GBVE: Wendy Roberts

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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“Amanda, if you eat all those fries they’ll go straight to your hips,” Mom piped up the moment the three of us sat down on the hard plastic chairs in the food court.

“I’m not that hungry anyway,” I said, pushing some of my fries across the table and trying to work up the courage to talk about the real reason I wanted to see her.

“How’s the arm?” Grandma asked, while noisily smacking food from her dentures.

“It’s fine,” I answered, absently patting the sling. “I get the stitches out next week.”

“Only my thirty-year-old daughter could trip over her own two feet and break her arm so badly it needed surgery.” Mom gazed at the food court ceiling asking the mall gods to grant her the patience to deal with my clumsiness.

Biting back a scathing retort I calmly answered, “Something happened to me after the surgery.” I’d actually wanted to talk to my best friend Meagan but she was currently living in a Yurt on an organic farm in Oregon.

“This is the first time you’ve had general anesthetic. Don’t worry. It happens to everyone,” Grandma said, reaching out to pat my hand.

“It does?” I highly doubted we were discussing the same thing.

“Sure,” Mom agreed. “After I had all my womanly plumbing removed last year I was backed up for weeks.”

“You should’ve had a bran muffin instead of fries,” Grandma said wisely.

“I am not constipated,” I stated through clenched teeth.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Mom said.

“Let me just show you the real problem,” I said.

Taking a deep breath I focused my gaze on a ketchup packet on our table. The small foil pack lifted into the air about four inches and spun around once before it dropped back to the table.

My mother opened and closed her mouth a number of times but no sound came out.

“Ever since I came out of the anesthetic I’ve been able to do stuff like that,” I whispered.

“Oh that’s nothing,” Grandma said with a wave of her hand. “Watch this.”

She offered a brief nod to the same ketchup pack. It lifted off the table, drifted toward the mound of fries, tore open slightly and then proceeded to squeeze ketchup in an intricate zigzag design all over the fries. “I’ve been able to do that ever since I married your grandfather fifty-two years ago.”

“I think Penny’s is having a white sale,” Mom announced, leaping to her feet and running away from the table as if her ass was on fire.

Grandma sighed. “She’s never handled this kind of thing well.”

I shook my head slowly from side to side. “What kind of thing are we talking about exactly? Are we witches?”

“Oh for goodness sakes, no,” Grandma chuckled. “Although certainly some of your ancestors were burnt at the stake for having telekinetic powers. Oh don’t look so mortified, my dear. It’s no different than you inheriting my green eyes and your father’s curly hair.”

“This can’t be happening.” I turned and faced her. “If I’ve inherited this, this weird ability from you, why did it only show up now?”

“It seems to only become apparent after a significant moment in one’s life. Like your arm surgery.”

“And for you, that moment was marrying Grandpa?”

“Well, actually, for me it was after the first time we, well, you know . . .” She winked. “For your father though, it was after he had his tonsils out.”

“Wait a second, you mean to say that Dad also has this freakish thing going on?”

She wrinkled her nose. “We’re not freaks, Amanda. I like to think that we’re just more highly evolved.”

I watched her remove her upper plate and wipe it with a tissue. Obviously, somewhere along the way evolution had made a wrong turn.
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To find out more about Wendy Roberts’ mysteries and women’s fiction, visit http://wendyroberts.com. Her debut, Dating Can Be Deadly, is available now!