When Abby materialised in her usual spot behind the school annex, someone was sitting on the curb, staring right at her. A girl, someone from her class, no less. Blonde hair in a ponytail, an Iowa Hawkeyes tee. Riley, if she remembered correctly. Not good. Not good.

"Abigail." She said and took her earbuds out. "I'm Riley."

"I- I can explain" she stammered, trying quickly to form a reasonable explanation as to why she had just appeared out of thin air.

"You don't need to. I just saw you-"

"-teleport." Abby finished Riley's thought, immediately covering her mouth. It sounded so surreal whenever she said it out loud. Riley nodded.

"Yes. Teleport."

The colour in Abby's cheeks began to rise. "Look, just... don't tell anyone, please? I don't want this to be a big deal and-"

"Abigail, it's okay. I can too." That threw Abby off just enough for her to stop panicking for a moment.

"You- what?"

"I'm serious. I can teleport, too."

Abby crossed her arms. It was probably her friend Emma playing a prank on her again, she set up Riley to come here, to give her a scare, and to make fun of her. "Prove it."

"How do you want me to prove it?"

"Ever been to the roof of the school?" Abby asked, and Riley nodded. "Teleport there. I'll meet you."

To her surprise, Riley actually tried. Of course, there was no way she'd be able to do it. After all, Abby knew her ability was unique, something she'd made sure to research over the years she'd spent living with it. Nobody was like her.

And yet, Riley closed her eyes, then the air started to distort slightly, and with a flash of bright warm light, she was gone. Immediately, Abby focused on the roof of the school, closed her eyes, and teleported too. When she opened her eyes, Riley was next to her again.

"That's-"

"Impossible, right?" Riley said. "I used to think that. But we're not alone. We're-" Abby interrupted her by grabbing hold of her, and squeezing tight. Tears shot into her eyes and she couldn't help herself but to let them out. She wasn't a freak. She wasn't alone. Riley slowly accepted the embrace, letting her cry on her t-shirt.

Abby let go again, sniffling. "Sorry." She said. "You just don't understand how... lonely it feels."

"Trust me, I know exactly how you feel." Riley laughed, clearly trying to hide her own emotions. It barely worked. A tear of relief crept into her eye, and she wiped it away.

"I guess we have a lot to talk about, right?"

---

Neither of them could focus during class, and lunch couldn't come soon enough. Riley, for the first time since enrolling at Glen Park, sat down at a table rather than eating her lunch on the floor in a corner by the bins.

Abby had saved her a spot opposite of herself, in the middle of the cafeteria, where they'd blend in. Even before Riley could take a seat, Abby had to ask.

"So for how long have you known?"

"I..." Riley looked around, but none of the other students seemed to care about them. "Two years. You?"

"Three. I was eleven when I found out."

"I assume there's a story there."

"My parents own a cabin near Lake Tahoe. We always go up there for Christmas, and one day in December of 2008 I just... wanted to be there. So bad. I sat on my bed, wished nothing more than for that day to come. I imagined my room there, the smell, the way the floorboards creak when you walk... and when I opened my eyes, I was there."

"Do your parents know?"

Abby nodded. "Yeah. I tell them everything." She took a bite of her lunch - some barely identifiable beige mush - and looked at Riley expectantly. "Yours don't?"

"I only have a dad. And he can't know. Not in a million years."

"You don't trust him?"

"He works for the government. To hunt people like us. Put us into prisons."

"Your dad is a secret agent bounty hunter?" She asked, and Riley blushed out of embarrassment. "That's so cool!"

"No, it's not. It's dangerous, and it means that we have to be incredibly careful about what we're telling other people about us. Nobody can know about this. Not your friends, ideally not even your family."

"It can't be that serious. I mean, we're just kids." Abby replied, nonchalantly. "They can't just put us in prison."

"Or worse. Hospitals. Laboratories. Experimenting on us. Like we're... monsters. Not human."

"I'm pretty sure we're human." Riley sighed and shook her head.

"If you don't want to listen, we shouldn't be talking at all. Let's just forget we ever saw each other." She took her tray and wanted to get up from the table.

"Hey, Riley. I didn't mean to upset you," Abby acquiesced. "It's just... a lot, okay?"

Riley sat back down, nodded. "I know. And we don't even know how many are out there. There used to be another guy, in Berkeley, but-"

"That's three people that can teleport? In the same city?"

"Not teleport. Derek has super speed. Saw him run a quarter mile in under two seconds." Riley poked around her lunch absent-mindedly. "He's gone now. Ran away when I told him about my dad." She looked down, trying to hide how tears were welling up in her eyes again. "I messed up. Again."

"I don't see how it's your fault. His decision. You told him, he chose to run."

"I just feel like we could have figured this out if he had given me a chance."

"So how many do you think there are? Of us, I mean." Abby tried to change the subject. "I mean, statistically speaking, two of us, with the same ability, going to the same school... gotta be a big coincidence or there's a lot more superheroes than we think there are."

"There's no better word for that? Cause I'm pretty sure I'm no hero."

"I'm open to suggestions" Abby laughed. Riley smiled too, she was finally opening up a little. "So, how did you find out?"

"I... lived in Iowa. I just moved here a few months ago, before that I lived in Des Moines. I was on the track and field team. Running, and I did swimming as well. Still do." She put her fork down, and recalled that fateful day in August 2009. "So it's raining, and I'm just about to break my personal best on the hundred yard sprint. I get into the blocks, and I run. Faster than I did before. By the time I can reach the end of the track, I've shaved a full second off my time. Great pace. But then, I slip, fall onto the track, face down in the mud, scraped on my knees."

"Ouch."

"Yeah. And I don't even get up. I just lie there, exhausted. My pace was ruined anyway. Eventually I get up, slowly, walk to the stands, wishing I was just at home, in the shower, and then I was. I experimented a little more after that, and I can teleport to anywhere I've been before, or that I can see."

"That you can see? I haven't tried that before."

"As long as I can picture the spot, I can get there."

"What if I show you a picture of a place? Does that work?"

Riley shook her head. "No. I gotta be able to picture it. That's how it works for you too, right?"

"Yeah." Abby nods and eats. "So, what are we gonna do? About your dad, I mean. Don't want him to stuff us into the lockers at... superhero prison just cause we can teleport."

Riley flinched, looked around, but nobody heard. "For starters, we should be very careful about who we tell. Don't talk about it out loud. Use a code if you have to."

"A code?"

"Like... instead of... what we can do, call it something else. Speaking French, maybe."

"What?"

Riley blushed in embarrassment again. "I mean, instead of saying that we can... y'know, say that we can speak French instead. That way nobody will think twice."

That didn't make sense to Abby, but Riley had clearly put some thought into this. "Okay. French. So... what do we do?"

"We need to find others. We know they exist. Derek is gone, fine, that was my fault. But we have to assume there are others. If there's two of us at the same school, there just have to be way more... y'know. French speakers."

Abby grinned. Riley was taking this way too seriously, but she didn't mind. "You mean superheroes."

"We're not heroes. We're not even making an attempt at helping other people. I don't even know how we would do that, with our... language."

"We could offer our friends rides."

"We are absolutely not doing that!" Riley replied, whispering irately. "We need to keep this under wraps. Nobody can know."

"Yes, Riley, I get it. This is the third time you're telling me." She grinned. "I'm just messing with you."

"We also need a backup plan. In case someone finds out." Riley said and opened a letter-sized notebook with a tattered red cover, a USGS sticker on the front, with devil's horns drawn on. Abby couldn't read much of it - it was written in a scrawly shorthand that was hard to read in the best of conditions, but especially indecipherable upside down, while she was trying to keep it hidden. It was full of notes, charts, and pasted in snippets of maps, newspapers and other graphics.

"That your journal?"

"I prefer log." Riley said and paged to a spread with a map of the Bay Area, where she had marked Berkeley and Glen Park. "We have Derek in Berkeley, or at least we used to, and us two in SF."

"Is all of this about superheroes? I mean... French speakers."

"It's... it contains what I know so far."

"All the vocab and grammar." Abby joked. Riley closed the log again and looked in her eyes.

"Look, if you don't care about this, I can deal with that. Just... don't make fun of me, all right? This is the first time I got a lead on any of this. And I'm going to pursue it."

"No, not at all! I think it's... kinda cool. The way you're going about this, all methodical... you're kinda like your dad."

"I am nothing like my dad." Riley said, calmly, but gripping her logbook a little tighter.

"Didn't mean to... imply."

"My dad finds people like us, and he puts them in jail, or labs, and, and... they're never seeing the light of day again. I just want to understand. I want to keep us safe."

"Well, so far I'm safe. And you are, too."

"Let's keep it that way."

The lunch bell rang, and they both realised they'd barely eaten anything. Not that they were hungry to begin with. "Hey, tell you what. Why don't you come to my house after school?"

"Why?" Riley immediately asked. Her defences were up, and way stronger than Abby expected.

"I... just think we could hang out. You don't have many friends, do you?"

Riley blushed again. "I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"You're coming over after school. No excuses!"

Riley nodded, and cracked a smile. "All right."