Girl Power

  She charges towards one of the men. He fires a pistol at her, but the bullets ping harmlessly off her. She snatches the gun away, her hand crumpling it into junk. She throws him to land at Kate’s feet. Kate manages to give him a kick, but he’s already out.

  The second is trying to get out through a side door. Starla grabs a wooden crate from off a pile. She throws it like a bowling ball to send the man sprawling. With a solid punch, he’s down for the count; he probably won’t wake up for a few hours.

  She tosses the other man aside before she unties Kate. A part of her wants Kate to jump up and hug her and then give her a kiss. The other part is just glad to see her friend safe. “What happened?” Starla asks.

  “I went to this businessman’s office. His name’s Ty Lecau. He burned down one of his own slum buildings since they wouldn’t let him raze it legally. These two jumped me outside the building when I left.”

  “They didn’t do anything to you, did they?”

  “They wish.” Instead of a hug, Kate extends one hand. “Thanks for the rescue. Do you have a few minutes for an interview?”

  “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Kate says. Starla winces at this. Is Kate’s friendship with Starla really that unimportant? She supposes to Kate a night of shoe shopping with her friend is far less important than an exclusive interview with Apex Girl.

  “What do you want to know?”

  As Kate begins to ask her questions, Starla thinks of how awkward it will be to have to proofread this story in the morning.

  Chapter 20

  Elise has spent a lot of time in Pacifica, but this is the first time she’s ever really been on the streets before. It’s not so different from most of the old cities in Europe. She supposes Venice would be pretty close except the entire city is underwater.

  She glides along in her peasant’s outfit. She’s tied her hair back with a piece of seaweed—what passes for a scunci among the poor girls in Pacifica. Without any makeup on, she looks common enough that no one gives her a hard time.

  From what she can tell, everything is going fine down here. Mother and the ruling council have managed to keep all the chariots running on time, so to speak. The people she passes all seem perfectly content, or at least no more harried than usual.

  She wanders into the bazaar to browse its wares. Unlike the last time she went, the crowds don’t instinctively get out of her way, but then she doesn’t have an honor guard now either. She slips through a group of children and their frantic mother.

  Seeing the children brings to mind the scare she had last week. She’d woke up in her apartment and immediately run to the toilet. After she threw up, she sat against the toilet for a few minutes, her mind spinning. Morning sickness was a sign of pregnancy. So was a late period, but having had only one period in her life, she had no idea if it were late or not.

  To be on the safe side, she went down the street to a pharmacy. She felt like a kid buying liquor as she went up to the front counter, nervously looking right and left in case anyone was looking at her. She set the pregnancy test on the counter as discreetly as possible. When it didn’t ring up on the first try, she had to grab onto the edge of the counter not to flee in panic. She waited for the chubby girl at the counter to get on a microphone to ask for a price check on a pregnancy test. To her relief, the chubby girl punched in the barcode numbers manually and a total came up.

  Back in the safety of her bathroom, Elise waited anxiously for the results. It came back negative. She breathed a sigh of relief. She had dodged a bullet, at least for now.

  With that in mind, she contacted Major Dalton to ask about birth control pills. “Are you sure they’ll work on me?” she asked the major. Pacifican and human DNA were mostly similar, but there were those slight differences that allowed Pacificans to breathe underwater and so forth.

  “Only one way to find out.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Well you know what they say: abstinence is one hundred percent effective.”

  “Catholics maybe. And stodgy old Republicans.”

  “I’m just saying, if you’re that worried, maybe you should stop having sex.”

  “Just give me the pills,” Elise growled. A courier had shown up the next day with a bottle of pills and a prescription. Elise had been taking them every day since then, but she still didn’t know if she could count on them. To be on the safe side, she had gone back to the pharmacy for some condoms.

  Children had obviously not been something she had considered while with Paul. They would have needed to adopt a child and the paperwork on that would have been a real chore, what with her being the king of Pacifica and her and Paul a gay couple to boot. Now that she can make a kid of her own, the matter has become far more serious.

  As she inspects some cute dresses at one stall, she watches the kids glide by. The way they jostle and argue is definitely a reason for her to wait. She doesn’t want to end up prematurely getting wrinkles like their mother from all that stress. At the same time, it would be nice to have a royal heir, a grandchild for Mother to dote on.

  First she supposes she needs to find the other half of the two needed to create a baby. At the moment she doesn’t even have a steady boyfriend. She’s been having too much fun with her new life to settle down.

  She slips the old woman at the stall a few clamshells for one of the dresses. In a restroom stall she changes into the dress. It fits better than that peasant gown and the glittering of the turquoise scales is much prettier. She rolls up the peasant gown and then stuffs it into the waterproof satchel she uses for a purse.

  When she glides back into the bazaar, crowds part for her like royalty. At least males in the crowds do. The females are probably just jealous they can’t make the dress look this good. She giggles at this thought as she swims away.

  For lunch she nibbles on a salad made of kelp and scallops. Food on the surface is definitely much better than down here. For one thing everything isn’t so soggy. She picks the scallops out to float away. While she nibbles on the kelp, she hears screams.

  Killer Whale is locked in the dungeon yet, so who could be attacking? She gets the answer when she sees a great white shark bearing down on the crowd. It’s the biggest shark she’s seen in a long time, probably twenty feet long at least. The teeth on it look like they can shred concrete.

  Elise shoots away from the table, out into the bazaar. She swims over the crowd and the shark. Its thoughts are easy enough to read. The animal is hungry. So hungry it’s decided to make lunch out of the Pacificans in the bazaar.

  A boy at the rear of the throng falls down. A man stops and races back to help him up. The boy swims away, but the man is slower. Too slow to avoid being eaten by the shark.

  Elise swoops down and focuses her thoughts on the shark. Telling it not to be hungry would be a waste of time; sharks are always hungry. Instead she focuses its thoughts on her. She makes herself seem like a manatee to the shark: big, slow, and relatively defenseless. Given the choice between a man and a manatee, the shark will go for the latter.

  The shark lunges up at her. Elise darts away from it, paddling towards the surface. She doesn’t want to get all the way to the surface, just far enough from Pacifica that no one can see her. She’s a strong swimmer, but the great white starts to close the gap. There’s nothing else to do then but summon Lord Neptune’s trident. It appears in her hands seconds later.

  She whirls around to lance the trident’s prongs into the shark’s head. The thing doesn’t stop at first. She has to pull out the trident and stab it two more times before it finally dies. Its jaws are only an inch from her right leg. The razor sharp teeth would have torn off the leg in a few more seconds.

  “Thank Poseidon,” she mumbles. Then she swims back towards Pacifica.

  ***

  She plans to get back to her disgusting lunch, but the man she saved
latches on to her. “You saved my life,” he says. “I can’t ever repay you.”

  “You don’t need to repay me. I was glad to help.” She studies the man. He has the rippling muscles of an Abercrombie & Fitch model with the luxurious beard of a Viking. Yet his eyes are such a soft turquoise, revealing a hidden intelligence. “You were pretty brave too. Was that your son?”

  “No, my nephew.” He sticks out a hand. “I’m Erek.”

  “I’m Elise.”

  “That’s a pretty name. For a pretty girl.” He kisses her hand despite that he doesn’t know she’s royalty.

  “Thank you,” she says, blushing at the compliment. “I was going to get some lunch. Maybe you could join me?”

  “That sounds wonderful.”

  While they eat lunch, she finds out Erek is a coral shaper. The coral shapers turn natural formations of coral into houses or other structures. Erek doesn’t just build houses, though; he also uses the coral to make sculptures. “That’s amazing,” she says. “Could I see them?”

  “Certainly. My workshop isn’t far away.”

  She should probably be concerned about going to the workshop of a man she met a half-hour ago. She’s certain what Major Dalton would say on the subject. But she’s not planning to sleep with him—not yet. And if he tries anything, she’s always got the trident at hand.

  The workshop isn’t much to look at. It’s about the size of Elise’s apartment on the surface with half of it dedicated to drawings and storage of Erek’s tools. The other half is what takes her breath away. The sculptures are the best she’s ever seen done in coral. There are men, women, whales, fish, and even a shark—ironic given what had just happened to Erek.

  “These are beautiful,” she says as she runs her hand along the sculpture of a man. “How many have you sold so far?”

  “None. I haven’t the heart to show them to anyone—except you.”

  She gulps at this. “That’s so sweet. Why me?”

  “I don’t know.” His eyes flick right and left. “I suppose I wanted to impress you.”

  “Well, mission accomplished,” she says. Then she swims over to kiss him on the cheek.

  ***

  Elise prides herself on not sleeping with Erek for two weeks. They spend a lot of time together, but none of it in bed. She sits in his workshop to watch him carve the coral with his specialized tools.

  He even lets her try. She takes the knife in her hand and gently digs at a chunk of coral. He shakes his head. “No, no. You have to be firm with it.” He chops at the coral with the knife. Then he hands it back to her. She pretends the knife is the trident and the coral the shark she killed when they met.

  “Much better,” Erek says. He pats her on the back. “You’re a natural.”

  That’s the first time they kiss on the mouth. They kiss quite a few more times after that, but it never goes farther than that. Maybe it’s the pregnancy scare or maybe she just doesn’t want to rush things with Erek. For all his manliness, he does have a sensitive artist’s heart that could be easily broken.

  On their two week anniversary, she takes his hand and says, “Erek, there’s a special place I’d like to show you. Have you ever been on the surface?”

  “When I was a boy, but only for a few minutes.”

  “How would you like to see it again?”

  “With you? I’d be honored.”

  She guides him to her private atoll, the place she and Allison had referred to as the Love Shack back in the day. She hovers near the surface for a moment, her hands in Erek’s. “This is going to be a little uncomfortable at first. You have to give your lungs some time to adjust. Try to keep your mouth open to help the air go in.”

  As promised, it is uncomfortable for Erek at first. He writhes around on the shore, panting and gasping as he struggles to breathe. She keeps a hand on his back to encourage him. She worries when his skin starts to turn blue around the edges. Is he going to die? Maybe he can’t make the transition—

  Then he takes a deep, wheezing breath. This is followed by another and another until his skin starts to change back to its normal color. “You did it!” she says. She gives him a kiss on the cheek as a reward.

  She helps him inside the house, to the bedroom. “This place is magnificent,” he says. “Almost as magnificent as you.”

  She knows this is a line, but she doesn’t care. She still blushes like a schoolgirl and says, “Thanks. You’re pretty magnificent too. I can’t wait to show you some of the sculptures they make here on the surface. They use all sorts of things here: stone, wood, and even garbage. I’m sure you’ll love it.”

  “Not as much as I love you.”

  Her body goes numb as he kisses her. “You love me?”

  “Of course. Elise, you are the most wonderful woman I’ve ever met. You’re so kind and sweet and beautiful too.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t you love me?”

  “I—” She thinks of their last two weeks together. It’s been nothing like she’s ever experienced before, not even with Paul. Maybe it’s because they’ve taken it slow. Maybe they have a deeper connection. She’s never really thought about the idea of a soul mate before, but Erek could definitely qualify.

  “I love you too,” she says. Then they make love for the first time. It’s so tender and gentle, not at all like her flings since she became a woman. Those were just sex, but this is truly making love. It’s as deeply spiritual as she’s always heard poets and singers say, as if she and Erek are one and the same for those few minutes.

  When it’s over, she collapses into his strong arms. She rests her head on his beard, to use it as a pillow. She wants to stay in this, the happiest moment of her life, forever.

  Of course that’s the moment when her phone rings. From the ringtone she knows it’s Major Dalton calling. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she tells Erek. She kisses him gently on the lips before she slips away into the living room.

  Dalton’s face comes onto the screen. “We’ve got trouble.”

  Chapter 21

  Allison sits in the back row of chairs at the day care center and kneads her purse in her hands. Today is the open house for the day care, when all the parents and guardians can watch the children play and do the various activities the caretakers come up with. At the moment Jenny is wiping finger paint over a piece of paper along with a half-dozen other children. While she paints, Jenny narrates to Sally, who sits next to her.

  It took a small amount of arm-twisting to get the day care to allow Allison inside. Sally had to explain that since Jenny’s father had died, her “sister” had moved in to help pick up the slack. That was what Allison had become to her wife in the last two weeks, a sister. To Jenny she was Aunt Ally now.

  When she was alone, Allison cried about the unfairness of this situation, but she had to admit it was better than the alternative. At least this way she could be around Jenny and Sally. Being an outsider was better than not existing to them at all.

  She would like to go over to where Jenny sits, but there’s no room and Sally as the “real” parent has priority. All Allison can do is watch and wait for her turn. She continues to knead her purse and listen to Jenny go on about her picture. “There’s Daddy,” Jenny says. “He’s up in the sky like an angel.”

  “That’s very nice,” Sally says. She looks over her shoulder at Allison, who wipes tears away. Sally pats Jenny on the shoulder. “Why don’t you go show Aunt Ally your picture?”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Yes.” Sally takes Jenny by the hand to lead her across the room. On the paper Allison sees a purple blob that’s meant to be a house and two blobs that are supposed to be Sally and Jenny. In the sky is a yellow blob meant to be Jenny’s father. Allison notes while there’s a tiny black splotch to represent the dog Jenny wants, there’s nothing for her aunt.

  Jenny holds out the picture at arm’s
length. “Oh my, it’s so pretty,” Allison says. “When we get home, Mommy will have to put it on the refrigerator.”

  Jenny doesn’t say anything to this. She squeezes closer to her mother. So far relations between Allison and Jenny have remained frosty. Out of desperation Allison called the counselor Major Dalton had assigned to them. The counselor said only that Allison has to be patient; in time Jenny will accept her as part of the family.

  Whether Sally will allow that much time is another matter. While Jenny goes off to play tag with some other kids, Sally sits down next to Allison. “I don’t think this is working,” she says.

  “She needs more time. She’ll get used to it.”

  “I’m not just talking about her.”

  “Oh.” Since their night of cuddling, Sally hasn’t allowed Allison to even look at the bedroom. Allison always has to sneak out after Jenny goes to bed.

  “Look, Allison, I do still care about you, but you have to admit it’s pretty awkward.”

  “I know, but what do you want me to do? Forget about you two? You’re all I have.”

  “Have you given any thought to dating? I’m sure you could find yourself a nice man—or woman.”

  “I don’t want anyone else. I love you. I love Jenny. I want us to be a family again.”

  “Then find a way to change yourself back. There has to be some way to do it.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know how it happened in the first place.”

  Sally shakes her head. “I don’t know what else to tell you.”

  “Don’t you feel anything for me yet? Physically?”

  “No!” she says loud enough that a few parents look their way. In a lower voice, she says, “Look, I did a little experimenting back in high school, but it was never really my thing.”

  “Couldn’t you try? For me?”

  Sally rolls her eyes. “Even if we did that, what would we tell Jenny? That Aunt Ally is her new mommy? She’s confused enough already.”

  “You’re the one who started this whole aunt thing.”

  “What else did you want me to do? I’m supposed to tell her that Daddy is a lady now?”

  “It would be better than all this lying.”

  “For you maybe. I don’t think it’s better for Jenny.”