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Iris hit the replay button, then slowed the video down to half-speed and zoomed in on the teenaged girl racing across the court at Central City Community College’s annual high school invitational. That jump - it was definitely just a hair longer than gravity usually allowed.
She felt the tingle of a story at the tips of her fingers.
"Hey Iris," said a voice in her ear. "Good, isn’t she?"
She jolted. She’d been concentrating so hard she hadn’t noticed Linda come into the coffee shop. “Hey,” she said. “Uh. Yeah. I don’t know much about basketball, but she looks really good.”
"Sarah James," Linda said, sitting in the seat kitty-corner to Iris instead of facing her across the four-top, as she’d expected. "Seventeen years old, five foot six, superstar point guard for the Warnicke High Lady Bobcats. But you knew that. You asked our department for her game film."
Iris’s face went hot. “I - it’s public information.”
Linda laughed. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Iris. You’re a journalist. That’s what public information is for.”
"So you wanted to meet because - "
"Well, like you said. You don’t know much about basketball, but you wanted to see this. So you noticed the same thing I did."
"What’s that?"
Linda pointed at the screen. “Hit play, would you?”
They watched the progress of the game, Sarah darting around the court. Iris was more a baseball fan, so she didn’t have the vocabulary to explain what the teenager was doing, but even she could tell it was amazing.
"She doesn’t even seem to touch the ground," Linda said softly. "I wrote that about her. Scouts are going out of their minds. She was a good, reliable player for the last couple of years, but not like this. This all came out of nowhere." She said it again. "Doesn’t even seem to touch the ground."
Iris swallowed. “You know as well as I do that CCPN would never run a story about a flying girl.”
There it was, out on the table, in between the sugar packets and the little bowl of half-and-half cups.
Linda nodded, as if she’d been waiting for it. “Not on their front page, but they’d run it on ‘Saved by the Flash.'”
Iris’s blog was under the CCPN umbrella now, hosted on their servers, overseen by editorial staff (lightly, because they wanted to “keep her voice,” but still edited), the comment section administered by their software. It felt strange sometimes, answering to other people when it had been solely her baby for so many months.
Iris blinked. “So you - what? Wanted to tell me you think I should pursue the story?”
Linda hummed to herself. “Not exactly. Okay, look, full disclosure. I graduated from WHS and I’m a fan of paying it forward, so I still help out the kids trying for sports scholarships. I’ve known Sarah a few years. When your blog moved over to CCPN, she asked me to let me know if you ever wrote about her.”
"Wow. That’s amazing. Would she - I mean. Do you think I could interview her?"
Linda leaned back. “Actually, that’s why I wanted to meet today. She should be here in a few minutes.”
"Really?" Did her voice just squeak? No, no way. Maybe a little.
"But just to talk, okay? Off the record."
"Oh. Sure. Of course." Iris could always talk Sarah into an interview. She could talk anybody into anything, her dad said. A combination of cute and stubborn, sweet and salty.
"That’s her right now." Linda waved at a girl walking in the door, and she turned in their direction.
On the screen, Sarah had been strong and lithe, almost magical as she darted around the court in her orange jersey. In real life, she was a sturdy-looking girl with dark eyes and olive skin, who seemed irretrievably anchored to earth. She wore her thick black hair up in a ponytail and the strays that had escaped it were held back from her face with a thin headband, like she’d just come from practice.
"Hey, Sarah. This is Iris."
"Hi," the girl said. She had a hard, set look on her square face. Maybe she was nervous? It couldn’t be easy talking to somebody about a secret like hers.
"Hi," Iris said, smiling warmly at her and holding out a hand. "Sarah. This is so unexpected. I’m really happy to meet you."
Sarah managed a tight smile and shook her hand. “You too.” She sat down across from Iris and immediately started to play with a sugar packet from the table, folding it in half one way and then the other.
Iris waited a moment for Sarah to start things off. She glanced at Linda, raising her brows. Linda made a little go-ahead gesture. Clearly the ball was in Iris’s court.
"So," she said brightly. "Linda said you wanted to talk to me? I’m all ears."
She nodded. “You write ‘Saved by the Flash,’ right?”
"That’s me. You read it?"
"Right from the beginning."
Iris felt the same flush of happy surprise that she did whenever anybody said they read her blog. She saw the numbers every week but it was different when somebody was in front of you saying they’d read your words.
"Like a bunny rabbit reads about the local wolf," Sarah finished.
Iris’s smile faded. “What do you mean?”
"It’s smart to know who might be coming after you."
"Hey. You know, the Flash catches - "
"Yeah, that’s who I mean."
"You think the Flash would be coming after you?”
Sarah’s gaze lifted from the sugar packet, which was starting to tear along its folds. “Look, it’s a good blog. I like the way you write. And at first I was just grateful that there was somebody else out there who could do weird things. It was like, ‘hey, I’m not alone.’ But I’ve been reading all this time, and I noticed that except for the Flash, we hear about these people for, like, a week and then what? Nothing. What’s he doing with them?”
"I - I don’t - Look, Sarah, I’ve met some of the people that the Flash has - " Iris paused. "Um. Handled. They weren’t nice."
"So? We still don’t know what happened to them. Do you?"
She swallowed. “No.”
"I don’t want to be next.” The sugar packet split, and grains of sugar spilled across the table. She dropped the packet and crossed her arms. “That’s what I’m saying."
"Wha - Why would you?"
"People like me - people who changed the night of the explosion - we disappear." Sarah chewed her lip. "I know some of those people sucked. Really I do. Like that metal man who was going around carjacking? And that one guy who, like, used sonic powers to blow out all the windows at some building downtown."
"Oh, my god, he was a twerp," Iris said.
"Yeah, but where is he now?"
"It’s a valid question," Iris said, trying to ignore the little voice in her head that was sneering, So why haven’t you asked it already, Miss Journalist of the Year? “But I still don’t understand why you think he’d come after you.”
"Linda said you requested my game film. The final game in the tournament at Quad-C? I keep it normal during games, but I know I pushed it that night. I saw the film too. Who knows how many others did. Who knows if the Flash knows what I can do. And if I disappeared, who would look for me?"
"You must have friends. Family. They would - "
"Sure, they would. As much as they could. But do you really think it would get bigger than that? Let’s be real. It’s not like I’m a cute blond from up on the hill. I’m Cherokee and Mexican. I live in the Willow Park apartments, where there are neither willows nor a park. I’d be just another missing brown girl on an electrical pole."
Iris twisted her cup on the table, trying to choose her words carefully. “I can see that you’re worried here. But truly Sarah, unless you’re using your powers to rob banks or hurt people or, I don’t know, kidnap babies, I don’t think the Flash would - ” Target. Hunt. ” - look for you. He focuses on people who are harming others.”
Sarah’s mouth twisted. “People who look like us aren’t exactly protected by good behavior in this country.”
Iris tensed up, and Linda put a hand on her elbow.
"What Sarah’s saying is that she doesn’t know how the Flash thinks. Nobody does. You come the closest, and can you honestly predict what he’s going to do a hundred percent of the time?"
Iris opened her mouth, closed it. Thought of a car screeching to a halt and the masked man she’d trusted dragging her boyfriend into the road.
She shook her head.
Sarah said, “I don’t expect you to control him or anything. That’s not what I’m saying.”
Linda squeezed her elbow and let go. “She just wants reassurance that you’re not going to out her on your blog.”
Iris leaned across the table, looking the teenager in the eye. “Sarah, I promise. I won’t write about you if you don’t want me to.”
Sarah relaxed all over. Now that she had, Iris realized just how tense she’d been.
"And if you want, I can tell the Flash that - "
"No! Don’t. Don’t mention me at all, okay? At all. Ever."
"Okay! Okay. Nothing. I swear."
"It’s not for long. Just two months. I’m out of here in May. I’m moving to Starling City the day after graduation."
"She has a full ride to SCU," Linda said proudly. "She signed yesterday."
"Yeah, and I just need nobody to notice me until I’m gone.”
Iris said, “I’ll do my part, then.”
"Then we’ll both do ours," Linda said, looking at Sarah meaningfully.
Sarah looked at the table. “Okay. No more flying.”
"Even at night?"
"Even at night."
It sounded like a discussion they’d had several times before.
Linda softened. “I know, kid. It’s tough. You want to spread your wings.”
"Linda. C’mon. I thought we were done with the bird jokes."
"We are never done with the bird jokes." Linda tugged her ponytail, and Sarah flicked her hair so it whipped out of the older woman’s fingers. "I’m just saying, until we know more about the Flash - " She looked at Iris. "About his priorities, then you’ve got to keep what you can do under wraps in Central City."
"Yeah. I know."
"One day."
"Yeah." Sarah looked at her phone. "I gotta catch the bus."
"I can take you," Linda said.
"You’ve got to go to that spring training thing for work, Lin. If you take me back home, you’ll be late. I’ll be fine. My girl Cherize is on the bus already. She’s expecting me." Sarah got to her feet, smiling tightly at Iris. "Thanks."
"You’re welcome. And Sarah?"
She paused.
"If you do disappear, I’m going to raise holy hell. I promise you that."
"Right alongside me," Linda said. "Girls like us have to look out for each other."
Sarah smiled, more real this time, and dashed out the door.
Iris let out her breath.
Linda trailed her fingers through the scatter of sugar grains from the mutilated packet. “She didn’t want to talk to you at first,” she said. “When I told her you’d requested the game film, she started planning to run away.”
"Two months from graduation?" From getting out, from going to college. She would have lost all of that.
Linda smiled grimly, as if she could read Iris’s thoughts. “But I told her you were smart, and fair, and you cared about people. Thanks for not proving me wrong. Thanks for listening. I know it wasn’t easy for you to hear.”
"No," Iris said. "No, it really wasn’t. But … she had some points. Some real, uncomfortable, points."
"I know you and the Flash have a thing."
"We don’t - I have a boyfriend."
"I know, but c’mon. The way you write about him."
"Maybe I have a crush. But that’s different than a thing. You actually have to know each other to have a thing." And how well did she know him? Really.
"As far as I can tell,” Linda said, unconsciously replying to Iris’s thoughts, “you know him better than just about anybody else."
"Well. Yeah. We’ve talked. But it’s not like we go out and get coffee together. And a journalist has to be impartial. They have to examine every angle." She chewed her lip.
"Nobody ever said this was an easy gig."
"What do you think?"
"About the Flash?" Linda swiped her fingers together, dusting off the clinging sugar. "I think Sarah’s right to be worried, at least about herself. He does good, that’s for sure, but why? And what is happening to those people who changed?"
"What do you think he’d say if I asked?"
Linda shrugged. “Try it and see, stringer. But make sure somebody knows where you are.” She looked at her phone. “Damn. Sarah was right. I am going to be late to the spring training interviews.” She hopped up. “Thanks again, Iris.”
"Yeah," Iris said.
Left alone, she looked down at the lid of her laptop, but didn’t open it. She smoothed her hands over the plastic and stared out at traffic, thinking about the people she’d written a post on, maybe two or three, before they disappeared. She took out her phone and sent a text.
I have some questions for you.
FINIS