The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Sloane Fitzgerald, who had scored second-highest combat marks in the entire Halloran entrance exam, who could crater a training room floor with a single overclocked punch, who had looked a fifty-foot zero-pointer in the face and thought about it for less than two seconds before charging, was nervous about her first day.

She caught me watching her from the bottom of the stairs and her expression hardened immediately, the vulnerability vanishing behind the armor she wore like a second skin.

"Stop staring at me."

"You look good."

"I know I look good. I don’t need you to confirm it."

"Then why did you change three times."

Her cheeks went pink. "Shut up."

Diane’s voice floated in from the garage. "Both of you. Cars. Now. We’re going to hit traffic on the 405 if we don’t leave in the next two minutes and I refuse to sit in traffic for forty-five minutes looking this good."

I grabbed my last bag from beside the front door. A single duffel, dark grey, packed with the remaining clothes and personal items that hadn’t gone ahead in the delivery shipments. Everything else was already at Halloran, delivered by the furniture company and arranged according to the floor plan that Diane had diagrammed with the intensity of a military campaign.

One bag. That was the extent of what I was bringing.

Sloane’s attention dropped to the single duffel hanging from my shoulder, then swept across the small mountain of her own belongings scattered near the door. Four labeled boxes stacked beside the entryway table.

Two garment bags draped carefully across the bench. One rolling suitcase that looked like it could survive atmospheric reentry. Her gaze returned to my duffel with the specific quality of someone doing math she didn’t like the answer to.

"I hate you."

"I know."

I moved past her toward the garage before the irritation building in her shoulders could translate into something that made her hands light up. The choker at her throat caught the morning light as she turned to glare at my back. I kept walking.

The garage door was already open. Morning air rolled in from the driveway, carrying the particular texture of Creston Hills in early September. Seventy-two degrees. Clear sky without a single cloud to interrupt it.

The kind of weather that made every real estate agent in California deploy the word paradise in their listings without a trace of irony or self-awareness. The neighborhood beyond the Fitzgerald estate sat in its usual morning stillness. Sprinklers hissed rhythmically across lawns that had been professionally maintained to within an inch of their lives.

The Range Rover occupied the center of the driveway, matte grey finish catching the early sun in a way that suggested Diane had picked the color specifically for moments like this. Sloane’s black coupe sat behind it, smaller and somehow angrier just by proximity. The kind of car that looked like it was annoyed about having to wait.

I tossed my duffel into the back of the Rover and climbed into the passenger seat. The leather was already warm from the sun. Diane’s sweet tea occupied the cupholder. Her playlist queued on the stereo, something with a slow Southern soul singer that she listened to when she was trying to relax and never quite succeeding.

She slid into the driver’s seat beside me and pulled on sunglasses that probably cost more than Gerald’s drill collection. Her hands found the steering wheel with the posture of a woman who understood that arrival mattered as much as destination.

"Seatbelt."

I clicked it.

Behind us, Sloane’s engine turned over with the aggressive purr of a car that was as angry about mornings as its owner. Her headlights flashed once in the rearview. Ready.

Diane shifted into reverse and backed out of the driveway with one hand on the wheel and the other holding her sweet tea, which she sipped from without looking away from the mirror. The straw made a quiet sound against the plastic lid.

"You should know," Diane said, pulling onto the street and settling into the lane with the ease of someone who had driven this route a thousand times, "that I rearranged your desk position by three inches to the left. The original placement put the lamp cord in walking path range and you would have tripped on it within the first week."

"You rearranged my furniture remotely."

"I called the delivery team and gave them revised instructions. There’s a difference."

"Is there."

"Yes. One requires physical labor. The other requires knowing the right phone number."

I looked at her. The sunlight caught the edge of her jaw and the gold of her earring and the faint trace of a mark I’d left on her collarbone that her blouse almost covered. Almost.

"Thank you," I said.

She glanced at me over her sunglasses. Just for a second. The corner of her mouth lifted.

"You’re welcome, baby."

The Range Rover turned onto Creston Heights Boulevard and accelerated toward the highway, Sloane’s coupe following close behind like an escort. The Halloran campus sat forty-seven minutes away in good traffic. In move-in day traffic, with half of California’s Hero hopefuls converging on the same stretch of highway, Diane had budgeted an hour and fifteen minutes.

I leaned my head against the window and watched the neighborhood pass. The houses grew farther apart and then closer together as we left Creston Hills and merged onto the main road. Billboards appeared. Grande Dame smiled down from a beverage sponsorship at forty feet tall, her violet eyes and perfect teeth selling something I didn’t bother reading.

My phone buzzed. Percy.

ROUTE C CONFIRMED OPTIMAL. I HAVE WALKED IT TWICE THIS MORNING. THE THIRD-FLOOR STAIRWELL IS FASTER THAN THE ELEVATOR DURING PEAK HOURS BY TWENTY-THREE SECONDS. I BOUGHT A WELCOME MAT FOR YOUR DOOR. IT SAYS "GO AWAY" WHICH I THOUGHT WAS FUNNY BUT NOW I’M WORRIED IT MIGHT BE RUDE. SHOULD I RETURN IT?

I typed back: Keep it. It’s perfect.

Then another message: See you in an hour.

Percy’s response was a single thumbs-up emoji followed by three separate messages clarifying that the thumbs-up was meant to convey enthusiasm rather than dismissal and that he hoped Lukas interpreted the emoji correctly.