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The first time I saw Emma, she was just a little scrap, all scrunchy-faced and closed up. She was snuggled in her mum's arm. My mum. I never asked for a sister. It was supposed to be our homecoming. Dad and me. We'd gone on a long trip, all the way to the sea. Dad said I was old enough to go with him because I was going to start school in the fall, and Mum said so too. Nobody said anything about babies. But when we got back, there she was. Mum and Dad said she was a Dopted but she looked like a baby to me. I had all this stuff to tell Mum and I did and she listened but I could see she was listening inside to something else and her eyes kept shifting to that little scrunchy face. Finally, I got mad. “Nobody said anything about a Dopted! We don't need her.” Mum's eyes stopped shifting and Dad knelt down beside me and put his arm around me. Mum looked really worried, which I kind of liked. “Having a sister will be fun, Peter. We couldn't tell you ahead of time because it was a very special arrangement. But we thought you should have something special too, like the trip with Dad.” “It was a good trip, wasn't it, Pete?” Dad looked anxious. “We got to fly in Uncle Ross's floatplane. That was pretty special?” The floatplane had been good. And the beach near Uncle Ross's house. And the waterslide park, that had been really good. But we didn’t need a Dopted. I was about to tell them that when the Dopted opened her eyes – dark, dark eyes – and looked straight at me. Her face unscrunched and she sort of beamed all over, and this beamy kind of feeling washed right into me, just like when Mum or Dad snuggled me when I was little. And I decided it might be not too bad having a sister. Might be okay. You see, I still thought she was just a regular baby sister. I didn't figure it out until she began lifting things. That was a long time later – almost Easter holidays. Emma was lying on a blanket on the floor, waving her stubby little legs in the air. I was reading to her. Mum said it was a good way to practice my reading and it kept Emma happy. I thought just waving her legs was making her happy. I was supposed to read until the timer on the stove dinged. It dinged about five pages from the end of the book. I already knew the story, so I just dropped it beside Emma and called to Mum in the next room that I was going outside to play. I grabbed my jacket and headed for the door – and tripped over the book. It was lying right in the doorway, halfway across the room from where I’d left it. Emma must have kicked it somehow. I glared at her, but she just waved her legs some more. I put the book on the coffee table and started outside again. Suddenly the book was in front of me, hanging in mid-air in front of my face, blocking the doorway. It was open right where I’d stopped reading. I tried to go around it, but it moved in front of me. Just when I was getting scared, Emma made a sort of chirpy noise. I looked back. She was waving the stubby little legs like crazy and her arms were waving too. Somehow all the waving seemed to point toward me and the book. “Mum!” I yelled. “Emma’s lifting stuff!” “It’s alright, dear.” Mum’s voice was almost drowned out by the clatter of the old sewing machine. “I baby-proofed the place. She can’t hurt anything.” “No, I mean she’s really lifting stuff. Without touching it!” “Ow!” The clatter stopped suddenly, and Mum appeared in the doorway, sucking the tip of one finger. I turned to point at the book, but it wasn’t hanging in the air any more. It was back on the coffee table. Closed. Mum looked really mad. “Peter, I’m trying to finish these curtains, and you’re not helping. I want you to mind Emma for half an hour longer, or I’ll never get them done. And no whining!” She disappeared back into the other room, making angry thumpy noises with her sewing stuff. She doesn’t like sewing. I turned to glare at Emma for getting me in trouble. The book was beside her blanket where I’d been sitting, open at the page where I’d stopped reading. She looked at me with her dark, dark eyes and beamed – and the beamy feeling washed over me again. I was almost finished the second read-through when Mum came out of the other room, carrying a set of sunny yellow curtains for Emma’s window. *** The lifting thing didn’t happen very often, and only when there was no one around but me. I tried to tell Dad about it once, but he just got awfully understanding and said it was all right to feel jealous sometimes but that he and Mum loved me just the same. I wasn’t jealous. Actually, I kind of liked that my sister could do weird stuff. So I didn’t tell anyone any more. *** Once Emma got big enough to walk, she’d follow me around. She didn’t seem to mind if I wasn’t playing with her. She’d just sit and play with a doll or a toy car, and every now and then she’d beam at me. And sometimes she’d lift things. Once we were out in the playhouse when it started to rain. Mum had left some cookies on a plate on the porch, but we’d have been soaked by the time we got to them. Emma just looked at me, then looked at the cookies, and suddenly the whole plate sailed through the air, right through the window of the playhouse. The cookies weren’t even damp. I don’t know how she did that. Another
time, we were playing in the park, making roadways in the sandbox
for our cars. This kid I knew from school came by and started
teasing me for playing with girls and called me stupid names.
I was mad. Dad says you should just ignore bullies but that’s
really hard sometimes. Emma just kept staring at him with those
big dark eyes, and suddenly his ball cap flew off and landed in
the grass behind him. He looked around to see who had done it,
but there was no one there – and the leaves were hanging
dead still on the trees. He went to pick the cap up, and it whisked
away from him. He kept chasing it, and it kept whisking, until
finally it whisked right into the middle of the spray pool, smack
on top of a fireman’s tap.
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