One thing was for sure: she wasn’t going to go with her old high school nickname of “Granola Breath.” Instead, she’d go with the person her high school self would have killed to be.
“You can call me Ororo Munroe.”
Colby looked delighted. “Oh, Storm. Very cool.”
“Oriole?” Luke said. He looked genuinely confused. “Like the baseball team?”
“Ororo Munroe,” Aria said, emphasizing the syllables so he would catch it this time. “She’s Storm from the X-Men, the one who controls the weather.”
It felt appropriate for a day that had already featured a big thunderstorm.
“Oh, yeah, the one Halle Berry played in the older movies,” Luke said, perking up. “She was a total badass.”
“Older movies,” Colby muttered. “God, kid, you make me feel like I’m a hundred years old.”
“Try having kids,” Aria said. “You’ll feel like you’re a thousand.”
Luke did the universal teenage eyeroll at that, and it made Aria think about how funny it was that he had known the X-Men reference at all. As far as she could tell, he lived in the middle of the woods and spent at least as much time on four legs as he did on two.
But unlike Eli, he’d bothered to get dressed once he’d turned human again. And he’d visibly brightened at the chance to just talk about a superhero movie.
Maybe it was a chance for him to be just a normal kid.
Aria softened her approach. Now that she knew him a little better, she didn’t think intimidation would do anything but remind him of his cousin.
“You’re right, though,” she said. “Storm was a total badass. If I were really Ororo Munroe, I wouldn’t worry about running into your cousin again. If he made one wrong move: zap.”
She flicked her fingers like she was tossing out a bolt of lightning.
“But instead I’m just me, and I’m a little scared of your cousin, Luke.”
“Because of his ‘dog,’” Luke said, practically putting the word in air-quotes.
“Right. His big, scary attack dog.”
Luke started to say something, and then he turned to Colby. He was sniffling like he had a cold, and then his eyes widened.
“Hey, you’re—”
“Not what we’re talking about right now,” Colby said crisply. “Answer Ororo’s question.”
“Eli would tear me apart if he knew I talked to you,” Luke said.
Suddenly all the ridiculous, frustrating humor drained out of the situation. There was no doubt he believed what he was saying.
Luke added, “He hates me anyway, because of my leg.”
“Because of your leg?” Aria said.
“I was born with a clubfoot. They did some shit to it with casts and stuff, but it never straightened all the way out. I mean, I can walk, but not that fast. Eli says that if we were really in the wild, I’d have died from it before I was even a year old.”
He didn’t even sound angry. He said it like he was just reciting some basic lesson that had been drilled into him since birth: the gospel of Eli Says.
“Good thing we’re not in the wild, then,” Colby said. “Because there are a lot of people who have done the world a lot of good who would have been dead before they were a year old.”
He’d gotten cool and composed—Aria could detect the anger simmering beneath
the surface there. He was controlling it, she realized, because he wasn’t angry at her or at Luke. He was angry at Eli Hebbert, and that was fuel he might as well save for later.