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other seven cats kept circling Minx quietly, their kitty brows furrowed in concern.
    "Betty," Jackie instructed robot Betty, "do you think you might go into the kitchen and make Marcia a nice cup of tea?"
    Betty rolled out of the room but it was anyone's guess if she'd do as instructed. More likely, she'd try to find cartoons on TV or flirt with Carl the talking refrigerator. Sometimes we did secretly wonder why, given what a great scientist Mommy was, so many of her inventions didn't seem to work quite as she'd intended them to.
    But, miracle of miracles, robot Betty rolled back a few minutes later while we were all standing around Marcia wondering what to do. In Betty's pincered fingers she carried a cup of tea. It was a good thing that it turned out she hadn't bothered to heat the tea, because instead of placing it in Marcia's hand, she dumped it over Marcia's head.
    "That's not helpful, Betty," Marcia said through gritted teeth, her twin ponytails and bangs now dripping.
    "At least it stopped you groaning," Rebecca said.
    "Maybe now you can tell us what your power is." Annie paused, an expression on her face that was different from what we'd seen the past few days. Ever since Marcia had staged her hostile takeover, Annie had seemed subdued, depressed even. But now there was a new light in her eyes, an intelligent curiosity. "And maybe you can also tell us," Annie added, that intelligent curiosity still there, "how long you've known you've had it."
    "I don't know! You can't expect me to know the exact moment!" Marcia was outraged, and acting mighty suspicious. "You know how these power things are when you first get them. It's not always some kind of instantaneous thing like a light bulb going on over your head when you suddenly realize, 'Now I've got it!' Sometimes it's more gradual."
    "Huh." Georgia looked dumbfounded. "My ability to turn invisible was pretty instantaneous."
    "So was my ability to freeze people," Durinda said.
    "Mine too," Jackie said. "One minute I was my regular self, and the next—poof!—I was faster than a speeding train. It's not the sort of thing a person fails to notice."
    "Well, Annie's power didn't come upon her instantaneously," Marcia said defensively. "If I recall correctly, it was more of a gradual realization of what she could do."
    "True," Annie said. "And now it's all gone, or at least the specialness of it is."
    "But what is your power?" Zinnia asked Marcia eagerly. To Zinnia, getting powers was like getting presents. There was always a mixture of joy and sadness in her whenever someone received hers: joy at the idea of presents in general, sadness that she still had to wait until August for her turn.
    "Oh!" Marcia grabbed her head again. "There goes the eight o'clock train!"
    "I think I've figured out what Marcia's power is," Rebecca said knowingly.
    "You have?" we all said as seven heads snapped in her direction, even Marcia's sore one.
    "Yes," Rebecca said. "Marcia's obviously gone crazy. She's seeing things and hearing things that aren't here. So that's her power: the power to be insane."
    We wouldn't have quite put it that way, but it did seem that Rebecca might have something there.
    "Is that it?" Jackie placed a gentle hand on Marcia's shoulder. "You're seeing things and hearing things that aren't in the room with us?"
    "Yes!" Marcia cried.
    "You keep mentioning the Big City," Annie said. "Is that where the things you're seeing and hearing are from, all the way over in the Big City?"
    "Yes!" Marcia cried again.
    "I think, then," Annie said, "your power must be that of superior hearing and vision, almost x-ray and telescopic vision. And what's more, you can't control the images and sounds bombarding you."
    "Oh dear, this is serious," Durinda said as we all thought about what Marcia must be going through: the first of us Eights to get a power so overwhelming it could actually turn on her and cause her physical pain. "This calls for a cookie."
    ***
    Daddy Sparky and Mommy Sally kept