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It’s right about now that I remember one fatally important fact: I am not a Hero.

Crimson complains that it’s about time Max showed up and what kind of big brother is late to his sister’s party that took weeks to plan in secret and blah, blah, blah. Max ignores her rambling.

“I need to talk to my sister for a minute,” he says. Without waiting for an answer, he grabs my arm and hauls me to the other side of the beach. We don’t say a word as we trudge through the sand.

“Why are you here?” he asks, stopping when we’re out of earshot. His eyes focus more on my hair than on me. Guess he’s really pissed off.

“Did you know about this party?” I ask.

“I helped plan it.” He doesn’t hide the disappointment in his voice. “Of course that was before you failed?” His eyes look to the sky but we both know he won’t find an answer up there. “You shouldn’t be here, Mace. They think you’re a Hero and you’re not. What happened today?”

Max definitely needs to know what happened during my exam. But summoning up the courage to tell him what I did and what the examiners said—well, it’s easier to throw a thousand-pound boulder. I know. I’ve done that.

Hero manual, page 336: Heroes are brave enough to say what needs to be said. I swallow and tell him exactly what happened.

Max puts his arms on my shoulders and gives me a warm, I’m on your side, smile. Of course, at six foot four, he always seems to be looking down on me. “So … seven days,” he says. “You got this.”

“You think so?” I ask.

He nods. “You’re Maci freaking Might. Sure, Lucy-fer is a total bitch but she’ll come around. They would put the entire human population at risk if they didn’t make their most talented Super a Hero.”

“Aww, Max.” I lean against his chest. After a lifetime of picking on me in

typical big brother fashion, he’s about to make me cry in a good way for once. “Thank you.”

He nods to the party. “Let’s just enjoy the night and keep quiet about the whole failing thing. You’ll be a Hero by next week and no one will need to know.”

Talking with Max almost makes me forget that my crush is within walking distance from me. As we return to the party—all smiles of course, because there’s nothing anyone should be concerned about—my group of friends parts and lets Max and me take a place near the now roaring bonfire.

Conversations float through the air, momentarily broken by laughter. Just like at Central, my peers are nice to me but don’t exactly seek me out for conversation. I think I know deep down that my friends are only my friends because Crimson has this unspoken threat lording over them. It’s been that way my whole life so it doesn’t bother me. Much.

Plus my thoughts stay occupied with finding Aloki in the crowd. When my eyes finally land on him, my heart crawls into my stomach again and my brain, which was full of information just minutes ago, now only knows how to breathe. I’m not even doing a good job of that. Aloki runs his fingers along Crimson’s arm, his perfect smile stretching across his lips as he tilts his head toward her.

No, no, no, no, no. This cannot happen. Crimson wouldn’t do that to me. I struggle to overhear their conversation, but between the crackling of the fire and the twenty other people all talking at once, I can’t make out a single word. So much for having genetically superior auditory skills.

Someone touches my arm. I flinch at the unexpected contact, then quickly pull on a smile and drag my eyes away from my secret crush. A guy with windblown shoulder-length hair brushes sand off his pants. “Hey,” he says, like we’re old friends.

There’s a black hair tie on each of his wrists. I know I know him but it takes me a moment to remember. Just about every Super has the same blonde hair and impossibly blue eyes, but not everyone has a smile that sends weird sensations coursing through my stomach. I glance back toward Aloki and the stomach sensations triple in intensity.

“Er … Evan?” I say the first name that comes to mind.

“Yes ma’am.” His twangy, southern-hospitality voice isn’t quite as lame as it seems. “Happy Birthday, Maci.”

He reaches out an arm and I flinch, my hand instinctively slapping my hip for a pair of hooks but finding only a handful of denim instead. Whether he notices it or not, he doesn’t say anything. He just swings his arm around my shoulder in a half-hug. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yeah,” I say. He isn’t a Hero, so I’m not sure how I know him. I can’t stop sneaking glances toward Crimson and Aloki long enough to think about where I would have met him before. Evan cracks his knuckles as he talks about something I’m not exactly paying attention to.

From the other side of the fire, Crimson’s eyes go wide at something Aloki says. Okay. I’m done spectating here. I gulp down my drink and smile at Evan, who just finished saying something about Africa.

“That’s awesome,” I say, hoping what he said was indeed awesome. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I need to get another drink and uh, talk to Crimson. It’s kind of important.”

Evan’s hands shove in his pockets. “Okay, I’ll catch up with you later.”

His crooked smile gives me a flashback to my childhood where I swear I’ve seen him smile before. Maybe he was in Hero training but became a Retriever. Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter. I’m on a fact-seeking mission. I wander through the people in a semi-circle until I’m right behind Aloki and Crimson.

And damn if the stereo isn’t directly between us blasting classic rock so loud I still can’t hear them. Aloki’s hands reach up and squeeze the sides of his head as if he’s super frustrated with her, but the smile on his face kind of negates that. She shakes her head. Her high arched eyebrows flatten.

Enough of this. The music dies the instant my fist slams into the stereo, chopping it in half like a block of wood in a karate dojo. For a moment I’m so stunned at what I did to the stereo that Crimson’s now very loud statement to Aloki doesn’t make any sense.