Chapter Two

I was surrounded by the smell of ramen noodles before I reached the bottom step. Metal silverware chinked underneath the roar of the microwave oven. Composing always left me ravenously hungry, and even though this was probably the third day in a row that we’ve had ramen with frozen vegetables, I was determined to get my fill.



My dad was looming over the stove when I bounded into the kitchen. I said a cordial “thank you” to him and pulled two plates out of the dishwasher—one for myself and one for my sister. He mumbled something that sounded like an acknowledgement but didn’t take his eyes off of the monotonously spinning plate of meatballs in the microwave. I shrugged and proceeded to scoop two helpings of rice on my plate.


“Joelle, did you see the mail?” Lisbeth asked.


I took her plate and scooped for her two helpings of rice as well. “No, I didn’t. Why?”


“I think Iris’ letter just came in.” She went over to shuffle through the pile of letters on the counter. “Yeah, here it is!”


Lisbeth exchanged the letter for her plate and went to help herself to the ramen. I examined the letter closely. The return address came from their house in Boston, so it had to have been fairly recent. I recognized Iris’ bubbly handwriting immediately and smiled to myself. Even though we both had email addresses and were friends on the same internet social network, we saved our big moments for old-fashioned snail mail. We sent tons of letters to each other when school came around, because her school’s Wi-Fi service was limited and constantly monitored by the technicians at the academy.


We sat down at the table, and I ripped open the envelope to read the letter.






Dear Joelle,


I know I should have written to you earlier, but life has been a bit hectic here at home after Anthony and I got back from Spektrum. It’s good to be back in Boston, though I was hoping we’d be able to stay over at your house for a week or so before we flew out of Tennessee. I can’t wait for Christmas break when we get to see you and Lisbeth again. You never know, Leon might be coming along, too. If your mom hasn’t heard from my mom yet, Leon found his affinity last week! He’s a Fighter, can you believe? He’s still as twig thin as ever, but he’s been running up and down walls and knocking holes into the shed all weekend. I get tired just watching him! Thankfully, Tony’s a Fighter, too, and he has Tito Robin’s Psychic affinity, so he’s been able to help Leon control his jitters and calm down. Only for brief moments, though.


But enough about me. How’s it been with you lately? Excited you’re not in middle school anymore (you’re so lucky; I don’t hit high division for another year)? I got your last letter with the CD—I swear you are way too talented to be stuck in Normal school. The high division’s field crew NEEDS a music director with your skill and creativity (last year’s show was just all over the place)! Keep sending me CDs whenever you make new ones; I’d love to show Tony’s friends your stuff when school starts again.


Can’t wait to see you on Christmas! Say hi to the famm for me, alright?






Love ya, sis!


Iris <3






“Can I read it?” Lisbeth asked when I looked up.


I handed her the letter; she scanned it before gasping with envy. “Leon’s a Fighter?! Lucky!”


“I know, it’s crazy,” I remarked, twirling my ramen with my fork. “He’s still just entering third grade, too. That’s supposed to be pretty rare for a homunculus; Iris only found hers two years ago, and Tony didn’t find his until seventh grade.”


“Do you think you could find yours any time now, Joelle?”


The fork was halfway to my mouth, but I had to stop and give her a look. “I’m Normal, Lis, just like everybody else in this family. You know that.”


“I know,” she hummed pensively. “But still, wouldn’t that be so cool? You’d be walking in on your first day of high school, and all of a sudden, FLAMES start shooting from your hands, or you turn into a DRAGON! Just like that!”


It was hard for me to keep a straight face while listening to her babble. Her imagination was almost as crazy as mine sometimes. “That’s not gonna happen.”


“But it could! It happens to some people. They grow up in Normal families, right? But they turn out to actually have the homunculus gene from some other, distant relative. Like Tito Robin! He has a Psychic and a Spirit affinity—”


This time I really had to glare at her into shutting up. I cast a quick glance over at my dad; he was pacing around aimlessly near the foyer, but he was still within earshot. It was always risky business to talk about homunculi and the Villanuevas around him—while he was always friendly to them when they came to visit, he became very sullen and moody when we started talking about what if’s. He wanted us to be happy being Normal. At least, that’s what my mom told us; he hardly ever spoke a word to me anymore.


The garage door rattled open from outside just then. My sister got up and ran to open the door to the garage. I squinted at the analog clock propped up on the wall. Mom was usually a good thirty minutes earlier to come home than this.


Her clacking heels came through the door, as well as a flurry of exasperation and fatigue. Unlike my ever-stoic father, you could read everything my mom was thinking with one look.


“Dong!” she called to my dad as she was slipping off her heels. She flew right into a rant about her day in rapid Tagalog. I caught words like “elections” and “flooded” and “romping bastard”, but everything else flew right over my head.


“Hi, Mom!” Lisbeth threw her arms around her in an affectionate hug.


“Hi, dai,” she greeted back somewhat distractedly. “And then he had the nerve to tell me that the whole commercial had to be reshooted because I had to mention something about the oil leak. Who gives a damn about the oil leak?! I haven’t mentioned anything about it in my entire two-year campaign, and I’m not going to spend another million dollars to reshoot a commercial just because the people want to feel safe knowing their next Tennessee congressman is thinking about it.”


“Mom, you’re coming to the open house this Friday, right?”


Mom waved her hand at me dismissively. “I have to check my schedule, dai. Things are getting busy around this time.”


“But you’ve known about this open house since the school year ended,” I reminded her. “This is important; they’re going to be giving a whole assembly on freshman AP classes, and I need to—”


She rubbed her eyes with furrowed eyebrows. “Look, I told you I would check, right? Don’t overload me with so much right now, I just got back from the office.”


I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. Of course it wouldn’t have occurred to me that Mom would have forgotten about the open house. All she’d cared about for the past year was the elections for Tennessee’s new congressman. It’s not that I didn’t want her to run; I was happy that she wanted it so badly and would do any honorable thing to get the seat so she could represent the state well in D.C., but little things like me entering into my first year of high school and my sister’s violin recitals always seemed to slip out of her mind. I could be pregnant now and it would take her four months before she would start asking questions, and maybe another two before she’d take me to an OB GYN.


Mom was tapping on her BlackBerry when she finally said, “I have Friday morning open. Your dad’s going to have to pick you up from the place, though; I need to run out right before noon.”


“Great!” I said with enough chipper in my voice to bleed her ears. “I’m so glad I fit so conveniently into your busy schedule.”


She set her phone down and gave me a hard look. Even through the election, she hadn’t lost her ability to detect sarcasm from my voice. “Joelle Christine, you know I do my best to juggle my election with our family life, but it takes some accommodating, and a few sacrifices have to be made. Not everything’s about you.”


“Right. It’s about you, isn’t it?”


I knew I was being childish, and my comebacks were always horrible when I was upset. My mom still looked mortally offended as I walked past her to dump my half-finished dinner in the garbage can. Ramen noodles just didn’t appeal to me anymore.


I stormed up the stairs and locked my room shut for the rest of the night.