The Normal One

Veda Sharma could tell you the exact moment she realized she was the only normal person in her family.

She was six years old, sitting at the breakfast table, watching her older brother Kavi lift his cereal bowl with his mind. Not with his hands—with his mind. The bowl just floated up, tilted itself, and poured the last of the milk right into his mouth. He didn't even look up from his comic book.

Her mother walked through the kitchen wall to grab the mail. Literally through the wall. Just phased right through it like it was made of fog, said "Bills, bills, junk mail," and phased back.

Her little sister Priya, who was only four at the time, sneezed and accidentally turned the family cat blue.

And Veda? Veda sat there eating her toast. With her hands. Like a person.

She was ten now, and things hadn't changed.

Every Sharma got their power by age five. That was the rule. Grandma Meera could make plants grow just by humming. Grandpa Dev could talk to birds—actual conversations, not just weird cooing in the backyard. Dad could slow down time, though he mostly used it to win arguments with Mom, which she said was "an abuse of a sacred gift" and also "incredibly annoying."

Veda had waited. And waited. And waited.

Nothing came.

She'd tried everything. She'd concentrated until her face turned red. She'd stood in thunderstorms with her arms out. She'd eaten strange things from the back of the fridge that she was pretty sure were magical but turned out to just be expired yogurt.

Nothing.

"You're a late bloomer," Dad always said, ruffling her hair.

"Powers aren't everything," Mom always added, in a voice that suggested she absolutely believed powers were everything.

Kavi, who was fourteen and thought he was hilarious, called her "the Muggle." Priya, who was eight and worshipped Veda completely, would say, "I think being normal is your power, Didi," which was sweet but also the most devastating sentence anyone had ever spoken.

It was a Saturday in October when everything went wrong.

The Sharmas were hosting the Fall Family Gathering, which happened every year and which Veda dreaded every year, because it meant forty-seven relatives showing up and doing extraordinary things while eating samosas.

Uncle Raj could duplicate himself, so there were always three of him hogging the snack table. Aunt Sonal could control the weather and liked to make dramatic entrances with personal thunderclouds. Cousin Nikhil, who was Veda's age, could turn invisible, and mostly used this power to cheat at hide-and-seek and steal gulab jamun when no one was looking.

Veda's job at the gathering was always the same: set up chairs, carry plates, refill water glasses. Normal stuff. Stuff anyone could do. Stuff, she couldn't help noticing, that nobody with powers ever wanted to do.

She was arranging chairs in the backyard when she felt it.

A trembling in the ground.

At first she thought it was Uncle Raj doing his stomp-dance, which he did every year even though everyone begged him not to. But this was different. Deeper. The water in the glasses on the table started to ripple.

Then the sky changed color.

It went from blue to a greenish-gray, like a bruise, and the air got heavy and strange. Veda looked around the backyard. Nobody else had arrived yet except her family.

"Mom?" she called.

Her mother stepped through the back door—actually through it this time, not bothering with the handle—and looked up. Her face went pale.

"Meera!" she shouted. "Dev! Everyone—outside now!"

Within seconds, the whole household was in the backyard, staring at the sky. A crack had appeared in the air itself, about thirty feet up—a jagged line of black and purple light, like someone had torn a hole in the world.

"A Rift," Grandma Meera whispered. Her hand found Veda's shoulder. "I haven't seen one since I was a girl."

"What does it do?" Veda asked.

"It pulls," Grandma said. "It pulls power. It feeds on it."

The crack widened. And then—Veda saw it happen—a tendril of green light drifted out of Grandma Meera's hands, rising up toward the Rift like smoke. Grandma gasped and stumbled.

The same thing started happening to everyone. Silver light streamed from Kavi's temples. Golden mist rose from Mom's skin. Dad's hands flickered as his time-slowing power was dragged upward in ribbons of pale blue.

Little Priya grabbed Veda's arm, and Veda could feel her sister shaking. Sparks of color were lifting off Priya like embers from a fire.

"It's taking everything," Dad said through gritted teeth. "I can't—I can't hold on."

One by one, the Sharmas dropped to their knees. The Rift pulsed and grew, feeding on their power, getting wider and darker. Through it, Veda could see something on the other side—a vast, cold nothing.

And Veda stood there.

Untouched. Unmoved. Completely, utterly normal.

The Rift's pull washed over her like wind over a stone. She felt it—a strange tugging sensation—but there was nothing to take. No power to drain. No light to steal.

She was the only one still standing.

Think, Veda. Think.

She looked around desperately. The chairs she'd set up. The tables she'd arranged. The extension cords she'd taped down so nobody would trip. The garden hose she'd coiled neatly by the fence. The forty-seven place settings she'd laid out. The emergency weather kit she'd packed because Aunt Sonal's entrances sometimes went sideways.

She knew every inch of this yard. She'd set up every piece of it, because that was her job—the normal job, the job nobody else wanted.

And right now, she was the only one who could move.

The Rift crackled and widened further. Through the gap, the cold nothing seemed to lean closer, hungry.

Veda ran.

She sprinted to the garage and grabbed the one thing Grandpa Dev had shown her years ago—the old brass bell that hung on the wall, the one he said had been in the family for two hundred years. "It grounds things," he'd told her once. "Brings what's lost back to earth. But it hasn't rung in decades. Needs someone to climb the big oak and hang it high—someone steady."

Everyone had always meant to do it. But there was always something more interesting, more magical, more powerful to deal with.

The big oak stood at the center of the yard, ancient and enormous. Veda had climbed it a thousand times. It was her favorite spot—the one place where, sitting among the branches, she didn't feel less than anyone. She'd mapped every handhold, knew every branch that could take her weight and every one that couldn't.

She grabbed the bell—it was heavier than she remembered—and looped its rope across her chest. She jumped for the lowest branch and started climbing.

The Rift screamed above her. The wind was vicious now, tearing at her clothes, and the higher she climbed, the worse it got. Her hands scraped against bark. Her foot slipped and she caught herself, heart hammering, and kept going.

Below her, she could hear Priya crying. Kavi was trying to shout something, but his voice was thin, drained.

Keep climbing.

Branch by branch. Hand over hand. The bell banged against her ribs. Her arms burned. A gust of wind nearly threw her sideways, but she hooked her elbow around a branch and held on with everything she had—which was just muscle and stubbornness and ten years of being the girl who carried the plates and set up the chairs and climbed this tree every single day of her life.

She reached the top.

The Rift was close here, so close she could feel the cold of that emptiness on her face. She pulled the bell free, found the thick branch Grandpa had always pointed to, and with shaking hands, tied the rope tight.

Then she grabbed the clapper and rang it.

The sound that came out was enormous—far bigger than a little brass bell had any right to make. It rolled outward in a wave, deep and warm, and where it touched the Rift's tendrils, they shattered. The stolen light—green and silver and gold and blue and every color of every Sharma's power—cascaded back down like rain, sinking into the people it belonged to.

The Rift shuddered. Veda rang the bell again. And again.

On the third ring, the crack sealed shut with a sound like a thunderclap, and the sky flooded back to blue.

Silence.

Then, from far below, Priya's small voice: "DIDI!"

Veda looked down from her perch at the top of the oak. Her whole family was staring up at her—on their feet again, color back in their faces, powers restored. Kavi's cereal bowl was probably floating somewhere. Mom was probably halfway through a wall. Everything was probably going back to normal.

And there was Veda, sitting in her tree, holding an old bell, breathing hard, completely ordinary.

Grandma Meera was the first to speak. She looked up at Veda with an expression Veda had never seen directed at her before—not pity, not the careful encouragement people give when they feel sorry for you. Something else entirely.

"That's my girl," Grandma said.

The Fall Family Gathering happened anyway, two hours late. Forty-seven relatives arrived to find the chairs perfectly arranged, the tables beautifully set, and a brass bell ringing softly in the oak tree whenever the breeze picked up.

Uncle Raj duplicated himself three times and hugged Veda with all four bodies. Aunt Sonal made a personal rainbow just for her. Cousin Nikhil turned visible for once and said, "That was the coolest thing I've ever seen, and I can literally turn invisible."

Priya sat in Veda's lap and wouldn't let go for an hour.

And Kavi—fourteen, obnoxious, thinks-he's-hilarious Kavi—walked over with a plate piled high with the best samosas and set it in front of her.

"I'm retiring the Muggle thing," he said.

"What are you going to call me instead?"

He thought about it. Shrugged.

"Veda," he said. "Just Veda."

She took a samosa. It was perfect.

Above them, the brass bell caught the wind and rang out once, soft and clear, over a yard full of extraordinary people and one girl who had saved them all by being exactly who she was.