"Hey."
Through the fog of her mind, Leslie felt a light jab to her rib cage, rolling her slightly to one side before her half-conscious body rolled back. She groaned in protest.
"Better get up, hon. It's past time you did."
Leslie flopped her hand in the air to signal her dad to quit it. Sitting up in her bed felt like seconds, but surely it took minutes.
When Leslie had rubbed just enough sleep from her eyes to see the world around her, the first thing she saw was her dad standing over her with his arms crossed. Was she in trouble? She couldn't think of a reason why she would be, if they thought she was home at a reasonable hour last night.
Her eye caught the open laptop on her nightstand, apparently plugged in and turned on since last night. What struck her most of all about it was the URL: "sapph-fire-dot-com."
She slammed it shut without thinking.
Once the instinct wore off, she remembered that her dad was still in the room - had been for God knows how long - and even saw her close the lid on her computer at a speed irregular for someone still groggy from staying up all night. His expression hadn't changed.
'Shit.'
She began to reel the device closer to herself when an older, male hand stopped it.
Her dad sighed.
"You wanna dirty your mind with that junk, be my guest..."
He lifted his hand, allowing his daughter to yank hers out from under it with her computer in tow.
"...just don't bring it into this house."
'Then where the hell else do I bring it?'
Even if she wanted to say it, it was just too early; instead, she went with her gut, which, right now, was telling her: 'deny everything.'
"N'kay?" The grunt was noncommittal, and she looked at him like she had no idea what he was talking about - an obvious bluff, but it was better than admission, which would have led to a more serious confrontation.
Lucky that she was fully dressed already (albeit in some need of a shower), she stood up and began her trek into the kitchen. Her dad followed.
"You know we appreciate the money," he said. "Even if it is just making videos, it's not like you don't pull your weight around here. Heck, you pay for more of this than your mother and me combined! If anything, I should be thanking you..."
Leslie paused in the middle of the hallway, eyes wide open.
'Shit. I haven't made a video in a while. That's not gonna go over well, not just with my folks, but the fanbase, the sponsors, the website - all that ad revenue could be just... gone!'
Her dad was still behind her, meaning he couldn't see the scared expression on her face as he continued.
"...all I'm asking is that we keep it Christian. It's our house too, your mom and I. Our name is on the deed, we're the ones who signed with the bank, and we don't need something like... this... in it. Alright?"
At first, Leslie said nothing as she leaned on the wall of the hallway.
"Leslie?" her dad said again, sterner this time.
"Yeah, yeah, alright."
Her dad nodded.
"Alright. Good talk."
He had to squeeze past Leslie to get into the kitchen, and Leslie pressed herself closer to the wall to let him by. Even after her dad had left, she clung to that one wall, her head remaining stationary while her eyes darted from one wall to the other, checking to see that they stayed right where they were supposed to, that what happened last night wouldn't happen again.
But the more she stayed, and the more she curled up against her slice of wall next to two wood-framed family portraits, the closer the walls felt, the closer her lungs felt to collapsing, like everything was a black hole imploding in slow motion and was ready to swallow her up.
She ran into the kitchen.
Despite Doris's straight posture and decisive movements, her attitude slumped into the kitchen where her dad was standing over the toaster, waiting for his toast to come up. He looked over at the entrance where Doris stood and smiled.
"Oh, hey there, Dory! Are you 'psyched' for our little familial excursion, next-?"
Right away, he could see the confusion on Doris's face.
"-er, our, uh, trip - next weekend?"
Toast popped up from the toaster, and without asking, Doris grabbed it from the slot and started eating it - no butter, just how she liked it.
Well... how she wanted it.
"Don't call me Dory. And I'm not going."
"I-I feel like it would be a great opportunity for us t-to really bond as a family, and, uh... get along better!"
Doris gave him a sideways glance. It was the first eye contact she'd made with him that day.
"I thought we did."
"W-well, think about it: what would you do around here all day with us gone?"
"Same as usual."
"Yes, I suppose... b-but you'd have to keep the house tidy, sweep the floors, wash windows, feed the cat-"
"Sure."
"Huh?"
"I said I'll do it. Gimme a list."
Mr. Zeul sighed. "I guess you are old enough, now."
Doris nodded, satisfied. She began to sit down with her toast when she heard:
"The thing is..."
She winced. Doris fully expected the sentence prior to be the end of it, but him reeling her back in threw her for a loop, especially in his body language: his eyes were dead set on the floor, like he had something he needed to tell her but it was too heavy to deliver it comfortably. His mouth hung open until his eyes finally set themselves on Doris.
Doris and her dad were usually the same height due to a slouch in his posture; now, however, his chest rose a tad and his chin was more perpendicular with the ground. It wasn't until he started talking that Doris realized what all of this meant - words she was afraid would come from her father's mouth, but almost never did.
"...I'm not asking."
Doris's parents were one of the few problems in her life that couldn't be solved by punching them, and she hated that. She couldn't really say 'no' to them unless they let her, which made it very lucky that they gave her a wide berth at all times. So why didn't they now?
"But... but that's not fair!" she cried.
"We feel that it is. Your mother and I - we just feel distant, and we feel that this could provide us with the right incentive to connect."
"What about what I feel!? Do you guys not even care about that!?"
"Sweetie, no! That's all we care about!"
Doris stuck her last few crumbs of toast in her mouth and stomped off to her room.
"There would be plenty of physical activity involved, chances for exercise - I thought you'd like that!"
Mrs. Zeul was right in front of her daughter when she slammed her bedroom door shut.
Mr. Zeul sighed.
"That went well," said Mrs. Zeul, stepping out into the kitchen. "I think."
"I don't," her husband replied. "In fact, I'd say it went over exactly as expected. How are we ever going to make a connection without our own daughter if she insists on being so nonreceptive?"
Mrs. Zeul put her hand on Mr. Zeul's back.
"Well, hon..."
She lowered her voice to a hush as she leaned in towards her husband, eyes darting between him and the hallway Doris had just stormed through - adjacent to which was a door labeled "LAB".
"...it's not like we've been the most open with her."
Mr. Zeul sighed. "I know," he said in a similarly hushed voice. "But that's business. What are we supposed to do, employ her? We're not going to subject her to that!"
"Golly no, I'm not suggesting that at all! Just that, well... we move past it."
"How? She knows we're criminals, how on Earth do we ever come back from that?"
"She hasn't gone to the police yet. That's a good sign."
"Unless they're sitting on us."
"Francis!"
Mr. Zeul stuck a finger up to the blinds of the kitchen window and pulled them down a smidge, just enough to peek at the other side of the street.
"I swear, Beatrice, they're waiting just out of sight, waiting for us to do something suspicious - something worthy of probable cause, or, better yet, something that gives away our employer!"
"Well, she's been stealing vials from the lab, so that makes her just as much a criminal as us."
"She is not taking vials."
"Well, somebody is, and only you and I know the combination."
"Well, it can't be her, then, can it?
"Why not? You don't think she's capable of it?"
"I know she's not capable of it. If our criminality was such a bother to her in the first place, she wouldn't think of doing such a thing, and she wouldn't anyway! Not our daughter!"
"Because we raised her?"
"Exac-!"
Mr. Zeul turned to his wife and was met with crossed arms and a cocked brow. The look of frantic acceptance on his face sloughed onto the kitchen counter, leaving only a sigh.
"Alright," he said. "So maybe she is. So what? Why would she be acting like this?"
"Let's you and me face it, hon - we're chemists, not teen psychologists. But we're still her parents. Maybe she won't let us into her life now. All we have to do is be there for her when she does."
DING DONG!
Pam opened the door to her apartment and was met face-to-face with Selina, flip phone in hand as she held it for Pam to see.
"I came as soon as you tex-"
Something green snapped at Selina's wrist moments before she moved it out of the way.
"Ah!"
The snap, as Selina's senses revealed, came from a tall, Venus-flytrap-looking plant that had been potted right next the door, almost in front of it.
"-ted me."
"Yeeeah, Audrey bites."
"Noted."
Pam stepped to the side. Her gaze led her guest to the couch where lay a moaning, girl-sized lump swaddled under a large, cozy-looking blanket. On the side of the couch facing the door lay a couple hyenas, each resting their head on the other's back. As soon as they perked their heads up and saw her, they came skittering towards her, panting and laughing as madly as ever while Selina bent down to pet them.
Lucy and Ethel always did have a thing for Selina. She suspected it was because hyenas are closely related to cats, rather than dogs as most would assume; it had been Harleen's conclusion, however, that they could smell the villainy on her and found it fondly familiar... unless she just smelled like the warehouse they lived in. She never quite knew how to take that last one.
Still petting Harleen's "babies", Selina looked to Pam and asked, "how long has she-?"
"Since last night," Pam said. "Said she wanted to move out before her owner called the cops."
"It's not even Thursday!"
Pam shrugged. "That's Harleen, I guess. Whatever the case, she won't get off my couch. She's not even watching the TV."
"Our Harley? Jesus, this is serious."
"Thought I'd get you to try talking some sense into her... or at least get her to leave. I am not feeding three animals on top of all my plants. Then again, Audrey could always use more food..."
The overgrown flytrap licked its lips, and Selina shivered.
"I-I'll talk to her."
Once Pam gestured for her to come in, Selina made her way ever-so-slowly to her friend, almost stalking her until she had reached the back of the couch, and she held a hand out to Harleen's obscured form. The blonde stirred at her touch, crouched in on herself, but didn't say or do much of anything.
"Hey, girl. How you holding up?"
Harleen moaned, sounding like a sick cat.
"Is this about last night?"
She moaned a little louder. God, it was like the wails of the damned.
Selina looked over at Pam, who still stood between the couch and the front door. Pam shrugged. It looked like Selina was on her own for this one.
"Anything I can do to help?" Selina asked Harleen.
Harleen didn't even manage another moan - all she did was lay there in silence.
"Look: whatever it is, I'm sure we can fix it."
"Too much..."
Selina was surprised to finally hear something from Harley. Progress was being made.
"What was that?" she asked.
"The rent I gotta pay... s'too much to fix. An' then I gotta feed the babies, fix up the place so... so's I can..."
She trailed off into some inaudible language. Silence overwhelmed them both. And then...
"It's all over," she spoke softly.
It was an odd feeling to be Selina in this moment - she knew everything was going to turn out fine, she had orchestrated it to be only so; and yet, to hear Harley suffer so uncharacteristically, even knowing it was all part of said orchestration, was something she felt she could never steel herself against. She felt like her heart had taken the place of a cat's favorite scratching post.
So, just as she reasoned with herself, she reasoned with Harley.
"Oh, come on! We missed one heist, it's not the end of the world."
"It's the end a' my world."
"It really isn't, trust me."
To be as theatrical as possible, Harley threw off the covers as she sat up to face Selina, eyes wide and red and visibly exhausted by tears.
"Conflabbit, Sel, did ya just come here just to contradictorize me or d'ya got an actual point?!"
"What if I told you I have a gift for you? Something that could fix your problem?"
Harleen's face popped out from the covers.
"No pullin'?"
"Serious as Sam."
"And who's he?"
"Nevermind that. The point is, if you come to school with us, I promise I can give you something that will cure anything that ails you now."
"Well, what is it? C'mon, gimme-gimme-gimme!"
Harleen bounced in her seat with excitement.
Selina poked her nose like she was pressing a pause button and Harleen stopped.
"Only after we get to school," said Selina. "We might be off-duty, but we're still on the clock. Capiche?"
Harleen looked dejected, but resigned, if reluctantly so.
"Awww... alright. Ca-pitchy."
"And since you're so down in the dumps, maybe it's better that I drive."
"You kiddin'? I wan' us to get there as fast as possible! C'mon, ya Lazy 'Lina, we haven't got all day!"
In an instant, Harleen had bounced herself over the back of the couch and through the front door where the stairs to the parking lot waited her eagerly.
Selina caught Pam slowly moving her gaze from the door and to Harley to her. If it was possible, she looked even less happy than when she had first walked in.
"If we die in a car crash..." Pam's voice crawled down the back of Selina's spine. "I'm going to kill you."
"It's so unfair!" Doris said into her phone.
"SO unfair," the phone replied in Leslie's voice.
"I mean, I'm a grownass woman! Why can't they leave me alone for just one second!?"
"Technically, you're alone right now."
This much was true - Doris had already made the run to school campus completely solo and was waiting for the others to show up and give her something to talk about.
"You know what I mean!"
"Yeah, I hear ya. My parents are being kind of assholes too."
"A stupid camping trip! I get one chance at having some me time, and they crush it like a- like a-!"
She stopped when Harleen's car landed in the street in front of her. Not parked, not drove - landed. As far as Doris could tell, the thing fell straight out of the sky and crashed with an awful, grinding "KERRRUNK" sound that was loud and screeching enough to blow someone's ears out if they were standing right next to it, which Doris was.
As Doris stood paralyzed in shock, Pam and Selina spilled out of the backseat and passenger's side, respectively, and lay on the pavement looking ready to throw up while Harleen calmly got out of the driver's side, stood up, and slammed the door shut.
"See?" Harleen told her passengers. "Told ya I knew a shortcut!"
Pam made a wobbly attempt to stand up, leaning on the side of the car for anchorage. "If by that you meant 'this is going to cut your lives short,' then I would say you did a bang-up job."
"Thank you!" Harleen said innocently.
Doris couldn't hear any of it past the ringing in her ears. She could feel vibrations hitting her head from the phone, probably Leslie asking if everything was alright, but she couldn't be sure.
"Uhhh, I'm gonna have to call you back. See ya soon."
She hung up without leaving room for a response. As rude as it was, she could hardly hear it if there was a response anyway.
After some groaning and tripping, Selina stood straight up with a hand pressed against her forehead and her eyes clenched shut.
"God, my kingdom for an aspirin."
She opened her eyes and was immediately met with Harleen staring at her from up close, trying to smile her own eyes shut. A moment of silence followed. Harleen didn't move an inch.
"Well?" Harleen asked.
"'Well'?"
"We're here! Ya got somethin' to show me?"
"Settle down, Sparky. I want the whole gang here before we give out any presents."
"Presents?" Doris asked, her hearing mostly returned. "What is this, Christmas?"
"For Harleen, it might as well be," said Selina.
"Yeah, if I wasn't Jewish."
"I just wanted to make up for last night. To everybody."
Doris cleared the wax from her ear with her pinky. "Wait, you're making out with who?"
All conversation stopped when a sleek, green car pulled up beside them: one they recognized as belonging to a certain Hal Jordan. Carol stepped out of the passenger's side.
As soon as the door had latched back with a KTHUNK, the car sped off with little fanfare.
"See you inside!" Carol's words were drowned out by the screeching of tires. She waved to the car, even as it rounded the corner into the parking lot.
"Aw, he's so excited to be with me in person!"
She looked around at her friends, seeing everyone staring straight at her.
"What?"
"How on Earth did you get a ride from Hal Jordan?" asked Selina.
"I have my ways."
"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked. Selina usually wouldn't have pried, but with Carol...
"What it means is that he still has feelings for me."
"Or he just felt like being nice to you."
"Oh, I don't think he 'just felt like being nice' last night!"
Selina looked at her with confusion, prying Carol to speak further.
All she did was smile.
Selina's eyes looked ready to pop out of her head.
"YOU DIDN'T."
Carol bit her lip and nodded.
"Oh, get out!" Selina pushed on Carol's shoulder like a cat pushes a ball of yarn.
Carol giggled. She had the biggest smile on, it was a wonder she only giggled as much as she did.
"So are you two back on?"
"Mmmm, I think I might need a little more persuasion to reel him back in - for good, this time!"
"How do you plan to do that?"
"Jealousy. He obviously still sees me as an option, so if he sees me being unavailable, he'll swoop at the first chance he gets to take me back!
"Didn't you already try that with that other guy? The yellow one with purple skin?"
"Nah, that was different."
"Different how?"
"It's complicated."
"Riiight."
"Besides, we tried a threesome and they just spent the whole night in their corner while I watched."
"Wow."
"I mean, I kinda liked it, but..."
As the conversation faded into Carol talking and being met with increasingly short responses by Selina, Doris stood off to the side, tuning them out. All she wanted to do was wait for Leslie to get here so they could move on as a whole group. Harleen, bored and equally tuned-out from the other two, slid right up next to her.
"Hiya, Dory! How's tricks?"
Doris would have been annoyed by the nickname if she wasn't just glad to see Harleen happier than she was last night.
"Well, yesterday was pretty shitty. And today's been pretty shitty."
"I see." She took a pen and notebook from somewhere on her person and dabbed the point of the pen on her tongue. "And howzat make you feel?"
Doris furrowed her brow.
"Shitty."
"Interesting..."
Harleen ran the pen across her tongue one more time.
"Wow, this tastes GREAT! Want some fruit-flavored ink?" She held the pen so close to Doris's face that she could read the label.
"Harleen, that's a Sharpie."
"Oh! Huh. So, do ya want it or not?"
Doris's brows tried their best to meet in the middle, and as low on her face as possible without closing her eyes.
"No."
Harleen shrugged. "More for me!" She continued to run the marker across her tongue, smearing it with black and dark blue ink.
Doris sighed.
"At least there's someone here dumber than I am."
"Hey, that hurts! Why, I'll have you know I'm studying to be a pee-sychologist once I gradumatate! 'Fact, if anyone talked to me like that, I'd give 'em what-for!"
"You're serious?" This was a first. "Even if it was a friend?"
Doris shot a look at Pam, who sat in the grassy patch of cement between her, Harleen, and the other two, the plant she always carried with her cradled between her legs, completely disinterested in anything any of them had to say. Something must have tipped her off, because it wasn't long before she and Doris locked eyes. Pam's head looked away, but her eyes couldn't manage for long - could it be she was thinking the same thing as Doris?
"'Course!" replied Harleen, pulling Doris out of her trance. "Bein' close to someone don't mean they can walk all over ya. 'Less they're teeeeeny-tiny, like a little bug! Then ya could feel their li'l feetsies all over ya like li'l tickles, an' they'd pick out belly button lint for ya, and they-"
'Dear God,' Doris prayed, 'make this stop.'
"What's up bitches!?" came a voice from afar - it was Leslie who answered Doris's prayers.
'Oh, thank God!' thought Doris.
'Amen!' thought Harleen before realizing thoughts weren't supposed to be out loud. She apologized mentally.
Leslie waved to her friends as she walked towards them on the sidewalk.
"Hey, Doris! Pam. Harl. Sel. How's everyone doing?"
Carol crossed her arms.
"Glad you could make it," said Selina. "Now that everybody's here, I'd like to make an announcement to you all about last night's little fiasco."
"Tch! Yeah, 'fiasco' is putting it lightly," said Leslie.
"I think my feet still smell like sewer water," Doris complained.
"You mean more than usual?"
Leslie and Doris stared daggers into Carol.
"Don't look at me like that, we all share the same locker room!"
Selina nodded. "It is true, unfortunately- uh, not the feet thing, just that things went more than a little south, and I can't help but feel that I was at least mostly responsible."
For once since they'd arrived, Pam looked at Selina.
She continued:
"I was the one who suggested the later date. I wasn't at my best in those sewers, both as a professional and a leader. This is all to say I accept full responsibility for what happened down there. It's on me."
As Selina stared pitifully out into the crowd of five, the silence to follow was broken up only by sheepish glances and dry coughs. It only ended when Carol stepped forward.
"We all kinda had our wires crossed. It happens, right?"
Neither Leslie nor Doris wanted to side with Carol at the moment, nor did Pam (though her current distrust of Selina still took center-stage), and Harleen was focused singularly on waiting for whatever prize Selina had waiting for her, but, however reluctantly, they agreed. As spited as they were, the guilt of what went wrong hung equally on everyone's shoulders.
Doris sighed. "I was the butthead who tried to fit into the sewers and had to shrink back down into useless ol' me."
"I... guess I tried almost killing us. That was a bummer, I guess."
"And I blew up at Leslie. Not that she didn't deserve it, but..."
Pam stayed quiet.
Harley put her arm around Selina's shoulders.
"Ya not just our boss, y'know - you're our friend, an' one little night a' catastrophe ain't gonna make our friendship disappear. It ain't the end a' the world, remember? Not when we got each other's backs."
Harleen pulled her friend into a hug. Looking around at all the different friends she had, Selina saw sincerity in their fake smiles - they really did want to let her know that it was okay, just like they really did want her to be happy. But for how much longer? How much longer would it be until they found out the truth?
Whatever the case, she knew she could only enjoy it til the end.
She patted Harleen on the back.
"Thanks, everyone."
Harleen backed up, putting her hands up in the air.
"Also, I'm completely blameless in all this, I jus' want that on the recuhd!"
Selina put her hand on Harleen's shoulder.
"You're right. You're more a victim of last night than anyone here. So..."
With her other hand, Selina held up a lengthy string of effervescent beads: pearls. Real pearls. And it was clearly meant to hang low and proud, or else be doubled around a wrist more than a few times.
"...this should pay for your rent."
Harleen didn't just gasp as she yanked the pearls from Selina, and she didn't just squeal, either - she screeched with joy. It was hard to be anywhere on campus and not to hear it. This, along with quickly alternating which soles connected with the pavement painted a very happy picture for everyone else.
Selina smiled.
"First rule of being a criminal: always have a back-up plan. This was mine. Yours was bunking with Pam, and for your sake and mine, I hope you get a better one in the near-"
In the micro-instant between words, Selina was stopped by the feeling of arms around her neck and something pushing on her lips - when her eyes caught up with the rest of her, it turned out to be Harleen's.
"Whoa!"
"Holy-!"
"Uh...!"
Seeing them crowd around the two would be like looking at a field of ripe tomatoes.
Harley backed off to more closely examine the pearls with star-studded eyes, leaving Selina in shock.
"-future."
Selina looked back at the rest to see who all had seen that.
A lightbulb seemed to appear over Doris's head.
"Oh! So that's who you said you were making out with."
Leslie and Carol looked at Doris with marked confusion. "Wait, what!?"
Selina shook her head, thinking how at least she was sure it was real. She took time to recover while she walked closer to the final person she wanted to address that morning.
"And Pam - I did some digging last night. Apparently, the same person that made my gear recently sold his wares to a person matching the description of whoever we saw last night. I'm still looking for whom exactly, but for now, I just want you to know... you were right, in a sense."
Pam raised an eyebrow.
Selina's open palm extended itself to her.
"We good now?" asked Selina.
It was a heartwarming gesture, and Pam didn't buy it for an instant. But she couldn't keep confronting Selina about what she knew she saw. She needed proof, and that could only come with opportunity.
Pam grasped Selina's hand and shook firmly.
"Yeah... 'we good.'"
Selina looked almost as unconvinced of Pam as Pam was of her, but what could she do? Pam accepted her, at least performatively - the most she could do was wait for this to blow over. With Pam, that'd be like waiting for a tree to die. But Selina was game. Cats climbed all over trees, and so help her God, this would be no different.
"Good."
Their handshake went on for far too long. It only broke up when Leslie came over to talk to Selina.
"You know, if you wanna make it up to us the same way you did Harles, I have a few ideas we can-"
"No kissing, no cameras, no quarterbacks."
"Dammit!" Leslie plodded away, looking more frustrated than disappointed.
Her teammates had a hardy laugh about it.
A smiling Doris threw an arm around her and comforted her as the five of them (surrounded by a hopping, half-dancing Harleen) walked into the halls of their school to greet the boring slog of the school day, which, after the night prior, they welcomed happily and with open arms...
...paying no attention to the young, masculine figure who had been watching from behind the corner ever since Selina had arrived.