Girl One(41)

“So what about you, Josephine Morrow? Girl One? You have anything special about you?”

“Maybe.” Even that one word, coy and hesitant, felt dangerous in my mouth, like the time I’d licked a nine-volt battery on a dare as a kid. That hot spark against my tongue.

Her eyes glimmered in the dark. “Do tell.”

“I can’t talk about it. Not yet. It’s not the same as with you. Just—look, please don’t tell Tom yet? I want to figure out what’s happening first.”

“Yeah. Um. Of course I’m not going to tell Thomas,” Cate said, affronted that I’d even ask. “But if you want to talk about it, I’m here.”

We lasted another few minutes in silence before I broke. “You’re so casual about it. Like it’s part of your life already. But I’m out there in the public eye. I’m trying to finish what Bellanger started, restore everything we lost when he died. How do I—how does this even fit into my life?”

“What did we lose when he died?” Cate asked.

I hesitated, surprised by the question: first because the answer seemed so obvious, and then because I struggled to articulate it. “The chance for there to be more of us.”

“Hmm. Yeah.” Cate sounded thoughtful. “So you’re worried about your credibility if you yammer to your scientist friends about superpowers?”

“Sort of,” I said. “Scientists are supposed to be cold and rational, but I think we have to be more curious than other people. More open to impossible questions. Why else would Bellanger have taken a chance as big as the one he did? But if we have … powers…”—that word felt less corny every time I said it, taking on a weight and energy—“then I’m treading new ground here, and maybe I’m not ready yet.” I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes until I saw starbursts. “I wish Bellanger could’ve known about it. That’s all. What if he’d known what he’d actually achieved?”

Cate was quiet for long enough that I assumed she’d fallen asleep. Her hand found mine in the darkness, threading her fingers through mine, squeezing my hand swiftly. “I know you were close to him. For what it’s worth? I bet he’d be fucking proud of you if he could see you now. He’d be an idiot otherwise.” She let go of my hand. “You’re not alone as you think. There is somebody who’ll answer your questions. We’ve just got to find her.”

Catching her meaning, I smiled into the dark room, rueful. “Mother One,” I whispered, and my mother felt at once very close, closer than she’d been in years, and impossibly far away.





18

We arrived in Vermont in the late afternoon. I’d watched the landscape change outside the windows, a topography hillier and greener than I was used to, the billboards less insistent about meeting God. Even the run-down areas were quaint instead of dilapidated. Sometimes we’d drive past nothing but trees for close to half an hour, then suddenly the trees would break to reveal white houses nestled along the side of the road, barns overgrown with ivy.

I was a native Vermonter. When I thought about my past, the weirdness of my birth usually obscured the more commonplace facts, like my star sign (Taurus), my birth weight (seven pounds even). But this part of the country was my birthplace, and I looked around, wondering if it had shaped my DNA. When I said as much to Cate, she laughed. “You know we barely ever left that compound?” she asked. “Only about ten acres of the great state of Vermont can claim any effect on us.”

“Do you have any memories of that time?” Tom asked, glancing back at Cate.

“Why? In the market for some good footnotes?” When he winced, she went on: “Nothing personal, but I know how writers can get. A while ago, one of the Homesteaders had this big-shot interview in Rolling Stone. I heard she made a real fool of herself. Good reminder to always watch what I say when there’s a tape recorder nearby.”

“I’m not recording anything,” Tom said, wounded. I was quiet. “Come As You Are” wailed from the radio. An endless refrain of Kurt Cobain lately. Memoria, memoria.

“That was me,” I said at last. “I was the one interviewed in Rolling Stone.”

“Shit,” Cate said. “That was you?” She leaned forward so that she was between us, elbows poking out like wings. “Morrow. I wouldn’t have said anything if—”

“Oh, I think you knew,” I interrupted, and Cate bit down a sly smile, eyes shining with suppressed laughter. We passed a covered bridge, candy-apple red, nestled among the trees. “Look, I wanted to do it. I never got to talk about the Homestead, growing up.”

“What’d your mother think about it?” Tom asked.

“We weren’t speaking by then.” Pines rose in peaks on either side of the road, casting spiky shadows over half the freeway. The sky beyond was a blue so clean and bright that I wanted to dip my fingers into it. “I actually tried to call her. I was proud of that interview. Rolling Stone! But she never picked up.”

“What could even make you ignore each other for a year?” Cate asked. “I’d give anything to talk to my mom again.”

“We’re stubborn.” That stubbornness, replicated perfectly, not leavened by the genetic influence of a father. “She always wanted me to go along with her and pretend our lives together in Coeur du Lac were all we’d ever known. Coeur du Lac, god. Mom went out of her way to pick the most ordinary town she could. Like I was ordinary too instead of—instead of what I am. What we are.” I gestured at Cate, and she nodded, soberer now, listening. We telegraphed a quiet understanding over Tom’s head.