CLAIRE

I remember the day the heroes disappeared. When I was a little girl, about nine years old, there were superheroes in our city— not just the Sentinels, the ones who were controlled by the local energy company. There were heroes and villains who used our city as a battleground. 

Some might have thought that meant that we were constantly afraid or in danger. But that wasn't the case, or at least, that's not how I remember it used to be. 

It was whimsical and wonderful, where life was bigger than life and every single day felt like a story too fantastic to be ours, but was somehow our miracle all the same. 

Maybe it wasn't that great, though— maybe it's my own nostalgia that makes it brighter by comparison. After all, what happened on that day changed my life forever. 

It was the kind of event where everyone remembers where they were in crystal-clear perfect clarity. 

I was in school when City Hall burned down. 

It was math time, and Mrs. Murphy had deviated from showing us long division to lecture us about the evils of calculators. This had been brought on by Charlotte Collins, who made the fatal error of mentioning that her mother's college students exclusively used calculators for their advanced math. 

The ringing of the telephone tacked to the wall interrupted her rant's conclusion about the laziness of our generation, much to the relief of Charlotte and the rest of us. Mrs. Murphy grimaced as she walked over to the far wall of the classroom to accept the call. 

As soon as she lifted the speaker to her ear, low whispers filled the classroom. As long as Mrs. Murphy was distracted and we didn't disrupt the phone call, we could get away with doing whatever we wanted for a few glorious minutes.

I pulled out the book on Greek mythology I'd hidden in my desk cubby that I'd gotten from the weekly trip to the library. I was sneak-reading a passage or two during the math lesson. It was an unfortunate habit I'd developed at that age, born out of one of Mrs. Murphy's tantrums earlier that year.

Look, I've never exactly been a math whiz, and that was especially true when I was a little girl. It took me so long to grasp the subjects that there was a point in the third grade when my teacher considered holding me back.

I'd come into the fourth grade eager to prove that I deserved to advance forward— only for Mrs. Murphy to get frustrated with me and berate my lack of ability or comprehension many times over the course of the year. No matter how hard I tried, nothing seemed to work. By the time the spring rolled around, I figured I was a lost cause and there was no point in paying attention since it didn't make any difference. 

I don't remember everything about that day. I don't remember when exactly Mrs. Murphy started staring at me, a grim expression on her face. Or how long it took before the class went silent, all eyes on me. Or even the words in my book, as they all blurred together in my memory. 

But I will never forget what Mrs. Murphy said when she got off of the phone.

"The rest of you, keep working. Claire Browning, please come outside and speak to me, please."

I cowered— I thought I was in trouble for my math grade or for reading my book in secret, and I was sure that Mrs. Murphy was going to yell at me again. 

The whole class was silent as I somehow propelled my slow, heavy limbs forward. Even my body dreaded what would come. I just hoped I wouldn't stress-vomit on Mrs. Murphy's favorite shoes again, like the previous time Mrs. Murphy had removed me from the class to "speak to her."

The gentle click of the door closing behind Mrs. Murphy echoed through the white brick hallway. As soon as the door was shut, Mrs. Murphy removed her red reading glasses and broke down sobbing.

I stared at her uncomprehendingly as seconds turned to minutes that felt like hours. I had no idea why the totalitarian dictator of my fourth grade classroom was suddenly crying in front of me like a human being, but I didn't like it. 

I didn't know what to say or what to do, though. I didn't know if I was in that much trouble, or if there was something else. 

When she finally stopped crying enough to put her glasses on, Mrs. Murphy spoke.

"I'm not supposed to be telling you this," Mrs. Murphy admitted in a low voice. "We're not supposed to tell anyone what's going on, not until the end of the school day. But it isn't fair to you, especially."

I tilted my head but said nothing— I had no frame of reference for what to say or do. 

Mrs. Murphy then inhaled sharply through her perfectly-sloped nose. "There was an attack on City Hall, by a superhero—I guess supervillain, now. It burned to the ground and your mother— your mother stayed in the building to try and save the archives and—"

Big, shuddering sobs racked Mrs. Murphy's body, bringing her down to her knees. I stood there, numb as the realization hit me. In the white hallway, a liminal space, it felt unreal, so detached from what Mrs. Murphy was saying. 

My mother was dead, gone, never coming back. 

But I couldn't cry, it had to be a mistake, these kinds of things didn't happen in New Kingsbury. At least, that was what my child brain believed. Never mind that with the heroes and villains, there were always some who disappeared. 

I don't know how long we stood there like that before Mrs. Murphy finally regained her composure. She sighed and smiled sadly at me.

"You're a brave little girl," she said. "We can't tell the other children, it would scare them. But I thought it kinder that you know the truth. Do you understand?"

I nodded— although it didn't feel like it was my body nodding. It all felt disconnected, like it was happening to someone else and somewhere else far far away from life as I knew it. 

"Good girl." Mrs. Murphy cleaned her classes and adjusted them on her face. "Now let's go back to learning about long division."

Somehow, I was able to put it past me, to somehow forget that my mother had died while I was in the middle of math class— that is, until the end of the day, when the intercom crackled to life thirty minutes too early for afternoon announcements and dismissal. 

I didn't comprehend the words coming out, but all I knew was that everyone in my class was staring at me, uncomfortable with the girl with the dead mom in the room with them, and learning that a supervillain who had once been a hero had burned down City Hall.

Heretic had been new in town, but she had been a hero. She'd saved a little boy about my age a few years ago from the supervillain Dr. Electra.

She wasn't supposed to be evil. 

This wasn't a minor act of vandalism, the occasional bit of damage bound to happen when you had colorful legends living in your hometown. 

This was serious, permanent, irrevocable. And while we maybe didn't know all of those words at nine years old, they stuck with us all the same. 

Only the Sentinels were still on our side. All other Mutated, people with powers, were just ticking time bombs bound to betray us, like Heretic, like even the first hero and villain, Mastermind. 

Things changed after that day. The Mutated had to turn themselves into the government, and those who did develop powers were taken by the Sentinels for training. There were a few classmates I had who never knew they had those powers— secretly ticking away.

But the ones who were around—there hadn't been many left after the war against Dark Titan before I was born—they didn't stick around. 

They left, taking their powers and chaos with them. 

Our involvement with the outside world grew less and less. We still had the internet, TV, all of that. But as superheroes spread, we were less interested in seeing others learn what we did all too well. 

As for my family, we ate only takeout for four months after my mother died while Dad barely was able to go to work and get me to do my homework, much less keep up our apartment close to the center of town. 

But he somehow got through it, somehow managed to make it out of a dark period marked with closed shades and an apartment slowly falling into disrepair. 

It wouldn't be until six years later that Dad would remarry. By the time my senior year of high school rolled around, we no longer lived in the center of town, as my mother was no longer alive and no longer needed a shorter commute to work. 

Instead, we moved to my step-mom's house out on the edge of the suburbs. It was just barely within district lines to allow me to still attend North Kingsbury High School, where I'd gone for the first two years. I had to take the monorail system to and from school, which was an improvement over buses or walking, in my opinion.

Plus, Holly's house was right below the monorail station, so it wasn't too much of a hustle if I slept in, and because it passed through all of the stations multiple times a day I could take it home if I had to stay after for newspaper or esports practice. 

Like I did the night I finally began to understand why City Hall burned down.