GBVE: Jennifer Echols

ATTENTION: Before reading, get information about the Great Blog Voice Experiment here.

The topic: “A young woman confronts her parents after discovering she has inherited telekinetic powers.”

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The street in front of the casino was blocked to traffic. Pink and blue lights flashed on the faces of a crowd of tourists gazing up. At the top of a hundred-foot pole, on a tiny platform, stood my dad. His arms were down, head down, eyes closed, like he was concentrating with all his might.

Poser.

Every few seconds he swayed a little as if he were about to lose his balance, and the crowd gasped. At the base of the pole, my mom in her stilettos, gold spangled bikini, and enormous feathers slapped her hands over her mouth and squealed, pretending to fear for his life.

All this time, they had let me fear for his life for real!

“He’s a fraud, you know,” I said to the guy next to me, loudly enough for my mom to hear.

“Of course,” the guy said without looking at me, still watching my dad. “They all are.”

“No, I mean he hasn’t trained his body through long years of concentration. He hasn’t even made the effort to construct an illusion. He has telekinetic powers that keep him from falling. He’s totally cheating!”

The man chuckled to placate the crazy girl and make her go away. No one was going to believe me.

So I cupped my hands around my mouth and called up to my dad, “You have freaking superpowers! Why aren’t you the President?”

“Zoë,” my mother scolded me through the crowd. “You’re breaking the frame.”

She meant I was diverting the audience’s attention from my dad, ruining the illusion. But who cared, when there was no illusion to ruin—when the fake illusion was the real thing?

I called, “Why do you make Mom dress up like Miss Nevada lost a wrestling match with an emu?” I gave him a little shove with my mind, take that.

He started back like he’d been physically pushed. Someone screamed.

Enormous feathers pushed their way through the crowd toward me. I wondered how my punishment would change now that I knew about my powers, and my dad’s. Electroshock when I tried to steal my mom’s cigarettes? Telekinetic spankings? A force field around my room when I was grounded?

Before my mom could reach me, I called once more, “Why do we live in a two-bedroom house with the paint peeling in big patches so it looks like a Swiss cheese? Why aren’t we cashing in? Why?” I gave him a harder shove. He tumbled backward off the platform, but at the last second—imagine!—managed to catch the edge with one hand. Even at this distance, I could see his muscled arm trembling with the fake effort of pulling himself back onto the platform.

My mom reached me and gripped me hard. Her lacquered fingernails dug into my arm. I prepared to be defiant in the face of her fury. But she wasn’t furious. She was afraid.

“He can stay up there, but not if you push him off!” she whispered. “Women’s powers are much stronger than men’s.”

Dad let go.
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Learn more about Jennifer Echols YA and adult romances at http://www.jennifer-echols.com/. Her first book, Major Crush, will be released in August by Simon Pulse.