“Well, that’s a boring power,” I mumbled to myself. I think Fleck heard, though, because moments later she shoved a nail and a block of wood into my hand.

  “Jo also said you could use all the other powers so long as you’re in that world. So show us by drawing something.”

  I shrugged. Drawing was something I could do, no problem. “What should I draw?” I was reminded of asking Jo the same question.

  “A bird.”

  I followed Fleck’s pointing finger to see the fire bird’s wings beating lazily. It had begun to flicker, as if the flame were nearly out.

  The bird wasn’t very big. It had a small head with a short, rounded beak and a long tail that dipped down as it flew. It reminded me a bit of a trogon, a bird from where I’m from, with a bright red chest, a Christmas-green back, and silver wings.

  I imagined a trogon as best I could. I hadn’t seen many—they were shy, but I liked that about them. It made it all the more special when you did see one. I imagined the feathers on its wings separated and pointed as it flew, its body a line. I imagined what it would feel like to fly.

  The nail scratched easily into the wood, shredding it into pleasantly small curls that fell to the ground as my hand moved feverishly. I was working quickly, as Jo had always demanded. But I wanted it to be good too. I wanted the others to know that I could draw.

  “Okay. Finished.” I spun the block around.

  They were staring back, faces set. I heard Fleck gasp.

  “Wha—”

  The block had begun to glow with brown smoke. I dropped it suddenly, the carved side landing up. I had remembered the ship pouring from Fleck’s fingers in the same way.

  The brown energy shot from the middle of the block into the air, spinning, writhing, reforming into an unmistakable shape: the bird.

  It trailed brown smoke and glowed so brightly that I could hardly look at it. The bird flew upward, spinning and thrashing as it soared to life. It was the same size as I drew it on the block.

  Soon the grayish brown dissipated, making way for white wood underneath.

  The other bird’s wings clicked, wood on wood, as they flapped, sending the bird higher toward its flickering fire twin.

  The two met in the center of a circle, colliding with a flash of light. The wooden bird had caught fire and was flying lazy circles around the room. The fire bird was gone.

  I tore my eyes away from the scene to look at the three strangers in front of me. They were staring back with a look that I can only describe as flabbergasted.

  I wanted to speak, wanted to ask if that had been what they were hoping for, but I couldn’t push a single word from my throat. I looked down at my shaking hands. I had never felt such power before—and yet it had been so natural.

  Did I really do that?

  “That was…” I looked up at Jonquil, who was having trouble picking his words.

  “Fantastic!” Scape said.

  I couldn’t help but smile. Very few people had ever said that to me. “Thanks.”

  With these three and Alejandro, maybe I’m not so alone after all.

  Scape then looked at me, serious. “We’ll tell you why the Walls are there,” they sighed, turning to Fleck, as if asking her to finish.

  Fleck complied. “It’s because they want us dead.”

  “Wait, who wants you dead?” I asked.

  “Everyone does,” Fleck answered. “See, some of us have more than one kind of smoke.”

  “Our great-great-grandparents were from different worlds, so they had different powers,” Jonquil continued. “That scares the Kings and Queens, because the three of us can do things that no one else can, so they think that, one day, we will overthrow them.”

  They showed me in turn. Jonquil drew a flower, but no matter what he drew it on, it appeared made of fire.

  That means he has the powers of Eleven and Three, I thought, remembering Jo’s nursery rhyme.

  Scape could make things that were indestructible. That reminded me of Four’s powers—the inhabitants were like cartoon characters who couldn’t get hurt, like their bodies were made of rubber. So Scape was a mix of Eleven and Four.

  Then Fleck showed me her powers again. She could draw something and then make it bigger or smaller. She must be partly from Six, I realized, where people can control the size of things.

  “They got rid of most of the people with more than one power a hundred years ago,” Jonquil explained, “and then they created the Walls to make sure no one can be born with multiple powers ever again.”

  “How were you three born, then?” I asked them.

  “Well, a lot of us hide among everyone else, never showing our powers. If we do get found, then we’re thrown into the Wall by the Smoke Keepers,” Jonquil said with a shiver.

  The image of the crackling Wall, swirling with energy—with smoke—shot in front of my memory.

  Jonquil went on, his voice low. “People have been hiding for many years. My mother had two smokes, and my dad had one. Now I have a bit from both of them.”

  “Same as you,” Fleck said, pointing at my chest, “brown smoke girl.”

  “Same as Jo,” Scape added. “That’s why she had to be careful. If you’re not strong enough to fight a Smoke Keeper, then you have to hide.”

  “How did you find each other?” I asked.

  “Jo found us. She’s been keeping us safe. She said that you would help us now.” Scape looked up at me with hopeful eyes.

  “You’re the missing link, Rose from Arizona.” Fleck held my hand in one of hers. I flushed. “Together we’re powerful enough. We’re going to destroy the Walls for good.”

  “What exactly do I have to do, though?”

  “Jo already started. She got the smoke from five of the Smoke Keepers already.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Look at the Smoke Ball. You’ll see the different colors she’s found.”

  I plucked the Smoke Ball from my pocket. When I looked closely, I noticed that it swirled with five different colors: yellow, white, violet, pink, and black.

  “Which worlds did she go to?” I asked.

  They looked at one another and Fleck shrugged. “She said that you would know.”

  I sighed. It seemed that Jo had left a lot of mysterious clues that I still didn’t understand. I hoped she would come home soon and explain them.

  “And what exactly are we going to do with the Smoke Ball once it has all the smokes in it? Just… throw it at the Wall?”

  “Of course not.” Fleck grinned, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “We’re going to fit it into this.”

  She scurried to one corner, lifting up a colorful pillow to reveal something long, wrapped in leather, underneath. She unfolded the leather to expose a gold sword.

  It was plain and looked homemade, but very sturdy.

  “Jo told us how to build it. She designed it based on old drawings. This was the sword wielded by the one King who fought against the rest. According to the legend, he was going to use his sword to destroy the Walls. Jonquil used his fire smoke to mold the metal into the exact shape.”

  “See,” Jonquil said, excited. He pointed to a hole, exactly the size of the watch, in the hilt. “The Smoke Ball fits in there. Then the sword will be powered by smoke from all the Kings and Queens. It’s the only thing powerful enough to destroy the Walls.”

  “Once the sword is ready, we’ll take down the Walls for good.”

  “So… we’re going to… stab a Wall?” I asked.

  Fleck rolled her eyes. “I’m not certain Jo picked the right hero, after all.” She wrapped the sword up, glowering at me as she replaced it under the long pillow.

  “You’ll have to teach me.”

  They all nodded at once. “We will,” Scape promised.

  “Good, because I—”

  BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

  The sound was so loud that it shook the walls and floor, but only I seemed to notice. The three looked at me, confused.

  “Rose?”

  “She’s disappearing like Jo does!”

  BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

  It was like a pounding in my head that made my whole body vibrate. I could hardly move, let alone speak. I could feel someone put their hand on my shoulder.

  “… meet us tomorrow. We’ll find you and together—”

  I could just barely make out Fleck’s voice as my vision swam in and out, blackness appearing to the beat of the pounds.

  BOOM. BOOM—

  THE FRIEND

  Rose? Are you in there?”

  The words swirled into my mind; I was still clinging to the dream. Then I realized someone was knocking on the church door.

  I had only a few seconds to sit up before it creaked open. I saw a shaggy head poke in. “Rose? Oh, cool! I thought you’d still be here.”

  “Alejandro,” I croaked, my voice still filled with sleep. “What time is it?”

  If it was super late, Mom would freak out.

  “School is about to end. I came by during lunch, but you were still asleep. I didn’t want to wake you up, but I wanted to make sure you didn’t sleep through the final bell, so I snuck out early.”

  He came in here and saw me asleep? And had I really been asleep that long? The dream felt way shorter.

  “Oh, uh, thanks.” I stood up, feeling awkward as I patted down my clothes. I felt the watch in my fist and quickly slid it into my pants pocket.

  When I looked down, however, to see if the chain was safely tucked inside, I saw something strange on my palm.

  “Okay, well, I’m glad you’re awake, I’ve got to—”

  “Wait!”

  He swung around, surprised, as I rushed toward him.

  “Yeah?”

  I shoved my hand up to his face. I knew my eyes probably looked wide and wild.

  “What’s this? Do you see this?”

  He squinted at my palm. “Uh, it looks kind of like… like the letter C. Why?”

  I looked down. Sure enough, there was a thin C carved into my skin—right where the Smoke Keeper had cut me. It wasn’t bleeding, like it had been in Eleven, but it was definitely there, raised and pale pink.

  Alejandro was still staring at me warily. I looked back at him.

  “What would you do if I told you”—I sucked in a deep breath—“that there is a… a whole other universe with magic?” I shouldn’t have said it. It was like I was trying to ask myself.

  I expected him to laugh, to convince me it was impossible, but instead—

  “Of course there is.”

  “Wait, what?”

  Alejandro shrugged. “It’s like space, right? There have got to be smart aliens out there on another planet somewhere, so I bet there’s also another reality with magic too. There’s, like, infinite realities, according to Warp Jump 3000.”

  His words zoomed through my ears, none of them sticking. “What are you talking about?”

  “Warp Jump 3000! It’s a game about alternate realities!” Excited, he sat down on a pew, pulling his tablet out of his bag. I sat next to him.

  He clicked on an app from his never-ending list of games. This one was mostly just stick figures and words. A line of text scrolled across the tablet: OF THE INFINITE UNIVERSES THAT SURROUND US AT ALL TIMES… THIS… IS ONE OF THEM. Then the screen was swallowed by a black hole that was replaced by a world where tiny stick people ran around with candies for heads. I’m not entirely sure what the point of the game was or why Alejandro had it. He seemed to like it, though, as he furiously tapped the screen as he spoke.

  “How does this prove that magic exists?” I asked.

  “Well, because if you can think of something, then it must exist in a reality somewhere. That’s what the game says, anyway. Ha! Gotcha, sucker!” he screamed as he squashed a running lollipop.

  “How would someone travel into a fantasy world?”

  “I guess,” he replied, pausing the game, “if it was in another dimension, then they could teleport, like in Warp Jump, or they could get there through astral projection. I have an X-Men game where Jean Grey astral projects.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, when you teleport, your whole body actually moves—like, the atoms just, poof, disappear, then they reappear somewhere else. Astral projection, though, is when it’s just your mind that reappears somewhere else.”

  “So just my… brain is going into the other world? Like a dream… but real?”

  “Exactly!”

  “But if it was just my brain going into another world, then if I got hurt there, would I still be hurt when I woke up?”

  “Hmm, that’s an interesting question.” Alejandro scrolled through his games, pulling up an X-Men app. “In the astral projection game, if someone gets hurt, they don’t, like, stay hurt. Like, if you get stabbed, you don’t die, but it would still hurt.”

  “It would?” I asked, rubbing the C.

  “Sure, because you’d have mental pain. Your brain would think you were hurt still, so it would send pain signals to your nerves.”

  “Could the place you got stabbed get, like, swollen?” I asked, feeling the raised lines.

  “I guess if your brain thought that you were hurt, it could still make it swollen even if your body wasn’t actually stabbed.”

  I nodded quickly. My heart was racing so fast. It’s possible. The world might be real.

  “Why do you ask?” Alejandro looked up at me, storing the tablet again.

  “Oh, uh, I just had a dream, and it gave me an idea for a… game.”

  “Wait, really? Can I help? I’ve always wanted to design a game!” He stood up, bouncing on his heels. He looked genuinely excited. I almost felt guilty.

  “Sure, yeah, sounds good,” I said, grabbing my stuff quickly as I tried to control my breathing, rubbing a thumb over my palm again.

  The world is real. It’s real.

  The two of us walked out. As Alejandro babbled about other worlds and time warps and phantom pain, I just focused on not shaking the watch in my pocket too much.

  There was a whole world in there.

  THE BATTLE OF THE SLUMBER PARTY

  I felt bad lying about where I was all day when Mom came to pick me up, but she soon got distracted when I told her about Jo.

  “Oh, bubala, I heard. But we’ll find her, I know we will.”

  I told her about the hospital, and Wes, and Cindy. I didn’t tell her about the watch or the dreamworld, though. I was realizing how important Jo’s rules were.

  We drove home. Which, for now, was on the second story of the Shooting Star, an apartment building that used to be a motel. It was a lot smaller than Wes’s house, but it felt way more like home.

  We ate at the dining room table, which squeaked when you leaned on it. Mom didn’t have time to cook, but she said it was a good thing that she worked at a diner because it meant that she could bring home the best food in all of Arizona. I liked that she worked at a diner because I could have a grilled cheese every night.

  Usually I liked dinner because it was the only time I really got to talk to someone, but today all I was thinking about was the watch, heavy in my pocket. I couldn’t wait until it was 11:00 and I could go see my new friends again.

  Real friends.

  The very thought made me smile.

  “What are you smiling about?” Mom teased, nudging me with a fry.

  I rolled my eyes. I had to be more careful. “Oh, nothing. Just, you know, school.”

  “Oh yeah? You don’t usually smile about school. Did something happen?” She wiggled her eyebrows at me.

  I tried to keep my face blank, but she knew that always made me laugh. It looked like her eyebrows were fighting caterpillars.

  “Not really, just a funny day.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re being so brave about Jo, then.”

  I know she meant it in a nice way, but the words thumped hard. Oh yeah, I guess I shouldn’t be so happy about the watch world. Jo is still missing. I should be worried about her.

  I think Mom saw my face go dark because she nudged me again. “I didn’t mean that you should be sad. What is it—did you make new friends?”

  “No!” I said too quickly, thinking about Fleck, Scape, and Jonquil.

  “Ooh, is it a boy?”

  “No!” I said even more quickly, remembering Alejandro. I knew if I mentioned him that Mom would get excited about me having a—ugh—boyfriend. (She called any boy who was my friend a “boyfriend.” She used to do that with Jeremiah. It was humiliating.) Why couldn’t I just be friends with a boy, anyway? Why did it have to mean something else? Why did she never call my girl friends, girlfriends? “I just… really like what we’re studying in class, is all. It’s alternate universes. Really cool stuff.”

  “Oh.” I could hear the drop in Mom’s voice. “I suppose that’s nice too. I was just hoping perhaps you were making some new friends.”

  “Who needs friends?” I asked, stabbing a fry a bit too hard into a puddle of ketchup.

  I didn’t have to look up to know that Mom was doing her sad smile. I hated her sad smile, especially when it was because of me.

  “One day you’ll meet someone who understands how special you are.”

  “Jo thinks I’m special.”

  “Maybe someone a bit younger than Jo.”

  I sighed. “I wouldn’t hold your breath.”

  Mom chuckled. “See? You’re great. Just trust me—when all those silly kids get a bit older, they will realize that being different is actually a terrific thing. Then they will all want to be just like you.”

  I snorted to myself, thinking about Jeremiah and Fallon wearing baggy plaid hoodies and dirty jeans while painting nerdy fantasy worlds in a haunted church.

  Then I thought of Alejandro.

  Hey, actually, that doesn’t seem so far off…

  My phone buzzed with a new text. It was sitting on the side of the table nearer Mom. She leaned over to read the message as it flashed onto the screen. “Oh, maybe it’s about Jo, did your dad—”

  Mom had gone silent, her hand over her mouth.

  I felt the adrenaline rise. Did they find her?

  “What? Mom? You’re scaring me.”