I can’t believe I made fun of some retard kid. Your brother.”
“Not retard! Don’t call him that. Developmentally…” Alix checks with Stephanie, who nods in confirmation. “Different.”
“Don’t hate me, okay?” Pox is pleading, and in his open expression I see what he must have looked like as a little kid, the first time he got caught being naughty and couldn’t live with the shame and guilt. “Forgive me?”
Together, the three of us answer as one: “Maybe.”
I wonder how long this new Pox will last. An hour? A day? A week? Could it be forever?
The light is red, but Alix, Stephanie, and I cross anyway. We don’t even bother to check both ways. We know the cars will stop for us, and they do. No one even leans on a horn. It’s our turn.
As we continue down the street, I take a long drink from Stephanie’s water bottle. Being a Fury is dehydrating. When we pass an empty store window, I catch a glimpse of our reflections in the dusty, warped glass. We are three figures attached at the shoulders, stretched, distorted, and unrecognizable.
14
I wake the next morning after ten hours of dreamless sleep and remember again with wonder everything that happened yesterday. The song, joining with the others, the ant, the anger, the power, Pox groveling at our feet.
It’s true, then.
I’m not who I think I am. I’m not who I used to be. All my life, I’ve been waiting, listening, hoping to find this thing—some special talent, something unique—that tells me why I am me and not someone else, why I was born, why my life hasn’t been like everyone else’s, and what I’m supposed to be doing with that life. Now I’ve gotten exactly what I wished for. True personal discovery. This is forcing me to reconsider everything I think I know about myself, every assumption of who I am and where I came from and what my future will look like. I no longer have to be secretly terrified that there is nothing special brewing inside of me and that my life will never, ever change.
I can change. I have already changed. Life has changed. I have a special purpose, a destiny. There’s no doubt about it. I’m Megaera, a Fury. This is the new normal.
Don’t you think a personal revelation of this magnitude deserves a day off from school?
It does, doesn’t it? This tops a fever. I should get to turn in a note that says: Please excuse Meg for the day because she needs to contemplate the idea that she is the reincarnation of a mythical being, quite possibly capable of ridding the world of wrongdoing and injustice.
But no such luck. While I am lolling around in bed with He-Cat curled at my feet, my phone vibrates with a text from Ambrosia, like she can read my mind. Come to think of it, maybe she can: No cutting today!
Right after that, a similar message from Raymond, another mind reader, pops up on my phone: Up and “Atom,” my powerful friend.
They’re right. There’s so much to figure out and so much to do. With a sense of purpose that I’ve never felt before, I perform my usual morning rituals: tooth-brushing and face-washing, backpack-loading and cat-feeding. It’s sweet the way He-Cat follows me everywhere now. I pick him up, and as I stroke his fur and listen to his grateful purr I wonder if people will immediately sense the enormous change in me. I feel so different. How can the world not recognize it? When I enter the kitchen a few minutes later, I take special satisfaction when the Leech doesn’t immediately order me to rub her gross feet or clean the dishes. She’s studying me with a perplexed expression.
“What?” I ask, certain that I have a new, un-ignorable Fury glow.
“Did you do something different with your hair, Meg? You look … You seem more…” She fumbles for the right word. In my mind, I provide several that I’ve always wanted to hear attached to my name. How about poised? Self-assured? Positive, confident, endowed with a whole new set of amazing, superhuman mental powers?
“Taller,” she finally says. “That’s it. You probably grew a whole inch lately. Don’t you dare think that means I’m gonna buy you any new clothes. Am I made out of money? You’re going to have to make do with the ones you already have.”
So much for my glowing radiance. It’s more than my height that’s changed. How can she not see it? This