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the school and
I know what kind of grades you’re getting. You can go to one movie with a boy
of your choice the day they tell me you’re working on straight As. Rule two
is, no friends.”
    “What?”
    “I know what
kind of friends a girl like you is likely to have. Smokers. Giggling little
no-brains. Probably a couple of drug users. That ends now. After school,
you’ll come straight home and do your chores and your homework. Then you and I
are going to watch television every night from eight until nine thirty.”
    Maggie’s lips
pressed together. “What happens at nine thirty?” she asked.
    “Bedtime,”
Grandma said.
    Rule three was
no allowance. What would Maggie need money for, anyway, since she wasn’t going
to be hanging out with her friends and would have all her meals at home?
    Rule four was
no talking back.
    It went on
from there for a while. Maggie stopped listening. She pulled her knees up to
her chest and hugged them there. She closed her eyes and just let the words
wash over her, mixing with the music until it all just felt like wind in her
hair.
    “Which brings
us to rule seventeen,” Grandma said.

Chapter 8.
     
    “No, no, no,
you didn’t,” Lucy said, cradling Brent’s head against her chest. She ran one
hand over his hair, over and over. “You couldn’t possibly have.”
    He was crying
openly now. The events of the last week had totally undercut any idea he ever
had about being a tough guy. “He said it wasn’t safe, that we should probably
just leave. And it was so weird in there—I could barely hear his voice.
It was the last thing he ever said to me! And then I found that well
or—or whatever it was. It was closed off, there was a lid on top. But
it looked kind of loose, and I thought I wanted to see if there was anything
inside. I don’t know what I expected to find. But when the lid came off there
was something green and glowing down there and it was getting bigger—like
it was coming up from a long way down, coming up really fast.”
    Lucy kissed
him on the top of his head. Which was a little weird but he didn’t mind. It
felt kind of good.
    “Dad came
rushing up behind me. He was shouting but there was no sound at all,
everything was perfectly silent. He looked down into the well and then he
grabbed the lid and tried to put it back on but—but it was too late. It
was just too late. He was on fire, he was…”
    “You didn’t do
anything.”
    “Yes, exactly!
I didn’t stop him! I didn’t even try!”
    “No, no, no,
no,” Lucy said again, and pressed her lips against his forehead. There was so
much comfort in that kiss. It was amazing how good it felt just to have a
friend right then. “You didn’t know. You couldn’t possibly know.”
    “Oh my God,
Luce, it was so horrible. He—he melted while I watched. I would have
stayed there and just watched and probably got killed myself if Maggie hadn’t
come along. She saved me. If I’d been as smart as her, or as fast, maybe I
could have—I could have done something for Dad.”
    “No, no, no,
no,” Lucy repeated. “It wasn’t your fault.” She sat down next to him, so
close their thighs were touching, and wrapped her arms around him. She held
him tight while he shook and cried and got it out of his system.
    “Now he’s
gone,” Brent said. “I don’t know what to do. Everything is different—I
can’t talk to Grandma about this stuff. I keep thinking about what Dad would
want me to do with these new powers. He would want me to do good things, I
think. If I do good things, if I help people, maybe that’ll make up a little for
killing him. Do you think so?”
    “Shh,” she
said. “You didn’t kill him. And I think he’d be proud of you whatever you do.
I heard him say that like, a million times.”
    When his
sobbing had slowed down a little, when he wasn’t sucking in breath that he couldn’t
seem to swallow, he turned slightly in her arms and looked up at her. She was
smiling bravely. Like she