the altar at which she must bow her head and atone for her sins.
Her dream rises. The spark. The fire. Her mother’s screams. This last she still can’t remember, though it must have happened. And all at her hand. Murderer. Before she cries again, Scarlet hurries on.
Passing Fitzbillies, she slows. In the window sits a girl gazing at a picture. Scarlet stops. Pretending to be contemplating the trays of warm, sticky Chelsea buns, she gazes at the girl, who’s silently crying.
Scarlet is struck by the strongest sense of déjà vu. She’s met this girl before, she’s certain. But it’s more than that—a feeling she doesn’t have words for. She knows this stranger intimately as she might a sister, if she had one. But how can someone be a stranger and a sister all at once? Although, Scarlet thinks, her relationship with her grandma is like that nowadays.
Esme!
She’s got to get back. She’s left her grandmother alone for too long now. She popped out only for a pint of milk to make blueberry drop scones. With one last glance at the girl, and forgetting the milk, Scarlet runs all the way back to the café.
5:05 p.m.—Leo
In the Faculty of Law building Leo sits in seminar room B16, trying to concentrate on whatever Dr. Hussein is wittering on about, something to do with the law of tort. But it’s no use. Leo can’t think why he even bothered turning up in the first place. He’s been missing so many of his lectures lately—handing in miserable essays to supervisions he’s often late for—that he’ll surely get summoned by his director of studies soon. But if he’s sent down it’s of no importance. It’s likely he’ll be dead in a week anyway, so what the hell does it matter?
All Leo cares about now is keeping Goldie alive. Instead of applying his mind to the complexities of tort law, he needs to be solving the problem of convincing Goldie that he’s not insane, while at the same time not terrifying her into a nervous breakdown. He needs to find a balance between convincing and careful.
“. . . so, if one uses the case of Beckett v. Hargreaves as an example of this, one must consider . . .”
Leo slams his textbook shut, stands, snatches up his bag, and strides out of seminar room B16. Thirty startled students turn to watch him go.
6:01 p.m.—Goldie
When I get home that night I decide to try again, this time with a daisy I picked in the park instead of a stolen rose. I tell myself I won’t be humiliated by ridiculous hopes, but my spirits are buoyed from seeing my sister and reading the beginnings of my very own graphic novel. Seeing myself as a superhero has given me the fanciful, but not altogether improbable, notion that I might have certain supernatural powers after all.
As I set the daisy on the kitchen counter, glancing at my juniper tree, a memory rises, just out of reach: Juniper bare and bereft of leaves, my hands closing like an oven, a faded heartbeat twitching back to life . . . I feel a surge of anticipation, promise, nerve . . . I place my hands flat on either side of the flower and focus on it. This time I’m wondering how it feels to be this flower—the breath of the breeze on its petals, the warmth of the sun on its leaves. I imagine Leo is beside me, Ana too. Then I think of Ma. And, all at once, I feel that this was something she could do: small magic tricks, though perhaps she didn’t know it.
As they cheer me on, the thought of lifting something, especially something as insubstantial as a daisy, doesn’t seem quite so fantastical. No more so than atoms or electricity or radio waves. After all, I think, is telekinesis or telepathy any more extraordinary than email or instant messaging? I bring my forefingers and thumbs together so that the daisy sits in the space between. I stare at the little flower.
Nothing. I close my eyes.
Rise.
I peek. Nothing.
“Rise.”
Another peek. Nothing. I open my eyes.
“Rise!”
And it does. Just a fraction. A twitch in the air. A hairbreadth off the counter. I’m certain. Almost.
8:38 p.m.—Bea
Dr. Jonathon Finch
Logic and Language
Bea barely glances at the plaque, twisting the handle and pushing so hard that the door slams back into the bookcase against the wall. Striding into the room, she drops her bag and strips off her coat and clothes as she crosses