Dreadnought (Nemesis, #1)

by April Daniels

since it’s all buggier than a Louisiana swamp, and

“What’s this?” “A suppository.” “No.” “Shove that up your butt.” “No.” “It’s for science.” “No.” “Please?” “You are going to buy me pizza.” “Deal.” “A lot of pizza.”

So all of the sudden it’s, ‘No, sir, I don’t have a superpower, I just have a special ability.’ It helps cut down on the jealousy, too.”

“Someday, you might get tired of needing to know where the nearest safe house is at all times. Someday, you might be sick of needing to take vacations in disguise. You might want to buy a house and be able to invite casual friends over and not lie to them about who you are. You might want to be able to make plans that don’t involve being on call for combat duty for the rest of your life. You might fall in love with someone who can’t protect themselves from the kind of people you’re going to piss off if you put on a cape. You have a family now? They’re going to have to go into a witness protection program if you start caping. They

think it’s a uterus that makes a woman? Bullshit. You feel like you’re a girl, you live it, it’s part of you? Then you’re a girl. That’s the end of it, no quibbling. You’re as real a girl as anyone. And you really need to learn to express your anger better.”

I want to remind her I go to high school. We cuss in high school.

after Blackfish died that we only accept adults.

The shelter of boyhood ended, and they called me a young man. For no reason at all, they looked at the things that felt right to me, and they took them. Even down to the way I carry my books and cross my legs. They took it. They took everything. Puberty came, and my body turned on me, too. Watching every part of myself I liked rot away one day at a time, the horrified impostor staring back at me. Watching the other girls, the ones they let be girls, head in the other direction. Every day, torn away further from myself, chained down tighter. Suffocated. Strangled.

I see a world that is terrified of me. Terrified of someone who would reject manhood. Terrified of a girl who knows who she is and what she’s capable of. They are small, and they are weak, and they will not hurt me ever again.

My name is Danielle Tozer. I am a girl. No one is strong enough to take that from me anymore.

But instead of being happy for me for being able to live as a girl, they all want to make me miserable, like I did something wrong and need to be punished. I

said I needed to handle it myself, that it was an important step in becoming a man. I didn’t have the courage to tell him I wanted nothing of the sort, and so for years I endured torment at school in silence,

I told you who I am, and you called me a liar!”

People think the world looks small when you get up high, but that’s not true. It looks huge.

Saying it out loud gives it power and my nervousness fades away. I feel good. Whatever happens now, I can deal with it. Because I’m Dreadnought. And I think maybe I could be a good person.