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  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors’ imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN 978-1-4197-5446-3

  eISBN 978-1-6470-0280-0

  “Love to Hate” © 2022 Lamar Giles

  “Fire That Lasts” © 2022 Sarah Trabucchi

  “Ordinary Kid” © 2022 Joseph Bruchac

  “Fly, Lions, Fly” © 2022 Morgan Baden

  “My Life as a Houseplant” © 2022 Matthew Phillion

  “Aubrey vs. the Ninth Circle of Hell (aka Prom)” © 2022 Elizabeth Eulberg Inc.

  “Something Borrowed, or The Costume” © 2022 Danielle Paige

  “The Knight’s Gambit” © 2022 Varian Johnson

  “The Night I Caught a Bullet” © 2022 Sterling Gates

  “Mecha Girl” © 2022 Axie Oh

  “Queeroes and Villains” © 2022 Anna-Marie McLemore

  Foreword and “Power Baby Blue Grows Up” © 2022 Barry Lyga

  “Bumped!” © 2022 Mercer Street Creative, Inc.

  Illustrations © 2022 Colleen Doran

  Book design by Hana Anouk Nakamura and Brenda E. Angelilli

  Published in 2022 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  Amulet Books® is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

  ABRAMS The Art of Books

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  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  “Love to Hate” by Lamar Giles

  “Fire That Lasts” by Sarah MacLean

  “Ordinary Kid” by Joseph Bruchac

  “Fly, Lions, Fly” by Morgan Baden

  “My Life as a Houseplant” by Matthew Phillion

  “Aubrey vs. the Ninth Circle of Hell (aka Prom)” by Elizabeth Eulberg

  “Something Borrowed, or The Costume” by Danielle Paige

  “The Knight’s Gambit” by Varian Johnson

  “The Night I Caught a Bullet” by Sterling Gates

  “Mecha Girl” by Axie Oh

  “Queeroes and Villains” by Anna-Marie McLemore

  “Power Baby Blue Grows Up” by Barry Lyga

  “Bumped!” by Paul Levitz

  About the Authors

  FOREWORD

  BY BARRY LYGA

  Superheroes. It’s no secret that I love them.

  It’s beyond love, actually. I think there is a very real possibility that a lifetime of reading about, thinking about, and writing about superheroes has altered my DNA to the point that my alleles generate four-color inks and old newsprint.

  My dad introduced me to superhero stories when I was a child, reading me the old Spider-Man comic strips and buying me Legion of Super-Heroes comics to keep me quiet on the six-hour drives to visit his parents. My mouth closed; my mind opened.

  Triumph. Tragedy. The empyreal. The infernal. Even the mundane, filtered through the fantastical. Superhero stories are, appropriately enough, a sort of super-genre, encompassing all other narrative types: romance, thriller, mystery, horror, coming-of-age. I could go on, but you know them as well as I do. No matter what kind of story you’re telling, there’s a way to tell it with a superhero. Superheroes are flexible (and I’m not just talking about Plastic Man). You can wrap a superhero around any kind of tale, as you will see in the worlds our contributors have conjured for you.

  Island private school for the future’s elite? Check!

  A girl who understands love in a world where emotions have been made illegal? Check!

  A kid who just wants to use his powers to become rich and famous on the basketball court . . . only to have a pesky murder attempt get in the way? Check!

  These stories and ten more await you in this, an anthology that gives a big bear hug to the history of superheroes while at the same time looking forward into a world that is more equitable, more diverse, and more heroic than ever.

  Superheroes must strike that nigh-impossible balance of being both timely and timeless. Look at Superman: In 1938, when he was introduced, the audience understood intuitively that his costume, with its red shorts over a blue leotard, was meant to evoke circus strongmen and similar performers of the day. That aesthetic lasted almost eighty years before DC Comics—presumably tired of our too-hip modern age’s “hilarious” snark about wearing underwear on the outside—deep-sixed the red trunks.

  Funny thing, though—within a few years, everyone agreed that it just looked wrong to see Superman without those red trunks over his tights. DC brought back the trunks, as is right, and those who think it’s the height of comedy to joke about wearing one’s underwear on the outside should ponder the stratospheric success of Madonna or Lady Gaga for a moment and then shut up.

  Superheroes simultaneously provide wish fulfillment and wish destruction. At their very best, they perform a truly amazing trick, showing us what we should aspire to while at the same time acknowledging that no, you’re never really going to fly, because you aren’t from the doomed planet Krypton. Like the rest of us, you were born to a very boring human being.*

  You’re never gonna fly.

  But . . .

  But it’s good to dream of flying.

  It’s good to aspire to things we can’t necessarily achieve. Because along the path to that impossible dream lie thousands of opportunities we’d never see if we hadn’t set out on the journey in the first place.

  And all of us—all of us—can always be better. Do better. Why do I love superheroes? It’s not the action poses, the capes, or the laser breath. It’s knowing that we poor, pathetic, earthbound humans have the capacity to envision and create something better than us, and then strive to achieve that goal every day.

  (And also the action poses, the capes, and the laser breath.)

  When I look at the superhero landscape at the dawn of the third decade of this terrorism-born, fascism-resurgent, pandemic-ravaged millennium, I see a (long-overdue) attempt at diversity and inclusion, which I applaud.

  But in many cases, it’s the same old costumes with new faces under the masks. The same old ideas dressed up in diversity chic.

  The superhero has been with us since 1938. (Some argue it’s been even longer, but let’s not get into that now.) The last truly new, truly radical character was probably Wolverine.

  Who was introduced in 1974.

  So let’s see what we can do about that. Maybe we can re imagine the superhero from the ground up, a creation for the age of Obama and Trump, not Herbert Hoover or Richard Nixon. New powers. New motivations. New perspectives. New worlds.

  A new age of heroes for an age that sorely needs them.

  Tie your towel around your neck, and don’t let your parents catch you jumping off the deck. We’re about to fly.

  —Barry Lyga

  April 2021

  * And for the love of Zeus, spare me the nonsense about “Batman is better than Superman because anyone can be Batman!” Yeah, anyone born into a billion-dollar fortune with a genetic predisposition for great abs can be Batman. Oh, and you get to watch your parents gunned down in front of you. Does that sound like fun?

  FRIDAY

  Ty Revell knows he’s the kind of Hooper you love to hate.

  It’s the first game of the year. The Warton High Trojans are playing in the local university’s sold-out, ten thousand-seat indoor stadium because . . . well, because when you attract fans the way future NBA lottery pick Ty Revell does, that’s what’s necessary.

  It’s all too easy for him. Left-right crossover, spin move, toss ball between the frozen defender’s legs, retrieve ball in paint, windmill slam.

  The crowd goes absolutely bananas. “Re-vell! Re-vell!”

  That’s highlight number six.

  He’s not worried about his points, rebounds, assists, or steals. Those are money automatically. These days he’s more concerned with how many options the local news has for their “Revell Reel.”

  This is a blowout game, though. Coach will probably sit him and the other starters for the fourth, give the bench some playing time. Ty loves doing his job well enough that those guys get the spotlight for a while. Makes him feel like less of a . . . a cheat?

  The thing he’s heard his whole life—from coaches, from teachers, from pastors preaching the gospel truth—is that success comes from hard work. Overcoming daily struggles, making tough decisions, and striving for incremental improvement is what makes you a winner. Supposedly, excellence requires sacrifice.

  From the time Ty was five years old, first glimpsed the secret colors of the world around him, and felt the spectacular way his body reacted, he’s been excellent at pretty much everything. Effortlessly.

  The other team inbounds the ball. Ty backs off the baseline, gives the dude room to get it in. He sees how the pass will happen a second before it leaves his opponent’s hands. He knows the ball’s spin and speed and who’s gonna catch it, even though that guy’s nowhere near Ty’s line of sight. He sees it in the minor twitches of muscles, the way the currents of air circulate in a spectrum of colors invisible to everyone but Ty. The signals, impression
s, premonitions—whatever you want to call them—make his muscles tingle, and it’s only a conscious decision to slow down, to play normal, that prevents his hand from snapping to the ball the way a frog’s tongue snaps to a fly, then zooming to the basket for another soaring dunk. Highlight number seven.

  Instead, he allows the small forward to catch the ball and break for a hole in Warton’s defense. Ty stays a step behind, making a good show of going for the block, smacking the backboard a microsecond after the ball touches it and spins through the hoop. Scouts have been dinging him for his defense all year. Irritating, because he can stop any offensive play anytime he wants, but more flaws in his game mean less suspicion.

  The next play, Ty hits a three to close the quarter and trots to the bench while waving at the crowd cheering him on. He’s come to expect the standing ovations. Would probably feel weird if they didn’t jump to their feet and scream his name, like maybe he’s holding back too much. The electricity in the air is mostly the kind he’s grown used to. But there’s something else crackling.

  Something he doesn’t like the taste of (oily), the smell of (old firecrackers), or the feel of (pinpricks, heat, aggression).

  There’s a guy standing in the bleachers, but he ain’t clapping.

  Not totally unusual—if Ty did that spin move between-the-legs shit to the team you root for, would you clap? But, like, this dude isn’t even watching the court. He’s turned all the way around, facing the crowd, looking for someone. Also, through Ty’s special perception, dude’s stained red, like the girl in that movie with the prom and the pig’s blood.

  “Revell!” Coach barks. He wants Ty with the team.

  When the fourth quarter starts and the crowd’s seated, Ty’s the weirdo not paying attention to the game. Because he’s watching that guy. As Ty twists in his folding chair to see what he’s doing, Mr. Red turns away, still searching.

  Ty senses movement—feels a pull—from ten rows up. A woman stands with an empty soda cup, excuses herself as she moves toward the stairs. Perhaps on her way to concessions for a refill or the bathroom. Mr. Red isn’t going to give her the chance.

  Dude spots the woman a second after Ty does and explodes out of his seat, bumping outstretched knees and toppling half-full popcorn buckets with no concern. The people he knocks into voice their displeasure. They grow alarmingly silent when Mr. Red pulls the pistol from inside his jacket.

  A lot happens between the moment that gun appears and someone screams.

  Mr. Red makes it to the aisle; the bloody sheen through which Ty perceives him blazes. The woman, whoever she is to Mr. Red, can’t possibly see him; she’s looking the other way. Yet she goes still in her tracks, maybe sensing the danger that’s smacking Ty in the face in a regular human instinct kinda way. The gut punch that warns you about the bad thing coming, but maybe not in time to save you.

  She faces the man, recognition and some grim history hardening her features. The normal spectrum of colors in which Ty sees her shifts to the same crimson as Mr. Red’s aura. Still, no one screams. It’s all happening that fast.

  Ty sees it the way he sees things on the court. The infinitesimal muscle twitches. The currents in the air. Mr. Red’s gun has a seven-pound pull, and he’s exerting five and a half pounds already. No one’s going to stop him. No one has to stop him.

  Ty almost does what he’s perfected on the court: hold back. He almost makes himself look at the play Warton’s running while bracing for the sound of the pistol and hoping Mr. Red has terrible aim.

  But if he misses her, who else will get hit? That gun’s got fifteen rounds—a count that pops into Ty’s head, though he knows very little about firearms. What if Mr. Red squeezes that trigger over and over and over? Even if it’s just one perfect shot, what would that mean? Letting that woman die because Ty doesn’t want to be that other kind of hero?

  That’s not reason enough.

  Mr. Red is exerting six pounds of pressure on his seven-pound trigger when Ty moves.

  The world slows, then stops. If there were time, Ty would hold back a little. There’s not, so this is what it feels like to slice between seconds and breaths and the shift from six pounds of pressure to six and a half. He plants one foot on the scorer’s table and propels himself forward with such force the wood splinters. He sails over the heads of the people Mr. Red terrorized while stalking his target, clearing thirty-five feet, landing beside the gunman with a whoosh! before snatching the pistol with his right hand, mangling Mr. Red’s trigger finger in the process, then planting the meaty edge of his left hand firmly against Mr. Red’s sternum. Ty’s intent is to shove the man to the ground, where others might jump in and restrain him.

  He’s not holding back, though. First time in a long time.

  The force of his shove is the same force he’s just exerted to make a world-record-breaking long jump. That force lifts Mr. Red and propels him a long way—to center court.

  The crunch when the man lands stops play as effectively as a referee’s whistle.

  No one understands at first. Did a crazy fan run onto the court? That doesn’t make sense, because he didn’t run—he flew. And the way his legs are angled, like a difficult geometry problem, he may never run again.

  “Hey! Hey!” someone yells, pointing.

  Recognition—muscles, air, color—reminds Ty that there’s still a gun in his hand, and that can be a whole other problem for a Black boy like him, so in a motion that would look like a glitch in reality to anyone who’s quick enough to catch it, he disassembles the gun and drops the pieces.

  Everyone’s staring, something he usually welcomes. No cheers this time. Only a stadium’s worth of silence.

  Until Mr. Red’s pained wailing shreds the air and begins the work of tearing Ty’s life apart.

  QBC News at Six, sports segment:

  “In local news, Warton High School’s nationally recognized basketball team is under investigation in an alleged cheating scandal. Cell phone footage from a recent game appears to show the school’s star player displaying preternatural abilities, something long banned in amateur and professional sports. Pending further investigation, consequences for the lauded program could include—”

  MONDAY

  “Jesus!” Coach drops his satchel and clutches his chest.

  For a nightmarish second, Ty fears he’s driven the man to a heart attack, but his senses confirm Coach’s heart is strong and beating normally. Though his spiking adrenaline has the air tasting like a storm cloud. Ty shifts uncomfortably in the office chair.

  “How did you—?” Coach looks to the open window behind his desk. They are on the third floor.

  “I didn’t feel like walking past everyone,” Ty says. Coach has never been concerned about how Ty got into his office before. He probably has a lot of questions now. Who wouldn’t? Ty says, “I tried to text you this weekend.”

  Coach gathers his bag, then makes his way to the high-backed chair behind his desk. “My phone got broken during all the commotion on Friday.”

  His heart skips. So that’s a lie.

  “Oh,” Ty says. “I’m sorry. About your phone.”

  “Is there something you need?”

  “I thought you might want to talk about . . . it. What happened.”

  So many conversations in this office over the last three years. Everything from advice about girls to their favorite movies. Rarely do they discuss basketball, because Ty has all the stuff on the court handled. In this office, they relax. Ty says things he can’t say to his dad. Coach has said Ty reminds him of his son, who’s grown up and works in a big city a few hours north.

  If Coach is disappointed, Ty can take it. He just wishes Coach would say that. Ty wants them to talk again.

  Coach rotates his chair halfway, facing the trophies and plaques along the far wall. “I’ve been advised by the district’s legal counsel not to discuss the incident that occurred on Friday night.”

  “Legal counsel?”

  Coach spins toward Ty again. His face is stone. “You should tell your parents in case they want to hire someone.”

  Hire someone? For what? Ty blurts, “I’m sorry. OK? I’m sorry.”

  Coach grinds his teeth, his jaw pulsing bright purple in Ty’s spectral vision.