what I have in mind.” She held up a fairly talented sketch of balance beams, ramps, brick climbing walls, and even a swing over a pool of water.
“Ah, Miss Berg? How are we going to have avatars? We aren’t all earth witches, like Michelle and Declan,” Erika asked.
“Ah, don’t worry about that. We have several strong telekinetics and nine witches. Every witch born has some telekinetic power, even Declan, right dear?” she asked, looking at me.
Someday I would realize just what a pivotal moment that was, and wonder what might have been if I’d had ten seconds more. I had decided that hiding my power was a dead end and that seemed the perfect time to display just a bit of it. Lifting her off her feet and flying her around the room would prove my point to her and everyone else. But just as I made the decision, footsteps pounded across the flat concrete and an excited voice yelled in echoes. “I got them! Miss Berg, you scored big time,” T.J. hollered, carrying a big cardboard box in his stretched-out arms.
He dumped the box onto the ground and it flipped on its side, the contents spilling out in a tangle of plastic arms, legs, and multicolored hair. I wasn’t entirely sure, but from my angle, it looked to be full of Barbie dolls with a Ken thrown in here and there for good measure.
Miss Berg lit up with a smile, her question to me forgotten and my moment gone.
“Perfect T.J., just perfect. I saw them at that Recycle store in the toy section,” she said. “They were still there when I went by today.”
Grabbing a blonde specimen dressed in a tiny jean skirt and white blouse, she set it upright on the floor and when she pulled her hand back, it stayed standing on its own. Then it moved, the legs and arms jerking it forward in a grotesque approximation of walking.
“Takes a bit to get the hang of it,” she laughed a little, self-conscious. Her Barbie started to smooth out a bit but its joints were stiff and rigid, its awkward motion frankly creeping me the F out. She walked it over to a stack of bricks and reached its little stiff plastic hands up to grasp the top edge of a three stack. After fumbling a bit, she managed to make the doll climb up, its joints creaking as she forced it to simulate natural movement.
This wasn’t my childhood game; there was no creation or imagination, no finesse or skill, just using brute power to operate a readymade alternative to a dirt dude.
My fellow classmates didn’t share my opinion, as the witch girls rushed forward to claim their own dolls. Funny how they tended to grab one with the same hair color as their own. The three kids who had demonstrated telekinesis also moved up and grabbed a doll, too. Soon the better part of a dozen of Mattel Corp.’s finest creations were teetering about the floor. Miss Berg put the other kids to work creating ramps and raised wooden walkways for the bizarre horde of perky plastic people.
T.J. was tinkering with a different toy that he’d pulled from the bottom of the box. It was small white robot, the miniature version of a much bigger, much more capable programmable home robot. His version was never meant to actually do as much as its big brother, but T.J.’s dexterous fingers were disassembling it and reassembling it in ways its designers had never dreamed of. Watching him with my Sight, I could see the magic at work as he took apart another couple of broken toys from the box and added their parts to his new creation. He was done in five minutes and when he added batteries to it, his little ‘bot marched into the middle of the rapidly growing obstacle course and proceeded to put the ungainly Barbizoids to shame.
“You’re not participating, Mr. O’Carroll?” Miss Berg said suddenly from my side. She handed me a Ken doll and motioned me into the fray. “This was, after all, your idea,” she said before moving over to direct the construction of a brick pyramid.
I looked at the toy in my hands and considered all the ways it was wrong. Bending one leg on it, I felt the joint ratchet, the design intended to hold the new position and not flow smoothly like a real leg would. My dirt people were usually built over a skeleton of wood and