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Zatanna has always been just a little bit too different for other people’s tastes. Her magic, her upbringing and heritage, the way she carries herself as she walks through the world—there’s always some naysayers. She tries not to let them bother her, because there’s better people in her life, more loving and compassionate and accepting people, but that doesn’t mean that the rejection of others doesn’t sting. It doesn’t mean she has no desire to belong.
When she’s three—and she hardly remembers this, but she’s heard her father tell the story a thousand times—she sits in her nanny’s lap watching her father rehearse for one of his shows. As far as the nanny knows, the Zataras are a family of performers and stage illusionists, nothing more. But the truth is more complex, and only some can be trusted with those kinds of secrets.
When her father pulls a rabbit out of his hat, her toddler self claps her hands together enthusiastically in the way that only someone who hasn’t yet been disillusioned with the world can. In the way only a child can. When he makes the rabbit disappear again, however, she can’t understand what’s happened to the furry little creature. She tries to ask her nanny, but the nanny shushes her, tells her it’s just a trick, snaps at her to quiet down and sit still.
That’s the trigger, though. Distressed enough by the disappearance of the rabbit, she begins to fret; when the her nanny dismisses her, she begins to fuss; when she can’t get her father’s attention, she begins to wail. Her cries are so potent that her nanny drops her hold, and little Zee escapes and starts running toward the stage. But she’s small and clumsy and she’s freaking out, because she’s three, and she doesn’t know any better. She trips over her own feet and her forehead hits the edge of the stage, and suddenly she’s looking up at the ceiling.
She can’t help it. She screams and hollers and doesn’t stop until someone—her father—is holding her to his chest, but by then, it’s too late. The rain has begun, and the thunder and the lightning, too. The whole theater is beginning to flood, and purple lightning strikes equipment around them, and the thunder shakes the whole building until one of the spotlights falls from position and crashes onto the thankfully-now-empty stage.
The way her father tells the story, the nanny fainted in shock at the sudden outburst of magical power; she was given a generous severance package, and Giovanni was given his first gray hair. But all Zatanna remembers is being afraid, being overwhelmed, and then knowing that she’s safe once her father’s arms are around her.
For a little while, anyway.
At fourteen, all Zatanna wants is to fit in. She begs her father for years to let her attend school with other children, instead of being homeschooled. “I can practice magic on the weekends, Daddy,” she tells him. “It doesn’t even have to be public school! Private school is fine! Please. I have no friends.”
She’s wearing him down, she can tell. But still, he resists. “You have Pocus and Lydia,” he argues, referring to her rabbit and her calico cat. “Not to mention Luka and Abby. Why you like that silly emergency room show enough to name birds after the characters, I will never understand.”
In spectacular teenage fashion, she rolls her eyes and puts her hands on her hips. “Those are pets. Not friends.”
Giovanni chuckles. “I don’t think the pets would take too kindly to that. You are their entire world, after all.”
“Dad. Please. If you really wanted me to have every opportunity in the world when I grow up, you would let me go to school and meet people.”
Somehow, as she stays on this line of logic, she wears him down. In the eighth grade, she starts attending the secondary level campus of Gotham Preparatory Academy. And yeah, maybe she would’ve preferred to go to PS18, where she knows the cute boy who works part time as a stagehand at her father’s theater goes, but she’ll take what she can get.
A seasoned traveler what with her father’s touring schedule, Zatanna is used to foreign worlds. She knows how to be diplomatic and polite, and if that’s not enough, she’s wealthy, her dad is a minor celebrity, and she’s seen enough teen movies to know not to be a teacher’s pet. She won’t be class clown or anything, and she’ll do well enough to justify her presence here to both her classmates and her father.
As she walks through the halls and goes from class to class, she can hear the whispers—there are always whispers, she thinks, when someone new shows up. Every movie she’s ever seen, every episode of Beverly Hills: 90210 she’s binged-watched after ordering the DVD boxed set, every Sarah Dessen novel she’s ever read has prepared her for this moment. She does’t let the whispers bother her, though that doesn’t stop her from being curious about the nature of her burgeoning reputation.
On her way to the cafeteria for lunch, she stops by her locker to switch out her textbooks, and she can’t help but allow the corners of her mouth to turn upward in a small, shy smile. A locker! It feels surreal. She never imagined she would have anything remotely resembling a normal teenage experience. Then, a few girls in a group introduce themselves, and she thinks this must be what it’s like to be a true A-list celebrity, where everybody wants to know who you are and what you’re about.
The leader of the clique is clearly the tall brunette with doe eyes and perfectly subtle yet stunning makeup. Her eyes sparkle with mischief, and Zee begins to imagine the sorts of fun trouble they could get into together.
“Hi,” the brunette says, somehow dry and enthusiastic at the same time. She leans against the locker and limply holds out a hand. “I’m Helena. You’re Zatanna, right?”
Zee nods and tries not to shake Helena’s hand too vigorously. “Yeah,” she replies. “I mean, yes. Zatanna Zatara.”
The strawberry-blonde-haired girl to Helena’s left cocks her head to the side. “Like the magician? That Zatara?”
She brushes a piece of hair back behind her ear. “Yeah,” she says, hoping her voice isn’t shaking as much as she thinks it is. Why is she so nervous? “That’s my dad.”
Helena purses her lips in a sly smile. “I knew it. I just knew you were Italian, too. I always know.”
The East Asian girl to Helena’s right rolls her eyes. “God, you’re so weird about that, Hels. Can we just get this over with?”
“Who shit in your cheerios this morning, Sandra? Christ. Anyway, Tanna—can I call you Tanna?—me and Sandra and Elizabeth here were wondering if you wanted to sit with us at lunch. We’ve got the premier ninth grade table—”
Zatanna can hardly believe what she’s hearing. Ninth graders? Want her, a lousy eighth grader, to sit with them at lunch? She must be dreaming.
“—and it’s probably good that you get an in now, if you know what I mean. You don’t want to end up an upperclassman with no power to show for it.”
And that’s how she ends up sitting with a group of girls she doesn’t know at all, picking at their food just enough to look like they’re eating it, but never really taking more than three bites the whole time. They chatter on about things she doesn’t quite understand, though Helena and Elizabeth have extremely protective fathers, which makes her feel a little more like she’s finally starting to fit in.
She says goodbye to the girls when the lunch bell sounds and signals that it’s time to get to their next classes, and she wishes she had class with any of them. Anything not to feel totally bewildered in this place again.
Bewilderment, of course, leads to all sorts of trouble, and the next particular brand of trouble is six-foot-two and built like a brick wall, which she discovers when she turns a corner without thinking about looking ahead of her.
His bulk knocks her to the ground, and her notebooks go flying. Still on the floor, she scrambles after them, her heart racing as the tardy bell rings. Her first day, and she’s already going to have a tardy on her record? She hopes that her Language Arts teacher takes pity on her as a new student and cuts her some slack.
Suddenly, she’s very aware of the looming presence above her, and once she has her things collected in her arms, she blushes and takes the hand he offers to help her stand. “Thanks,” she mutters. “And sorry.” She tries to go around him, but he blocks her path. “Um, I’m really trying to get to English right now. Can you please not—can I please get through?”
This tank of a man has a handsome face, though for a guy who’s obviously not that much older than her, his eyes seem remarkably sad, and his expression is stone cold. He doesn’t look like the kind of person who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, but maybe just a guy who’s had a little rough. Or a lot rough. She’s not really one who would be able to tell the difference.
But then, a small smirk peeks through the cracks on his seemingly immovable face. “English 8 is the other way,” he tells her. “I can walk you there, if you like.”
Stunned and more than a little embarrassed, she nods and begins to follow him as he walks in long strides toward the other side of the school; she practically has to run just to keep up. “Thank you—for, um—for helping me. I’m Zatanna.”
He looks back at her and again, smiles almost imperceptibly. “Yeah, I heard. Nice to meet you, Zatanna. I’m Bruce.”
“Nice to meet you, too, Br—wait.” She screeches to a halt. “Bruce?”
He stops walking and turns to face her, though he stays right where he is, a respectful few feet of distance. “Yeah.”
“So like… you’re…”
Bruce sighs. “Yeah. Bruce Wayne. Sophomore.”
She bites her tongue—she doesn’t want to be rude. But it’s Bruce Wayne! Of the Wayne family! Orphaned at a tender age, parents brutally murdered in front of him, raised by his—well, no one is exactly sure who he’s being raised by, other than his trust fund and inheritance. Not that it matters. He’s just… he’s just one of the most famous people to ever come out of Gotham.
And he didn’t even ask for it, she thinks. I know how that feels.
She straightens herself out internally and paints a smile on her face that might just be overkill. Maybe. “Okay, Bruce Wayne, sophomore. Weren’t you gonna take me to my English class?”
Something about him makes him a kindred spirit, and Zee finds herself drawn to him in a way that she can’t quite explain. It’s not long before they’re waving at each other in the hall, the small, subtle kind of wave you give someone when an unexpected friendship is still new, when you don’t want other people’s input or commentary. But one day, Helena catches her waving and launches into interrogator mode.
“How do you know Bruce Wayne?” she inquires during lunch later, though that might be too gentle a word for it.
Zee shrugs. “Ran into him in the hall. Literally. He practically knocked me over.”
Elizabeth runs a file across her fingertips. “Well, if there’s anything that can be said for my cousin, it’s that he’s built like Mt. Everest.”
Cousin?
Helena sighs wistfully and rests her head in her hand. “If he’s Mt. Everest, call me Edmund Hillary.”
Elizabeth gags. “Ew. Gross. Please don’t ever tell me how much you want to bone one of my family members ever again.”
“I didn’t know Bruce was your cousin,” Zatanna chimed in.
The strawberry blonde shrugs. “His mother was my father’s sister. She was a Kane first, which for the record, is a far more important family in this city.”
Sandra rolls her eyes as she reads A Passage to India instead of eating. “That’s some of the stupidest shit I’ve heard today, Bethie, and we’ve had the same classes since eight in the morning.”
Zatanna ignores the bickering that starts up between the three of them over things that don’t matter in favor of scanning the cafeteria and looking to spot Bruce. She smiles to herself when she sees him sitting with his own squadron of three girls. One of them looks almost exactly like Elizabeth, but with much redder hair, cropped short and expertly faded. The others are a blonde goth-punk type in blue jean shorts and fishnets and a fashionable Lauren Bacall type with black hair that matches her own. Something about their individuality makes her heart yearn for something, though she can’t put her finger on it just yet.
The redhead says something to Bruce, and he shakes his head and rolls his eyes. The blonde fist bumps the redhead, while the glamour girl just takes in the scene, apparently happy to watch. She wonders what it’s like to be a part of a living ecosystem like that, where the communication and emotion ebbs and flows so naturally. She likes Helena and her friends just fine, but everything they say feels so targeted and edgy and stilted. But maybe that’s what surviving in school looks like. Maybe it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe things get better later.
Maybe.
It’s December when Helena finally invites Zatanna over for a sleepover with her and the girls. “Bethie’s place, Friday night, 6:30 sharp. Just the four of us. It’ll be fun!” she promises, leaving two air kisses on Zee’s cheeks. But when she asks her father for permission, he’s affronted by the very request.
“It’s Shabbat, piccola. I know we no longer attend temple every week since your Bat Mitzvah, but I expect you to at least be home for Friday night dinner. After all, what is the point of taking a residency over a tour if I can’t have one special night at home every week with my only daughter?”
His words tug at her heartstrings, to be sure, but she suppresses the saccharine feelings of nostalgia that bubble up inside of her. “I’m not a little kid anymore, Dad,” she states with the oh-so-mature flourish of arms crossed over her chest and a little stomping of the foot. “Besides, you see me all the time. What’s one Friday night dinner?”
“Tradition matters, Zannaleh,” he tells her. “Without traditions, we forget who we are. Without roots, we forget where we came from. I no longer tour because I knew we were becoming rootless, my darling daughter. And that has never been the life I wanted for you. I’ve seen it end too many times in tragedy. So while I respect that you want your independence now, you will simply have to wait a few more years to make those decisions. No going out on Friday, piccola. Not even after dinner. Enjoy your Shabbats with me while you have them, yes? You never know how many you might have left.”
But she’s too much of a teenager, too much of a child to hear the truth in his words. Instead, all she hears is that he’s keeping her locked up and away from the world, away from her friends, away from normal development. Living in their old manor is nice, but even an infinite amount of rooms in a magical house can be impossibly stifling. And boy, is she stifled.
So of course, she does what every teenager does when their parents tell them ‘no.’
She sneaks out.
It’s not as hard as one might think. When your father is a professional magician, illusionist, and escape artist, you learn a couple of tricks along the way, and it’s not all about the stage presence. Sometimes, it’s about how to open locked windows, climb down trellises, and run across the grass fast enough so that the security camera your dad insisted on installing in case of crime—it is Gotham, after all—don’t catch you. And if you do it all after dinner, making your dad think you’ve acquiesced to his demands? Even better.
It’s not all that far to get to the Kane’s multistory penthouse, and the doorman is quiet but polite letting her in. When the elevator reaches the first penthouse floor, a soft bell chimes and the doors whoosh open. The doorman must have called ahead, because her friends are traipsing down the slate stairs to meet her, already in their slumber party garb.
“Tanna!” Helena squeals, throwing her arms around Zatanna. “I’m so glad you made it. We were just about to do mud masks.”
Zatanna feels more than a little out of place in a place like this. Everything in the large apartment is either cream and tortoiseshell or gray-on-gray, and it feels larger than life. The textures are brutal, the angles harsh, and it’s all so, so expensive. She knows that she’s not one to talk, what with the proverbial silver spoon hanging out of her mouth, but this is an entirely different level, and she already knows that the Kanes are the kind of old money that doesn’t just keep up with new money, but outpaces them altogether. Not that they’re necessarily bad people, or anything. Just… things are different, for people whose bank account might as well read as the infinity symbol.
On their way to Beth’s bedroom, they pass a room with a door that’s cracked open, and Zatanna makes brief, fleeting eye contact with the redhead she knows always sits with Bruce at lunch, and who she now knows is Beth’s twin sister, Kate. She’s wearing one of those racerback tank tops and all of the stick-and-poke tattoos up and down her arms are bared for the world to see. Her ears are riddled with piercings that for some reason forms a knot in Zee’s stomach, makes her a kind of nervous she’s not entirely sure how to describe. She’s entranced as Kate fiddles with a lighter and brings the flame up to light the joint between her lips, her eyes are sharp but unquestioning. But Helena and Beth and Sandra keep walking, and the moment is over as quickly as it began.
The girls push Zee into the hot seat and start spreading some green gunk over her face. “My dermatologist swears by this stuff,” Beth says as she coats Zee’s forehead. “Your skin is going to look radiant, girlie.”
It dries quickly and they peel it off, but when they hold up a hand mirror to her face, she doesn’t really see the difference. But she doesn’t want them to know that, so she smiles and hands the mirror back. Thankfully, they’re so obsessed with what they view as their own success that they don’t think anything of it.
“We should play truth or dare,” Helena suggests, a little bit of fire behind the eyes. “Or… we can play never have I ever.”
Sandra, for once, looks delighted. “Oh my God, yes. We have to. We haven’t had fresh blood in so long, it finally won’t be so boring.”
Beth shoots her friend a look, but doesn’t argue. “And we haven’t played since last spring, so maybe we’ll have some fun things to share.”
Helena looks pointedly at Zee. “You know how to play, right? Put a finger down if you’ve done it, leave it up if you haven’t?”
Well, no, actually. She didn’t know how to play—but she appreciates the odd sliver of kindness Helena shoes by explaining it in the question anyway, and she nods. Pleased with the order of things, their queen bee kicks things off with an easy one. “Never have I ever… ridden a motorcycle.”
Everyone but Sandra keeps their fingers up. “We went to Hong Kong this summer,” she offers, as if that explains everything. “Okay. My turn. Never have I ever… kissed Bruce Wayne.” She smirks at Helena.
Helena scrunches her nose and puts a finger down, and Zee is more than a little bit surprised. Bruce doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to go for girls like her. But then again, it’s not as if she knows the kinds of girls Bruce goes for. She wouldn’t exactly call them friends.
“Ugh,” Beth groans. “That’s so icky, Hels. When did you make out with my cousin? Actually, no. I don’t want to know the details. Spare me, I beg you. I’ll go if it means not having to hear about that.”
But the brown-haired beauty is reveling in the potential of the game, and it’s obvious she wants to up the stakes. “No, no. I’ll go. Never have I ever touched myself.”
There’s a long pause as the girls look at each other to see if they’ve understood what she meant, and the longer the silence continues, the more they’re convinced. Their hostess blanches. “Wait—you mean—”
“That’s exactly what I mean, Bethie.”
“How pedestrian,” Sandra quips with a roll of her eyes.
Beth grimaces. “Ew. Gross.”
Zee gulps and hopes that no one hears her. Because the thing was, she was going to put a finger down. Because of course she has. She’s fourteen and sometimes she can’t get the idea of it out of her head so she just… tries it out. And it feels nice. It is nice. There’s nothing wrong with it, surely? But based on her friends’ reactions to the very idea of it, she isn’t so inclined to share.
“Tanna,” Helena says with a coy smile. “Why don’t you go?”
Zatanna nods. “Yeah, okay. Um… never have I ever… um… been kissed?”
“Wait—you’ve never been kissed?”
“Like, never?”
“Not even a peck?”
“Um. No.” She blushes as all three of her friends put their fingers down and question her. She thought maybe she wouldn’t be the only one, considering they’re all just a year older than her, but clearly she’s underestimated them. “Bad timing, I guess.”
Helena looks at her with pity; Beth is still in shock; Sandra simply looks bemused. “Oh, sweetie,” Hels says, her voice all sugary sweet. “Don’t worry. We’ll find you a cute boy to make out with at the next party. Assuming you actually like boys, of course.”
“Oh—yeah. Yes. I like boys. There’s this boy down the street, actually—”
“Aw, boy next door?” Sandra twirls a lock of hair around her finger and smirks. “That’s cute.”
“Don’t be mean, Sandy,” Beth says. Then she turns to Zee. “Sweets, you can do so much better than that. You go to Gotham Prep. We’ve got the best of the best, and we’ll find you the… well, the fourth best, at least.”
The sleepover is a lot less eventful than she thought it would be. A few more rounds of ‘Never Have I Ever’ and they turn off the lights and tuck in to watch a movie that Beth rented on pay-per-view. On the one hand, it’s nice to just be doing teen girl things. But on the other hand, every interaction she’s had has felt shallow and blasé. These girls, as much as she’s come to care for them, just aren’t really her people. When there’s a lull in the movie and the girls are talking about whatever teen idol of the month is on screen, Zatanna slips away under the pretense of going to the bathroom.
She’s not really going to the bathroom, though.
Tiptoeing through the hall, she keeps going until she finds the door to Kate’s room, still cracked. The hinges squeak a bit as she pushes the door more widely open, and she winces. Kate looks up at her from her place on the floor, and she sees that Kate’s friend Dinah Lance—the blonde punk rocker girl who seems way to cool to even go to school—is sitting on the beanbag across from her. In the middle of the room, a now unlit joint sits in a ceramic ash tray, though Zatanna notices that neither of the girls seem particularly intoxicated.
Kate raises an eyebrow. “What’s up?”
Zee looks behind her and then back at Kate with a shrug. “Boring movie,” she answers. It’s the best thing she can come up with without being deliberately mean.
Dinah laughs. “Yeah, I’ll bet. Come on in, kid, take a seat. Close the door behind you.”
She does just that, though she hesitates until Kate pats the spot next to her. When she sits next to the older girl, she smells a sort of minty, sandalwood fragrance combined with the sharp smell of what she realizes must be the weed. She must be being obvious about it, because both Kate and Dinah are looking at her expectantly.
“You wanna take a hit?” Kate asks, holding up her lighter. Her voice is lower than her sister’s, in a pretty sort of way that makes her heart feel like she’s held.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Zee says. Can’t stop staring at the lighter in between Kate’s fingers, though.
“You can always shotgun her, Kitkat,” Dinah chimes in. Something about the phrasing and the tone feels… not threatening, exactly, but Zee knows she’s out of her depths here. Still, if it means staying in this room, this place that feels so much less artificial and deliberate, she’ll do anything.
She wants to fidget, but keeps the urge at bay. “I’ve just never done drugs before.”
Kate snorts. “Look, no one’s gonna force you. But if you want to try ‘em, this is probably the safest place in Gotham to do it. So… shotgun, yes or no?”
She still doesn’t know what it is, but she doesn’t care. Dinah and Kate’s casual, devil-may-care attitudes are enticing, and there’s something trustworthy about them that she couldn’t say the same of for her friends watching the movie. So Zatanna nods and watches Kate light up the joint again, take a hit, and then—
Oh. Okay. So that’s what shotgunning is.
Kate grabs Zatanna’s face gently and coaxes her lips open with her thumb, and then breathes the smoke into her mouth, their lips just barely brushing together. A fire lights up inside of her stomach and travels even lower, and her thighs tense without her meaning to. The smoke burns her lungs and she turns away to cough, embarrassed when Dinah can’t stop laughing at her. Kate puts a warm hand on her back.
“You okay kid?” she asks. Zee nods and takes a minute to catch her breath. Within five minutes, she’s blinking rapidly, and her head is a little fuzzy, and she leans back against the bed next to her new friend.
“I think I liked that,” she says, and Dinah starts cackling all over again. Kate, for her part, just smiles.
“You did it, Kitkat,” the blonde says, clapping her hands together. “You took her smoker’s v-card.”
Dinah leaves—in her words, “I’ve got people to do and shit to see.” Then, to Zatanna, “Make good choices, kid.”
When it’s just her and Kate, she feels her throat tighten. Something about being here with this girl who’s only a year older than her but who feels so much wiser makes her nervous and desperate for approval. It’s pathetic, really, and she would feel it more if Kate wasn’t such a hospitable host.
“How did you fall in with my sister and her friends, anyway?” she asks.
Zee shrugs and sighs, still comfortably high. “They came to me. I don’t know why.”
Kate scoffs. “Helena’s always liked shiny new toys. Beth and Sandra just follow her lead. I really shouldn’t be surprised at this point.”
“They aren’t all bad,” Zee tries, a halfhearted defense. “They’re just kind of…”
“Vapid? Conniving? Cunts?”
Cunts. Now that… that’s not a word she’s familiar with, but she’s not about to ask Kate, not here, not now. Instead, she just laughs nervously. “Yeah. Something like that. But they’ve been really nice, at least to me.”
“Don’t let them fool you,” Kate warns. “Seriously, kid. The second you’re not useful to them, they’ll drop you. There’s no loyalty, and there’s no confidentiality, so be careful what you tell them. Whatever you say, they can turn it against you on a dime.”
“You sound like you speak from experience.”
“Maybe I do.”
Zatanna considers this. “Can I ask you something?”
Kate shrugs, stretches out her legs. The soft fiber of her sweatpants rubs against Zee’s leg, and she tries not to jump out of her own skin. “Um—okay, so, we were playing a game—l”
“Never have I ever, or truth or dare?”
“Never have I ever.”
Kate nods. “Okay. Continue.”
Zee takes a deep breath. “Okay. So we were playing it, and… Helena says that she’s never… touched herself.”
“Uh huh.”
“You know. Like. In a sex way.”
One corner of Kate’s mouth turns up. “Sure.”
“And like, and I’m sorry if this is too much information or something, but like—I was gonna put my finger down, because like, I’m a teenage girl, of course I’ve done that. I’m pretty sure the three of them were lying about not doing it.”
“So you put a finger down…?”
Zee shakes her head. “No, that’s the thing. Your sister called it gross and Sandra acted like it was so basic, like in a bad way, so I just… didn’t. But like. You know. It felt weird, having to lie. And then I felt weird about doing it, and so maybe you’re right and your sister and her friends are—what was that word you used?”
“Cunts?”
“Yeah. Cunts. Because I don’t think I ever felt… well, bad about it. Not before tonight.”
Kate suddenly reaches out and brushes a lock of hair behind the girl’s ear. “You don’t have to feel bad about doing things that make you feel good, Zatanna.”
Zatanna shivers at her new friend’s touch. “You—um—you can call me Zee.”
Smiling, Kate’s hand doesn’t leave Zatanna’s face. “Zee… yeah, that’s cute. It fits.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah,” says the redhead with a slight nod as she leans in closer. “I do, actually…”
Zee doesn’t expect Kate’s lips to press against hers, or for Kate’s tongue to ask for access to her mouth. She doesn’t expect the hand that snakes itself into the back of her hair, or heat she feels when Kate moves her body closer. Her body tightens, tingles in the most marvelous way, and a rush of warmth and electricity shoots straight to the spot between her legs. When that happens, though, she feels a rush of fear as well, and pushes Kate gently away.
Kate’s eyes are wide, her pupils dilated. “What’s wrong?”
“I—um, I don’t—”
The redhead closes her eyes and leans back with a tired sigh. “Of course. Wow. Okay. I’m guessing I read that wrong?”
Zatanna looks at the carpet beneath her, her gaze intensifying on the little wiry fibers—anything to not look Kate in the eye. “I—I don’t know. Maybe I, um, wrote it wrong?” If I even know what ‘it’ is.
Kate stares at her for a long, hard minute, and it’s disconcerting at best. Whatever she’s trying to glean, Zee just doesn’t know. Either she’s too young or too sheltered to understand the complexity of someone like Katherine Kane, and right now, she doesn’t know which one is more true. But finally, finally, the older girl says something.
“Hey,” she says gently. “I won’t tell anyone.”
Oh. She hadn’t even though of that. She can’t imagine what life at school would be like it everybody thought she liked girls.
Especially since she hadn’t really thought she liked girls. Until now. Maybe.
“And,” Kate continues, “it seems like you’ve got some stuff to figure out. And if you do, great. But either way, don’t let this turn you off to… I don’t know, anything? What I’m trying to say is, we’re cool. If you need a friend, you’ve got one.”
Zatanna worries the hem of her shorts. “Can I ask you one more question?” she asks meekly.
“Sure, kid.”
“Could I sit with you guys at lunch on Monday? I have a feeling it’s gonna be hard to go back to my own table.”
Kate smiles. “You know, I think that can be arranged.”
Zatanna doesn’t even bother sneaking back into her house. When she sees her father sitting in the kitchen, hands folded at the table, she stops in the doorway. “It’s okay if you ground me,” she tells him. “I shouldn’t have snuck out.” Still kind of glad that I did, though.
“Two weeks, straight to school and back home, with extra magic lessons.” Giovanni sighs. “Did you have fun, at least?”
She smiles to herself, thinking of Dinah’s laughter and Kate’s nonchalance and the weed, and of breaking rules that are meant to be broken. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”
Two years later, when she’s sixteen and a sophomore in high school and doesn’t talk to Helena or Beth or Sandra anymore, her father takes on an apprentice, and that apprentice grinds her gears.
He’s a punk kid, a lot like Dinah, except more annoying. And he’s older, like twenty, which she guesses isn’t really saying much when Dinah and Bruce are both eighteen and graduating this year. Still, he acts like he’s wise to the world, but all Zatanna sees is a reckless wannabe rockstar type with a weird accent and too-tight pants.
“He’s kind of a dick,” Bruce tells her one day when they’re laying side by side in her bed, listening to a new album that he brought over. His hand is intwined with hers, and she feels safe with him. They’ve been dating since her freshman year homecoming, much to the entire school’s surprise. Dinah and Selina Kyle, the other member of their little group, are thrilled. Kate… well. Kate knows too much, but she’s kind and doesn’t talk about what happened in her bedroom the night of the fateful sleepover. For herself, Zee appreciates how simple it all feels—how easy.
“Yeah, I know.” Zee snuggles up onto Bruce’s chest. “I’m really not a fan. But my Dad does what he wants, I guess.”
Bruce kisses her hair. “I guess it’s his house, his rules?”
“I don’t know,” she sighs. She cranes her neck to look at him. “You know I’d come over to your place if he wouldn’t throw a hissy fit.”
He smiles down at her. “I know.”
“Like, I hate that he makes me leave my door open. It’s so stupid.”
“He’s just trying to protect you.”
“As if I need protection from my own boyfriend!”
“Zanna.”
“Bruce.”
He sighs, probably tired of having the same discussion over and over again. And she knows it’s likely insensitive of her to be so irritated and angry toward her father when Bruce doesn’t have any parents at all anymore, but still. She knows he probably looks at Giovanni and wishes there was someone there to care about him like that.
Zatanna would like to care about him like that, maybe.
“Well, well, well. What do we have here?”
She rolls over to see her father’s apprentice leaning in the doorway, a smirk plastered onto his stupid face and his bleached hair all spiked up. He’s all silver chains and safety pins and leather, leather, leather—it would be hot if it weren’t so pretentious. The young man’s Liverpudlian accent, as she’s found out it’s called, cuts through the music like a knife.
Zee props herself up on her elbows and shoots him a dirty look. “What do you want, Constantine?”
Constantine’s face lights up with a devious smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
She lets herself fall back down onto the bed, sharing a look with Bruce. “Not really.”
The Brit clucks his tongue at her. “Shame. Really thought you and the boyfriend here would like to know that dear old dad’s out of the house.”
“What?” Zee shoots up like a rocket and nearly falls out of the bed. “What do you mean?” She demands as she approaches her father’s apprentice.
“I meeeaaannn, love, that Zatara’s gone out on some kind of emergency call. Dunno what for, nor do I care. But I figured you might.”
With absolute purpose, she walks up to Constantine and stands just inches from him. “Constantine, I’m only going to say this once, so I need you to listen, okay?”
His eyes rove all over her body, and she hates that she doesn’t mind it. “Sure thing, sweetheart.”
“Get out, and close the door behind you.”
He grins again. “If you say so.”
The magician closes the door, and when Zee turns back to the bed, Bruce is sitting up and his face displays a mix of a emotions. “Zatanna, what are we doing?” he asks.
She climbs back onto the bed and sits in front of him with her legs beneath her. “My dad is going to be gone for a limited time only, and we have the house to ourselves. The door is closed, and as annoying as he is, Constantine’s no snitch.”
Bruce is worrying at the inside of his cheek. “Uh huh. And what exactly does that mean?”
She puts her hands on her boyfriend’s shoulders. “I have condoms in my nightstand.” She has ever since Dinah elected to give her a presentation on the finer details of human intimacy the summer between her eighth and ninth grade year. She even checks the expiration date every three months to make sure she hasn’t missed anything. Not to mention, she’s been on the pill since the first day Bruce held her hand, thanks once again to Dinah’s urging and, dare it be said, intervention. Without her best friend, Zee doesn’t know what kind of trouble she would’ve gotten into.
His eyes go wide. “What?”
“I’m on the pill, and I have condoms,” she reiterates. “We should have sex, Bruce. Let’s have sex. Before my dad gets back from wherever he went.”
In all honesty, she thought Bruce would be… well, excited. It’s been her understanding that most teenage boys want to have sex with their girlfriends, and it isn’t as if she and Bruce haven’t done their fair share of heavy petting. But instead of rushing in, he just stares at her. “I don’t think that’s a good idea right now,” he says, very slowly, like she’s some kind of wounded animal that’s been trapped in a corner.
“Why not?” she asks. Well, more like whines. God, she hates when that happens—she always sounds so much like a child.
“We don’t know when your dad will get back.”
She huffs. “Okay, so let’s get on with it already.”
“We’re not exactly alone in the house.”
She rolls her eyes. “Please. Constantine barely counts as a person. Besides, he’ll probably have headphones on and be listening to some terrible 70s proto-punk band.” She can look at Bruce and see he’s getting frustrated, but she doesn’t entirely care.
He clearly does, though. “I just don’t wanna rush it, okay? It’s supposed to mean something with you, Zanna.”
“I don’t see why—wait, what do you mean, ‘with’ me? As opposed to who?”
And then suddenly, a memory is flashing by in her mind’s eye.
“Never have I ever… kissed Bruce Wayne.”
Helena scrunches her nose and puts a finger down.
Oh, God.
Did Bruce and Helena only kiss? Did they do more than kiss? Did he still care about Helena, if he ever did? Of course he did, what a stupid question, Bruce wouldn’t kiss a girl he didn’t care about, much less have sex with one. But what does he mean, that it’s supposed to mean something with her? Did it not mean something with Helena? Because the idea of Bruce having meaningless sex just… fully doesn’t jive with her perception of him.
The room is silent except for the quiet music playing in the background. “Did you sleep with Helena?” Zee asks. She doesn’t want to know the answer, but she needs to.
“Zatanna—”
“Did. You. Sleep. With. Her.”
Bruce sighs. “It’s complicated.”
“Yes or no, Bruce. You either did or you didn’t.”
“No.”
But in her heart of hearts, she doesn’t believe him.
“You should go,” she whispers. She’s on the verge of tears, and she doesn’t want him to see her like this.
He doesn’t say anything, but he grabs his backpack and the CD and starts to leave. She isn’t looking, but she knows when he pauses at the door and glances back at her before he leaves. And then he’s just gone, and she’s sitting alone in a quiet room without anyone to talk to, because her friends were his friends first, and they’ll probably just pick his side anyway.
She laughs. She laughs like an insane person, until she starts to cry. Once the tears start, she doesn’t really know a way to stop them.
A few minutes later, Constantine appears in the doorway again, though this time with much less joie d’vivre. His brows are knit together in concern as he looks her up and down, not so lasciviously this time, and he keeps a respectful distance.
“You okay, love?” he asks.
She shakes her head. “How—“ She sniffles and gasps, and then takes a deep breath to right herself. “How much did you hear?”
He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Nothin’ really. Just watched tall-dark-and-stupid get the hell out of Dodge, as they say.”
“You don’t have to call him stupid.”
“Well, if he’s made you cry, I’d say he’s pretty stupid, yeah?”
Zee can’t help but smile a little bit, and when she looks up into his eyes across the room, he’s mirroring her with a slight upturn of his mouth. “Yeah. Maybe.”
He gestures toward the bed. “Mind if I sit?”
Oh, what the hell. She shakes her head and scoots over, making a little more room for him. He sits down beside her, and he smells like cigarettes and cinnamon, of all things, and she likes it a lot. “I know you’re not my biggest fan,” he offers, “but if you need a friend… well, you know. I’m around. And I like friends.”
This is a side of him she hasn’t gotten to see before, Zatanna realizes, and she likes it. The idea that this adrenaline-junkie, magic-seeking ne’er do well might have a softer and more compassionate side is something that she couldn’t have imagined, but it’s also something she’s incredibly glad to find out. “What’s your first name, again?” she asks.
He raises an eyebrow. “Erm, well. It’s John. Some people call me Johnny, or John-O, but it’s just John, really.”
“Okay, John.” Without thinking about it, she lets her head rest on his shoulder, and she can feel his surprise. But she likes that, too—likes that she can keep him on his toes, even if just for a little while. “Thank you.”
“For what, love?”
Zee sighs. “Just… for being decent, I guess.”
He snorts. “First and last time I’ve heard that one, I’m sure. Don’t have a lot of people thinkin’ I’m decent.”
“Hey.” She pokes him in the stomach, and he flinches. “Don’t talk about my friend that way.”
“We’re friends?”
His genuine surprise tugs at her heartstrings. “Yeah, John. We’re friends.”
And the funny thing is, she’s pretty sure it’s true.
milliemoo301 Sun 09 Jun 2024 02:53AM UTC
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viharker Sun 09 Jun 2024 02:59AM UTC
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