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Chapter 106 – Thanks and GivingAlex woke up and got Shar going, and then she rushed through a shower. She hurried back into her room and bugged Shar some when it turned out Shar was playing with her dolls instead of getting dressed. Breakfast was already on the table before they got downstairs.
Her dad was already out the door before she had the dirty dishes in the sink, and her mom had the slow cooker going before Alex had Shar all bundled up for school. Her mom was totally right. Managing a third grader was a lot more work than you’d think. Even a third grader who was mostly trying to be helpful. And Shar really was a great kid, but still she was a kid. Alex remembered a few times when she was back in grade school that she’d tried to be helpful and accidentally made things way worse. Like the time Annie was too busy working on a science fair thing to clean her side of the room, and Alex tried to help out by cleaning Annie’s side, too. She didn’t know the papers all over the floor were important, until Annie had a screaming fit at her. Fortunately, they got all her papers out of the trash before the garbageman came. Only problem? The papers and she and Annie had all stunk like garbage, so then their mom had been really mad about that, too.
Alex got to school, and the big thing was Terawatt’s interview at the White House. Nicole even wanted to support Terawatt by leading a protest against Mattel.
Alex just said, “I think we should all try to do what she said and find a way to help people.”
Kelly overheard her and stuck her nose in. “That’s easy for you to say! You already got a way, with your cameras and all. What am I supposed to do? Join the Marines?”
Alex had this mental image of Kelly dressed like a Marine but doing a Private Benjamin thing: ‘I can’t wear this! It clashes with my coloring! Do you have anything in a salmon color?’ She managed not to grin much, and she suggested, “Well, you know a ton of stuff about cooking without spending a lot of money, and the girls at camp said you were really good at campfire cooking. Have you ever thought about helping out at the soup kitchen downtown? I bet you’d be really good at it.”
But Kelly was busy being Kelly, so she sniffed, “As if!”
And there were about a hundred different takes on Terawatt’s White House press conference, and a lot of people thought she was too left-wing, or too right-wing, or too stuck up, or too elitist, or too prissy, or too mean, or too soft on crime, or a big jerk to people like centerfolds, or pro-gun, or anti-gun, and on and on. It was so frustrating, because she couldn’t even argue that Terawatt said the right thing, or complain when stuff she had said got taken totally out of context, since she didn’t want to draw a connection between her and Terawatt. Because really, when had she claimed she was pro-abortion? She just had to grit her teeth most of the day.
Keeping a secret identity was mega-cruddy some of the time.
And everyone who wasn’t talking about the Terawatt interview was talking about Homecoming. Alex decided she just had to trust that Willow could talk Jack into giving her one guaranteed night off. She was just going to act like she knew she could do Homecoming and it would all go off without a hitch.
Yeah, she didn’t really believe it, either.
She got home and found Willow was trying to Skype, so Alex grabbed her computer and Skyped Willow right away.
“Good news!” Willow bubbled. “Well, it’s good news now, but it could’ve been really icky news if Jack hadn’t been all grouchy about the NID.”
Alex wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it, after that lead-in.
Willow explained, “I sort of went and peeked past a couple firewalls, and it turned out the NID was doing a big project through the FBI and the NSA using the newest version of the FBI’s facial recognition software.”
Alex grimaced. “Oh, don’t tell me. They were trying to ID Terawatt.”
“Yeppers! And they’re using the NSA’s face database of every driver’s license in the country, plus every other photo ID they have, including military stuff and arrest records and all that jazz, plus everything they have from Canada and Mexico and the Caribbean. So they came up with over twelve hundred possibles that they’re investigating. Alex Mack didn’t make the cut.”
“What? How’s that possible?” Because, well, it was her face! How could her face not match up with Terawatt’s face?
Willow grinned. “Well, I might have thought about doing this last spring back before I met you, so when Jack figured out who you were and I went scrambling around covering your tracks, maybe someone illegally altered the official photos of Alex L. Mack that the NSA and FBI and DIA have, along with the California DMV and a few other databases. I just changed your jawline and your lips by a few pixels here and there, so it’s not really noticeable if a person glances at the photo, but it’s totally enough to flag as a non-match because of the algorithms in the facial recognition software.”
Alex winced. “But what’s going to happen to the women they flagged?”
“You mean the 1243 females and 2 males?” Willow told her, “Well, most of them will get rejected because they don’t have the right body type or body shape or body size. But the rest? The NID’s being huge buttheads about this, so the FBI or the DIA will have to check out every one of those women, and I’ll monitor things, so if anybody looks like they’re going to get accused of being Terawatt, we can go save ’em.”
Alex clenched her teeth, but she figured that would have to do. For now, anyway.
* * *
On Wednesday, after she picked up Shar, Marsha came over. Then Alex gave them both a half an hour of training in using their telekinesis. Half an hour — with breaks in the middle — was about all she could do before Shar lost her concentration and got cranky. But Alex agreed to do it every Wednesday, as long as she was in town at the time.
After Shar left the room, Marsha showed the sneaky TK trick she’d been working on. She flipped a coin in the air and caught it in her hand and slapped it on the back of her other hand. And it was heads. She did it ten times in a row, and made it come out heads nine of the ten tries. She grinned. “My brother’s always doing this to see who does the dishes after dinner. I’ve already won way more than usual lately. Just lucky, I guess.”
Alex warned her not to get too carried away with it, because she really needed to not get in trouble using superpowers.
That night, right after dinner, while she was getting started on homework and also doing her TK exercises with the freeweights, she got an SRI conference call on her tPhone. That was probably not good.
Jack asked, “Tera, we’re not calling at a bad time, are we?”
“No, this is actually a pretty good time, tonight. Even if Shar’s in here with me.”
Willow chimed in, “Shar, this is Auntie Willow. Would you do me a favor and go watch ‘The Iron Giant’ until Alex tells you it’s okay to come back in?”
Shar grinned. “Oh, sure! I didn’t want to write out this stuff anyway. It’s boring.”
Jack said, “Okey-dokey. I have Finn and Harriman here, you two on the line, and Miller and Lupo down Mexico way. I wanted to give a few FYIs and get everyone’s thoughts on the matters. First off, Terawatt has an official night off for Friday, for reasons already covered. No one calls her until Saturday nine ack emma her time at the absolute earliest. Got it?”
He got a chorus of ‘yes, sir’ replies.
He went on, “Hammond passed me some more CIA docs. They found out that North Korea’s been trying to buy truckloads of dangerous biochemicals. Plus radium. They think The Eternal President wants his mad scientists to try ol’ Doc Deemer’s plan on for size, but we know that won’t work on mammals without Walsh-level gene tampering.”
Riley pointed out, “Sir, they do eat plenty of invertebrates. And I would not be happy if they created a squid the size of the Astrodome.”
Jo added, “I’m still not convinced that stuff would be safe to eat, sir.”
Jack continued, “There are some other possibilities, but the CIA numbers say they’re definitely not importing enough food to cover their deficit, and they’re having a comparatively hard winter, and due to flooding in the spring, their arable land was even smaller than usual for the summer, so they’re expecting a serious famine this winter. If this turns out to be an SRI problem, we may have to deal with a lot more than Team One and Team Two can handle. Like … what would happen if half of Seoul got splattered with teratogenic biochemicals. So I’d like each of you to come up with two or three things the NK might be up to, and any thoughts on handling the crisis if they pull it off, or even if they fail drastically.”
Everyone said okay to that, even Alex. Even if she pretty much figured it was going to be giant bugs that Americans didn’t eat, like spiders or cockroaches. Scorpions! Eww, giant scorpions would be nasty.
Then Jack handed things off to Willow, who said, “Okay, Red Tree Software did its thing on the Secret Service intranet. Their gateway from the main DHS IT stuff is still in good shape, and already stopped three hacking attempts from the stuff that got into their intranet. But someone really good used the gateway to the White House staff’s private network, which they got into through a classic P$ychon4ut-style attack. So there was a nasty little cuckoo’s egg sitting where it shouldn’t be. That code looked way too familiar. So I pulled up some copies of cracker code I analyzed a few years ago. Parts were an exact match and parts looked like natural evolutions of those approaches. So I think I need you guys to check and make sure William Robert Halsey is still in the Texas State Penitentiary and not an escapee, because I think P$ychon4ut’s on the loose again, and that’s totally of the bad.”
Jack added, “Okay, and while we’re on ‘totally of the bad’ stuff, the Russians haven’t been able to find any trace of their missing sub, and we’ve got sound detection across the polar ice cap under the ice protecting the old out-of-date DEW line, and they’re not picking it up, either. So no one has any idea where it is. It didn’t go west to the Atlantic, it didn’t go east to the Pacific, it didn’t go north to the pole, and it didn’t stick around the bay where that museum’s set.”
Willow cheerfully asked, “Has it gotten a citation for loitering, maybe?”
Jack grumbled, “I really doubt we’d be lucky enough that the guys who put all this time and effort into stealing it just forgot to learn how to operate it, and they’re on the bottom of the ocean in a crushed sub now.”
* * *
So Alex had all that kind of stuff looming overhead while she prepared for Homecoming. She left her dress at Marni’s Boutique until Friday, so Shar wouldn’t get into it, but she drove down and tried it on again to make sure it fit just right and her shoes looked great with it. Then she and the rest of the Homecoming Court and the escorts had to practice walking out to the middle of the football field and standing in the right places, until the vice-principal was happy. Alex really didn’t see how this was supposed to be complicated. All they had to do was walk out with their escorts, stand in a line while the escorts went off to the side, let the Homecoming Queen stand in the middle of the line, and clap when the Homecoming Queen got her sash and bouquet of roses.
But she had butterflies in her stomach Friday night. Really huge butterflies. How could she be nervous about this, when she had flown off and done really major stuff? Maybe it was because she hadn’t really believed she’d get to walk out there and really be the Homecoming Queen, which maybe meant more to her than she’d been willing to admit. She could still remember all the times in elementary school and middle school and high school when she’d have been willing to do anything to be the popular girl who got to be the prom queen or whatever.
Just in case, she was sitting in the stands with her cameras, instead of getting down on the field like usual. And she had her makeup and hair all done, and her lingerie already on under her shirt and overalls, and her dress and heels ready to go, back in the girls’ locker room. And her mom and dad and Shar and Ray were sitting with her, and Shar was so excited she was vibrating. Shar was so excited she was kicking her legs constantly and making the whole row of seats vibrate.
“Hey, there, is this seat taken?”
She knew that voice! She gasped in astonishment, and when she turned, it really was Jack! With Willow! They’d both come all the way out just to see her be Homecoming Queen!
She jumped up and hugged both of them and tried really hard not to cry because she’d ruin her mascara and eyeliner. And the false eyelashes that she thought were too much but Nicole had talked her into because they were going to be under football lights a hundred feet from the stands.
Jack grinned at her reaction. “Finn and Scott and Walters wanted to be here, too, but they drew the short straws so they’re stuck on duty.”
“At least he gave my daughter the night off.”
Alex gasped at that voice, too. It was Janet! And Hanna! And Hanna looked so pretty with her hair styled like that and the Taylor Swift eye makeup and that perfect lipcolor and those high cheekbones. She looked like a supermodel, only shorter.
Alex hugged them, too. “I can’t believe you all came out to see me, I love you so much!”
Hanna said, “I have to take lots of pictures, because Grover and Cindy could not come, and Riley and Jo had to be on duty, and Graham said he had some kind of assignment from Jack.”
Alex’s dad told her, “Well, I’ll take pictures with Alex’s good Canon, and you can take pictures with her GoPro unless you have something better.”
Her mom disagreed. “I don’t think so, George. I’m going to take the pictures with Alex’s Canon. I still remember those vacation photos before Alex took over as the family shutterbug.”
Her dad pretended to grumble. “Boy you take a couple thousand out-of-focus photos where you accidentally lose the top two feet of the picture so everyone’s head gets cut off, and no one ever lets you forget.”
Willow volunteered, “I’m pretty good with that GoPro, if you haven’t used one before.”
Shar gushed, “Auntie Willow’s super-smart, so she can do anything!”
Jack told Shar, “I keep telling her that, but she thinks I’m biased, for some weirdo reason. Maybe she’ll listen to you.”
Willow gave him a pretend swat on the arm and smiled. “Hush, you.”
Then the football game was really tense, and she got some great photos of some awesome plays, even if they went into the lockers at halftime trailing by a field goal.
Well, she had to sprint for the girls’ locker room, too, because she had to get into her formal gown and check her makeup and her hair. Okay, she had her makeup and hair done already, and she just had to touch up her hairstyle, and she knew she had a few extra minutes if she needed it because she was going to be the last member of the court to get called onto the field.
Mrs. Wright was in the girls’ locker room guarding everything and checking on stuff, while several volunteers were there to help. Robyn and Mina were there, so Alex was sure her stuff was totally safe. She stepped out of the overalls, unbuttoned her shirt, and kicked off her sneaks and socks. Presto! Right after she adjusted her bra, she was ready to put on the dress and heels, and she was done. Mina touched up Alex’s hair a little more, and then Alex made sure everyone else was ready, too. Kelly was wearing four-inch spiked heels, and Alex didn’t see how Kelly thought she was going to walk across a trampled football field in those.
Then everything went off just great, even if Alex was pretty sure Kelly’s heels sank into the soil more than once, and Kelly had to hang onto her escort’s arm pretty hard a couple of times. And when Ray walked her out as Homecoming Queen, with everyone cheering for her, and Shar screeching like crazy in the stands, she felt … amazing. She felt this swelling happiness inside her that made her so joyful it was all she could do not to burst into tears.
Then, when they all walked off the field together, Kelly complained, “I can’t believe how stinky Mike was when he walked me out!”
Well, duh. Mike had been on the field playing hard for the whole first half. How could he not be stinky? Alex just didn’t want to think about how bad his rental tux was going to smell when he turned it back in.
And Kelly had dirt all over the heels of her brand-new pumps from where her heels sank into the field. Alex was so glad she was wearing low heels.
Then the team made a last-second comeback and won by a point in the last two minutes of the game, so everyone was totally excited when they went into the dance in the gym.
And then Ray didn’t mind dancing with her pretty much the whole time, and he must have been practicing, because he was so much better than last year. And she really liked slow-dancing with him and just nestling in his arms. And Jack and Willow played chaperones and danced, too, and wow was Jack a good dancer. And Willow looked beautiful in her green dress. The two of them looked like movie stars playing ‘chaperones at the dance’ in a high school movie.
At the end of the dance, Alex walked with Ray out to his car. Jack whisked Willow past them and called out, “See you at breakfast tomorrow morning!”
Willow added, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”
Ray whispered, “I don’t think I can think of anything Willow wouldn’t do.”
Alex thought about that bag of sex stuff Willow gave her back at San Diego Comic Con, and she sort of had to agree. And she was pretty sure Jack and Willow were going straight to a hotel room to do stuff Alex didn’t want to hear about.
* * *
Alex woke up as soon as the alarm went off. It was early Saturday morning, and she had stuff to do! Willow and Jack were coming over for breakfast, and so she needed to shower and be dressed, and then clean in the living room and kitchen, and then start on whatever was supposed to be the breakfast for the morning. Alex wasn’t sure, but she thought it was cinnamon rolls, which Shar loved, especially if she could get lots of extra icing on hers.
So she showered and dressed before she woke Shar up. Shar burrowed under her pillow. “But I don’t wanna get up!”
Alex said in a sing-song, “Auntie Willow and Uncle Jack are coming for breakfast!”
The pillow went flying, and Shar popped out of the bed like it was a toaster. “Okay!”
Alex grabbed the pillow in mid-air with her TK and put it back on Shar’s bed. She said, “You go ahead and get dressed, and I’ll get started downstairs.”
“Okay!”
But when Alex got to the kitchen, there was a note from her mom that said, “Coffee and milk and juice only.” Okay, that was easy, because there was already a pitcher of orange juice in the fridge. Alex started the coffeemaker and went into the living room to clean up.
Telekinesis was one of the best powers ever. Alex had Shar’s Barbie stuff scooped up into her Barbie storage box, and the newspapers and magazines all picked up and folded and put in the wicker basket, and the cushions all straightened on the couch and chairs, even before she had the wall unit dusted or the rug vacuumed. And since she was doing all of it at the same time, she had the whole room ready even before the coffee was ready.
Her folks were dressed and in the kitchen before she got back. Her mom said, “Oh, good, you saw my note. Jack’s bringing the cinnamon rolls.”
Alex found her mouth starting to water. “Did you tell him to get ’em at Gloria’s?”
Her dad just smiled and nodded.
An SUV pulled up, and four people piled out. Alex ran out and hugged everyone, even Jack. Especially Jack, because there was no way Janet and Hanna could have come if Jack hadn’t gone out of his way to be a nice guy.
Jack smiled. “Okay, everybody inside, we’ve got to finish breakfast before Alex has to rush off to learn wacky stuff.”
Willow complained, “Jack saw everything in the case at the shop, and he had to buy eight of the assorted dozens to take home for everybody.”
Jack insisted, “Yeah, one each for Hanna, Grover, Harriman, Scott, Walters, and Finn. And two for me and Charlie, because Charlie’s a doughnut hound.”
Willow said in a pretend whisper, “Yeah, because Jack definitely won’t get into the doughnuts on the flight back.”
Hanna smiled. “I wanted to try one of everything Gloria had in her case, but she said some of them would not keep well without refrigeration.”
Alex grinned. “Well, the next time you come out and visit, we’ll go over there and you can try the éclair and the Bavarian cream and like that. They’re awesome. They’re like the best doughnuts on the planet.”
Jack said, “I really wanted to try that maple bar with bacon, but someone fussed that I was gonna spoil my appetite.”
Alex nodded. “Oh, yeah! It’s way better than I thought it would be. I mean, I thought ‘Bacon? On a doughnut? Eww!’ But it was awesomely good.”
But her mom said with a smirk, “Alex says every one of Gloria’s creations is great. That might be because Gloria uses Alex as her taste tester.”
Her dad told everyone, “I have to admit, Alex and I have tried doughnut places from Marin County down to Anaheim, and Gloria’s is the best doughnut place we’ve ever found. There’s a few haute cuisine doughnut shops in San Francisco that the food snob crowd likes, but for the pure doughnut, you gotta go with Gloria’s.”
Alex added, “Yeah, that crème brulée one at that expensive place was pretty good, but the pesto one? Yuck.”
Shar came bouncing into the kitchen. “Auntie Willow! Uncle Jack! Aunt Hanna!” She hugged everyone and leapt into Hanna’s arms. Alex wasn’t worried about Shar knocking Hanna over, because — hello! — Hanna. And Hanna introduced Shar to Janet, too.
Shar looked wide-eyed over at Jack and whispered loudly, “Is she the one with the really giant needles?”
Janet glared at Jack. “Colonel …”
But Jack just gave Shar a wide-eyed look back and nodded yes.
Janet knelt down and cooed, “Honey, I wouldn’t use big needles on a cute little girl like you. I only bring out the big needles for very naughty colonels.”
Willow added, “And Jack’s the naughtiest colonel ever!”
Jack smiled. “I even have my official membership badge from the Very Naughty Colonels Association.”
Shar looked at him suspiciously. “Really?”
He nodded eagerly, even as Willow stood behind him and mouthed ‘no way’.
After they chowed down on awesomely yummy cinnamon rolls, Willow set up her laptop computer in the home office. Okay, Alex was still eating her fourth one when Jack led her in and closed the door.
Willow said, “We’re good to go. I’ve got the VPN up and encryption’s at maximum.” She cleared her throat and asked, “Is anybody on?”
“Major Finn, with Sergeants Scott and Walters.”
“Captain Miller with Lieutenant Marshall.”
“Lieutenant Lupo with Lieutenant Bailey and Sergeant Carlson.”
Jack said, “Okay, Team One, I’m bringing the world’s best doughnuts back to base. Swing by HQ this afternoon to get yours.”
“Yes, sir.”
Then Jack started, “Miller, I believe you’re up at bat.”
“Yes, sir. Lieutenant Marshall and I made a quiet visit to the Texas state pen. We claimed we were an HWAAA team investigating a hazardous waste exposure claim by a former inmate, and we wanted to take blood draws from a random sample of twenty current inmates to test for lead and cadmium levels. It was easy to ‘accidentally’ get William Robert Halsey in that sample. They have someone sitting in that jail cell, but it’s definitely not William Robert Halsey. He looks close enough to pass a rough inspection, but it’s not him. And his picture matches their files exactly, so he’s the same guy who was hauled to the prison in the first place. That means the swap was made before Halsey ever got to the prison, and there’s been an impostor there for several years.”
Lieutenant Marshall followed. “I took blood draws, and just in case, we really will check for heavy metal levels, but I’m already working on a fake report to the prison warden telling him there aren’t any elevated levels, and he’s off the hook.”
Miller said, “IT pulled up the Texas state prisoner records. There’s a tripwire on Halsey’s files, so someone wants to see if anybody ever needs to check on him. So our guys didn’t touch his files. They did an end run and just looked in the records of the prison and found the names of the men who delivered Halsey to the pen in the first place. Two Texas state corrections officers. Carl Rodgers retired early and moved to Mexico, but a quick check indicates he’s not at the listed address and he has apparently vanished. Thomas Hernandez disappeared shortly after the prison transfer, it isn’t known exactly when because he was taking a week’s vacation immediately after, so he could have vanished anywhere from right before the transfer up to a full week later. Oh, no, that’s not suspicious at all.”
Jack thought out loud. “So … Rodgers and Hernandez could have done the transfer with the fake Halsey, then taken a huge payoff, only Hernandez took the money and ran. Or Rodgers did it with someone who just looked like Hernandez, then he stalled a little until he could ‘retire’, and then vanished. And someone else must be getting a hell of a payoff to sit in a prison cell for years.”
Willow looked really worried. “Jack, this took a lot of planning and coordination and big cash dollars. I’m afraid P$ychon4ut might be working for The Collective now.”
Jack grimaced. “And no one in the world can stop him except you and Bruce Schneier? Great!”
Willow patiently explained, “Well, it wasn’t just me and Bruce. It was hundreds of white hats all over the world, helping each other here and there. But plenty of us can keep him out, and I can definitely harden all the DHS sites against his fave evil tricks. Unless dumb people keep downloading porn and watching inappropriate streaming videos and reading email then clicking on links only a bonobo would be dumb enough to fall for.”
Jack’s left eyebrow rose sharply. “A bonobo?”
Willow nodded. “Yeah. Definitely not smart enough to be a chimpanzee. Besides, it’s more fun to say ‘bonobo’ and I need something of the fun right now.”
Jack said, “Okay. Good work, men. And I’ll tell our IT guys they did good. So that P$ychon4ut-like attack on the EPA firewall for the Downingtown problem could have been the real P$ychon4ut. And The Collective could have a cracker who’s a challenge even for our hacker. I’m really getting fed up with those guys.”
After the call, Willow smiled at Jack. “Wow, you went a whole conference call without calling your IT guys Homer and Jethro.”
Jack grinned. “Well, we just hired a new guy, so now there’s three of them. So they’re Larry, Moe, and Curly.”
“Jack!” Alex and Willow complained at the same time.
“Manny, Moe, and Jack?”
Willow fussed, “They do have real names, you know!” But Alex had no idea who ‘Manny, Moe, and Jack’ were even supposed to be, so Jack had to explain it to her. Geez, she didn’t even know the Pep Boys were supposed to have first names.
Alex gave everybody more hugs before she changed into Terawatt and flew off to her martial arts lesson. But she told Jack he had to get her some video of Hanna on her school’s Homecoming Court.
When Alex got home and showered again and came downstairs for lunch, Shar couldn’t wait to tell all about spending time with Uncle Jack and Auntie Willow before they had to go home. Jack had asked her about her dolls, and given her some suggestions about what Terawatt Barbie would be doing, and had watched some cartoons with her and told her about Space Ghost and the Herculoids, so now Shar wanted to see them, too, and he’d read to Shar while Willow snuck around getting video of him doing funny voices for the characters in the book.
As they cleaned up the kitchen after lunch, Alex’s dad told her mom, “You know, I keep saying Jack is too old for Willow, but when I see them together … Maybe they’re just right for each other.”
Alex’s mom smiled. “You know, Jack would be a really great father.”
Alex insisted, “He already is. And neither of their houses is big enough for a new baby, or even the rest of the other person’s stuff.”
Her dad looked at her mom and grinned. “Sounds like someone’s been thinking a lot about this.”
* * *
And in another week and a half, two more Sunday kung fu lessons had gone by, and Terawatt hadn’t had to rush off to save anyone. And Hanna had looked just amazingly gorgeous in her school’s Homecoming Court, because Jack got some really great video footage and emailed it to Alex. Alex had to admit that Jack’s son was a really good-looking guy. Hanna could totally do worse than Charlie O’Neill.
And the TK lessons with Marsha and Shar were going really well, even if their TK was pretty low-level. But both of them could push a soccer ball around, so the three of them played some TK soccer where you had to stand still and try to push the soccer ball around the back yard and between someone else’s legs. Alex thought it was really fun, but both Marsha and Shar had headaches when they were done, and Shar was really cranky about it, so she needed to remember not to overwork either of them.
And it was finally Thanksgiving vacation. Alex and her mom had baked sixteen pies, which were all wrapped in plastic wrap and stored on the food-only shelves in the garage way away from the chemistry stuff, along with cinnamon rolls and apple fritters from Gloria’s for breakfasts, and loaves of banana walnut bread that Shar had seen her friend Sophie and Sophie’s mom make and so she wanted to bake some for the holiday. And there was a twenty-five pound Thanksgiving turkey thawing in a plastic liner in the big sink in the laundry room.
Even if, every time the turkey came up in conversation, one of her parents made a ‘what are the rest of us going to eat after Alex eats the whole turkey’ joke. It totally wasn’t her fault she had a healthy appetite.
The fold-out couch in the home office and the nice bed in the guest bedroom were ready. All the vacuuming and dusting was done. Alex had changed the sheets on her bed and Shar’s bed, and she had sleeping bags and camping mattresses and camping pillows on the floor in her room. Shar had insisted on sleeping in a sleeping bag next to Alex, as soon as Alex said she was taking one of the sleeping bags. That was mega-convenient, because Alex had been planning on making Shar take a sleeping bag anyway, so Annie and Willow could have the beds.
And Alex’s mom had told everyone that George’s ‘niece’ was living with them, and that Alex’s friend Willow was going to drive down to spend Thanksgiving with them because her parents were both out of town.
Since they needed to pick up four people flying in on three different flights, they took two cars to the airport. It worked out pretty well, since Aunt Ashley’s flight got in late, and then Annie’s flight was right on time, and then grandma and grandpa’s flight got in a few minutes early, so there wasn’t a huge gap in between plane arrivals.
Shar was awestruck when Aunt Ashley came sashaying out of the security area with the rest of her flight crew. She looked really pretty in her uniform, and she looked really happy. As soon as she spotted Alex and her folks, she headed right over.
Shar just stared at her and said, “Wow. I wanna be a flight attendant when I grow up!”
Aunt Ashley laughed and knelt down expertly to give Shar a hug. “So you’re my new niece, huh?”
Shar asked, “Can you teach me to be a flight attendant, too?”
Aunt Ashley smiled. “Sure. It’s a ton of fun, and I get to fly all over the place. I’m planning on taking Alex to Paris next summer as a graduation present.”
“Wow! Do you have to speak France to go there?”
Ashley gave Shar another little hug and said, “No, but I do speak a little French, and the more of a language you speak, the more options you have for fun things to do when you go visit.”
Shar grinned. “I’m learning Spanish in school!”
Ashley grinned back. “That’s great. If you speak Spanish, you can visit Mexico, or Spain, or most of Central America, or most of South America. So you should definitely work on your Spanish for when you get older.”
Ashley only had one small checked suitcase to pick up, and she just called her airline’s baggage claim guys to have it pulled and set aside in the airline’s luggage office downstairs. Then they sat and talked in a busy coffee shop until Annie’s flight came in.
Annie thought Shar was cute as a bug, too. Even if Alex had carefully told Annie over the phone — in euphemisms that only the two of them and Ray would understand — that Shar wasn’t an ordinary eight-year-old. And grandma and grandpa — her mom’s parents — were perfectly content with the explanation that they had taken in her dad’s niece Charlene when Shar’s father died in a horrible fire.
They scooped up everyone’s luggage and drove home, with Alex driving Shar and Aunt Ashley and Annie and grandma. And then Willow arrived and brought four of her chocolate cakes, and put her one tote bag in Alex’s room in the corner.
Annie pulled Alex aside and gasped, “Willow Rosenberg! WILLOW ROSENBERG! You invited Willow Rosenberg to come for Thanksgiving? Willow Rosenberg comes to our house for Thanksgiving? Willow Rosenberg bakes cakes for you?”
Alex explained about Willow’s boyfriend having to go to a thing run by his late wife’s family, so she wasn’t welcome, and her family was opposed to Thanksgiving, with Willow’s mom speaking at a protest march on the East Coast, so she had no one to be with. And she was ‘Auntie Willow’ to Shar.
Annie shook her head and breathed deeply until she got herself under control again. “You have the weirdest life in the world. You know that?”
Alex shrugged. “Well, maybe not THE weirdest, but it’s kind of not normal. Some of the time.”
Annie challenged her, “Oh, yeah? Name five people with weirder lives.”
“Okay … Maggie Walsh. Danielle Atron. Colonel Jack. Hanna. And Shar.”
But Annie disagreed on everyone except Hanna and Shar, and she couldn’t disagree on them because stuff had been mega-weird for them starting with how they were even born.
Over dinner, Alex’s mom and dad filled her grandparents and aunt in on everything. Well, everything they were cleared to know. They talked all about how Alex got awesome grades and was taking AP courses and got awesome SAT scores and was already accepted into a good college for next fall, and got chosen Homecoming Queen, too. Annie was getting top grades at MIT and had been selected for a really big internship over the previous summer and was still in the running for valedictorian of her graduating class. Shar was adjusting well, and in the ‘smart’ class in her grade, and making lots of friends, and learning Spanish, too. Willow was the head of her own computer software company and was best friends with Alex and was Shar’s ‘auntie’ and knew Annie, too. Alex’s mom had her Master’s degree now and was working in a more important job. Alex’s dad was head of research at the plant. All that stuff. Just nothing about Danielle Atron or kidnappings or Terawatt. And her grandparents told about what they’d been doing, and what old friends of Alex’s mom and Aunt Ashley were up to, and lots of things like that.
With all the chitchat, dinner ran really long. Like ‘past Shar’s bedtime’ long. So everybody got their choice of desserts before anyone got up from the table. Since there were four different kinds of pies, and lots of chocolate cake, and two kinds of ice cream not counting her mom’s Ben & Jerry’s which was hidden at the back of the freezer, and a box of Gloria’s doughnuts, no one went away hungry. In fact, everyone except Alex left the table feeling like they were going to explode. Grandpa was insisting that at this rate he wouldn’t fit in an airplane seat when it was time to fly home on Sunday.
Alex and Annie and Willow cleaned up in the kitchen with grandma, while Aunt Ashley helped Alex’s mom put Shar to bed in one of the sleeping bags, and Alex’s dad showed grandpa some of Shar’s artwork. They all just chatted and had fun and made Willow feel more comfortable. Then Alex snuck down after all the relatives went to bed, and she had more food. Then she had to brush her teeth again. She went ahead and showered, so she was set in the morning, when things would be crowded in the bathrooms.
When she snuck back into the bedroom, Annie and Willow both lifted their heads off their pillows and asked, “Did you go get more to eat?”
Alex said, “Well, yeah, I can’t eat enough in front of them. I figure tomorrow will be okay, because I’ll eat breakfast, then Thanksgiving dinner here at noon, then Thanksgiving dinner at Ray’s at three, then snacks here tomorrow night.”
Annie groaned. “I still feel too full! Only you could eat two huge Thanksgiving Day dinners and then be thinking about how to get enough to eat later.”
Willow smiled. “Well, only you can do it and not look like Jabba the Hutt, because if I did it, I’d weigh about six hundred pounds now.”
Alex murmured, “If you were doing it because you’d been exposed to GC-161, you’d look just like you do now.”
Annie frowned. “I need to go on a diet.”
“No! You don’t!” Alex insisted. “You’d just feel better if you got more exercise. And if you got more exercise, you might have more energy for schoolwork, too.”
Willow whispered, “You look fine. And I bet you already get plenty of exercise walking to classes every day.”
Annie mentioned, “I thought about getting a bike and biking to classes, which would give me more time, too, because my trips between buildings would be shorter, but you wouldn’t believe how many bikes get ripped off every month on the university campuses in the area. It’s a huge business for the bike thieves.”
Willow suggested, “Get a really crummy bike no one would want to swipe, like maybe an old one-speed or a two-speed, with scratches all over the paintjob, and if it’s old enough the front wheel won’t be detachable either, so no one will be swiping just your wheel, and then you also won’t care if it gets wet or dirty or scratched up.”
Annie thought about it for a couple of seconds. “That’s a really good idea.”
Willow said, “You can leave it out in the rain and snow and not care, just put a cheap shower cap over the seat when you’re not riding it so it’ll stay dry, because having a wet butt is no fun.”
Alex snuggled into her sleeping bag, and a sound-asleep Shar snuggled against her. Alex wrapped an arm over Shar and dozed off.
* * *
On Thanksgiving morning, Alex woke up from the smells. The coffee for breakfast. The already-baking turkey, which was so big her mom had to get up at like five to get it in the oven so it would be done by 11:30. Boy, she hoped her mom was able to go back to sleep after that.
Alex should totally have done that instead of her mom, because she could move the turkey and get it into the oven way faster with her TK. Now that she was thinking about it, she felt really bad about not thinking of it earlier.
And breakfast was yummy. Apple fritters from Gloria’s! She had two. Aunt Ashley split one with grandma. The desserts were all prepared for the big Thanksgiving meal, but they still had to make the rest of the main course, while the guys watched sports and Shar tried unsuccessfully to talk them into watching “The Iron Giant” with her, and grandpa taught Shar about pro football and why the New York Giants were the best, and why she should always root against the Washington Redskins, even if they were playing the Dallas Cowboys. Shar was happy to go along, since grandpa’s favorite team had the word ‘giant’ in their name. The salad was already done, and in a couple of huge baggies in the fridge. The peas with pearl onions, and the already-baked dinner rolls, and the dressing all would get heated later. But the sweet potatoes still had to be roasted so they could get mashed and then mixed with raisins and then baked with marshmallows on top. Mmm. And the gravy wouldn’t get made until the turkey came out of the oven. And then there were the mashed potatoes. It was a good thing they had two ovens and a microwave and a stove with five burners, because there was no more room at all in the one oven after that turkey went in.
And grandma and grandpa had brought two boxes of chocolates! Alex snitched chocolates all morning long. They were pretty good. And it wasn’t her fault, because she didn’t get enough to eat at breakfast with everyone watching.
After the big dinner at noon, most of the house wanted to take naps. So Alex put away food and cleaned up in the kitchen with anyone who wanted to help, like Willow. It would have been way faster if no one was watching, but she couldn’t use her telekinesis if a grandparent or aunt might walk in and catch her. Then she changed her top and went over to Ray’s house for the Alvarado family Thanksgiving dinner. She took one of her pumpkin pies. There was more roast turkey but with stuffing instead of dressing, and Ray’s mom made a really yummy stuffing that had plenty of spices and chopped nuts. Mmm.
After she helped Ray’s mom put away leftovers and clean up, she necked with Ray in the back yard for a little bit, and then went home. She saw the SUV wasn’t in the driveway, so she asked Annie what was up.
Annie explained, “Grandma and grandpa and Aunt Ashley wanted to buy Christmas presents for Shar, and I think a ‘congrats on your college acceptance’ gift for you, and maybe some more chocolates because someone ate most of ’em already. So Mom and Dad took ’em all to one of the malls.” Alex pretended she wasn’t embarrassed about eating the chocolates.
Shar popped up. “Yeah! So maybe now I could show Annie some stuff?”
Willow came downstairs and asked, “Ooh, are you gonna do some firebending?”
“Wait, firebending?” Annie checked. “I didn’t hear about this one.”
Alex told her, “Shar is a pyrokinetic, and she’s started learning Northern Shaolin kung fu. So … kung fu plus fire blasts equals firebending.”
Shar announced, “I am so gonna kick Azula’s ass! She’s eeee-vil.”
Alex patiently said, “Shar? Language.”
“Okay, I’m gonna kick her heinie. I don’t like her. She’s creepy. And mean.”
So Alex got talked into going out in the back yard with Shar and showing Annie and Willow some tag-team superheroine action. Shar wanted to fly around and blast stuff, but Alex made her promise to keep her fire to little things that were just for show. As a compromise, Alex ended up flying around the backyard with Shar as her ‘wingman’ and ‘blasting’ pretend bad guys, even if Alex only ran a few sparks between her hands.
Annie and Willow oohed and ahhed as Shar ‘flew’ around with Alex and punched the air with little bursts of fire. It was pretty cute, as long as Shar didn’t get carried away and maybe burn down the trees in the back yard or set fire to the shed with all the martial arts gear inside it.
Or at least it was cute until Annie gasped, and Alex whirled around in mid-air to see Aunt Ashley standing on the back porch watching them and looking like she might faint.