Proud Machinery

CHAPTER TWELVE

Priya was always worried she'd run into Kess when she went back home to take care of Giant, but she never did. It annoyed her that Kess didn't seem to have even thought about Giant and what would happen to him once no one was staying at the house. But Giant had always been more Priya's cat than anyone else in the family's—she'd been in charge of feeding him since she was eleven and cleaning his litter box since she was fourteen.

Kess, on the other hand, should really never be trusted with responsibility for any animal. She wasn't the sort of person who had a hard time making friends with humans and so befriended animals instead. Rather (she had explained to Priya once), whatever psychological quirk made it difficult for Kess to bond with people made it even more difficult to bond with things that weren't even human. Kess appreciated animals, but she didn't form relationships with them. Before the Red and Blue situation, this was something that annoyed Priya about Kess, but that annoyance and others were swallowed up by affection. Now that the affection had been wiped away by some strange magic, even thinking about Kess's difficulty with animals made Priya weirdly angry.

Today, Priya brought Connor with her to the house. "I don't think I'd spend every night at Stephanie's even if my parents were gone," said Connor, stroking Giant from his ears to the tip of his tail. "You guys are my... something... now—"

"Tribe," said Priya as she filled Giant's food bowl. "Clan. Pack."

"Yeah, that. But my home's still my home."

"Mine is too." She looked around the laundry room where Giant's stuff was kept. Even this, the ugliest room in the house, shone with the beauty of familiar things. "But me and Kess couldn't stay here together any more. We didn't talk about it, but I think we both decided to stay away to avoid fighting about who would leave.

"But you have to live here together when your parents get back, right? When is that?"

"Three weeks."

"Man, they really trusted you two."

"We were good kids," said Priya. "We were really, really well-behaved up until we suddenly joined rival gangs."

"You're still good kids," said Connor. "You haven't done anything bad. None of us have. You keep calling us 'gangs' but we haven't actually done anything wrong. We just hang out and play with our superpowers."

"Give us time."

That stopped the conversation for a while. Priya petted Giant for a minute while he ate, just to make sure he remembered her smell. Then she asked Connor, "Do you want something to eat?"

They weren't as hungry as they'd been at first. The transformation into a Red seemed to require a lot of food as fuel, but after it was finished they only ate a little more than they used to, more on days when they used their strength a lot. Still, it felt good to cook in her own kitchen and not Stephanie's, which had a chandelier and appliances as shiny (and possibly as expensive) as a sports car. Priya got out the ingredients for grilled cheese sandwiches.

Connor sat on one of the stools at the counter. He looked natural there—something about his red-headed harmlessness went well with kitchen cabinets. "Priya," he said, "can I ask you something?"

She froze for a second with the cheese half sliced. His voice when he said her name had a quality that foretold coming awkwardness.

"Of course you can."

"Why did you like Danny?"

Awkwardness was coming and could not be diverted. Any attempts to avoid the awkwardness would only make it worse. It was like being Oedipus Rex. In a way.