Double Life

The alarm on my phone went off at 6:47, which was seven minutes before my actual alarm, because I'd learned a long time ago that the seven minutes between first waking and actually getting up were the only seven minutes of the day that belonged entirely to me. I lay there in the gray half-light of my bedroom, listening to Mrs. Kowalski's dog yap at nothing through the wall, and I did what I always did. I took inventory.

Left arm, fine. Right arm, fine. I'd slept on my stomach again, which meant my glasses were somewhere in the sheets, and my hair was a disaster, and there was a faint smell of smoke coming from somewhere south of the building, probably the taqueria on the corner, which meant Hector was already prepping the al pastor for lunch. Good. Normal. All of it normal.

I sat up, found my glasses tangled in the duvet, and put them on. The world snapped into focus. My apartment is small, one bedroom, fourth floor, no elevator, and the radiator clanks like it's personally offended by winter. But the rent is cheap and the landlord doesn't ask questions, and when you live the way I live, a landlord who doesn't ask questions is worth more than granite countertops.

I made coffee. I stood at the window while it brewed and watched the city wake up. National City in February is gray and wet and smells like diesel and salt. Not glamorous. But I've seen this city from ten thousand feet, and I've seen it at three in the morning when the only lights are the ones on the bridge and the hospital, and I've seen it with a hole punched through the middle of it by something that came out of the sky. You learn to love a place differently when you've held it together with your own hands.

My phone buzzed. A text from Alex.

*Don't forget. 8:30. Mom's expecting us.*

I typed back: *I know. I'll be there.*

Then I finished my coffee, took a shower, and got dressed for work.

Here's the thing about my job that I don't tell people: I actually like it. CatCo is a mess, the elevators break constantly, and my editor, whose name is Marcus and who has the personality of a damp sock, treats the copy desk like his personal fiefdom. But I'm good at it. I'm good at reading a story and knowing which three sentences matter and which forty don't. I'm good at making other people's words sound like they meant them. There's a craft to it, and I've spent enough years being told what I can do with my body that it's nice to be told I'm good at something that doesn't require me to lift a bus.

The bus thing happened on Tuesday, by the way. I don't want to make a big deal of it. A city bus, forty-one passengers, brakes failed on the hill by the museum. I caught it. There's a video. It has four million views. I haven't watched it.

I wore the costume under my clothes that day, which I don't always do, because the blue top is thin enough that it doesn't show through my sweaters if I'm careful, and the shorts are the problem, they always have been, but if I wear them high enough and my skirt is long enough, nobody notices. The cape I keep in my bag. It folds down smaller than you'd think.

I got to the office at 8:52, which was late, but Marcus was in a meeting, so nobody noticed. I sat down at my desk and opened my email and there were two hundred and six messages, and I started with the ones that said URGENT in the subject line, because those are always the ones that are least urgent, and I was halfway through the third one when Priya leaned over the divider between our desks.

"Did you see the thing about Supergirl?"

I didn't look up. "What thing."

"The poll. On the website. 'Is Supergirl a hero or a menace?' It's at sixty-two percent hero, but it was at seventy-eight this morning. Somebody's organizing."

I looked up then. Priya had her phone turned toward me, and there it was, our own website, our own poll, and the numbers were moving in real time. Sixty-one percent now. Then sixty.

"Who's organizing," I said.

"No idea. But they're good at it. Look at the comments."

I didn't want to look at the comments. I never want to look at the comments. But I looked at the comments. There were nine hundred of them, and the top one said *she's not one of us*, and it had four hundred likes, and the second one said *my cousin lives in the building she saved and his rent went up because now everybody wants to live there*, which didn't even make sense, but it had three hundred likes, and the third one was just a string of emojis that I couldn't interpret and didn't want to.

"The rent thing is stupid," Priya said. "That's not her fault."

"No," I said. "It's not."

But I closed the tab. I had work to do. There was a piece on the mayor's budget that needed cutting from twelve hundred words to eight hundred, and Marcus wanted it by noon, and I was going to do it, because that's my job, and because when I'm editing I don't have to think about polls or comments or the way people look at me when I'm wearing the cape. When I'm editing, I'm just Kara. Kara who wears glasses and has a desk and a coffee mug that says WORLD'S OKAYEST EDITOR, which was a gift from Alex and which I love.

I finished the budget piece at 11:40. I sent it to Marcus. I went to the break room to get more coffee, and there was a man there I didn't recognize, tall, dark coat, standing by the window with his back to me, and something about the way he was standing made the hair on my arms go up. Not danger, exactly. Not yet. But something. I've learned to trust that feeling.

"You're Kara Danvers," he said, without turning around.

"I am."

"I read your work." He turned then. He was older than me, maybe fifty, with a face that had been handsome once and had settled into something more interesting. "You're good. You have a light touch."

"Thanks."

"I'm not here to flatter you." He took a step closer. "I'm here because I'm writing a piece, and I need someone who knows the city. Someone who's been here long enough to understand how it works. I was told you're that person."

"Who told you that?"

He smiled. It wasn't a warm smile. "Does it matter?"

I looked at him for a long moment. My phone buzzed in my pocket. Alex again, probably, reminding me about lunch. And somewhere out there, past the window, past the gray skyline, there was a city that needed me, and a poll that was dropping, and a man in a dark coat who knew my name and wouldn't say who sent him.

"No," I said. "I guess it doesn't."

I didn't sit down. I didn't offer him coffee. I stood there with my mug in my hand and waited, because I've learned that when someone wants something from you, the first thing you do is make them ask for it out loud.

He asked.