Velveteen vs. the Junior Super Patriots by Seanan McGuire Page A

was in the locker room, she removed her rabbit ears and domino mask, wiping the worst of the sweat out from her eyes. Temporarily blinded by the gesture, she didn’t realize that she wasn’t alone until she turned, and nearly walked straight into Sparkle Bright.
    “Wha—oh!” She pressed her free hand to her chest, laughing a little to cover her surprise. “You startled me. I thought you weren’t working out until Updraft got back from field exercises. What’s up?” Sparkle Bright didn’t answer. Velveteen paused, realizing for the first time just how cold the look on the other girl’s face was. “Sparky? What’s wrong?”
    “Don’t call me that,” said Sparkle Bright, a note of obvious disdain in her voice. “I don’t take diminutives from heroes that aren’t in my power class.”
    “But . . . but the nickname was your idea. Yelena? What’s wr—”
    An older, more cynical Velma would have told her teenage self that she should have seen the blow coming; would have said that it was telegraphed in every inch of Sparkle Bright’s imperious, angry pose. But the teenage Velveteen had never expected her best friend and former roommate to lash out at her that way; would never in a million years have said that her sweet, silly, sentimental roommate was capable of such a thing. Apparently, the teenage Velveteen was the one who was in the wrong. Sparkle Bright’s rainbow whip cracked crimson and ebony fury across the locker room, catching Velveteen squarely in the chest and sending her smashing back against the wall. Only years of physical conditioning and training in the ways to safely take a fall saved her from serious injury.
    Rolling with the momentum as much as she could, Velveteen wound up in a crumpled heap at the base of the wall, blood already starting to well from a cut the tile had opened in her cheek. Eyes gone terribly wide, and terribly hurt, she stammered, “Y-Yelena, what—”
    “DON’T CALL ME THAT!” The whip this time was barely red at all, just a lash of pure, furious black, catching Velveteen in the side of the head and slamming her back against the wall. In the moments before she lost consciousness, she saw Sparkle Bright stalking toward her, hands balled tightly into fists. “I thought you were different,” she hissed. “Now I see that you’re just another two-bit hero with useless powers, trying to exploit me to stay in the spotlight. You stay away from me, Velveteen, and I might do you the same favor. You got that?”
    Velveteen didn’t answer. Velveteen was no longer aware enough to participate in the conversation.
    They found her passed out in the locker room almost two hours later; she was diagnosed with a severe concussion, and suspended from field activities for ninety days. When she came off her bed rest, Sparkle Bright was suddenly the team’s second-in-command, and Velveteen found herself grounded, working with all the other second-string heroes while the more “useful” powers took to the skies, and took to the spotlight.
    Remembering a whip made of light, and an anger she still didn’t understand, Velveteen couldn’t say she really minded.
    *
    “Here.” Aaron offered her a napkin across the table, looking awkward. “C’mon, Vel, don’t cry. I just need to talk to you, that’s all. Just talk. I mean, yes, I’m here because the . . . company . . . told me to be here. They said that you’d probably listen to me, even if you wouldn’t listen to anybody else. But I could’ve said no. When they asked me, I could’ve said no.”
    “So why didn’t you?” Velma demanded, taking the napkin and using it to wipe her eyes. It worked better than her hand. More absorbent, for one thing. “They could have sent somebody, I don’t know, who was less of a lying snake.”
    “That’s not fair.”
    “Neither is what you did to me, so hey, I guess we’re even. Why are you here , Aaron?”
    He went quiet, sitting silent for a long moment while he gathered his