"Duncan,.Lois.-.A.Gift.Of.Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Lois)

"I'm clairvoyant too," Nancy said. "I can see things happening. Brendon's building a boat, for instance. In the afternoons if I reach out and look for Brendon with my mind, I see him banging away on it. And precognitionЧ"
"You have that too!" Kirby's eyes were wide. "The way you know when a phone is going to ring! My gosh, Nance, you're a three-star performer! They could give you tests for the rest of your life and never get through with you!"
"Well, they're not going to," Nancy said decidedly. "I'm not going to let them. I'm not going to spend my life being somebody's experiment."
Kirby was silent. When she spoke at last, it was thoughtfully.
"Just how are you going to spend it, Nancy?"
Nancy was surprised at the question. "What do you mean?"
"It's your gift, isn't it? This ESP thing? Like my gift is dancing? I feel sometimesЧ" She paused.
"How do you feel?" Nancy prodded.
"This is going to sound silly. Do you remember a fairy tale we used to read when we were little about a girl with magic shoes? Somebody put them on her feet and they became part of her and she couldn't take them off again. They made her dance."
"You think something like that happened to you?" Nancy glanced down at her sister's long straight feet.
"Oh, not with magic shoes, of course. It's the thing about having been given something. I can imagine it sometimesЧsomebody actually having a present for me, all wrapped up, and it's the ability to dance. 'Here, Kirby,' the person says. 'Here is a special thing just for you. Work hard at it and use it.'"
"A fairy godmother?" Nancy asked.
Kirby flushed. "See, I told you it would sound silly. It is a funny coincidence though, isn't it, with both of us having special things?"
"Then what about Brendon?"
"OhЧBren." Kirby shrugged. "You can't count him."
"It's a nice way to think about it," Nancy said, "but I could believe it more if Brendon had something too. A fairy godmother wouldn't be that unfair, to give us two gifts and not give one to him. Besides, who believes in magic?"
"Who believes in ESP?" Kirby countered. She laughed, and the laughter was good, for it broke the tension.
Nancy laid the book aside and went over to the bureau to get her pajamas. Then she went into the bathroom to change so that Kirby could have the whole room for pirouettes.
As she undressed she looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. She was still straight and skinny, but suddenly, to her surprise, she saw that she was not quite as flat as she had been. She turned sideways and looked at herself again. Yes, it was true. She might never look like Kirby, but she was finally, at long last, beginning to look like something other than a boy.
She put on her pajamas and went back to the bedroom.
"Kirby," she said, "when did you first get a bra?"
Kirby was doing her pirouettes en pointe.
"Oh," she said, "years ago. I guess I was eleven. I really needed it. I was starting to flop around."
"I guess it will be years before I need one," Nancy said.
"Lucky you."
Nancy sat down on the bed to watch her sister. It seemed to her that Kirby was thinner than she used to be. The muscles stood out in long cords down her legs, but her knees were pointed and her arms were no longer so rounded. Her face looked thinner too.
"Kirby," Nancy said, "do you ever think about boys?"
"Nope," Kirby said. "No time to. Do you?"
"Boys like you," Nancy commented. "I can tell they do. They look at you in the cafeteria and smile and act silly to get your attention. Barbara tells meЧyou know, Barbara in my social studies classЧshe has a brother in the ninth grade, and he thinks you're a knockout."
"Does he?" Kirby said without interest. She was practicing on demipointe now. Her face was red with exertion and she was breathing too hard to continue the conversation.
Watching her, Nancy had a sudden picture of Kirby years from now, still stretching and bending and pointing, all the roundness and softness gone and just the muscle left.
I almost wish, Nancy thought, that she didn't have her gift. I wish she were just herself, pretty and fun and nice, without this drive in her making her go all the time. I wish she had time to like more thingsЧpretty clothes and boys and parties and reading books and being a sister.
She did not say it out loud because Kirby would think she was crazy. Kirby thought having a gift was wonderful.
Well, maybe it was, Nancy thought. Maybe a person could get used to it. Maybe she would get to love being an ESP person just the way Kirby loved being a dancer.


8

Christmas began in November.
Long before Thanksgiving had appeared on the horizon, the stores were filled with Christmas decorations and counters overflowed with gay colored wrapping papers and greeting cards.
Brendon went around whistling Christmas carols, and their mother kept saying, "I don't understand it. The holidays never used to start until the beginning of December. It's been so long since we spent Christmas here in the States, perhaps I'm not remembering correctly."
Kirby did all her shopping in one afternoon the first week of December. She was not the shopping type Nancy was. Nancy could shop happily every day for a month or more without actually buying anything, just looking at things and wondering about and enjoying the feeling that eventually she would decide on something to buy.
To Kirby such shopping was a waste of time. She made her list out beforehand. When she was ready to shop she went straight to the right department of whatever store she had decided on and made her purchase and went quickly on to the next one. In one Saturday between noon and two o'clock she made all the gift purchases for the entire family, including a necktie for her father, although they were not sure just now where he was and could not mail anything until they heard from him.
She was just getting ready to leave the store when her eye was caught by something on the china counter. There, set back behind the ashtrays and half hidden by the bulging side of a huge flower vase, was a swan made of smoked glass.
Kirby crossed the aisle and stood before the counter, looking down at the small, gray figurine. It was an odd thing, delicate and yet strongly posed, the long thin neck arched back as though in anger, the wings spread wide.
A salesgirl appeared from around the corner of the counter.
"May I show you something?" she asked.
"I'm looking at that swan," Kirby said. "What's it for? It's not a vase or something, is it?"
"No," the girl said. "It's just a figurine. It's pretty, isn't it?"
"But it hasn't any purpose?" asked Kirby.