On June 17, 2004, six students and two faculty members from Saint Ilia’s School for Gifted Girls were found dead. A not altogether shocking occurrence, as mishaps of the fatal variety often happen when one thousand powered teenagers are crammed under one roof, and with a fire conveniently destroying much of the school, there is little to prove these were nothing more than tragic misfortunes.
But as the lead Detective assigned to the case, it is your job to get to the bottom of what really happened at Saint Ilia’s.
If only you could.
You toss the files onto the table in frustration. You’re missing something, something that instigated these deaths, predicated the fire. A person, a power. Suspicion naturally first fell on all the various girls and staff gifted with abilities that could affect the deaths—powers over fire and water and air—but all those interviews have failed to provide a viable lead, and they, and all the other powered individuals from the school, have been cleared.
It doesn’t make any sense. You wish you were powered, gifted in some way that could help, but you are, as the kids say, just a normie.
At a loss, you decide to call it a day, return to the investigation with fresh eyes tomorrow, and begin to pack away all the files and evidence. There isn’t much. Victim profiles, interview notes, and the few items that survived the fire: a paint-splattered cup, a candy wrapper, and, most miraculously, a paper fortune teller, the kind you used to play with as a kid. It’s crumpled, water-warped, and singed, but still intact.
You pull the folded paper out of the evidence bag, turning it over in your hands, marveling how this bit of paper didn’t burn. Something niggles at the back of your mind, something that feels both silly and sinister and has you flipping the fortune teller open, settling your fingers into the corners.
Feeling nostalgic, a little macabre, and kind of desperate, you whisper your question:
Who killed the eight women and girls at Saint Ilia’s?
Ready?
Pick a Color.
RED—go to A
BLUE—go to B
GREEN—go to A
YELLOW—go to B
A. Now pick a number.
1—go to C
2—go to D
6—go to D
5—go to C
B. Now pick a number.
8—go to C
3—go to D
7—go to D
4—go to C
C. One more number.
8—go to Dr. Ilia Khan
3—go to Isis Alero
7—go to Neveah Sims
4—go to Megan Carpenter
D. One more number.
1—go to Lucy Johnson
2—go to Danielle Watanabe
6—go to Ms. Stevens
5—go to Lim Pak
1. LUCY JOHNSON
Lucy Johnson was born in 1988 and developed the power to speak and understand any language in 1997, which she most often used to ruthlessly make fun of her younger sister, Allegra, and anyone else who crossed her path. She was the first to die at Saint Ilia’s in 2004, crushed under a fallen bookshelf in the library, hundreds of books in hundreds of languages raining down on her. She was not found until three other girls had also died.
Do you know who killed her?
Yes—go to The End
No—go to Pick a Color
2. DANIELLE WATANABE
Danielle Watanabe always knew she was special, and when her feet left the ground in 1994, she was not surprised. Her ability to fly led her to Saint Ilia’s the following year where she hovered to and from classes among other special girls. And—ugh—the occasional normie, some scholarship sibling of a gifted child. Those girls Danielle liked to zoom past, quick as a rocket, scattering their possessions and lifting their skirts as they shrieked in surprise, feet stuck to the ground. She had just done so to a normie on that day in 2004, sending the poor girl’s paper art to the winds. As Danielle spun away in the sky, cackling, she felt a slight sting on her right shoulder. She thought nothing of it, and neither did anyone else until Danielle plummeted from the sky, face and neck swollen around a small red welt on her shoulder, dead before she hit the ground.
Do you know who killed her?
Yes—go to The End
No—go to Pick a Color
3. ISIS ALERO
How can a girl see so much and know so little? This was the common refrain Isis Alero heard from academic counselors at Saint Ilia’s when she was flunking a class or caught cheating for the nth time. But really, what was Isis to do? She had x-ray vision. She didn’t need to memorize facts and figures when she could just peer through the back of the person in front of her and read their test—usually Lucy’s sister who knew better than to rat Isis out and risk the ire of two powered girls. She was doing so that day in June, vision easily surpassing the girl’s attempts to hide her answers by folding her papers. Please. Isis copied the entire final exam, left class, and was exposing who was kissing whom in the closets when she abruptly fell down the stairs, breaking her neck, having apparently not seen the wet floor sign in front of the landing.
Do you know who killed her?
Yes—go to The End
No—go to Pick a Color
4. MEGAN CARPENTER
If you asked Megan what the greatest injustice in the world was, she’d say it was that powered people like herself did not get more recognition. Megan was telekinetic. She could move things with her mind . . . light things. The other girls often laughed at Megan’s attempts to levitate anything heavier than a chair, and the only people she impressed where the normal kids. But their admiration only made the lack of respect from her true peers more apparent, and Megan frequently hounded the normies, pelting them from afar with small objects. She was surprised on June 17th when an unseen assailant chucked their own paper ball at Megan’s head in retaliation. Surprised even more when, a few minutes later, she suffered a splitting headache, a sudden nosebleed, and collapsed, dead of a ruptured aneurysm.
Do you know who killed her?
Yes—go to The End
No—go to Pick a Color
5. LIM PAK
The news of several mysterious student deaths did not phase Lim. Threats and danger hadn’t bothered her ever since she woke up one day able to put her fist clean through a concrete wall. Lim had yet to meet a problem or person she couldn’t punch out of her way. So, while the rest of the school was off huddling together, Lim went to the pool alone, kicking out the normie girl working beside it, tossing her paper sculptures into the water and threatening to do the same to her until she left. But mere minutes into her swim, Lim got a sudden cramp in her side . . . then her leg . . . and then her arm. She flailed, went under. Lim tried to pump her arms, use all her mighty strength to get back to the surface, but water can’t be punched into submission.
Do you know who killed her?
Yes—go to The End
No—go to Pick a Color
6. MS. STEVENS
People didn’t start to panic until Ms. Stevens, the art teacher, was found dead in her office. But while her death caused great fear, people were more shocked than sad. Ms. Stevens had the ability to manifest mental images onto canvas without so much as touching a paintbrush. She decided that made her a capital A artist, and everyone else who could not make paint or pencil create their own ideas were simply not trying hard enough. She especially hated anyone who worked in a medium her power had no effect on like clay or paper. Everyone knew the story of how Ms. Stevens tore up Allegra’s origami midterm in front of the whole class. So, when Ms. Stevens accidentally drank from her paint-thinner cup instead of her coffee cup, few were sorry.
Do you know who killed her?
Yes—go to The End
No—go to Pick a Color
7. NEVEAH SIMS
Unlike the other victims of June 17, 2004, Neveah knew she was going to die. After watching Isis Alero take a nosedive down the stairs, she started seeing her own lifeline coming up short and confided in some of her friends. They were sympathetic, but none really paid her any mind. Poor girl may have had the gift of foresight, but it was far from 20/20. Her predictions were wrong more often than they were right, giving her a reputation for being overly anxious, weirdly eccentric, and wildly unpopular. Her only friends were normal girls, for the powered girls bullied her as incessantly as if she were one of them. It was deeply ironic then that Neveah, the only one with the power to stop these tragedies and identify the culprit, was ignored and dismissed until it was just too late. When Neveah’s visions finally sent her running to the office to give testimony, she choked on the principal’s proffered candy, and all she managed to say before she died was, “she has powers!”
Do you know who killed her?
Yes—go to The End
No—go to Pick a Color
8. DR. ILIA KHAN
Dr. Ilia Khan, the last to die, was not simply named after the founder of Saint Ilia’s as many were led to believe. She was Saint Ilia, the woman who built the school one hundred and forty-six years ago for people like her. But she was not immortal, just long lived. How long turned out to be one hundred and ninety-three years, as she died in a fire that destroyed much of the school on June 17, 2004. She had just received a cancellation note for her emergency grief counseling session with the Johnson girl. Just as well. Dr. Khan did not like counseling non-powered kids. What, after all, did normies have to fret about? They were never going to outlive their loved ones, laser eye their cat, or read the mind of a pervert. They didn’t have real problems in Dr. Khan’s eyes, and she tossed the note blithely in the trash. But as she did so, her arm accidentally knocked into one of her scented candles, sending it flying into the curtains. They went up like dry paper.
Do you know who killed her?
Yes—go to The End
No—go to Pick a Color
THE END
You set the fortune teller on the table, hands shaking. Bee sting, aneurysm, drowning—every flip had you following in the ghostly footsteps of the victims, fates sealed in a paper fortune teller.
“Excuse me?”
You look up at the small voice, shooting to your feet in surprise.
A girl is standing in your doorway. She enters without invitation and closes the door behind her. As she turns back to face you, you notice that she is wearing the Saint Ilia’s uniform skirt and blazer. It’s rumpled, dirty, dotted with ash—as if she has just emerged from the fire there, a fire two days gone.
“I see you’ve found my fortune teller,” the girl says.
“Your . . . this is yours?” you demand, picking it back up. She looks familiar. From the files? An interview? You want to open them up and check, but something tells you to keep your eyes on the girl.
She’s digging into the inner pocket of her blazer. “That one’s old, though, used up,” she says as she pulls out a crisp, white sheet of paper. “I’ll make you a new one.”
When she steps up to the desk and reaches for a pen, you flinch back, hand twitching to the desk drawer that houses your sidearm. The girl follows the movement with her eyes and smiles, unafraid, jotting something onto the paper. You flush, feeling absurdly embarrassed in front of the child, and sit down, trying to ignore the sudden cold sweat trickling down your back.
“I want to ask you some questions,” you say with as much authority as you can muster. “Are your parents here?”
“I am sorry for this, Detective,” she says conversationally, ignoring your question. “Truly, I am. But you’re just like Neveah . . . ” She trails off and eyes the fortune teller you still hold. “You should have stayed out of it.”
She begins folding the paper—diagonally, corners in, corners back, widthwise, lengthwise—humming idly as she works. With each fold you feel your heart hammer in your chest, speeding up, the pieces you have missed this whole time falling fatally into place.
You had asked the fortune teller a question, and now its answer sits before you: the girl who folded the paper, wrote the fortunes, and made them all come true, killing eight women and girls with powers no one knew she had, powers over paper and ink and (mis)fortune itself—
“Ready?”
Allegra Johnson holds out a brand-new paper fortune teller to you.
“Pick a color.”
