“So, what’s your useless superpower?”

It was a game they used to play sometimes. A conversation starter for new faces when they were out at a party, but also a question that came up when everyone was deep in their cups and ready to wax eloquent about their unlikely origin stories.

“My what?” Camilla laughed. Their breakfast orders arrived at the table, and everyone dutifully paused, sitting back as their dishes were placed before them by a friendly server. Once she had left and everyone was settled, Abbie leaned forward again, placing her elbows on the table.

“Oh, come on,” Abbie said. “I have to have asked you this before, right?” Next to Abbie, Jenna nodded around a bite of benedict. 

“Your useless superpower, babe,” Jenna repeated around a full mouth. “You know, like the weird thing that you can do that’s completely useless, but is honestly kinda creepy when you think about how spot on it is.”

“Like mine is that I kill plants by proximity,” Abbie added fluidly. “Just my presence ensures their untimely demise. And faster than a natural death. Not enough to be noticeable…like it would still take several hours. But I kid you not, that’s why I can’t have house plants.”

“That’s…oddly specific,” Camilla laughed. “You know, you could just water your plants instead of inventing a paranormal reason why you can’t keep them alive.”

“I do!” Abbie insisted, stabbing her eggs vehemently for emphasis. “Too much, not enough, exactly right, it doesn’t matter. It’s my useless superpower. I can’t control it. What’s yours?”

Abbie and Jenna had been best friends for almost fifteen years. They shared a freshman college dorm and had each taken turns hiding from crazy roommates and ex-lovers by sleeping on one another’s floors. The bond was cemented when Abbie had camped out on Jenna’s couch to avoid an outbreak of avian flu in her dorm room when her mother threatened to withdraw her for a semester. 

Camilla was also a college friend, but was the kind of gregarious personality who made friends with everybody and somehow managed to maintain them all. The three were undoubtedly close, but Jenna and Abbie had been nearly inseparable. Time and distance had balanced the friendship, except for occasional throwbacks. It was clear Abbie and Jenna had neglected to indoctrinate Camilla to this particular madness. 

Now, nearly a decade after graduation, the trio religiously regrouped twice a year for ladies’ weekends. 

“I don’t know,” Camilla flustered. “Maybe…when I set a timer…sometimes I manage to look right before it goes off. Like I anticipate it’s done…or something.” The two other girls looked at her bemusedly and Camilla shrugged, digging into her breakfast.

“Why do you even set a timer, then?” Abbie asked, her brow furrowed in confusion.

“Well, it’s not real, right?” Camilla replied, setting her fork down again impatiently. “So, like, I don’t want to actually burn the casserole or oversleep or whatever. We don’t actually have superpowers.”

There was a moment of tense quiet where no one spoke.

“Mine is that I accidentally light something on fire any time I’m near a fire source,” Jenna remarked, smoothing over the awkward moment. “That’s one hundred percent why I quit smoking at parties. But, dude, do you remember those scented candles I got us at that apartment we shared in Credence? Nearly burned the place down.”

“But god forbid you manage to light anything on purpose. Do you remember that barbecue we hosted in Arroyo Village?” Abbie cackled. “It took four hours for you to cook a goddamn burger.”

“Best goddamn burger anyone ever tasted though!” Jenna protested, smacking Abbie as the other girl fell against her, wheezing. “You ask, you ask them! Camilla?”

“You’re a barbecue queen,” Camilla reassured her.

~…~

Jenna delicately placed the cigarette between her black-lipsticked lips. When she pulled the lighter out of her back pocket, her hand shook and she steadied it with both hands.

“You’re just lighting a cigarette, babe,” Abbie said, her voice hoarse. “You got this.”

“Fuck,” Jenna released a soft sob and flicked the lighter with her thumb. The flame ignited, bright and unwavering, and Jenna’s hands were steady as she brought the lighter to the cigarette’s tip. It glowed brightly as the woman took a drag, her lip trembling as she exhaled. And then it fell, slipping from her full lips into the dead grass at her feet….where it fizzled and extinguished. 

Abbie groaned. “I have not been standing here all fucking night so your ass could fail to light this dead brush on fire,” she snarled and marched up to her friend. Abbie reached for the lighter, and Jenna’s eyes grew wide.

“Abbie! No–!” she cried, throwing out her arm, but as Abbie snatched the other woman’s hand, the lighter ignited. Flame caught on Abbie’s long sleeve like paper shavings doused in lighter fluid. Abbie shrieked, lurching backward and tripped on a tree root, falling to the ground. 

~

“Fuck your superpower,” Abbie panted.

“Oh no, that one’s definitely on you, bitch,” Jenna snapped back. 

Grandma’s Tale

My grandmother never wrote down her stories. And god forbid she allow us to record her verbal telling in her later years. A second generation Swedish immigrant, she would recite the tales of her youthful adventures, ad libbing constantly with exclamations in Swedish I never grasped, no matter how many after-school hours she babysat before my mother arrived from the veterans hospital to pick me up. She was vivacious, and adventuresome. An icon, raised from a fantasy epic, too heroic to be real.

~…~

“That story was for you, love,” she whispered. The distress in her eyes was unfeigned and it carved something out of the pit of my stomach, leaving a hollow place. 

“I—I—” The words wouldn’t come. The story had been so vivid, so full of passion and life, that I had allowed it to flow through the keys of my computer like so many data points. It had seemed too good to not be shared. Yet now, confronted with the horror of her reaction, it felt thinned somehow. Transparent. An echo of its former power. The marrow had been sucked clean and only the dry bones remained.

Mother’s Letter

I cleaned your room yesterday. Nothing extreme, just tidied a few things. There are no more wayward socks to discover under the bed or forgotten snack wrappers to throw away. I haven’t had to tell you for the thousandth time to put your shoes away. Not for ages.

Your Auntie is coming for a visit and I offered her your room to stay in. Don’t worry—I boxed up anything incriminating. Children don’t think about that when they go away. The evidence they leave behind, the secrets. 

I didn’t think about it. Moving out and away was both sudden and slow. One day my room was the place I slept as well as my sanctuary. Home is where my books are, I used to say. Dorm rooms are a meager substitute. There was no room for my books. My parents knew I would be back. That first year away meant nothing but adventure, like going away to camp or boarding school. Only the essentials made the journey that first time.

I can’t remember when the books came with me. They were heavy, but my new apartment had the space, and my new friends all loved to read, and I couldn’t wait to share them. It didn’t seem like change at the time. It didn’t feel different.

You’ll come visit. In the summer when you have a break from courses and your lease expires and all of your friends head back home to their families. I’ll see you in a few months. And before then, if you run out of charge on your laundry card and have a craving for a home-cooked meal, you’ll load up the car we gave you with a week’s worth of dirty clothes and hit the road. Four hours is not so long. You’re not so far away.

Over time visits may shorten, and the time between them might grow.  

Home is not a place. The house changed when you left it. And home will keep changing, evolving, growing around the empty space you left behind. But the space will always be there, ready to welcome you when you return to make it whole. Grow, evolve, fail, love. And don’t forget me. Come back and tell me of your adventures. 

I love you. I love you.