Rivals by David Wellington

help.”
    “There must be
something I can do! What good are these powers if I can’t help my own family?”
    “Chill,
Brent,” Lucy said, and pulled her cell phone out of the outside pocket of her
backpack. She dialed 911 and told the operator what was going on. An
ambulance was there five minutes later.
    Grandma was
screaming the whole time. She couldn’t seem to stop. She was in a lot of
pain. When Brent climbed up into the ambulance beside her, she lifted her head
and looked down at Lucy, who was about to get in, too.
    “Your little
girlfriend should go home, Brent,” Grandma gasped. “I don’t want her seeing me
like this. It’s bad enough the doctors will see me.”
    Brent
apologized to Lucy with a look. “I’ll see you there,” she said. She shrugged
good-naturedly and started hobbling home as the paramedics slammed shut the
rear doors of the ambulance.
    There was more
screaming. A lot of it—until the paramedics gave Grandma something for
the pain. When she settled down and her eyes started drooping behind her thick
glasses, she reached for Brent’s hand with her good left hand and he felt the
diamond scratch his skin.
    Oh no , he thought. Oh no. Not today—not
when Mags was so upset already.
    Grandma must
have hit Maggie with the diamond. Just like she’d threatened to do so many
times. What had Maggie done that was so awful to deserve that? Brent supposed
it didn’t matter. It could have been anything. As far as Grandma was
concerned Maggie couldn’t do anything right. “Grandma,” he said, softly, “you
have to forgive her.”
    “I’m going to
press charges,” she told him. “You saw what she did.”
    Yeah, but
you hit her first . Except—that
wasn’t good enough, was it? Perkins the bully had hit Ryan Digby first. That
hadn’t made it okay for Brent to beat him up. Still—it was his sister
this time. That made it different, somehow. Not in a way that was fair, but a
way that mattered nonetheless. “If you don’t forgive her, how are we going to
work as a family? You don’t know what she’s going through. Please.”
    “I won’t have
her in my house anymore,” Grandma insisted.
    Our house.
Not yours.
    “She’s wild.
Like an animal. Just like her father.”
    Our father.
Our father who just died.
    “She’s a
spoiled little brat and she needs to learn discipline or she’s going to get
herself in a heap of trouble,” Grandma finished.
    Too late, Brent thought.
    The ambulance
reached the emergency room and there was more waiting, and the pain medication
wore off and Grandma started screaming again. Eventually, though, a doctor
came and took her away. A nurse took Brent by the arm and lead him toward a
waiting lounge. “Your friends are already here. They’ll take care of you,”
the nurse told him. He pushed open the door and saw Lucy inside—talking
to Weathers.
    “Brent,” she
said, and jumped up to hug him. He gently pushed her away.
    “What are you
doing here?” he asked the FBI man.
    “Investigating
an assault on an elderly woman. That’s the kind of crime I take pretty
seriously,” Weathers told him. “I might have to make an arrest.”
    “Not unless
she presses charges. That’s—that’s how it works, right? She has to
actually accuse Maggie of a crime.”
    “So you’re definitely
certain it was your sister, Maggie Gill, who broke your grandmother’s hand?”
Weathers asked.
    Brent frowned.
That was a weird way of putting it.
    “Are you
recording this?” Lucy asked.
    The special
agent smiled and opened up his jacket to show them a miniature voice recorder
in his breast pocket. “Yes,” he said. “Very astute, Ms. Benez. I have a
terrible memory, you see, and this helps me recall everything exactly as it was
said. In case, say, I need to provide evidence in a court of law.”
    “Don’t tell
him anything, Brent. Not until you have a lawyer,” Lucy said.
    Brent shook
his head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not like he doesn’t know exactly