I was very sure of three things as I stood on the edge of the parking garage at 2:17 a.m.

One: I was not suicidal.
Two: I was not drunk.
Three: The city looked completely different when you were fairly certain you might accidentally fall upward.

Phoenix sprawled beneath me like a living organism. Headlights pulsed through arteries of asphalt, neon signs flickered like scattered, nervous thoughts, and the day's heat still radiated from concrete and steel, thick enough to taste. The air was oil and dust and something metallic, sharp enough to sit on the back of my tongue.

I flexed my fingers.

Blue light leaked out anyway.

I swore under my breath, clenched my fists, and shoved them deep into the pockets of my hoodie. The glow dimmed, but it didn't vanish. Not really. It was like trying to hide a secret while your own skin insisted on confessing.

"Get it together," I muttered.

If anyone looked up right now, they'd see a twenty-four-year-old woman in ripped jeans and worn sneakers, hair pulled back messily, posture tight and tense like she was about to bolt. They wouldn't see the headlines that still followed me like a foul odor:

FORMER CYBERBULLY CLEARED OF ALL CHARGES
STALKING CASE COLLAPSES—BUT QUESTIONS REMAIN

I hadn't stalked anyone. I hadn't bullied anyone. I'd been loud, reckless online, angry in ways that felt normal until the internet decided otherwise. By the time the truth came out, the damage was already done. Friends vanished. Jobs disappeared. Trust shattered.

Freedom, I discovered, didn't feel like freedom.

And now this.

It had started three days ago in my apartment kitchen. A mug shattered in my hand without me squeezing it. Blue light flickered under my skin. Then heat. Then... weightlessness. Just for half a second, enough to make me stumble backward, knocking over a chair.

Since then, gravity had become negotiable.

I took one careful step back from the ledge and exhaled. My heartbeat refused to slow. It thudded too fast, too hard, like my body was bracing for something it couldn't name.

Half the population.

Every channel, every news feed, every social media app screamed the same thing: half the world had woken up differently. Strength. Speed. Fire. Flight. People lifting cars. Melting steel. Disappearing on camera in blurs of light. Governments scrambling. Hashtags dedicated to grainy footage and screaming anchors.

I hadn't posted anything. I didn't trust the world with my secrets anymore.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, sharp and sudden. I nearly lost my balance, yanking it out.

PCG.

I stared at the name longer than I should have.

Peterson Cayden Grant. Detective. The badge number I still remembered. The only person who'd looked at me during the trial like I wasn't already guilty. We'd grown up two streets apart. He'd taught me how to throw a punch when I was twelve. I'd taught him how to lie convincingly to our parents.

We hadn't talked in months.

I answered. "If this is about the noise complaint, I swear that wasn't me."

His voice was low, tight. "Where are you, Charlie?"

I glanced back at the ledge, then the city. "Define where."

A pause. Paper shuffling. A distant siren. "Don't do that."

"I'm not doing anything," I said quickly. "I'm just... standing."

Another pause. Longer this time. "You're on a roof."

Not a question.

I swallowed. "You always were annoyingly perceptive."

"Charlie." Her name softened in his mouth, weighted with worry. "Get down from there."

"I'm fine," I said.

"You're glowing," he said.

My breath caught. "I—what?"

"Someone called it in," PCG continued. "Anonymous tip. Blue light. Female. Hoodie. Parking garage on Seventh."

Of course. Someone had seen.

Of course.

"I didn't ask for this," I said, words spilling out before I could stop them. "I didn't do anything."

"I know," he said immediately. No hesitation. No doubt. "Listen to me. I'm ten minutes away. Stay where you are. And whatever you're thinking—don't test it."

I laughed once, sharp and humorless. "You think I want to jump?"

"I think you're scared," he said. "And I think fear plus power is a bad mix."

I closed my eyes.

Blue light pulsed brighter under my skin, responding to my emotions like it had a mind of its own. The air around me thickened, charged, humming with electricity. For one terrifying, heart-stopping second, my feet lifted an inch off the concrete.

I gasped and dropped back down, knees buckling. Hands caught on the wall, blazing now. Electricity crawled across my palms like living veins.

"Nope," I whispered. "Absolutely not."

I sank to the ground, back pressed against the cold concrete, knees pulled to my chest. The city kept moving, oblivious to the fact that I hadn't flown, but might have.

On the phone, PCG exhaled slowly. "Okay. That's new."

"You don't say," I muttered.

"Charlotte—" Detective Peterson echoed through the phone urgently again.

Do you know those videos where an animal is cornered with no options but to fight, flee, or deal with it? Yeah, I pretty much put myself in that situation.

"Sup, Detective," I smacked my lips together, knowing it wasn't good when you get a call from a detective on a Tuesday. Still, I was sitting on the edge of a beautiful Los Angeles, California building, about to attempt to fly.

It's not what you think... or at least, that's what I thought to myself. That morning I woke, I found myself suspended in mid-air, disoriented, and unable to recall how I ended up in that position, but mornings will do that to you... and now, here I was, sixteen stories high, attempting some insane party trick I wasn't sure would work while the LAPD and Detective Grant talked me down from my phone. Was I crazy? Yeah. Was I about to do it anyway? Do birds fly?

Most of them do, anyway.

I wanted to find out if I was genuinely developing "superpowers." So far, just one was enough to send my ego soaring.

I settled on the edge, listening to the city bustling below me—birds chirping, cars honking, people yelling. Okay, maybe I was stalling. Perhaps I didn't want to do this so badly, but one step off solid ground and I had no choice—I was freefalling.

Down, down, down.

"Wha—What do I do???" I panicked.

Suddenly, was it a bird? A plane?

No, it..."Hey now, what the hell were you thinking?"

Suddenly, I wasn't falling anymore. I was staring into deep blue eyes under a mask, goggling back at me. He had an infectious smile plastered on his lips as he floated me back onto solid ground.

"I was thinking I was going to start floating, you dumbass," I smacked the super-guy's rock-hard bicep, and he let out a husky laugh.

"It looked like you were falling to me," He said, still a cocky smirk on his lips.

"Was not—exactly."

He sighed, rolling his eyes as he checked his invisible watch, taking in the rows of cops around us. "Was, too. You could have died if I hadn't been here to save your sorry ass," He muttered.

"Hey!" I screeched. "Just who do you think you are?"

"I..." He stuttered, unsure for a moment. "I don't exactly have a superhero name yet." He said, wiping his hand against the back of his neck nervously. "I'm kind of new to this—"

"So, you get my dilemma," I snapped with a fury enough to make him step back.

Detective Grant cleared his throat behind us, and the super turned to look in his direction. "Kid, you did your duty. Now I need you to either talk to one of my officers or flee the scene," He ordered the man.

"I actually kind of want to stick around for this one," the boy said, his blue fawn eyes snapping at me from behind his mask.

"Well, keep him as far away from me as possible," I said, looking down at the ground, anywhere but at the muscled dickwad and Detective douche in front of me.

"So, super-sex is not an option. Noted," Super Dick said, his eyes trailing to Grant. "Hey, uh, which psych ward is she going to today?"

"Why do you want to know?" I snapped at him, watching his eyes burst open wide with surprise.

"Just curious—maybe I want to piss you off some more during visiting hours..." He added the last part to annoy the hell out of me. "...Or maybe to bail you out. I believe something is happening to you. Just don't know what yet."

Detective Grant glanced at him with a raised eyebrow, which meant he'd heard enough. "My officers over there are waiting to hear from you, Super kid, so either you scram, or you go talk to them," he told the boy.

"I never asked to be seen as an unhinged suicidal idiot dangling off the edge of a building," I snapped, "But here we are, placing me in a psychiatric hospital while I'm attaching an imaginary bungee cord to myself and exposing myself and others to even more dangerous situations—"

"So, I need to put you down for danger to others, too," Detective Grant muttered.

"I'm going to leave you two over here," Super Soldier said. "See you around, Charlie." He smiled, a movie star smile that made my stomach bubble and winked in my direction, his blue eyes twinkling behind his mask. "I apologize for interfering with your 'flying' opportunity," he air-quoted, "but what if it never worked out?"

"It might have, and you just chased that opportunity away. Now I have to find out what the hell is going on with me the awkward way—"

"It's only awkward if you make it awkward—" Detective Douchebag smiled at me. "Now, hands together behind your back. You know the deal. I have to take you in cuffs for your safety, yadda, yadda—"

With a scowl on my face, I clenched my fists tightly behind my back, showing my frustration. "I know," I spat out angrily. "You're just lucky I haven't developed super-strength yet, like superboy over there," My eyes flicked in his direction as he talked with a sergeant.

"Yeah, yeah," He said, dismissing me as he slapped handcuffs on my wrists.

I'm sorry, but did he just mock me? The sound of screeching cop cars and ambulances reverberated through the air as I reached my breaking point.

With his hands raised in surrender, the blue-eyed super dork insisted, "It wasn't me."

I felt the weight of everyone's gaze as the restraints around my wrists effortlessly broke apart, like a knife slicing through soft butter. "Okay, that was my awkward introduction to my superpowers," I said hesitantly, nervously smacking my lips together. "Gotta go."

"Wait!" Superboy called out, his voice echoing through the bustling streets. "I never got your number, Charles—" Okay, he needed to stop that. I was either Charlotte or Charlie—anywho...

"Ask detective asswipe for my number. I'm sure he'd be happy enough to hand it over." I blinked at him multiple times, watching his jawline muscles clench.

As I gazed upward, the earth started to tremble beneath me. Suddenly, I felt weightless, as if I were soaring through the air, I lifted off the ground. "Woah, she does have superpowers," Sergeant Millogan's smirk dropped.

"Adios, Detective," I saluted him.

"Charlotte—" Detective Peterson scolded. I was gone before he could continue.

"Call me, Detective—to swing by my apartment. Your choice, but right now, I've gotta bounce."

They never saw that coming, and frankly, neither did I. Boy, was I in deep shit.