Chum

August in Philadelphia is perhaps the worst August a person can experience in America, from my limited point of view. I’ve had Ventnor Augusts, where the heat turns the ocean water into a cooling, salty spray and ruins my hair, and I’ve had New York City Augusts, stuck inside the well air-conditioned home of an uncle or grand-uncle, and I’ve even had a Florida August where it’s so damp and muggy that it just sort of washes over you, and the sweat becomes something you get used to. Philadelphia Augusts, in my uneducated opinion, suck really hard. It’s just warm enough that I’m sweating without exerting any effort, and just humid enough that my sweat isn’t evaporating easily, making me feel like any movement is being done through a fine layer of molasses. My hair isn’t as bad as it is in Ventnor, but it’s still frizzed up to hell, collected behind me in a loose low ponytail.

There’s a basketball court near me, so that’s where I spend any days where the weather is just a little bit more tolerable than the average, like today. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still miserable, but misery loves company, and it’s easier with friends.

It’s your average basketball court – two hoops, outdoor, raw asphalt, painted white lines fading with age. The whole thing is surrounded with a rectangle of eight-feet-high chain link fence, and neither hoop has had any actual netting for years. I’ve told my dad to bug people in the city government about it, and he promised that he had, but evidently fixing the many basketball hoops throughout Philly isn’t a super high priority. Understandable. The sky is bright blue, with the sun flickering on and off through a parade of thick, dark clouds. It’ll definitely rain later today.

There’s a couple kids I don’t recognize, along with “the posse”, as my mom refers to them. Kate, Jenna, Tasha, Lilly, and Marcus, who I do basically everything with. My best-friends-forever-for-life.

Kate’s currently playing Horse, and when I say playing, I really mean annihilating this poor sixth-grader. Kate, or Kaitlyn Smith when she’s in trouble, is about as tomboyish as they come – short-cropped sandy hair, freckles splattered across her face like she just lost a fight with a pepper shaker, and constantly adorned in whatever was comfortable, fashion be damned. We’re sort of like weird alternate universe fraternal twins, except she’s got pinker skin than me and her hair isn’t curly and she’s good at basketball like how I’m good at soccer.

Marcus Johnson is lounging off to the side, deep in one of his books. He’s got these thick, round glasses that he pushes up his nose every few minutes, which would look comical if he wasn’t built like a linebacker. Marcus is our group’s token boy, the constant in our ever-changing girl dynamics. We don’t have much in common but we get along well enough somehow, and his presence is enough to ward off weirdos, so he’s sort of like the group’s bodyguard. Even though most of us could probably beat him in a fight, because he’s a huge nerd whose sole time-consuming hobby is superhero forum gossip.

Lilly Rodriguez is at the center of the chaos, as usual. She’s got this wild curly hair that’s somehow perfectly controlled and a dimpled smile that you can’t say no to, even when she’s being a pest, which is frequently. But, like, a pest in the ladybug way, or the Japanese beetle way, not a pest in the mosquito or spotted lanternfly way. She’s the one who brings all the music carts and her speakers to make sure we all get to enjoy her taste in bands, which, I’ll admit, I have some mixed feelings about. I think, from what I can overhear of the argument, someone tried to slap the off switch on her speakers, which is a real dick move even if I’m not really into hypersoul. Just ask nicely!

Off to the side, on one of the cracked, faded benches, is Tasha Reynolds. Tasha is the type of person who manages to make frizzy hair and large glasses look downright sophisticated. She’s always got a book with her, as usual, and right now, she’s half-watching the game and half-reading some thick tome that’s probably about quantum physics or something. We’ve been friends since kindergarten, and I would trust her with my life.

Lastly, there’s Jenna Nguyen. Jenna is leaning against the fence, casually dribbling a basketball as she observes the game with a critical eye. She’s my best friend since middle school, and possibly the only person I’ve ever met who is more willing to backtalk authority figures than I am. Jenna’s got this long, black hair that she always ties back when she’s doing sports, and her eyes are constantly moving, taking in everything. She’s the type of person who doesn’t take crap from anyone, and she’s constantly sketching in her notebook, turning our everyday lives into works of art. By far, the best artist I know. No, like, better than that. Better!

And then there’s me – plain old Sam Small. I’m here melting my skin off until it sloughs, sitting underneath a little parasol that someone had put into a concrete block and attached a solar panel to the top of. It wasn’t anyone I know, it’s just sort of been there for a year now, and having an outlet I can charge my phone and run a miniature fan through is the only thing making me not want to go buy a bag of ice and bludgeon myself to death with it.

Swish. The basketball hits the rim, rolls around a couple of times, and then plops straight down to earth. Three sixth graders all slap their hands down in rough synchronicity (that’s a SAT word that means “at the same time”) while Kate collects five bucks from each of them. Some day I worry that she’s going to get someone real mad by hustling them, but she can handle herself. I’d be up there playing ball with her, maybe to make the odds even more lopsided in her favor, but there’s something in the way.

I can smell everyone’s blood. Well, not everyone healthy and cutless, but Kate spilled herself over the floor earlier the day and I can still smell the crusted-up blood faintly oozing out of her knee, and her scraped palms, and with those open that means I can smell the rest of her veins and arteries – her “vascular system”, as my mom informed me. It’s not just the people in my immediate vicinity, though, because there’s blood everywhere. It gets fuzzier the further out it goes, like turning into a vague mist, but I can smell everyone that’s having their time of the month, everyone that’s scraped themselves up or cut themselves accidentally on a kitchen knife. In at least a block around me, maybe two blocks. It’s hard to explain because I’m not like… seeing them. I can tell where they are in space but without seeing them at all, like someone put a blood-compass in my brain. There’s no overlay on my vision like a pair of spy goggles. Just overwhelming information.

The other group that had been occupying the basketball court give up the territorial dispute in the face of Kate’s dominating performance and Lilly refusing to give up on her music. This suits me just fine, because the fewer things I have to focus on overall, eyes, ears, etc., the less overwhelming the blood sense becomes. I wonder if I could get a lobotomy to turn it off. I’m too busy paying attention to all the singing blood around me to notice when my actual eyeballs are filled with Kate, waving her hand in front of my face.

“Hello? Earth to Small. What’s good?” she asks, gently thumping her palm into my nose.

Now, I’m not super into superheroes, fictional or otherwise, but I know enough to know about secret identities and shit like that. The problem is that it’s kind of hard to hide the teeth. Everyone already knows about it, but not everyone knows about the blood thing, and it’s making me have to do a bit of momentary algebra in my head. I trust my friends, but, let’s say ten years down the line somehow I’ve gotten roped into being a superhero – if I reveal everything to them, am I putting them in danger? I mean, real supervillains going after someone’s family and friends is seen as a below-the-belt punch, but I can’t predict that everyone I’ll ever encounter in my life is willing to play above the table.

It feels weird that this is something I even have to consider now. I kind of hate it.

I keep it to myself. “Sorry, just dealing with… the teeth thing. You know how when you feel your teeth with your tongue it always feels way bigger in your like… in your head? Like the sort of mental image of what your tongue is feeling with the sense of touch. It’s a lot weirder when suddenly all your teeth are replaced with shark teeth.”

“Yeah, that sounds like kind of a shitty superpower. I’m not going to lie. You can still eat with them jawns though right? Like, you haven’t been starving yourself, yeah, babe?” Kate asks, showing an inkling of genuine concern in her blue eyes, bending down into a squat to meet me at eye level. I’ve never exactly been comfortable with eye contact but I maintain it to avoid looking guilty.

“Yeah, I can eat fine. I’ve still got like… molars and shit,” I answer, pulling my lips up to show. “Shee?”

“Oh, that’s so cool even if it kind of sucks as a power. You don’t even have like, a little super strength? Can you breathe underwater?” she asks, bending down and pointing her phone flashlight into my mouth so she can see what my molars have turned into. Which is to say, they still look mostly like molars, but the grooves and crevices have deepened significantly, giving it an appearance like it’s covered in serrated spikes.

I shake my head. “I wish. I think I can like… drink saltwater now? Like, I think it gave me super-kidneys, but I still need to breathe. I tried, trust me. Also, saltwater still tastes gross.”

“Man, that sucks,” Marcus’s voice rings out from the side of the bench I’m sitting on. “Super-liver? That means you probably can’t get drunk anymore.”

“No, super-kidneys. Actually, I’m not sure, what part of your body filters water?”

“That would be your kidneys, yeah,” he replies.

“Who knows! Maybe it means you can drink a lot of bad stuff before it starts poisoning you. You could just become the hardest partier on the block,” Kate chimes in, standing up to her full height and leaning back to crack her spine.

“Well, I’m not a supe doctor so I don’t think I can really say authoritatively one way or the other,”

“‘Authoritatively’, you’re such a nerd,” Kate says, flicking my nose with her finger.

“If you think that’s nerdy, watch this; your kidneys are probably fine,” Tasha chides, not even looking up from her book. “The problem with seawater isn’t necessarily that it’s toxic to your kidneys. Basically, when you have too much salt, you pee it out, but if you don’t have enough non-salted liquid in your body, your kidneys will start to fail because the salt will build up and it will be drawing freshwater from the rest of your body that it doesn’t have. So what’s probably happening is that either your body can spontaneously generate new water internally in response to too much salt, which basically makes you immune to dehydration, or, what I think is more likely, you’ve probably developed some sort of mechanism to forcefully excrete excess salt without requiring water. I would be surprised if you just somehow had super-efficient kidneys that violate physics when processing urine.”

“Gross!” “Ew,” Kate and I shout in unison. “Dude, don’t talk about pee like that,” Kate says for me.

“Oh, don’t be such a baby,” Tasha replies. “Just drink some seawater and then see if you can notice any sort of alternate excretions, like maybe developing some sort of salt powder on your skin. Or maybe you just sweat it out and have brine sweat? It’s honestly kind of fascinating.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re really weird sometimes, Tasha?” Kate says, once again vocalizing my thoughts for me.

“Can we please stop saying the word ‘excrete’?” I ask politely.

Tasha adjusts her glasses and laughs at my misfortune. Jenna and Lilly have begun meandering their way over to the bench, presumably to see what all the hubbub is about, when I see another person getting closer. Well, I notice them with my weird brain before I see them with my eyes, and bend over, craning my neck, watching them approach.

Everyone else turns around to try and get a look at what I’m looking at. But I know immediately, because her silhouette is unmistakable, from the way she walks to the way she pushes the gate in the chain link open.

Her name is Liberty Belle, leader of the Delaware Valley Defenders. And she’s headed straight towards us. Lilly goes white as a sheet and turns her music off immediately, I assume fearing a noise citation. Marcus shuffles along behind me, while Kate cocks her hip out with a hand on it like she’s trying to intimidate an adult with, like, half a foot of height on her. Jenna immediately whips out her notebook and starts drawing, Tasha scoots over on the bench to give the rest of us a wide berth so she can read uninterrupted, and I can only stare.

“Hey, hey, don’t let me interrupt you. Everything okay around here, citizens?” she asks, the most confident grin in the world across her face. I’m distracted immensely for multiple reasons, but her smile is definitely one of them. She’s easily six feet tall, with dark skin, kind eyes, and a round cloud of locs around her head like a halo that floats and bobs with her movement. On a patrol like this, she’s wearing a lighter version of her normal uniform, with what looks like a black unitard, several bands around her arms, and some well-shined brass armor pieces – a breastplate, shoulders, and shinguards over top of red-lined sneakers. “What’s the matter? Y’all see a ghost up in this jawn?”

“Are we about to get arrested?” Kate asks. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Tasha pinching the bridge of her nose, but Liberty Belle just laughs.

“I’m sure some people would like me to hassle a couple of middle schoolers playing basketball without supervision, but y’all know that’s probably not necessary. I don’t see any weapons or drugs or dead bodies. Y’all not hiding a dead body from me, are you?” she asks, breaking out into more boisterous laughter. Her voice is deep and comfortable, like the verbal equivalent of a pillow, and I realize that my mouth has been hanging open for about the past twenty seconds.

“No, ma’am,” I break the silence.

She smiles at me. “Hey, kiddo, pass me a ball, yeah? Or are we just gonna sit on a bench instead of enjoying this beautiful summer day?”

Kate snorts. “You’re, like, thirty, and a superhero. Not a fair match for me.” She says, passing her the basketball that had been tucked under her free arm anyway.

Liberty Belle catches it with one hand. “Oh, I’m not that great at basketball. But, if you want to make it a little fairer, why don’t we do a little six-on-one? It’s been a quiet day, nobody’s dying, I could really use the distraction.”

That gets everyone’s attention. She passes the ball back to Kate.