Maya Chen woke up floating three feet above her bed.
At first, she thought she was still dreaming one of those vivid dreams where you can fly, where gravity is just a suggestion and the world bends to your imagination. But then her alarm clock started blaring that annoying beeping sound, and Maya's eyes snapped fully open to find herself staring down at her tangled sheets and the stuffed animals scattered across her mattress.
"Oh no, oh no, oh no," she whispered, frantically paddling her arms in the air like she was trying to swim back down to safety. It didn't work. She just sort of bobbed there, suspended in the middle of her bedroom like a balloon filled with helium.
This was not how ten-year-olds were supposed to start their Tuesday mornings.
"Maya! Breakfast!" her mom's voice called from downstairs, and the sudden spike of panic that shot through Maya's chest was apparently exactly what her body needed. She dropped like a stone, landing with a thump that rattled her teeth and sent her favorite stuffed elephant Mr. Trunks tumbling off the bed.
Maya lay there for a moment, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling that she'd stuck up there when she was seven, trying to process what had just happened. Her heart hammered against her ribs. Her hands were shaking. And somehow, impossibly, she could feel a strange tingling sensation running through her entire body, like tiny electric currents dancing just beneath her skin.
She held up her hands in front of her face, examining them as if they might have transformed overnight into something alien and unfamiliar. But no they looked exactly the same. Small, with chewed fingernails because she'd never quite kicked that nervous habit, and a small scar on her left thumb from the time she'd tried to help Dad with carpentry and learned that nine-year-olds probably shouldn't handle saws unsupervised.
"Maya Chen, I'm not calling you again!"
"Coming!" Maya shouted back, scrambling to her feet. She grabbed her school uniform from where she'd laid it out the night before plaid skirt, white polo shirt, navy cardigan and dressed in record time, her mind racing.
Had that really just happened? Had she actually been floating? Or was she losing her mind? Maybe she'd been sleepwalking. People did weird things in their sleep all the time. Her Uncle James once made an entire sandwich while completely unconscious. Floating was probably just a more dramatic version of that, right?
Maya rushed through her morning routine on autopilot brushing her teeth, combing her straight black hair into its usual ponytail, checking that she had all her homework in her backpack. Everything felt normal. Everything looked normal. But that tingling sensation hadn't gone away. It hummed beneath her skin like a song only she could hear.
Downstairs, the kitchen smelled like her mom's famous blueberry pancakes. Mom stood at the stove, still in her nurse's scrubs from the night shift at County General Hospital. Her dark hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and there were tired lines around her eyes, but she smiled when Maya appeared in the doorway.
"There you are, sleepyhead. I was about to send a search party." Mom slid two perfectly golden pancakes onto a plate and set it on the table. "Eat up. You've got exactly fifteen minutes before the bus comes."
Maya's little brother, Lucas, was already at the table, syrup smeared across his six-year-old face as he built what he called a "pancake tower" by stacking his breakfast pieces into an increasingly unstable structure. He had that same look of intense concentration he got when building with his Legos, tongue poking out between his teeth.
"That's gonna fall," Maya said automatically, sliding into her chair.
"Is not," Lucas replied, carefully balancing another piece on top.
"Is too."
"Is not!"
"Kids," Mom said with the special tone that meant 'not before I've had coffee,' and they both fell silent. Maya picked up her fork and started eating, but she could barely taste the pancakes. Her mind was elsewhere, replaying that moment of floating over and over like a video stuck on loop.
Should she tell Mom? The thought made her stomach clench with anxiety. Mom was already so tired, working double shifts to make ends meet since Dad had left two years ago. The last thing she needed was Maya claiming she'd developed superpowers or whatever this was. She'd think Maya was sick, or stressed, or making up stories for attention.
And maybe she was wrong anyway. Maybe it had been a dream, or a hallucination brought on by staying up too late reading comics under her covers with a flashlight. That made more sense than the alternative that something fundamental had changed inside her overnight, that her body had somehow decided to break the laws of physics just because it felt like it.
Lucas's pancake tower collapsed with a syrupy splat, and he let out an indignant wail. Maya couldn't help but smile a little, despite her inner turmoil. Some things, at least, were predictable.
"I told you it would fall," she said.
"You're mean!"
"Am not. I'm realistic."
"What's 'realistic' mean?"
"It means Maya's being a smart aleck," Mom interjected, pointing her spatula at Maya with mock sternness. "And it means you both need to finish eating so you're not late for school."
Maya obediently shoveled down the rest of her breakfast, glancing at the clock on the microwave. Twelve minutes until the bus. Twelve minutes of normalcy before she had to walk out that door and face the world with whatever was happening to her.
She could feel it building inside her again—that tingling, that energy, like pressure behind a dam. It made her fingers twitch and her muscles tense. She gripped her fork tighter, trying to ground herself in something solid and real.
The fork bent.
Not dramatically, not like it was made of clay or putty. But it definitely bent the metal tines curling slightly under the pressure of her grip, as if her hand had suddenly gained the strength of someone three times her size.
Maya's eyes went wide. She quickly set the fork down, hiding it under her napkin before Mom or Lucas could notice. Her heart was racing again, that same panic from the bedroom flooding back through her veins.
This was real. This was happening. She wasn't dreaming, wasn't imagining things. Something had changed inside her, something profound and impossible and terrifying.
"You okay, honey?" Mom asked, and Maya realized she must have made some kind of sound ha gasp or a whimper that she hadn't meant to let out.
"Yeah," Maya lied, forcing a smile that felt like plastic stretched across her face. "Just remembered I forgot to finish my math homework. Can I be excused?"
Mom frowned, studying her for a long moment that made Maya want to squirm in her seat. But then she nodded, too exhausted to push the issue. "Go ahead. But don't miss that bus."
Maya practically ran back to her room, closing the door behind her and leaning against it like she could block out the world. She looked down at her hands again these ordinary, everyday hands that had just bent metal without even trying.
What was happening to her? And more importantly, what was she supposed to do about it?
Outside, she could hear the distant rumble of the school bus making its way down the street. Seven minutes, maybe less. She needed to pull herself together, needed to act normal, needed to pretend that everything was fine even though her entire world had just tilted on its axis.
Maya took a deep breath, grabbed her backpack, and headed for the door. She had no idea what this day would bring, had no idea what she was becoming or why. But she knew one thing for certain: her life would never be the same again.
The adventure was just beginning.