1. Because I never wanted to be a teacher in the first place.

2. Because I graduated from the South Florida Villain Academy with the goal of becoming a professional villain.

3. Because my father had always talked about how much he loved his villain gig, until he didn’t.

4. Because my telekinesis only worked during the new moon and the full moon, not consistently enough to be a government-certified, first-class villain or even a mere henchman.

5. Because I was stuck in a dead-end job, delivering pizza on a motorboat part-time outside the climate-controlled dome while working my way up from substitute teacher to full-time Villain Academy staff.

6. Because the pay was still shit even as a full-time teacher, but you got subsidized housing under the dome during the worst housing crunch in a generation.

7. Because villains were part of the problem, too.

8. Because my father was said to be the greatest villain of all time but had been reduced to broke trailer trash living outside the domes.

9. Because when my best student Ezra asked me whether he’d be able to afford a place under the dome big enough for their parents and siblings right after graduating, I lied and said yes.

10. Because my father refused to move in with me and leave his beloved hero livestream, reliving his glory days vicariously, all day, every day.

11. Because the fights were all staged and choreographed.

12. Because the public needed a distraction from the “once-a-century” superstorms and flooding that were now happening twice a year.

13. Because I organized this year’s Miami-Dade Hero School vs.Villain Academy Field Day livestream and wrote the script so that Ezra looked like he was about to get away with the golden trophy before the heroes pulled a buzzer beater to steal it back.

14. Because everyone loved an underdog story arc until the underdog was actually close to winning.

15. Because the rain during the Hero-Villain Battle of the Decade had turned into a thunderstorm, fucked up my father’s magnetic field powers, but didn’t fuck up his pride enough for him to want to accept my help after he couldn’t book any more villain gigs.

16. Because one day Ezra went home when it was raining and didn’t come back the next day.

17. Because Ezra’s parents were too busy watching the 24/7 streams to evacuate from the storm before the heavy rain came.

18. Because both the heroes and villains were too busy rescuing important people the day after to bother with families living outside the domes.

19. Because cliffhangers for staged action sequences were more exciting than boring rescue sequences without three-act story structure.

20. Because I took my old boat and visited my father’s trailer after school that evening, discovering nothing more than a few bloated wood planks.

21. Because the principal called with bad news about Ezra and his family.

22. Because it was a new moon.

23. Because I lost control of my powers on the way back from what had been my father’s home and caused a 7.0 earthquake.

24. Because I leveled both the Villain Academy and the Hero School and injured at least five heroes on the corporate payroll.

25. Because official reports attributed the quake to the remnants of fracking hundreds of years ago.

26. Because nobody wanted to admit they don’t know the real cause of the earthquake since it wasn’t preplanned for the streams.

27. Because I looted the ruins of the school for all the yearbooks I could find with Ezra in them and took the framed photo of my father from what was once the lobby.

28. Because the news kept playing that photo of my father, even though he had always hated the lighting and the angle it was taken from.

29. Because I dumped the yearbooks and the photo into the storm drain to lighten my load, the wet pages and cracked glass now free food for the gators and sharks rumored to live in the sewer system.

30. Because I fled into the swamps before the pros arrived to search for the real villain behind the earthquake. No self-respecting “champion” would ever venture outside of the domes and into the canals like a common pizza deliveryperson. If they want a villain, I’ll be their villain. Maybe I’ll finally make my old man proud when he sees me on the stream from his couch in the sky, watching me dodge heroes on my boat.

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Ⓒ Tina S. Zhu