I smell the plants before I see the building.

  Not flowers - green. The aggressive, sharp green of things growing faster than they should, pushing through soil and concrete with an urgency that has nothing to do with the season. It's February. Nothing should be growing like this. But as I turn onto Longshore, I can see it: the hedges along the sidewalk are leaning wrong, straining toward the community center like they're trying to uproot themselves. A crack in the pavement has a weed pushing through it that wasn't there this morning. The little strip of garden Mrs. Patterson maintains by the front entrance - winter-dormant for months - has shoots poking up through the mulch.

  Jasmine. She probably has no idea she's doing this. She's in there, scared, and every plant within - what, a block? Two blocks? - is responding. Trying to protect her. Trying to reach whatever's threatening her, even though they're rooted to the ground and can't do a damn thing about it.

  I file that away. Something to talk about later. Not now.

  The front of the building looks mostly normal. The Songbirds are gone - no signs, no bandanas, no truck. There are two cop cars parked at the curb, lights off, and a small cluster of adults on the sidewalk talking in the urgent, arm-crossing way that means they're parents and they're angry. One of them is on the phone. Another is pointing at the building. A third sees me coming and does a visible double-take at my face.

  Right. I probably look like hell.

  The front door is propped open. Inside, the main lobby before the grand stairwell is bright and warm and smells like industrial cleaner and microwave popcorn. Someone made popcorn. That's either the most normal or the most surreal response to a crisis I've ever seen.

  Lily's in the corner, costume still on, cowl pushed back so her face is visible, talking to a cop. Her meteor hammer - her scarf, which also happens to be a meteor hammer - is coiled at her hip, the weighted end hanging still. She looks calm. Professional, even. She sees me and her eyes widen - not at my presence, at my face - and I give her a small shake of my head. Not now. Later.

  She nods, almost imperceptibly, and goes back to the cop.

  "Sam!"

  Zara. Thirteen years old, glasses too big for her face, rushing toward me from the back hallway like I'm the last lifeboat. She stops short about three feet away, because Zara always stops short - she's not a hugger, she's a hoverer, orbiting at arm's length until she's sure it's safe to land.

  "Hey, Z." I crouch down so we're closer to eye level, and my ribs scream at me, but I keep my face neutral. "You okay?"

  She's staring at my cheek. "What happened to your face?"

  "I'll tell you in a minute. Are you okay? Is everyone okay?"

  "We're fine. Mrs. Patterson made us go to the back room when they started yelling. And then Lily came, and she - " Zara's hands move, describing something fast and circular. The meteor hammer. "And they left. But it was really scary."

  "I know. I'm sorry I wasn't here."

  "Where were you?"

  "School. Locked in the library." I stand back up, slowly. "Where is everyone?"

  "Back room. Alex is--" She stops, recalibrates. "Alex is upset."

  "Yeah. I bet he is."

  I pinch my nose. I'm here early. Like, school isn't over. It makes me wonder, for a second, about the logistics. Do these kids from all over Philly get to leave early to come here? I remember that the various events, the resources, they're not... constant. I know we have our little group powwow on weekends, but it's a Friday. I glance at the calendar at the wall. "Group Counseling - How to Handle Your Powers, Session A Fridays 2:30 PM, Session B Mondays 6:30 PM", okay, right. That makes sense. It's a program that outgrew needing just me and Maggie. They probably all have permission to leave school early for something like this.

  The back room under the stairwell - the office - is narrow, but not as narrow as it used to be. More structural supports, less concrete and old wood, and a truly impressive number of potted plants that Mrs. Patterson insisted on because "kids need to see things growing." She had no idea how literal that would become. Right now, every single plant in the room is oriented toward Jasmine, who is sitting in the corner with her knees pulled up, trying very hard to be invisible. The ficus is practically draped over her. A spider plant on the windowsill has extended a runner that's reaching toward her like a hand.

  Jasmine sees me notice and goes red. "I can't make them stop," she mutters.

  "It's okay. They're just worried about you."

  "Plants don't worry."

  "Yours do."

  She doesn't have an answer for that, so she pulls her knees tighter and the ficus leans closer. "In through your nose, out through your mouth. Okay, Jasmine? Try to focus on the room, not your body. Listening to your heartbeat is going to make it accelerate."

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Okay, Mom," she bites back. Slowly, the plants start detangling from her legs, which I count as a win. She's listening to me even if she's being prickly about it. Whoops. Caught the Jordan in my brain about to say "tsundere".

  Alex is on his feet, pacing. Of course he's pacing. He's got that energy - the coiled, frustrated, I-should-be-doing-something energy that I recognize because I've felt it every day of my life. His benched ribs are healed enough that he's not favoring them anymore, and his hands keep clenching and unclenching at his sides. When he sees me, his expression cycles through three emotions in about two seconds: relief, anger, horror.

  "Your face," he says.

  "It's fine."

  "It's not fine. Who did that?"

  "Sit down, Alex."

  "I'm not going to sit down. Who--"

  "Sit down."

  He sits. Not because I outrank him - I don't, technically, this isn't a hierarchy - but because something in my voice makes it clear that this isn't a discussion. Liam, already on the couch with his arm around his backpack like it's a stuffed animal, gives Alex a look that says dude, just listen.

  I pull a folding chair from against the wall, open it, and sit down facing them. It hurts to sit. Everything hurts. But I need to be at their level, not standing over them, not lecturing down. I look around for Mrs. Patterson. I look behind me, trying to sort of see out through the front door. Cops. Ok.

  "Okay," I say. "Here's what happened today."

  I tell them about the bomb threat. I tell them about the lockdown, the two hours in the library, the early dismissal. I tell them I ran to the community center as soon as I got out. I tell them I got intercepted on the way - four guys, Songbirds, they wanted to send a message. I tell them I got hit. I don't tell them I chose to get hit. I don't tell them about the route selection or the performance of exhaustion or the strategic calculation behind every second of it.

  "They told me to stop coming here," I say. "To stop volunteering. To walk away."

  Silence. Zara is staring at her shoes. Liam's arm has tightened around his backpack. Jasmine's ficus has grown two inches in the last five minutes and nobody's mentioned it. It's not arranged towards her anymore, actually, and I'm noticing that it's growing thorns, and sort of stretching out, towards the door.

  "So are you going to?" Alex asks. His voice is challenging, but underneath it there's something else - fear, maybe. Fear that the answer is yes.

  "No."

  "Good. Then let me--"

  "No."

  "You don't even know what I was going to say."

  "You were going to say 'let me help.' Or 'let me go after them.' Or 'next time, let me be here so I can--'" I gesture vaguely at his hands, at the gas jets he can summon from his fingertips. "Right? 'Let me at 'em'. The answer is no. I'm not your mom. I can't force you not to. But I can tell you that if you do I'm going to be really, genuinely, for real upset at you. The kind of upset that isn't going to go away if you just figure you'll act first and apologize later."

  Alex's jaw tightens.

  "Here's what I need you to hear," I say, looking over all of them. "If they come back. If Songbirds show up here again, or anywhere near you, or anywhere near this building. Your job - your only job - is to not fight them. Go upstairs. There's a kitchenette. Go to the third floor and go on your phone in a cot or whatever. This is not a war, and you are not soldiers."

  "That's--"

  "I'm not done." Alex closes his mouth. "Your job is to not fight them. Not because you can't. I know you can. I know what each of you can do and I know that any one of you could put a Songbird in the hospital. That's exactly the problem."

  I let that land. Zara looks up from her shoes.

  "They want you to fight," I say. "That's the whole point. Every single thing they did today - the yelling, the signs, getting in Mrs. Patterson's face - all of it was designed to provoke a reaction. Because the second a powered kid hurts a Songbird, even in self-defense, even if they completely deserve it, the story changes. It stops being 'adults harass children' and starts being 'dangerous superpowered kids attack protestors.' And then they win. They get everything they want. The center gets shut down, you get flagged, and every person who was on the fence about whether powered kids are dangerous gets pushed to the wrong side."

  "So we just take it?" Alex's voice is barely controlled. "We just sit here and let them scream at us and do nothing?"

  "Mrs. Patterson stood at that door for two hours," I say. "No powers. No weapons. Just herself. And they didn't get past her. That's not nothing. That's the whole thing."

  "But they hurt you."

  "Yeah. They did. And there's video of it. Four grown men beating up a teenage girl for volunteering with kids. That's the story now. Not 'dangerous cape-lover gets what she deserves.' Not 'Songbirds deliver justice.' Four men. One girl. A commercial street in broad daylight." I let myself feel the bruise on my cheek, let them see me feel it. "I'm going to be okay. My face is going to heal. But that video is going to be out there forever. And it's going to do more damage to them than anything any of us could do with our fists."

  Quiet. The ficus creaks slightly as it leans back into a straighter position. Thorns drop off of it gently, one by one, without a sound.

  Zara, small and precise: "What if they don't just yell next time? What if they try to actually hurt someone?"

  It's the right question. The devastating question. Because everything I just said assumes a certain kind of threat - harassment, intimidation, the technically-legal aggression that the Songbirds specialize in. But Zara's thirteen and she's smart enough to see the gap.

  "If someone is physically attacking you," I say, "you defend yourself. Period. That's not negotiable. If someone puts hands on you, you do whatever you have to do to be safe. But--" I hold up a finger. "There's a difference between defending yourself and retaliating. There's a difference between 'I pushed him away because he grabbed me' and 'I set him on fire because he called me a freak.' The first one, everybody understands. The second one is a news story that ends your life. You become the person who set someone on fire forever. You might go to juvenile hall. Even if you don't, the court system itself will chew you up and spit you out. It's miserable."

  Alex looks like he wants to argue. He doesn't. Maybe because he's thinking about the warehouse raid.

  "As much as I don't want to say this, it goes double for you, Zara, Jasmine. I'm not stupid. Liam, Alex, and I are all white. Or, well, I look white, but jury's still out on that one--" I point out.

  "You're not white?" Jasmine snarks, raising an eyebrow.

  "Ehh?" I wobble my hand. "Either way. The system is significantly less nice to you two than it is to someone like us. I'm not asking you to be passive," I say. "I'm asking you to be smart and consider that doing something stupid will follow you your entire life. There's a difference."