Page 3 of Gifted & Talented

Unbeknownst to the various partygoers, all oohing and ahhing in unison as the very stoned were wont to do, what they were currently witnessing was the confidential source of Arthur’s ongoing… nothiatus,exactly, but the careful, anxiety-inducing, borderline-obsessive concealment of an adolescent glitch he’d thought he’d outgrown, like wet dreams and voice cracks; the lovely reminder that Arthur Wren, supposed harbinger of a new era, was basically just an almost-thirty teenage boy.

Given Arthur’s string of political disappointments, his recent withdrawal from the public eye had seemed more than coincidental—optically, it amounted to laziness, cuckoldry, or insidious ambivalence, such that Arthur had always been a traitor after all. Oh, so the poor little rich boy turned out to have thin skin? PRIVILEGE! screeched user @FuckThePatriarchy420. It could really weigh a person down!

Of course, Arthur would have liked to believe the sudden cancellation of his last four public appearances could be understandably forgiven had They (the ominous, media-dwelling They) only known the truth, which was the spontaneous release of tiny rockets in flight from any overeager technical system Arthur encountered whenever he was—as he nearly always was—at work. Wi-Fi routinely went out. Cameras always failed. Apps consistently crashed. Most recently, broadcast signals had malfunctioned via an electrical surge so infernal that a terrified journalist had been concussed by a boom and fallen briefly into a coma. It was as if Arthur was some kind of still-living (arguably half-alive) poltergeist, haunting every highbrow political venue with the occult situationship between himself and every electrical current.

Surely the uptick in mishaps wouldn’t last—it simplycouldn’tlast; that was an unimaginable scenario involving all sorts of horrors—so his decision to withdraw, deal with the problem, and heal in private was actually quite a reasonable one—if, that is, such a thing as accidental electrokinesis could reasonably be (1) said, (2) believed, or (3) understood.

To be clear, it couldn’t. Which was why the rumors went uncorrected; the lesser of two evils being, in this case, to lose a little more shine in lieu of revealing an uncontrollable, witchcraft-adjacent mutation, for which no Notes app apology could possibly suit. Arthur didn’t know how to stop what he couldn’t explain, and even Gillian, brilliant tactician though she was, agreed there was nothing for it—that the best they could do for now was to simply let it pass, as it had done once before.

Luckily, there was nothing notable about revealing it here, given that internet use was banned for social safety, and besides, no self-respecting aristocrat actually believed there was anything beyond their personal control.

Provided everybody stayed a safe distance from any electrical outlets, all would be well—or in the alternative, all would be forgotten by the morning.

“Just something to elevate your natural talents,” Yves offered in explanation as Philippa laughed, leaning over for a kiss. “You are always magical tous,Arthur, but consider the possibility of being… erotically godlike?”

Arthur looked down at his palm, the subcutaneous crackle of static, testing the fluidity of whatever you might call this; “power” being too complimentary a word. Normally it was little more than personal hazard, no different from an unsolicited spark or intrusive thought (like the memory of Lou’s laugh or a caustic line of criticism). A flicker of light shot out from the chandelier to Arthur’s palm, dancing across his fingertips. The buzz of electricity in the room, briefly dormant, shot to attention the moment Arthur called it forth, dazzling before his eyes like the glitter of tropical lightning, rendering the corridor a veritable marching band of Georgian sconces. This Arthur hadn’t done in ages—over a decade, at least, since he’d managed anything remarkable on purpose. It had been longer than years since Arthur had last felt in control.

Which meant it was the profound opposite of the depressing month Arthur had spent cloistered in his office, appearing only for mandatory congressional votes before hurrying away with his chin locked partway to his chest, mumbling demurrals and skirting cameras, effectively choosing headlines that read “irresponsible louche” over “magical circus freak” because what, pray tell, was the reasonable, progressive-but-not-too-radical, voter-swaying, public-approving, laws-of-physics-ly plausible explanation for any of this?

Or so Arthur asked himself, perhaps more often than a less egotistical person would. Not that we are here to judge. Although we’re here, so why not have at it.

Suddenly, Arthur became aware that he was starving, that he had come all this way just to strip down and be devoured, that his father would never forgive him for the man he’d turned out to be. God, what fun it was to be such a profound disappointment! Arthur drained his glass of champagne and reached for his phone, noticing before he tucked it away for the evening that Gillian had sent him a message.

Ah, well, it wasn’t allowed, and anyway, it could wait. The chandelier sparked again, the world thrumming in unison, illicit and sinful, wanton and free. He felt connected, he felt profound, he feltonline!

The lights dimmed and roared, then flickered to the soundless synth-pop bass that was Arthur’s racing heart.

“Who wants to see a magic trick?”

3

At the moment Arthur Wren crossed the threshold of an orgy and Meredith Wren nearly pissed her lady-pantsuit on stage, Eilidh Wren—slightly less of an asshole, but only by virtue of personal misfortune so extreme it derailed all potential assholery she might have otherwise blossomed into like a peony in June—was plummeting to her death on a last-minute flight back to San Francisco aboard a budget airline, her tailbone practically rattling against the skeletal economy seat (an aisle seat, 16D), while an ad winked sadistically up at her from the in-flight magazine (THIS APP WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY! :), a particularly insidious taunt).

The plane had been undulating wildly for several minutes, such that the oxygen masks had already dropped into the cabin and Eilidh was, ultimately, impressed they did not require an additional fee to use. This was what she got for coming home early, bypassing the ample preparation she’d so recklessly elected to ignore. This plane was almost certainly going down, something that Eilidh had not previously believed was possible. True, she was not a person of any mechanical know-how, but she was familiar enough with the family business to be comfortably sure that eventhiscabin had been equipped with the industry-standard technomantic computing her father had developed over the last four decades with Wrenfare. Assuming the airline had kept up with the latest system updates, the plane ought to be borderline sentient. Shouldn’t it practically land itself?

Someone in the pipeline of airline safety had fucked up monumentally—which, Eilidh was displeased to reflect, was an uncharitable thought on her part. She had been doing so well. She hadn’t had a bitchy thought for nearly two entire days. (She, unlike the other two Wren siblings, did not have Lou living in her head, which was better or worse for Eilidh depending on whether you find it more oppressive to be insulted by the ghost of childhoods past or your own insipid thoughts.)

Eilidh’s impressive departure from misanthropy was new, and far from the usual. She had just returned from a silent retreat in Vermont that she was fully prepared to lie about. Of course she had loved it. Of course she was refreshed. No, she had not missed her phone. No, she wasn’tat alldevastated that three days of total silence was something for which she had not had to bargain for or fight about with a partner because she had no partner, not even a roommate or a cat (she felt it would be rude to The Cat, the one she might one day adopt but wasn’t currently ready for, as she was not yet her ideal person). Yes, she was terribly glad she’d done it! Well, that part was true, sort of. She wasn’tnotglad she’d done it, except for the fact that she was maybe about to die on her way home.

The plane dropped again in the sky, like a toy clutched in the hand of a giant. The lights flickered almost hysterically—almostmorehysterically than the woman beside Eilidh, who was presently hyperventilating into a paper bag. Earlier, Eilidh had tried to reach for the woman’s hand in an effort at solidarity, but the woman had only been more terrified, as if the well-meaning touch of a stranger was proof this was very bad, very bad indeed.

Eilidh’s hand tightened on the armrest of her seat as she considered the prospect of dying, a thought she entertained somewhat routinely, about three times a week (tops). She once again had the counterproductive thought that her body was useless, then corrected herself firmly, compulsively consulting the mental sticky note that readYOUR BODY WORKS BETTER THAN MOST AND YOU SHOULD BE GRATEFUL :)before another roil of turbulence knocked her mindfulness somewhere into her colon.

God, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, would it? What did she really have to bind her to this world, to keep her even remotely interested in her life? It had been five years since the injury. Five entire years since the surgery. And in that time, what had she done?

(Here’s what she hadnotdone: played the Sugar Plum Fairy, or Juliet, or Odette, or woken up unaware of her back, though the last time Eilidh had mentioned that to Meredith she’d been briskly told to stop complaining, they were all getting older, gravity wasn’t specifically invested in ruining Eilidh’s life, even though Meredith had once sprained her ankle and missed a round of the USTA Junior National Championship finals when she was ten years old and had never, ever let anyone forget about it, which wasn’t technically the same thing because Meredith had moved on from tennis and Eilidh had never fallen out of love with ballet. But it was a similar flavor, and anyway this was all in Eilidh’s head, and she did not have to defend herself to anyone outside of it.)

Eilidh was, at present, a marketing executive at Wrenfare. Well, “executive” was maybe too lofty a term. (Her amendment, not mine—“executive” is technically accurate, if spiritually controversial.) She worked in marketing at Wrenfare, though because her last name was obviously Wren and her father, the founder and CEO, had a photo of her on his desk, people assumed that Eilidh was slightly more important than she actually was. She was routinely asked to sign off on things that she considered quite frankly none of her business, and people often specifically requested to work with her, thinking that her presence on a project might ensure that it favorably crossed the boss’s desk.

Which wasn’t wholly false. Her fatherdidlike to keep tabs on what she was up to, and they had a standing lunch date near the offices on Tuesdays. At these lunches, familial and casual though they purported to be, Eilidh might mention a person who would later be promoted, or she might reference a project that would later be green-lit, so it didn’t really matter what her title was. Still, she was primarily just an ordinary person who worked in marketing, because it was the only thing for which she was even remotely qualified. (She had worked on the annual gala for her ballet academy, an extracurricular she’d taken up as a bit of quid pro quo because she’d overslept after a particularly grueling rehearsal for which she held the principal role—okay, she hadn’t meant to brag, but since you’re so obviously curious, it was Princess Aurora fromSleeping Beauty—and missed an exam.)

Eilidh was good at her job. Eilidh was not, generally speaking, an idiot. And—this part is the Big Secret—Eilidh did not technically have to die in this plane crash if she didn’t want to.

As if to belabor the point, Eilidh felt a stirring up her spine, something sprouting like an emergency hatch, a panic button presented from inside herself. It was a different sensation every time, but its presence was always noticeable. Often the feeling lived dormantly, alive but inactive from somewhere within Eilidh’s chest cavity, but this particular flourish of motion was both muted and undeniable, like the crook of a lover’s finger. A quiet but unmissable unfurling where a set of wings would be. It was rare that she and the thing were of similar minds, but even so, the message was unmistakable. All she would have to do to save everyone on this plane was give in.

Provided she could stand the cost.

The plane was going down, that was for certain. Inclement weather, poor planning, technical malfunction, maybe some unholy combination of all three. The pilot had somehow left his microphone on and was crying audibly, which was not very beneficial for the vibes. Some rows ahead of Eilidh, a woman was clutching her screaming baby, unable to keep from sobbing into the child’s head despite her ardent rocking, her desperate attempts to make these final moments good, to make them sweet. Who boarded a plane with a baby unless they absolutely had to? Eilidh felt a pang of something horrible then, almost criminal, as if this were single-handedly her fault. She looked away and spotted an older woman who was praying a rosary; a man who was weeping openly, his thumb gently stroking a picture of three young children on his phone.

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