Excerpt: Blue Sky

Prologue:

Special

Cathy McGill was tired.
That was all she seemed to be these days- tired. Today was especially bad. Dylan, her four-year-old, had thrown his cereal all over the wall at breakfast and gotten milk in baby Emma’s eyes, making her cry. She hadn’t stopped crying throughout the car ride to Dylan’s daycare center or on the way back. After she’d finally calmed down, she became extremely hyper and loud, shrieking shrilly while Cathy tried to contact the insurance company for the umpteenth time to find out why they wouldn’t cover Emma’s shots. When the operator ‘accidentally’ hung up on Cathy for the seventh time, she’d thrown the telephone against the still cereal-covered wall in a Dylan-esque fit, causing it to shatter. The noise had startled Emma, who howled loudly the rest of the morning.
Lunchtime brought more food on the walls and a loud spit-up all over the new dress Bill’s mother had sent Emma. Then came the mail, which was made up of statements on overdue bills Bill should have paid ages ago and a letter from the pediatrician about paying for Emma’s shots, which only reminded Cathy of the frustrating calls to the insurance company.
Then Bill rang to say he wouldn’t be coming home until late (again). The loud ringing on the phone started Emma off again. She cried so loudly Cathy didn’t hear the phone ring again. When she did finally pick it up on its 8th ring, it was Bill’s mother, who wanted to complain and complain and chat and complain some more about how there simply was nothing to do around here anymore.
Then some preacher from St. Someone’s Church of Redemption managed to force his pious way into the living room (which was of course a mess) and refused to leave for almost an hour, talking over Emma, the phone (which rang incessantly for hours) and Cathy’s desperate attempts to get him out the door.
“You don’t understand,” he patiently explained as Cathy attempted to rock Emma, scrub the walls, find something for dinner and reassure Bill’s mother (shouldn’t Bill be the one doing the reassuring? It was his mother after all…) all at the same time (not recommended),
“This church is different from other so-called religious groups” here he added a snooty humph at the idea that there could be anything remotely as religious as St. Someone, “because this church is the real deal. Our prophet has received seventy-three revelations from God, and all in just the past three months! With a paltry donation of, say, $50,000, your soul will be saved from eternal damnation! And we are also willing to save your loved ones at a cut-rate deal of just $299.99 a month for the next fifteen years. Imagine, your daughter could be assured a place in heaven before she graduates high school! And that’s not all-”
But here, thank goodness, he was interrupted by a doorbell ringing. It turned out it was a preacher from St. Whats-its Church of Holy Mercy, and the two got so into their debate on the virtues of their own churches, they didn’t notice when Cathy shut the door on them.
And then Emma spit up all over the ultra-stainable carpet.
And all this before 2:00.
Now Cathy was waiting in line with all the other moms for Dylan to come out of daycare. Emma had finally stopped crying, and was now happily throwing cheerios all over the backseat. At long last, Dylan, with all the boundless and destructive energy that befit his age, bounded outside, dragging his much-abused backpack behind him in the dirt. Cathy cringed inwardly at the sight. Dylan had gone though three backpacks already, and it wasn’t even October. From the look at the current victim, he’d be on to a fourth one soon. Yet another thing to worry about.
“HIYA MOMMY!!!” her son screamed as he bounced into his car seat, setting Emma off once more. Had that bruise on his chin been there this morning? Cathy didn’t know, and didn’t have the energy to care.
“Hush, Dylan, there’s no need to yell. How was your day? Oh, Emma, darling, calm down, it’s just Dylan, shhh…” Cathy rocked Emma’s feet in an effort to soothe her while Dylan chattered excitedly about his day. Mm-hmming and nodding absent-mindedly to his detailed story on how he stole some innocent girl’s plastic horsie (which meant a parent-teacher conference for sure), she carefully backed out onto the main road, ignoring the loud honking of impatient mothers behind her. Honestly, didn’t they know if she speeded up she’d get into an accident? Like honking incessantly would make her go any faster… Cathy simmered as she drove down the highway.
Dylan had finally tired of talking of his amazing preschool exploits, and satisfied with coloring his baby sister purple with a crayon. Cathy prayed it was washable, but some nasty voice in the back of her head told her it probably wasn’t. Caught up in worrying about how on earth she was going to get the crayon off Emma, she realized ten seconds too late she’d missed her exit.
“Dammit!!!” she hissed under her breath. Dylan looked up, his brown eyes wide.
“Mommy said a bad word!!” he gleefully announced, his chubby face breaking into a wide grin. Emma shrieked, though whether it was in agreement, dissent, or just for the heck of it was anyone’s guess. Cathy took several deep, calming breaths like that impossibly pretty looking woman in the Inner Peace Now video had demonstrated before answering. She had to do this carefully, or else Dylan would spout her words for the next three years.
“Yes, Dylan, Mommy said a bad word.” Cathy answered in her best all-knowing Buddha voice, “Mommy was wrong to say that. So Mommy’s going to be punished. She’s going to be put in time-out when we get home, and not get to play with her toys. Because that’s what happens when people use naughty language, right, Dylan?”
Until she’d had kids of her own, Cathy had hated the sort of people who used babyish high-pitched voices on children and talked down to them. Now, she understood it was simply a part of surviving parenthood. She looked hastily in the rearview mirror to see Dylan’s reaction. He looked bored, and had abandoned the crayon in favor of poking Emma. Emma looked like she was about to howl, a reaction Cathy thought she might join in on.
“Dylan honey-” Cathy murmured gently as Emma started to scream, her voice raising several octaves as the scream grew, “don’t poke your sister. It’s not nice. Tell Emma sorry.” Did Dylan notice how her voice cracked on the last words? Don’t cry, don’t cry, dontcrydon’tcrydon’tcry.
“Sorry Emma!!!” Dylan yelled, loud enough to be too loud, but nowhere near as loud as little Emma, who seemed to be setting some kind of sound record. Utterly bored now that his main form of entertainment, abusing his sister, had been taken away, he looked out the window, his lower lip stuck out in a pout. Just as Cathy was about to make a right-hand turn, Dylan yelled out suddenly in Cathy’s ear,
“LOOK, Mommy, LOOK!!!!!!”
Cathy almost rammed into the car in front of her, stomping on the breaks just in time.
It was a long while before she was able to answer her son’s anxious calls of,
“Mommy? Mommy?”
Other cars swerved around Cathy, honking loudly as they passed. She knew she should move to the shoulder of the road, but she was too busy concentrating on not screaming, cursing, crying, or a combination of that to bother. The deep calming breaths from the Inner Peace Now video were repeated again to little effect
Finally, when Cathy felt she could trust her voice to be even, she turned to Dylan and said as steadily as she could,
“What, Dylan. What is it now.”
She inwardly winced at the sound of her words- much too harsh for a toddler- but Dylan showed no sign he picked up on her extreme aggravation.
“Lookit the sign! It moves, Mommy, it moves!”
Cathy glanced at the direction Dylan was pointing in. It was a billboard, one of those new ones that had a televised moving image instead on the old, traditional poster. A pretty girl, maybe seven or eight, with bright red braids and blue eyes and an impossibly cute smile waved her hands in the air, making several stones rise. Then it cut to her wearing a preppy school uniform, looking very proud and cute at the same time. Beside her in golden letters were the following:
Test your child for special abilities today! Simply call 1-800-SPECIAL. Do it now, and enrich your child’s life forever!
As she watched, the video began at the beginning again. Cathy felt relief creep back inside of her. This was an easy question to answer; many of Dylan’s questions were much more difficult, and he refused to take an ‘I don’t know’ for an answer.
“Well, sweetie,” Cathy began, marveling at how cool and collected she sounded- the exact opposites of the raging battle between Team Stressed Out and Team Panic Attack going on inside of her- “there are some people who have… special abilities.”
“Like making things fly?” Dylan interrupted curiously.
“Exactly. Or make themselves invisible, or see into the future… Things like that. So the government wants to find these special people, so they test everyone to see if they have an ability. If they do, then they get sent to a special government school for people like them, where they get special training. It’s a very interesting program.”
“Did I get tested? Am I special too?” There was undisguised hope in Dylan’s voice.
Cathy smiled gently. “No, darling, you don’t have an ability. But you’re still special to Daddy and me. Children get tested when they are very little. You were just a few months old when we got you tested. The program has only been around a few years, though. You were one of the first to get the test. Daddy and I had to get the test as well, since we were never tested as kids.”
“What about Emma? Is she special?” Now Dylan sounded horribly depressed; Cathy could only imagine the horror of having a sibling with an ability while being completely normal yourself. For once, she sympathized with Dylan.
“We tested Emma a few months after she was born, didn’t we, Emmon- Lemon?” Cathy sang as she tickled Emma gently, using Bill’s pet name for their only daughter. Emma giggled and smiled at Cathy. Cathy continued,
“She’s also normal, so we don’t have to send her to a special school. You’re both beautiful and perfect.”
Cathy smiled a little at Dylan’s obvious disappointment. His pout became more pronounced and his eyes tightened, as though he were about to cry.
“Don’t worry, Dylan,” she soothed, feeling more in control by the second, “most people are like you and me. Only a very, very, very few have abilities. But it doesn’t hurt to check.”
Cathy twisted in her seat to face front. While she had been talking to Dylan, she had been ignoring the outside world completely. Her car and its little dramas was its own microcosm, separated from the rest of the world. Now she was fully aware of how dangerous her position was- stopped in the middle of a busy lane, not even having the panic lights on, while other cars swerved around her angrily, honking their horns loudly. She was just begging to get in an accident.
With a sigh, she pressed her foot down on the gas pedal just as a train rattled by. The tracks were built right by the highway, which worked in her favor despite the noise. Dylan loved trains, and it would be just the thing to get him out of his mood. It was one of those old-fashioned ones, not built for transporting goods or supplies, but for transporting people. Large boxcars with windows and curtains (tartan red) flashed by.
And sure enough, right on cue, Dylan let out a squeal of delight.
“Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! A trainatrainatrainatrainatrain!!!!!!!!! Can we race it? Please? Please?”
Laughing at the expression in her rearview mirror, Cathy sped up, not enough to pass the train or even a few cars, but enough to reenter the rhythm and flow of traffic. Her mind whirled as she contemplated what to make for dinner (something easy that required almost no preparation time) and groaned inwardly at the prospect of giving Dylan and Emma baths. Dylan liked baths well enough, but he completely swamped the bathroom floor every single time. Emma hated baths with a passion, and always made sure to remind Cathy at every bathing opportunity.
Cathy was so caught up in her own musings she did not see the face in one of the windows of the endless line of boxcars that whizzed by.

A sad face.
A face without hope.
A face of pain.
The face of someone different.