by Anita Oh
All the cameras started flashing at once. Audrey tried to keep the smile on her face, but she felt like she was just blinking a lot. The flashes kept going as the president listed off all the details for the release of “Super Explosion!” Once she’d finished, she said the reporters could start asking their questions.
Although Audrey had spent hours memorizing her script, she wasn’t prepared for the wall of questions that slammed into her.
“Audrey, where are you from?”
“What do your parents think of you joining Supernova?”
“What’s it like coming from nowhere and being put into a group with such high expectations?”
Audrey kept smiling, not sure how to pick out a question to answer. Then one voice cut through all the others. It was a nasal, whining voice.
“Audrey, what is your response to the rumors that you’re the girl in the photos that have been circulating of Eli Gale, and that the only reason you were placed in Supernova was because of your connection to him?” Sullivan Snell asked.
The whole room fell silent, waiting for her response.
Audrey glanced at the president, who gave a short nod. Audrey had no idea what that nod was supposed to mean, but she figured she should tell the truth.
“It’s true that Eli introduced me to the president,” said Audrey. “He’s been very kind to me.”
“So, what would you say is the nature of your relationship with Eli Gale?” Sullivan Snell asked.
Audrey furrowed her brow. “I only met him one time,” she said, trying to choose her words carefully. If she said she thought Eli Gale was the best person in the world, Sullivan Snell would probably set another mob on her. “There’s no relationship. He seems nice.”
He opened his mouth to speak again, but another reporter cut him off.
“Pegasus, how did your father react to the news of your debut?”
Peg blinked at the reporter, only opening his mouth to speak when Koko elbowed him.
“My father, rock legend Huxley King,” Peg said, his words coming out stilted and unnatural. “It’s an honor to be able to walk in his footsteps, but I hope to follow my own path and create an explosion around the world.”
Audrey remembered reading that in the script. She thought he’d done well, but neither the president nor Thorne looked happy.
“He seems really proud of Peg,” Koko said into the following silence. “Even though he’s on tour, he always takes time to show his support. For all three of us, actually, he’s been a great support, offering advice and suggestions for any problems we’re having. Now that we’re finally official as Supernova, I’m sure he’ll continue to support us.”
Even though Audrey thought Koko’s answer was top-notch, the president’s scowl deepened.
“Thorne, what are your thoughts on the new song?”
Thorne smiled on high beam, and a bunch more cameras went off.
“It’s a fun, catchy song that will put you in a good mood every time you hear it,” he said. His hands were still shaking, so he linked them behind his back. There was no sign of nervousness in his voice. “I hope that people come to associate that good feeling with Supernova. We don’t want to just explode people’s worlds. We want to remake them into something brighter.”
He smiled again, and the president looked a little happier.
“Back to Audrey,” said Sullivan Snell. “How do you respond to rumors that you were involved in an attack on a homeless woman outside the Sparkling Gem offices last week? Especially in light of what happened this morning?”
Audrey glanced at the president, whose lips had turned thin. The red glow appeared behind her sunglasses. Audrey would get no help from her.
“What happened this morning?” she asked, unable to help herself. She’d been checking the news constantly for any sign of the cult, but she’d been so busy this morning that she hadn’t had time. If they’d done something else, she had to know.
“The attack of an alleged ‘cult of monsters’ on a group of schoolchildren,” Snell said. Before Audrey could even begin to process that, he fired more questions at her. “What’s your affiliation with this cult? Are you a member? What do you have to say to the allegations that they are inhuman in appearance and strength? This isn’t the first time that Sparkling Gems Agency has been tied to the occult. Is it true that the president makes all agency employees engage in devil worship?”
“Pineapple,” said Audrey, looking to the president for help. “Pineapple!”
“I think that will be all for now,” the president said. “If your idea of a press conference is to harass young girls with irrelevant questions, there’s no point continuing.”
The reporters began to mumble, and a few shot Snell dirty looks, but he seemed pleased with himself. Audrey barely noticed, too wrapped up in thoughts about the schoolchildren. As the others filed offstage, Audrey stood frozen in shock. Peg took her by the arm and led her away.
“Well,” the president said as the door closed behind them. “That could’ve gone better.”
Chapter Thirteen
The president was so horrified with how the press conference had gone that she sent the four of them home without the celebratory lunch she’d planned. Audrey thought that was pretty tough on the other three when she was the one who’d fallen apart.
She couldn’t find any information on the cult attacking a group of children. There was one report about a wild animal attack, but nobody had been seriously injured. It was frustrating, not being able to find out what she needed to know.
Audrey didn’t look up from her phone the whole way home. When they got to the house, she walked straight into Koko in the entranceway.
“He was probably messing with you,” Koko said as the drawbridge closed behind them. “Trying to get you to slip up and say something.”
“I think he’s evil,” said Audrey.
“He’s definitely evil,” said Peg.
The four of them headed toward the living area, but as Thorne started to push the door open, they heard Peg’s voice on the TV, saying the line about his father at the press conference. A bunch of people were laughing. Thorne closed the door and backed away.
“We should think of this as our time to bond,” said Peg. “Suffering brings people together.”
“I don’t want to bond,” said Koko. “I want to nap, and maybe try to mentally prepare for when the president calms down enough to yell at us.”
“I’m sure when she calms down, the president will realize that we all did the best job possible, given the circumstances,” said Peg.
“Well, I didn’t mess up,” said Thorne. “I was perfect.”
Koko rolled her eyes and turned toward the stairs.
“Come on!” Peg said, catching Koko by the arm and pulling her back toward them. He turned toward Thorne. “You know it’ll show in our performances if our personal relationships are better. We can eat snacks and do face masks!”
Thorne paused, considering. “Your pores have been looking large lately. Fine, but air-popped popcorn only, and I get to decide what we put on our skin.”
Peg broke out into a sunny smile.
“Screw that,” said Koko. “I want the most fattening thing we’ve got. I want pizza. With chocolate on it. And deep-fried.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Peg told her. “I’ll get the snacks, Thorne will get the skin care, and we’ll meet you guys in the spire room.”
Audrey had never been in the room beneath the tall spire she’d noticed when she first arrived, but she could see its shining light from her room. She’d been so busy, she’d only had time to eat and sleep when she got home, so she hadn’t seen a lot of the academy.
The staircase up to the spire room was steep but short, and she and Koko came out into a small room with wooden bench seats around the walls. The room was shaped like a cone, tapering in to a point at the top where the light was set.
“I used to come here all the time when I first started at the academy,” K
oko said. “Before Thorne started, when I didn’t know anyone. It was only a month or so, but it felt like forever.”
“How long have you lived here?” Audrey asked.
“Four years, almost five. It’ll be weird to live somewhere else, but I suppose if our debut goes well, we’ll have to.”
Audrey hadn’t thought of that, but it made sense. You couldn’t keep living at a school after you graduated.
“I suppose the agency will arrange somewhere for us,” Koko said. “It’s kind of scary to think about.”
Koko normally seemed super tough, and like she had it all together. Even earlier at the press conference, when she’d been nervous, she hadn’t shown it. Audrey supposed that was what Peg had meant by bonding, opening up to each other about their worries.
Koko’s stomach growled. “I wish Peg would hurry up!” she said. “Put your phone away, Audrey. Even if you find out what happened, what could you do about it?”
Audrey guiltily slipped her phone into her jacket pocket. She’d hardly been aware of taking it out to check. Maybe phones had evil powers too.
Thorne actually got there before Peg, carrying a small case in front of him.
“You can’t just slap a mask on your face and hope for the best,” he explained, handing out makeup remover wipes. “You need to cleanse and exfoliate first. If you take skin care lightly, you’ll end up forty years old and wondering why you’re all saggy like an elephant.”
Audrey had never given any thought to her skin. It was just there, keeping her insides in place. Clearly, that had been a grave error in judgment. She carefully wiped the makeup off her face.
Peg arrived with the snacks and dumped them out in the middle of the room.
“I said popcorn,” Thorne said, frowning in disapproval.
Koko snatched up a bag of chocolate pretzels before they could be confiscated.
“You know I hate the little kernels,” Peg said. “They get stuck in my throat. Do you want me to choke to death, Thorne? Really, do you?”
Thorne rolled his eyes. He glared at Audrey as she opened a bag of corn chips, but really, she agreed with Peg about the kernels. You could die from popcorn if you weren’t careful.
“I guess in this situation, we’d normally talk about childhood memories or our families,” Koko said through a mouthful of pretzel. “But I guess that’s a bit hard…”
Audrey crunched on a chip. “I remember some stuff.”
She remembered looking up into the night sky and seeing it explode with sparks of color, but not who she had watched it with. She remembered laughing at something so hard that her ribs had hurt and she’d fallen down, but she didn’t remember what had made her laugh. She remembered being somewhere dark, with only a pinprick of light, and feeling like it was the end of everything.
“It’s all patchy,” she said.
“You don’t know what happened to your family?” asked Peg.
Audrey shook her head.
“Do you know why the cult took you?” asked Koko. “Were you like a human pet?”
Audrey shrugged. “The president said I’m a sacrifice. To raise a dark lord. Maybe end the world.”
“Wow,” said Peg. “That sucks.”
Audrey ate another chip. She felt like she was doing all the sharing here, so she tried to think of something she wanted to know about them.
“What’s a yokai?” she asked Koko.
Koko rolled her eyes. “That’s like asking, ‘what’s a human?’ It’s not like yokai are one specific thing. We’re creatures from Japanese folklore.”
Audrey nibbled on the edge of a chip, thinking about that. “Do you have powers?”
Koko shook the bag of pretzels, but there were none left. She reached out to get another bag, but Thorne edged them away from her, so she grabbed some popcorn instead.
“Some, but nothing fun. Just some mild elemental manipulation, mainly. Energy transference.” Koko held out her hand and closed her eyes, and after a moment a small bolt of lightning shot up from her hand. She opened her eyes and gave a little shrug. “Mostly, it’s just the horns.”
Audrey turned to Peg. “Evil Matt said you have dark powers.”
“They’re only dark to the unenlightened,” the three of them said in unison, laughing.
“That’s what my grandmother always says,” Peg told Audrey. “My family are mystics. My grandmother is powerful, but I’m relatively weak. Sometimes I get visions, but mostly it’s just a strong intuition.”
Audrey choked on a chip. “You can see the future?” she wheezed.
He shrugged. “Kind of. The future isn’t set in stone, so if I have a vision, it’s just the most likely outcome. I’m untrained, so my visions are probably about sixty, maybe seventy percent likely to come true. My grandmother has trained her whole life in all forms of mysticism. Her visions are bang-on a hundred percent every time. She knows a lot about crystals and herbs. I don’t even know half the stuff she can do because I haven’t trained. She says knowledge needs to be earned, not told.”
Audrey thought Peg’s grandmother sounded pretty smart. “Is your dad magic too?”
Peg shook his head. “Nah, that’s all on my mother’s side. That’s how they met, actually. He wanted to get famous, but he had no charisma, so he went to see my grandmother. She turned him away, but he sweet-talked my mother into helping him.”
“He must’ve had a little bit of charisma, then,” said Thorne. “To charm your mother.”
“Your grandma wasn’t happy?” Audrey asked.
Peg shook his head. “They didn’t speak until just before my mother died. My grandma’s pretty focused on her work now. It’s all she does. She wanted to train me, but my father enrolled me at the academy instead. I wish she’d taught me enough to control the visions. They can be pretty intense.” He rubbed his temples as if he had a headache just at the thought.
“I can’t do anything cool,” Audrey said. “All I can do is run away.”
“Maybe you can, but you forgot,” said Peg. “You can’t be sure.”
It would be awesome to have some sort of power she could use against the alpha. Audrey held out her hand like Koko had done, trying to shooting lightning bolts, but nothing happened. “I’m just human,” she said sadly.
“Well, that’s okay too,” said Peg. “Thorne’s human, and he doesn’t let that hold him back.”
Audrey snorted with laughter. “Thorne’s not human!” You only had to look at him to know that.
“Yes, I am!” Thorne snapped.
Audrey shook her head. “But your face. Your smile.” She pointed her finger at him to emphasize, and he pushed her hand away.
“Looks like you’ve got another fan, Thorne,” Koko said, her eyes shining with amusement.
“No!” Audrey said, feeling herself turn red. It wasn’t like that at all. Just because she had eyes and could see that Thorne was beautiful didn’t mean she liked him. It just meant she had decent vision. Thorne wasn’t kind or fascinating like Eli. Thorne was bossy and grumpy. He was ambitious and full of himself. She didn’t think of him like that at all.
“It all comes down to good skin care,” Thorne said, picking up his case of beauty products. “Hurry up and finish eating. I’ve worked out individual three-step programs for each of your problem areas.”
Koko gathered up the two remaining bags of corn chips and clutched them close.
“You’ll get all bloaty in the face, and the president will know you were eating unapproved food,” Thorne said. “Don’t say you weren’t warned.”
Koko turned to Audrey, not letting go of the food. “You know, when Thorne started at the academy, he couldn’t sing or dance. He was way worse than you. He cried himself to sleep every night. And the only thing he’d eat was shortcake, so he was all…” She puffed out her cheeks.
“The other kids used to call him Piggy Shortcake, remember?” said Peg.
Koko put a hand on her heart, pouting at Thorne. “It was doubly funny because he was
so short.”
“It wasn’t funny, it was stupid,” said Thorne. “It wasn’t even imaginative.”
He tried to look like he didn’t care, but the tips of his ears had turned red. Audrey couldn’t even imagine a Thorne who couldn’t do everything perfectly.
“You must have worked hard,” said Audrey.
Thorne’s eyes went wide. “Yes. I did.”
“He’s worked harder than anyone,” Koko said, the mocking tone gone from her voice.
“You must miss shortcake,” Audrey added.
“I do,” said Thorne. “I really, really do.”
Audrey took a deep breath, her resolve hardening. If Thorne could give up cake, she could learn how to talk to people without falling apart. “I’ll work hard too,” she said. “Harder than anyone. I’ll become the best!”
“We’ll all be the best,” Thorne said in that gentle voice he usually reserved for the camera. “The best ever.”
“Yay,” Koko said, opening a bag of chips. “Shine on, Supernova!”
“Explode into your dream!” said Peg.
And in that moment, Audrey believed the four of them could do anything.
Chapter Fourteen
The president didn’t yell at them for botching the press conference. Instead, she made them sit in her office for the whole of the next morning, watching it on repeat.
Over and over.
Audrey thought she’d hear the words in her sleep. It was like torture.
Occasionally, the president would pause the video and give them a pop quiz. “So, Koko, what should you have said here?”