As I look into the drawer, I feel all the hope I'd let myself feel plummet back into my heart, hiding away again. Gone. There's only one thing in the drawer.

A syringe filled about halfway with a dark amber liquid. The plastic cap is still on it, the seal unbroken. It's one of the spring-loaded ones, the EpiPen kind. A locked drawer that contains an EpiPen? Kind of counterintuitive. You always want an EpiPen to be accessible.

So if it isn't an EpiPen, what is it?

"HELIOS?"

"Yes, Helen?"

"Can you analyze this, do whatever you do?"

"I cannot analyze the compound. However, its weight tells me that it is a thin liquid, nearly as thin or even thinner than water. It's made to move easily through the bloodstream."

I already knew all of that. I just wanted to hear it out loud, I guess. "So, I'm supposed to inject myself with it?"

"I believe so."

I sigh. Shit keeps getting crazier.

Honestly, I'm not that surprised.

I pick the device up and weigh it. Less than half a pound. Almost entirely plastic. I sigh again. I'm stalling. "HELIOS, where do I inject it?"

"I believe it would go in the crook of your elbow, or in your neck."

I snap the cap off of the needle and press the point of it into my arm. I'm really not that scared. Random liquid in my veins? Yeah, why not!

I'm definitely crazy. I press the needle into my skin, barely feeling the dull pinch. I press the button, hear the click, feel the formula slide into my bloodstream. It's a certain coldness, spreading from the point of injection throughout my body. HELIOS speaks, suddenly very dull and quiet, "Blood pressure and heart rate are spiking."

I begin to feel faint and dizzy, as if I just got off the teacups at Disney. I can barely stand, the room is spinning so fast.

Or am I spinning?

It's hard to tell.

I somehow make my way to the bedroom and throw myself on the bed.

I pass out to the sounds of HELIOS muttering something about muscle deformation.

///

"Sammy, can you stop that? It's driving me crazy."

For the past half hour in the car, he had been singing the Angry Birds theme song. Mommy was losing her marbles. He didn't stop, though, just got a little quieter. I sighed.

"Mommy, are we there yet?" He asked, pausing from his singing. It was only the fifth time he'd asked me... in the past ten minutes.

"Is the car stopped, honey?"

"Nooo..." He said this like.he was unsure of his answer, though we were going at fifty down the highway.

"When the car stops, then we're there, okay?"

"Yeah, I know that, mommy!"

"We'll be there in..." I check the map on my phone. "Eight minutes."

"How does your phone know that?"

I pointed at the sky. "Satellites!"

"Oh," he said, with a wisdom beyond his years. The silence didn't last long. "What are satellites?"

"Satellites are big things up in space that bounce information around the world." I made a frantic gesture with the hand not on the wheel.

"How do they do that? And how did they get up there?"

"They do it with magic. Humans learned how to control magic in 1969. Didn't you know that?"

"What?! We can control magic???" The genuine faith and belief in his words touched my heart.

"Mmmm-hm. How did you think your tablet worked?"

He looked at the thing in his lap with wide puppy eyes of wonder. Under his breath he whispered, "Whoooaaaa..."
He looked back at me. "What- what are some other things that are magic?"

I was put on the spot. I said the first thing that came to my mind. I was hungry. "McDonald's."

"McDonald's!?"

"Yep. How else would they make the food so fast?"

"Holy shit!"

"Hey, language!" I said, stifling laughter. I loved this kid. And he was mine. Warmth surged through my heart. But, indeed an opportunity here. "Mommy is also magic, did you know that?"

He stared at me with a blank face. "Really?" For a six year old, he injected more sarcasm into the word than I'd ever heard in my life.

"Mmmm-hm. I know when you're thinking about doing anything bad. And I can see it in your eyes when you did do something."

He was obviously unconvinced. "Name a thing I did that was bad yesterday."

My kid was smarter than most, in some aspects. "Well, I know you were up way past your bedtime last night." I had heard the sounds of cartoon birds and pigs playing on his tablet all the way from his bedroom.

His eyes widened. "How'd you know that?"

"Like I said... magic!" I wiggled my fingers in the rearview mirror.

His face dropped, and he was obviously having second thoughts about causing trouble again. Probably wouldn't last for long, though. He's six. We were entering town now, and o could see the turn into the hotel's parking lot. "Look, Sammy! That's where we're staying."

"Whoooaaa! It's so big! And it's all ours?"

I laughed. "No, not all of it. Just one room."

His mouth was agape. "And how many rooms are there??"

"Probably around a hundred." I told him as we parked.

"That's so many!" And he went on a ramble about how big it looked and was there a pool and could we play in it and Landon had a huge pool. I honestly zoned out and began thinking about Sammy. How much I loved him. How much I wanted the best for him in this world.

How I would do anything to protect him.