by Sam Maggs
Thank goodness for phone alarms. Life savers.
“Right,” Nadia said to herself, walking toward her room. “Everyone is asleep. Like they should be.” She would have to wait until tomorrow to share her news about the journal and the list—though she had no doubt all her friends would be just as excited as she was. How could they not be?
“Not everyone,” came a voice from deep within the lab. Nadia spun—and saw a small light in the back corner of the lab she’d missed when she blasted through the front doors. In fairness, she had been distracted. You know, by contact with her dead mother from beyond the grave.
That was not a normal, everyday thing, not even for Nadia. And Nadia saw some pretty weird stuff on a pretty regular basis. She had a quartz laboratory she’d crafted with science because of Sailor Moon. So, you know, “normal” wasn’t exactly in Nadia’s wheelhouse.
Nadia walked toward the back of the lab, curious. “Who was that?”
“Who else would be awake at this ungodly hour?” A familiar creak accompanied the words—Tai’s crutches.
Sure enough, Nadia found the light was coming from the window that looked into Taina’s room in the lab. “Taina,” Nadia said scoldingly, walking into her friend’s room. “It is almost eleven! You should be asleep.”
Taina gave Nadia a pointed look.
“Okay, yes, true,” Nadia conceded. “But I was working, and I found—Wait.” She paused, confused for a moment. “I thought you went home earlier?”
Taina shrugged. “I was going to.” She sat on the edge of her bed, carefully tucking her crutches in the corner by the lab stool that was currently passing for a nightstand.
Nadia sat next to her friend. Tai’s bedspread was a cool blue, and on top of that was a white crocheted blanket that Tai’s abuelita had made her. It reminded Nadia of the snow under the sky outside the Krasnaya Komnata. Not like the winters in New Jersey, where snowfall almost instantly turned brown and slushy and covered everything in muck so that you immediately ruined the suede boots your machekha* had gotten you. In Siberia, it stayed white and crisp and pristine for what felt like forever—there was no one to disturb it.
When the sky was clear and the sun was shining, those were the days you knew to stay inside. Without cloud cover, everything was that much colder.
“Is it the Bee-Boi?” Nadia asked with concern, touching Tai’s shoulder. Taina might not have bipolar, but all-nighters weren’t healthy for anyone.
Tai shrugged and Nadia’s hand slipped away. “It’s—” Tai looked at Nadia properly, for the first time since she’d come in. “…Whyyyy are you all Wasp’d up?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Nadia waved her off. “We are talking about you.”
“Nothing to talk about,” Taina said with an air of finality. “Thing doesn’t work; thing should work; gotta figure out how to make thing work. There, easy.” Taina bumped Nadia’s red-and-black boot with her white Vans. “Now, Wasp’d?”
Nadia sucked in her bottom lip, a habit whenever she got excited. It might have been her subconscious way of stopping herself from talking too quickly. It didn’t work super well. “I found something.”
“So you said.”
Ignoring her friend’s snark, Nadia brandished the journal in front of her. “I was packing up the house and I found Hank’s secret tiny laboratory and inside the secret tiny laboratory I found something else—my own mother’s journal. And—”
“Your what?”
“Look!” Nadia flipped to page twenty-seven. “Here!”
“‘Things to share with your future potential child.’” Taina read slowly from the top of the page.
“Yes!” Nadia sprang up, spinning in a messy pirouette with the journal held above her like a very small and very light pas de deux partner. “I’m going to do them. All of them, right away. Isn’t it amazing?!”
“Is it?” Tai asked.
“Isn’t it?” Nadia repeated, stopping to face Taina. Wasn’t it?
“I’m asking you.” Tai flopped back onto her pillows, stretching her legs out in front of her and crossing her arms. She looked at Nadia with an expression mostly of curiosity…but there was something else in there, too. Wariness? Hesitation? Doubt? Nadia knew that Taina approached everything with a level of skepticism (or, as Taina would describe it, “realism”), so she tried not to take the look too personally. Nadia was an over-communicator to a fault and it was easy to forget that not everyone was the same way.
“Well,” Nadia said quickly, “I never knew my mother! And now she’s left me what is basically a how-to list for connecting with her and it’s such a beautiful opportunity, and—”
“That’s great,” Taina interjected. “That sounds really great, seriously, I’m happy for you. But—”
“But what?” Nadia asked. It came out a little snappier than she meant it to.
“Nothing.” Taina seemed to change her mind about what she wanted to say. “I’m happy for you,” she repeated. It wasn’t as convincing as Taina seemed to think it was.
“Taina.” Nadia frowned. “Be honest.”
Taina let out an exaggerated sigh and ran her hands over her face. “All I was going to say is that you’ve got a lot going on right now and nobody wants you to end up in a manic episode and frankly I didn’t even know you cared that much about, you know…” She paused, searching for the right way to say what she was trying to say. “Living in your past. I thought you were all about the other thing.”
Ah. Nadia thought she understood now. She perched on Tai’s stool. “It’s not that I want to live in the past—it’s the opposite,” Nadia explained with a smile. “This gives me a list of all the things I was supposed to have done but never got the chance to do. It’s like…a correction. A do-over.”
“And what about Like Minds?” asked Taina. “Have you even settled on a project yet?”
“Well, I just—”
“Or taking G.I.R.L. statewide?” Taina continued, a little louder. “Or your therapy workbooks? Or driver’s ed? Or selling your house? Or—”
“I know,” Nadia interrupted, her tone uncharacteristically sharp. Why was Taina being like this? Nadia was well aware of everything she had going on right now. “I know! But this…” Nadia stopped for a second to think. “What if you found something from your mother? What if she could speak to you again, even a little? Wouldn’t you want to be a part of that?”
Tai’s face closed off entirely. She didn’t like to talk about her mom’s passing. “I have Alexis and I have my abuelita,” she said bluntly. “What good does it do to wish my parents were still around? Should I be sad all the time? Should I be hanging on to something that isn’t real?” Tai pulled the crocheted blanket up over her legs. “I’d rather focus on the people who are here for me now.”
Nadia was frustrated. Tai just wasn’t understanding. She took a deep breath and tried to get her thoughts in order. Some part of her body still knew it was late, and it was starting to take a toll on her. “Okay, yes; I know I can sometimes procrastinate work with other work—”
“Sometimes—?”
“And I know”—this time it was Nadia who talked over Taina—“that I still have to pick a project for Like Minds even though I feel like I can’t find something that really matters and also finish the house and get my license and all of those things. But I can do those things while also making up for all the things I missed out on in the Red Room.” Nadia stood up and kissed Taina on the forehead. “But I appreciate that you worry about me. I’ll let you sleep.”
Tai sighed. Nadia could tell she was still worried about her. She didn’t know what else to do about that.
“Okay,” said Taina. “I’m dropping it. But don’t think that means I’m not still worried, okay?” Nadia smiled appreciatively, before turning to leave. “Oh, and one last thing,” she said, when Nadia was halfway out the door. “When are you going to tell Janet about this?”
Nadia froze in the doorframe. “Janet?” She hadn’t even considered i
t. A wave of guilt washed over Nadia. What did she have to feel guilty about?
It wasn’t like she was trying to replace Janet with Maria. A girl could have a mama and a machekha. It was a completely normal thing.
But what if that’s not how Janet felt about it? Nadia thought back to earlier that night, to the wonderful dinner and all the time Janet had put into taking care of packing Hank’s house for her, even though it was probably very emotionally turbulent for Janet herself. Would Nadia hurt Janet’s feelings if she brought her Maria’s journal?
Maybe. Probably, even. Either way, it wasn’t worth it. After all, she had said to Taina this wasn’t about prioritizing her past over her present. No, this was just about reclaiming something that had been stolen from her. It was empowering. It didn’t mean she valued Janet any less.
“I don’t think I will,” said Nadia, not turning around. “I think it can just stay between us, you know?”
There was silence from behind her. Nadia started to wonder if Taina had somehow fallen asleep in, like, two seconds with all the lights on. Really, she wouldn’t have put it past Tai.
“Okay,” Taina finally said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Night, Taina.” Nadia flipped off the overhead light switch by the door. “Love you!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Taina said to Nadia’s retreating back. Nadia smiled. That was Taina’s way of saying I love you, too.
Nadia shut the door to her own room and flopped down face-first onto her bed. She exhaled. It had been a long day. An amazing day, but still a long day. It was almost tomorrow. Messing with the time-space continuum did some strange things to your executive function. Nadia felt like an extra-crispy piece of toast. But, like, a very satisfied piece of toast? It had been an amazing name day. Toasty warm.
Rolling onto her side, Nadia pushed herself up onto her pillows. Her room was still pretty sparse; most of the things she’d use to decorate her space here were currently sealed up in boxes on the first floor of Hank’s house, twenty blocks away. But Nadia couldn’t wait to make this place really her own. She had so many ideas for how to decorate.
It was mostly in pastels. Nadia wanted to feel like she was in the Crystal Lab, even when she wasn’t.
Nadia rolled the rest of the way off the bed and forced herself to change out of her Wasp suit and into her pj’s (a well-loved oversize T-shirt from Janelle Monáe’s Electric Lady tour that Nadia had nabbed during one of Shay’s twice-annual clothing purges. It had been washed so many times it felt like a soft blanket).
Taina’s just worried about you, Nadia thought, wiping her face down with a cleansing pad. Nadia appreciated that her friends didn’t want her taking on too much. It wasn’t their fault for not understanding how important this was to Nadia.
She set the journal on the gray folding table in her room. She looked at the gilt letters on the front one more time before turning it over and turning off the lights. She had plenty of time to deal with everything—starting tomorrow.
* Stepmother, though Janet preferred the Russian word for it.
Nadia was running out of time.
“Do you think we could reschedule this for later?” she called out from behind her Wasp mask.
“Why, when we’ve got the bug spray ready now?!” shouted back one of the A.I.M. lackeys currently attempting to break into the Pym Laboratories Philanthropy head office in downtown Cresskill.
At least, it felt like she was running out of time, and there were certainly more convenient moments for an A.I.M. attack than this one.
The month since Nadia’s name day had been one of the most intense of her entire life—and she grew up in a school that considered you an underachiever if you only knew fourteen different ways to kill a man (as opposed to the requisite seventeen to forty). For some reason, the one thing Nadia had never considered about being a Cool American Teen was that it actually necessitated a lot of work? Like, a lot of work. How was Nadia supposed to maintain a healthy eating-and-sleeping cycle with this amount of work?
And Nadia didn’t even have to go to high school like her friends did. They were on another busy-ness level entirely.
To be fair, Nadia had the equivalent knowledge of an American GED at seven years old. She was very bright, but she also had Some Thoughts about the American public school system and billionaires who didn’t pay their taxes.*
The house was nearly finished now—Janet and Bobbi and Nadia had been packing tirelessly. The dining room, the basement, even Hank’s dusty old bedroom had been sorted and boxed and cataloged and donated. All of the packed boxes from the house had been moved into Nadia’s room in Pym Labs weeks ago. She’d held on to more than a few things, of course; Hank’s old photo albums, a few boxes of books, and Nadia’s first handmade G.I.R.L. poster were all coming along to Nadia’s new permanent home. The bigger pieces, she sold. Nadia was shocked to discover that Hank’s dated mid-century furniture was now all the rage among Brooklyn’s extremely hip. She had heard more people in adorably oversize hats and tiny sunglasses (surely not effective but decidedly fashion-forward) comment on her broken-down old couches’ “rehabability” than she’d thought possible over the last few weeks. But she was happy that all Hank’s belongings would be going to loving new homes.
One of the only spots still left untouched was Hank’s secret laboratory. She was going to get around to it, but every time she thought about tackling it, she found herself turning to Maria’s journal instead. Nadia had been slowly working her way through the list, one item at a time. The New York Hall of Science had been incredible. The first two Star Wars films, however, had been middling at best. Or were they the middle two…? Nadia had trouble caring enough to keep it straight. Apparently, they got much better. (She’d promised Ying they could watch the next one together tonight, and now she was going to be late!)
Nadia was enjoying herself, checking off item after item, certainly. But she still felt as though with every item on the list, she was…chasing something. Something she didn’t quite know how to reach. Waiting to feel a certain way or think a certain thing or to be told how she should feel about what she had just done…She didn’t really know what she was waiting for, really. But she knew she hadn’t found it yet.
And Nadia still hadn’t told Janet about what she had found—the lab or the journal.
Not because she didn’t want Janet to know. It wasn’t that at all. It was just that Nadia wanted to spare her machekha’s feelings. Nadia had no idea what else could be in the lab that might trigger some unpleasant memories or emotions in Janet. Hank hadn’t been a good partner, regardless of the reasons, and Nadia didn’t want to be insensitive about that. And she never wanted Janet to feel like Nadia didn’t appreciate everything she had done for her. Nadia could never repay Janet for her kindness over these last few years. Complicating things with Maria’s journal just seemed…
Complicated.
And Nadia was too busy right now for complicated. She was definitely too busy right now for A.I.M.
“Just the three of you, then?” Nadia called back to the A.I.M lackeys. She knew there were only three agents; she’d searched the area thoroughly while tiny before revealing herself. Nadia was just distracting them for a moment while she hit the comms button on her helmet, connecting with the Pym Philanthropy front desk in a flash.
“Wendy, there’s only three of them and I am watching them all,” Nadia relayed quickly. “Take your team out the back. Jarvis is waiting in the van.”
“Got it.” The girl on the other side of the line sounded relieved and grateful all at once. “We made the call and got the rest of the street shut down. We’ll help the neighbors evacuate. You got this, Nadia.”
“Definitely!” Nadia replied with confidence. This wasn’t her first time taking on A.I.M. She knew what she was up against.
Nadia had been leaving her weekly therapy appointment and heading for the bus when she’d gotten the call from her friend Wendy, who worked Pym Philanthropy’s front desk. Wendy als
o planned their parties and loved pigeons. Nadia sometimes stopped in on her way back to the labs to chat with her, and it was always a delight.
Which is why, when Nadia heard how worried Wendy sounded on the call, she’d headed straight over. Suit on and particles activated, Nadia had spied on the location from the top of an organic coffee shop across the street that sold the most delicious crepes. Did she have time to stop for a crepe?
After, Nadia decided. Because there was simply no mistaking the three A.I.M. agents clearly…what did they say in Ying’s movies? Casting? Caring?
Casing. Casing the joint! They had been casing the joint.
Here was the thing about A.I.M. For a supposed covert international technology cartel dedicated to overthrowing the world’s governments, stealth was not really their strong suit. Their suits, in fact, were lemon-yellow biohazard gear with noisy black boots and a matching belt (didn’t they know that belts and shoes did not have to match? That was, like, the first thing Shay had taught Nadia about fashion). Today their biohazard suits were black, and while they might have been able to get away with something like that in Williamsburg, it was considerably more conspicuous in Cresskill, New Jersey.
Their accessorizing didn’t help their situation, either. If the oversize guns on their backs didn’t scream “evil baddies,” the cold, lifeless eyes of their identical helmets certainly did—thin, opaque visors embedded in perfect cylinders with flat tops.
Nadia giggled to herself. They were just…they were bucket-heads. Sure, they were dangerous and evil and a threat not to be taken lightly.
But they wore buckets on their heads. Like Goth Devo.*
And they were here at Pym Philanthropy.
“You know this isn’t our lab, right?” From her vantage point in the air, Nadia made a mental note of the location of all three agents. One by the front door, one on the street, one in the alley trying to sneak away unseen. “This is a charitable organization. We do stuff like science parties. You would probably like it!”