Super Human
By Nicola Yoon
When a superhero gives up on humanity, the US president picks the first person the superhero saved--a young, wealthy, Black woman in LA--to try to talk him out of destroying the world. When the superhero reveals dark facts about his past, the woman finds all her pre-prepared arguments seem meaningless.
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X is a superhero who appeared one day and began saving people. He quickly gained a lot of press coverage, in which the press focused on his Blackness and went down a rabbit hole of off-color racial commentary. One journalist called him "African-American" until another said that one with his powers was probably from another planet, and therefore neither African nor American. One day, X broadcasts an announcement that he has become disillusioned with humanity. He tells world leaders they have three days to put forth an individual to convince him not to destroy humanity. Syrita, a wealthy, Black 17-year-old is chosen, since she was the first person X ever saved (from being hit by a pickup truck). The leaders believe she will remind him of his drive to save people. Surprisingly to Syrita, X lives in the Crenshaw section of LA, in a neighborhood her mother would call a "ghetto." Since Syrita was almost killed, she has been challenging her mother's classism and the racism intertwined with it, telling her mother that "it's not a crime to be poor." Syrita and X sit in his apartment. X tells her that he was out of his superhero costume and got shot by a cop just for being Black on the street, despite being an honorary member of every police force in the country as his superhero persona. Syrita thinks about all the protests for Black lives, which she has often turned away from to escape the pain of the truth. X flies her out his window and to a roof. She wants to try to explain away X's getting shot, to put the blame somehow on him rather than the system, but she knows it would be a lie. He takes off his mask. He talks about how he got his powers. His mom made a wish after his brother and uncle got shot that bullets couldn't hurt him and he woke up with magical abilities. Syrita arrived at X's apartment with a litany of prepared arguments and counterarguments in defense of humanity; however, the fact that X is human, not from outer space as the media had presumed, and has suffered makes her arguments fall apart. X says, "They all thought I wasn't human, but I am."Syrita decides upon the best course of action to remind him of this humanity. She walks to the edge of the roof and falls.
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