Until We Break (Formerly Wicked, Wild, Wonderful)

Original Edition: Chapter Twenty-Eight

"How?" Naomi asked.

"With this." Suddenly, something was flying across the room straight at her. On instinct, she grabbed it before it could hit her and felt the coolness of it in her hands. It was a can of spray paint. "The old fashioned way," Saint finished. Maybe it was just her mind playing tricks but the way he smiled at her, he must have been thinking about last night too. "I hope they televise it," his smirk grew when he added, "live."

Naomi smiled back but a small part of her told her that it was not for the same reasons.

She quickly grabbed her stuffed backpack from a corner and ducked into the storage room. She replaced what she needed to and sunk her feet into the only pair of sneakers she had thought to pack. There was no mirror, but she nodded at herself anyway. For a split second, she almost took her hair up into a sloppy ponytail, but her fingers relaxed and she decided against it. Instead, she reached into her bag and pulled out the stolen lioness mask. She ran her palm over its features and her heart hammered inside her chest. Breathe. She pulled the door open.

In the hallway, everyone had some sort of bag strapped to them as they came near her. Chyna handed her one. Naomi tested its weight. "What's in it?"

Without turning around, Chyna told her, "TNT sticks." There was a brief pause. Cairo chuckled audibly. Chyna turned around finally and smiled. "It's paint, Naomi. Relax," she said comfortingly.

But, she was. And that fact might have been a little more frightening.

Sully grabbed her hand, pulling her into their small crowd before slipping his monkey mask over his face. "Let's go, let's go" he chanted. Naomi laughed and let the smaller boy carry her away.

The rest of The Guise slipped on their masks and jogged up the stairs one by one, surfacing in the crowded tent. It was weird being a back out into the real world. The moon, Naomi hoped, hadn't told the sun any of her new secrets but she still couldn't help but squirm in guilt. Naomi followed Chyna's back out into the open and only then was she able to realize just how early the time was. The sun was only barely grazing clouds.

And just like that, she was waking at abysmal times again in Riverside, except now the air felt warmer and there was no need for tip-toeing afraid that something somewhere would fumble and shatter. She had already broken everything. Grounding the pieces under the soles of her feet would at least make the shattered shards something beautiful before the wind carried it off. They quickly made their way over to the shed where the Tiger unlocked it and they all grabbed their individual bikes. He wheeled over to Naomi and patted for her to get on. "Get "Now's probably a good time to put that thing on by the way," the Tiger said to her, pointing an index finger at the mask she was holding.

Nodding, Naomi finally put it on.

She exhaled.

Immediately, she was reborn.

*

With the Guise, Riverside seemed indefinitely smaller. Despite the fact that they were only on bicycles and in reality their speed couldn't have been that much, they treated Riverside like it was a communal skate park and not a metropolitan city.

The Tiger curved them up the sidewalk, his bike jumping with them every time they rode over a crack or city debris. There were still parts of the Lioness that vividly remembered the dangers of riding a bicycle but she did not murmur. The danger of it pulsed through her like adrenaline. Perhaps, she might have been afraid if she was being pushed closer and closer to the edge, but all that had already happened. Now, she was free-falling.

The Lioness' hands found the Tiger's waist and she gripped onto him as he plopped them off of the sidewalk and back into the road, speeding up to the Bunny, who was giggling under her mask and going beside the Bull whose face was turned toward the horizon in front of him.