Read Throat for Free Online Page A

thing kept going higher and higher as it left my hand. It all felt so effortless. The refrigerator tumbled in midair a moment, then gravity caught up and it came crashing down on its side.
    The sound boomed off the nearest buildings. The kids at the swings came running over, shrieking and laughing, all wanting to touch me, calling me superhero names like Spider-Man and the Hulk. Manda was right in the middle of them.
    “Emma! Emma! You’re Superman!”
    “No, shhh, no, I’m not!” I said. “It was just really light. I didn’t do anything.”
    “Emma! You’re a superhero!”
    They begged me to do it again. I shook my head over and over. Thankfully, none of them was older than five or six. Nobody would believe them if they told anybody what I’d done. I thought it again.
    What’s happening to me?
    I was stunned and more than a little afraid. It was almost as if … as if I were turning into something new.
Some new kind of human
.
    But what kind? I didn’t know.
    One thing that hadn’t changed: my impulsive nature. Why couldn’t I have waited until after dark to have tested my strength?
    But it had been impossible to ignore once I had felt it—that power—inside me. The moment it had surged through me, I didn’t give a rip who was watching.
Who cares?
I would have thought if someone had tried to warn me not to do it.
What? You think you can stop me?
    I took Manda’s hand and hustled her back to the apartment with her complaining the whole way. I stopped when we got to our steps. “You can’t tell Mom about this,” I said. “You just can’t.”
    “Why?” Manda said. “She has to know. She has to know you’re Superman, Emma.”
    “I’m not Superman, Manda. I’m not.”
    “Supergirl, then.”
    “No.”
    “Superwoman.”
    “No, I’m nothing. I mean, I’m just strong, really, really strong. This has to be a secret, do you understand? A secret just between me and you. If you tell anyone, even if it’s just Mom, she’ll get really scared and other people will find out. And then …” I wasn’t sure what I could say to convince her. Then I had an idea. “The bad guys will get me, Manda. Do you see what I’m saying? You don’t want that to happen, okay? The bad guys would get you too. And Mom.”
    “Oh! Like Peter Parker.”
    “Yeah, just like Peter Parker. Nobody else can know or—”
    “Or the bad guys, they will come and hurt us.”
    “Right. Okay. Talk about something else when we see Mom. Anything else.”
    “Okay.”
    My head was bursting with thoughts, so many I couldn’t keep up with them all. The most disturbing was this: while it was happening, what I was doing didn’t feel disturbing at all. Lifting thatrefrigerator didn’t feel strange. It felt natural.
The most natural thing in the world
.
    The next morning I begged out of school and nagged my mother until she drove me to one of those doc-in-the-box places to get the stitches removed.
    “But it’s more than a week early!” Mom kept saying all the way there.
    “I know, but it feels fine,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her what I already suspected.
    I looked at the doctor’s name tag: OLOKOWANDI .
    “And may I have your name, miss? Call me Dr. Olo,” he said when I climbed up on the paper. He was a dazzlingly handsome black guy with the most striking smile I had ever seen. Though right now he was looking kind of perplexed.
    Dr. Olo had just taken the bandage off my leg and run his finger along the top of my thigh. Where the sick-looking wound had been, there was a slight ridge of flesh about three or four inches long—and nothing else. The skin was perfect, otherwise.
    “I don’t mean to … say this,” Dr. Olo said. It sounded like an accusation. “There are no sutures. You took them out, didn’t you? You are a strong girl to take them out yourself. Or did your father or mother do it for you?”
    My face must have told him that wasn’t the case. His expression changed. “Take your finger,