Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time it happens, Rory is six. 

No one is around to see it. Dad is in the kitchen making dinner, and Mama is sitting at the counter keeping him company with Andrew in her lap. Rory is old enough now that she can sit on the couch in the family room and watch TV alone, without supervision —Andrew is not. Dad, Lucas, and Aunt Nancy say he’s being a runner, and that they can’t take their eyes off of him, even for a second. Rory has seen him go as fast as his little legs can carry him, giggling wildly while Dad huffs and puffs trying to chase him down. She thinks that Dad must prefer it, though, because if Andrew doesn’t run, then he just gets into stuff. 

He's knocked over four potted plants, drawn on three different walls, broken one Wii controller, and swallowed two small objects before Mama and Dad realize he needs to be watched . 

So, Andrew isn’t allowed in the living room without an adult, which means that Rory gets to be spared from the stupid Back at the Barnyard Crap that Andrew insists they watch whenever he’s around to have a say. Rory is a good big sister; she knows she is, but even she has her limits. Sometimes, she just wants to watch the Lilo & Stitch show in peace , and now is her opportunity to do just that. 

...Except she can’t, because the remote is nowhere to be found. Not under the couch, not on the coffee table. Dad says it’s on the windowsill and Mama says it’s on the mantle—but Rory finds it nowhere . She checks under Eggo’s belly for the fifth time before she throws herself back onto the couch with a defeated sigh. Eggo looks up at her with big, beady eyes. Rory runs a hand over her curly head. 

“You don’t know where it is either, do you?” She asks. Eggo pants in response, pushes her boney head more insistently against Rory’s hand, and it’s enough to make her laugh. She scratches under Eggo’s ears and holds her little paws until she jumps up and into Rory’s lap to roughhouse. She wonders if Eggo ever gets tired of rewatching Miami Vice with Mama and wishes she could put on a TV show of her own instead, if she feels the same way about Lilo & Stitch that Rory feels about Andrew’s Back at the Barnyard . 

Rory's able to distract herself for five whole minutes until Eggo decides that she’s tired and leaves her, covered in a million curly dog hairs, to go flop down on the other end of the couch and fall asleep, forcing Rory to take up glaring at the TV instead. She doesn’t recognize the show that’s playing right now, something about three, frankly scary looking cats, all exaggerated faces and bug-eyes. She doesn’t even understand what they’re saying, either, because she has no way to turn up the volume.  

Good grief, she thinks. 

“Good grief,” she says, out loud. Dad explained to her some months ago that Charlie Brown and Grandpa Ted both say good grief when they’re feeling deeply... inconvenienced, by the world. In-con-venience, is when something causes big trouble in your life. Rory can’t think of a better word to describe what she’s feeling right now. The family room feels stuffy—she’s not paying attention to anything that’s on the screen, but it feels like everything around it starts to get fuzzy in comparison, like she’s focused but she really isn’t. Three cats roll around in a monster truck. She thinks about the beach, and about the fuzzy blue Stitch doll sitting on her bed... She imagines that she really is watching Lilo & Stitch after all. 

She blinks, and it feels like something clicks into place. Whatever awful show was on isn’t anymore. Now, she’s watching What’s New, Scooby Doo? Brayden likes this show the best; when he and Bryce come over to play, he always wants to be Fred. It’s not nearly close to what she wants, but— 

“ I did it!” She shouts, and launches herself off the couch, skids to a stop in the kitchen, where Mama and Dad look startled . Andrew is at the dining table, not so much drawing as he is scribbling . 

“I changed the channel!” She shouts again, for double emphasis. She sways a little on her feet; standing up so fast made her dizzy, or maybe she’s a little hungrier than she thought. 

“You did ?” Mama and Dad say, at the same time, in the same tone. They do that a lot, and they always look at each other afterwards, nicely. Not like when Rory and Scarlett do jinx and Rory has to get her a Capri-Sun from the fridge. When Mama and Dad do it, it feels like a secret. 

“Good job, Baby,” Mama says. She really looks happy—but Rory looks at Dad and he looks... like it’s funny. He looks amused , and Rory has a feeling he doesn’t understand that she changed the channel . They couldn’t find the remote, they still can’t find the remote but she changed the channel anyway. Mama must not get it either. She doesn’t know how to explain it any easier. 

Before she can try, Andrew says, “Congratulations,” with his back still turned. He doesn’t know how to say his Rs correctly yet, so everything that comes out of his mouth sounds a little funny. It sounds like congwatulations, and it makes Mama and Dad laugh. It makes Rory laugh, too, although her mind is still racing. IchangeditIchangeditIchangedit.  

“I hope you paused the TV before you ran out here like a crazy person,” Dad says, still sounding smug . “It’s dinner time.” 

“Spaghetti,” Mama says, moving to sit down at the table next to Andrew. She rolls her eyes, pulls a dramatic face, but there’s a smile at the corner of her lips when she adds, “ Again .” 

“Betty Crocker over here,” Dad scoffs, not mad. They’re being playful, Rory notes. He messes up Mama’s hair and dangles her fork just out of reach, push and pull. “Sorry, we can’t all be Martha Stewart. Or Julia Child?” 

Mama shakes her head. “ Rachel Ray .” 

Rory laughs, she sees Mama and Dad look at each other, again, both smiling. And then Dad turns his back to them, and when he turns back around he has two sticks of uncooked pasta underneath his upper lip, hissing like a cat.  

Rory laughs so hard, she forgets all about Lilo , and Scooby Doo, and monster truck cats. It doesn’t cross her mind for the rest of the night. 

_____________________________________

Sometimes, Dad leaves her noise machine on too loud after he tucks her in for bed, and she has... weird dreams. 

They all start the same way: total darkness. Somehow, this dark is less scary than the dark that blankets her room at night, even with no Strawberry Shortcake nightlight. It feels safer, like she’s only in her own head, instead of some foreign location. She always knows exactly where to go in these dreams; she’s only had about four, all in the last couple months—but she had known the directions the first time, too, even through her confusion. Muscle memory for something she hadn’t experienced yet. 

Her feet will move before her brain even tells them to move, they always take her the same way. There’s water on the ground underneath her, too; not shallow like Andrew’s kiddie pool... more like she’s walking through one big puddle. The splashes echo, even though there’s no walls. 

It’s not entirely the same for every dream. Sometimes, Rory will walk for five minutes. Sometimes it feels like she walks for thirty, but the destination always changes.  

Most of the time, she comes across her family. Mama and Dad getting ready for bed, Hop and Grandma Joyce eating dinner, Uncle Jonathan and Aunt Nancy talking in their kitchen. She can hear everything that they say clearly—which is maybe the weirdest part of it all, because Rory can only ever remember her regular dreams on mute. Her regular dreams are also not nearly as boring as watching Hop scarf down Grandma Joyce’s mac n’ cheese and then fall onto the couch to shout out all the wrong answers for Jeopardy . 

No matter how long they last, they always end quick. Abrupt . They can’t see her back, or hear her, she doesn’t think. She tries talking to them sometimes, even though she knows it’s just a dream—things like, I’m right here or can you see me? Nobody ever answers, but sometimes their eyes will scan over her—just once, for a second, looking through her—before everything goes back to black. It takes her a while after that to realize when she’s gone back to looking at the back of her eyelids. 

Once, and only once, she tries to step inside with Nancy and Jon. She thinks, why not? She’s just dreaming, and she can do whatever she wants in her dreams. She’s driven cars, cast spells, and spoken to animals in her dreams. Visiting her aunt and uncle will be a piece of cake, maybe she’ll even get to see Scarlett, too.  

The closer she gets, the more real it starts to feel, like maybe if she bumps into Uncle Jonathan he’ll really be there, present and solid. They’re sitting on the couch, Aunt Nancy’s feet in his lap, there’s the perfect empty spot right next to them. 

Rory inches closer still. She reaches forward to climb up onto the couch and then suddenly, it vanishes from beneath her and she’s met with nothing but pitch black. Aunt Nancy and Uncle Jonathan’s voices go softer and softer and Rory goes falling farther and farther until she lands, into the water, wetting her pajamas and the ends of her hair. It knocks the wind out of her. The ground is solid and smooth, like hardwood, or marble, she feels her bones dig into each other when she rolls onto her back to cough. She looks up and she sees smoke, but it’s not regular—she sees the mousy brown of Aunt Nancy’s hair and the grey-blue color that their couch is. She learned more about evaporation in school two weeks ago. When the sun touches the water, it looks exactly like this. 

She wakes up with a start, back in her bedroom, with dry hair and dry pajamas. Her mouth tastes like metal. 

_____________________________________

Sophia and James Byers turn seven on January 11th, and their birthday party is the following Saturday. There are pink and blue balloons lined up the driveway, all the way to the front steps, and a banner that says HAPPY 7 TH BIRTHDAY SOPHIA & JAMES above the front door. 

Rory loves her little cousins—but, as the party kicks off, she starts to get... bored. She hasn’t been seven for almost three years now, so when Scarlett comments loudly that games like pin the tail on the pony-slash-dragon, and heads up, seven up feel babyish , Rory quietly agrees. 

Because Scarlett Byers is ten to Rory’s nine and a half, and extremely persuasive when she wants to be, Aunt Nancy and Uncle Jonathan let them play outside in the front yard, so long as they stay near the windows where other adults can see. 

The minute the front door closes behind them, Scarlett bets that Rory can’t beat her in a race to the end of the driveway and back. 

“And she’s six months older than I am,” Scarlett says later, rolling her eyes. Her cheeks are still a little red from their race, even though she won all three rounds. Now, they’re at the very edge of the yard, and Scarlett leans against the elm tree that’s next to the Byerses mailbox, while Rory sits at her feet. Scarlett’s house is built right in front of a two-way street, which means cars can come , and go , faster than usual. That’s why Uncle Jonathan told them not to go far, Rory feels guilty.  

She feels guilty for not listening, for being dangerous , and a little nervous about the cars zipping by—but she looks at Scarlett and Scarlett looks okay, unbothered. If she’s fine, then Rory can be fine, too. Rory doesn’t want Scarlett to look at her and think she’s a kid like this Madeline Thompson girl she’s been describing for the past ten minutes. She wants Scarlett to think she’s brave. 

“Miss Hannah put on A Bug’s Life in class on Friday for recess, and she screamed ! Really,” Scarlett covers her mouth when she laughs now because that’s how they do it sometimes on Sailor Moon. “ She sounded like how Soph does when she sees a real bug. Except Soph is only six,” She waves a hand. “She’s still a baby. Maddie is older than me!” 

A Bug’s Life is one of Andrew’s favorite movies, and secretly Rory’s number one. “I like A Bugs Life ,” Rory says. “She screamed?” 

“ Bloody murder ,” Scarlett nods, her eyes big and wide and blue. Rory hangs onto everything she says all of the time, because when Scarlett talks, everything she says sounds important. She has a whole extra year of knowledge compared to Rory, which means there’s probably a little life lesson in everything she tells her. “Trust me. It was the wrong scream.” 

“What is the right scream?” 

“Not that!” Scarlett says, she steps away from the tree to stand in front of Rory and look at her, very seriously, when she says, “Mom told me screaming like that when you’re big makes a frog grow in your throat.” 

Rory’s hand flies to her neck, horrified. She doesn’t scream very often at home, not like Soph and James and Scarlett and Andrew do, so maybe that’s why Mama has never told her about this before. Or maybe Aunt Nancy knows things that Mama doesn’t. “A frog ?!” She squeaks, scared she can feel one growing in as she speaks. Scarlett shrugs, kicking some dirt with the shiny tip of her shoe. 

“Then how are we supposed to scream?” 

“That’s not the point!” Scarlett exclaims. Rory thinks between screaming wrong and throat frogs, she’s forgotten what the point is supposed to be. “The point is to not get scared . Not by baby stuff like that, anyway.” 

For the first time, Rory looks at Scarlett and thinks that, maybe, she might be wrong. She thinks of last summer, at the lake; how all her cousins had run past her and splashed into the water excitedly, and how she had stayed behind, feet sinking into the dirt because the darkness of the water had scared her. Not knowing what was below made her nervous. She had been embarrassed, because even little Sophia, who cried if she so much as saw a beetle on the ground, was out in the middle of the lake with James and Andrew and Scarlett. She would scream and whine and threaten to get out of the water if James got her hair wet when he splashed her—but she was still having fun . Rory wanted to have that same fun, too. 

Mama had stepped beside her, held out her hand, even though she didn’t have a swimsuit on, and her hair was nice and curled around her shoulders. They walked into the water together, and when Rory’s feet didn’t reach the ground anymore, Mama wrapped her arms around her, tight, so they could float. 

I get scared too, sometimes , she remembers Mama whispering in her ear. Swimming was a lot easier after that. 

“Everyone gets scared,” Rory tells Scarlett, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, because it is. “Even grown-ups.” Even Mama . 

Scarlett tips her chin and gets that look in her eyes. Rory sees that look when they play Monopoly, and Twister. She even saw it earlier, before they raced down the driveway.  

She sniffs, and she says, “I wanna be fearless.” 

...And then she starts singing. It’s a song Rory recognizes, only because Scarlett had sat her down last time they saw each other and played it seven and a half times on her CD player, and hasn’t stopped talking about it since then. She’s so good , she had gushed, wait ‘til you hear Love Story.  

Rory watches the cars going back and forth in a blur, muddling together into greys and whites and sometimes blues and reds. She doesn’t notice that Scarlett isn’t singing anymore, not until she sees Scarlett step right onto the edge of the lawn and say, “Shit!” Sounding exactly like Aunt Nancy when she says it—except Rory is pretty sure Scarlett is saying it on purpose; when Aunt Nancy does it, it’s almost always on accident. 

Rory scrambles to her feet. “What is it?” 

She can’t see it at first, when Scarlett points. There’s too many cars, she can’t tell exactly where she’s supposed to be looking and Scarlett keeps going oh my gosh! Oh! Oh! Every time another car passes by, which is every half a second, at this point. She only sees it when Scarlett drops her arm, and when she registers what it is she’s looking at, she freezes . 

“A cat !” Scarlett cries. 

On the double yellow lines that divide the road, between the speeding cars, there’s a flash, a tuft of orange hair, a tail and two ears. The kitten can’t be older than a couple months, no bigger than the size of her hand. It’s trembling horribly, Rory can see its tiny pink mouth opening around a meow, thinks she hears it over the sound of tires against asphalt.  

“What do we do!?” Scarlett demands—but Rory doesn’t know, and if Scarlett doesn’t know either then they’re both screwed. She doesn’t know and she thinks something terrible must be about to happen, but she can’t stop looking. The kitten doesn’t move. Scarlett asks, “Is it hurt?” Rory’s ears are ringing. 

“I... Don’t know...” Rory whispers, sounding like her voice is miles away. Still looking. She feels Scarlett grip her shoulder, vision going dark around the edges. 

Rory has never fainted before—it happens to people a lot less commonly than shows on TV make it seem—but she thinks that must be the only explanation for the way she remembers what happens next. Because one second she’s standing, and Scarlett is shaking her, looking panickedly between her and the road, and then she blinks. 

And something in the air feels charged, different... something clicks. The road is clear for a millisecond longer than normal. Rory reaches out, or she thinks she does. The ringing in her ears gets louder and louder and then suddenly it stops— 

Orange fluff flies towards her. 

It knocks directly into her chest and sends her flying backwards, into the grass. For a second, it feels like she can’t breathe. All she sees is the sky, and then Scarlett leans over her, mouth open wide. 

She screams, exactly like Madeline Thompson during A Bugs Life . So loud and for so long that Rory hears when the front door flies open, and when Mama gasps, and when Dad and Aunt Nancy say shit! In unison and when they all come running outside towards the two of them. 

Warm fingers slide around the back of her head and lift it into an equally warm lap. Mama looks at her upside down, eyebrows wrinkled. She looks scared. I scared her.   

“What happened?!” Dad asks. 

“Are you okay, Victoria?” Uncle Jonathan questions. 

“I told you two to stay where we could see you .” Aunt Nancy.  

“Oh shit!” Echos Andrew, from earlier. Nobody has the mind in the moment to remind him not to say bad words. “Oh my shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit—” 

Rory groans, “The cat...” 

When she moves to sit up, everyone moves with her, causing commotion on the way. Mama keeps a hand firmly on her back while Dad says no, don’t move yet! And then, give her some room! She doesn’t hurt—not yet, at least. Not anywhere noticeable. She’s mostly confused. So, so confused. She knows, she knows what she did—except she doesn’t, because what she thinks she knows doesn’t make any sense.  

Upright, Rory sees everyone's concerned, scared faces. Dad, Uncle Jonathan, Sophia, Andrew, Mama... she looks to her left and James is on the ground with the orange cat in his lap. Relief floods through her, and then dizziness almost immediately after. Mama’s hand on her back keeps her upright; she’s at her side, questioning her, but Rory can hardly hear over the ringing in her ears, only just beginning to clear out. 

“Where does it hurt?” Is the first thing she hears Mama say, softly and only to her. She can barely shake her head to tell her no, it doesn’t hurt —her head feels heavy, not right, fuzzy on the inside. 

“—It happened so fast! I know you said to stay by the window, Mom! But we couldn’t just leave it there! And then... I don’t know! All of the sudden it flew over to us— yes, flew . It flew over and hit Rory in the face and she fell over.”  

Scarlett is facing Dad and Aunt Nancy, telling them everything while Uncle Jonathan and Mama are crouched beside Rory, trying to keep her awake. She hears Aunt Nancy say something about TBI and concussions .  

“It flew?” Dad is saying, he doesn’t look scared and confused anymore. Rory doesn’t know how he looks; unsure. Suspicious. 

“My chest,” Rory croaks, and it feels like it takes the world. The cat hadn’t knocked into her that hard, so why is she so tired? Why does it feel like she can’t quite catch her breath?  

“Don’t let her fall asleep,” says Aunt Nancy, immediately, when Rory’s eyes start to flutter. 

“Your chest hurts?” Mama asks, puts a warm hand over Rory’s heart and rubs in circles. It feels nice, but it doesn’t fix anything. Nothing hurts, except for Rory’s brain, she guesses, still trying to figure out what happened . 

“Th’cat... Not my face. My chest.” 

Everyone has turned to look at her now. Dad, Aunt Nancy and Scarlett. They look normal at first—well, the same as they did before—but as Rory tries to tell them that she’s really not in pain, just tired, just confused, their faces all change at once. 

It is not a good transformation. 

Dad’s mouth falls open, Aunt Nancy purses her lips. Scarlett looks... terrified. All of their eyes are wide. 

“Oh my god!” She shouts. “Rory, your nose!” 

One by one, everyone else starts to realize, Uncle Jonathan chokes on his breath, Sophia begins to cry, Mama turns Rory towards her and gasps , almost launching herself backwards into the grass. Mama has never tried to get away from her before. Like she was bad . 

Andrew screams. Rory feels something warm and wet tickle her upper lip. 

When she wipes at her face and pulls her hand back, it’s streaked with blood, and she kind of feels like screaming, too. 

Before her eyes start to cloud over with horrified tears, she sees Mama and Dad, and their Look. Something about it feels different. 

_____________________________________

The cat goes to the vet with Dad and Mama. She’s a girl, and the vet people say she has a sprained leg, and that they might need to keep her overnight to fix her up and monitor her for any other problems. 

The car ride home is quiet. Mama doesn’t offer to turn on the radio and sing along like she usually does, and Andrew looks at Rory with crazy eyes for the whole hour and thirty minutes. 

That night, Dad tucks her into bed, still looking weird, like he’s still thinking about something else. He thinks he must be doing a good job at hiding it but Rory can tell. She knows exactly what he’s thinking about, because she’s thinking about it too. 

“Good night, Rory,” he says from the doorway before he leaves. “I love you.” 

Of course, trying to fall asleep after that isn’t easy. Rory’s mind is whirring and it won’t stop. When she closes her eyes, she gets glimpses of memories; falling onto the grass. The cars flying across the road. Scarlett’s ear-piercing scream. 

Even Scarlett, who swore just minutes before that that she wanted to be fearless, feared her in that moment.  

For a minute, she thinks she drifts to sleep. Floaty, worriless sleep—and then her fingers twitch and she’s awake again. Except, her room is darker than she remembers, and there’s the steady sound of trickling water that doesn’t sound very much like the rainstorm setting on her noise machine, never mind the fact that she knows Dad had set it to forest sounds tonight. 

So, she’s dreaming. Rory never knows when these types of dreams will happen, if it’s because of what she had for dinner or because she still has water in her ears from the bathtub, or because she fell asleep on her left side instead of her right. Tonight isn’t any different. 

It’s been a while since the last one. About five months and three days, so she’s nervous, at first. This time, the voices arrive loudly, already close without her having to move an inch.  

She turns around, and it’s behind her. It’s Mama, sitting on the bed, and Dad standing up, walking— pacing— back and forth behind her. Mama has never looked so upset before. There’s not much on her face, which is absolutely the worst part, and exactly why Rory can tell that something is really wrong . Mama has always shown exactly what she’s thinking on her face; she can’t stop smiling when she’s happy, she scrunches up her nose when she sees something she doesn’t like. She’s always making faces to make Rory and Andrew laugh—when Dad gets in one of his moods, where he’s grumpy, and tired, and he can’t think of what to write on his computer. She’ll twist up her face and march around the living room, worrying over the coffee table or the curtains and making her voice sound exactly like Dad’s, quick and sharp and stuttering. She’ll do it until Rory and Andrew are almost in tears laughing, until Dad comes out of the den to see what all the commotion is, and she’ll do it until he finally starts to laugh, too. 

Right now, she looks like nothing. Far away, tired. 

Dad stops walking, stopping next to where Mama is sitting down. His voice echoes, “ Okay ,” he says finally. “ This is okay. It’s— ” 

“ It’s not okay ,” Mama interrupts, not above a whisper. She doesn’t look up from her hands in her lap, twisting the ring on her fourth finger around and around and around. “ Don’t say it’s okay, Mike. It’s not. It’s not— ” 

“ Not right now, ” Dad interrupts back, saying please to her with his eyes. “ Not for us, right now. But it can be. It will be, if we work together, to figure out what our plan is .” 

“ Plan, ” Mama repeats harshly. Her mouth twists, and then her whole face, and then Rory can tell a little bit, how she feels. Angry. “ No plan. Who is it helping? She’s... she has to live with it. Just like I did, and... and Eight. She’s going to grow up knowing she's different than all the other kids in ways that she can’t understand. In ways that are my fault and I—”  

“El ,” Dad tries again, sounding like he might... 

In nine years, Rory has seen her Mama cry a handful of times. She cried when they watched Bambi , and again at the end of Where the Wild Things Are, Spirited Away and Mamma Mia . None of those times are like this one. Now, she watches Mama’s lip shake and a horrifying tear fall down her cheek, and listens to her sob, and it’s all her fault. Rory knows well enough, to know she’s being talked about. She knows what she did, and at the same time she doesn’t know at all—but Mama must, and it must be bad, if she’s crying like this. Rory’s stomach squeezes around itself when she realizes, something must be wrong with her, and that same something is the reason she can see them right now, talking to each other. 

“ I just...” Mama whispers, looking away from Dad, down at her fingers in her lap. “ I cursed her.”  

“No,” immediately, Dad shakes his head. His eyes are misty—but Rory steps forward to look at him better and he looks angry too, in a different way. Angry at Mama—not angry at her, angry at what she’s saying . And tired. “ No. You can’t—”  

“ He cursed my mom, and then me, and now I gave it to my daughter—” Her head shakes rapidly, as Dad keeps trying to get through to her. The tears don’t stop rolling down her face, dripping off of her chin and onto her shirt. Rory begins to feel her eyes well up, too. “ This curse,” Mama spits it, more than she says it. “ It was supposed to be over with me. I was supposed to end this. I was supposed to make it safe—” 

“It is safe!” Dad says finally, sounding like it gets ripped right out of him. He drops to his knees so he can be on Mama’s same level and look at her in the eye. Rory only sees the back of his head this way—she’s scared to move, scared to speak, scared to breathe—but she sees the moment Mama finally looks at him. “As long as she’s here with us, it is safe .”   

He looks down, takes Mama’s hand. The one with the ring. He says, “ El, none of this is your fault.”  

Mama rolls her eyes. She doesn’t believe it.  

“ Nothing is ever my fault in your eyes, Mike.”  

“Because it isn’t,” he says back, sharp, Rory has never heard him be so stern before, not even when Andrew runs off in the grocery store to peer into the carts of random strangers. “ Not this. Not anything. We watched him die, El.”  

Now, Rory is confused, she sees Mama give him a look, her stare hard. “ You don’t know,” she whispers painfully. “ How many more?”  

“None ,” Dad begs, somehow already knowing exactly what she’s talking about. “ I know that, and so do you. It’s not- this isn’t like that . It doesn’t have to be like that, ever again. They’re gone,” he says. “They’re gone .”  

Mama is quiet for a long time, so long that Rory isn’t sure if she’s going to say anything at all. Dad sits still the entire time, which is something Rory doesn’t see him do a lot; she’s more used to the Dad she found when this dream, or whatever, started. The Dad who can walk back and forth in the family room for hours if Mama doesn’t call him in to help her with dinner, whose leg bounces wildly while he taps away on the computer or watches TV on the couch.  

Now, he’s like a statue; if Rory didn’t hear the sound of his breathing echo in the dark, she would’ve thought that he wasn’t breathing at all. He stays there on his knees and lets Mama squeeze his hand until his knuckles are white. 

After the third minute, Mama finally says, defeated, “ I don’t know what to do .” 

“ We’ll figure it out ,” Dad tells her, no ifs, ands, or buts. He doesn’t let Mama say what if we don’t? Even though it looks like she wants to, just puts his other hand over hers and says, “ We will. I promise . ”  

Mama sniffs once, and then she nods. Dad nods back, and she nods again. “ Okay .” 

“ You know, usually I’m the one with the fatalistic view of the world...”  

For the first time since this vision started, the first time since eleven o’ clock this morning, Mama smiles for real. She even laughs , even though her cheeks are sticky and she’s still crying a little bit. She pushes Dad’s shoulder gently, then his forehead. 

“ Jerk,” she huffs. “ I don’t know what came over me.”  

Dad frowns suddenly, and he says, very urgently, “You know I don’t think you’re being over dramatic, or anything—”  

“I know.”  

“ I just- I mean it. You know? I would do anything—” 

“ I know, Mike—”  

“—to keep us safe. You don’t have to worry anymore. Anything at all, El.”  

“Got it,” Mama smiles, and Rory doesn’t have to peek around to know that Dad is smiling back, that they’re sharing their Look. The happy one. Mama hugs him, which is easier now that they’re the same height, and he hugs her back immediately, arms circling her middle and squeezing. Rory steps a little closer, wishing she could fit herself between them and let them know she’s been listening, tell them that she doesn’t know what to do either. 

Rory steps an inch too close, and she feels her toes hit the edge of the rug that she knows is on the floor of their room, almost as if it’s really there . 

Mama’s closed eyes snap open and upwards , and she looks directly at her . Not through her, like Uncle Jonathan and sometimes Grandma Joyce. Mama looks at her like she’s been standing there the whole time, like she could reach out and touch Rory if she wanted. Like she’s about to say Rory, what are you doing here? Right now.  

Rory stumbles back, caught. Mama starts to fade, her eyes ( still looking) disappearing last, and then Dad, and then the rest of their bedroom, and Rory slips on the frictionless ground beneath her. She falls, and she falls, and she falls until it starts to feel like she’s going back up in the opposite direction, and then back down again. She screams, and she feels like she doesn’t stop because it just echoes—  

She nearly rolls out of bed with how hard she thrashes awake. She can still hear herself screaming in her own head—but in real life, her mouth is closed, and she’s breathing hard through her nose. This time, when she feels the familiar tickle in her left nostril, she doesn’t have to wipe a finger underneath to guess what it is. 

She gets up, cleans her face with a tissue from her bedside table, and she tries to go back to sleep. 

_____________________________________

Two weeks later, Mama and Dad still have not mentioned it, and Rory hasn’t asked.  

Everything goes back to normal, mostly. Mama goes back to smiling, and singing, and laughing, and they still watch TV all together on Friday nights. So, it’s all okay—except, sometimes Rory will look over and find Mama already staring at her, something different in her eyes. She doesn’t know if it’s bad or not. She never looks away when Rory catches her, just blinks. She blinks, and then she’ll smile, and then she looks away, but the look on her face before that is what Rory always remembers. 

They haven’t talked about it— but that doesn’t stop Rory from thinking about it. She thinks about it every night, about what could possibly be wrong with her and why Mama had been so terrified to find out. She thinks about that the most; the look on Mama’s face in her mind, her tears, the way she had told Dad that it wasn’t okay , and really meant it. 

Rory thinks of that, and about how Mama looks at her differently now. She knows the two must be related, and it scares her, the idea that Mama might look at her and not see Rory anymore. That it might be forever.  

To try and fix it, Rory spends a lot of time alone, in her room. Dad had once explained to her, when Scarlett went away to dance camp one summer and Rory cried big, ugly tears at the idea of not seeing her cousin, that distance makes the heart grow fonder. Scarlett would be gone, but once she got back, Rory would love her even more than before she left—which hadn’t seemed possible at the time, but Scarlett returned, and Rory found herself more excited to play with her that day than she’d ever been before. 

She figures that is what Mama needs. Distance, so she can be fond again. So Rory goes upstairs after dinner, to play with toys, or read books, or listen to her radio. She falls asleep early, out of boredom, before Dad can come in to read her a story, and she doesn’t have any more Dreams. 

It goes on for two weeks. On Friday, Rory goes up to her room early, and brings Hermione the Cat with her. She doesn’t like to jump off of things that she thinks are too high since she’s still a little weak, so Rory can put her up on the bed and know that she won’t jump down and run away any time soon. Mama and Dad saw it as a no-brainer, when the vet called a few days after the incident and asked if they wanted to take her, so they went and got her that day, surprising Rory when she got home from school. The cat’s fur had been matted, almost grey, the day Rory saved her—but the people at the animal hospital cleaned her up nicely, so she was bright and orange and fluffy. She reminded Rory of Crookshanks, in Harry Potter , which Rory didn’t particularly like as a name. Hermione, Crookshanks owner, had a much prettier name. It was a no-brainer for Rory, too. 

She’s petting over Hermione’s orange fur now, looking her in her big, green eyes. They’re connected, she thinks, after what happened at the twins’ birthday party. Hermione understands her. Just like the real Hermione and Crookshanks, Sabrina and Salem, or Sailor Moon and Luna. 

Rory and Hermione have fallen into an intense staring contest, when Hermione’s ears twitch outwards, and she turns her head, hearing Mama come to stand in the doorway before she actually sees her. Mama still taps her knuckles against the frame, even though the door is halfway open and she knows Rory has probably noticed her already. 

“You blinked,” Rory says to the cat. 

Hermione meows, and she gets up and jumps off the bed, much to Rory’s surprise. She wobbles, and walks over to curl herself around Mama’s ankles, purring happily. 

“Hi,” Mama says to Rory. “It’s Friday. I want to show you something.” 

Mama and Dad have never tried to make her watch TV on Fridays, so they never come into her room and remind her about it. This is the first time either of them has ever said they wanted to show her something. 

She stands up. “Are Dad and Andrew downstairs?”  

Mama shakes her head, turning around to make her way down the hall. Rory follows, even though she’s confused, because she’s also curious. Maybe staying away has been working, maybe Mama is fonder already.  

“I was thinking,” she says. “Just us. No boys.” She looks over her shoulder at Rory and grins, and Rory smiles back, unable to help herself.  

When they get downstairs, the fireplace is crackling, and Eggo is already fast asleep on the couch. Hermione crawls up, curls around Eggo, and drops her face in between her paws, so she can go to sleep too. 

Mama has already set the blankets up just so, and there’s a bowl of popcorn on the coffee table that she puts between them when they sit down. On the TV, is a blue menu screen with several circles, a mini TV, and a gecko, all surrounding the young girl in the middle. 

Underneath her, in big, red letters reads: MATILDA.  

“ Me and Aunt Max used to have girl's nights,” Mama tells her, still grinning. “At my old home, the cabin. We would lock the door on your dad and Uncle Lucas and listen to music, read magazines, watch movies ... just us. We had so much fun.” 

Rory sees the way her face lights up when she talks about it, the way she looks off, like she’s there right now. Her and Scarlett watch movies together sometimes, and listen to music the same way. Mama was a girl once, too. 

When she mentions this, Mama nods. “It’s what you do with best friends,” she says, very seriously. She leans in close to Rory, and kisses the top of her head, and then she grabs the remote to press play on the movie. 

Matilda in the movie, lives a pretty sad life, in Rory’s opinion. Her parents won’t let her go to school, are absent and dismissive. They don’t know how old she is, let her big brother call her mean names... Even though it’s not real, Rory feels sad for her. She thinks about what her life would be like if Dad and Mama weren’t so kind, sometimes, if she was born in the Wormwood family instead. It’s a miserable image, and Rory is so lucky. 

She wonders if that’s why Mama wanted to show her this, so that Rory remembers never to take it for granted—even though she doesn’t, and she thinks Mama knows that. 

“Are we best friends?” She asks, the question still lingering on her mind. Mama must have brought that up for a reason, just like she put Matilda on for a reason. 

Mama turns to look at her, and she looks for a long moment, small smile stuck on her face. 

She leans in close once more, like it’s a conspiracy, and she whispers, “You’re my best best friend.” 

Matilda is sad, but Rory finds herself laughing at some moments in the first thirty minutes, Mama giggling along with her when Matilda replaces her dad’s hair product with Peroxide, and he comes into the kitchen blonde. Mama tells her about how Hopper was so glad the movie didn’t come out until she was in her twenties, because she and Dad definitely would’ve tried to do the same thing to him to see his face get all red. 

The more time passes, the more Rory starts to think that maybe Mama didn’t have a motive after all; maybe she just wanted her and Rory to have a nice night. No boys, just them.  

...And then at minute twenty-six, Matilda squints, her father giving her no other choice but to focus on the TV. She’s hurt, and she’s angry, she doesn’t want to watch this stupid game show—the camera cuts back and forth to her eyes, the TV. Rory is on the edge of her seat, wondering what’s going to happen next, even though something about it starts to feel a little familiar. They cut back to the TV one last time, music growing louder — 

It explodes. Under Matilda’s stare. 

Rory feels an icy, unpleasant sense of déjà vu, and then she starts to figure out exactly why Mama put this on. 

She can feel Mama’s eyes burning on her. When she turns her head, Mama’s looking at the movie. Stiff as a board. 

Moving forward, the movie doesn’t give her much to laugh about, not that she really feels like laughing anymore, anyway. Miss Trunchbull is an awful woman. She’s loud, she’s mean, she torments the children of Crunchem Hall just like Matilda’s family torments her.  

She’s horrified when Miss Trunchbull locks Matilda in The Chokey. When she looks over at Mama, she’s surprised to see the look on her face. It's kind of scary, and kind of sad, the thought of six year old Matilda locked in that tiny space, all alone and unnoticeable to anyone besides the evil person that put her there—but it wasn’t real, and Rory reminds herself of that, several times, when she feels herself start to get claustrophobic. 

“It’s not real. Just acting,” she says out loud, because there’s the even scarier threat of tears in Mama’s eyes, reflecting off her face in the light of the TV, and Rory doesn’t think she can handle to see it. Not again, and not because of herself—because she knows that she’s the reason Mama wanted to watch this in the first place, because of what she can do. Because of what she did . 

Mama looks back at her, lips pressed together so tightly Rory wants to tell her to stop , don’t hurt herself. For another long time, Mama just looks at her, eyes shining. She looks at Rory like she’s trying to figure her out, like she’s putting the puzzle pieces together in her head. She smiles—but it’s not a normal one, not really happy. Her smile says I’m sorry . It says you have no idea.   

She reaches for Rory and finds her wrist. She squeezes once, twice. She doesn’t let go. 

Miss Honey saves Matilda from The Chokey. She’s Matilda’s teacher; kind, and caring, and she sees in Matilda what her parents, and Miss Trunchbull, do not. She believes in her, and believes in all her students. She loves them. She reminds Rory of Mama, a bit. Light brown hair, brown eyes, a gentle, kind smile. When she saves Matilda, they hug, and Rory feels Mama lean in a little closer to her, hand still on her wrist. 

That must make Rory Matilda. Matilda, who explodes the TV just by looking at it. Matilda, who moves half full water glasses across the table just by looking at them. Matilda, who changes the TV channel when she wants to watch Lilo & Stitch just by thinking about it and Matilda , who saves cats by making them fly across a busy road to safety. Just by looking. 

Matilda, who can pour herself a bowl of cereal without using her hands. 

Matilda, who makes parked cars roll down the street. Who can pickpocket a detective from right where she stands. 

“She’s pretty,” Rory says about Miss Honey as Matilda is returning her doll, a gift from her mama, who died when she was small. 

“Really pretty,” Mama agrees quietly. Her eyes sparkle still in the dim light, but she’s happier. Rory thinks. 

Miss Trunchbull gets a taste of her own medicine; the students come together, with the help of Matilda, and treat her exactly how she’s been treating them for the past year. They chase her out of the school, never to be seen again. It’s the first time Rory smiles since the TV blew up. In the corner of her eye, she sees Mama laughing too. 

Miss Honey takes Matilda away from her horrible family, and becomes her new mom, which makes Rory happy in a way she doesn’t have the words to explain, a way she doesn’t quite understand. Crunchem Hall becomes good again, thanks to Miss Honey’s direction, and Matilda doesn’t move any more water glasses, or make any more of her friends fly. It ends with a bedtime story. Miss Honey and Matilda are now a proper family, something they’ve always longed for. Warmth blooms in Rory’s chest. 

The credits roll. Rory looks over, and Mama is crying. 

“Mama? What’s wrong?” She starts to ask, urgently, because it’s happening now and she can’t stop it—the terrible sound of Mama sniffling and the terrible image of tear streaks on her face and neck. 

Mama reaches for the remote and, still crying, turns the TV off. It takes her a little while to calm herself down, shaking her head at Rory’s worried murmurs. She breathes in, out, just the way she taught Rory, when she would get so nervous that it was hard to breathe.  

In, out, until she can properly say, “You know why I wanted to watch this movie, don’t you, Rory?” 

Rory feels her cheeks prickle. She can’t look. She can’t look at Mama or anywhere other than her hands. She’s so scared of what she might see. The silence of the living room starts to feel too loud. “No,” she lies, because she needs Mama to explain it to her, because she’s already crying and Rory needs to know that she’s not afraid to say it. That she won’t be afraid of her when it’s true . 

 Mama doesn’t get mad at her for lying, or even a little playfully disappointed like she usually does. She also doesn’t back down, when it seems like Rory might not want to talk about it.  

“Matilda can do things,” she explains patiently. “Using her mind.” 

“Okay,” Rory says quietly, still not looking. She furrows her eyebrows down at her hands, and then gets scared that if she stares for too long something might happen to them, so she squeezes her eyes shut instead. Tries to stay calm.  

"I think,” Mama says, voice not as steady as Rory thinks she wants it to be. “I think that you can do that, too.” 

Rory’s heart stutters in her chest. Like it pains her to hear it, because it does. She’s... she has abilities. She can do things that she only ever thought were possible on TV, under hundreds and thousands of special effects. It’s not in her head anymore, it’s not something that can be fixed. It’s just who she is, and what is she supposed to do with that? How is she ever supposed to be normal if she can ruin everything with just the wrong look? How will the rest of her family feel? They should... They’ll be scared of her. Scared of what she can do, what she could do to them. They’ll never look at her the same way again; not even Mama could. 

She feels Mama’s warm, soft hand close around her wrist. At least that. Even if Mama’s idea of her has changed forever, at least she’s not afraid to touch.  

“Rory,” Mama whispers. “Can you look at me, Baby?” 

Rory doesn’t know if she can. She doesn’t know if she wants to. 

She does. Mama is crying still, but she looks determined. She doesn’t look defeated, like she did on that night two weeks ago. She looks at Rory like she needs her to know this, like she needs to make her understand something. 

“It’s okay ,” she says, and her voice doesn’t falter once. Rory’s lip trembles. “ It’s okay.”  

And then it’s a mess of limbs; she pulls Rory into her, knocking over the popcorn bowl and not caring one bit. She circles strong arms around Rory, and Rory cries . All the confusion, all the fear, all the regret comes draining out of her. She feels it throw itself into the fire and burn.  

When Rory was young, a new baby in a new world, Mama and Dad say that she didn’t cry. When she was born in the hospital, she came out of Mama looking silently at the fluorescent lights and the doctors around her with wonder, with as much excitement as her 4-minute old self could fully understand. She slept through the night, and didn’t cry when she woke up. She didn’t wail when she got hurt, or when she didn’t get something she wanted. No tantrums. Her emotions stayed inside, too big for such a tiny body, and then she grew into them. She would cry during movies, and when her friend's pets passed away, and it was a temporary relief. She would let out fast, sharp breaths when she fell off of her bike and scraped her knee, or when she cut her finger on a pair of craft scissors, but she didn’t cry. 

Now, she cries for all the times she didn’t before, and Mama holds her through it—a hand between her shoulder blades, and one around the back of her head. She goes It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay I’m so sorry... I’m sorry.  

Rory cries for what feels like forever, until her throat is scratchy and her eyes won’t water anymore, and then Mama is just holding her, rocking them back and forth on the couch. As long as she wants, Rory thinks. She could stay like this for as long as she wants, and Mama would be okay. 

But Rory pulls back, and wipes at her eyes, and Mama pushes the damp, sweaty hair away from her face and tucks it around her ear. There are two dark blue circles where Rory’s tears soaked into her shirt. She doesn’t pay them any mind. 

Rory says, openly, “I don’t know what to do , Mom.” 

Mama blinks, four times in quick succession. There are tears in her eyes too, her nose glowing red. “Neither did I,” she says, and it hangs heavily in the air. Rory doesn’t think it means what she thinks it means. “It’s all going to be okay. I can help you, okay? I can help you.” 

Rory shakes her head, all she’s been is confused—and now, after a moment of realizing, she’s back to square one again. “How...” 

“I can help you,” Mama continues, looking at Rory painfully, like she doesn’t want to say this—but she has to. “Rory, because I’m the same .” 

It feels like time stops. Like Rory’s entire body freezes, like her world has been flipped on its head. Mama is nodding like she knows exactly what’s racing through Rory’s mind right now. The whole time. The whole time. The whole time the whole time the whole time  

“You’re Matilda?” Rory whispers, as in awe as the day she was born. Looking up at Mama with wide eyes. The whole time. 

Mama laughs, from deep in her belly, even though Rory had been serious . “Yes,” she says back. Her smile falters, for just a minute, when she says, “You... you got it from me.” 

Rory can’t believe this. “Prove it,” she blurts, saying the first thing that comes to her head, because if she thinks too hard about how to respond, she thinks she might start crying again. Suddenly, it starts to make sense; why Mama’s solution had been to put on a fun movie, instead of calling somebody to take her to the nearest doctor, why it seemed so easy for her to acknowledge the idea that Rory might have superpowers . 

Wow. She has superpowers . Real, actual ones. 

Mama doesn’t get upset that she asked. In fact, she smiles again, and starts to look around the room, searching. “Here,” she says, and Rory watches very closely as Mama tips her head down, looks right across the room, a picture of concentration. 

The TV blares to life, so bright after minutes in darkness that Rory almost thinks Mama tried to explode it like Matilda did. She didn’t; it’s just on, some adult show Rory doesn’t recognize, a woman in a man’s arms, the back of her hand across her forehead. 

Mama does something with her head, and it changes. And then it changes again, and again and again and again until Rory can’t even count anymore and she looks over at Mama and Mama is looking firmly on the TV. Dark red drips out of her nose. 

As quickly as it started, it stops. She hears Mama’s sharp exhale as they’re bathed in dim light again. She looks at Rory, who is speechless, and she smiles, while Rory is trying to grasp what exactly she had just seen. This whole time . 

Mama had done it with such effortlessness, such control, and had stopped it in the blink of an eye. Her nose still bled—left nostril, just like Rory—but maybe that was just part of it. Maybe it didn’t mean something awful. 

“Does Dad know?” She asks. Dad has known Mama for more years than Rory’s even been alive. They’ve known each other since they were small, just like her. They’ve been apart, and then together again; Rory thinks that if she never noticed Mama’s abilities, there’s no way Dad could’ve, not unless she showed him on purpose—but Dad has always looked at Mama a little more closely than he looks at anyone else. Always noticing things. 

“Dad knows,” Mama answers, still smiling. “He’s known the whole time. Since we met.” Rory notices sometimes, when Mama and Dad talk about each other when the other isn’t around, about what they were like as kids, and stories from the past, they get this shimmer in their eye. The look on their faces is not unlike the look they direct at each other so often. Mama looks like this now, absolutely, incredibly fond.  

“Your dad... he saved my life. He kept me safe. We were only twelve, but... but he was the first. He was the first person to treat me human ,” she says. “He was the first person to... to love me. For me. He loved me even when I lost my powers—because I did,” she adds, when Rory’s face goes confused for a minute. “And he loved me when I left to go and get them back—but not any more or any less. No matter what I did, or what I looked like, he loved me...” 

 
 
 Then, Mama’s face goes numbingly serious. She reaches out and she takes Rory’s hands in her own. They’re almost the same size, now.  

“And I love you , Rory. I love you so much . No matter what. Me and Dad love you so much.” 

Rory wants, badly, to believe her. So she does, and it’s easier than she thought it would be. 

_____________________________________

Rory starts taking lessons with Mama. Every few days, after school, they’ll sit together at the kitchen table, and Mama will coach her. She teaches her how to do little things, like moving soda cans and knocking over Andrew’s action figures with her hands pinned underneath her lap. 

It’s never for more than an hour a day. Sometimes, it takes Rory longer to remember how to turn it on, her powers—but it doesn’t matter. Rory gets home at 2:30 and Mama says she’s done at 3:30, every time without fail. 

In three weeks' time, Rory knows how to crush an empty Coca-Cola can, she knows how to change the channel on purpose , and she knows how to close doors behind her without a second glance backward. Her nose doesn’t bleed every time, now, only when she has to focus harder. The whole thing is mostly about focusing; Mama explains that it’s not just about imagining what you want to do and doing it. She describes it as two sparks, constantly in her line of sight. When she focuses on something, they get closer, and like opposite magnets, they push against the energy between them. That energy is what makes the power.  

It’s cool. Rory... she feels so cool. Mama is an amazing teacher, even better than Miss Honey—but as the days drag on, and Mama has Rory still rolling empty cans across the table, Rory wishes she was doing more . She wants to make the TV go crazy like Mama did that one night. On a day after that, she saw Mama retrieve the TV remote by making it float towards her, much more calmly than Hermione had at The Party. Rory wants to do that . Rory wants to be just like her. 

She’s getting a little of what she wants, today. They get a later start, because Mama takes Andrew in for a check-up at 1:45. They sit at the table by 4:15 and Andrew watches from his chair, while Dad gets started on making dinner. Today, Mama tells her, she’s going to learn how to make things float. 

“We’re going to start with a fork,” Mama says, holding it up, showcasing it like the pretty girl does on Wheel of Fortune . She puts the fork down in front of Rory, and after some minor fussing, one in front of Andrew, too. 

Rory places both hands on the table, and she sees Andrew belatedly doing the same in the corner of her eye. She knows this part well; it’s how every lesson starts, Mama tells her to look, tells her to focus.  

This time, when Rory focuses and the fork starts to rock back and forth on the table, Mama says, “Now, I want you to try lifting your head. Slow. Keep your eyes on the fork... Like that! Yes!” 

Rory begins to lift her head, Mama’s words making her confident. The fork gets maybe half an inch off of the table, and Rory gets too excited. Her head twitches upwards just a little bit faster than before, and she loses the connection like that , fork falling to the table with a clank. 

“That was good!” Mama says at the look on Rory’s face; frustration and disappointment always clouds her features when she can’t get it right on the very first try. “You did good! You just need to stay calm—” 

“It didn’t work!” Andrew interrupts loudly. His fork is still on the table in the same position as before, and he sits up from where he was leaned over to glare at it, pushing it away. “This isn’t fair,” he huffs. He’s learned how to say his Rs now—but in its place is a heavy lisp that sounds even funnier. Thith ithn’t fair. “ Why don’t I have superpowers?” 

Mama coos, “Aw, poor baby.” She reaches across the table and squishes Andrew's cheeks, tickles his neck so he shies away with a weird gurgling sound in the back of his throat. “You’re just a late bloomer.” 

“I’m not a baby!” Andrew argues, but Rory looks at his baby face, his ruddy cheeks and his grubby little fingers and can’t imagine him as anything other than her baby brother , so it makes her laugh, and drop the fork she’s trying once again to lift off of the table. “Rory, stop laughing! I’m seven next month! I’m a man!” 

“Hey! If you’re a man, why aren’t you in here helping me make dinner?” Dad suddenly calls from the kitchen. Rory can see what he’s wearing across the kitchen counter, his normal clothes with an apron over the top that says: My favorite child gave me this apron , in white lettering, a gift from both Rory and Andrew, with help from Mama, after Dad failed to answer which of the two of them was his favorite. He always looks funny when he puts it on, waving around spatulas and wooden spoons and running the kitchen like he’s really a cook, and not a professor at college. 

“You’re the man, Dad. Dinner man,” Andrew says, grinning, showcasing all his missing front teeth. 

“Do you really want Andrew’s help, anyway, Dad?” Rory says teasingly, because last time Andrew tried to assist with cooking, they ended up with waffle batter on the ceiling, and it took weeks to clean up.  

“Touché,” Dad says, pointing his spoon at Rory and ignoring Andrew’s indignant hey!  

In defeat, or maybe out of spite after Rory called him a bad cook, Andrew wanders over to go bother Dad in the kitchen instead, and leaves her and Mama to continue their lessons. 

“Let’s try again,” Mama says. So Rory does exactly that, she looks down, purses her lips. She tries again. 

...and again. 

and again.  

and again. 

By the time she gets the fork high enough to float just under her chin, she’s gone through five napkins, now soaked with blood, her eyes are glazed over, and she feels almost like she’s on autopilot. 

“Very good,” Mama quietly praises, watching the fork just as much as Rory is. If Rory wasn’t feeling such a physical strain in that moment, she would’ve thought that maybe Mama was making it float for her, she looks just as focused—but Rory knows her ears aren’t ringing for nothing, knows her hands aren’t shaking for nothing. “You got it. See if you can make it higher.” 

All she wants is to see the look on Mama’s face again, like when she’d successfully crushed the soda can for the first time. Rory braces herself; she starts to lift her head. 

There’s a resounding CLANG coming from the kitchen, and it meshes perfectly with Dad’s frustrated Andrew! And the sound of the fork. Falling back down against the table. Right back where it started. Rory thinks she really could cry. She doesn’t want to go over it all again, but she really does. She wants to do it all night, until it’s as easy as breathing. Until it’s as easy as it is for Mama. 

Dad comes around the counter with Andrew, covered in flour, in tow. He shoves Andrew gently back into the dining area without another word, turns on his heel and walks back into the kitchen. 

“You messed me up , Andrew!” Rory shouts, but the volume of it does something funny to her head. Not funny, bad. Painful , like a sharp rock landing on the very top of her head and sending rings of pain downwards, unlike any hurt she’s ever felt before, and she doesn’t even hear Andrew’s response. She flinches, and Mama notices immediately.  

“Okay,” she says, voice short, much more serious than she’d been just a minute ago. “I think we’re done for today.” 

Rory looks at the clock. 4:45. “What?” She asks, watching as Mama gets up and takes the fork back into the kitchen. “Why?!” 

“We can try again tomorrow,” she says, not answering the question, not looking Rory in the eye. “If you’re hurting, we stop.” 

“I’m not!” Rory argues, standing up, and she sways on her feet which doesn’t help her case in the slightest. The sharp ache behind her eyes doesn’t help her, either. Neither do the tiny spots of light in her vision. “I’m fine! We’re supposed to stop at an hour! I want to go again.”  

Mama can tell. Of course she can tell. “Not tonight, Rory.” 

“You promised!” How is she supposed to ever be even as half as good as Mama if Mama doesn’t let her learn? She almost had it. If Mama just let her try again, she would’ve gotten it. She knows she would’ve. Rory doesn’t want to wait for tomorrow, she wants to show her now . 

“I promised to teach you, and I am,” Mama replies, so frustratingly calm, even as Rory gets more upset. “I didn’t promise an hour always. You’re in pain, so we’re finished.” 

Rory’s head throbs again. Her eyes flutter. “No, I’m not!” 

Dad watches the two of them, looking stuck. Nervous. He takes one look at Rory, and then another more meaningful look at Mama. He says, “Rory, I think you should listen to Mom.” Which Rory saw coming from a mile away. It’s not fair, at all. Because he always takes her side. He doesn’t understand why Rory needs to keep going. She’s fine. She just needs some water, and maybe to lay her head down for a bit—all she wants is one more chance. One more chance to prove it . 

“One more time.” 

“Rory, please .” Mama starts to sound unsteady, too; she starts begging the same way Rory is doing back. She presses the heels of her hands to her eyes and she breathes. In and out, like this is hurting her also.  

“Mom. Just one more—” 

“I said no !” Rory’s plea dies in her throat. 

Mama does not raise her voice. Ever. She knows how to be stern, and she has this look that lets Rory and Andrew know when to stop doing something, when not to push—but she doesn’t yell. She doesn’t even yell now, but her voice is louder and more stubborn than Rory has ever heard it before, and it startles her. She thinks Mama startles herself, too. The look on her face, it’s like she wishes immediately she could take it back, that she could rewind and start over and say something differently. 

But she doesn’t take it back. Instead, she lifts her chin and she says, “I want you to go to your room, and I want you to lie down for a couple minutes. Please.” 

This time, Rory doesn’t fight her on it. Suddenly, she doesn’t have the energy to. She turns around and she stomps up the stairs. She ignores the sound of Andrew asking is Rory in trouble? She especially ignores Mama’s responding no, Andrew. She’s not. When she gets up to her room, she musters up enough strength walking in to swing her hand backwards. 

The door doesn’t close.  

Rory turns around slowly, and stares at the dark hallway. More importantly, at her open door. It didn’t work. If it didn’t work, why was her head spinning? Why were her hands clammier than usual and why did her ears feel like they were stuffed full of cotton? She stumbles over to the edge of her bed and sits down heavily, feeling like a zombie. She wants to cry, but she can’t even muster the tears, and it... it scares her. She feels out of control of her own body, and she can’t think of anything she hates more than this. Than feeling helpless.  

Mama knew she was weak. Rory wanted to be so, so angry—that it felt like Mama was expecting her to fail before she even did. 

But immediately, she knows that’s unfair. Or at least not the whole truth. Mama would not have helped her practice every day after school if she thought Rory was going to fail, wouldn’t smile with all her teeth whenever Rory got something right if she hadn’t believed Rory could do it all along. She just, apparently, didn’t believe Rory could do anything for more than twenty minutes at a time. It’s just as unfair as her first thought—but Rory allows herself to wallow in it this time, because Mama had been right. Hadn’t she? There Rory sat, in the dark of her bedroom, dizzy and nauseous with the door wide open because she couldn’t even muster enough strength to close it. Mama had taught her that trick weeks ago.  

After twenty minutes of feeling sorry for herself, Mama appears in the doorway looking about as beat up as Rory feels. She looks sorry, and Rory didn’t know if she was truly ever angry to begin with—but all of it is forgotten when she sees her.  

Mama doesn’t come in immediately; she hovers in the doorway and looks nervous. 

“How are you feeling?” She asks. She doesn’t say I told you so.   

“Okay,” Rory lies. Her brain hurts, and she’s hungry, she feels like she just swam in the pool for an hour too long.  

Mama shuffles in place, and Rory finally notices Hermione at her heels. It’s like movie night all over again. She reaches out, beckoning the cat closer, and Hermione trots inside happily, letting Rory scoop a hand under her belly and lift her up onto the bed. Mama still doesn’t step through the doorway.  

Thinking maybe she needs an invitation, Rory says, “You can come in.”  

“I’m sorry,” she says, and steps through the threshold. Not any closer than that, like she’s afraid Rory might change her mind. 

Rory shrugs. “You were right. I can’t do it.” Mama shakes her head, takes another small step forward, makes a face like she wants to argue. Rory looks away, her own face hot. “I’m never going to be like you,” she says childishly. “And I’m not mad,” she adds. “Not anymore.” 

“I don’t want you to be like me,” Mama says urgently. “I never wanted that, Rory, I— this was supposed be fun. It was supposed to be different.” Different how, Rory wasn’t sure. Since the night of Matilda , they had talked a lot about Rory and not a lot about Mama, about how she got her powers or how she got them back, why she lost them and how she grew to be so good with them. Mama never brought it up and so Rory didn’t ask, because maybe it wasn’t that important—even though she had a hard time believing that any part of Mama could be considered unimportant .  

“I wanted,” Mama continues, unsteadily. “ Safe . For you. That’s all I want, and- and I didn’t want to control. I don’t want you to feel controlled. I’m sorry.”  

“But you were right,” Rory insists. “I was tired. And weak. I had a headache.” 

Mama seems relieved at that. Being right. The guilt, though, is still there, and Rory doesn’t know what to say—she’s still a kid. She can’t find the right words, and it’s harder because she doesn’t even know why this happened in the first place, anymore. I don’t want you to be like me. It was supposed to be different.  

You have no idea.  

“ I can’t do it.” Rory repeats, helpless. 

“You can,” Mama says. “But you don’t have to.” 

“You don’t want me to,” Rory guesses. 

“I don’t want you to hurt yourself.” Mama says patiently. “If you feel like you need to. That isn’t worth this . You are more important.” 

And finally, she walks the rest of the way forward and sits down by Rory’s feet on the bed. She wraps her warm hand around Rory’s ankle and says, very seriously, “Just you, Rory.” 

She has never looked at Mama and wondered if she was telling anything but the truth—even though she can tell when Andrew is the one who snuck in her room and stole the fruit snacks from her backpack, no matter how many times he insists it was Eggo. Even though she has a feeling that dad isn’t telling the whole truth when he says he’ll go to jail if Rory turns the ceiling lights in the back of the car on. 

“I want to keep doing lessons,” Rory says, and waits. 

“Okay.” 

She waits some more, and then looks up. Mama is looking back at her calmly, has accepted it easily.  

“For more than an hour a day,” she pushes. 

Mama narrows her eyes then, and tilts her chin up. Rory does the same, and they’re like that for a while. Until the corner of Mama’s mouth twitches an Rory realizes that she isn’t really fighting for any of it. Mama already knows that she's going to say yes. 

“For as long as you want,” she levels. “… Until you get tired.”  

She’s smiling still, but something in her expression is pleading. “Promise, that if you’re tired, we’ll stop.” 

Rory thinks back on thirty minutes ago, the nausea and the ache in her bones that came from being pushed to her limit. It’s not a very hard choice to make. 

“Promise.” 

Mama’s grin grows, coming full force, and she reaches out, pinky finger extended for Rory’s to wrap around like it always does. When the promise is complete, she uses their pinkies to pull Rory up and forward , until she face-plants into her lap. Hermione meows and jumps off of the bed. Rory’s laughing too much to care. 

_____________________________________

Rory is thirteen. There are a lot of things she still doesn’t know, and a lot of things she does. She can lift a fork off the table now, and she can lift Hermione off the table. All eleven pounds of her. She can change the channel without the remote and turn off her own bedroom light when she’s already under the covers, and she can even make Andrew fly if she focuses really hard. Only once in a blue moon, although he asks far more often than that. 

The power doesn’t go out when she sneezes anymore. Mom says that it’s because she’s so mature now. She can control her powers now. Making things float doesn’t make her nauseous anymore, within reason (Andrew is a lot heavier than Hermione). 

She tells Scarlett, and Bryce and Brayden—but she’s under strict instruction not to tell anyone else. She had never seen Mom and Dad so serious before, the day they sat her and Andrew down at the table and told them (mostly Andrew) that they needed to keep it a secret. That Rory should only use her mind in public if it’s an absolute emergency.  

You’re so freaking cool. Like, a secret agent, Scarlett had said when she told her. A secret agent with super powers. Holy shit.  

They trust her a lot—they don’t remind her every day before school (anymore), or when she goes with them grocery shopping—but it’s nights like tonight where it starts again. From ten in the morning until now, at six o’clock. 

Be very careful tonight, okay? Mom says while making breakfast. 

Just remember what we talked about, Dad says at lunch time, when Rory comes in to drag him away from the computer. 

“Be safe, alright? Stay with your cousins, make sure Andrew holds your hand,” Mom says at the front door, straightening Rory’s collar and smoothing out her dress and straightening her collar again. She’s a witch this year; dark green dress with long, billowy sleeves. Pointy hat and all. 

“I’ve been doing this for three Halloweens already, Mom,” Rory says, laughing, just as Andrew waddles by. 

“I do not need her to hold my hand!” 

“It’s your first Halloween without me,” Mom says, and Rory hadn’t even realized that that was true—but now that she was thirteen, and Scarlett fourteen, trick or treating wasn’t an adult supervised event anymore. They were old enough to take care of themselves and Andrew and the twins. 

It’s exciting, and overwhelming. She’s going to miss Mom holding her candy bag for her and carrying her home at the end of the night when she’s tired—but she’s also looking forward to the freedom. Feeling adult, for the first time. 

“I told everyone at school I was going to be a vampire this year. All of a sudden Madeline Thompson decides she’s gonna be Bella Swan,” Scarlett explains as they walk down Jackson Street. Weaving through groups of other kids and teenagers. There’s fake blood dripping from the side of her mouth and Rory thinks she really looks the part, with her pale skin and sleek dark hair, and the fake fangs pressing into her lower lip. “She hasn’t even seen the movies. I doubt she read the books.” 

“That can’t be a coincidence,” Rory says distantly. She’s on house watch—because if she isn’t, Scarlett will take them down three blocks without stopping just to finish her story. She has her half full pillowcase in one hand and is holding Andrew’s hand with her other as she scouts out which houses are bigger, which ones have the longest lines, and which ones just have a bowl outside.  

She’s busy looking, so she doesn’t notice the much taller figure approach, not until Andrew knocks right into their chest and nearly topples over, if not for Rory holding onto him. 

“Watch where you’re walking, dumbass.” Rory looks up and sees an older kid, one she recognizes, because he and his friends always skateboard by their house, their girlfriends riding on the back or on their bikes beside them, shrieking with laughter.  

This kid looks at all of them, but he lingers on Rory and Andrew the longest. He looks down, and finally says, “Aren’t you a little old to be holding your sister’s hand? That’s fucking hilarious, dude.” 

Andrew drops Rory’s hand like it burned him, he stares down at the ground and doesn’t respond.  

“You shouldn’t say those words,” Sophia says from behind Scarlett—but she’s dressed as Elsa and there’s already tears in her eyes and she’s isn’t intimidating at all . 

“Aren’t you a little old to be trick or treating?” Scarlett says back sharply, and gives him a look that would make anyone cower in shame. “Seriously. What are you, like, nineteen ?” 

“I don’t trick or treat,” the kid says, and reaches down to wrestle Andrew’s candy bag from his hand in on quick movement. “I will take this, though.”  

He goes around them to jog back up the street, cackling annoyingly to the sound of their protests, and Rory… is angry. 

She’s pissed , because she looks over at Andrew, in his Fantastic Mr. Fox costume—the costume he and Mom had been working on for days—shocked and embarrassed and more dejected than he should ever be, hands by his sides and the threat of tears in his eyes. Andrew cries at everything; movies, the end of his bed time stories, when Dad makes dinner and it’s really, really good—but never anything like this. Never because somebody made him. Rory sees bright red. 

She turns around, takes three steps up the sidewalk, staring this kid down. Her ears are ringing. Somewhere, distantly, she remembers that she’s not supposed to do this, that she promised .  

She’s too angry to care. Her head twitches. 

She hears and sees it, when he hits the asphalt. 

“Is he dead?” James asks, right before he starts to wail.  

The five of them go running up the sidewalk, following Rory’s lead. Rory tastes the metal in her mouth and wipes at her nose just in time, before the kid rolls over. His nose is bleeding, too, chin and hands scratched up from the fall. Rory reaches down and retrieves Andrew’s candy back, dropped at his side during the fall. 

“You… you pushed me,” the kid says, blood all over his teeth. He’s looking right at Rory when he says it. “You pushed me!” 

“You stole from him,” Rory says. 

“She didn’t push you, she was all the way over there!” Argues Soph. 

“It’s an uneven sidewalk,” is James, unable to conceal his grin. 

Scarlett leans over him, before people start to make their way across the street. “No one will ever believe you.”  

As they all turn to walk away, Andrew takes Rory’s hand again, not before leaning over the same way Scarlett had, face red, and screaming: “ ASSHOLE!” Sounding perfectly normal. No lisp. 

It only hits Rory, what she’d done, as they start to walk to the next house, and she realizes that she had broken the one rule that had been set for the night. The one rule. 

But she looks at Andrew, who’s smiling again, clutching his candy bag tightly in one hand and Rory’s in the other, like he hadn’t been embarrassed to hold her hand in the first place. She looks at him and she thinks that it’s worth it. Nobody even has to find out. 

_____________________________________

Nobody finds out, Rory thinks. And then two weeks pass and Mom and Dad call her down into the kitchen. 

She sits down at the dining table, and seemingly out of thin air, Dad pulls out her Halloween costume. The same dark green dress. Rory knows what this is about before they even say anything. She thinks she even stops breathing for a moment. 

“I can explain.” 

Mom and Dad let out matching breaths, and neither are of relief. 

“The one thing we told you not to do, Victoria?” Dad says. He never calls her Victoria. He barely even calls her Vic. It’s always been Rory, and this is how she knows that he is angry . He doesn’t even have to raise his voice. “Do you know how dangerous that could have been?” 

“I know! But nobody saw me—“ 

“That’s not the point! That’s– it’s—” 

“Rory,” Mom says, quiet and emotional, and Rory feels like shit . “You promised .” 

“He was bullying Andrew, mom!” 

At once, they both freeze. 

They look at each other, and then at Rory. Dad isn’t mad anymore so much as he is confused . 

“What?” Mom finally says. 

“This kid,” Rory answers. “He came up to us and he was making fun of Andrew. He swore at us, and he stole Andrew’s candy. I couldn’t just stand there! So I waited until he was halfway up the sidewalk and I made him trip, and I think he broke his nose because it was bleeding when he turned around but that’s not my fault ,” she doesn’t stop to breathe, and if either of her parents try to interject she doesn’t hear it, barreling on. “I’m sorry for breaking the promise—but I’m not sorry for doing it, because I bet he won’t bother Andrew ever again.” 

She looks up, chest heaving. Mom and Dad…… are smiling.  

Mom has her head bowed, poorly concealing the upward curve of her mouth and her snorting laughter, and Dad is grinning. Unashamed about it. He’s so amused. Absolutely tickled . 

“Um,” Rory says. 

“That sounds like an emergency to me,” Mom collects herself enough to say. Rory’s eyes widen. She looks over at Dad. 

More reluctantly, he says, “Me, too.” He points at Rory—but he can’t stop smiling, so it’s not exactly stern . “You still need to be more careful.” 

“It won’t happen again,” Rory agrees. “Within reason.” 

 Mom cackles . 

“You are your mother’s child,” Dad says, completely fond. 

“Did you ever break somebody’s nose, Mom?” Rory asks. 

“Nose, arm, neck…” 

Silence. 

Mom and Dad look at each other, the same loaded, loving look that Rory is starting to wish they wouldn’t do right in front of her. They look, and then they both burst out laughing again, and when Rory retreats back to her room they laugh harder. Stitches . 

Rory knows and doesn’t know a lot of things. She doesn’t think she’s even remotely close to understanding them .