by Sybil Nelson
“I can’t calm down, Quin,” my father said to my mother, probably through a video chat. “Something’s happening to her.” Oh my God. Were they talking about me?
“Well, if she is changing, we’ll just have to deal with it,” my mother said.
“This puts us all in danger. Maybe we should send her away. For her own safety.”
“Gregory, please, don’t panic. It’s probably nothing. How many times did we think something was happening to Josh? It always turned out to be a mistake. Just watch her for a few days and let me know what you see. Then we’ll decide what to do.”
“I love you, Quin.”
“I love you, too.”
“Be safe.”
“I will. I’ll be home soon.”
When I heard my father turn off the computer, I got up and ran to my room. After closing and locking the door, I paced the room and tried to calm my nerves. What did they mean, send me away? Where would they send me? I was beyond freaked out. I got out a sheet of paper and a pen and tried to make a list like Tai does when she has a problem. But I could only think of two things to write: 1. What was happening to me was definitely not normal, and 2. I was somehow putting my whole family in danger.
Chapter 7: Waffle Attack
The next morning, I sat in my room minding my own business. Well, kinda minding my own business. I was staring at the Houston house with my binoculars, waiting for Tai to get home, but that’s not really spying. She’s my best friend and I hadn’t seen her in three weeks and I needed to know as soon as she got in because we really needed to talk. I promised myself that I wouldn’t use my fire power or super hearing again until I talked to her and we figured some things out. I also wanted to convince my parents I was normal so they wouldn’t send me away.
In any case, I was completely the victim in an attack from the devil twins. They snuck into my room and nailed me in the head with two frozen waffles. Those little brats had great aim for five-year-olds. Then they ran out of the room laughing. I had to follow them and teach them a lesson. I had no choice. They can’t just come into a girl’s room unannounced and throw frozen waffles. They got one of my favorite comic books wet.
I caught up with Charlie first. I picked him up and threw him on the couch. Then I sat on him and farted. Yeah, I farted. So what? When dealing with little brothers, sometimes you have to get gross. Then I took his shoe laces and tied them around his wrists so that they were like attached to his feet. Unfortunately, Charlie thought this was hilarious, his idea of an awesome Monday morning. He was laughing the whole time. Even when I let him go and he had to hop around the house bent over with his butt sticking up in the air, he was still laughing. I rolled my eyes in disgust and went in search of Chester.
“Chessie, where are you?” I called sweetly. “I have some candy for you.” He didn’t fall for it. Those boys were getting smarter every day.
If I concentrated hard enough I could probably hear him giggling somewhere in the house. But I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t use my … oh, what the hay.
***
“Priscilla, what did you do to your brother?” my dad asked a few minutes later while I sat in the window seat of my room.
“You’re gonna have to be more specific than that, Dad. I got too many of them.”
“What did you do to Chester?” he said slowly, holding back his annoyance with me.
“Uh, well, let me just say, he totally deserved it.”
“Priss, he’s only five. I don’t think anything he could do warrants you tying him to a chair and setting him on the street corner with a sign that says: Take me, I’m free.”
“Sorry, Dad.”
“Sorry’s not good enough. Now I’ll give you a choice. I can ground you for a week or you can make it up to them.”
“Grounded?” I shrieked, turning to face him for the first time. “But, Dad, they started it!”
“And I’m finishing it.”
I sighed. “Fine. I’ll take them to the park after school tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” he said, but didn’t leave the room. I looked out the window again and continued my stalking of the Houston house. “Is there anything you want to talk about, Priss?” he asked, sitting on my bed. I felt a little uneasy. For the first time in my life, I felt uncomfortable around my dad. I knew for a fact that he had lied to me. I didn’t know if I could trust him anymore.
“Like what, Dad?” I didn’t look at him. I just kept staring at Tai’s house, willing her to come home.
“I don’t know. What’s going on in your life?” He took his glasses off and cleaned them with his tie.
He was trying to reach out to me, but I wasn’t ready. I didn’t know what to think of the conversation I’d overheard the night before. “Just watch her for a few days,” my mother had said as if I was some sort of chemistry experiment.
I shrugged. “Nothing special.” Well, that was the biggest lie ever told.
“Are you sure? Because a boy called here for you.”
“Really? Who?” I asked, bolting upright. Was it Spencer? Did he really call me? How’d I miss that? Maybe he called while I was outside tying up Chessie. Maybe he wanted to confirm our date. More likely he suddenly realized what a loser I am and wanted to cancel.
“Kyle Montgomery,” my father said.
I rolled my eyes and sat back down at my window seat. “Kyle is not a boy. He’s … he’s just Kyle.”
“Well if any young man intends on courting my daughter, he needs to first be properly introduced to me.”
I laughed. “Daddy, you’ve known him since he was born. We have a picture of him poking your eye at my second birthday party.”
Just then, I saw the Houston car pull up.
“Look, Daddy, if Kyle ever intends to … court me or whatever, I’ll definitely let you know, right after I puke.” I didn’t wait for a response. I dashed out of my bedroom and out of the house. I didn’t stop running until I was down the street and in front of Tai’s house. I hugged her so hard we both nearly fell over.
After the hugging and jumping up and down subsided, Tai grabbed my hand and pulled me inside her house. We pounded the shag carpeted stairs and then entered her bedroom. She locked the door, pulled the curtains shut, and then said, “Okay, show me.”
“Show you what?” I said, acting confused.
“Oh, you know what. Show me the fire.”
She pulled her thick black hair into a bun and slapped on a spare pair of glasses that were on her desk. Then she stared at me, banging her little fists together in anticipation. I hadn’t seen her this excited over something since the high school science teacher let her visit the ninth grade biology class and dissect a pig.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, strolling around her bedroom and looking at her collection of books as if I’d never seen them before. Tai didn’t have a normal twelve-year-old girl’s bedroom. Neither did I, for that matter, but at least my room was fun. Half of my room was dedicated to Marvel comics and the other half to DC comics. Tai’s room was just covered with books. And not cool books with pictures or anything. Just thick, boring, brown books with strange titles like Quantum Mechanics and Vector Analysis. And those were the books whose titles I could actually pronounce. Her room reminded me of a psychiatrist’s office. Which I guess worked since I usually went over there to get help with my problems.
“Priscilla Maxine Sumner, if you don’t show me right now I’ll … I’ll … I’ll never speak to you again.” She was so unimaginative with her threats. It would have been so much funnier if she threatened to dye my hair green or threatened to tell the twins that my comic book collection was a new type of toilet paper. But Tai wasn’t very creative like that. But maybe that was why we were such good friends. We balanced each other out.
“Okay, okay. I’ll show you.” I sat her down in her desk chair and stood in front of her with my hands stretched out, palms up. “Now I’ve discovered that there are two things I can do with my han
ds. First, I can make them pulse with heat. Feel my fingertips,” I instructed her when they started to turn red and throb.
“Oh my God,” she said after touching them quickly. “They’ve got to be like over a hundred degrees Celsius!”
“What does that mean?”
“One hundred degrees Celsius or 212 degrees Fahrenheit is the boiling point of water. Show me something else.”
“Okay, for the next thing, I really have to concentrate. Just watch my fingers closely, especially my index finger.” I closed my eyes and concentrated on that secret part of my brain. Then I felt the energy shoot out of my fingers.
“Holy hotdogs,” she said softly like she was afraid that if she spoke too loud the fire would disappear.
I opened my eyes and saw that a small amber yellow flame hovered above each of my fingertips. The ones above my index fingers were the strongest and also had bits of blue and purple twinkling in them.
“I … I … I don’t know what to say.” Tai’s eyes were wide with wonder. I was just happy she didn’t look freaked out or scared like my dad did.
“What do you think this means?” I asked, shutting off the flame and rubbing my hands together. It still kind of stung a little. I hoped Tai could come up with a reasonable explanation for this and that it had nothing to do with aliens.
“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure it’s not normal.” Tai spun around in her chair and clicked on her computer. “I’ve been scouring the Internet ever since you told me about it, and I’ve found absolutely nothing else like your … situation.”
“Great. I am an alien.” I flopped down on her bed.
“Alien? What makes you think that?”
“Nothing. Never mind,” I said, not wanting to tell her about the strange conversation between my parents. I normally didn’t keep secrets from Tai, but it was just too embarrassing to share.
“I don’t think you’re an alien,” she said, making one final decisive click on the keyboard. She scooted her chair over and turned the screen slightly so I could see it.
On the screen was a Photoshopped image of me in a red spandex body suit with a cape.
“You think I’m a superhero?” I said unenthusiastically, examining the image.
“Yes, superhero!” she exclaimed. “Like in one of your comic books. I can’t believe you haven’t thought of that. Oh my God, this is awesome,” she said, clapping her hands. “My best friend is a superhero.”
Well, I guessed that made sense. It was actually kind of cool to think that I could be a superhero. But since I hadn’t fallen into a vat of radioactive material or been bitten by a spider, the question remained, where did the powers come from? I could still be an alien.
“So what else can you do?” Tai asked, standing and offering the chair to me. She took a brush out of the drawer and started working on my hair. This was our little ritual. Normally, when we talked it was with a hairbrush and comb in each hand.
“What makes you think I can do anything else? Isn’t the fire enough?”
“Wishful thinking, I guess. I just think it’s so cool. I can’t believe you have superpowers!”
“Well, there is something else I can do.”
“I knew it. I knew you were holding out on me. What is it?” She spun me around in the chair to look at me.
“I can hear things.”
“You mean like voices? In your head?” She scrunched her nose up just like she did whenever the school cafeteria served fish sticks.
“No, not like that. I’m not crazy. I can hear sounds like … go in the hallway and whisper something into your hand.”
Tai stepped outside. I rolled my eyes when she whispered her phrase. My best friend really was a nerd.
“Okay, what did I say?”
“You said, ‘Force equals mass times acceleration.’”
“Holy hot dogs, that’s awesome!”
I shrugged. The awesomeness of my powers was starting to wear off the more my parents’ words sunk in. What if they really did send me away?
“What’s the matter? Why do you look so forlorn?”
“What does that mean?”
“Depressed.”
“I’m not forlorn.” I had to think of something to get her mind off of my powers. Honestly, I was sick of them. “I’m just worried about what I’m going to wear to Spencer’s house tonight.”
“I almost forgot about that.”
“He said you could come, too.”
“Really? I can go? To Spencer’s house? Spencer Callahan?” If she were the athletic type, she would have done a back flip right there in her room. “We gotta do our hair.”
Tai dashed to the bathroom to turn on the flat iron, curling iron, crimper, and electric brush. We were looking at a four- or five-hour hair styling session, and I didn’t mind at all. I didn’t want to think about superpowers.
An hour later, we were so focused on the dozens of outfits lying around Tai’s room that we nearly jumped out of our skin when her mom knocked on the door.
“Tai, Channel 2 is here,” she said through the door.
“Oh, okay, Mom.” Tai took slow, deep breaths. Suddenly, she looked like she might puke.
“Channel 2? Why is Channel 2 here?” I asked.
She sat down at her desk and took her Rock Box out of the drawer. For the most part, Tai was a perfect, charming, polite, beautiful genius. She was every parent’s dream child, but she did have one strange little quirk. Whenever she got really nervous, she took out this shoe box full of rocks that she’d collected over the years. Then, one by one, she’d take them all out and then put them back in. She had a special order and rhythm to the process as well, and if she got thrown off or interrupted, she’d have to start all over again. Thankfully, by the time she was finished with her rock ritual, she always got back to normal.
The rock thing would’ve driven most people crazy. I mean, she could be at it anywhere from two minutes to two hours depending on what triggered it. But I just considered it a minor side effect to having such a great best friend.
“While I was at physics camp, I took this test and I did kinda well, so Channel 2 wants to do a story on me. No big deal,” she said, focusing on her rocks.
It was a big deal. It was a huge deal. If it wasn’t, she wouldn’t be rubbing rocks as we spoke.
“Will you come with me? Will you sit with me?” she asked. Well, really, she pleaded.
“Tai, I wish I could, but my dad would flip if he found out I got on TV. You know how he is about privacy and keeping a low profile.”
“Well, you wouldn’t have to say anything. Just sit next to me. I could use the moral support.” She scraped the rocks back into the box and started all over again. She was extremely nervous about this.
I really didn’t want to do it, but how could I leave my best friend hanging? Over the years, my father had instilled in me his desire to stay out of the limelight at all costs. When I was little, I used to be really good at gymnastics. Getting up at 4:00 a.m. every day and driving to Pittsburgh for practice really paid off when I won the junior division title at eight years old. My coach said that if I kept training, I would probably make the Olympic team as a teenager. I was so excited. I could already see myself on the cover of a Wheaties box holding a gold medal. I thought Dad would be excited, too, but when I told him, he flipped out. He wouldn’t even let the newspaper do a story on me because it meant my picture would be in it. And just like that, my gymnastics career ended because he thought it was too dangerous.
“Please, Priss. I don’t think I can do this without you.”
I sighed. “What if I sit off to the side so the camera doesn’t see me.”
“I guess that’ll be okay.”
***
“So tell us about the test. Was it hard?” Stacy Marguilles of Channel 2 News asked Tai while I stared at the two inches of makeup on the reporter’s face. I mean, really she should’ve just put on a Halloween mask.
“It was a little challenging, but it was so
much fun,” Tai explained while I sat in the Houstons’ brown wingback chair and stared at the orange shag carpeting. The Houstons hadn’t redecorated since like the seventies. Every time I stepped into their house, I felt like I had jumped into an old rerun of Sesame Street. I didn’t really understand what Mr. and Mrs. Houston did for a living. Basically, they got paid for being smart. They spent all their time reading big, fat, dusty books and then giving speeches about their findings. I don’t know what possessed them to adopt a child. Don’t get me wrong, I was glad that Tai came to River’s Bend. I mean, she was my best friend in the world, the only person who really understood me. But Mr. and Mrs. Houston were a bit too old, formal, and stuffy to have kids. They were more likely to translate some ancient Egyptian manuscript than to play with their adopted daughter. They’d lived across the street from me my entire life and I didn’t even know their first names.
