Dedication
To the real Maria Torres . . .
and secret superheroes everywhere
Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1: Breaking and Entering
Chapter 2: The Package
Chapter 3: Starting Over
Chapter 4: First Impressions
Chapter 5: A Very Long Day
Chapter 6: Figuring Things Out
Chapter 7: A Mysterious Gift
Chapter 8: Escape
Chapter 9: Doubt Creeps In
Chapter 10: Tryouts
Chapter 11: A Strange Turn of Events
Chapter 12: The Roster
Chapter 13: Friend Problems
Chapter 14: A Powerful Shock
Chapter 15: Out. of. Control.
Chapter 16: The Secret’s Out
Chapter 17: Minor Mishaps
Chapter 18: A Mind of Its Own
Chapter 19: A Broken Promise
Chapter 20: Maria Has a Plan
Chapter 21: Defense Mode
Chapter 22: Figuring Out the Trigger
Chapter 23: Testing, Testing
Chapter 24: Strength
Chapter 25: Healing
Chapter 26: Unknown Powers
Chapter 27: Powers, Activate!
Chapter 28: Best Friends
Chapter 29: Bold Moves
Chapter 30: Living on the Edge
Chapter 31: Promises, Promises
Chapter 32: Confrontations
Chapter 33: Good and Bad
Chapter 34: The Show Must Go On
Chapter 35: Deep Thoughts
Chapter 36: Fire!
Chapter 37: Visual Confirmation
Chapter 38: Trying Not to Freak Out
Chapter 39: A Strange Sight
Chapter 40: A Surprise Attack
Chapter 41: A Startling Discovery
Chapter 42: A Growing Danger
Chapter 43: Just Getting Started
Acknowledgments
Back Ad
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER 1:
Breaking and Entering
It was a moonless winter night when a stealthy man in a long black trench coat inched through the aisles of a dark laboratory. He didn’t need much light since he knew the place well—he’d be able to tell by feel when he found what he was looking for.
When he came upon a glass case, he thrust a metal pick into the lock and turned it. The lock clicked, and the man slid the door aside.
A shrill alarm pierced the air, and the man cursed under his breath. He lunged for the contents, blindly grabbing what he could from inside and dashing for the door. He ran through the hallway and flew down the stairs, coattails flapping, all the way to the ground floor and into the night.
The alarm was just as loud outside. The man heard sirens in the distance and fled down the sidewalk into the darkness.
As he rounded the corner and ran under a streetlight, he glanced at the items he clutched. He grimaced, frustrated that he’d only managed to grab two of the devices he’d wanted: his own and one other. But the alarm on the glass case had been unexpected. There hadn’t been one in the past. Dr. Gray must be growing paranoid, he thought.
He heard footsteps behind him, and his heart jumped into his throat. A figure in a sleek bodysuit came speeding toward him and lunged for his feet, managing to shred his pant leg with razor-sharp fingernails. The man tripped but kept going as a second figure appeared in front of him. It screeched and jumped up in the air like an acrobat, pushed off against a building, and landed on him.
“Oof!” cried the man as he went down. He slammed his hand into the attacker’s face, then scrambled to his feet and stumbled onward, still clutching the precious items.
With lungs burning, the man glanced over his shoulder as the sirens grew louder. The two figures gave chase again. The man ran full throttle through the shadows of the inner city and ducked down an alley. He ran toward a grouping of trash cans, breathing hard and trying not to make any noise.
A woman stepped out of the shadows. The man slowed. He couldn’t speak.
“I suppose you did that,” she muttered, indicating the sirens.
The man nodded. “Sorry,” he gasped. He handed her one of the items and kept his own, and dashed away, not waiting to hear her reply. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw her climbing up a fire escape and disappearing over the edge of a roof. He could hear the footsteps of the two attackers in the distance.
Soon the man came upon a lone vehicle parked alongside the curb. He wrenched the door open and got in, and sped off into the night.
Thirty minutes later, the man pulled into a parking spot on the top level of the airport parking garage. He looked all around and expelled a relieved breath, then dabbed the sweat from his forehead and smoothed his hair. He checked the rips in his pant leg for blood and wiped his ankle clean. Satisfied, the man reached for his passport and overnight bag, and opened the car door.
Tires squealed. An SUV skidded wildly into view. Three figures in full bodysuits, like the ones the man had escaped from earlier, burst out and rushed at him. Before he could yell for help or lock himself inside the car, the figures grabbed him and ripped the device from his hands. Then they bound his wrists, shoved a cloth in his mouth, and tossed him into the back of their SUV. A moment later, they were off.
CHAPTER 2
The Package
Charlie Wilde let the front door slam behind her and shuffled listlessly to the living room for the last box. She gave a fleeting look around the empty house and sighed. The Wildes’ cats, Big Kitty and Fat Princess, warily circled and sniffed at two pet carriers on the floor. Their dog, Jessie, whined and paced anxiously at the window. “I feel you,” said Charlie. “Believe me.”
Charlie’s younger brother, Andy, followed her in, carelessly dragging snow across the carpet. Without a word the kids lifted the box and carried it out of the house together. The door slammed again, and the children waited at the back of the moving truck for their mom to grab the box from them.
All around, the noises of the city went on as if everything was normal: honking horns, waves of music from passing cars, and the occasional siren. But things were far from normal for Charlie. When her cell phone vibrated in her pocket, she balanced her end of the box with one hand and reached for it.
It was a text message from Charlie’s best friend, Amari, consisting of two emojis: a sad face with a teardrop and a green moving truck.
Charlie used her thumb to reply with a row of sobbing girl faces.
Andy, who was ten, grew bored waiting for their mother and started smacking the heel of his boot into the ice on the driveway to see if he could make a hole. After one particularly hard kick, he accidentally dropped his end of the box. The lid slipped off, and a couple of coffee mugs spilled out onto the ice.
Charlie sighed and lowered her end of the box to the ground. It had been a long, cold morning. Now that the house was empty and she’d said good-bye to her friends, she just wanted to get moving.
A blue car slowly passed by, the driver peering out the window like she was searching for an address. The car kept going, and Charlie turned back to Andy, who was just standing there. “What are you waiting for? Pick up that stuff,” she said. “And quit messing around.”
“You quit,” muttered Andy. He dropped to his haunches and pulled off his gloves.
Charlie’s mom poked her head out from the moving truck. “Any more boxes?”
Charlie frowned and stared stonily at the driveway.
“This is the last one,” Andy said. He chucked the coffee mugs into the box and smashed down the lid.
“Impressive,” Charlie said sa
rcastically. She helped him lift the box up to their mom, who put it on top of a stack and shoved a sleeping bag next to it to keep it in place. They could hear their dad grunting from inside the truck as he tightened the straps that would hold the fragile stuff in place for the seventeen-hundred-mile journey, taking them from the awesome city limits of Chicago to what Charlie called Absolutely Nowhere, Arizona.
“Almost done,” their father called out. “Load up the warm bodies and we’re out of here.”
“Okay, kids,” their mother said, “crate the cats and grab Jessie. We’ll put them in the car with me. You two ride in the moving truck with Dad.” She jumped out onto the driveway. “We’ll know soon enough how well this’ll work—I’ll spare you the meowing and the puking for the first few hours, at least,” she said with a wry smile. All three pets had been rescues with unknown pasts, but the animals had one thing in common: they hated riding in the car. Jessie got carsick if she moved around too much, and Big Kitty was especially skittish and had an earsplitting, banshee-like meowl whenever she wasn’t enjoying herself. Fat Princess chewed on things when she was anxious.
Andy darted inside, and Mom gave Charlie’s shoulder a squeeze as she passed. Charlie pulled away. She could hardly believe this was it—their last moments in their beloved house.
As Charlie lagged after them, she saw the blue car coming back this way just as slowly as before. She hesitated at the door to watch it. But a second later Andy began hollering from inside. The cats were clearly not cooperating. Charlie went to help.
Ten minutes and several scratches later, the cats were successfully enclosed in their crates. Charlie and Andy each carried one out to the Subaru. While Charlie carefully loaded them into the backseat and secured them with seat belts, Andy opened the hatch for the dog. He unfolded the waterproof sheet they kept back there and spread it out in case of an unfortunate barfing incident.
“I’ll get Jessie,” Charlie told him once the cats were loaded. As she jogged back to the house, she saw a small package propped up next to the door. “Where did this come from?” she murmured. She picked it up and looked around, but saw no one.
“Is this yours?” Charlie called to her dad, holding it up.
Her father appeared at the back of the moving truck and started lowering the roll-up door. “I don’t know,” he said, hopping out and continuing to pull it downward, “but anything that doesn’t make it in here in the next two seconds has to ride on your lap for three days.”
“Eep!” Charlie tossed the package into the back of the truck, just making it.
“First goal of the spring season,” her dad remarked as he slammed the door closed and latched it. “Nice shot.”
“Yeah,” Charlie said, but it came out halfhearted. Her stomach hitched as everything about moving away suddenly became so immediate. The truck was loaded, the house empty. She’d never play soccer with Amari or her other friends again.
At least I’ll be able to play soon, Charlie thought. If there was one nice thing about having to move so far away, it was that her new school in Navarro Junction had a sixth-grade girls’ spring soccer team, and tryouts were next Thursday. But Charlie would give that up in a heartbeat if she could just stay in Chicago. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard.
“Have you got Jessie?” her dad asked, and started toward the driver’s door.
“I’m getting her,” Charlie said, her eyes flying open again. She darted into the house, past her mother, who was grabbing snack bags from the kitchen counter. Charlie took Jessie by the leash and rested her hand on the dog’s head, trying to calm her. She looked around one last time, letting another sigh escape.
“Charlie,” her mom called, the click of her boots echoing in the hallway as she walked toward the door. “We’re ready! Time to go.”
Charlie felt a wave of anxiety, and tears sprang to her eyes. “Just give me a second to say good-bye to my house!” she yelled back with more attitude than she probably should have had. But she couldn’t help it. Didn’t her mother understand what she was doing to her? Charlie had lived in this house since the day her parents brought her home from the hospital. Her whole life was here. And now everything was falling apart.
CHAPTER 3
Starting Over
The Wildes rolled into Navarro Junction on Friday afternoon, just in time to get a quick tour of Andy’s and Charlie’s schools. When they moved into their new house on Saturday, they got everything unloaded into the garage and their beds and desks set up, and that was about all they could manage before they collapsed.
On Sunday Charlie stood in the garage and stared at the stacks and stacks of boxes that still needed unpacking. She wondered idly where her soccer stuff was, but looking for it seemed like an overwhelming task. Besides, her thoughts were consumed with having to start school in this strange place. It made her stomach hurt to think about it.
She turned away from the mess and instead took in the neighborhood. All the homes had stucco siding and ceramic-tiled roofs, which reminded her of gingerbread houses.
The street was quiet, and there was no one outside that she could see. She went to the screen door and called inside, “I’m going for a walk!”
“That’s great, honey!” came her mother’s overly cheerful reply.
Charlie frowned at her mom’s enthusiasm—after all, it was her fault they had to move—and ventured down the driveway to the sidewalk. It was weird taking a stroll in such an unfamiliar place and thinking at the same time, This is where I live now. She slipped her hands into her hoodie’s pouch pocket and clutched her cell phone. It made her feel better, somehow, to know that Amari was just a text message away. Charlie took a photo of her house and sent it to her, then kept walking.
It was quiet compared to her old neighborhood. There were no skyscrapers here, no honking horns or random sirens at all hours of the day and night. No businesspeople rushing down the sidewalk to work or to get in line at the coffee shop, or to catch the train like Charlie often did. That had been an adventure every day. Life was happening everywhere all the time at a breakneck pace, and a kid had to be quick to keep up. Of course Charlie had to be cautious when she was out alone in the city, but her parents had made her and Andy take self-defense and safety courses at the Y since they were little. And because her mom was an ER doctor, Charlie even knew CPR—you never knew when that could come in handy. By the age of twelve she’d been able to handle just about anything, but if she’d ever needed help, her stay-at-home dad had always been available by phone.
Now, walking through her new neighborhood with its strange stone-covered yards, cacti, and flowers blooming in February, Charlie felt uneasy and unsure about what to do with herself. It was too calm here. If she were back home, she could meet up with her friends or take the “L” train somewhere exciting. But here there wasn’t much of anything going on—not that she knew of, anyway. Her mind returned to school and the quick tour they’d taken in and out of a jumble of small buildings. She began to worry about getting lost or finding a place to sit at lunch tomorrow.
Charlie picked up her pace, always expecting to see tall buildings around the next curve in the road but never finding them. Navarro Junction was an hour’s drive from Phoenix, plopped down in a valley in the Sonoran Desert. There weren’t many trees, but mountains surrounded them. When their Realtor had handed Charlie’s parents the keys to their new house, he’d joked that the schoolkids always knew which way was home based on which mountain range they were looking at.
Charlie hadn’t understood why it was funny. Didn’t kids here memorize street names? In Chicago, the president streets went east-west. If you got lost, you just walked until you hit one and figured out your way home from there.
Charlie squinted against a sudden squall so she wouldn’t get dirt in her eyes and flipped her hood over her head. She jogged across the street and saw a tiny children’s play area between two houses, surrounded by stones. A couple of giant saguaro cacti stood in one corner. Charlie knew what kind th
ey were because, on the long drive, their father, a biologist, had talked about how different the plant and animal life would be in their new home. The saguaros were the tall ones often pictured in postcards of sunsets and cowboys and ghost towns, their prickly arms pointing out and up to the sky. Charlie looked at them, puzzled. Who would put something so prickly near a kids’ play area? It didn’t make sense.
Charlie’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She stopped walking and pulled it out, smiling when she saw that Amari had sent a photo in return. Charlie looked closely and realized it was a photo of Charlie’s old house, with snow falling all around. “Bet you’re a lot warmer over there!”
Charlie’s eyes teared up. Amari had gone out in the cold and snow to do that for her. She longed for her friend.
“I miss you,” Charlie replied. “And snow.”
“Seriously, don’t miss snow,” wrote Amari. “Totally overrated.”
“Haha,” wrote Charlie, though she was far from laughing. There was so much she wanted to say to Amari about how different it was and how sad she felt, but trying to find the words was too painful.
Instead she typed, “I should have given you my new snow boots.” There was definitely no need for the new boots Charlie had gotten for her birthday last fall. That was before Mom dropped the bomb about moving.
“You’ll need them when you visit,” replied Amari. “Or when you go skiing in the mountains! Lucky.”
“I suppose,” Charlie wrote.
“Are you moved in?”
“Not really. Everything’s a mess. Big Kitty freaked out and hid behind the stove. She hasn’t come out yet.”
“Oh no! She’ll feel better soon,” wrote Amari. “And she’ll come out when she gets hungry enough.”
“Yeah, I hope so. Thanks.”
There was a pause, and then Amari replied, “Hang in there!” with a brightly smiling emoji.
Charlie’s eyes lingered on the screen, but she couldn’t think of anything to say to that. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat, and then she shoved the phone back into her pocket and continued walking, making a loop that she hoped would bring her back to her house.