Just Super

Looking at the army, I fight back the urge to give up and let Tiara handle it. It’s not that I’m afraid, much. It’s just such a huge task that it seems impossible.

“Frank, Emily, may I cast a minor spell on you?”

Emily says, “Sure;” at the same time, I ask, “What spell?”

“It will allow us to communicate on the battlefield. For the next eight hours, or until you will the spell to deactivate, we will be able to communicate as if we were face-to-face.

“Okay.” Sure, Emily and I can mostly do that with our phones, but having Tiara joined up seems helpful.

Tiara whispers a few words and touches each of us on the forehead, followed by herself. I feel something, but I’m not sure what. I flicker a couple of hundred feet away. “Testing, one, two, three.”

“Yep, I hear you,” Emily says. “Oh, cool. I can see you.”

Woah, it is like face-to-face. That is, I can actually see her when she talks. The image of her face is there, but somehow doesn’t block my view of anything. Neat.

“Thanks for asking us first,”I say to Tiara, “instead of just casting it on us.”

“Of course,” she replies, “It’s common courtesy, although in your case, also a necessity.”

“A necessity?”

“Did you think my other selves didn’t use spells against you as a courtesy?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Ordinary magic can not do much to you now—not without your consent.” 

Well, that gives me more to think about. Later. If there is a later. 

But now we discuss strategy, or possibly tactics. I’m not entirely clear on the difference. Whichever it is, the upshot is that we’re going to distribute ourselves around the mesa, so we’re not in each other’s way. Tiara will mostly be standing on a platform of magical force high above the enemy.

“Um, Tiara, ma’am?” I’m not sure I should ask my question.

“Yes, Frank?”

“What’s up with the rest of the Cavaliers?”

“This is only the biggest of several simultaneous incursions. They are dealing with the others. Were the two of you not here, I would probably call them in.”

That’s sort of mindblowing. Emily and I are subbing for the fucking Cavaliers. “Thanks.”

That’s all settled, then. We all take a moment to prepare ourselves.

Emily breaks the silence. “Okay, then.” She vanishes.

Even if I couldn’t directly sense her direction, I’d know where she went from the disturbance in the army below. Within a couple of seconds, the air over a small patch is filled with maybe twenty robots flying upwards. Or robots and parts of robots.

My turn. 

I spin in the air, arms stretched out to their limits. I focus my golden aura in my fingertips, leaving a shimmering circle in the air. Then I flicker to the spot we picked for me a minute or so ago.

I appear among a loose squad of animated statues and complete two more spins before they can react. Then I push the glowing ring out from me, hard. Everything near me goes flying away at slightly under the speed of sound, so there’s no perceptible delay before the air is filled with the almost deafening sound of shattering stone.

I’m standing in a thirty foot radius circle, devoid of anything but me and the ground. Beyond that, the next twenty feet is filled with broken pieces of statue, and beyond that, toppled statues.

I flicker away before any energy beams or bullets can reach me from the nearest squad of robots. Unfortunately, I didn’t really think about where I was going, and end up about ten feet away from Emily. It doesn’t hurt, exactly. But it’s a bad feeling nonetheless. Emily turns and sees me just before I flicker away.

I repeat my new trick a couple of times. After the second circle of destruction, I flicker away and find myself about ten feet from Emily again. Once again it takes me a moment to flicker away.

Emily notices. “Okay, what’s up with that, Frank? What’s going on? You know, don’t you.”

“Can we talk about it after?”

“It’s affecting us now.”

She’s right. 

“Okay, fine. Like I said, there aren’t supposed to be two of us.” I blast away another circle of enemies. This time they’re robots.

“That’s really not an explanation.”

“Sorry, I’m gathering my thoughts.” And blowing up robots. Wait, no, this time it’s armored skeletons. “Okay, when you, I don’t know—bonded with? Merged with?— the poltergeist, you pulled it into yourself. You were focused on protecting it and everyone else by keeping it inside you and never letting it out, right?”

“Basically.”

“And other than the poltergeist, you were basically safe, right?”

“Yeah.”

“It was different for me.” I describe what I saw when I slid my perception back along my world line—the argument with my mom, the search of my room. I describe giving up. Then I describe how it could have gone differently. “To be clear, I didn’t actually change anything in the real past. I didn’t find some alternate universe where I had a backbone and steal the real Delilah’s life.”

“Delilah?” Emily smiles. “Delilah. I like it.”

Oops. I wasn’t quite ready for that. Whatever. “Yes, Delilah. So what I’m saying—”

“Hi, Delilah, I’m pleased to meet you.”

The rush I feel when she calls me that removes any doubts. I shake my head.

“My point I’m trying to make is, when I’m talking about this stuff, I’m going to say stuff like ‘When I bonded with the poltergeist, blah blah blah happened,’ but that’s just so I don’t have to say ‘If I had done all those things, then I had bonded with the poltergeist, then blah blah blah could have happened.’”

“You know that I know how your power works, right?”

“I know, but if I didn’t say all that, I’d have to say it the long way every time.”

“Why?”

“It’s just how my brain works, okay? May I continue?” This time it’s robots.

“Right, sorry, Delilah.” She’s not playing fair.

“So when eleven year old me merged with or bonded with or became one with the poltergeist, she didn’t have a safe home. She didn’t have parents who would understand her. I think she was probably living on the street.”

I can tell that the idea of that bothers her..

“Remember, it didn’t really happen,” I clarify. “That me never existed, but if she had, she’d have had different priorities. I suspect she was less concerned about protecting everyone else than she was about protecting herself and her only protector.

“So Fra—” Aw, fuck it. I might as well own it. “—Delilah+poltergeist ended up very different from Emily+poltergeist. I’m thinking that when you re-created yourself, you bound yourself within your body. I didn’t do that.”

“I could buy that, but why—hold on—”

One of the mechs just came into view and opened fire on her. She flickers onto its back and rips the mega-cannon off like before. She continues “—why can’t there be two of us? Why does being near you feel weird but fine to me, but being near me feels weird and bad to you?”

“My mark couldn’t create a poltergeist out of nothing, or pull divine energy from nowhere. We both became one with the same entity. We’re still mostly separate, but on some level, we’re trying not to be.” 

“That sounds bad.”

I flicker into the air and spend a few seconds watching her absolutely obliterating rank upon rank of invading automatons with her giant baseball bat of doom. From up there I spot a couple more mechs coming into view. Time to make myself useful again.

I flicker into the cockpit of the mech that Emily just disarmed. Sure enough, there’s a pilot. I grab her and flicker us to an empty world (the one with the fake school), then flicker myself back to my world. I repeat that with all the mechs I can see. That eats up a solid minute or two. 

“Mechs should be inactive now,” I report.

By this time, Emily’s cannon has broken into pieces too small to be useful, and she’s fetched a new one.

“So the reason it feels bad for you and not for me is that you’re being pulled into me, but not vice versa?”

“I think so, yeah. Because of the different ways we merged with the poltergeist.”

“Or maybe I have seniority.”

“Sure.”

Emily has probably wiped out a couple thousand invaders at this point. I can’t get an exact count due to the whole ‘smashing them to bits’ thing she has going on. I’ve dealt with somewhere between a quarter to half that many, although dealing with the mechs has to count for something. I flicker to the other side of the mesa where Tiara’s been working. There’s a lot of melted metal on the ground, but she’s not keeping up with Emily—maybe not even with me. At this rate the forcefield will be down long before we can finish these guys off.

“Um, Tiara, ma’am?” It’s so weird being able to just talk to her. 

“Yes, Delilah?”

Gah! Of course she heard that too. “You heard what Emily and I were talking about?”

“Yes. You were mostly correct.”

“Mostly?”

“You were also correct about waiting to discuss this until the job here is done.”

“Okay. One question, though. The poltergeist was some kind of divine being, right?”

“Of a sort. And how did you come to that conclusion?”

“It’s the same kind of thing that powers marks. That’s why I can have two right now, and why I can suddenly do so much more with mine.”

“Correct.”

“Thanks.”

I didn’t exactly need her to confirm that, but it makes following through on my next idea seem more worthwhile. I flicker above the forcefield for a moment and get out my regular phone. There’s no signal so I flicker into the skies of Chicago.

I open my spreadsheet of all the marks I’ve been able to gather info on during my time at The School. It was very useful for my plotting. Now I want to do some good with it.

When I put together the spreadsheet, I included a column for ‘offensive potential.’ That’s pretty subjective of course, but it’s a start. I filter on that, listing only the ones in the top couple of tiers, offense-wise.

Next I reject the ones that are definitely not going to help. Talia’s ability to control water would be amazing if we were on the coast, but in the middle of Death Valley it’s mostly useless. Same with Lane Steen’s ability to evacuate the oxygen from an area. That’s not super useful against enemies that don’t need to breathe.

I pick out my top three choices and flicker back to the fight.

“What was that about?” Emily asks. “Where’d you go?”

She could have asked while I was gone, but I guess she wanted to let me be.

“I had an idea.”

“Oh no.” 

I think she’s being facetious.

My first try is Polly Menard’s mark. She can gather the light in an area and redirect it however she wants. At normal power level, she can focus sunlight into a laser that can cut through steel. I bring up the picture of her mark on my phone.

I don’t need Coach Lacey for this. I picture the mark in my mind and imagine it on the back of my right hand. I feel it settle in.

“It’s going to get dark for a second,” I warn the others.

“Delilah—” Tiara sounds like she might be going to object.

I reach out and gather the light in a hundred foot radius and focus it into a bunch of lasers that shoot down into the assembled enemy. I let go and inspect my handiwork. 

Damn. Maybe twenty robots went down, but others keep moving with holes through them. The statues and skeletons seem unfazed by the attack. I could probably do better with practice; I got the ability, but not the skills Polly has learned. There’s no time for that, though. Okay, next.

James Kitchen’s mark seems like maybe my best bet. He can project and control electricity. I should at least be able to take out a bunch of robots with that.

Or not. I can throw what amounts to a bolt of lightning, but it grounds itself too quickly to do a lot of good. Once again, skill issue.

I don’t see any point in even trying Lane Schmidt’s mark. I’ve seen how much better he’s gotten over the last year at converting elements. No, I need brute force; I don’t even have to look up the mark I need.

I imagine Marie’s mark on my right shoulder blade. I flex it with my mind. No finesse there; its meaning is obvious to me now. Move This.

I flicker into the air over the largest concentration of artificial soldiers I can see. Emily is a good five hundred feet away, and Tiara is still on the other side of the mesa.

I hold out my hands, palms down, and pour as much of the energy flowing across my skin into Marie’s mark as I can, and jerk my hands upwards.

One hundred and some odd robots, skeletons, and statues, along with one mech that happens to be in the area below me, fly upwards so fast they’ve almost reached my height of six hundred feet in the half-second it takes me to slam my hands back downward.

The sound of them hitting the ground is almost deafening, even up here.

That’s more like it.

“How did you do that?” Emily sounds impressed.

“I borrowed another mark. It’s the one on our right shoulder blades.” She got Kyle’s mark when I borrowed it, so I assume she got these, too.

She appears in midair at my altitude, and a couple seconds later another hundred or so of the enemy smash into the ground. “This will work. This will work just fine.”

Through the link Tiara gave us, I can see the smile on her face.

We fall into a rhythm—smashing unliving soldiers to smithereens by the thousands. Then we start getting a little silly. Instead of sending them up then down, we try moving them along the ground at speed; Emily moves hers toward mine and I sweep mine toward hers. It’s not as entertaining as we’d hoped.

Then I see a group of what I can best describe as “monsters.” Some I recognize from mythology, like a few chimeras and at least twelve minotaurs, but others might as well be made up by imaginative kindergartners. 

“Uh, they might not be here of their own will,” I point out.

“Yeah. Let’s try not to hurt them.”

Instead of smashing them, we flicker among them, touching each one with bare fingers until they’re all on the ground in unconscious heaps. I do manage to stay at least thirty feet from Emily the whole time. That’s starting to not be enough, though.

I’m about to tell Emily that when a huge shape separates from the mesa and spreads its wings. Oh. Dragon. Cool. It leaps into the air.

“I’ve got this one,” Emily says.

“Why do you get to fight—”

“I didn’t say anything about fighting.” She flickers away and appears fifty feet in front of the dragon.

It doesn’t seem to like this. Without warning, it lets loose a gout of flame. I see Emily behind the dragon for an instant, but she’s back in place when the flame dissipates. She darts forward and slaps her hand down on the tip of its snout. “No!” 

The dragon lashes out in an attempt to bite Emily, or maybe swallow her whole. Emily swats its nose again.

“Look,” she says, “we’re not your enemy. The person who brought you here is gone. If you’ll just go wait over there—” she points at the castle, “—we’ll try to get you home as soon as we can.”

The dragon glares at her. I really don’t see how such a huge creature can hover.

“Or wherever it is you need to go,” she adds.

After a moment, the dragon folds its wings and dives, then spreads them and swoops back to the castle.

“Wow.” That slips out.

Through the link I see Emily blush. Goddess, she’s so cute.

“It’ll probably tell the others. Hopefully they won’t be a problem.”

“How did you do that?”

“I’ve met dragons before. They’re mostly cool. I thought there was a good chance she was forced to be here, and a show of strength would convince her that she’s better off sitting this out.”

I don’t have anything else to say to that except “Wow.”

We get back to smashing things.

“I see. Thank you Ms. Doyle, Ms. English.”

Principal Ruehl has joined Tiara, Emily, and me in the cafeteria of The School. It’s the best place we can all sit comfortably without Emily and I being within forty feet of each other. We’re all in a big circle: me, Tiara, Emily, then Ms. Ruehl.

Emily and I have just finished telling our side of the events of the morning and afternoon, and explaining why we need to sit so far apart.

“So instead of just trying to reverse it with her mark, Delilah and I thought we should talk to the two of you first.”

To be fair, it was her idea, but I didn’t argue against it. When I even think about flickering myself to how I was this morning, I get such a strong sense of impending doom that it makes me almost physically ill.

“That was a wise choice.” That’s high praise from Tiara. “I could not reverse it, and I doubt that your mark could. The consequences of even trying could be dire.”

I don’t like the sound of that. “Consequences?”

“Yes. I don’t think the two of you quite understand the scale of what you’ve done.”

Neither Emily or I manage to say anything to that, so she continues.

“I am going to tell you things. I will share this information without demanding a promise of secrecy, because the two of you have earned it. I do, however, ask that you not share what I tell you beyond those of us currently present.”

Emily and I exchange glances. We both nod to Tiara.

“To keep the archmage from ascending, I had to divert the divine energy he was channeling elsewhere. Neither I nor any of my companions could have survived trying to absorb all of that energy, so I found a way to spread it among them.”

“The Six,” I say without thinking.

“Yes. I had learned of the language of the gods in my search for a way to defeat our enemy, and I used that knowledge to mark each of them with words that I hoped would help them contain and channel that divinity.

“It worked, but not as well as I had hoped. My friends distracted, then destroyed, the archmage’s armies while I confronted the archmage himself. He had poured much of his strength into the ritual of ascension, and with that disrupted he was weak enough for me to defeat, if only by a slim margin.

“But the marks were not enough. My companions could not contain the divinity for long, even with the help of the words that I’d imprinted onto them. I tried adding more words, but it was no use. One by one, they burned out. 

“I mourned, and cursed myself for not being able to save them.

“It wasn’t until the marks started manifesting on children that I knew the full extent of what I’d done. I tried to remove them at first, but I determined that I could not do so and leave the marked child alive and functioning.

“In the more than forty years I’ve known magic, I have not been able to determine if the human soul exists. Certain evidence makes me think it more likely than not that they do, but that isn’t proof. 

“Divinity, however, definitely exists. When the words were set free from their bearers, each took a share of divinity with it, or possibly the other way around. Once that divinity chooses a new host, it can not be removed by any normal means. My belief is that it merges with the soul of its new host.”

That is definitely a lot, and she’s not finished.

“When you merged with the poltergeist, Emily, something similar happened. It was a divine being, but it was broken—” She holds up a hand when I open my mouth to interrupt, “—how that came to be is not relevant. What matters is that all that was left of it was its divine energy and its purpose.

“Your need to protect it and others while it was trying to protect you allowed you to truly integrate—something I had not been able to help my companions achieve. There is no poltergeist, and there is no Emily of before. There is simply you. Since the poltergeist had no ‘self’ to speak of, it is your self that survived.”

She turns to me.

“Your situation is different, as you surmised. We can’t know exactly what happened, since it did not, in fact, actually happen. What we can know is that you were correct; your mark could not create divinity from nothing, or amplify what was already there to such a great degree. You, too, became one with the same being.

She hesitates. I get the impression she doesn’t want to say what she’s about to say.

“It seems that, to the extent that human souls exist, the two of you now share one.”

That doesn’t sound terrible, but from the look on her face I know there must be something worse to come.

“That is not a natural state. A single soul can not be in two places at once for long. Soon, no matter what you do, there will be only one of you.”

Emily speaks first. “What if one of us goes to a different world?”

“That might delay the inevitable by a few hours, or even a day. But it would not prevent it.”

“Oh, I get it. That’s why Emily has my mark. If the mark is attached to our soul, and we have the same soul…” Thinking about that is better than thinking about my distinct lack of future.

Tiara nods.

“So one of us will just disappear?” Emily knows which one of us that will be; I can tell.

“I believe that to be the case. I’ve seen souls merge. There are a few seconds while they each struggle to survive, then one does. Given the way the two of you perceive this pull, that will almost certainly be you. You may retain some traces of her, a few of her memories, but otherwise, yes, there will be only you.”

I guess I’m glad she’s not sugarcoating it. Ms. Ruehl has sat quietly throughout this. I turn to her.

“What happens if I go over and touch her right now?” 

“I don’t know. In any future I can see where you touch her, I can’t see what happens next.”

“But you couldn’t see me move The School, right?” When she nods I go on. “That worked out okay.” I’m grasping at straws. “What if I try to reset myself to before I did this to us this morning?” The thought once again nauseates me.

“I don’t know. There are a number of futures where you disappear from where you are now, and I see nothing beyond those points.”

Well, fuck. 

Ms Ruehl and Tiara are looking at me with pity, Emily with a mixture of pity and terror, and maybe some guilt.

I’m out of ideas. I do wonder about something, though. I turn to Tiara again.

“If this divine soul is where we get our power, and now two of us are sharing it, why is she just as strong as ever?”

“Actually I’m stronger right now,” Emily corrects me, “by probably twenty percent or more.”

“I don’t know,” Tiara answers.

Wow, that’s remarkably straightforward.

“And what happens to her power level when it happens?”

“I don’t know.”

I have one more question for Ms. Ruehl. “If I just get near her, does whatever happens happen immediately?”

“No, but—”

That’s good enough for me.

I flicker right next to Emily, or at least I try to. I target the spot next to her chair, but she’s already gone when I get there. She’s across the room now.

“Delilah, no!” she shouts “There’s still time. There are things we can do.” She’s pleading.

She’s got a point. There are things I can do.

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

I flicker to Denise. I recognize that we’re about halfway between her high school and her apartment building. “Hey.”

“Frank!” She throws her arms around me. “You’re okay!”

I wonder what the news is saying, but not enough to check. “Um, it’s Delilah now.”

“Oh, cool!” She stops and narrows her eyes. “You’re not planning on cutting Emily’s hair are you?”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Look, I just wanted to thank you for everything. I don’t know if I would have figured myself out if it weren’t for your support, and even if I did it would have been so much harder.”

“What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“I’ve got to go, but check in on Emily for me, would you?”

“Fr—I mean Delilah—what’s wrong? Tell me, please?”

“Thank you.” I flicker to my room.

My aunt and uncle aren’t home yet, so I call my aunt and add my uncle’s line to the call. Both go to voicemail. “Hey, it’s your niece. I picked a new name! I’m Delilah. Thank you so much for taking me in. I love you both so much.” I want to say more, but words aren’t working right now. I hang up and flicker one more time.

“Hey, Mom.”

I’m standing behind her in her cubicle at work. She spins around in her chair.

“Fr—”

I interrupt before she can finish my old name. “It’s Delilah, now. Goodbye.”

I flicker back to the cafeteria, making sure to give Emily space.

“Please stay. I promise I won’t touch you unless you say it’s okay,” I say to her.

I wait.

After a few seconds she nods.

I flicker a few inches from her. The pull is so strong that it’s hard to not either break my promise or flicker away. I manage anyway. “Hey.”

“We can figure—”

“I’m not going to struggle,” I whisper. This is for her ears only.

“What?”

“I’m not going to struggle.”

"You can't just give up." She won’t meet my gaze.

“Look at me, please?”

She does.

“I"m not. I"m not giving up. This doesn’t feel bad now. It feels right.” When I started that statement, it was a lie to make her feel better, but now it’s true. I can reach out and touch her; I can move away; I can stand here and stare into her eyes. But sometime very soon we’re going to touch.

I glance down at her lips, then back to her eyes. She nods.

“It’s going to be okay,” I lie.

We kiss, and everything changes.

I feel weird. Where did Emily/Delilah go?

Wait.

I look down at myself. I’m dressed like Emily/I was earlier. Why does that feel strange/normal? And where’s Delilah/Emily?

Wait. A few seconds. I/We only have a few seconds. I look over at Principal Ruehl and Tiara. They aren’t reacting to Emily/Delilah disappearing. As a matter of fact, they seem frozen in place.

Oh.

We’re both here. For the moment, I’m both Delilah/Emily and Emily/Delilah. 

No wonder we feel weird.

What should we do with the three point two-nine seconds we have left?

That depends on what we can do, we suppose. We know the answer to my/Delilah’s last question to Tiara about our power level: off the f/rea/uc/king charts. That definitely gives us some options, and we have three point two-eight-nine seconds to exercise them.

First, we make sure this won’t happen at The School again. There. It’s locked down. No incursions or extradimensional travel within ten miles of the small Pacific island. Should we seal off the whole world? No. That would cause a cascade of consequences that we don’t have time to sort out.

Next, we swap the chunks of Death Valley back to the right worlds, or close enough. We decide to keep the chunk that’s been in our world for forty years rather than grab the original. While we’re at it we send all the living creatures from the invading army back where they belong (which turns out to be three-hundred and forty-three different worlds).

Two point five-five seconds left. This is taking too long. We heal Kyle and Marie; it turns out they were duped by Tiara B. They’re still assholes, but not evil. Gun-guy (aka, Neil Stinson) is a hired thug. Tiara B had shapeshifted him into a duplicate of Len. It only lasted a minute or two, but it was enough to get Checkers to bring him into The School.

We leave a note explaining all that in Principal Ruehl’s hand.

Next we find the forum where my/Delilah’s mom was soaking in transphobia and delete it and all backups everywhere. We also change the email passwords of everyone who ever posted transphobic comments on there. It’s petty, but… Okay, it’s just petty.

We do some more general cleanup from the incursions that accompanied this morning’s invasion. There’s so much we could do if we stay like this. If we finish merging, we’ll be even more powerful. 

We could fix the world. 

Or we could totally screw/fuck it up. 

Right. Good point.

More importantly, we don’t want to be a goddess. We want to be us. We won’t have the kind of power we’ve had most of the day, but, honestly, that’s a relief. Not that we have to go back exactly to where we were.

We have one second left. Tiara was right—it would be impossible for her to separate us, to put us back how we were. It would be impossible for my/Delilah’s mark to do it. For us?

Piece of cake. 

We make a small splice and…

That was a really good kiss.

I have no idea what just happened. Emily and I stare at each other for a second, then kiss again.

“Ahem,” Principal Ruehl says. Really. She doesn’t clear her throat, she says the word “ahem.”

We stop kissing again.

“What just happened?” Emily whispers.

I shrug.

“It would appear that neither of you has vanished, nor are you likely to in the next few minutes. I presume you found a solution.”

It’s not a question, but I think about the answer. Yeah, we definitely found a solution. I feel irresistibly pulled to Emily, but in the usual way, the nice way—not the way that makes me fear for my existence.

I also don’t have access to nearly as much power as I had earlier—I don’t think. It’s hard to remember exactly what that felt like, but I’m ninety-nine percent sure this isn’t it.

The extra marks are gone from my hands and arms.

Emily’s hands are also mark-free.

“Check your arms,” I tell her. She slides her jacket most of the way down her arms; no marks are visible—mine or anyone else’s.

“Ms. English,” Principal Ruehl interrupts our self inspections. “School is out at the moment, but in the future, please follow the dress code. Sports bras are insufficient attire outside of the gymnasium.”

I can’t tell for sure, but I think she’s teasing.

Emily rolls her eyes, concentrates, then looks disappointed. “I could only flicker for a few hours and I already miss it.” Then, to Ms. Ruehl, “Yes, ma’am.”

Tiara has been watching us, and finally speaks. “Emily, Delilah. I would like to speak to you both at some point in the near future. For now, though, I need to deal with my other selves.”

She grasps the pendant of her necklace and traces a circle in the air. Nothing happens. She tries again. Nothing. She eyes me suspiciously, then waves her hands and vanishes.

“What was that about?” I ask Emily.

She shrugs.

I check my watch. It’s two minutes until six o’clock. “Uh, oh. It looks like you’re going to be late.”

“Late for what?” Emily cocks her head to the side.

“We’re meeting at your house before dinner, right?”

She smiles. “Oh, right! Ms. Ruehl, is it okay if Checkers takes me straight to my house?”

“I have many questions for you, and there is much paperwork to fill out—” She’s definitely teasing now. “—but I suppose that can be dealt with tomorrow, and as for Checkers, an exception can be made, just this once.” She gets out her phone.

“See you there!” I say.

Emily puts her hand on my shoulder an instant before I flicker to her house.

Before we flicker to her house.