Mom sees my face before I'm through the door.

  She doesn't gasp or anything. Rachel Small stopped gasping around the third or fourth time her daughter came home looking like she'd lost a fight with a sidewalk. What she does is go very still at the kitchen counter, wine glass halfway to her mouth, and her eyes do this quick medical scan thing - left cheek, jaw, the way I'm holding my ribs. Cataloging. I've seen EMTs do the same thing. Triage at the threshold.

  "Before you say anything," I start.

  "I wasn't going to say anything."

  "You were going to say something with your face."

  "My face is my business, Samantha."

  Dad's at the table with his laptop and a stack of city planning overlays, reading glasses pushed up on his forehead. He looks at me, looks at Mom, looks back at me, and takes his glasses off entirely, which is the Ben Small equivalent of a five-alarm siren.

  "Four guys," I say, dropping my bag on the floor and pulling out a chair. "Songbirds. Broad daylight on Torresdale. I didn't fight back, I have a police report with a badge number and an incident number, a woman recorded the whole thing on video, and I already texted the group chat."

  I let that sit.

  Mom puts the wine glass down without drinking from it, which might be a first. Dad folds his glasses, unfolds them, folds them again.

  "You didn't fight back," Dad says.

  "Nope."

  "Because you chose not to."

  Silence. The refrigerator hums. I can hear Maxwell listening to his phone in the shower upstairs, just barely - almost certainly a nature documentary. Mom and Dad are having a whole psychic conversation I'm not privy to.

  "The bomb threat at school," Mom says. "And then this."

  "Yeah. I told the cop that. He's including it in the report."

  "Sam--"

  "I know what you're going to say. And I hear you. But I need you to hear me when I say this - I wasn't out looking for trouble. I was walking to the center because kids were scared. Lily handled it before I got there. Tasha called 911 from school. The system worked. I just happened to get intercepted on the way."

  Dad puts his glasses on the table. "Who's Megalodon?"

  Oh.

  I look at him. He looks at me. Mom's watching both of us.

  "Where did you hear that?" I ask, which is a stalling tactic and we all know it.

  "Mr. Donovan was asking a couple of people around the neighborhood. He wanted to send a care package. Said a cape in a shark helmet told him her name was Megalodon." Dad's voice is very even. "He's known us for fifteen years, Sam. He didn't put it together. But I did."

  I could lie. I could deflect, change the subject, crack a joke. But I'm so tired of lying to these two, and they've earned better, and honestly I think the lying is worse for my mental health than the caping at this point.

  "Yeah," I say. "That's me."

  Mom sits down.

  "Before you--"

  "How long?" she asks.

  "Tuesday night. The scanner went off and there was a break-in four blocks away and I just - I couldn't not go. Some streets still have snowdrifts five feet high. The cops don't show up at midnight, not fast enough. And then the only other things I've done are just going running. I promise. See, I'm not crossing my fingers or anything."

  "Three times," Dad says. My Mom mutters something about crossing fingers and me being nearly 17 and somehow it actually hurts a little more.

  "Three times. And I told Amelia, and I told the team, and I'm not doing it alone."

  Another one of those silent conversations. I sit there and let them have it. My ribs ache and my jaw is sore and I want to go upstairs and sleep for about forty hours, but this matters more.

  "The costume," Mom says. "The shark helmet."

  "Amelia made it. It's - it's not Bloodhound. It's bulletproof. She's really figuring out her powers and everything. I'm as armored as it gets. It's something new."

  "Something new," Dad repeats, and I can't quite read his tone. Not angry. Not resigned, either. Something in between, maybe, or past both of those into some parental emotion I don't have the vocabulary for.

  "I can't stop," I say, and I mean it in every sense. "They come after me whether I'm in costume or not. Today proved that. At least in the suit I've got armor and tools and a voice modulator and people don't know it's Sam Small under there."

  "Rachel," Dad says.

  My Mom takes her glasses off. "We've had this conversation a thousand times, Sam. We know you're not going to stop. We're not going to punish you. That's... I've been talking to a lot of parents. I've gotten a lot of good advice. About parenting. And I've been talking to my brother."

  Where's this going? But also; "Really? Uncle David?" I ask, like I've met him literally ever.

  "It's so common that there's a name for it. Watching History Syndrome," she says.

  My face bunches up. "I don't think that's an actual illness."

  "It's not," she says, her face pulling back a little bit. "It's watching your kid and knowing they're going to be in a history book one day. The girl who punched the Devil in the face and won the war on evil everywhere."

  "We don't--" I start.

  Mom swipes a hand in front of me like she's yanking the words out. "I know we don't believe in the Devil, Samantha. But it's the same thing. I hear it from every parent. Watching your kid and knowing they're doing something important. But being scared anyway. Just... I know theory of mind is hard for you. Please just try to understand how we feel. I know three parents who have kids at Aurora Springs, one in the hospital after some ruckus with the NSRA. And one of them was in Daedalus until her lawyer overturned the case. All things considered, you're a remarkably well adjusted teenager with superpowers."

  My heart feels like it's going too hard for a reason I don't understand. "Ok...?" I ask, trying to pull the next sentence free. When's the shoe dropping?

  "That's not a compliment," Mom says, and my body feels suddenly weighted down by an anchor I can't see.

  Dad looks between the two of us, rubbing his chin slowly. He's been growing out a beard since he shot Rush Order, perilously slowly, and this is the first time I really seem to be able to have noticed it. "The maps I gave you."

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "Yeah."

  "You've been using them to learn patrol routes."

  "Yeah."

  He exhales through his nose. "Good. The 1920s survey maps have better resolution for the alley network than the modern ones. The sewer plans are mostly accurate but there was a reroute in 2019 around Cottman that isn't reflected in the documents I gave you. I'll get you the updated version."

  Mom stares at him. I stare at him. He shrugs, very slightly, and puts his glasses back on.

  "If she's going to do this, she should have accurate maps."

  Maxwell leaves Sunday morning.

  It's weird - he's been on our couch since Mrs. Heartbeat nearly killed him, what, two, three months ago? His presence became wallpaper. The way he'd be in the kitchen at six AM flipping coins into a mug, reading futures in the coffee steam or whatever it is he actually does. The sound of his physical therapy exercises through the ceiling, these rhythmic grunts that Dad started unconsciously syncing his morning stretches to.

  He's packed light. One bag, which makes sense because he arrived with basically nothing, bleeding through a field dressing and holding his phone in his teeth.

  "Shoulder's good?" I ask, leaning against the doorframe while he zips up.

  "Eighty, eighty-five percent." He rotates it demonstratively. Barely winces. "I'll finish PT from my home. My actual home, which I am told still exists and has not been broken into, small mercies for dorm living. The school has been given a little extra discretionary juice for security."

  Mom makes him take containers of food. Dad shakes his hand and then, in a move that surprises everyone including himself, hugs him. Maxwell accepts it with the grace of someone whose precognition probably warned him it was coming but chose not to dodge.

  "Monday," he says to me on the porch. "One more thing, and then I'm out of your hair."

  "You were never in my hair."

  "I was absolutely in your hair. Your father started doing my PT exercises."

  "He does that with everyone. He did Mom's pregnancy stretches in sympathy when she was carrying me."

  "That tracks," Maxwell says, and then he's gone. His old car coughs to life and pulls away from the curb, and the Small household is back to three.

  Monday.

  School is buzzing about Friday's bomb threat in that electric, half-excited way where everyone's kind of performing fear while also being genuinely a little rattled. The freshmen are loudest about it. The seniors are pretending not to care. I'm somewhere in between, sitting with the goths at lunch, eating a truly mediocre turkey sandwich and half-listening to Alex Garcia explain why Neon Genesis Evangelion is actually about labor relations.

  "The entry plug is a workspace," he's saying, gesturing with a chip. "Shinji is a child laborer. The Angels are just OSHA violations."

  "That's the worst take I've ever heard," says someone whose name I think is either Kai or Kyle. "And I've heard you say that Cowboy Bebop is a show about the gig economy."

  "It IS a show about the gig economy! I don't even need to reach for that one!"

  I eat my sandwich. My jaw aches a little when I chew, still tender from Friday, but the bruise is already fading - greenish-yellow now instead of purple, which is going to be fun to explain to anyone who notices the healing speed. I've got a story ready. Arnica gel. Mom's a big believer in arnica gel. Nobody questions arnica gel.

  Afternoon. The hallway between fifth and sixth period, and my phone buzzes with a calendar notification I'd almost forgotten about.

  Dr. Desai - 4:15 PM - RESCHEDULED FROM 3/20 - CANCELLATION OPENING

  Right. I asked for this.Awesome.

  Dr. Desai's office hasn't changed since the last time I was here, which was - I do the math - November? October? Somewhere in there, before the fugitive part of my life, before I stopped telling him things that mattered. There's a new painting on the wall - abstract, lots of blues and greens, probably meant to be calming. It is mildly calming. Art stimulates the brain. Credit where it's due.

  He looks the same too. Glasses on a chain. Dark skin. Trying not to notice that the small bit of hair barely visible peeking from his collar, if continued, would make him approximately the hairiest person I have ever met. The kind of face that doesn't give you anything for free - you want a reaction from Dr. Desai, you have to earn it.

  "Samantha," he says, and sits down across from me. Notepad. Pen. The classics.

  "Hey."

  "You requested this appointment."

  "I did."

  "That's new."

  "Yeah, I know." I settle into the couch, which does not yield. "I'm - okay, I'm going to try something different today. I'm going to actually tell you stuff."

  One eyebrow goes up about three millimeters. For Desai, that's basically a standing ovation.

  "I haven't been honest with you," I say. "Not for a while. I was coming in and doing the thing where I talk about surface-level stuff - school, sleep, the meds - and avoid anything real because talking about the real stuff means admitting the real stuff is happening, and I wasn't ready to do that."

  "What's changed?"

  What's changed. I think about that. The Torresdale beating. Mrs. Patterson's soccer speech. Lily handling the center without me. Maxwell quoting No Country for Old Men in my kitchen. The fact that five different people in the last month have told me some version of "you're going to burn out" and I've finally, finally started to believe them. Is it time for character growth?

  "I think I've been treating my life like a sprint," I say. "And I need help figuring out how to actually... pace myself? Without feeling like I'm abandoning everyone who needs me?"

  Desai writes something. "Let's start with the medications. When did you last have bloodwork?"

  We do the clinical stuff. Lithium levels are stable - I've been good about taking it, which I tell him, and he notes this without praise, which I actually prefer. Concerta dosing seems right, I'm focusing okay at school when I'm not, you know, scanning exits. Prazosin's helping with the nightmares, mostly. The desvenlafaxine - "I think it's working? My lows aren't as low. But I also can't tell if that's the drug or if I'm just in a better place generally right now."

  "Can be both," he says. "Often is."

  Then we get into it.

  I tell him about the hypervigilance. The exit-mapping in classrooms. The way I spent fifteen minutes at my bedroom window before getting dressed last Tuesday, just watching the street for threats that weren't there. The stress-pulling - I hold up a hand and there's a hair between my fingers I didn't notice grabbing.

  "When did the hair-pulling start?"

  "I don't know. Recently? I don't catch myself doing it."

  He writes. "And the exit-mapping. Is it constant, or does it come and go?"

  "It's - it was constant last week. After the Songbird thing Friday it kind of... spiked. But over the weekend it got better. I was home, I was safe, I could feel it getting better. Today at school I caught myself doing it in English and stopped."

  "You caught yourself."

  "Yeah."

  "And stopped."

  "Yeah. Is that - is that good?"

  "It's awareness," he says, which is a very Dr. Desai answer. "Let me ask you something. You said you've been treating your life like a sprint. What does the marathon version look like?"

  I open my mouth and then close it, because I actually don't know. I know what the sprint looks like - it looks like the last two years. Run at every problem, absorb every hit, burn every bridge, rebuild every bridge, repeat until something breaks. The marathon version is... what? Delegating? Trusting the team? Showing up for the center and the mentorship kids and the EMT shifts and letting the institutional stuff - Ford, Jamal, the DVD - handle the things they're built to handle? I like the EMT stuff. That feels like it could be something.

  "I think it looks like not being the only person in the room who's trying to fix things," I say slowly. "I have people. Good people. And they can do stuff without me standing over their shoulder. I just - I have a hard time believing that. Trusting it."

  "Why?"

  "Because every time I've trusted someone else to handle something, someone has ended up in the hospital. And because there's a couple of small people in my brain that trust - that trusted me. There's a boxing coach, and a dead woman, and my best friend that moved away, and my Pop-Pop telling me about responsibility and--" I pause. I take a breath. "And I feel like if I let go for a second then nobody else will pick up the rope. Even though I know, like, logically, that's not true. Maxwell does his job and also has still been, like, doing college from my couch. My Dad shot a supervillain for me and my Mom started a national movement of angry white women,"

  That gets a chuckle out of him, which feels amazing. I'm getting a good grade at therapy.

  "--And my team... my friends held things together on Friday without me. Even the civilian lady who owns things on paper. The brain says all good."

  "But the feeling says?" He asks.

  "The feeling says if I take my hands off the wheel for one second, everyone dies."

  Desai lets that sit for a moment. Then: "There's a clinical framing for this. You've been in a prolonged state of hypervigilance - not pathological, given your actual circumstances, but the body doesn't always recalibrate when circumstances change. Your threat assessment is calibrated to the worst periods. The fact that you can identify the gap between the evidence and the feeling is significant."

  I think about the big stamp on my file that says PTSD. Yeah! We got that one, buddy. "Significant good?"

  "Significant useful. It means you have the tools to reality-test. When the feeling says everyone dies if you step back - you can check. Has that happened? What actually happened when you weren't there?"

  "The center held," I say. "Lily handled it."

  "Then that's data." Desai says, glancing at the clock. "You mentioned feeling good. Better than you have in a while. I want you to keep monitoring that - not because feeling good is a warning sign, but because you know your history. If the energy escalates, if sleep drops below six hours without fatigue, if the ideas start coming faster than you can track them--"

  "Flag it. I know." I've been watching for hypomania since the Megalodon outings started. "I'm sleeping. I'm eating. I'm taking the meds. I laughed at lunch today at something genuinely funny and not because I was performing being okay."

  "Good." He closes the notepad. "Same time in two weeks?"

  "Yeah. And, Dr. Desai - thanks. For the cancellation slot."

  He gives me approximately four millimeters of smile. Record-breaking.