Ryan shrugged. “I don’t have a lot of emergencies. Like, none so far, that I know of. I’ve had some—falling out of a tree I was climbing, tripping on things—but I haven’t noticed any particular ability to get out of stuff like that.”
“So maybe your ability only deals with helping other people,” said Dr. Withunga.
“Who, though?” asked Dahlia. “Anybody? Or people you know?”
“Or people you like?” asked Jannis.
“Or people you love?” asked Mitch, looking pointedly at Bizzy. But it didn’t sound like he was taunting Ryan.
“I was thinking,” said Ryan, “maybe it’s people I have responsibility for. Bizzy’s mother charged me to look after her on the way home. Keep her from getting hurt.”
“Not in those words,” said Bizzy.
“The meaning was clear enough,” said Ryan. “And my mom asked me to help with Dianne when she got stung. I just figured out the right things to do because it was my job. I kind of knew.”
“And that ‘kind of’ knowing—that’s your micropower,” said Dr. Withunga.
“Not completely,” said Aaron. “I saw him. He was amazingly smooth and quick. He not only knew, he just did it, without hesitation.”
“Nobody’s ever called me smooth before,” said Ryan. A few people chuckled at that.
“Our micropowers,” said Dr. Withunga, “fall into three categories, with plenty of overlap. First, there are things we just know, like my ability to know about people’s belly buttons. I don’t do anything, the knowledge is just there in my mind. Is that how it is for you, Mitch?”
“Yep,” said Mitch. “I just know, without looking, without even thinking about it.”
“Then there’s the stuff we can do with our own bodies,” said Dr. Withunga. “Like Lanny.”
Ryan looked around.
“He couldn’t come today,” said Dr. Withunga.
“He makes everything around him smell better,” said Dahlia.
Jannis corrected her. “He neutralizes odors. He makes it not smell at all.”
“The important thing is that he doesn’t choose to do it,” said Dr. Withunga. “He’s aware of it, especially when it wears him out. But his skin seems to respond without any information even going to his brain about it. Totally a reflex of his own body.”
“He must have been great as a baby,” said Bizzy. “Diapers that didn’t stink.”
Dr. Withunga didn’t take it as a joke. “We don’t know when his micropower kicked in. With most people, it happens near the time of puberty, but other people get their micropowers when they’re younger.”
“I was about ten the first time,” said Ryan.
Bizzy looked like she was about to say something, but she stopped herself.
“Come on, Bizzy,” said Dr. Withunga kindly. “It’s okay to tell us.”
She considered for a moment more and then said, “Mine was triggered when I was three.” Again she hesitated, on the verge of saying something else.
Dr. Withunga held up a hand to keep others from speaking. And she waited for Bizzy.
“Mine wasn’t born in me,” said Bizzy. “Mine came as a curse.”
Dr. Withunga didn’t say anything, though Ryan could see that she was considering the idea.
“Who or what was it that cursed you?” asked Dr. Withunga.
“Her mother,” said Ryan softly, because he knew Bizzy would have a hard time saying it.
“Interesting,” said Dr. Withunga. “She cursed you with great beauty?”
“Her curses are temporary,” said Bizzy.
“But your glamor persists,” said Dr. Withunga.
“She only has one curse, usually,” said Bizzy. “She says to somebody, ‘You’re so clumsy,’ or ‘You’re such a klutz,’ and then for the next few hours or the next couple of days, they trip and fall, or drop things, or cut themselves, or bump into things.”
“Dangerous,” said Jannis.
“Very,” said Bizzy. “But she’s never done that one on me or my brother.”
“You’re saying that’s your mother’s micropower?” asked Dr. Withunga.
“I don’t know,” said Bizzy. “She told me she was a witch, and that’s always been as good an explanation as any other.”
“It’s a micropower,” said Aaron. “She clumsied me once. I was just passing by her, but I could feel that she had a micropower. A strong one. And then she said, ‘Clumsy of you,’ and I fell flat on my face. The effect lasted all the next day. I had to be so careful.”
“Sorry,” said Bizzy.
“And she cursed you with beauty?” asked Dr. Withunga.
“I don’t know if she meant to,” said Bizzy. “But I came into the room wearing a new dress that we just got from Goodwill, and I twirled in it, and she said, ‘You’re so pretty.’ And then she gasped, looking at me.”
“This is so helpful,” said Dr. Withunga. “How clear are your memories of that time?”
“Very,” said Bizzy.
“So let’s think of a few things, all right?” asked Dr. Withunga. “For instance, could you feel your face changing?”
Bizzy closed her eyes and thought.
“Can you feel your face changing even now, when the glamor comes over you?” Dr. Withunga persisted.
“It’s usually under my control. I work on keeping my face relaxed. Regular. But if I want to wear that face, I can choose to do it. A bunch of muscles tightening in certain ways.”
“And did that happen the first time?”
“Yes,” said Bizzy. “Not as clearly as now, not as quickly, but yes. That was the first time I realized I even had those muscles.”
“Did you practice with them?”
Bizzy blushed, which only made her more beguiling. “After it wore off. The third day, I looked in the mirror and it was gone. I was just regular again. And so I tried to flex those same muscles again.”
“Like learning to wiggle my ear,” said Ryan. “I noticed that when I smiled really broadly, my ears went up. So I tried to isolate those muscles and I practiced until I could raise my left ear without smiling at all.”
“Just one ear?”
Ryan shrugged. “It’s the one I controlled first, and that was enough to establish me as a genuinely weird kid.”
“A status you aspired to,” said Jannis.
“I was a five-year-old boy,” said Ryan. “You always want to be able to do something that makes your friends go, ‘Wow.’”
“Like that, I suppose,” said Bizzy. For the first time, she was deliberately drawing the attention back to herself. “I worked on it, until I could pretty much get the effect on my own. Whenever I wanted. And over the years, it got better. Smoother.”
“Until it stuck that way,” said Ryan.
Bizzy whirled on him. “It never,” she said sharply.
“I figured you didn’t know,” said Ryan. “It’s not usually full-on drop-dead stunning like this, but all the time, when you’re walking along the street, through the halls at school, it’s like your face is flickering on the edge of looking like this. People stare, and I think that’s why.”
Bizzy shook her head. “When I’m not doing it, it isn’t there.”
“You haven’t seen yourself,” said Ryan. “I’m only telling you because you need to know. It’s like your face wants to go this way and kind of tries to. I bet you keep reminding yourself to relax your face.”
Bizzy was about to make some retort, but she stopped. “Maybe,” she said.
“I’m not making it up,” said Ryan. “I’m not the only one who notices. People glance at you and see the glamor, and then watch you to see if it happens again.”
“That happened to you?”
“Weirdly, not at all on the first day I knew you,” said Ryan. “You were just a girl I was leading to clas
s and kind of talking to.”
“You wouldn’t know what my face was like that first day,” said Bizzy. “You barely ever looked at me.”
The other kids chuckled.
Ryan nodded. “I didn’t have much experience talking to pretty girls.”
“Or any girls,” said Dahlia.
“Yeah, like that,” Ryan answered. Dahlia was taunting him, but she was also correct, so there was no point in taking umbrage. “I didn’t really notice it until I saw you moving into the house that night.”
“What, you’re neighbors?” asked Dahlia.
“Next door?” asked Mitch.
“Next wall,” said Ryan. “They’re in the other side of the duplex.”
Mitch rolled his eyes, and Ryan imagined he knew why. Living in the same house as all that beauty? Insane. Even if there was a wall between them. Since it drove Ryan crazy sometimes, he assumed Mitch was imagining the situation. Only what Mitch didn’t know was that Ryan fell in love with her for her conversation and kindness and humor and all, not her face. Her regular face was pretty enough, but it wasn’t distracting. He felt as though he loved the person Bizzy, not the glamor.
“So you think your mother caused this?” asked Dr. Withunga, bringing them back to the methodical discussion.
Bizzy shrugged. “When I was three, I was sure of it. Since then, I’ve learned that when she tells other people things like ‘You’re so pretty,’ or—my brother, for instance—‘You’re so strong,’ or ‘You’re so athletic,’ it doesn’t have any particular effect. Only ‘You’re so clumsy’ or ‘What a klutz.’”
“But she can still trigger Bizzy’s glamor,” said Ryan, using Dr. Withunga’s term for it. “She did it this morning, as a kind of punishment. ‘You’re so beautiful.’”
“It switched it on,” said Bizzy, “and it’ll last all day. Maybe tonight I can sleep it off and have a more normal day tomorrow.”
“So she uses it as a punishment?” said Dr. Withunga.
“It’s a curse,” said Bizzy, “and she knows it.”
“But safer than making you clumsy,” said Dr. Withunga.
“I think she actually loves me,” said Bizzy, “so she doesn’t want me damaged. But a witch like her—what does she know of love?”
Dr. Withunga didn’t contradict her. She just nodded.
“She’s not really a witch,” said Jannis. “No such thing.”
“You’re so sure of that?” asked Dr. Withunga. “Oh, the kind of witch they looked for in Salem—that’s just silly. Trafficking with the devil? I don’t think so. But witches were usually identified because they muttered curses that came true. ‘No milk,’ and a nursing mother’s dugs would dry up.”
“‘Dugs’?” asked Aaron.
“The word they used in court documents from the period,” said Dr. Withunga.
“You’ve researched witchcraft?” asked Ryan.
“Micropowers would be interpreted different ways in different times. Most so-called wizards and witches were charlatans, of course, using illusion and misdirection to seem to do transformations and curses. Maybe even hypnosis and suggestion. But some of the things people saw might have been real. The result of micropowers. So of course I researched it, once I became convinced that micropowers existed.”
In a quavering voice, Jannis asked, “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”
“I’m a witch with a very small and barely useful power,” said Dr. Withunga. “But right now we’re talking about Bizzy, who has a very strong power. She’s able to change herself, her face in particular, in a way that is extraordinarily pleasing and attractive to other members of her species.”
“We used to have a dog,” said Bizzy, “and she whined whenever I had the face on.”
“Interesting,” said Dr. Withunga. “Because that raises another question.”
The others waited only a moment before Dahlia said, “What?”
“Just trying to phrase it clearly,” said Dr. Withunga. “We don’t actually know yet whether Bizzy’s micropower is just something she does to herself, changing her face, or whether there’s also something that emanates from her, like the way Dahlia makes other people yawn. It might just be that it’s her face changes alone that make people regard her with . . . let’s call it ‘astonishment.’”
“Yes, let’s,” said Jannis.
“Or maybe ‘worship,’” said Mitch.
“Please no,” said Bizzy.
“Or is it an emotional thing also, something that even a dog can feel?” said Dr. Withunga. “For instance, Aaron has told me, and Ryan has implied, that passersby look at you even when you’re not wearing your glamor. Could that be an emotional thing that you give off all the time, to one degree or another? It’s hard to test for that, but you already have some observational data. From Ryan and Aaron.”
“Mine’s pretty clear,” said Aaron. “People who aren’t looking at her turn and stare when she comes within range. I think your hypothesis of an emotional connection is spot-on.”
“But you’re immune?” asked Ryan.
“Heck no,” said Aaron. “But I’m trying to be scientific, so I force myself to look at other people instead of her. They stare, with or without the glamor. Well, not stare, but keep looking at her covertly, pretending that they’re not, because they know it’s rude to stare.”
“Sounds like I’m a traffic hazard,” said Bizzy. She said it in kind of a joking way, but she also sounded worried and hurt.
“That’s right,” said Aaron. “But when you’re not full-on stunning, people can still operate heavy machinery.”
“Maybe she could quell a riot,” said Mitch. “Just by standing there looking pretty.”
“Or cause one,” said Jannis.
“We’re not going to get answers today,” said Dr. Withunga. “It’s just like with all the rest of us. We ask questions, we wonder about possibilities, and then we work on figuring out how it works and how to get more control over it. Learn to switch it on or off, which Bizzy has already done—at least the on-switch part. But it’s up to her now for a while. When she knows more, we’ll discuss her micropower again.”
“Next time,” said Mitch, “would it be okay if she either comes without the, um, glamor, or, like—”
“Wears a bag over her head?” said Dahlia.
“A mask,” said Mitch.
“No mask, no bag,” said Dr. Withunga. “We learn to bear each other’s micropowers. Even if it takes a lot of gratuitous yawning before some people get control of themselves.” She raised her eyebrows at Dahlia, who looked defiantly unrepentant.
“I only yawned people who deserved it,” said Dahlia.
“In your ignorant opinion,” said Jannis.
Dahlia turned languidly toward her. “Are you feeling really relaxed, Jannis?” she asked.
“You really don’t want to get into a micropower battle with Jannis,” said Dr. Withunga.
“I’m tired of nobody knowing what Jannis’s real micropower is,” said Dahlia. “It isn’t fair. And that bull about knowing high E is just . . .”
Jannis gave a tight little smile. Then she parted her lips and emitted a soft high-pitched note, like the chirping of a shy bird.
“I’m sure that’s a high E,” said Ryan, “give or take six tones.”
“It isn’t fair that she doesn’t tell,” said Dr. Withunga. “But if Jannis is wise, she will continue not to tell. I certainly won’t tell on her.”
“And we’re not trusted,” said Mitch.
“For all we know,” said Dahlia, “she uses her power on us all the time.”
“I know that she has never used it on any of you, because there has never been either a need or a provocation,” said Dr. Withunga.
Jannis sat stiffly in her chair, not looking at anybody.
Ryan thought that made Jannis the
most interesting person here. After Bizzy, of course.
“I think,” said Dr. Withunga, “that we’ve gone as far as we can today, with both Ryan and Bizzy. We’ll have to look into forming a group here in Charlottesville, because we can’t expect all of you to make this trip on a regular basis.”
“I can do it,” said Jannis.
“Because you go to school here,” said Dr. Withunga. “It would be kind of you to help form the nucleus of the new group.”
“If my mother lets me take part,” said Bizzy.
“That’s between you and her,” said Dr. Withunga. “I wish you could get her to take part in the group, because her micropower sounds fascinating.”
“There’s more than one sense in which she’s a witch,” said Bizzy.
Ryan couldn’t help but agree. Mrs. Horvat didn’t look like Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz, but she carried the same attitude of general malevolence. She was definitely not like Glinda, the good witch of the north.
“We’ll figure out what’s possible,” said Ryan. “But I don’t know if my micropower is going to be worth studying, or even possible to study. I kind of hope I never find out, because I don’t want any more emergencies.”
“Because you’re not sure you will always be able to save the person you have responsibility for,” said Dr. Withunga.
“Yes,” said Ryan. He did not add that it was also because he clearly remembered putting that bee in his mouth, and he was afraid his micropower would require him to take a bullet for somebody or stand between them and a speeding car. He wasn’t sure how ready he was to die for love. Or even to get stung for it.
10
Errol Dell was the kicker for the Vasco da Gama High School football team, and such was their offense that he was called upon often in every game. Because he was strong and fairly accurate, he was the team’s top scorer by a wide margin, and there was talk that he would be scouted by some major colleges.
So it was not surprising that he moved through Vasco da Gama High School like a god, followed by worshipers and worshipful glances.
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