Tuesday morning, I spend fifteen minutes standing at my bedroom window before I can make myself get dressed.

  Nothing's out there. Just the street, the same cars that are always parked along the curb, Mrs. Hernandez walking her ancient corgi like she does every morning at 7:15. Normal. Safe. The word feels like a lie I'm telling myself, but I keep looking anyway, scanning for the thing that's wrong, the detail that doesn't fit.

  There's nothing. There's never nothing. There's just things I haven't noticed yet.

  I get dressed. I eat breakfast without tasting it. Mom asks if I'm okay and I say "yeah, just tired," which is technically true even if it's not the whole truth. Dad's already at work. The house feels too quiet, too exposed, like the walls are thinner than they used to be.

  The walk to school is fine. That's the worst part - it's fine. No one follows me. No cars slow down. No strangers with yellow bandanas loitering on corners. I mean, there are some strangers loitering on some corners, but they're probably the normal everyday loiterer. At worst, they're Kingdom. Is that an "at worst"? Either way, it's just the cold February air and the sound of my own footsteps and the constant low-grade hum of adrenaline that won't turn off no matter how many times I tell myself I'm being paranoid.

  I'm not being paranoid. Someone put a bounty on my head two days ago. The fact that nothing's happening right now doesn't mean nothing's going to happen. It just means I don't know when.

  School is school. Classes, hallways, the usual background noise of teenage existence. I sit in the back when I can, keep my eyes on the doors. Twice I catch myself mapping exit routes - windows, stairwells, which direction I'd run if someone came through that door right now. I make myself stop. I make myself take notes. I make myself pretend I'm a normal student having a normal day.

  It doesn't work, but I do it anyway. I like to think that the security guards might be useful someday for something other than harassing students. A girl can dream, can't she?

  Lunch, I sit with the usual people. Alex Garcia, who is earnestly discussing moving away for college, which is weird because I could've sworn he was younger than me, and a gaggle of goths whose names I have never absorbed entirely. They're talking about something - a show, I think, or maybe a game - and I'm nodding along without actually listening, my attention split between the conversation and the cafeteria entrance and the windows and the table of security guards eating their sandwiches in the corner.

  "Sam?" Alex's looking at me. "You okay? You've been weird all day."

  "I'm fine," I say. "Didn't sleep great."

  It's the same lie I told yesterday. He doesn't look convinced, but he lets it drop.

  Melissa Marshall passes by me on her way to get lunchroom food from the cafeteria ladies. I sort of match eyes with her for a moment, and she looks... Disquieted. Why? Did something happen? Do I need to beat someone up? I won't pretend I don't feel a little bit protective for my... pocket... civilian. The other one that's not Alex Garcia. No, wait, Alex knows about Bloodhound. No, it's basically just Melissa.

  She looks back at me. Oh. She's probably worried about me. Well... I hope not! That would be a silly thing to worry about.

  The afternoon crawls. History, then English, then the eternal purgatory of study hall where I stare at my phone and try not to refresh the Songbird-adjacent forums Tasha's been monitoring. There's chatter. There's always chatter. Someone talking about "the girl who attacked our guy," framing it like I'm the aggressor, like he wasn't the one who came at me with a baton. The narrative's already solidifying: violent cape-lover, dangerous, someone should do something.

  No new bounties, though. Not yet.

  The final bell rings and I'm out of my seat before the sound finishes echoing, already calculating the route home, already running through contingencies. Melissa catches up to me at the lockers.

  "Walking home?"

  "Yeah." I hesitate, then: "Hey, can I walk you all the way to your door today? I've never actually seen your house."

  Melissa blinks. "You want to see my house?"

  "I mean, we've been friends for years and I've never been inside. That's weird, right? We should fix that." I'm talking too fast, overselling it, but Melissa just shrugs. We haven't been friends for years, really. Melissa has been someone, like... around my orbit. Someone who knows my name but until relatively recently I haven't bothered to memorize hers. And that makes me sad. Some days it does feel like something's been taken from me. Oh! Too contemplative. Let's bottle that one back up for later.

  "Sure, I guess. It's not that interesting. My mom might make you eat something, though. She's convinced everyone under twenty is malnourished."

  "I can handle being fed."

  We walk. The route is familiar until it isn't - past the usual landmarks, then into the part of Melissa's neighborhood I've only ever seen from the turn where we normally split. The houses are smaller here, closer together, with chain-link fences and plastic lawn chairs and the particular aesthetic of working-class Philadelphia that I know in my bones even if I've never walked these specific blocks.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Melissa's talking about something - her mom, I think, or maybe her sister - and I'm making the right noises while my eyes sweep the street. Car parked on the corner, someone sitting in the driver's seat. Probably nothing. Probably just someone waiting for someone. I note the license plate anyway, file it away in the part of my brain that won't stop collecting data even when I tell it to.

  "This is me," Melissa says, stopping in front of a narrow rowhouse with a green door. "You want to come in? Mom's probably home."

  "I should get back," I say, and the words feel wrong even as I say them. I walked her here to make sure she got home safe, and now I'm standing on her sidewalk lying about why I can't stay. "Next time, though. Tell your mom I said hi."

  Melissa grabs me by the wrist. "Sam. You're coming inside," she says, and I don't have the heart to break her grip, either. My fingers twitch just on... wrist breaking reflex. No, she's right. Sam. Samantha Small, this is your tactical brain speaking. If they have people waiting for you on your walk home, then you dodge them by not being there when they expect you to be there.

  ...

  Okay, fine. I let her pull me - because she's 5'6" and I'm becoming increasingly self-conscious about how much I tower over basically everyone in my grade except the really tall boys, so her actually pulling me isn't really in the cards - and get to witness a classmate's house for what feels like the first time since middle school.

  Melissa's house smells like fabric softener and something tomato-based simmering on a stove. The living room is small, densely packed with furniture that doesn't quite match - a floral couch, a leather recliner, a coffee table covered in magazines and a half-finished puzzle. Family photos crowd every available wall surface: Melissa at various ages, a younger sister I vaguely remember hearing about, parents at what looks like a wedding, grandparents in that particular posed style that screams "1970s portrait studio."

  It's aggressively, overwhelmingly normal. I feel like an alien who just landed on the planet and is being shown what human domestic life looks like.

  "Mom! I brought a friend home!" Melissa yells toward the kitchen, already kicking off her shoes. I follow her lead, lining mine up neatly by the door because I don't know the house rules and neat seems safe.

  Mrs. Marshall emerges from the kitchen wiping her hands on a dish towel. She's got Melissa's same dirty blonde-brown hair, same round face, same general energy of someone who watches a lot of Bravo and has opinions about it. "Oh! Sam, right? I've heard so much about you. Are you hungry? I'm making sauce. Sit, sit."

  "I'm okay, thank you--"

  "She's malnourished," Melissa says, throwing herself onto the floral couch. "I can tell. Feed her."

  "I'm really not--"

  But Mrs. Marshall is already retreating to the kitchen, and thirty seconds later I'm holding a bowl of pasta with red sauce and a fork and no clear memory of how either got into my hands. Melissa grins at me from the couch like this is exactly what she planned. Everyone wants to feed me pasta all the damn time! Why did I have to be born in a city with such a high Italian population?

  "Told you," she says.

  I eat. It's good - homemade sauce, the kind that takes hours, not the jarred stuff. The kind my mom doesn't have time to make because she's working and also dealing with me and also probably developing an ulcer from stress she won't admit to.

  Melissa puts on some reality show I don't recognize and keeps up a running commentary on all the participants. I eat my pasta and let the noise wash over me, the sheer mundane domesticity of it, the kind of life that exists parallel to mine but never quite touches it.

  For sixty minutes, I'm just a girl eating food after school at a friend's house.

  It doesn't last. It can't last. But I take it anyway.

  It's time to go. I wave goodbye, and it's nice, and it feels normal, and it's not quite my kimchi but it's better than driving myself insane. I take a deep breath. The outside world is not scary. There is nothing they can throw at me I can't handle. The problem was if they attacked Melissa, and that was the part I didn't want to have happen. And now she's home. So we're good. So we're good!

  I turn and walk home alone, my hands in my pockets and my shoulders tight and every sense I have cranked up to maximum. The vulnerable window. The six blocks between Melissa's house and mine where I'm just a girl walking by herself, no witnesses, no backup, easy target.

  Six blocks. Five. Four.

  A car passes. Doesn't slow down.

  Three blocks. Two.

  Someone's walking a dog on the other side of the street. They don't look at me.

  One block. My house, right there, the familiar shape of it against the gray February sky.

  I make it to the porch. There's a package sitting by the front door - brown cardboard, no return address, my name written in Amelia's handwriting. I pick it up, unlock the door, and step inside.

  The house is empty. Mom's at the library, Dad's at work, Maxwell's... let me remember. He's getting his shoulder checked on. About to be out of the sling. Something with the scar tissue. I stand in the living room holding the package, feeling the weight of it, not opening it yet.

  Not yet.

  I take it upstairs. Set it on my bed. Stare at it for a while.

  Then I try to do homework. Then I try to watch something on my laptop. Then I try to read, but the words won't stick, my brain skittering off the page every few seconds to check the window, the door, the quality of the silence in the house.

  The evening passes in pieces. Dinner with my parents, a performance of normalcy that takes more energy than it should. Yes, school was fine. Yes, I'm eating enough. No, nothing's wrong. Yes, please schedule me with the therapist. Yes, the therapist. I know I've never asked before. It's just been a rough winter. You know, with the fugitive thing. And they say that's fine, that makes sense. Sure. We'll see if Dr. Desai is available again.

  By 10 PM I'm back in my room, pretending to sleep, staring at the ceiling and listening to the house settle around me. The package is still on my desk, unopened. Waiting.

  My phone buzzes at 11:03.

  I almost ignore it. I've been ignoring most notifications all day, letting things pile up in the group chat, not wanting to deal with the constant low-level anxiety of being connected to everything all the time.

  But this one's different. This one's from the police scanner HIRC I subscribed to months ago and mostly forgot about - the one that pings me when something happens in my zip code. Jordan set it up, and for the most part I ignore it and let it drive me insane during... sprees.

  Break-in reported at Donovan's Hardware, 7200 block of Frankford Ave. Units responding.

  Donovan's Hardware. That's four blocks from here. That's Mayfair. That's my neighborhood, my streets, the places I've walked a thousand times without thinking about it.

  I sit up without thinking about it, too. I look at Amelia's package. A small tooth comes out of my fingertip, sideways and jagged, and I rip the tape off.