When I played that song, I felt the world come apart around me, and I heard the death rattle of the universe as protons and neutrons and electrons tore into smaller subatomic bits. . and then into void.

I still hear it in my dreams. It worries me sometimes.

I’ve learned a lot this summer, but I’m ready to learn more at Paxington and find out what I’m supposed to be doing with these amazing and dangerous gifts.

September 22, San Francisco

________

Eliot watched and worried as his sister read his essay.

Her brows furrowed.

Eliot knew people liked his writing style better, but Fiona was good at putting facts together and impressing people with her logic. Besides, her essay pretty much told the entire story of what had happened to them this summer. He hoped the teachers at Paxington read his paper first.

“Well?” he asked her. “What do you think?”

“Just a second.” She held up a hand, rereading from the top of the page.

Eliot paced. Sunlight filtered into his new bedroom from the garden. Outside were rows of pink and yellow daisies, and beyond, he could make out misty San Francisco Bay-a spectacular view.

Inside their new house, however, especially in his bedroom, the view was not so spectacular-crowded with mountains and mazes of cardboard U-Haul boxes, each one filled with a hundred pounds of books. If there was the slightest shudder from the San Andreas Fault, Eliot knew he’d be buried under an avalanche of Chaucer, Twain, and Shakespeare.

Fiona looked up from his essay and brushed her long, dark hair from her face. “You don’t have all the facts,” she said. “You should have added something about your girlfriend.”

“She wasn’t my girlfriend,” Eliot replied.