Nova glared at him.
“What can you do?” asked one of the girls.
Adrian looked around and Nova followed the look. The small tent was crammed with long picnic tables covered in plastic cloths and folding chairs sporting clusters of balloons. On one table sat a homemade cake and a small stack of presents. There were adults too—the parents of all these children, Nova guessed, many of whom had ceased their conversations to stare at the new arrivals.
“What can I do?” said Adrian, and Nova saw his hand inching toward his pocket. His eyes brightened as he knelt down on one knee so he was eye to eye with the birthday boy. “Tell me, what’s one present that you really, really want for your birthday this year?”
The boy immediately blurted out, “A bike.”
“A bike?” Adrian glanced up at a woman who resembled the boy. “Is that all right with you?”
“All right with me?” said the woman, looking pained. “It’s not exactly … I can’t afford…” She looked helpless, like it broke her heart to not be able to answer this one wish for her child. “I would love to give him one, if I could.”
“Well,” said Adrian, pulling out the marker. “Let’s see what we can do.”
CHAPTER FORTY
NOVA FOUND HERSELF LOITERING on the edges of the tent, watching the party with a mix of delight at seeing the children’s innocent enthusiasm, but also a fair amount of pity when she thought of how very misplaced that enthusiasm was.
Renegades, she wanted to tell them, they’ll break your heart in the end.
Except she couldn’t convince herself that this Renegade would.
The birthday boy had been wobbling on his bike for several minutes now and had even managed to lift his feet from the ground and take half a turn around the tent before he panicked and crashed into a table—unhurt, thankfully. And as soon as the other kids saw what Adrian could do, they began plying him with requests. Draw me a teddy bear … a lollipop … an airplane! Until the tent was full of gifts, all in matching canary yellow pulled straight from the walls of the canvas tent.
Adrian never said no, not even when the requests became more and more outlandish （now a tree house … a tree house with cannons … a tree house with cannons and also a moat being guarded by a robotic shark!）， and he never seemed annoyed, even as the kids pressed in around him, leaving him little space to actually draw the things they wanted.
“Excuse me?”
Nova glanced down. The birthday boy’s older sister, perhaps eight or nine years old, stood at the table beside her.
“Don’t look at me,” said Nova, lifting her hands. “My abilities are negligible compared to his.”
The girl blinked, and it occurred to Nova that she probably had no idea what the word negligible meant. She was trying to come up with a synonym when the girl asked, “I was at the trials.”
Nova blinked. “Oh. That. Right.”
“You were amazing,” said the girl, a little breathless. “You didn’t even use superpowers!”
“No. No, that’s the thing, my power is … not…” She glanced at Adrian. “Not showy, like that.”
“Yeah, but that’s what was so great about it.” The girl’s ears had gone pink. “I’m not a prodigy, but … seeing you, it sort of made me think that maybe I could be a Renegade, too, you know?”
Nova opened her mouth, but hesitated, unsure how to respond. She doubted the Renegades would ever recruit someone who didn’t have at least a little bit of a superpower, but Danna and Adrian had both suggested that she could stay on the team even if Max had stolen her ability. And if that was possible, maybe a non-prodigy could someday be accepted too.
She thought back to her conversation with Adrian. He thought they were inspirations to the people. He believed that the existence of superheroes could encourage everyone to be more heroic. Nova had been adamant that he was wrong, but seeing the way this girl was looking at her now, she had to wonder.
So instead of rejecting the girl’s dream, she leaned forward. “Can I tell you a secret?”
The girl inched closer, nodding giddily.
“You don’t need to be a Renegade to be a superhero.”
The girl’s head listed to one side. “That sounds like something my mom would say.”
Nova laughed. “Sorry. I mean, it’s true, but … it’s also sort of a cop-out, isn’t it?”
“Did you get any cake?”
Startled by the change of topic, Nova shook her head. “No, but I don’t—”