But she knew she should be surprised, so she eased up from her chair and crossed the room to examine the plate-shaped mark on the door. Vinaigrette oozed down between bits of lettuce pasted flat.
Prom date out, telekinesis in. Not a fair trade at all.
She didn’t clean up the mess. She knew she’d get in trouble if she left it until her parents came home, but that was just tough. She flounced into the living room, stretched out on the chaise, and tested her magical power. First she pressed the button on the TV remote without physically touching it. She was pleased to find her power had this much precision. She clicked through the shopping networks to a music channel. Now her levitation had a kick-ass sound track.
After a few moments of knocking magazines around on the side table, she turned to bigger objects. The more she used her power, the more the sparkling sensation raced through her body. She lifted the armchair five feet in the air, moved it across the room, and set it back down. She lifted the coffee table all the way to the ceiling and accidentally scraped the plaster. Hastily she lowered the table and set it down. She lifted the chaise she was sitting on and propelled it around the room, tilting it on its course, like a car in an animatronics-filled fantasy ride at Disneyland. She set it down in a new location and adjusted it a little so she could still see the music videos on TV.
Next she turned her attention to the sofa. Here she had a problem. She managed to make it hover a few inches off the floor, but this gave her a headache. Lifting heavy things hurt, just as if she were lifting them with her body rather than her mind. She preferred a happy medium between the addictive sparkles through her limbs and the pain in her head. She set the sofa down.
She lifted herself into the air, careful not to lift too high and hit her head on the ceiling. The chandelier was dusty, she noticed. This was the best feeling yet—producing the strongest sparkles—and she had only a lingering headache from her battle with the sofa. She moved all the furnishings exactly where she wanted them, then imagined opening the medicine cabinet in the hall bathroom and taking out the painkillers. When she saw the plastic bottle bobbing toward her down the hall, she opened a kitchen cabinet, removed a glass, and filled it with chilled water from the refrigerator. The glass had just arrived in front of her, and she was concentrating hard to defeat the child safety cap on the bottle without giving in and using her fingers, when the front door opened, scraping broken bits of plate along the marble floor.
“Sweetie,” her mom called, “we’re home for just a second. I forgot my pur—”
The painkiller bottle and the glass of water hit the floor. Pills and bits of glass splashed all the way to her mom’s sequined stilettos.
Holly and her mom stared at each other. She pictured how her mom must see her, floating in the air, no strings attached. She became painfully aware of the rock music blaring from the TV. It made her power seem underhanded, like her mom had caught her smoking pot.
“Peter,” her mom called sharply behind her. “It’s happened. I’ll get the shot.” Watching Holly, she stepped right through the mess of pills and broken glass and plate on her way to the kitchen.
Shot? Holly didn’t like shots, especially shots with sinister connotations of lying in wait for her. She picked up her mom with her mind and hung her in midair.
“Holly, Holly, careful, careful,” her mom protested. Out of the corner of her eye, Holly saw her mom careening against the kitchen light fixture. But Holly could only devote so much attention to her mom. She turned to focus on her dad coming through the doorway.
She didn’t get the chance. Her dad grabbed her neck. But he never touched her. He stayed in the doorway. Holly could tell from his intense gaze on her and the sudden pain in her throat, and her own experience of the last fifteen minutes, that he was squeezing her neck with his mind.
The world went red.
She lashed out at him with her magical power, a blind punch, to make him let her go.
The pressure on her neck released and she gasped at the same time she hit the marble floor hard on her hip. Before she could take another full breath, her mom sat on her and jabbed something into her arm. The shot. Holly knocked her mom off, flung the shot away, and tried to levitate out of harm’s way. But the excited sparkles drained out of her like her drool pooling on the cold stone floor.
“Peter!” Holly’s mom yelled. “Call Mr. Diamond!”
Holly wondered why her mom wanted to drag the owner of the casino into this. This dream was the strangest one she’d ever had. That was her last thought before she blacked out.
“Holly, sweetie,” her mom whispered. Her mom’s fingernails hissed through Holly’s hair, stroking, comforting. Holly opened her eyes.
She lay in her bed. Her mom leaned over her. Her dad and a balding man in a white coat—not Mr. Diamond, but a doctor she’d never met—stood at the foot of the bed, chatting quietly in concerned tones.
Looking past them, Holly tried to lift her copy of Romeo and Juliet off her desk. Nothing. Then her pencil cup, her pink stapler, her tennis tournament trophy from eighth grade. No movement, no tingle. Nothing.
“Do you remember what happened?” Holly’s mom asked.
“You gave me a shot!” Holly cried. “Dad tried to choke me!”
“No,” all three adults said sadly, as if they’d been afraid of this.
“We held you down while the doctor gave you a shot of medicine to stop your hallucinations,” her mom said gently. “We couldn’t control you. We didn’t want you to hurt yourself or one of us. You punched your father in the eye.”
Sure enough, Holly’s dad’s left eye was shaded, developing into a shiner. Holly shrank against the headboard.
“Holly, I’m Dr. Gray.” The physician approached the bed. “You have a condition called mental adolescent dysfunction,” he said in the tone of the narrator of antiquated films about menstruation that Holly’s PE teacher had shown in middle school. “It’s a psychiatric disorder that presents in puberty. The bad news is that this is a serious condition. In the past, people have been institutionalized their whole lives with the disease. But the good news,” he went on quickly as Holly started to hyperventilate, “is that it’s easily controlled with medicine. We gave you the initial dose in the shot.” He pulled a prescription bottle from his pocket and shook it. Pills rattled inside. “Take one of these every night before bed. Don’t ever take more, don’t ever miss a dose, and you should be fine.” He set the bottle on her bedside table.
“That’s not what happened,” Holly murmured.
“What do you mean?” Holly’s mom asked, playing along, like this was all one of Holly’s childhood tea parties when Holly was little.
“You and dad left for dinner,” Holly said. “While you were gone, I felt like I—”
The adults watched her.
She skipped that part. “You came back to get your purse. You yelled to Dad that you were getting the shot, like you had something ready and expected all this to happen. You told him to call Mr. Diamond.”
“Mr. Diamond!” Her dad laughed.
Holly pointed at her dad. “And you tried to choke me!”
Her dad flinched as if Holly had hit him. Again. She realized how serious this accusation was and how hurtful, but he had tried to choke her. Hadn’t he?
“Holly.” Dr. Gray pulled Holly’s desk chair close to her bed and sat down. “Your parents tell me you had a disagreement tonight. That’s how the disease manifests itself. Your parents made a decision to protect you, but you’re angry with them for having power over you. Your father is allowing you to work as his assistant so you can learn the magic trade, but you’re jealous and impatient. You want to be the magician.”
Holly squirmed. This might be true. But she would never dream of hurting her father to take over his act. No.
“These are common emotions, Holly,” Dr. Gray said. “All teenagers feel this way about their parents sometimes. The only difference between other teenagers and you is that you, unfortunately, have
a mental disorder that pushes your delusions of grandeur into the danger zone. When you were in that state, you probably thought you could fly or something.” He raised his eyebrows in question.
His description of what she’d experienced was too accurate to be wrong. She eyed him guiltily.
He didn’t seem to blame her, though. He patted her arm—ouch, on the sore spot where someone had given her the shot—and handed her a glossy pamphlet. “This will tell you more about the disease. Just take your medicine, Holly, and I think you’ll be fine. If you’re not, we’ll move to the next step.” Her parents followed him out of the room. Holly heard them walking him to the front door with good-byes and thanks for the emergency house call.
Tuning them out, Holly examined the pamphlet. On the front, a stick person held its head in its hands while teardrops sprang from its face. Another stick person put its arm around the first, lending comfort in 2-D.
WHAT IS MENTAL ADOLESCENT DYSFUNCTION?
Mental adolescent dysfunction (MAD) is a lifelong mental illness that strikes during puberty (≈ 14 years). The first episode is brought on by strong emotion. Thereafter, sufferers are plagued with delusions that they have magical powers. They may believe that they can:
• Move objects with their minds
• Read minds
• Control the minds of others
Most troubling, patients with MAD may become violent. Therefore, it is imperative that patients control their symptoms with medication at all times.
Holly’s own tears plopped onto the pamphlet and ran down the slick paper. Earlier her parents had forbidden her to date Elijah, and she’d thought that was the end of the world. Now she faced a lifetime of mental illness, a job bagging groceries, a room in a halfway house with the other crazies, or—God forbid—living with her parents forever.
She felt a little better when she opened the pamphlet. Inside were rainbows and butterflies. Both stick people stood upright and triumphant. They had taken their medicine.
Holly’s mom swept in and sat in the chair. She took the pamphlet from Holly and set it aside. She held Holly’s hand in both her cold hands and gazed at her, looking even older than she had earlier that evening. “Sweetie, the doctor says everything’s going to be okay. Nobody has any reason to be afraid of you as long as you take your medicine. But you know how cruel teenagers can be.” She squeezed Holly’s hand. “Don’t tell anyone what happened tonight. Don’t let anyone know you have MAD.”
“Don’t worry,” Holly said. She pictured herself announcing to her school, Guess what? I’m not just a fourteen-year-old showgirl anymore. I’m a violent fourteen-year-old showgirl with a mental disorder! No way would anybody ever hear about MAD from her. She might be crazy, but she wasn’t that crazy.
“The kids at school could make fun of you,” her mom understated. “If this health problem goes on your permanent record, you could have trouble getting into college or finding a job. It could be bad publicity for your father’s act. People hold such prejudice against the mentally ill.”
Holly’s eyes flitted to her dad, who glowered at her from the doorway. The red bruise under his eye had turned purple.
“Don’t even tell your best friends.” Her mom produced Holly’s cell phone, which she must have taken from Holly’s purse while Holly was unconscious. “Especially not Elijah Brown.”
Holly grabbed for the phone.
Her mom snatched it out of Holly’s reach. “You sent texts to that boy all day at school when you were supposed to be paying attention in class. You had countless messages from him today—”
Fourteen, Holly thought.
“—and another seven in the last hour,” her mother finished. “Seven!”
“What did they say?” Holly wailed.
“I erased them.” Her mom eyed her sternly. “Break up with him, or I will call his mother and break you up myself. Text him right now and tell him you can’t go with him to the matinee or the prom.” She handed Holly the phone.
Holly took it with a frustrated sigh. She didn’t want to break her date with such a cool guy, on a text. But honestly, she thought it might be for the best, now that she’d been diagnosed. Thank God she’d freaked out here at home. What if that had happened on a date, and she’d given Elijah a shiner?
Besides, breaking the date with him on a text was definitely better than her mom calling his mom, which might get around school. She didn’t need anything else added to her Ninth-Grade Freak tally.
She thought for a moment, then composed a message her mom would deem appropriate. But she made it sound stilted and un-text-message-y. She hoped Elijah would figure out that she’d been forced into it. She didn’t want him to hate her. Cringing, she handed the phone over.
I’m sorry to cancel our dates to the prom and magic show. My parents and I concluded it’s not the right decision for me at this time.
Her mom read the screen, gave Holly a satisfied nod, and pushed send. She tossed the phone backward to Holly’s dad, who fumbled with it and dropped it. There was no real magic in this family.
Her mom rubbed Holly’s arm and stood up. “Get some sleep, sweetie. We’ve all had a hard night, but you need to go to school tomorrow so no one suspects anything’s wrong.” As she passed Holly’s dad leaning in the doorway, she put her hand on his chest. Then her high heels clicked across the marble floor of the living room, fainter and fainter.
Holly’s dad stepped forward to Holly’s bedside. “I’m sorry, kiddo.”
Holly swallowed. “I’m sorry for hitting you. I thought you were trying to kill me, seriously.”
“Don’t worry about that now,” he said hoarsely, on the verge of tears. “Just take your medicine.” He bent down and touched his forehead to Holly’s. This close, his black eye filled her field of vision. He rocked his forehead back and forth against hers. Then he kissed her on the tip of the nose, backed away, and turned off the light as he left the room, closing the door behind him.
Holly nestled down into her soft bed. She lay on her sore arm. She rolled over to the other side. Now she lay on her sore hip. In her faulty memory, she’d landed on her hip when she fell from midair. She wondered what had really happened.
She jerked upright in bed and switched on her lamp. During her hallucination, she’d punched her dad with her telekinetic power. In reality she must have punched him with her fist. He had a shiner. She would have a corresponding mark on her knuckles.
She gazed down at her hand, skin smooth, nails unbroken. She wiggled her fingers. They weren’t even sore.
She stared at her closed door. What if her parents had made up her disease? What if she really did have magical power?
She tried to open the door with her mind. Nothing happened. No delicious sparkly feeling at all.
Shaking her head, she turned off the lamp and snuggled down into bed again. The clock on her bedside table said that only an hour and a half had passed since Holly had sat at the kitchen table in front of that doomed plate of edamame. But her mom was right. Holly was bone tired, as she should be. She’d had a physical fight with her parents. She’d attacked and hurt her own dad. Her parents hadn’t made up her disease and then let Dr. Gray in on the secret. Only a crazy person would come up with a conspiracy theory like that.
Besides, her parents wouldn’t do that to her.
Elijah retrieved his backpack from his locker in the casino’s employee break room. He thumbed through the messages on his phone as he headed down the employee corridor toward the bus stop. But the message from Holly stopped him cold. Poker dealers and cocktail waitresses and someone dressed up as a giant banana flowed around him as he dropped his backpack on the industrial linoleum and read the message over and over, trying to make sense of it.
To think, this had started as the best day of his life. He’d had the balls to snag the seat behind Holly in English way back on the first day of ninth grade, but there his courage had failed him. The longer he stared at the back of her head and examined how each strand of
her rich brown hair caught the fluorescent lights of the classroom, the surer he became she was way too good for him. She lived in a mansion with her famous parents, who were the toast of the casino. Elijah lived in an apartment with his mom, who’d gotten him an unpaid apprenticeship at the casino after school so he wouldn’t get in trouble like his dad. It had taken him almost the entire school year to work up his courage again and ask Holly out, and she’d said yes. He’d bragged about her to the older guys on the lacrosse team, who’d turned on him and tried to hit him in the crotch with the ball for the rest of practice.
And now this. He’d been afraid of this when she abruptly stopped their long and funny text conversation a few hours ago. The casino didn’t allow cell phones during work. On his break halfway through his shift, he’d hurried back to his locker to check his messages. Nothing from her. He’d sent seven more hilarious one-liners into the abyss, because he was an optimist. And an idiot.
A giraffe elbowed him in the back, trying to get around him. Shoved off balance, Elijah nearly dropped his phone. The giraffe kept walking on four stilts as if nothing had happened. And that’s exactly how Elijah felt, staring at Holly’s message. He was the kind of guy to whom a beautiful girl could say yes and then no without a clear explanation. The kind of guy nobody noticed in a corridor full of musclemen and giraffes. A boy with no father. He looked up at the wide hall ahead of him, which was painted a dull white and ended in a vanishing point. This was his life.
His boss snapped him out of these thoughts. He was looking for Elijah because Mr. Diamond wanted to see him.
Elijah turned around and spotted his sawdusty boss a few steps behind him. “Why would the owner of the casino want to see me?” Everyone in the casino knew what Mr. Diamond looked like because his portrait was displayed in the entrances and the elevators and the bathrooms, but few employees had been granted an audience.