Generation Wonder , livre ebook

PUBLISHER S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4197-5446-3 eISBN 978-1-6470-0280-0
Love to Hate 2022 Lamar Giles
Fire That Lasts 2022 Sarah Trabucchi
Ordinary Kid 2022 Joseph Bruchac
Fly, Lions, Fly 2022 Morgan Baden
My Life as a Houseplant 2022 Matthew Phillion
Aubrey vs. the Ninth Circle of Hell (aka Prom) 2022 Elizabeth Eulberg Inc.
Something Borrowed, or The Costume 2022 Danielle Paige
The Knight s Gambit 2022 Varian Johnson
The Night I Caught a Bullet 2022 Sterling Gates
Mecha Girl 2022 Axie Oh
Queeroes and Villains 2022 Anna-Marie McLemore
Foreword and Power Baby Blue Grows Up 2022 Barry Lyga
Bumped! 2022 Mercer Street Creative, Inc.
Illustrations 2022 Colleen Doran
Book design by Hana Anouk Nakamura and Brenda E. Angelilli
Published in 2022 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Amulet Books is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

ABRAMS The Art of Books 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007 abramsbooks.com
CONTENTS

Foreword
Love to Hate by Lamar Giles
Fire That Lasts by Sarah MacLean
Ordinary Kid by Joseph Bruchac
Fly, Lions, Fly by Morgan Baden
My Life as a Houseplant by Matthew Phillion
Aubrey vs. the Ninth Circle of Hell (aka Prom) by Elizabeth Eulberg
Something Borrowed, or The Costume by Danielle Paige
The Knight s Gambit by Varian Johnson
The Night I Caught a Bullet by Sterling Gates
Mecha Girl by Axie Oh
Queeroes and Villains by Anna-Marie McLemore
Power Baby Blue Grows Up by Barry Lyga
Bumped! by Paul Levitz
About the Authors
FOREWORD
BY BARRY LYGA
Superheroes. It s no secret that I love them.
It s beyond love, actually. I think there is a very real possibility that a lifetime of reading about, thinking about, and writing about superheroes has altered my DNA to the point that my alleles generate four-color inks and old newsprint.
My dad introduced me to superhero stories when I was a child, reading me the old Spider-Man comic strips and buying me Legion of Super-Heroes comics to keep me quiet on the six-hour drives to visit his parents. My mouth closed; my mind opened.
Triumph. Tragedy. The empyreal. The infernal. Even the mundane, filtered through the fantastical. Superhero stories are, appropriately enough, a sort of super-genre, encompassing all other narrative types: romance, thriller, mystery, horror, coming-of-age. I could go on, but you know them as well as I do. No matter what kind of story you re telling, there s a way to tell it with a superhero. Superheroes are flexible (and I m not just talking about Plastic Man). You can wrap a superhero around any kind of tale, as you will see in the worlds our contributors have conjured for you.
Island private school for the future s elite? Check!
A girl who understands love in a world where emotions have been made illegal? Check!
A kid who just wants to use his powers to become rich and famous on the basketball court . . . only to have a pesky murder attempt get in the way? Check!
These stories and ten more await you in this, an anthology that gives a big bear hug to the history of superheroes while at the same time looking forward into a world that is more equitable, more diverse, and more heroic than ever.
Superheroes must strike that nigh-impossible balance of being both timely and timeless. Look at Superman: In 1938, when he was introduced, the audience understood intuitively that his costume, with its red shorts over a blue leotard, was meant to evoke circus strongmen and similar performers of the day. That aesthetic lasted almost eighty years before DC Comics-presumably tired of our too-hip modern age s hilarious snark about wearing underwear on the outside-deep-sixed the red trunks.
Funny thing, though-within a few years, everyone agreed that it just looked wrong to see Superman without those red trunks over his tights. DC brought back the trunks, as is right, and those who think it s the height of comedy to joke about wearing one s underwear on the outside should ponder the stratospheric success of Madonna or Lady Gaga for a moment and then shut up.
Superheroes simultaneously provide wish fulfillment and wish destruction. At their very best, they perform a truly amazing trick, showing us what we should aspire to while at the same time acknowledging that no, you re never really going to fly, because you aren t from the doomed planet Krypton. Like the rest of us, you were born to a very boring human being. *
You re never gonna fly.
But . . .
But it s good to dream of flying.
It s good to aspire to things we can t necessarily achieve. Because along the path to that impossible dream lie thousands of opportunities we d never see if we hadn t set out on the journey in the first place.
And all of us- all of us-can always be better. Do better. Why do I love superheroes? It s not the action poses, the capes, or the laser breath. It s knowing that we poor, pathetic, earthbound humans have the capacity to envision and create something better than us, and then strive to achieve that goal every day.
(And also the action poses, the capes, and the laser breath.)
When I look at the superhero landscape at the dawn of the third decade of this terrorism-born, fascism-resurgent, pandemic-ravaged millennium, I see a (long-overdue) attempt at diversity and inclusion, which I applaud.
But in many cases, it s the same old costumes with new faces under the masks. The same old ideas dressed up in diversity chic.
The superhero has been with us since 1938. (Some argue it s been even longer, but let s not get into that now.) The last truly new, truly radical character was probably Wolverine.
Who was introduced in 1974.
So let s see what we can do about that. Maybe we can re imagine the superhero from the ground up, a creation for the age of Obama and Trump, not Herbert Hoover or Richard Nixon. New powers. New motivations. New perspectives. New worlds.
A new age of heroes for an age that sorely needs them.
Tie your towel around your neck, and don t let your parents catch you jumping off the deck. We re about to fly.
-Barry Lyga
April 2021

* And for the love of Zeus, spare me the nonsense about Batman is better than Superman because anyone can be Batman! Yeah, anyone born into a billion-dollar fortune with a genetic predisposition for great abs can be Batman. Oh, and you get to watch your parents gunned down in front of you. Does that sound like fun?
FRIDAY
Ty Revell knows he s the kind of Hooper you love to hate.
It s the first game of the year. The Warton High Trojans are playing in the local university s sold-out, ten thousand-seat indoor stadium because . . . well, because when you attract fans the way future NBA lottery pick Ty Revell does, that s what s necessary.
It s all too easy for him. Left-right crossover, spin move, toss ball between the frozen defender s legs, retrieve ball in paint, windmill slam.
The crowd goes absolutely bananas. Re-vell! Re-vell!
That s highlight number six.
He s not worried about his points, rebounds, assists, or steals. Those are money automatically. These days he s more concerned with how many options the local news has for their Revell Reel.
This is a blowout game, though. Coach will probably sit him and the other starters for the fourth, give the bench some playing time. Ty loves doing his job well enough that those guys get the spotlight for a while. Makes him feel like less of a . . . a cheat?
The thing he s heard his whole life-from coaches, from teachers, from pastors preaching the gospel truth-is that success comes from hard work. Overcoming daily struggles, making tough decisions, and striving for incremental improvement is what makes you a winner. Supposedly, excellence requires sacrifice.
From the time Ty was five years old, first glimpsed the secret colors of the world around him, and felt the spectacular way his body reacted, he s been excellent at pretty much everything. Effortlessly.
The other team inbounds the ball. Ty backs off the baseline, gives the dude room to get it in. He sees how the pass will happen a second before it leaves his opponent s hands. He knows the ball s spin and speed and who s gonna catch it, even though that guy s nowhere near Ty s line of sight. He sees it in the minor twitches of muscles, the way the currents of air circulate in a spectrum of colors invisible to everyone but Ty. The signals, impressions, premonitions-whatever you want to call them-make his muscles tingle, and it s only a conscious decision to slow down, to play normal , that prevents his hand from snapping to the ball the way a frog s tongue snaps to a fly, then zooming to the basket for another soaring dunk. Highlight number seven.
Instead, he allows the small forward to catch the ball and break for a hole in Warton s defense. Ty stays a step behind, making a good show of going for the block, smacking the backboard a microsecond after the ball touches it and spins through the hoop. Scouts have been dinging him for his defense all year. Irritating, because he can stop any offensive play anytime he wants, but more flaws in his game mean less suspicion.
The next play, Ty hits a three to close the quarter and trots to the bench while waving at the crowd cheering him on. He s come to expect the standing ovations. Would probably feel weird if they didn t jump to their feet and scream his name, like maybe he s holding back t