Page 63 of Gifted & Talented

Fix me,she imagined asking this woman that she did not know, the woman that her genius sister Meredith considered the most magical, intelligent, arcane-knowledge-having person on the planet.Teach me how to exist.

I dunno,said the imaginary Lou cheerily,can I offer you a deal on a Wrenfare Creative Suite subscription? Six months free if you sign up now!

It couldn’t be her. The thought gripped Eilidh madly, desperately. The address was wrong. This wasn’t it.

“Let’s go,” said Eilidh.

Wordlessly, Meredith put the car in drive.

29

The house was small, with another small apartment building around back, such that they weren’t sure which building was intended to represent the address they were given. The house was a stucco Spanish revival, a gray or beige or simply dirty white, though it had a big window out front that was shaded by a mature oak, its front yard mostly sundried dirt with patches here and there of passionless grass. It wasn’t ill cared for, exactly, though the houses beside it were overrun with flora, such that vines from the neighbors’ yards had crept out onto the sidewalk, rendering it unwalkable. Meredith parked the car and got out, and then Eilidh got out, and then Arthur said I thought Gillian was going to handle this and Gillian said yes I can do that and Meredith said I just wanted to get out of the car Brother Micromanager calm down. But it was clear they all wanted to get closer to the house; to sniff it out and see if it had an air of something. Magic, maybe, or the opposite. Whatever it took to make errant magic behave.

As Gillian took the initiative to walk up to the house, Eilidh lingered by the car and Meredith hung back to take a phone call, beginning to pace along the sidewalk as she answered in clipped tones. Arthur, meanwhile, stood in front of the house and pondered it.

It occurred to Arthur that the place Lou had grown up—an apartment on the outskirts of Mill Valley with two bedrooms, one shared by Lou and her mother and the other by her two grandmothers—had probably not looked dissimilar, though in Arthur’s memory it was warmer, homier than this. He remembered the feeling of walking inside, uncertainty mixing with hope that an answer might be waiting for him, left on a gentle simmer on the stove.

In this era of leapfrogged maturity and responsible home ownership, Arthur could see the house before him needed tending to; that it was one of the only affordable places still remaining in the Bay; and that from wherehe stood on the street he could see bars on the bedroom windows, a surefire sign of neighborhood crime. He remembered that Lou’s mother had had her car broken into several times while they were growing up, which always cost her more money to fix than the value of anything the thieves had taken from the car’s interior. Lou’s Lola, who hated Arthur, had still taught him how to reconfigure the wiring for the new-old detachable radio unit, and afterward Abuela told him that it was because Lola could secretly no longer do that kind of magic herself—she was getting too old to hold it on her own, and he was a good and clever boy who listened well. Then she fed him rice and beans until he couldn’t comfortably sit down.

“Cahhhhhhhh!” exclaimed a small voice.

Arthur was still staring at the house when he realized someone was waiting on the sidewalk for him to pass. A boy, no more than two or three, was holding hands with his mother, pointing at the vehicles lining the street. “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Arthur vacantly, and stepped aside.

“Lost?” asked the mother.

“Oh, no, not really. Well, no.” Arthur looked down at the boy, who wore a vibrant green T-shirt that readDINOSNORES. He was dark from late summer heat, bruised around the knees, tufts of sun-lightened copper dappling his chocolate-cherry hair. “That’s some high-quality weaponry,” Arthur said, pointing to the bow and arrow in the boy’s hand. The tips of the arrows were suction cups.

The boy instantly hid behind the mother’s knees, peering up at Arthur in wide-eyed silence.

“They’re not really military grade,” offered the mother. “More for feats of strength.”

“Makes sense,” said Arthur. He took a longer glance at the mother, whom he had not really been paying attention to until then, noting only that she seemed near his age; she had shoulder-length black hair and wore an oversized Cal T-shirt. The boy resembled his mother strongly, although his eyes were a different color, hazel or maybe green where hers were deep and dark. She wore a faded black baseball cap on her head, a faint look of amusement playing idly around her mouth.

“Are you anticipating any sort of tournament?” Arthur asked the boy.

The boy said, firmly, “Dahhhhhh.”

“I think probably a quest,” the mother translated.

Arthur smiled. “For treasure?”

The boy got shy again, leaning against his mother’s thigh.

“He’s not really ready to talk about his quest preparations,” the mother said as the boy buried his face in her denim shorts, looking stressed in the way young children sometimes did. Arthur wondered if Riot would do the same thing someday; become mired in the existential anxiety of her quest preparations. Hopefully not. Hopefully she would be firing arrows because she understood the world didn’t wait for you to take the time to draw.

The mother patted the little boy’s head. “You’re fine,” she informed him. “Don’t worry. Arthur won’t be staying long.”

Arthur blinked with surprise, then looked more closely at the mother.

“Oh my god,” he said.

“Yeah,” I agreed, because yes, it was obviously me. “This is really embarrassing for you.”

“Dsdjhbkebrbu?” said Monster, looking up from my shorts.

“This is Mommy’s friend from a long time ago,” I explained to him.

“Mommy?” asked Arthur before he could stop himself.

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