The picture is exactly what I was afraid of.

  Songbirds outside the community center - not one or two, but a group of maybe eight or ten, signs and yellow bandanas and that particular aggressive energy I recognize from the ribbon cutting. They're not attacking anyone, not yet. Just standing there, shouting, being loud and present and threatening in that way that's technically legal but everyone knows what it really means. Through the window behind them, I can see faces. Kids' faces. Zara, maybe, or one of the others - hard to tell from the angle, but they're in there, watching, scared.

  Mrs. Patterson is at the door. I can see her posture even in the grainy phone photo - shoulders back, chin up, trying to look dignified. But I can also see in the corner a truck that has even more Songbirds in it. How many of these fucking guys are there? How many people in the world see the presence of superpowers as some sort of horrendous aberration?

  Either way, they're threatening kids. They're threatening my kids. Even if they can't hit any of them, they can't beat anyone, they can scare them, and I refuse to let any of these kids become more traumatized than their Activation already made them.

  I'm already moving before I finish processing. Pushing through the crowd of students spilling out of homerooms, ignoring the teachers trying to maintain order, heading for the exit. Someone calls my name - maybe Destiny, maybe someone else - but I don't stop to find out.

  Sam is your school out yet

  Sam?

  I text back OMW ASAP and shove my phone in my pocket.

  The front doors are chaos. Students flooding out, parents arriving early for pickup, a few cop cars still lingering from the bomb threat. I slip through a side exit instead, one that lets out near the parking lot, and then I'm running.

  Not sprinting. Not yet. I need to think.

  The direct route is Keystone Street - straight shot to Longshore, left turn, less than a mile to the community center total. Five minutes at a dead sprint. It's also exactly where they'd expect me to go. If I were setting up an ambush for someone running from this school to that building, Keystone is where I'd put my people. Open stretches near the parks, the baseball diamonds, places where visibility drops and there's room to work.

  Keystone is relatively isolated. Homes and parks. It's not a commercial corridor, it's a place where someone would be able to drag someone into the trees or a dugout and make them vanish for just long enough.

  I'm not taking Keystone.

  I cut northwest on Deveraux instead, then hook onto Torresdale Avenue. It adds two, maybe three minutes to the run, but Torresdale is a commercial corridor - McDonald's, grocery stores, the check cashing place, that laundromat that's been there since before I was born. Foot traffic.

  Cars.

  Witnesses.

  Cameras.

  If I'm going to get jumped, I want it to happen somewhere that costs them.

  My legs settle into a rhythm, not quite a sprint but faster than a jog, the kind of pace I can maintain for miles if I have to. My backpack bounces against my shoulders. I didn't have time to drop it off at my locker, so I'm running with fifteen pounds of textbooks and binders, which isn't ideal but isn't going to slow me down much either. My body's already processing the adrenaline, converting it into fuel, that familiar feeling of everything sharpening and clarifying.

  I'm thinking about the bomb threat. I'm thinking about the timing. I'm thinking about how someone called it in at 11:47, right before lunch, when a normal school would have evacuated and sent everyone home early - scattered and vulnerable and predictable. But Tacony Charter did shelter-in-place instead, which means I was locked in a library for two hours while whoever set this up sat around wondering why their plan wasn't working.

  Or maybe they needed me out of the picture for two hours while they got all their assets in place? Look at me, using the word asset like some kind of cool operator. They needed me unable to leave so they could throw a bunch of angry middle-aged people at the community center and not have me interrupt them. Or maybe they just didn't realize that a bomb threat - if that's even what happened, I'm still not 100% sure - would involve the bomb squad. Maybe maybe maybe. Too many maybes.

  Either way, they pivoted, or this was part of the plan all along. I'm reconstructing it in my head, although I can never remember if this is deductive or inductive reasoning. They couldn't flush me out of school, so they poked the community center instead. They knew I'd come running. They knew I'd be panicked and predictable.

  They're not wrong. I am running. But I'm not panicked. And I like to think I'm not very predictable either.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Torresdale Avenue stretches ahead of me, lined with businesses and parked cars and the ordinary texture of Northeast Philly on a Friday afternoon. I pass the smoke shop, the little park, a bus stop where a couple of older women are waiting and watching me run past with mild curiosity. My phone buzzes in my pocket but I don't check it. I need to focus.

  The fire station is coming up on my right - Engine 38, brick building, a couple of trucks visible through the open bay doors. They moved it from Keystone before I was born. I heard recently that they were planning on moving the whole station back, I overheard my Dad talking about it. That seems like a city planner-y thing. I could stop there. I know people who know people in the fire service. I could explain, ask for help, let them call the cops or drive me to the community center or something. It would be the safe play.

  I don't stop. Stopping means explaining, and explaining means time, and time is something I don't have. Mrs. Patterson is standing at that door with ten Songbirds shouting at her and a building full of scared kids behind her. Every minute I'm not there is a minute something could go wrong.

  I pass the fire station and keep running.

  That's when I see the car.

  It's a gray sedan, nothing special, the kind of car that's invisible in traffic. But it's pacing me. Staying parallel, one lane over, matching my speed even though I'm running and it should be pulling ahead. There are two people in the front seats. I can't see their faces clearly but I can see the yellow.

  Bandanas. Songbirds.

  I don't slow down. I don't speed up. I keep running like I haven't noticed, like I'm just a girl late for something, while my brain runs calculations.

  Two in the car. Probably one or two more somewhere else - on foot, or in another vehicle, waiting to cut me off. They weren't expecting me to take this route, so they're adjusting on the fly. The car is trying to get ahead of me, find a spot to pull over, let the passengers out to intercept.

  I watch the road ahead. There's a red light coming up, and the sedan is going to have to stop for it. I'm not.

  The light turns red. The sedan brakes. I cut across the street in front of it, close enough that I hear someone inside shout something, and then I'm on the other side of Torresdale, weaving between a parked pickup truck and a guy coming out of the grocery store with bags in both hands. I'll have to cross back over at Longshore, but that's ok.

  "Sorry!" I call over my shoulder, not slowing down.

  The sedan is stuck at the light. I've bought myself maybe thirty seconds.

  I check my phone without breaking stride. More messages in the group chat - Lily saying she's at the center, Maggie asking what's happening, Tasha posting another picture. This one shows Mrs. Patterson still at the door, but now there's a Songbird right up in her face, finger pointing, mouth open in what's clearly a shout. The kids have moved away from the windows. Smart. Someone taught them that.

  I put the phone away and run faster.

  The sedan's caught up again - must have run the light, or gone around the block, or something - I don't drive and I don't need to drive and I don't understand driving. It's behind me now, not beside me, and I can hear the engine note change as it accelerates. Trying to get ahead. Trying to find the cutoff point.

  And there, half a block up, two guys stepping out from between parked cars. Yellow bandanas. No signs this time, no pretense of protest. Just two men, mid-twenties maybe, spreading out to block the sidewalk.

  The trap closes.

  I could turn around, but the sedan's behind me. I could cut into one of the businesses, but then I'm cornered in a building, and who knows if there's a back exit. I could try and push past them. They're making themselves wide on the sidewalk. They're not covering their faces. The bandanas are almost unnoticeable, like fashion choices. If not for the fact that they're staring me down, I would assume they're just normal people who like yellow. I could call the cops... no, no I couldn't, not with the time I have. I could start a fight.

  I have maybe four seconds to decide.

  So I decide.

  I slow down. Let my pace drop, let my breathing get ragged, let my shoulders slump like I'm finally hitting the wall. The performance of exhaustion. The two guys ahead of me see it and start moving in, trying to look natural. They think I'm done, think I've run myself out, think this is going to be easy. I put my hands on my knees, and then fake a stumble left so I'm leaning against the brick wall of - what, another McDonalds? How many McDonaldses does one road need?

  Behind me, the sedan pulls to the curb. Doors open. Two more.

  Four on one. Broad daylight. Torresdale Avenue, right in front of the grocery store and the check cashing place and the laundromat. A woman walking her dog across the street. A teenager on a bike waiting at the corner. An old man sitting on a bench outside the barbershop. Witnesses everywhere. I pull my phone out and pretend to not notice that I'm about to get sandwiched between four people, texting the group chat; Torresdale.

  I hear a guy crack his knuckles behind me. "Easy money," he murmurs.

  "Can I help you?" I ask, pretending to just now notice, putting my phone into my backpack where it will get cushioned inside all my books and papers and binders. I adjust my shoulder straps looser in case I need to throw it. But, really, I know in advance that four on one isn't great odds. But it makes me wonder - where is everyone who's going to help? Do people just let this shit happen in the real world and let it wash over them and by the time the cops come everyone's too scared or can't remember the faces?

  In the real world, what are you talking about, Sam? This is the real world. "Fellas?" I ask, leaning back up to my full height.

  "If you'd really like to help us, you could hit your head a couple of times against the wall and get a nice black eye. Then we wouldn't have to lift a finger," one of the guys in front of me says - tan, hair pulled back into braids. I'll remember that. He pulls his bandana up to cover his face before I can memorize the shape of his lips and nose. "You must've pissed someone off real bad."

  "Three hundred dollars four ways doesn't sound like it's worth the heat," I point out.

  The other guy in front of me bandanas up. I watch his face move as he laughs. "Three hundred dollars?"

  "Some guy's mad because I fucked his daughter or whatever, and you guys are about to try and fail to beat me up for three big ones on his behalf. Do I have the shape and smell of it right?" I ask lyingly, trying to sneak out whatever extra I can from the ones stupid enough to talk.

  "I wouldn't beat up a college student for three hundred bucks. Not enough money," the one with braids says. He cracks his knuckles, too, and rolls his neck. "No, you're worth way more than that."

  Shit.