Page 4 of Gifted & Talented

If circumstances were left to the parasite’s whims, it was narrowly possible Eilidh might survive the impending crash against her will—against the laws of physics, against all conceivable odds. The parasite—the thing that seemed to have taken residency like a squatter in her chest—had already intervened for her in the past, unless there was some other reason she’d survived carbon monoxide poisoning (the doctors had insisted there was, but then again they’d had no subsequent explanation for the frogs).

Of course, the consequences might be worse if she accepted its help rather than simply leaving her demise up for grabs. Terrible things always happened where the parasite was involved. Though, was there really a worse, given the scale of things? How did one assign a measurable degree of disaster to a pestilence of livestock, or to the seas turning red? The death of firstborn sons was understandably catastrophic, but did stars falling from heaven to earth outrank the leveling of mountains to plains? If Eilidh said help me and the thing said yes but turned all potable water to blood in exchange, how was that equitable preservation of life? Certainly the government would be no help whatsoever.

And even with all apocalypses being equal, at what point would they stop being warning shots? How much calamity could strike at the parasite’s hands before the world wasactuallyending, and therefore Eilidh was, too? Because at some point surely there’d be no more posturing. Eventually the earth would stop fucking around and call it quits.

But these weren’t the real questions. Eilidh’s mortality, her intellectualizing of life itself, these thoughts were trivial, extraneous at best. The real concern was, what of the others on the plane, the bystanders, all presumablyparasite-free, with only one outcome written on their fates unless Eilidh so charitably intervened, risking only the continuity of life on earth over a bargain with an eldritch thing for which she had no rational explanation…?

Oh, it was all so fucked, thought Eilidh tiredly, with all her young, young, youngyoungyoungyoung twenty-six years of exhaustion in her bones. All these people for other people to miss. Might the plausible horrors be worth it? Philanthropically speaking, if nothing else? Maybe the world wouldn’t end today. Maybe, theoretically, it would just be one tiny, survivable plague. Mere roulette, with suboptimal (but dismissable) nonzero odds of complete annihilation! Just another thing she’d simply have to suck it up and live through, like all the rest.

In any case, her father would miss her, a quiet voice reminded her. Eilidh imagined him sitting at the restaurant alone, looking at the door, checking his phone. Waiting, as he always did, for her to walk in and meet him at their usual table, in their usual place. Could she really bear to disappoint him? She had never been able to before.

In the wake of Eilidh’s indecision, the situation irreversibly worsened. Nothing could help Budget Airline Flight 2276 now except a miracle, or whatever you might call a miracle that did its job but in the worst imaginable way. Still, the choice was a simple one, somewhere between carnage or ugliness. Either a combustible mass grave somewhere in the Rockies, or…

Truthfully, Eilidh hated to find out. But the sensation in her body, the monstrous creature she housed, it was both guardian and jailer—it would do her bidding, yes, but only if she wished for life at every other living thing’s expense. She could feel it now, the power that was really more like capitulation. The red button she only had to press for temporary salvation, which would feel like destruction right up until it passed.

The flight attendants screamed for everyone to assume the brace position when Eilidh, lacking persuasive alternatives, finally gave in. She compromised with the universe, making her peace, taking a deep breath and hoping for something mild. Something not too… destructive. (Surely there’d be fallout, but then again, a compromise means neither party truly wins.)

The irony, really, was how hard Eilidh had to fight on a daily basis to keep it at bay, barely contained, versus the ease of letting it loose, which was only metaphysically difficult. What would happen now that she’d set it loose on purpose? A flood? A plague? A fire?

The end of the world?

Abruptly, the plane’s cabin went dark. The parasite living in her chest unfurled, a greedy, gleeful rattling at the bars of its perilous cage.Just enough to live,Eilidh thought desperately.Please, just rein it in.

Nah,she practically heard in answer.

Then, as if with a gentlemanly shake upon contracted offer and acceptance, Eilidh felt the wings burst free.

4

A stye! A fucking stye! Meredith kept folding her eyelid over in front of the mirror, compulsively checking it. She nudged it with the corner of her nail, wondering if she could just… pop it. Like a zit. The internet plainly stated that under no circumstances was she to touch it. She should do a warm compress ten times an hour or something for a zillion intervals a day, as if she had that sort of time. Alternatively, suggested the internet, she could see a doctor. Right, a doctor! Meredith wanted to laugh hysterically. Yes, she could do an online visit—if she pushed a button on her phone right now, she’d be placed into a queue for three to four hours just for someone to tell her she’d be fine in three to fourteen days.

She nudged the stye again. It wasn’t visible from the outside—she didn’tthinkit was visible, anyway, and even if it was, it wasn’t contagious—but still, it was a damned inconvenience. She couldn’t focus on anything else, and to make matters worse, her phone was ringing again.

She glanced down at her watch screen and silenced the call from her father’s assistant. The third one that day. Certainly this persistence was heightening to unusual, but it wasn’t as if Meredith could speak to her father (or any representative of her father) in this agitated state of mind. She’d only pick a fight or do something stupid, like acknowledge he’d been right.

Meredith glared at her reflection.

I know what you did,Jamie’s message taunted in her head. She heard it in Jamie’s voice now, like he stood languid beside her at the bathroom counter, fingertips brushing the line of her neck. She saw him tucking her hair behind one ear, that little crease of fondness in his brow. An old incarnation of Jamie, dead and buried in a girlhood tomb.

I know what you did, and I’m going to publish it.

Ghosts begot ghosts. Lou appeared then beside Meredith’s reflection, like clockwork. Despite the years of teenage malaise they’d intimately shareduntil they hadn’t, the Lou in Meredith’s memory was always ten years old, round-cheeked and scowling.

“Hey, dumbass,” said the Lou-shaped specter. “You can’t honestly be surprised if he’s on to you. I mean, you knew it was inevitable. You’ve always been a fraud and this whole thing is idiotically transparent.”

“Shut up,” muttered Meredith, maturely.

“And if Jamie knows, Idefinitelyknow,” Lou reminded her, a smug look on her nonexistent face. “I’m the one who taught you how to get away with it, you ungrateful bitch.”

Meredith shook herself, recalling that this was psychologically unproductive.

“Fuck you,” she whispered to imaginary Lou, turning to imaginary Jamie, who gave her a breezy smile because he, too, didn’t exist. “You don’t know shit,” she informed him, and watched him disappear astride the high horse he’d intrusively ridden in on.

Bolstered, and determined not to think about her stye (her mother had always said thinking about a zit made it worse, which was presumably also true for styes), Meredith fucking Wren shoved open the door to the women’s restroom and took off down the corridor, grudgingly returning the call from her father’s office only to brutally collide with someone who’d just turned the corner.

“FuckingChrist,” Meredith nearly screamed, dropping her phone.

Then she registered her assailant.

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