Gifted

Chapter Eleven

Diana

After I see the kids off to school, I climb into my car and head toward the Pinkertons, an unfortunate family I am currently working with.

I am driving down Roe when suddenly a film, like a soap bubble, expands in the corner of my mind. It’s clear and colorful, yet translucent: I can see the road beyond it. I watch the vision with only mild interest, thinking it’s going to be about, maybe, the stock market or the weather or something trivial like that, like they usually are. I never see anything really exciting or important...

Next moment, my hands are clenched on the steering wheel hard enough to leave indents. I slowly relax my grip, and then slam to a halt and roar off in the other direction. The Pinkertons can wait: Family always comes first. Always.

. . .

The two girls are standing the intersection of Benner and Otmann, not far from the high school. A mob surrounds them, seeming to be a mixture of students, ordinary townspeople, and, strangely, the media. Cameras flash, a demented strobe effect.

Liza and Katie stand trembling in the center of the mob, Liza clutching Katie against her protectively. I can’t hear what Liza’s trying to say, so I edge closer, part of my brain thinking, oddly, of the car, which I left running with the keys in the ignition in my haste.

“We didn’t...we—I didn’t mean to...!” I hear Liza cry, and my heart tears at the fear in her shrill voice. Then I see the cause of the commotion, and my mouth drops open in absolute shock:

Standing with them is a woman, dressed in a plain green dress, her feet bare, her red hair floating to her shoulders in soft curls. But it’s her eyes that frighten me, it’s the eyes that give her away for what she is.

Her eyes are blank. Completely blank. There’s nothing behind them.

She’s nothing but an empty shell.

Fear, along with a dose of giddy excitement, grips me: Liza has tried to manifest a human being, and it looks like she nearly succeeded.

“Witch!” a shrill woman screams in the front row of gawkers.

“Who are you to dare create a man?” yells a smartly-dressed businessman a little further along.

“Actually,” Liza points out, her voice falsely cheery, “it’s a woman.” She grins at his scowl.

No one else calls her out after the man does, but most seem to be thinking along the same lines. Angry...and fearful...glares poised like daggers, aiming to kill.

“Mom?” Liza calls suddenly, noticing me, her eyes darting back and forth between me and the mob. She holds Katie even tighter to her.

My mouth twitches in a smile; she almost never calls me “Mom” anymore, not for years now... Always “Diana”, which is just fine by me, personally. But still. What a beautiful word.

The tension’s so thick now you could cut it with a knife. Still, no one moves.

“Katie, Liza, why aren’t you two in class?” I ask quietly, knowing perfectly well the answer. Anger burns through me, but I must keep myself in control, it wouldn’t be good for them to see me get angry. I’m supposed to be the responsible, controlled adult. Yet I want to hand that title off to someone else for the moment so I can rage at this horrible, uncaring mob of strangers who only see my daughter as a freak, and not as the beautiful talented person she is.

Liza manages a sardonic smile. “Well, as you can see, there’s an angry mob here...they saw me manifest her—or try to, anyway,” she amends, giving the soulless woman a once-over, disappointment in her eyes, “and these charming folks just happened to notice and had to come right over to congratulate me!”