie fixed him with a hard look. Was he implying that he didn't believe her? "Yes," she said defensively. "Some people rather like to browse around at pawn shops, you know."

"I know," said Max, lifting his hands in a show of innocence. "I'm not judging or anything."

"I never said you were." Maggie cringed at the tone of her own voice. The words had come out sounding testy and irritated, which wasn't how she felt at all. "So, those boys in the store," she said, changing the subject. "They're your friends?"

Max nodded. "My best friends. Sterling and Jade Tucker. Or, they prefer to be known as the Silver Snake and the Green Machine. They weren't prodigies before, so, you know, that makes their abilities all the more exciting now, I guess."

Maggie thought about Duncan and Kevin, both of whom hadn't been prodigies before and viewed the change in a negative light. "Do you ever wonder if some people might have been happier before becoming prodigies?" Maggie asked. "Or whether there are any people who were disappointed, when everyone got powers, about what their powers turned out to be?"

"For sure," Max answered without hesitation. "If I'd been a non-prodigy all my life, and then I suddenly ended up with the power of absorption and had to go live in the quarantine after getting to experience all this—" He gestured around them, at the street, the bustling sidewalk, the buildings looming overhead "I think I'd be pissed."

Maggie nodded, strangely pleased that Max could empathize with the trials faced by some of the members of her gang.

"But I think for the most part," Max continued, "people are pretty happy about the way things turned out. The Great Equalization solved a lot of problems, like prodigy oppression, and people relying too heavily on superheroes for everything."

Maggie couldn't hide her snort. Max gave her a curious glance. She hesitated for only a fraction of a second before elaborating. "I know everyone calls it the Great Equalization, but what's so equal about some people being able to, I don't know, fly or manipulate water or shoot flames from their fingertips, while other people have to deal with smelling like a skunk every time they lose their temper?"