“Okay, so I want to learn more. Go ahead and tell me. Tell me everything.”

Josh was resigned to his fate at that point. If there was no point in avoiding the full truth, he might as well know all of it.

“No.” Margot’s curt reply was immediately infuriating to Josh.

“What do you mean no? You just…”

“No for now.” Margot interrupted. “It would take days to explain everything to you and even then you wouldn’t be able to understand it all. For now, you get two questions. And I reserve the right to refuse to answer either if they’re too complicated. Is that acceptable?”

“Sure?” Josh didn’t know how to respond to the ultimatum he was suddenly being given.

“I’m not counting that as your first question even though it sure did sound like one.”

“Alright.” Josh let out a long sigh. He had no idea it was going to be this tedious to learn anything from Margot. He might not have agreed to accept her help if he had. “Fist question. What do the marks do?”

“Ah, now you’re getting somewhere.” Margot tapped her finger to nose in a gesture Josh didn’t quite understand. “These marks access our potential. And not in a we only use twenty percent of our brain kind of way. It’s less literal than that. It’s… kind of a complicated answer, but its not hard to explain with a visual aid. Sara, do you still have a white board?”

Sara, who had been listening in this whole time, jumped up off the couch immediately and made a break for her bedroom. “Yes, I’ll be right back with it!”

The second Sara was out of earshot, Margot turned sharply back to Josh and whispered, “If you ever get my daughter hurt, I’ll kill you myself. Clear?”

Sara was back in the room before Josh could respond, and now that she was back all he could do was nod. It wasn’t an unreasonable warning, but it had been sudden. It made sense that Margot had waited until Sara was away too, though Josh wasn’t sure that had been the purpose of sending Sara away. The sudden shift in tone in Margot’s voice, between when she had sent off Sara, offered her warning, and then once Sara had returned, was disorienting and it made it difficult for Josh to focus on what she was saying.

“The best way I can describe this is with a more math based approach, and I’m not great at maths, so bear with me.” Margot popped the cap off of a dry erase marker and began scribbling something on the white board that was now covering her lap. “Lets consider two subjects, John and Stacy. John has what we’ll call a life potential value of seventy-eight. That’s a little below average, but it’s certainly not zero. And Stacy have a life potential value of one hundred and thirty, a little above average. And the world as we know it has a filter that separates individuals based on that life potential value. Anyone below one hundred will be barely successful in their life or not successful at all, and anyone above one hundred will be successful. Are you following me?”

Margot was pointing down to the white board where she’d drawn stick figures and added numbers and a line between the two figures. Josh nodded his head even though he wasn’t entirely sure where she was taking her explanation. Sara had lingered after handing over the white board and was nodding her head from where she sat opposite Margot.

“One last assumption. Let’s assume these values are fated and irrevocable. John will always have a value of seventy-eight, Stacy will always have a value of one hundred and thirty. And as their lives play out, Stacy will use her up to her entire capacity of one hundred and thirty potential as her successes lead to further successes that she can take advantage of up to a point. But John, as he is only ever marginally successful, and presented with little opportunity as a result, only uses up to forty potential.” Margot was still writing as she spoke, but now we was doing actual math on the board as well. “That leaves thirty-eight points of potential untapped.”

“And a mark taps into that potential that get unused…” Josh filled in the blanks.

“Right. And these numbers are arbitrary, but that filter is more or less real.” Margot had mostly scrapped her diagram, but was still doodling idly Some people have a lot of potential, usually the ones that are deeply apart of the world they live in. I’m not entirely sure how that part works. But those people can’t see the marks. And conversely, people with lower potential can… but they usually don’t for other reasons that are more complicated than this explanation already is. But the people that can see marks innately are all low potential. And the mark makes up for that lack of used potential and low innate potential by manifesting certain things.”

Josh waited for Margot to go on, but she had stopped short of where the explanation seemed to be going. “You’re going to make me use my second question to ask what sort of things the mark manifests… aren’t you.”

Margot said nothing, but a chuckle from Sara and a playful smile from her mother seemed to indicate that that was the case.

“Fine, second question… what do the marks actually do?”

“They all do different things depending on the person. The same way everyone sees them differently, they rely on your perception of your shortcomings to bridge the gap.” Margot stood and walked over to the large wooden desk that had been sitting in the study area when they had moved in. And, without warning, lifted the desk from its center mass with just one hand. “Mine gives me strength that my body can’t have on its own.”

“So you get superpowers?” Josh knew it was another question but it seemed to follow naturally and he had already been cheated out of his second question.

“No… well… almost.” Margot put the desk down and sat on top of it. “It isn’t inaccurate, but it isn’t in the spirit of what the mark does either. And I could explain more, but that’s all the questions I want to answer today.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to say anything else, mom?” Sara goaded her mother. “Anything… about safety?”

“No. Now get back to studying.” Margot turned again to Josh as her daughter groaned and moved to the other side of the room again. “There’s one last thing. And you can decide not to do this, but I personally would feel a lot better if you let me teach you how to defend yourself.”

Josh started to shake his head, but then caught himself. The thought of learning self defense wasn’t exactly appealing, he’d never gotten in a fight before. But he had also never really ventured out much. And now his life was changing and he had no idea what was waiting for him. The thought occurred to him that at the very least he should be able to defend himself if worst came to worst.

“And before you say no…” Margot paused for a moment. “Whenever you come over and I’m here, I’ll answer two questions about marks and related things. And… I hesitate to offer this, because I doubt it will happen and I don’t want to give you a false hope. But if you can pin me while sparring, I’ll answer an additional question every time.”

Josh gave Margot a confused look. “Do you think I’m that impatient?”

“I suppose not.” Margot let out a single humph of a laugh. “And like I said, it would be unlikely to happen. So, we can scratch that.”

“I don’t think you’ll get anywhere goading me either. Not that I need it, I think self defense lessons would be a good idea.”

“You an spar against me if you think that’ll be easier!” Sara called from across the room.

Her offer made Josh blush. Getting into close quarters with Sara would be awkward but interesting. Almost like the equivalent of playing twister with a girl in high school, except now the girl would be trying to harm him.

“Alright, you can spar with Connor and Sara to start off with, it’ll probably be a good idea to practice all together since they’re so rusty now. What days do you have the lightest course load? We should practice weekly, at least.”

“How about Wednesdays? I have easy lectures Thursday mornings.”

“Not weekends?” Sara asked loudly from across the apartment again. She was trying not to intrude on the conversation, but the longer it went on the harder and harder it had become for her.

“Weekends are for movie nights, right?” Even though Josh suspected that movie night had probably been a ploy to observe him, it had still been a good time.

“Of course they are.” Sara had turned to face her mother and Josh, and she was beaming. “But that’s Sunday. You could come over Saturdays to do some exercises…”

Margot had a strained look on her face but she didn’t say anything to indicate why. “If you want we can train and talk every Wednesday and Saturday. Would you be comfortable doing that?”

“I can back out and stop any time I want if things get too weird, right?” Josh had been hopeful when he asked but upon seeing the serious and troubled expression he was answered with he became nervous. “Right?”

“You can try.”

“Okay. I should go.” Josh stood awkwardly, unsure of how many more ominous messages he could take before things truly progressed to the point where he felt he needed to follow his roommate’s advice.

Up to that point ‘weird’ had been more subjective, Josh already knew something unnatural was happening around him that he couldn’t explain and talking about it was hardly weird in and of itself. But the cryptics were becoming too much.

Before he could make it to the apartment door, however, Sara had jumped up to great him. And there was no getting past her. Without a word, she hugged him tightly around his whole body—arms included. It wasn’t so tight that she was squeezing him, in actually felt quite relaxing to be held in place like that. And just as it was becoming awkward as well, Sara withdrew and smiled. She seemed to know that there were too many words being said and that Josh was becoming overwhelmed.

And with that send off, Josh departed back into the world he had know his whole life. But as he descended in the elevator, he couldn’t help but think how it was no longer the real and normal world. Not to him. Not anymore.