Kerry Allen's Love Emporium

Eugenia and Drew returned, holding Andi upright between them.

Ivy stopped pacing the common room. “What happened to her?”

Drew kicked the door closed and fumbled for the lock, only to drop his hand when he saw there was no lock. Good little heroines didn’t need privacy, evidently. “She swallowed when she should have spit.”

Andi shook off the support. “Wuzzun gonna. Got Barbie bumped inna back. Buh zokay.” She held up a hand, twisted into what might have been a combination of a thumbs-up and an OK sign, and peered at it as if mystified by her own gesture. “Hurked it rye dup. Doan feel a thing.”

She staggered into Drew and Eugenia’s bedroom and collapsed facedown on the nearest bed.

Eugenia pushed up her glasses. “I knew there was something suspect about that punch. I wish I’d kept a sample.”

Ivy reached insider her jacket and removed the vial of pink liquid from its hidden pocket. “Call me Genie today, because I’m granting wishes. Can you analyze it?”

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The following morning, Ivy, Andi, and Eugenia left the dorm together. Drew stayed behind with promises to catch up with them at the testing hall.

Andi walked backward, her calculating gaze fixed upon her bedroom window, which they all knew could be easily breached. “I’m tempted to sneak in and catch him being manly. What do you suppose he’s doing in there, all by his lonesome?”

Ivy shrugged. “Peeing standing up. Shaving off the Grizzly Adams beard he sprouted overnight. Whatever else a man masquerading as a woman would want to do in private.”

“Well, I know what my brothers do in private first thing in the morning.” Andi squinted at Eugenia. “Do I detect a scowl behind those glasses, young lady? Tsk, tsk. Such an expression is most unbecoming a future heroine.”

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Ivy rapped her knuckles against Edwen’s forehead. “I think you broke him when you punched him, Andi. He’s talking stupid, and his eyes are loose.”

“Nystagmus,” Eugenia diagnosed. “A malfunction of the ocular muscles. It’s often congenital.”

Edwen giggled. “She said ‘genital.’”

Ivy knocked him on the head again. “Yeah, that’s the kind of maturity I’d expect from a centenarian.”

“Hey, Edwen. What was the final match in the dirty geography championship?” Drew cupped his hands around his mouth and whispered, “Bangkok against Titicaca.”

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Growing up with four brothers, each gifted with a more warped sense of humor than the last, one either became a light sleeper or suffered multiple late-night noogie attacks.

When Andi’s mattress shifted beneath a weight other than her own, her eyelids snapped open. A familiar face hovered inches above hers, its pale, glittery sheen distinct in the darkness. The scrawny body to which it was attached pressed against hers. “Is that a unicorn in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

“My darling Andrea, you dazzle me with your wit.”

Well, this was a minor nightmare. “You better hope this is a dream sequence.”

The face smiled. “Yes, a dream… a dream come true.”

She launched her fist at the intruder. It connected with a satisfying snap of nasal cartilage and with enough force to send him flying. He hit the floor with a meaty thud and a whiny whimper. Andi rolled off the opposite side of the bed and wrapped her fingers around the baseball bat propped in the corner.

The light on the little table between the beds clicked on. Ivy assessed the situation with one glance. “A bat will make a mess. I have strychnine.”

“If it doesn’t break this little turd’s kneecaps, I’m not interested. A few bloodstains on the carpet will give this place some character.”

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The Heroine Academy had a total of four hundred and sixty-eight—now sixty-nine—students; it said so on a big sign out front, and when I arrived, they flipped over a card to up the tally, like the score at a high school baseball game in a hick town that didn’t have the budget for an electronic scoreboard. Or maybe it was more. Ivy, at least, had arrived after me, so it had to be at least four seventy. I’ll take a head count tomorrow and get back to you later with hard data. Since the first sentence is devoted to it, that number must be of crucial significance later in the story, right?

Most of the heroines-in-training looked like they’d rolled off the same assembly line at Mattel. My roommates and I were the freaks, and let me tell you, it really tore us up inside to feel unwelcomed by four hundred and something Malibu Barbie clones. Or it would have, if any of us were so lacking in personality, we’d never had a friend in our whole entire lives. But since each of us made three new friends in a span of maybe ten minutes earlier that day, we spent the rest of it getting settled into our dorm suite, feasting on nachos and some beer that mysteriously materialized, as opposed to bawling all night over our lack of popularity and checking ourselves out in the bathroom mirror like we reached this stage of our lives without previously noticing what we look like. I can’t speak for all my roommates, but I can brush my teeth and comb my hair and dress myself without once consulting my reflection. I might look if I have to pop a zit, but that hardly ever happens, since my skin is so clear, it’s practically translucent, like a newborn rat when you can see its pulsing veins and bulging black eyes through its pretty skin.

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