“What do you mean, sick?” I demanded, my hands floundering on the top of the table. I wanted to reach out to grab my parents’ joined hands, or grab Aaron’s hand, get some comfort from someone, but I didn’t want to be the baby, the youngest daughter who needed her hand held.

“It’s Alzheimer’s,” he said, ripping the Band-Aid right off in the way only my dad could. Aaron flinched again. “Early onset.”

“What?” I blinked, one of my as-of-yet unshed tears clinging to my eyelash. I don’t know what I’d expected but this wasn’t it. We’re Atypicals, we’re practically magical beings, if he was at the AM getting checked for something, it would be some kind of magical disease that has some magical cure, right? Not … this.

“But…” I gasped for air. “You’re Atypical. So why—how—”

“Being Atypical doesn’t protect me from disease,” he said. “In fact, it may have hurried it along.”

“No, you—you have an ability, this shouldn’t be possible,” I insisted.

But that’s not how anything works, apparently. All the telekinesis in the world, the mind reading, dreamdiving, future-predicting, every drop of unique ability and specialness that my family has can’t help us. Nothing can help us. Help him.

The thing about Mr. Wiggles is that he would fall off every now and then. He would fall off the wheel, flop into his little bed of those soft wood chip things you line cages with, shake himself off, and get right back on the wheel.

But what happens when you fall off the wheel, straight through the wood chips, the floor, and you just keep on falling, falling, f a l l i n g

December 26th, 2016

Dear Mark,

I’m still mad at you, you know.

You reached in, without me knowing, and you took my power away. You did it without meaning to, which frustrates and comforts me in equal measure. You didn’t mean to hurt me. You also didn’t mean to change my life so completely, and you did it effortlessly. Thoughtlessly.

We were on a collision course from the start, but I never thought our abilities colliding would mean that I’d have my ability shunted back to some deep, dark place where I couldn’t access it. I think that was worse than this. Yeah, I’m still handcuffed to a bed, spending Christmas with slowly healing ribs, but at least I know it’s the drugs making my power feel far away. After what happened with you, it’s like I was pushed underwater. Do you know what that feels like? To have a fundamental part of you pushed down to somewhere you can’t reach?