The Chosen (A Talents novel)

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 

First, I discovered the world is being guarded by a secret organization of people with supernatural powers. Next, I figured out there’s a certifiably evil traitor at the highest levels of the organization, who also happens to be a skilled in the ways of mind control.

Then, I had to clean Grandma’s attic.

This may seem like a bit of a letdown. I’m not saying it was easy to go from saving my boyfriend and best friends from a tidal wave, fighting a life-or-death battle with a girl with electric hands, and lifting people into the air with the strength in my mind, to sorting decrepit boxes of fifty-year-old memorabilia. Considering the hundred-degree heat of the unfinished crawl space above our house in Danville, reclining in an air-conditioned spa would definitely have been a preferred way to go. But if given the choice between hanging out in the attic, pouring over Grandma’s old photos and love letters, or hanging out at Delcroix with Chief Recruiter Judan, I would take the attic any day.

It was actually kind of soothing. I would scoot a disintegrating cardboard box under the single electric light bulb hanging from the ceiling and fish through the contents. If I saw books, clothes, or fabric for sewing projects Grandma would never complete, I was supposed to bring the box to the car for donation to Goodwill. If I found Hallmark cards, photographs, or newspapers, I was to assume they had deep sentimental value. Those boxes I pushed to the back of the crawl space for safekeeping.

After I had looked through them closely enough to determine if the contents had anything to do with my mother.

Sure she died when I was four, so I didn’t really know her and couldn’t possibly miss her. Nor was I one of those tragic figures who had to go live with her evil stepmother and spent her childhood tortured and unloved. I had been raised by an eccentric grandmother with a fondness for matching tracksuits and overly bright makeup. I actually had a decent childhood, if somewhat isolated due to my propensity to drop giant branches on people when my uncontrollable talent was triggered.

Still, there were times when all I wanted was to talk to my mom. Like when I got my first bra. I lay in bed that night and wondered if she would have bought me the flowered lacy one instead of the plain cotton one Grandma insisted was, “more than I needed anyway.” And yes, I am a “barely A” and probably could have continued to wear the undershirts they sell in three packs for seven year-olds. But I had a feeling my mother would understand that an eighth grader needs a real bra. Whether she’s earned it developmentally or not.

I know she couldn’t possibly have been as beautiful and fun as I imagined. If she had been around she probably would have said, “Because I told you so,” and made me clean the toilet. None of that mattered. When I thought about Cam and wondered why I felt this weird, nagging doubt when I was with him, or dreamed about Jack and wanted to cry because I’d never see him again, I imagined my mother holding me in her arms and protecting me from it all. And even if it was crazy, I missed her.

So pawing through dusty old boxes in Grandma’s attic was actually a little like an Easter egg hunt. I sorted through a lot of old Happy Birthday cards and occasionally found one that was addressed to Maggie. I pulled apart photos that had melted together from the heat of the attic and found a few of my mother—dancing in a ballet recital when she was six, graduating from college with a huge smile on her face and her funny black hat falling off her head.

Around lunchtime, I figured I’d do one more box and then descend to the relative cool of the eighty-five-degree house below. I found a smaller box that had been tucked behind the other boxes and shoved into the rafters and dragged it forward. I knew right away this was something different. First of all, it was taped shut, and not just with one piece. This box had been carefully sealed all over with opaque packing tape that had grown brittle and yellow with age.