She was fine, just shocked. “I guess I’m okay. What do you think happened?” She was staring at the gaping hole in the ceiling.
Like I would know what happened. “Termites maybe? What were you doing just before you crashed through the floor?”
Mia had a contemplative look. “Well, I was combing my hair and something crashed. It startled me. I think a lotion jar fell in the tub. Anyway, I startled and then ended up down here. Pretty crazy, huh?”
Too crazy. “I’ll call Grandad. He said to do that if anything odd happens. I think this qualifies, right?”
Grandad came right over. He examined the floor thoroughly. Grandad then asked some questions. He wanted to understand exactly what had happened before Mia crashed through the floor. There was some water damage to the flooring from a slow leak, though the leak had been fixed a while back. The damage wasn’t so extensive that the floor would collapse. At least not under normal conditions.
He called mom, told her what had happened, assured her that Mia was fine. Grandad had a carpenter friend who would come over right away and take care of it. And he did manage to get his buddy to drop everything and come over right away. He had a different task for us.
We headed back to Grandad’s lab for yet another round of tests. He moved into a side room, a small kitchen and lounge area, and puttered around for a couple of minutes before calling Para in. He pointed at a heavy-duty digital scale. That made sense. Let’s see if Mia had gained a few pounds. Mia, Para, whatever. I smiled at her. She growled at me.
Yes, you did too growl. Seriously mean look you had there, Para. Oh, don’t bat your eyes at me. The way you snarled; you could have been one of the Ogres of Merelot on the Adventures of Prin. And no makeup needed. Oh, is that so? If I wasn’t busy working on the Journal...
Anyway, Grandad motioned for Para to step on the scale. The scale registered her normal weight.
A puff of air from a cylinder on the counter hit Para in the face, messing up her hair. She jumped straight up, slapping the cylinder on the way. I was like, no way. The scale showed at 10-times her normal weight. We found the cylinder two rooms over. It had smashed through two walls of sheetrock and hit the concrete outer wall, totally denting the cylinder and taking a large chunk out of the concrete.
Grandad was shaking his head. “Must be an autonomic response to stress. Adrenalin reaction. Fight or flight. You look the same but your mass increases exponentially, as does your strength. You’re amazing Mia. Your gift is amazing. Let’s have a late movie night. It’s been a while. No school tomorrow. How about the two of you spend the night? I’ll give your mom and dad a call. Go home and grab an overnight bag. We’ll run some more tests.”
As we were walking toward the door, I could tell Para was troubled. “Grandad, am I going to keep crashing through floors?”
“No Sweetie, I don’t think so. Even when you are ... denser ... you don’t weigh too much for a strong floor. The bathroom floor was weakened from the water damage. We’ll be as careful as we can. It will all be fine.”
We did as Grandad said. It was obvious he wanted us near at hand in case any more ... changes ... manifested. When we got back to his lab, he ran more tests on Para. She insisted Grandad not scare her again. He agreed, then checked a bunch of things like electromagnetic field fluctuations and such.
I slipped away to tidy up for bed, wash my face and comb my hair, that sort of thing. My hair was a mess. Frankly, I looked terrible. The hair could wait until morning. Too much had happened that day, and I was done with the image in the mirror. Time to make a ponytail and call it a day. Then it was, like, what’s wrong with Grandad’s mirror? It wasn’t working. No image in the mirror. I know. How can a mirror NOT work? Some odd light refraction? DARPA?
I was, to say the least, confused. “Grandad, can you come here for a minute?”
“Sure can, just a sec.”
He looked in the bathroom and frowned. “Where did you go? I’m really not in the mood for hide-and-seek right now.”
Real funny Grandfather. “I’m not in the mood for games either ... Grandfather. How did you get the mirror to NOT WORK? Is this an experiment, like with Mia?”
Grandad had backed into the wall across the hall. “Liz, where are you? Sweetie?”
“Right here in front of the mirror, of course.”
He looked right at me, but his eyes didn’t focus. He couldn’t see me. I was invisible. It was unreal.
Grandad definitely looked concerned. “Close your eyes and imagine, imagine with all you’ve got, that you can see yourself in the mirror.”
I did as he suggested. “There I am. I guess the mirror isn’t broken after all. What’s happening to us Grandad?”
He had a very thoughtful look as he answered. “I don’t know for sure. Not yet. But we WILL find out.”
Para had walked over in time to catch my reappearing act. She just stood there with her mouth open.
I was getting into a mood. “Best close your mouth Mia, before a fly buzzes in.”
Grandad called the twins. It was still fairly early in the evening. They came over. We updated them on what we had found out about our gifts. Rock and Roll looked at each other. They had some news too.
“Spill it,” I said.
Rock glared at me, just a little. “Well, something is happening to us as well. You know what it’s like when Roll sneaks up behind you, tackles you, and mashes you to the ground? All your air gets knocked out and you see stars?”
Para shook her fist. “No, and he better not even
