Class ended in five minutes and all I could think was, an hour isn't long enough for concert band.

It took a considerable amount of time just to set up all the chairs, stands and instruments, even for a group as meager and underfunded as ours. Another chunk was lost getting everyone to stop talking, then more for tuning, both individually and then as a whole. More still had to be allotted at the end to deconstructing everything, making room for the choir class that followed us. In the end, we only ever used half the period to actually play music, and that wasn't enough to fix all the big mistakes, let alone fine-tune any details.

Not that even the whole period's worth would be enough for me. If I had my way I'd replace half my classes with more of this, but I'd settle for subsuming just my next period.

Still, it was wonderful while it lasted. Just me, my flute, and the rest of the band, twirling and jumping through chord progressions, suspended on sound. Something I could still be proud of. A precious, precious distraction.

Mr. Hoffman signaled to cut just before the transition from third to fourth movement. "Okay," he said, voice reedy and beleaguered, "we'll stop here. Morgan, Will? Those long notes are forte, but they're not fortissimo. Remember that. Trumpets, work on your entrance at measure 47. That sixteenth-rest matters; you're supposed to be responding to the French horns. Taylor?"

I paused in dissembling my flute and looked up.

"Not bad. Focus on refining that solo section."

I savored those first two words like ambrosia.

He continued to talk over the sounds of cases being shut and chairs getting stacked against the wall. "Every one of you should be taking this chart home with you tonight. The showcase may not be until winter, but we've got performances leading up to that, too. I want this one ready by open house."

Charlotte was waiting for me by the door, clarinet case in hand to match my flute's, and together we dove into the river of students in the hall. The music room had instrument cubbies, but this was Winslow, so anything small enough to steal was better off in a locker. It still wouldn't be safe there overnight, not if anyone knew it was there, but it'd keep people out until I could take it home.

We melded into the throngs, navigating the hall's currents. There were spots everyone knew to keep their distance from, lockers or corners where members of the Bay's two main gangs staked their claim, boasting their exploits to each other and harassing non-members that got close enough to be noticed. Some avoided the tags the same way, though that was a paranoia reserved for the freshmen or the otherwise meek and naive. I was a junior now; the tags themselves were just paint.

"So," Charlotte began, "how'd it go? With the…"

The eyeliner. I frowned. "Not great. I looked like a goth raccoon. I don't think it's for me."

"You'll like it better once you can get the lines even. Promise. Next time I come over and your dad's not there I can show you, alright?"

"Sure," I mumbled, shrugging my shoulders. "And, you know, thanks. Really."

She rolled her eyes and smiled. "Of course."

Her locker was closer. She stowed her clarinet away, retrieved a textbook and a binder and shut it. "See you at sixth?"

The question wasn't rhetorical. Now that the fleeting high of being good at something had faded from me, she could tell what sort of state I was in, and if I was going to ditch I would do it now, before I had to brave the locker room. I wasn't going to, though. "Yeah. See you then."

She smiled again, this time with a sympathetic tinge, and went back the way we came, in the direction of her next class.

I shoved my free hand into the pocket of my hoodie and started the other way, frustrated with myself. Charlotte meant well, and she was the best (and only) friend I'd had in years, but I hated making her worry about me. It was almost worse than it was with Dad; he didn't know what he was supposed to be worrying about, only that I hadn't grown into my teens the way he'd expected me to and we were past the point where Mom's death alone could explain it. Charlotte knew a lot more than he did, so her concern probed deeper, stirred what I tried so hard to keep down and drew it into my throat.

I needed it, but knowing that didn't make it any easier.

I reached my locker to find one of the biggest gang tags I'd seen yet. The outline of a wolf's head had been drawn in gold spray paint across a few lockers, jaws poised to clamp down on the stylized red "88" that'd been there for weeks. Half of a crude triangular ear spilled over onto my door.

My brow furrowed. The speculation online that the Chosen had "inducted" a new cape seemed to have held weight. They were probably nonwhite, too, if they were outright taunting the Empire over it. I wished I could enjoy seeing Nazis get taken down a peg or two, but I knew what would come of poking the bear before you shot it. At best, they'd take it out on minorities. At worst, they'd pick a fight to bolster their image and ravage some unlucky part of the city, and then they'd take it out on minorities.

For a guy that gave lip service to doing right by his people Fenrir sure seemed to get them into unnecessary combat a lot. Then again, by all reports he probably did consider that "doing right" by them.

My flute and the books in my bag went into my locker. As I was closing it something bumped into me from behind and shoved me forward, forcing my nose to collide painfully with the cold metal door. Wet threatened to leak from my nostrils and I clamped them shut with both hands, praying no one had seen. I whirled around to face my assaulter.

Sophia Hess. Leering over her shoulder at me, eyes narrowed, flanked on her other side by Emma Barnes. She was one of the only girls in the school that about matched my height but I had a feeling she would manage to look down on me even if she were five foot nothing. Her gaze was hard to meet head-on but I didn't dare look anywhere else, not at the floor, not at the people rubbernecking at us, and definitely not at the rest of her.

The places she was slender where I was just lean.

The swell of her chest where I was flat as a board.

The curve in her hips where I was a narrow line.

That might have been the worst part about what the two of them did to me: that even after all the rumors and belittling and veiled threats, I was still so achingly, caustically jealous of them both. I hated myself for it.

Sophia's face was hard. "Watch yourself, Hebert."

I knew what she meant. "Tell anyone what you know and you and your dad are dead." I opened my mouth to retort, still covering my nose, but I was interrupted.

"Wow Taylor," Emma said, voice a casual, underhanded sort of scathing, "did you have a growth spurt? I could swear your shoulders have gotten even wider." She winked, a boxer prefacing the knockout punch with a cocky flourish. "Maybe the football team will even ask you to be a linebacker this year."

They weren't actually very broad, all things considered, and I knew that, but the fact that she would say it, knowing exactly how deep it would cut, burned me. The words I hadn't quite formed soured in my throat, liquefied, became a bile that promised to rise and brim over the instant I broke composure. It took everything in me not to spew my reply's remains at their backs as they walked away, Emma whispering in Sophia's ear, probably about secrets that would ruin me if let slip.

I stormed down the halls in a fugue state, swallowing down what wanted, needed to escape, barely conscious of anything other than the building pressure. It was a wonder I got to where I was going, but not a pleasant one.

The door to the locker room loomed like the gates of hell, gilded in dull, flaking paint. That might have been more truth than comparison, actually; if hell was anywhere on Earth, it'd be in Winslow, and if ever there was more perfect torment than this, it was meant for a different sinner. If I strained my ears I could almost hear the devil over the demons, drawn into this liminal corner of reality to watch the show, cackling like a cartoon in anticipation of my raw suffering.

I hesitated briefly, then entered, not letting my gaze wander beyond where I was walking lest I blush and add fuel to the rumors about my sexuality. I beelined for my usual stall, locked myself in, hung my backpack on the hook on the door, and turned back to the toilet just in time for the stench of the place to sink into my nose, cracking the dam that held me together.

How do boys manage to smell so fucking bad?

All my stress and hurt and loathing gushed up my throat and into the toilet in a torrent of black liquid. I did my damnedest to stem the tide but I'd been holding too much back, the pressure needed release. When the worst of it was out I just stood there, excess dribbling down my mouth and nostrils. It was dark as pitch except where the light hit it, catching and bending on the surface in an iridescent shimmer, like an oil spill in a parking lot. For all I could tell it was oil, or at least something a lot like it: there wasn't much of a smell to it, but it was filmy, it was slick, and I knew from testing and training that it burned.

I raised a hand to wipe my face clean but stopped when I noticed I was missing a couple fingers. Where the tip of my ring finger and half my pinky should have been, there were only a pair of stumps, melty and dripping black.

I frowned. I must've been in a worse state than I'd realized, if I was falling apart like that. It happened sometimes, when I released restraint. I was just glad it'd ended up in the bowl with the rest.

Instead of wiping the wet on my face away, I reabsorbed it, feeling it replenish my mass. From the stumps grew a pair of dark and pearlescent digits that, with a bit of concentration, solidified into flesh, good as new. My power didn't let me reshape my base form, to my immense disappointment, but it did let me recover from what would otherwise be devastating injuries; regrowing fingers was the least of my capabilities in that department. There was still some oil left on me when I was done. I opted to just absorb that, too. It wasn't the most comfortable sensation, similar to eating when I was already full, but it didn't hurt any.

I changed out of my shapeless clothes, ignoring my bare, breastless chest, and into my shapeless gym clothes. The hoodie went back on right after, my fondest form-obscuring refuge, and the rest of my regular clothes went into my backpack. I raked through my curls, remedying the strays and tangles. They tickled at my shoulders now. I reveled in that.

A knock on the stall door startled me. "Hey, uh, you good, man?"

I flushed the toilet, not worrying about the fact that I'd just sent a highly flammable substance down the pipes. My oil dissolved into water once it'd been off my person long enough, quicker if I wasn't trying to influence it. "I'm fine." I opened the door to find a boy I'd seen maybe once or twice standing there. He'd changed into a plain white t-shirt but had yet to swap his jeans for shorts.

The concern fell from his face. "Oh."

By the lockers, a guy built between stocky and chubby barked a laugh as he pulled on his shirt. "Told you. He voms in there all the time. Hey Hebert," he jeered, "got a boyfriend you're tryna stay skinny for?"

The first boy chuckled at that. I dodged past him. Others done changing funneled into the door to the gym proper and I shuffled into the sea of bodies. I was surrounded on all sides by boys I couldn't relate to, some busting guts with unfunny jokes, some saying despicable things about girls in our class, many in dire need of deodorant. They all saw me as a part of that whole, if a vaguely defective part, set apart by some subtle, pervasive quality of weird, but I knew who I was.

I was Taylor Hebert. I was a girl, even if only one other person knew it. I had a power. It wasn't world-class or game-changing, but it was mine. I didn't have a team and I wasn't planning on becoming a Ward - I would never be a Ward - but I was going to do some good with it anyways.

I was going to be a heroine.