2

“How do you know he’s well-liked?” Caleb questions, bewildered.

“Come on, you’ve seen how many messages he gets on dating apps. And how many blokes make eyes at him when we go out.” Because as much as Caleb has people staring at him, Rex is just as bad for that kind of shit, especially in any queer club or bar.

I’d never be into him like that, because he’s my little brother in every way but blood, but I have eyes, I get it. Rex is the very epitome of pretty-boy twink , paired with the confidence of a pissed-off badger and a mouth that gets him in trouble every two seconds of his life. If Rex didn’t have superhuman strength and the combat training of a SAS solider, I’d be worried about leaving him wandering around alone.

“Okay, first of all, ‘make eyes’?” Caleb demands, sounding highly disturbed. “What the fuck? Please never say that again. Also, why are you noticing how many random men ‘make eyes’ at our pseudo little brother? That’s strange.” He narrows his eyes at me. “You’re strange right now.”

“It’s called being observant, Cal,” I say reproachfully, making a show out of looking disappointed in his inability to understand basic deduction. “Check yourself before you wreck yourself, please.”

“That’s not even what that means!” Caleb fumes, losing his cool again quite terrifically, a thing that I will never not find immensely entertaining.

He climbs back over the bed-zoo rope just so he can be close enough to get up in my face, like almost no one else in my life has the balls to do. “And I stand by what I said,” he affirms. “It’s a dodgy word, whatever Rex decreed .”

I raise my eyebrows at that, sceptical, and he rushes to argue because that’s his default setting.

“You know he’s a bad gay anyway.” Caleb pulls a face, his pretty little nose scrunching up, making him not one iota less attractive, the fucker. “Like, edgy. He wears straight-boy baggy jeans, and he was great at maths in school, and he almost blinded himself the one time he tried to use eyeliner. We can’t trust his stance on gay morals.”

I’m almost positive that’s insane, but okay. I’m nowhere near plugged into the … pulse of the queer community enough to know what’s considered “edgy” by the community at large. I do, however, think that I’m going to be making a T-shirt for Rex’s next birthday that has the words #1 Bad Gay printed on it. Possibly in glitter. Yep. That’s definitely happening. Rex would wear that shit all day long.

I’m getting flashbacks to all those times in my teens when I googled “am I gay?”, only to be bombarded with quizzes and random information to the point where I struggled to discern joke from honest speculation. I mean, obviously I don’t think being shit at maths means anything about a person’s sexuality, and neither does Caleb; for the record, he’s just being an argumentative weirdo, like always. But when you’re a fourteen-year-old who’s confused as hell, you grasp at anything to explain your own feelings, or in some cases, the lack of them.

I was afraid to ask Rex, who came out super early, which was very typically brave of him but also second-hand terrifying for me. I didn’t want him to think I was being stupid for not knowing, when he seemed to know from minute one exactly who he was.

Plus, growing up in a little English town as one of the very few Black kids around meant I already felt singled out so much of the time, I wasn’t eager to add another layer of ‘different’ for people to get potentially weird about.

For a young queer kid trying to figure themselves out, the internet is good, but also bad, but also reassuring, but also scary, but also great, but also terrible. I’m honestly unsure if I would recommend it, because I think mostly all I did was give myself imposter syndrome and anxiety about the whole thing.

Even now, at twenty-one, I still don’t feel comfortable slapping on a label.

“Okay, lets outsource this.” I turn my attention back to Tim, who looks frightened and intrigued to be once again included, which is either very silly of him or very courageous. “Tim, if I were to ask you?—”

“Oh my fuck.” Caleb whacks my arm, cutting off my attempt at democracy. “Don’t bring Tim into this again.” He shoots our American friend a vaguely exasperated frown. “Tim, why haven’t you run away yet? I told you to save yourself. Where are your survival instincts?”

Tim’s eyes bounce between us like a trapped bunny rabbit. “Uh, well, I?—”

“Great!” Caleb interrupts, hitting my arm again, turning a scowl on me. “Now you’re making Tim uncomfortable. Well done.”

“ I’m making Tim uncomfortable!” I say, outraged by the implication. How dare he. Tim is my ally, my most-trusted collaborator. “Are you joking, mate?”

Tim seems to have found the end of his rope—frayed and possibly on fire. “I really don’t know what’s happening anymore.” He sounds lost, like an ugly baby swan or a blue koala alien. Very upsetting.

“That’s okay.” Caleb sighs, giving Tim a sympathetic pat on the arm. Too hard, by the wince on Tim’s face. He really needs to learn that not everyone appreciates affection through mild physical violence like our family does. “We hardly ever know either,” he says, like he’s trying to be reassuring and missing by about thirty miles. “It’ll be over soon, probably.”

Sensing a need for a topic change, I offer up another friendly grin to Tim and ask, “Can I use your clipboard?”

Tim, although initially startled by the non-sequitur, rallies with impressive speed. “Uh, what for?” His fingers tighten protectively on the clipboard.

“Yeah,” Caleb says narrowly, squinting at me with a deep and undeserved suspicion, “what the fuck for?”

I shrug one shoulder. “I’ve never held a clipboard before. I want to see how it feels. Does it make you feel empowered?” I ask Tim. “I think I would feel empowered by it.”

Caleb, sensing trouble born from ingrained wariness due to our past interactions with anyone outside our family, warns, “Tim, whatever happens from here on out, don’t give him the clipboard.”

I shoot a look of absolute betrayal at Caleb. “Why are you constantly trying to crush my hopes and dreams, Cal?”

“You only started wanting to hold a clipboard five seconds ago!” Caleb huffs irately.

“Says who?” I demand. “Maybe I’ve wanted to do that for years. You don’t know me, you don’t know my life!”

“Yes, I bloody do,” Caleb says, looking up at me with one of those rueful half smiles on his face that never fails to catch me right in the chest. “I have literally known you since we were six.”

That’s true. First time I met Caleb Moon was just after my parents and I moved to Colbie, the tiny seaside town my friends and I grew up in. My parents wanted to get away from the city, and their friends, Mei’s parents, who were also looking to move somewhere quieter, told them about a couple of cottages for sale in Colbie.

Before I was stolen by the ultimate-evil corporation Obsidian Inc. and experimented on with the superhuman drug called Liquid Onyx, my parents were city people through and through. But after they got me back, they were afraid of it, of all the people they couldn’t trust surrounding them all the time.

Colbie gave them the chance to start over someplace where they knew absolutely everyone. It was where we found and built our new, much larger, much more bizarre family, with people who knew exactly what they went through because their children were exactly like me. Liquid Onyx survivors. Kids who had our DNA mutated by one of OI’s scientists in an experiment that turned us into superhumans with enhancements and powers that made us dangerous to the outside world.

I met Caleb on Colbie beach when I ran away from my new house to escape being forced to unpack boxes. Caleb was kicking a football around on his own, having snuck out of his house after an argument with his dad, one of many to come.

Caleb kicked the ball at me without warning, and my shield powers reacted on instinct when I raised my arms to block it. A bright-orange shield materialised in the path of the football. It bounced off the shield, and I dropped my arms, horrified at what I’d just revealed to a complete stranger. I might have been only six years old, but I understood better than anyone the consequences of my secret getting out to people I couldn’t trust not to react badly.

But Caleb ran right up to me that day without any trace of fear and told me, in a rush of excitement, that I didn’t need to be afraid, and wasn’t this brilliant because I was just like him. We were the same kind of different. Superhuman. Special. Survivors .

I was so relieved that he didn’t run away from me screaming that I let myself be dragged to Rex’s house, where Caleb introduced me to his best friend, who he said was one of us too. They told me about their powers, Caleb’s complex empath abilities and Rex’s terrifying ability to combust matter with his mind. Later, I took them to meet Mei, and I watched them be extremely impressed by her ice powers.

It was improbable that the four of us would wind up in the same small town the way we did, and I don’t have much belief in the idea of fate, but if the universe did have some hand in bringing us together, I’ll be grateful for it for as long as I live.

My life would be so much less without them. Without Caleb. He was the one who first took the fear out of what we are, who made it something exciting and good rather than a reminder of the pain and horror we went through at the hands of Obsidian Inc.

I don’t realise how Caleb and I have been staring at each other, bubbled off in our own little world for what has probably been a weird amount of time, until Tim clears his throat to get our attention.

“So, like, how old were you when you got together, then?” he asks, like that’s a perfectly reasonable question that doesn’t make all the synapses in my brain fire off at once in a cacophony of sheer, bloody panic.

“Not now, Tim,” I say, holding out a hand in front of his face and ignoring how mine is burning with the embarrassment over having been caught practically gazing at Caleb like a lovelorn romantic hero from a romcom. “We’re having an argument about … wait, what are we arguing about again?”

“You know what? I don’t even remember.” Caleb ducks his head, taking a very deliberate step back from me, which I’m not sure whether to thank him for or be annoyingly hurt by.

I never know how to feel when Caleb pulls away from any intimacy we share these days. There was a time when we were freer in how we touched and acted towards each other, but things have undeniably changed between us since his breakup with Mei, and there’s only so much pretending we can do before it gets stupid or genuinely harmful.

“Uh, well,” Tim says, tilting his head like he’s actually trying to remember how this bullshit kicked off. “I think it started with you wanting a race-car bed, and your boyfriend saying he doesn’t want a race-car bed, because he became of legal drinking age or something, maybe.” He doesn’t sound sure or happy about any of that, which is fair.

“Tim, he became of legal drinking age three years ago, come on,” I scold. “If you’re going to live here, learn our laws. At least the important ones. Also, he’s not my boyfriend. If he were my boyfriend”—I throw Caleb a pointed look—“he would let me get a race-car bed.”

“Holy shit, fine, get the race-car bed,” Caleb says, exasperated. He glares at me, warning, “But I’m not sleeping in it.”

“Why would you sleep in it?” I ask before I can stop myself. “We’re not boyfriends yet.” Triumph is singing too loudly in my veins to realise how that’s going to sound.

“Not yet?” Tim prods, coming very close to smirking for someone who was afraid of me ten minutes ago.

Caleb is just doing the slack-jawed, did you really just say that thing he usually reserves for Rex and the oftentimes insane results of our brother’s faulty brain-to-mouth filter.

“Shut up. I just meant … metaphorically,” I say, trying unsuccessfully to blag it out.

Caleb laughs at that, pushing any emotional confusion aside enough to take the piss as is our way of life. “Explain your metaphor, please.”

“No, thank you,” I say, rapid fire, rising to meet the challenge in Caleb’s eyes. “If you can’t understand a basic utilisation of figurative language, Cal, there’s nothing I can do for you. Should have paid more attention in our English lessons.”

“You fell asleep in our English lessons!” Caleb accuses.

I cross my arms, looking down those two inches of height difference between us. “That’s because I already knew what a metaphor is.”

“Only because Mei told you,” Caleb huffs.

“She would have told you too if she thought you deserved it,” I say without sympathy. “But you threw a pen at her that day, so.” I shrug. “You reap what you sow, Cal.”

Tim, possibly sensing the pin he’s just taken out of a very specific grenade, finally does the sensible thing and tries to bow out. “Uh, I think I should leave …”

Talking is a mistake, though, and only dooms him further.

Caleb serves Tim with a face full of judgement. “I think you should have left five minutes ago, Tim, if I’m being honest. Don’t blame me for your bad life choices.”

“He did try to warn you, to be fair, mate,” I offer, just to be a prick.