He pulled back the hammer of the gun. I instinctively raised my hand, fingers outstretched, and an orgasmic sensation—like the fluttering wings of a thousand butteruies—swept through my body.

  A blue orb exploded from the palm of my hand, and when it hit the killer’s chest, he was engulfed in a pulsating electric blue light.

  He shook and dropped to the floor and stopped moving as smoke rose from his body. Smelled like rotten meat had been barbecued.

  The other gunman fired and I pivoted but the bullet sliced through my shoulder. I sure wasn’t faster than no speeding bullet. And this time there was pain. But not anything I couldn’t handle. The terrified killer tried to make a run for it, but I lunged and snatched him by the back of the neck. I bounced him off the hallway walls, breaking those framed paintings of Jesus and plenty of the Mexican’s bones.

  When I showed up at my cousin Benny’s workshop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he was stunned to say the least. Benny was Felicia’s only son. We hadn’t seen each other in years. He’d attended MIT to study engineering. Now had a successful career as both an inventor and a designer of special mechanical F/X for big budget sci-fi and fantasy movies. Benny was living in a very different world from where he started in the South Bronx.

  Though the whole story was outrageous, my physical change was enough to convince. It was agonizing for me to deliver the news about his mother’s grim death. He took it really hard and we both cried for a long time.

  Some family reunion.

  While I showered, my hands soaped the impressive curves of my body, and I was amazed at how supple and silky my skin was, the firmness of my breasts. As I recalled firing the blue orb from my palm, I got that tingly feeling again. My fingers slipped between my smooth thighs and I was immediately lost in self-pleasured bliss.

  Afterwards, Benny bandaged my bullet wound, fed me dinner and gave me clean clothes. Then I demonstrated some of my powers. Benny was completely enthralled and kept saying: “Fucking awesome,” over and over. Then he anxiously watched me shoot up the last bit of dope. Both of his older brothers o.d.’d on heroin, so I knew how tough it was for him to witness my daily drug ritual.

  “This is the craziest shit in the world, cuz. What are you gonna do?”

  “First. Make Johnny Grande pay.”

  “I have something to show you,” Benny said as he flicked on the fluorescent lights, illuminating his vast workshop. There were all kinds of stuff in various stages of design. Futuristic looking weapons. Working robots. A sleek, black BMW sports bike was parked in the corner. “You can use that to get around. It’ll hurl ya from a zero to sixty mph in about 2.8 seconds.”

  “It’ll sure beat the subway. You know what? I think I need some kind of disguise.”

  “You’re goin’ to the whole extent with this superhero gig?”

  “Grande and his men still believe Mildred Sosa is just some fucked up junkie. He’s got crews lookin’ all over for me. If he knows what I look like now, it’s easier to find me. I’m not invincible.”

  “You managed to dodge a bullet.”

  “Barely. And Grande’s got a whole army backing him.”

  “Okay. I might be able to help you.”

  The outfit he came up with was pieced together from different movie costumes Benny had lying around. Leather motorcycle boots with crisscrossing straps and heavy buckles. Leather pants with metal skull studs running up the sides. A padded top with built-in body armor, so in case I took another bullet, I had a better chance of surviving. The final item was a helmet. It was gladiator style, with rows of sharp spikes. Fierce.

  I stared at my image in the mirror as I slipped on a leather cloak with a hood. Not the perfect outfit but it was going to do the trick: give me a secret identity and maybe even inspire a little fear.

  Word on the street quickly spread that Johnny Grande’s operation was falling to pieces. At first Grande thought it was rival dealers. But his shit was being destroyed, not ripped off. Then there was the crazy talk about a woman in black riding a motorcycle. Some vigilante. Super speed. Super this. Super that. Grande chalked it up to mass hysteria.

  When Carlos stumbled into Grande’s study, all fucked up with a broken arm, covered in soot and blood and babbling, Grande paid attention.

  “This loca burned down the warehouse and wasted most of the men. If I hadn’t seen with my own fuckin’ eyes …”

  Carlos winced when Grande smashed his metal fist on the top of his precious handcrafted desk and split it in two. He stood up, massive chest heaving, eyes squinting, gold-capped teeth clenched as if he was going to go berserk.

  Instead, he calmly said, “Find out whatever you can about this superbitch,” and walked out of the study.

  Grande put out a bounty. Offered big money for her head, or for any information that might give the drug kingpin a serious edge against this new kind of enemy.

  The best info they got was from some homeless guy who’d seen the superhero on a rooftop shooting up manteca. The man recognized the smell when she cooked it.

  This “barrio avenger” as they were calling her was a junkie? Grande figured that somehow the H was helping her powers.

  Grande had an idea. It could cost him dearly but that was a chance he was willing to take.

  Junkies around the Bronx were dropping like flies. Heroin laced with Fentanyl, an extremely powerful painkiller, was causing lethal overdoses.

  Word went out on the street that if the so-called barrio avenger didn’t hand herself over to Grande, the entire East Coast supply of dope would be poisoned. Dealers and junkies all over the city would go nuts. And they’d all want the superhero dead.

  Grande’s limo was sandwiched between the lead vehicle, a Bronco SUV, and a colossal Hummer carrying half a dozen highly trained and heavily armed mercenaries flown in from Mexico. The small caravan cruised across the Third Avenue Bridge, which connected Manhattan to the Bronx. It was late at night and there was light traffic.

  “I think this scheme of yours is gonna backfire big time,” Carlos said as Grande cut the tip off a Cuban cigar, stuffed it in his mouth and lit it. “Killin’ off your customers isn’t the best thing for bizness. Other dealers are goin’ to war with us ’cause they think you’ve lost it and figure you’re weak.”

  “Whatever it takes to bring down that puta. We’ll rebuild.”

  A blue orb of light struck the lead vehicle and it suddenly flipped over and rolled. Tires screeched and cars smashed into each other.

  The driver hit the brakes, the limo swerved and slammed into the guardrail.

  “It’s her,” Grande said and quickly dashed out of the limo.

  In the middle of the massive pileup, lit by a jarring glare of headlights, he saw her on the sleek bike, wearing a hooded cloak. She glared at Grande, pulled down the hood of her cloak, revealing a wicked metallic helmet.

  Bitch wanted a war. She was going to get one.

  As I climbed off the motorcycle, one of Grande’s men hopped on top of the limo, kneeled and calmly placed an RPG over his shoulder. I’d seen enough movies to know what kind of damage a rocket grenade launcher could do.

  He fired and the rocket came straight at me. I dove and rolled. A powerful explosion blew my bike to smithereens and a couple of cars along with it.

  I held my palm out and focused. My body tingled. The blue orb struck the thug with the RGP. He was through. The other thugs fired a volley of bullets. I took cover behind an overturned SUV. Sparks. Sound of bullets ricocheting all around me.

  I got ready to make my move when the gunfire abruptly stopped.

  My ears were buzzing. I waited a moment and then peeked over the wrecked SUV. Grande’s men had dragged innocent bystanders out of their cars and held the barrels of their machine guns to the hostages’ heads.

  Grande removed his leather overcoat. “Come on, Barrio Avenger. You and me. Unless you want the blood of all these innocent people on your hands.”

  Bile rose in my throat. Grande was a total wack job. I’d lost count of all the heroin addicts who were dead because of me. All of this was turning out way different from what I’d anticipated.

  I stepped out from behind the vehicle.

  “Cute outfit by the way.”

  “Let them go,” I said. “These people have nothing to do with this.”

  Grande marched toward me. He was gigantic. Light glinted off his intimidating robotic appendage and his eyes were filled with a strange sense of calm. He knew he held all the cards.

  “You wanna play superhero? What’s that line from Spider-Man number one? Something about great responsibility and power?”

  “I can kill you where you stand.”

  “Yes. But then they’ll be plenty of dead hostages. You chose the wrong mother to fuck wit’, baby girl. I got no rules. Heroes do.”

  I debated my options. How many more innocent lives was I willing to risk? What made me think that I could pull this off in the first place? Superpowers or not, I was still nothing more than a junkie. I sure was no damn hero.

  Grande hammered the side of my head and the force of the blow knocked me to the ground. Next thing I knew, he had me by the throat and slapped me against a beam of the bridge. Though I didn’t intend to defend myself, my instincts took over, and I kicked him in the chest. He let go and performed an acrobatic backflip and landed on his feet with the grace of an Olympic gymnast.

  Then his men started shooting the hostages.

  I leapt into super-speed mode, and in a matter of seconds, I managed to take out most of Grande’s hit team.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take all of them.

  “You got cojones, nena. But it’s over.” In the grip of his bionic fingers, Grande clutched a stunned teenage boy by the back of the neck and dangled him over the Harlem River. “Come here or the kid’s fish food.”

  I gazed into the boy’s desperate, tear-filled eyes and did as Grande ordered.

  “You win.”

  “Take off that helmet.” I obeyed and tossed it at his feet. Grande grinned flamboyantly and kicked it away. “Damn, you’re quite a stunner.”

  Grande’s free hand came up quick and something pricked me in the neck. I went into a seizure and dropped to my knees.

  “Just gave you a shot of Naxolone.” There was a syringe in his hand. “It’s an opioid antagonist. Blocks off the heroin from your opiate receptors. Yeah, I know heroin’s got something to do with your powers.”

  While I was figuring out how the hell Grande found out my secret, my throat swelled, my muscles cramped, and I realized I was going through immediate, hyper intense withdrawal symptoms.

  He released his grip. The boy screamed. I beat back the pain and sprinted into action and the world around me stopped moving.

  But I didn’t.

  I dove, and as I flew past Johnny Grande, my left hand grabbed his shirt collar, and I used him as an anchor as I swooped down. The boy appeared to hover in mid-air. I seized his outstretched hand, flung him upward and back onto the safety of bridge. The heel of my boots jammed against the guardrail as I landed in a crouch right behind Grande, hooked my right arm around his thick neck and heaved the sonofabitch with the last ounce of strength I had left.

  We toppled through the air, and time returned to normal as Grande managed to twist around and clamp his robotic fingers around my throat.

  He hit the water first and the impact of his wide back against the surface caused a huge splash, which was so loud they probably heard it in Brooklyn. Grande dragged me down with him and we were immediately swallowed up by blackness. Went down fast like a dead mobster wearing cement shoes.

  Though I could see nothing, I grabbed Grande’s metal arm, focused with all my will power, and an electrical charge hit him and forced him to release his death grip.

  For a moment I watched Grande plunge to the bottom of the Harlem River. His body went into wild spasms and jerks as bolts of blue lightning fried him. Fried him good.

  I frantically tried to swim upwards and realized my powers were completely gone.

  One other little problem, I was a superhero who didn’t know how to swim.

  Perfect.

  While I struggled to make it to the surface, my lungs filled with water and I prayed that if I made it, someone would jump into the freezing river and save me. Otherwise I was going to drown.

  I hit the surface, threw up water, and I sank under the water again. I thought about how in the universe of comic books, good always triumphed over evil.

  In real life, nothing was ever so simple.

  Sometimes it was about the luck of the draw. And as I heard the sound of a helicopter coming, I hoped that I still had at least little bit of luck left.

  THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN

  by ALEXANDRA SOKOLOFF

  The B building was burning.

  Anna could barely catch a breath through the smoke stinging her eyes and lungs. The wide dark halls were thick with it, curling, wafting.

  A chemical fire? Those morons from Litwack’s 3rd period lab, trying to shut down the building? There had been a half-dozen fire drills since the beginning of school … .

  But why were the lights out? The only illumination was from the red EXIT signs above the side stairwell doors. The whole building was dark … just the drifting smoke, tinged red from the neon.

  Alarm bells were ringing, but far, far away.

  And why was she alone? Anna looked around her for what oddly felt like the first time, blinking through the smoky gloom. The cavernous halls were empty, no one in the open classrooms either.

  There was the sound of sobbing, though, from somewhere, resonating faintly in the tomblike dark.

  And softly, softly, screams. Screams.

  She glanced down the center aisle of the classroom to the left of her, down the collapsing fiberglass curtain that served as a wall between classrooms—and froze.

  Male legs in khaki pants and reindeer socks stuck out from under sweet Mr. Brooke’s desk. The legs were stiff and still. Anna thought absurdly of the Wicked Witch of the East, how she’d run screaming from the living room when she was five and had first seen The Wizard of Oz on TV and those black-and-white-striped witch legs had curled up and rolled under the house.

  In her peripheral vision, a dark shadow ran suddenly past.

  It was fast. Sinuous and snakelike.

  Anna whipped around, staring down the corridor. Silence, stillness—a heavy stillness. She held her breath, watching, and the shadow fell again across the wall. A chill ran through Anna’s entire body.

  It had two heads.

  Anna unfroze and ran for the main staircase. It felt unbearably slow, like running through sand. Like running—

  In a dream.

  The alarms started to shrill—piercing, pulsing beats.

  Her breath was coming faster, her legs moving even more agonizingly slowly. Her pulse was pounding in her head, the sound distorted and visceral. She knew the shadow was behind her—she could hear a double breath … .

  Madness …

  She reached the edge of the main staircase, grabbed the rail to pull herself forward onto the stairs—

  At the foot of the staircase, on the landing, Tyler Marsh stood looking up at her, as real as she was—perfect profile and long dark silky hair falling into his eyes. The alarms pulsed around them, vibrating through her body.

  “Run,” he said, without opening his mouth.

  And she woke up.

  The clock alarm was bleating in shrill pulses, five a.m. blinking redly from the digital screen. The morning was pitch black. Anna’s heart was still pounding crazily in her chest, shaking the mattress. She reached clumsily for the clock to silence it, then lay back, dazed and groggy. The dream was gone.

  The stench of smoke was in her nose.

  Shower to wash away the lingering smell of smoke, then way too long with the hair dryer—reluctant to shut off the warmth. She mostly avoided her own eyes in the mirror, but sometimes, with her thick dark hair blowing around her, she was almost pretty.

  She negotiated the tiny but labyrinthinely cluttered living room by the light of the TV screen. Her father was passed out and snoring in the huge vile La-Z-Boy, empty beer bottles scattered at his feet.

  Anna grabbed a Diet Coke from the kitchen fridge, grabbed her backpack from the hall, and plunged out the front door into the chilly dark.

  She made it to the corner just in time to catch her bus, and rode in rumbling darkness, alone with the bus driver and two Latina housekeepers, over potholed streets, under the towering silhouettes of palms and old-growth trees, through sleeping San Gorgonio.

  San G was a base town, or had been until the base was shut down in the closures of the nineties, plunging the city into economic depression. The war in Iraq had not revived the base. The dying town sprawled in a semi-desert ringed by mountains, pocketed in a valley which trapped heat and smog for the entire summer, only somewhat relieved in fall by the winds Raymond Chandler famously described as “those hot dry Santa Anas that come through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch.” And brought asthma and arson and devastating wildfires, Anna knew all that.

  But the winds also signaled change and excitement, and sometimes, even, magic—like that fall in first grade when she for some reason had brought an umbrella to school on a cloudless Santa Ana day and discovered, walking home through the gusts, that she could fly, actually fly off the ground like Mary Poppins, with the umbrella open against the winds … flying. And for one day, she was magical—

  She sat up on the cracked vinyl bus seat with a gasp.

  She’d dreamed about Tyler last night. Definitely. Definitely something about Tyler. Something she couldn’t quite remember, but so intimate it made her stomach flutter.

  But the dream hadn’t been good. That much she remembered. Not good at all.

  Her chest tightened with anticipation and unease as the bus shuddered to a stop in front of the high school.