Cindy is hard at work on her sketch pad when I walk into her room Saturday morning. The look of concentration on her face is adorable. So is everything else about her, for that matter.

She swats me for looking over her shoulder. When she does it again, I sit down on her guest chair to wait for her to come to a stopping place. I close my eyes and listen to the scritch-scratch of her pencil on the paper.

“Falling asleep, are we?”

I wish. I take the pad from her hand before opening my eyes.

“Hey!”

“Sorry,” I shrug.

I look at the first sketch. It’s perfect. It fills in all the little details that the original illustrations are missing. The next sketch is from the back. That’s where the real work is, because Cindy has nothing to work with but front views, and a three quarter profile or two.

“Beautiful,” I say, “I want to try it on right now.”

I stand, handing her the sketches to hold where I can see them. I study them carefully.

“Well?” Cindy asks.

“Shush. You worked hard on these. I want to get them right.”

I close my eyes. With the sketches still fresh in my memory, I switch my clothes to match them. Cindy gasps.

“Don’t open your eyes yet!” she blurts out.

She leads me by my arm To the mirror, I assume.

I open my eyes and it’s my turn to gasp.

It’s perfect.

Cindy snaps about a billion pictures.

“I see a couple places I can make improvements,” she says, “ I'll have some new sketches by Wednesday. That should give us time for last minute changes.”

“But---”

“You came to me for help. You can keep these.”

She hands me the sketches of my Halloween costume.

“Okay, okay,” I give in. “Your turn?”

Cindy pulls out another set of sketches. I look them over with as much care as I did the first, and change. Then I strip out of the new outfit. “You just wanted to get me in my underwear.”

“Like that would be a challenge.”

I'd brought a book to read while she rips the seams out and traces the resulting pieces. She makes great sketches, but hasn't mastered the art of turning them into patterns. We'd brainstormed this idea as a workaround.

She’s around five inches taller than me, but we have similar builds. She said that wouldn't be a problem, that she’ll be able to scale the improvised pattern easily enough.

The real question for me is this. If she doesn’t know how to map the look of the final dress to pattern pieces, and I have no clue about any of it, where does the information come from? Information from nowhere seems weirder than objects from nowhere, to me, anyway.

She eventually finishes with the pieces. I stand up to change.

“Hold on a second.”

She walks over to me.

“Hands over your head.”

“Is this a stick up?”

“Funny girl.”

She pulls a tape measure from her pocket and starts taking my measurements. This is a little bit awkward. And interesting. I have to ask.

“I need to know your measurements so I know what adjustments to make to the pattern.”

Oh. That’s all.

“Done. Now cover those curves and let's go get some lunch.”

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I stare at the UT tower. My plan was to climb to the top and use it as my lookout on Saturday night. It is not a good plan. Not that I couldn’t climb it. There are windows and a quick check confirms that the seams in the limestone are good enough handholds, even though they shouldn’t be.

The problem is visibility. Anyone glancing up at the tower would be likely to notice me hanging onto its side. It’s too damn white. That seems counter to the whole not getting spotted idea. I consider trying to open a door to the observation platform, but I want to experiment some more with that in a safer environment first.

I considered my options. Dobie center, a private dorm, is a couple of blocks away, and about as tall. Downtown there are several taller buildings. I doubt any of them would conceal me that much better on my way up. Maybe the whole lurking on top of buildings thing wasn’t the best plan.

“There you are.”

I calmly turn around to face the voice. It takes a moment, because I’m still descending from the ten foot vertical leap I made when she startled the hell out of me. I have plenty of time to consider precisely how awkward this is, since I’d slipped into the zone automatically.

I need to have my records changed to get “smooth” added as my middle name. Lowercase, of course. I don’t want to be pretentious.

Valeria is trying not to laugh. Or at least trying to appear to be trying not to laugh. Ah, there, the ground.

“Just a second.”

I start scanning the ground carefully.

“What did you lose?”

“Just my dignity.”

“Are you sure you had it with you?”

“Ha.”

It turns out she has been flying around looking for me. She checked the moon tower first. Of course. Then the top of the tower I was looking at. Then she noticed a lonely figure staring at the tower and came to check it out.

“So you couldn’t get up there, huh?”

I explain my thoughts on climbing the building at night. In too much detail, probably.

“Beautiful and smart,” she says.

I blush and look for a distraction.

“We better get moving,” she continues, “We’re late.”

“Late for what?”

She pulls her goggles back into place and holds out her hand. No piggy back ride this time.

It’s hard to have much of a conversation when you’re falling sideways through the air at terminal velocity. I blink up a pair of goggles of my own to keep my eyeballs from drying out.

Then we’re rapidly descending toward the soccer fields at Zilker park. We land gently on Rock Island. It isn’t an actual island, but a stone outcropping in the middle of an otherwise flat expanse. There are two girls waiting for us.

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“I felt bad because I didn’t get there quicker,” Michelle finishes.

“You stopped the thing,” I say, “It would have been worse without you.”

“The thing” is the tentacle creature at Whole Foods on the night of the first wave of attacks. Michelle hadn’t believed her dream at first (pretty much the same one Valeria had had), and had stayed home until she heard the crashes and screams from a few blocks away. A security guard had been practically ripped in half by the monster before she got there.

Helen tells her story next.

“Wait, snakes with wings?” I interrupt, “Like Tim’s?”

“Tim?” Valeria and Helen both ask.

“I’m not calling him Electro Bolt,” I say to Valeria.

Then, to Helen, “A guy we watched fight some snake-bats at the U.T. tower last weekend. He had the same power you do.”

“Val mentioned that.”

Val?

“There’s a guy that uses fire like I do, too,” Michelle chimes in, “I’ve seen him flying around a few times.”

I look at Valeria.

“Have you run into anyone else that can mess with gravity?”

“Run into? No, but he’s out there.”

“How do you know?”

“I can feel it when he’s using his power. It makes ripples.”

“How do you know it’s a he?”

She shrugs.

I get to hear Valeria’s story again. She had believed her dream right away, since she woke up pressed against the ceiling. She flew out her window and found the dragon swooping around her neighborhood.

She quickly discovered that her ability to alter something else’s gravity had a range of around a hundred feet, and the dragon’s breath a range of about one hundred fifty. After a couple of close calls she had gotten in close enough to force it down, but it had slipped out of her range and tried to get away. Thus the chase my neighbors had seen.

She caught up with it and slammed it into the ground hard enough to finish it off, but not before it got off a big gout of flame into some trees.

They’ve all seen the video of me fighting the minotaur, so I leave it at that, filling in a few details of how I had felt at the time. They “ooh” and “aah” over the lack of gashes on my arm.

Then Helen asks the tough question.

“What exactly is your power?”

I don’t know how to answer that. Lucid dreaming while I’m awake? It doesn’t exactly fit the mold of the others’.

“She’s just better.”

Valeria to the rescue. I give her a grateful look.

That clearly doesn’t entirely satisfy Helen, but Valeria continues.

“Let’s get to the really important question. What next?”

Important, and complicated. Helen and Michelle have been waiting. Playing around with their new powers a bit, but otherwise keeping a low profile until the main event. Valeria brings up some of the issues she and I have with the whole situation from our last conversation. Then she switches topics.

“I’m guessing none of you have reported in?” she says.

A couple days after the first wave of monsters and powers, the Department of Homeland Security had started running commercials and making internet postings asking anyone who had gained powers to call in, or report in person to the U.S. Marshals’ office downtown. They only want to ask some questions, they said.

None of us have reported.

“Like I want to end up strapped down in a lab somewhere,” Michelle says.

Nobody disagrees. I decide to bring the conversation back to what we can do, instead of what we aren’t going to do.

“If we’re supposed to fight off an invading army of monsters, shouldn’t we be at least practicing together?” I ask.

That leads to a lot of questions. The four of us are all still in high school. When will we find the time? Where can we practice? How can we practice, without maiming or killing each other? How can we track down the other eight, if there really are eight more of us?

Through all this, something keeps bothering me. I finally put my finger on it.

“Were you all always this hot?”

Smooth.

“I mean, I definitely look different than I did before. And you all, well,” I’m flailing, “Look at you.”

As it turns out, none of them have been visibly changed by getting powers. Of course, they want to know how I have changed. I wave them off with the same thing I told Valeria. Heavier. Not pretty.

“Tim wasn’t hard on the eyes, either,” Valeria notes.

I don’t care for that, but I push that thought aside.

One of the many confusing things for me is that I like girls. Before puberty, I had assumed I would like boys, since I was supposed to be a girl. Aunt Tabitha had totally cracked up when I told her that. She promised she would explain why when I got older.

Still, bringing up a picture of Tim in my mind, I know Valeria is right. If I liked boys, I might have been into him. Until he opened his mouth, of course.

“What are the odds?” I ask.

None of them have an answer.

We come back around to the idea of preparing for the big fight. None of us seem particularly anxious for it to happen, but we all want to win when it does. We really need to practice.

“I don’t see how that’s going to be possible,” Michelle says.

“What’s the problem?” I reply, “We just---”

Then her hair bursts into flame. Bright, bright, flame.

I do not have a witty comeback for that.

“Okay, okay. I get it,”

The flames go away.

“It does that any time you use your powers?”

She nods.

“So we need someplace enclosed,” says Valeria.

“Or far away from people,” I add.

“That we can all get to in a reasonable amount of time.” Helen chimes in.

The three of them all get out their phones and pull up maps. I curse my lack of a data plan.

We don’t come up with a solution that night. We do find a few possibilities, which we will check out individually and report back. Well, the other three will. I’m not familiar with any of the places. I do promise to keep my eyes open for a good option, though.

We give each other our phone numbers. Which I put in my phone. Which I now have. Yay!

When we’ve said everything we have to say, Valeria offers me a lift home. Helen had driven Michelle here, so they were good. It’s only a ten minute run home, if that. Of course I say yes.

We stop at a coffee shop and get drinks. Iced coffee for me, hot chocolate for her. We end up talking until three in the morning.

From there I do run. She was so sleepy I’m worried she'd drop me. I'd have been fine, but it would have made her feel bad.

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Sunday afternoon I track down Cindy in the library. She is curled up on one of the three beanbag chairs, reading. I pull an interesting looking book from the shelf and plop down into the chair nearest her.

She smiles at me and goes back to her book. I lean back and start reading. Every once in a while we both look up at the same time, our eyes meeting. Then back to reading.

When the dinner bell rings, we close our books and walk to the dining room together.

We both eat at the away table. We didn’t discuss it. There was a glance at the table. A questioning look. Maybe a nonverbal discussion. The rest of the kids eat at their regular table, or table five. We don’t have to not talk to anyone but each other.

When dinner was over, I walk with her back to her room, then on to my own. Still in silence.

In my room I sit down and cry my eyes out. I’m not sad. Not exactly. Just overwhelmed. Those four hours of not talking with Cindy, alone in the library, alone in a room full of people, were the most--- I couldn’t find the word, the most intimate time I had ever spent with anyone.

For an hour I let myself cry. I let myself stop thinking about my emotions and just feel them. I don’t worry about what they say about me. I don’t worry about the future. I don’t worry about my past. I just am.

Eventually, I start wondering if I could be the first master of meditation through crying. I could become a self help guru, after investing heavily in the waterproof mascara industry of course.

So much for that.

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That night I discover that as long I don’t prop the stupid door open, the door trick doesn’t drain all the life out of me. When I pay close attention, I can feel a sort of drain as I open the door, but it doesn’t seem to slow me down.

With some careful experimentation I find that having the door open, with nothing across the threshold, isn’t too bad. Having something in the doorway though amps up the drain big time. The bigger the something, the bigger the drain. So, no more chairs in the doorway. I probably don’t need to prop it open at all, but the idea of being stuck far away (or even in a dream) and then not being able to open a way back makes me uneasy. Very uneasy.

I want to try something a little further, but still workable if I get cut off. My school seems like a good choice. Familiar. Within running distance. I can live with breaking my rule about not mixing this part of my life with school.

But then I have a better idea.

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I step out into a different kitchen this time. But still a familiar one. That isn’t quite what I was aiming for, but it will have to do. I close the door quietly behind me. 

Since it’s Saturday, Kevin won’t be on duty, but I’m not sure who will be there in his place; whichever of the day people who drew the short straw for the weekend, I guess. That’s an advantage for me, since they’ll be less alert. None of them are permanently on the nightshift like Kevin.

I open the kitchen door a tiny bit. I can hear the television in the staff room, so the coast is probably clear for me to head upstairs.

I sneak through the dining room and living room. I take the long way around the living room, so that I’ll be in the shadows and away from the open door to the staff room. I can see Nathan crashed out on the couch in there. He looks asleep, but I’m not taking any chances.

Even though it’s an old house, it’s in pretty good shape. The downstairs floors hardly creaks at all, and even the stairs are easy to get up quietly. At least as long as I walk right next to the wall. That brings back memories. Something is off though. I shake my head. No time for that. I’m on a mission.

The floor upstairs is a little more of a concern. I'd always made a huge racket walking on it before. I worry a little, until I remember that I’m a lot lighter than I was last time I was up here. That turns out to take care of the problem. I’m pretty sure no one hears me as I approach my old door.

Silence. With my ear pressed to the door, I can’t hear anything from the other side. I turn the knob as carefully and quietly as I can, then duck in and pull it closed behind me.

I nearly jump out of my shoes. There’s someone in my bed! How dare---

Okay. Of course there would be. A place like this wouldn't leave a bed empty. I wonder who it is. My night vision is good, but not good enough to see through the blanket whoever it is has pulled over his head. 

No problem. I’ll just need to stay extra quiet. Chris, in the top bunk, could sleep through anything, but I don’t know anything about this new guy.

Thinking quiet thoughts, I tip-toe over to the dresser. I kneel in front of it and ever-so-slowly pull the bottom drawer open. Once it’s out halfway, I reach in and pull free the heavy envelope that I'd taped to the outside back of the drawer when I first arrived here a couple of years ago.

I set the package down and slide the drawer closed. It jams at the last inch, like it always does. Without thinking about it I shove it closed. CLACK!

Crap!

“Chris!” a voice says from the bottom bunk, “What the hell are you doing?”

It’s Jay. Of course. That was one of the first things we'd fought about. He had said this was supposed to be his room, and I'd stolen it. I’m sure he wasted no time taking my place. Jerk.

“Chris?”

Right, it’s dark, and he can probably only see a vague shape. I’m pretty close to Chris's size now. I focus on a memory.

“Sorry, dude, just going to pee,” I say in Chris's voice, “I tripped.”

“Well, be more careful.”

“Sorry.”

I open the door and slip back out into the hall. I’m breathing hard. This is too weird. I shouldn't have come back here. I need to get back to Promise. Back home. I’m halfway down the hallway when I remember what I came for. It is still lying on the floor in my old room, Jay's room.

What should I do? I can’t leave it there. That would be worse than not having come at all. But if I go back in, I might get caught.

Whatever. I had to get it.

When I open the door, I don’t even look in Jay's direction. I step across the room, grab the book, and practically dive back out.

As the door closes behind me, I hear someone moving in the room. I run for it.

I’m back in the kitchen in seconds. There, I throw open the pantry door that I had come through into the kitchen earlier. It leads into the pantry. Oh, right. I close it.

I hear footsteps from the living room. I hadn't been quite as sneaky on my return trip, and I apparently have Nathan's attention. He could be there in seconds.

I have to concentrate.

“Focus, Parker,” I mutter to myself.

Easier said than done. I’m back someplace that was the closest thing I'd had to a home for years, until last week. So many memories. Not all bad, but very few really good. This was the place where I couldn't be me. Where I could only do my best to pass as normal.

The footsteps are close. I have to focus. I close my eyes and feel for the door, feel for my room, the room that is really mine, at Promise. I open the door, and without looking, step through and close it behind me.

I open my eyes. I’m home.

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I sit on the floor, back against the wall, getting my breathing back under control. I’m back in my room. I’m safe. 

The last few minutes keep flashing through my mind. The familiar yet strange. I realize what had seemed off. Everything had been so much bigger.

Before tonight, the only room at Heart I'd been in since my change was the office. I'd noticed then how much bigger everything there seemed, but that had hardly been my biggest concern that night. 

I don’t have that here at Promise, because I’ve never been here as Parker 1.0. And I haven’t gone back to my old school, so I haven’t had it there. Huh.

And then there’s the whole Jay taking my bunk thing. I’m surprised he hasn't kicked Chris out of the top bunk. Jay is by no means small, but he isn’t big enough to worry about breaking the top bunk, like I used to be. Yet another mystery I hope I’ll never have the opportunity to solve.

It would be easier to calm down if I weren't so annoyed at myself for freaking out in the first place. What’s the big deal? What would have been so bad about being caught? It’s not like they could have held me.

Maybe I would have gotten in a little trouble if they reported me to Meg, but so what? I could deal with that. I'd fought monsters, damn it. Twice! Now that was something to freak out about.

I could have been killed in either of those fights. And there were more monsters to come, or so Valeria and Tim said. 

Then there was this power of mine. These things I could do. How did they work? Were they going to last? Could I suddenly find myself Parker 1.0 again someday, powerless? Hopeless?

Yeah, I have much better things to freak out about. So I do. Only for an hour or so though. The best thing about a short attention span is --- Ooh! shiny!

Well, it isn’t exactly shiny, but the envelope I'd gone to all that trouble for is sitting right there on the floor in front of me, still unopened.

I tear it open and reach in. Of course it’s still there. No one would have gone to the trouble to put the envelope back if they had found it.

I pull out a slightly singed copy of The Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum. The damage isn’t bad, and the book opens easily. I read the inscription on the inside cover.

 To my little one,

 May you someday find the only riches worth having.

 love always,

    Your Aunt Tabitha

The book has fairly large type, so I’m able to read it through the tears.