The Power(28)

Margot watches the girls on the screen in Wisconsin. One of them has a tattooed hand of the Goddess in the centre of her palm. Her friend shrieks as she applies the power, but it’s not clear to Margot whether she’s crying out with fear, pain or with delight.

‘And we’re joined in the studio today by Mayor Margot Cleary. Some of you might remember Mayor Cleary as a leader who acted swiftly and decisively after the outbreak, probably saving many lives.’

‘And she’s here with her daughter, Jocelyn. How are you doing there, Jocelyn?’

Jos shifts uneasily in her chair. These seats look comfortable, but they’re actually hard. There’s something sharp digging into her. The pause goes on a moment too long.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Well, now, you have an interesting story, don’t you, Jocelyn? You’ve been having some trouble?’

Margot puts a hand on Jos’s knee. ‘Like a lot of young women,’ she says, ‘my daughter Jocelyn recently started experiencing the development of the power.’

‘We have some footage of that, don’t we, Kristen?’

‘Here’s the press conference on your front lawn. I believe you put a boy in the hospital, didn’t you, Jocelyn?’

They cut to the footage of the day Margot was called home. There’s Margot, standing on the steps of the Mayor’s Residence, tucking her hair behind her ears in that way that makes her look nervous even when she’s not. In the footage she puts an arm around Jos and reads from her prepared statement.

‘My daughter was involved in a brief altercation,’ she says. ‘Our thoughts are with Laurie Vincens and his family. We are grateful that the damage he sustained does not seem to have been serious. This is the kind of accident which is befalling many young women today. Jocelyn and I hope that everyone will remain calm and allow our family to move on from this incident.’

‘Wow, that seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it, Kristen?’

‘Sure does, Tom. How did it feel, Jocelyn, when you hurt that kid?’

Jos has been preparing for this with her mom for more than a week now. She knows what to say. Her mouth is dry. She’s a trouper; she does it anyway.

‘It was scary,’ she says. ‘I hadn’t learned how to control it. I was worried I could have really hurt him. I wished … I wished someone had shown me how to use it properly. How to control it.’

There are tears starting in Jos’s eyes. They hadn’t rehearsed that, but it’s great. The producer zooms right in, angling camera three to catch the glisten. It’s perfect. She’s so young and fresh and beautiful and sad.

‘Sounds really frightening. And you think it would have helped if –’

Margot steps in again. She’s also looking good. Glossy, sleek hair. Subtle tones of cream and brown on her eyelids. Nothing too showy. She could be that lady on your block who takes great care of herself, swims and does yoga. Aspirational.

‘That day started me thinking, Kristen, about how we can really help these girls. The advice right now is just for them not to use their power at all.’

‘We don’t want them just letting off lightning bolts in the street, now, do we?’

‘Certainly not, Tom. But my three-point plan is this.’ That’s right. Assertive. Effective. Short sentences. A numbered list. Just like on BuzzFeed.

‘One: set up safe spaces for the girls to practise their power together. A trial at first in my metropolitan area and, if it’s popular, state wide. Two: identify girls who have good control to help the younger ones learn to keep their power in check. Three: zero tolerance of usage outside these safe spaces.’

There’s a pause. They’ve talked this through in advance. The audience listening at home will need time to adjust to what they’ve just heard.

‘So, if I understand what you’re proposing, Mayor Cleary, you’d like to use public money to teach girls how to use their power more effectively?’

‘More safely, Kristen. And I’m really here to gauge interest. In times like these, we should probably remember what the Bible says: the highest among us aren’t always the wisest, and the older generation isn’t always the best to judge what’s right.’ She smiles. Quoting the Bible – a winning strategy. ‘Anyway, I think it’s the job of government to come up with interesting ideas, don’t you?’

‘Are you suggesting some kind of training camp for these girls?’

‘Now, Tom, you know that’s not what I’m saying. It’s just this: we don’t let young people drive a car without getting their licence, do we? You wouldn’t want the guy rewiring your house to have no training. That’s all I’m saying: let the girls teach the girls.’

‘But how do we know what they’ll teach them?’ Tom’s sounding a little high-pitched now, a little afraid. ‘This all sounds very dangerous to me. Instead of teaching them how to use it, we should be trying to cure it. That’s my bottom line.’

Kristen smiles directly into the camera. ‘But no one has a cure, do they, Tom? Says in the Wall Street Journal this morning that a multinational group of scientists is certain now that the power is caused by an environmental build-up of nerve agent that was released during the Second World War. It’s changed the human genome. All girls born from now on will have the power – all of them. And they’ll keep it throughout life, just like the older women do if it’s woken up in them. It’s too late now to try to cure it; we need new ideas.’