“OK,” Isabel said to Tess the next morning. “What was that back there when we met Kyle yesterday and don’t try to play that off as nothing? You’re my best friend and I know you. I let you off the hook last night, but I want the scoop now.” “I don’t know,” Tess answered her best friend honestly, for once her impish grin was completely gone. “But when I touched him it was…I don’t know…something happened.” “Well,” Isabel said as she tossed herself down on the soft cushions of the couch, “you certainly were staring at him like you’d been struck by lightning. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you stare at anyone like that before.” “Well,” Tess said as she sat beside her friend, “I don’t think that I’ve ever met anyone like him before. I don’t know what happened, but I connected to him when we shook hands and it wasn’t an easy going sort of thing like your mom and dad told us it was. It hurt. It was like I had grasped a live electrical wire. Your parents always said that it was this gentle thing right, when you connected? Well they lied.” “Mom and dad always said that it was gentle when they connected,” Isabel told Tess as she turned to look her in the eye. “They never said that it was gentle for everyone. Look at Michael and Maria, they can’t even stand being in the same room most of the time, hell she even moved to a different state.” “Do you really think that there’s something going on between them?” Tess asked as she leaned forward in expectation. “I’ve always thought that they hated each other just a little too much if you know what I mean.” “We saw the two of them at the Prom last year,” Isabel said as she heard little feet on the stairs behind them. “She can’t deny it anymore than he can. Hey buddy did you just get up from your nap?” She said to her baby brother when he came down the stairs. “Izbel,” the three-year old Andrew Guerin said as he ran the rest of the way to his sister and her friends. “Tess,” he squealed as Tess picked him up and began to tickle him. His deep belly laugh echoed throughout the three-story house. “What did you do last night?” He asked them after he had settle down in between them. When they had gotten back home, Michael, Isabel and Tess who’d spent the night, their youngest sibling had been in bed. “We were just out later than you at Alex’s munchkin,” Tess said as she began to tickle the little boy again. “Why didn’t you take us,” Ryan and Trent, the fourteen year-old identical Guerin twins asked as they entered the living room as well and fell down gloomily on the loveseat across from their older sibling. “That would be because you two are still grounded for that little fight you got into at the pier last week,” Isabel said as she laughed at her brothers. She paused as she picked Andy up and whispered something in his ear before putting him back on the ground where he promptly toddled quickly out of the room yelling for his daddy. “I can’t believe you two,” she scolded them. “That had to be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done,” Tess said as she took Isabel’s lead and began to scold the two young men that she thought of as her real family. “Are you crazy fighting with those boys? The four of them were each twice as big as you. Plus they’re outsiders. Are you trying to stir up trouble for everyone?” “Well,” Ryan said as he had the decency to blush in shame. “We didn’t start it.” He was the quieter one of the two and usually he followed in his louder brother’s wake just as he had followed behind him by ten minutes the day they were born. “No,” Trent said as he fingered his black eye in what could only be described as pride, “but we sure did finish it. Besides,” he shrugged and grinned at his older brother, “they deserved it. They were picking on this new girl at the beach. She’s only thirteen and they wouldn’t leave her alone.” Trent’s voice darkened in renewed anger at what they had witnessed at the beach the week before. “That’s right,” Ryan said as his own anger came back as well. Trent had hated the boys anyway, they were a couple of years ahead of them, fixing to start the 11th grade at their rival high school a town over and they had always made the twins life a living hell. Seeing the bullies go after that young girl who’d looked so lost and sad had just been an excuse, the icing on the cake. Ryan on the other hand, never got mad on his own behalf, and never went looking for a fight either. He touched the bruise that was on his eye, the opposite one from his brother and thought ruefully to himself that he didn’t actually walk away though when one presented itself to him. But that girl was little, only a year younger than them but she looked like she should still be in elementary school, and they had been riding her so hard that she had backed up in a corner and had been crying silently. That’s when he and Trent had seen them from the pier and had made their way over. Yeah the boys had been bigger than them, but Trent and Ryan had an edge the others didn’t, they weren’t exactly normal. The bullies had never known what had hit them. “Besides,” Ryan added as he returned his thoughts to the living room and his siblings, “we figured it was our duty to help her out, she was smaller than all of us, and plus she’s Maria’s little cousin.” “Maria’s cousin?” Tess asked sharply. Maria’s mom had gone out of town two weeks before and had come back with a cousin that Maria hadn’t even known existed. The little girl was the same age as the twins and Jessie Whitman. She had been in three different foster homes after her parents’ death before they could track down her last living relatives, Amy and Maria Deluca. “Well that does make a difference,” Isabel said with a firm nod of her head. She looked at her younger brothers with in a new light. They were growing up fast. “But, it doesn’t mean that you should have used your powers like that, and don’t try telling me that you didn’t. There’s no way you could have pounded those guys like that if you hadn’t. You risked putting everyone here in danger, and that’s what mom and dad are punishing you for.” “That’s right,” Georgia Harper Guerin said as she came into the living room with Andy in her arms. She handed the little guy over to her daughter and sat down with relief in the overstuffed chair. “How you doing today mom?” Ryan and Trent asked at the same time. “About the same as I was twenty minutes ago when you guys asked me for the millionth time today.” Georgia laughed when her sons both blushed. “I’m fine,” she said as she rubbed her extended belly. “I just wish that your new siblings would hurry up and come greet us. They’re two weeks late as it is.” “They’ll come when they’re ready mom,” Isabel said as she grinned at her mom. They all knew she was pregnant again with twins, but no one knew if it was boys or girls, or a boy and a girl. “Judging by the way things usually went in this family it was probably more boys,” Isabel thought ruefully to herself. “Mom can we please go to the Whitman house?” Ryan asked with a pout. “We can’t get into to too much trouble playing with Alex’s sister. Plus Michael’s already over there.” “Fine,” Georgia said with a weary sigh, “you two can go, but make sure that you’re home in time for lunch and take your little brother. Andy would probably like to play with little Danny anyway.” At the mention of the last Andy piped up and began nodding ecstatically. He loved Alex’s youngest sibling, Daniel, who was one month older than he was. The twins jumped up, grabbed Andy, kissed their mom goodbye and flew out the door to see Jessie Whitman. TBC

Part 4