Inside Straight

Security hustled him away before he could get in another word. The auditions continued. For every dozen duds or fakes, someone came along who left the audience gasping.

Early on, a woman who called herself Gardener—slim, black, and intense—trailed a handful of seeds on the ground, in front of the judges’ table. Instantly, they grew into trees, towering conifers that left the judges in their own little forest. Auditions halted for an hour while one of them, the strongman Harlem Hammer, uprooted them and cleared them away.

Later, a good-looking, dark-haired guy in his twenties stepped onto the field and flexed his fingers. Donning a cocky grin, he flung out his arms like he was throwing a ball, and a stream of glaring blue flames jetted from his hands and struck the frame of a gutted car. A layer of frost and icicles formed on the metal, even in the midday heat. Then he fired yellow flames at the pile of Gardener’s uprooted trees, which caught fire. Assistants were on hand to put out the flames with fire extinguishers. Finally, he faced the judges, hands raised, and he was on fire. His head and hands burned with writhing purple flames, and he was smiling, unharmed. He called himself the Candle.

This was exactly what Ana meant when she told Roberto there’d be flashy stuff here.

“Sixty-seven!” one of the production assistants called, checking her clipboard.

“Sixty-seven, Paul Blackwell!”

“Yes!” the guy in front of her exclaimed, then dashed for the field. He hadn’t been able to shut up about how cool his power was.

For a long moment, nothing happened, and Ana wondered if he was another one of those nats who claimed vast mental powers. Then, one of the judges—Topper, the former government ace—sneezed. And sneezed again. And couldn’t stop sneezing. Then the Harlem Hammer sneezed. Both of them were incapacitated, wracked with violent seizures of sneezing.

And Downs—he gripped the edge of the table, caught in some seizure of his own. He wasn’t sneezing, but his eyes rolled partway back in his head, and his body twitched, almost rhythmically. Oh my, Ana thought.

Paul Blackwell crossed his arms and regarded them with a satisfied grin.

“Jesus Christ, would you stop that!” Downs shouted. The seizures stopped and the three judges slouched over their table, exhausted.

Topper wiped her nose with a tissue and said angrily, “Mr. Blackwell—”

“I am Spasm!“ the guy said, punching both arms into the air.

“Fine. I think we’ve seen enough of your—I hesitate to even call it an ace—”

“Hold on, not so fast,” Downs said, and Topper rolled her eyes. “Er, Spasm. You say you can do this sort of thing to anyone?”

“Yes, sir!” he said, grinning. “At least, so far.”

The three judges leaned together to confer, and a moment later Spasm left the field, grinning. Downs scratched a note on the paper in front of him. Then the production assistant called, “Sixty-eight! You’re up! Ana Cortez!”

Ana’s heart raced. This was it. Finally. She spotted a guy up in the stands, waving both arms wildly. Roberto, among the spectators. He seemed so happy. The sight of him settled her.

Smoothing her hands on her jeans, she went to face the judges. The three looked so with-it, so assured of themselves. They’d recovered quickly from their encounter with Spasm, and their gazes were almost bored. Who could blame them? Surely they’d seen everything by now.

Downs asked, “What is it you do, Ana?”

She’d said it a hundred times by now. “I dig holes.”

“You dig holes.” His expression was blank.

“Yeah.”

“Well.” He shuffled some papers in front of him. “Let’s see you dig a hole.”

She stood alone at the edge of the field, a hundred yards of green spread before her. She’d never had an audience like this—not since she was little, digging mazes in the playground, when all the neighbors gathered and whispered, brujita, es una brujita de la tierra. This crowd didn’t make a sound. The silence marked thick anticipation.

She closed her eyes so she couldn’t see them.

Kneeling, she touched her medallion, then put her hands on the ground.

Had to be big. Something flashy. The holes she dug for work—nobody could see how far down they went. So she had to do something else. It didn’t need to be precise, no one here was measuring. Turn the hole sideways, and dig it fast.

Now.

Particles moved under her hands, the dirt shifting away from her. The ground rumbled as it might in an earthquake. It vibrated under her, no longer solid, sounding like the soft roar of a distant waterfall. She opened her eyes just as a trench raced away from her. In seconds a cleft opened, splitting the earth to the opposite end zone. A hundred yards. Wide and gaping, it was four feet deep, angled like a steep canyon. Earthwork ridges piled up on either side, and a gray film of dust floated in the air above it. She’d cracked open the earth like an egg.