“She’s pretty hidden. You know. By leaves. Rain,” he said. He was out of breath due to running full speed back to the inn and now, running back. “I’d just stopped under the tree for a bit of shelter. And then she called down to me, ‘Hi, Harrison! Just wanted to warn you that I’m going to be jumping soon. Didn’t want to startle you.’”
“That’s all she said?”
“That’s all she said.”
“Does your sister have a history of jumping out of trees?” Prue asked.
“Well... ,” I said.
“Well?”Prue repeated.
“Okay.” I stopped running. Harrison and Prue stopped too, and we all huddled underneath an umbrella that wasn’t even a rain umbrella at all, but a beach umbrella that somehow belonged to Prue, because of course Prue owned an enormous yellow-and-white-striped beach umbrella and had casually packed it for summer vacation. It felt a little bit like we were inside a tent. “I have something to tell you.”
Prue and Harrison were rapt listeners. They both seemed to have guessed that I was about to drop something important on them.
“Right. So. All the rumors. The boil and bubble stuff,” I said, repeating the phrase I’d used in the graveyard with Harrison. “All that’s true, okay?”
I tried to gauge Prue’s reaction without being too obvious about it. She was nodding her head, and when I looked at her she said, “Harrison told me.”
“I hope that’s okay,” Harrison said quickly. “We don’t have many secrets.”
“I know what it’s like having a sibling. I’m glad you told her,” I replied. “So, going along with that whole thing... Mary can float.”
“Fly?” Harrison exclaimed.
“She might use the wordfly; the wordfloatis a tad more accurate,” I clarified.
“Wow,” Prue said. “So shedoeshave a history of jumping out of trees.”
“No. I mean, not really. This is new. She knows... we don’t use our powers... I mean, she doesn’t use her powers in front of other people. It’s not how it works.”
“What canyoudo?” Prue asked.
“I’m a dud,” I said quickly, in the vein of pulling a sticky bandage off a wound in one unthinking breath. It felt like I was admitting something not only to them, but to myself. We were almost eighteen, and it was time I came to terms with it: I wasn’t getting any powers.
“What do you mean?” Harrison asked.
“I’m just normal. I’m just a sidekick.”
I started running again, forgoing the relative dryness of Prue’s umbrella for the chance to move faster. As a result, I reached the tree before either of them. And I also reached the tree soaking wet.
The impressive canopydidprovide fairly adequate cover from the storm. I found Mary immediately, looking strange and languid, sitting far up in the tree with her back against the trunk and her legs spread out on a branch and crossed at the ankles.
“Mary?” I called up to her.
She didn’t look like herself. Her dress was too big, her hair was too messy. When she looked down at me, I could have sworn her eyes flashed black.
“Hi, Georgie,” she said.
“Can you come down?”
“I kind of like it up here.”
“You told Harrison you were going to jump.”
“I don’t think I’m ready to jump quite yet.”
“You know I don’t love heights.”
