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Nadia was frustrated. Tai just wasn’t understanding. She took a deep breath and tried to get her thoughts in order. Some part of her body still knew it was late, and it was starting to take a toll on her. “Okay, yes; I know I can sometimes procrastinate work with other work—”
“Sometimes—?”
“And I know”—this time it was Nadia who talked over Taina—“that I still have to pick a project for Like Minds even though I feel like I can’t find something that really matters and also finish the house and get my license and all of those things. But I can do those things while also making up for all the things I missed out on in the Red Room.” Nadia stood up and kissed Taina on the forehead. “But I appreciate that you worry about me. I’ll let you sleep.”
Tai sighed. Nadia could tell she was still worried about her. She didn’t know what else to do about that.
“Okay,” said Taina. “I’m dropping it. But don’t think that means I’m not still worried, okay?” Nadia smiled appreciatively, before turning to leave. “Oh, and one last thing,” she said, when Nadia was halfway out the door. “When are you going to tell Janet about this?”
Nadia froze in the doorframe. “Janet?” She hadn’t even considered i
t. A wave of guilt washed over Nadia. What did she have to feel guilty about?
It wasn’t like she was trying to replace Janet with Maria. A girl could have a mama and a machekha. It was a completely normal thing.
But what if that’s not how Janet felt about it? Nadia thought back to earlier that night, to the wonderful dinner and all the time Janet had put into taking care of packing Hank’s house for her, even though it was probably very emotionally turbulent for Janet herself. Would Nadia hurt Janet’s feelings if she brought her Maria’s journal?
Maybe. Probably, even. Either way, it wasn’t worth it. After all, she had said to Taina this wasn’t about prioritizing her past over her present. No, this was just about reclaiming something that had been stolen from her. It was empowering. It didn’t mean she valued Janet any less.
“I don’t think I will,” said Nadia, not turning around. “I think it can just stay between us, you know?”
There was silence from behind her. Nadia started to wonder if Taina had somehow fallen asleep in, like, two seconds with all the lights on. Really, she wouldn’t have put it past Tai.
“Okay,” Taina finally said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Night, Taina.” Nadia flipped off the overhead light switch by the door. “Love you!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Taina said to Nadia’s retreating back. Nadia smiled. That was Taina’s way of saying I love you, too.
Nadia shut the door to her own room and flopped down face-first onto her bed. She exhaled. It had been a long day. An amazing day, but still a long day. It was almost tomorrow. Messing with the time-space continuum did some strange things to your executive function. Nadia felt like an extra-crispy piece of toast. But, like, a very satisfied piece of toast? It had been an amazing name day. Toasty warm.
Rolling onto her side, Nadia pushed herself up onto her pillows. Her room was still pretty sparse; most of the things she’d use to decorate her space here were currently sealed up in boxes on the first floor of Hank’s house, twenty blocks away. But Nadia couldn’t wait to make this place really her own. She had so many ideas for how to decorate.
It was mostly in pastels. Nadia wanted to feel like she was in the Crystal Lab, even when she wasn’t.
Nadia rolled the rest of the way off the bed and forced herself to change out of her Wasp suit and into her pj’s (a well-loved oversize T-shirt from Janelle Monáe’s Electric Lady tour that Nadia had nabbed during one of Shay’s twice-annual clothing purges. It had been washed so many times it felt like a soft blanket).
Taina’s just worried about you, Nadia thought, wiping her face down with a cleansing pad. Nadia appreciated that her friends didn’t want her taking on too much. It wasn’t their fault for not understanding how important this was to Nadia.
She set the journal on the gray folding table in her room. She looked at the gilt letters on the front one more time before turning it over and turning off the lights. She had plenty of time to deal with everything—starting tomorrow.
* Stepmother, though Janet preferred the Russian word for it.
Nadia was running out of time.
“Do you think we could reschedule this for later?” she called out from behind her Wasp mask.
“Why, when we’ve got the bug spray ready now?!” shouted back one of the A.I.M. lackeys currently attempting to break into the Pym Laboratories Philanthropy head office in downtown Cresskill.
At least, it felt like she was running out of time, and there were certainly more convenient moments for an A.I.M. attack than this one.
The month since Nadia’s name day had been one of the most intense of her entire life—and she grew up in a school that considered you an underachiever if you only knew fourteen different ways to kill a man (as opposed to the requisite seventeen to forty). For some reason, the one thing Nadia had never considered about being a Cool American Teen was that it actually necessitated a lot of work? Like, a lot of work. How was Nadia supposed to maintain a healthy eating-and-sleeping cycle with this amount of work?
And Nadia didn’t even have to go to high school like her friends did. They were on another busy-ness level entirely.
To be fair, Nadia had the equivalent knowledge of an American GED at seven years old. She was very bright, but she also had Some Thoughts about the American public school system and billionaires who didn’t pay their taxes.*
The house was nearly finished now—Janet and Bobbi and Nadia had been packing tirelessly. The dining room, the basement, even Hank’s dusty old bedroom had been sorted and boxed and cataloged and donated. All of the packed boxes from the house had been moved into Nadia’s room in Pym Labs weeks ago. She’d held on to more than a few things, of course; Hank’s old photo albums, a few boxes of books, and Nadia’s first handmade G.I.R.L. poster were all coming along to Nadia’s new permanent home. The bigger pieces, she sold. Nadia was shocked to discover that Hank’s dated mid-century furniture was now all the rage among Brooklyn’s extremely hip. She had heard more people in adorably oversize hats and tiny sunglasses (surely not effective but decidedly fashion-forward) comment on her broken-down old couches’ “rehabability” than she’d thought possible over the last few weeks. But she was happy that all Hank’s belongings would be going to loving new homes.
