“Tammy, are you sure you don’t need anything else? You know anything we leave in the apartment will be taken to a storage locker. How can you fit everything you want into two backpacks?” my mother asked worriedly as I placed my two small bags on the small mountain of cardboard boxes she’d stacked at the door.

  “Like what? I don’t have much. One bag for my school supplies, and another for my clothes and the plushie dad gave me. There are still some old toys, and books in the closet, but not much else. They’re certainly not something I’ll need at the academy,” I explained before turning to face her.

  The last couple days hadn’t been kind to her. She looked gaunt, and had huge black bags under her eyes, like she hadn’t eaten or slept the entire time I’d been in custody. She probably hadn’t.

  “Why don’t you sit down for a couple minutes? I know this move was kind of forced on us last minute, but that doesn’t mean you have to work yourself to death in order to accommodate the BEI. How about I heat you up some of that macaroni we had the other day? It’s probably still good.”

  She just smiled. “You know I’m the adult here, I’m supposed to be looking after you. You don’t need to fuss over me.”

  “Need and want are two different things,” I said as I took her hand and gently guided her to the kitchen table. “Now I know you’ve already packed everything essential, and anything else you box up will only end up going into storage, so please just relax for a minute and eat something. I’m worried about you.”

  “Darling, I’ve been through much worse than this while I was working, I’m fine.”

  “And the fact that those assholes you used to work for were able to take advantage of you to that extent was a crime in itself,” I muttered.

  As I turned to check what was left in the fridge, hoping mom had taken the time to pick something up in the few days that I’d been away, she grabbed my hand.

  “Tamera… I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I wasn’t a better mother.”

  I paused, and turned back towards her, confused. “What are you talking about? You’ve always been a good mother to me. I know how much you’ve had to sacrifice just to pay for this tiny apartment, and to keep me fed all these years. Even after working over sixty hours a week, you still made time for me whenever we were both home. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  She smiled weakly, and at that moment she looked smaller and more fragile than I’d ever seen her before. “Yet whenever you needed me, I wasn’t able to help you. I didn’t know what to say when you were ostracised at school, and when you pretended to be okay I decided to just pretend I didn’t know there was still a problem. When you started seeing your imaginary friends I was concerned, but I never carried through with the therapy, because they seemed to be helping you cope with the situation. When you said they went away, I just pretended to believe you.”

  I felt an icey pit in my stomach, and resisted the urge to step back in surprise.

  “You knew?”

  “Of course I knew,” she laughed lightly, “The walls of this place are made of tissue paper, and you’re not very subtle when you’re venting to your friends.”

  “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

  “Because I didn’t know what to say, and they helped you get through the rough times a lot more than I did. A part of me actually started wishing they were real, so you’d always have someone to support you,” she lowered her head. “Unfortunately, that only helped fuel my deepest fears… that you’d end up being Empowered, like your father, and taken away from me.”

  “But you received the bi-yearly test results, and should have known how unlikely that was,” I sputtered.

  “And despite all those bi-yearly tests, you’re apparently still Empowered.”

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  Tears were starting to stream down her face, which was making me flustered. I was so used to seeing my mother as this strong, hard working woman, and when she started breaking down like this I wasn’t quite sure what to do.

  Slowly I leaned down and pulled her into a tight hug, and let her cry on my shoulder while I tried to process my feelings.

  “Everything’s going to be okay. Even though I have to go to the academy, you can come with me, so we won’t get split up, and I’m going to receive protection while I’m there, so I won’t be in danger like most of the other students. Plus, depending on the lab results over the next year, they might label me as a non-threat and allow us to go back to a normal life,” I said lightly.

  “That’s what they told your father too, right up the night of the accident,” my mother sobbed.

  “If you’re concerned, then we can move into one of the enclaves, and I’ll do everything in my power to protect you, until the very end,” I promised her.

  “Listen to you,” my mother chuckled softly, as she pulled away from my embrace, whipping away her tears with a napkin. “I’m your mother, I’m supposed to be protecting you, not the other way around.”

  “We’ll protect each other, that’s what family is for,” I declared softly as I stepped back.

  I took a deep breath, and looked at my mother for a minute, trying to work up the courage to discuss something I’d been holding in the last few days.

  “You know… you actually know about my friends makes what I’m going to say a little easier, but no less awkward,” I said hesitantly.

  My mother raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything, just waiting for me to continue when I was ready.

  “When I was in Coopers, trying to hold those monsters off, something happened. My friends jumped into battle and I swear, they were doing damage to those big beetles. They’ve never been able to interact with anything before. It could have just been my panic-addled brain dealing with the stress, but if not, and if I am Empowered, I think my power might have something to do with them,” I explained quietly.

  “Did you tell the police, or BEI agents about this?” my mother asked, concerned.

  “No! How would I even begin to explain that? ‘Hey, I’ve had imaginary friends since I was a kid, and they’re the real reason I managed to survive that fight!’” I growled defensively. “If I’d told them that, I probably would have either ended up in some psychiatrist’s office for a psychiatric evaluation, or dumped straight into an enclave. I didn’t want that! Besides, I’m still not sure what I saw.”

  “It’s alright, calm down. I’m not judging you,” my mother said, stepping forward and grabbing my hands. “I believe you. What do you want to do? Do some tests to see if it actually happened?”

  I shook my head. “They’ve never been able to interact with anything before, or since, which is why I’m so unsure what I saw was real or not. It might be that they can only interact with Ruptures, or Empowered people, so testing will be difficult. I just… felt the need to tell someone. Will you keep it a secret for now?”

  “Of course. I’m your mother, and I’ll keep your secret as long as you need me too,” she replied gently. “Take all the time you need to figure things out, and I’ll support you however I can.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered, struggling to hold back tears.

  “You’re welcome,” my mother smiled.

  We stood there for a couple seconds before my mother gently let go of my hands. “All this talk about powers has reminded me, we need to bring your father’s keepsakes. I’ve kept them in the back of my closet, and we haven’t looked at them in awhile, but we can’t leave them behind.”

  She took a couple steps towards the hallway, then stopped and looked back at me. I could still see the pain and sorrow in her eyes, but the tears had stopped. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

  “Okay, I’ll be right here.”

  I jumped slightly as a series of slender tendrils slowly wrapped around my shoulders. I’d forgotten that Angelica had been in the room, hiding in the shadows next to the door. “Are you going to be okay Tammy? You two got fairly emotional back there.”

  “I’ll be fine, eventually, I just need time to process,” I replied.

  “Your mother took that much better than I expected,” Tyberius murmured. “She’s a remarkable lady.”

  “It actually shouldn’t be that much of a surprise, when you think about it. I started pretending I couldn’t see you all when I was six, and at that time my only precaution was not talking to you directly while being in the same room as here. I probably didn’t even always close my door in the evening. I’m not sure if it was a smart choice, as a parent, to allow me to keep talking to you all instead of taking me to a therapist, but I’m glad that’s the choice she made.”

  Angelica's tendrils tightened around me further. “And she’s supporting you while you investigate your powers,” she purred. “You’re lucky to have her.”

  I nodded, dabbing eyes with the last napkin on the counter, then quickly dropped the evidence into the trash before my mom came back. Gathering myself up, I looked around the mostly empty kitchen area and sighed. “You know, I’m going to miss this place, just a little. It served us well over the years.”

  “You can always come back later,” Tyberius said, his grating voice echoing through the tiny area.

  “Fuck no. I might miss it, but the place is an absolute shit hole. It’s better to let the good times live on in my memories, then remind me of how terrible things were later,” I chuckled.

  A strange beeping noise echoed through the kitchen, and it took me a couple seconds to realize it was coming from the new phone the BEI had supplied me with. I dug it out of the pocket of my jacket, and fumbled with it for several seconds until I figured out how it worked.

  “Mom, the truck is here to pick up our stuff!” I yelled down the hallway.

  “Tell them to come up, and remind them the lift isn’t working,” she called back.

  “Right… I’ll figure out how to do that later, right now it might be faster to just go down and let them know,” I muttered. “Maybe I’ll take one of the boxes down, it’ll make things easier in the long run.”

  As soon as I said that Hairy burst from the closet, excitedly. I had no idea why he’d been in there, or for how long, but he shot out and stood over our meager belongings. “What can I carry?”

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