The Emerald Mask (4 page)

Tía Rosa gasped when they reached the attic. “It looks like a bomb went off in here!”

Ma, who was surrounded by boxes and boxes of old papers and photographs, would've been mad if Gabriella had said something like that. But when it came from Rosa, she just laughed. “Found it!” she exclaimed, waving an old scrapbook in the air.

“What's that?” asked Gabriella.

“It's your
abuelita
's old scrapbook from when we were kids,” Ma explained. “Tía Rosa said I probably didn't have it anymore. So I set out to prove her wrong.”

“I never said that,” Tía Rosa protested. “I said you probably couldn't
find
it. Big difference.”

“Yeah, the difference being that you were wrong!” Ma teased. “Just you wait, Gabriella, until you see your
tía
with long hair in braids. You won't even recognize her.”

Tía Rosa grinned as she ran her fingers through her cropped black hair. “I thought Mami would have a heart attack when I came home from the salon,” she said. “I had it all cut off when I was sixteen, and I haven't looked back since!”

Everyone laughed and then Ma's phone started beeping. “Time to pick up Maritza from her piano lesson,” she said. “Let's all go together. She'll be so surprised to see you, Rosa! I can't wait to see the look on her face!”

“I like this aunt business,” Tía Rosa announced. “Swoop in like a celebrity, get the star treatment. I could get used to this.”

“We'll see what you have to say after you help the
girls wash the dishes tonight,” Ma teased.

As Gabriella followed her mom and Tía Rosa toward the stairs, she caught her toe on something and tripped in the most spectacular way imaginable. A box skidded across the floor before it hit a rickety old card table, which toppled over—spilling another box of mementos and photos everywhere.

Gabriella tried to stop her fall, but she ended up in a heap on the floor. She groaned as she pulled herself up to a sitting position.

“
Mija!
You okay?” Ma cried as she hurried toward Gabriella.

“Yeah, yeah, I'm just a klutz,” Gabriella said, looking down.

“Grab a trash bag, Isabel,” Tía Rosa called to Gabriella's mother. “Maybe we can sort through some of this junk while we tidy up.”

“No, no, I got it,” Gabriella said quickly, looking down at the mess around her. “You go ahead and pick up Maritza,” Gabriella continued. “I'll clean up this stuff.”

Ma hesitated, but Tía Rosa beamed at Gabriella. “Such a good girl, and so helpful!” she said to her sister.
“Nothing like the two of us when
we
were growing up.”

“Yeah . . . but you should see her bedroom,” Ma joked.

Then she and Tía Rosa disappeared down the stairs. Their laughter echoed back to Gabriella until they left the house.

Gabriella didn't really mind cleaning up the huge mess she'd made. It was actually pretty interesting—there were photos scattered around that Gabriella had never seen before, of relatives she'd never met. Some of them had been taken in Mexico, where Gabriella's grandmother was born. Gabriella put a few of them in a stack to show Ma and Tía Rosa after dinner. With any luck, they'd start telling one of their stories and forget all about the chores Gabriella and Maritza were supposed to do.

Then something on the floor glinted, catching Gabriella's eye. She wasn't quite sure what it was, but she knew one thing for certain: it definitely wasn't an old photograph.

With careful fingers, Gabriella moved aside the papers that were partially covering the object. Her hands reached for it before she knew what they were doing, as if she was somehow drawn to it.

A mask,
she thought—but unlike the flimsy, Halloween
store masks she was used to seeing this time of year. This one was tough and aged, made of thick, unyielding leather that had been painted—or dyed?—a shimmery shade of brilliant green. It reminded her of a beetle or a chameleon, reflecting the light with an iridescent gleam.

Looking back, Gabriella was never quite sure why she pulled the mask up to her face and peered through the eye slits. It just seemed, somehow, like the right thing to do. And she certainly never expected the mask to feel so, well,
good
. To Gabriella, who was blinking into the dusty shafts of sunlight filtering through the attic, the mask was suddenly more than a mask. It was a whole new identity. It was a way of concealing what was happening to her.
To hide myself away,
she thought.

The idea was liberating.

And silly,
Gabriella realized as she ripped the mask away from her face. Wearing a mask like this in public would probably guarantee
plenty
of attention—and that was the last thing Gabriella wanted.

A yellowed piece of paper fluttered to the floor. Gabriella picked it up and realized that it was a newspaper clipping.

ROBBERY THWARTED!

Emerald Wildcat Saves the Day

An attempted robbery of New Brighton Central Bank was thwarted on Thursday by a masked individual who, witnesses claimed, apprehended the suspects and tied them to the bank's marble columns. Witnesses reported that the hero then transformed into a leopard or jaguar before fleeing the scene, shortly before police arrived.

“It's very common for mass hysteria, or even psychosis, to occur in groups of people who are under extreme stress or facing life-threatening danger,” said Dr. Abigail Lansing, chair of New Brighton University's psychology department.

Gabriella carefully placed the article on the floor. She didn't need to read any more about Dr. Lansing's opinions. Most people might find it hard—impossible, even—to believe that the witnesses were right.

But not Gabriella.

It
had
to be a
nahual, she thought as she turned the mask over in her hands.
Right in New Brighton—just an hour away!

Gabriella reached for the article again and stared at the blurry photo beneath the headline. Taken from the bank's security-camera footage, it wasn't great quality, but if Gabriella squinted, she could get a better look at the hero who had single-handedly stopped the robbery. She had long glossy black hair, which was slicked back from her face.
Her face!
Gabriella thought. If only she could see the face behind the mask—

But her neck was visible, and so was her chin. It was a silly thought—just thinking it made Gabriella blush, even though she was all alone in the attic—but for a moment, Gabriella thought she recognized herself in those features.

Don't be ridiculous,
Gabriella scolded herself.

And yet . . .

The mask felt so right. Normal, even, for someone who thought she'd left that word behind the first time she transformed.

Why is this even here?
Gabriella wondered suddenly. In an attic filled with old photos and family heirlooms, the mask and newspaper clipping were completely out of place.

Or were they?

A new idea struck Gabriella then, as sudden and unexpected as one of the lightning bolts that crackled between Darren's fingers.

Changer ability runs in families,
she thought, sitting up straighter.
Ms. Therian said so. Just look at Mack and his grandfather!

Gabriella hardly dared to think it, but she couldn't stop herself.

Could
I
be related to the Emerald Wildcat?
she mused.

Then she heard the sound of a door opening.

“Gabriella! We're home!” Ma called from downstairs.

“Be right there!” Gabriella called back, trying to make her voice sound as normal as possible as she shoved the mask into her hoodie's pocket. One afternoon in the attic, and her whole world had shifted. Because if
Ma
was a
nahual
too, if everything that was happening to Gabriella had happened to Ma and she'd somehow survived it and become so good at concealing her true self that even her own daughters didn't know . . .

Then maybe there was hope for Gabriella after all.

Mack got to school so early the next morning that the cafeteria was still serving breakfast. Even though he could smell French toast sticks and maple syrup, he went straight to homeroom. He had so much work to do on his comic that every second of the day counted—and Mack would rather steal fifteen extra minutes to sketch in homeroom than have a second breakfast in the cafeteria.

Using the side of his pencil, Mack made some thick broad lines on his paper. The kind of comic art he loved had dark, heavy lines, which were perfect for conveying energy and action. Detail work, Mack had already
discovered, was harder. Facial features, for example— How did anybody ever learn to draw two eyes of the same shape, or a mouth that was more than a cartoony loop?

Practice, probably,
Mack thought, grimacing as he erased his superhero's face again. The paper wouldn't hold up to much more erasing, but Mack didn't mind if he had to start over. He would do whatever it took to get the facial expression
just
right.

Mack was so engrossed in his sketching that he didn't even hear when someone had come up behind him, whispering
“Psst!”
to get his attention. It wasn't until a hand grabbed his right shoulder—jostling his drawing hand—that he looked up.

“Hey! What—” he started to say. But when Mack realized that Gabriella was standing next to him, he softened.

“Hey, Gabriella. What's up?” he asked. A confused expression flickered across his face. “This isn't your homeroom. Is something wrong?”

“No . . . not wrong, exactly,” Gabriella began. She glanced over her shoulder at the door to make sure no one was about to join them.

“What's going on?” Mack said.

Gabriella didn't reply as she slipped the Emerald Wildcat's mask out of her backpack. Mack let out a low whistle. He turned it over and over in his hands, examining the iridescent leather, before he looked up at Gabriella.

“Pretty awesome mask,” he said as he handed it back to her. “Where did you get it?”

“In my attic, actually,” Gabriella explained. “I think . . . I know this sounds crazy, Mack, but I think it belonged to a real superhero. A
Changer
superhero—a
nahual
one, to be specific.”

Mack's eyes widened, flashing with excitement and intrigue. “Are you kidding?” he asked. But before Gabriella could tell him more, Mack started rummaging through his backpack. “Check this out,” he said as he held out a comic book.

It was old; Gabriella could tell that right away. The paper felt thin and worn, as though someone had flipped through it hundreds of times. The date on the cover read May 20, 1996. But Gabriella couldn't tear her eyes away from the title. In tall, jagged letters, it read
The Emerald Wildcat, Volume 1
.

Gabriella couldn't speak.

There she was, on the cover—or at least, a drawing of her: The Emerald Wildcat, a gorgeous Latina, wearing a green leather suit. Her black hair shone with blue highlights, and her eyes—striking, unmistakable golden cat's eyes—stared through a shimmering green mask.

The same mask that Gabriella held in her hands.

“I—I don't understand,” she finally said.

“The Emerald Wildcat. A lesser-known superhero, but one of the coolest, in my humble opinion. One of the most amazing things about the Emerald Wildcat is that she really existed. For a few years in, uh, the midnineties, she actually stopped a bunch of crimes from happening—right in New Brighton,” Mack said, sounding a little bit like a superhero encyclopedia. “Here, I think there's an article online. . . .”

Mack tapped his phone a few times and then showed the screen to Gabriella. “All the archives of the
New Brighton Times
are online now,” he told her. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“I found a copy of that article in my attic!” Gabriella exclaimed. She would've recognized the grainy photo anywhere.

“Right, so the Emerald Wildcat was running around town, fighting all this crime—better than the police, even,” Mack continued. “And
everybody
wanted to find out who she was! But she left, like, no clues. Ever. Then things . . . changed.”

“What do you mean?” asked Gabriella.

“Like, the police put out a wanted poster with her mask on it,” Mack explained, flipping to a panel near the back of the comic. “They were so embarrassed. Here was this so-called superhero—I mean, nobody believed she was an actual wildcat, because . . . well, you know. And she was doing a better job at stopping crime than the actual police!”

“So what happened to her?” Gabriella said.

Mack shrugged. “Nobody knows. She simply . . . disappeared, never to be heard from again. Of course, her adventures live on in the Emerald Wildcat comic series. They retold some of her exploits and invented new ones after she vanished. But as for the Emerald Wildcat herself . . . It's almost like she never existed.”