The Girl Who Would Be King(9)

I look around helplessly. I don’t think even my amazing ‘auto-pilot’ arms have the hand-strength to get me back onto that tiny stone lip. Would I survive the jump? It’s four stories. If I survive, what would I break? Everything? Nothing? I sit down on the roof, drawing my legs up to my chest, and as the rain pours down I bury my head against my knees, breathing deeply, trying to be smart. After a few minutes I stand up and carefully walk around the roof edge. The ground on the south side of the building is the softest and wettest.

I’ll jump from here.

I can’t decide if I should take a running start, putting distance between the building and myself or if I should just jump from a standing position on the edge. I chew my lip and walk to the middle of the roof. Before I can talk myself out of it, I start running for the edge.

When my feet leave the roof it’s the most alive I’ve felt since before the accident.



•

I’m more than six blocks away and moving at a speed even I thought impossible when the police cars finally screech to a halt in front of the jewelry store. But I can still hear car doors slamming and guns being drawn, voices shouting. I smile. I can’t help it, it’s funny. Now at a safe distance I put the necklace on and hide it under my cat suit. I decide to run some more. It feels good, almost like I imagine flying might feel.

Everything is going to work out fine.

I stop by my motel and grab a sweatshirt to better cover up my sweet new necklace that matches nothing I own and head toward an all-night diner for a celebratory feast. The feel of the silver and diamonds grazing my neck is exciting and I smile like a kid with a giant lollipop. I slide into a big cushy booth and order a coffee – I’ve never had one before but it seems like the right thing to do – the grown up thing. I also order something called the “super grandest slam” breakfast, which they serve 24 hours a day. Partway through gorging myself, a waitress – not mine, but another one whose nametag reads Felice – comes by to refill my coffee. I nod even though I’d kind of hated the stuff, and as she pours it to the top, I wince.

“Nice necklace,” she says casually. I look down and see that it has partially slipped out of the neck of my sweatshirt. I gulp down some pancakes.

“Uh. Thanks. It’s my grandma’s.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, walking away.

An hour later, after two rounds of pancakes and just as I’m getting ready to leave, the same woman, but now in street clothes, slides into the booth with me without saying a word. I look at her one eyebrow cocked and she points to a muted television above the diner’s counter. The necklace I just stole is already on the freaking news. She smiles across the table at me.

“I think we should talk,” she says. I try to remember I have superpowers and look right at her but say nothing. “You want to explain?” she asks.

“Not to you, bitch.” I’m happily surprised that this response shocks her.

“Bitch? You really wanna go there?” she asks, raising her voice. I decide that while I know I can kill her and maybe even everyone in the restaurant without breaking a sweat, I had warned myself just last night to be careful about these kinds of situations. It’s best to stay away from the authorities as long as possible. At least until I know what I’m really capable of.

“Sorry,” I mumble, choking on the words. “I’m leaving.” I throw a twenty on the table to cover my multiple meals and the tip. She grabs my arm as I get up and I sling it away from her powerfully. She’s more shocked at this than my ballsy comeback of a moment ago. “Don’t freaking touch me,” I hiss and walk out the front door. A block later I have practically forgotten about her when she sidles up beside me. She’s got dark hair and eyes and now that I’m standing I can see she’s shorter than me by nearly a foot and having trouble keeping pace with my long legs.

“You got the wrong idea, honey,” she says, catching her breath.

“Oh really?”

“Yeah. I’m impressed. I mean not so much at your crappy choice of words and obvious temperament issues, but you’re just a kid – who are you working with that you managed to snag that necklace? Or did you just luck out and find it in the street somewhere?” She lets her sentence dangle there in the air like a challenge and I turn on her, crossing my arms. I know the smart thing is to tell her I found it, but what can I say, I’m pretty proud of my first score.

“What do you think?”

“I think maybe you’ve got some talent and I should introduce you to some friends of mine,” she says. I look at her hard, trying to read whether or not it’s a trap, but I can’t really tell. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea, but I’m also not sure I have anything to lose. I’m trying to figure out what I am, what I want to be doing, and what my life is going to be about, and if she and these friends of hers mess with me or double-cross me, I’ll just kill them and move on. As Delia always used to say, you don’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Actually it had always annoyed the crap out of me that she said that since she never freaking cooked and I would have happily eaten an omelet, but I’m starting to understand that maybe she wasn’t talking about cooking. Felice hands me a card with the name of some Spanish restaurant I can’t pronounce on the front. There’s an address and a phone number. I raise an eyebrow at her and turn it over. On the back is her name and ten o’clock written in black ink.