Extraordinary Mistakes

November 2019

“Just stop it, Abigail...” Rebecca’s hands hold her forehead. She hadn’t slept all night.

Abigail ignores her pleas and only stops when she gets so tired that she can’t fight it anymore and collapses. Rebecca drags her to bed, kisses her forehead and goes back to the control room. When she gets there, she notices that Padma isn’t around and goes to her room to find her.

“Is the accommodation to your liking?” Rebecca knocks on the door and gets in.

“Yes, thank you, ma’am.”

“I’m sure that Ahktar has explained that everything that happens here is not to be commented with anyone. Abigail’s only ability is the mental loop, understood? The emotional manipulation doesn’t exist. She has no fatal flaw.”

Padma swallows her saliva. She didn’t know about the fatal flaw.Why would someone so well off, like you Abigail, commit the fatal flaw? Why would you ruin your life like that? How did you do it?

“Understood, ma’am...”

Rebecca takes a deep breath.

“Do you have an ability, Padma?”

“Yes, I’m self-sustained, ma’am.”

“What does that mean?”

“That when it’s activated, I don’t need to eat, sleep...”

“Do you use it often?”

“I try not to.”

“Why is that?”

“Ma’am, my side effects... it can get out of hand.”

Rebecca waits and the girl understands that she’s supposed to elaborate on it.

“Last time that I overused my ability I spent at least three days without being able to sleep. I had too much energy and ended up having a threesome with two colleagues. It’s not something that I usually do.” She looks away and her voice breaks. “An older colleague found us... in the middle of it,” she whispers, “and took me out of there.”

“It could have gone way worse, thankfully you had someone put the brakes on you. Same that I’m doing here. You aren’t to interact with Abigail in any way. If you have something to say to her, you tell me, and I’ll deliver the message.” Rebecca takes a deep breath, deeper than she has all day. “She can be highly manipulative when she’s in this state.”

One week has gone by and Abigail refuses to stop using her ability. She keeps throwing up and crying, begging her parents to let her out, promising that she isn’t trying to use it and that the shocks hurt. She refuses to eat and threatens to die from hunger if they don’t release her. A doctor comes by and tries to insert a syringe with fluids, but she pushes him.

Rebecca forces her to drink water, and Abigail shouts how much she hates her. Throwing against one of the cameras a book that her mother left for her to read, There’s a Hole in My Sidewalk by Portia Nelson. Rebecca highlighted Autobiography in Five Short Chapters.

After two weeks, Rebecca is done, and uses a tranquilizer on her to connect her to fluids.

It’s late in the evening. Rebecca reads One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez and Padma monitors Abigail’s vitals.

Mark has gone to Eurasia to visit Veronica, their middle child, and there are already rumors circulating that they separated.

“One month and a half and you’re still a complete stranger to me, Padma.”

“Sorry, ma’am.”

“Any siblings?”

“Yes. All of them younger, two brothers and two sisters.” She shows the pictures on her phone. “The oldest is 18 years old, the next one is 16, this one 15 and this one 12.”

“Deviants?”

“No, they’re humans, same as my parents.”

“Are they around?”

“No, they moved back to India five years ago. I stayed to work with Mr. Ahktar. I send them some money.”

“Is the analyst salary from the Institute enough?”

“Yes, I live in the dormitory, so I pay very little for rent. The salary was enough to cover it and for everything else. Until my father lost his job two months ago, so things have been harder. I’m trying hard for my brothers and sisters to keep studying. They want to be engineers and doctors; I think they will make it.” She stops. “I’m sorry, I keep going and going.”

“Never apologize for being vulnerable. It takes great courage and strength to be open about our misfortunes. Be honest now with me, have you cut costs on your wellbeing before you moved here? In food perhaps?”

“I am self-sustained, ma’am.”

“That comes with a heavy price.”

“One that I am happy to pay for my brothers and sisters’ future.”

A therapist accompanies Abigail every day. Rebecca, Mark, Zach, and Padma always step away in those moments. She finally comes around to read the poem and understands what her mom means. How hard change is, how inevitable it all feels until we take a first step in a different direction than we have for a long time.

She realizes she can’t continue doing what she has so far. That all her emotions are valid and worth feeling, that she can’t use her ability to avoid the uncomfortable ones.

It took her three months to be finally good enough to come out. She runs to hug her father, apologizes to him, and refuses to look her mother in the eyes. Rebecca respects it and steps aside. Zach punches her lightly on the shoulder and makes her promise never to pull such a stunt again. They sit by the poolside and Abigail asks her brother to tell her all about his life on the last few months.

Inside, Saif’s team removes the equipment. Padma left the day before without saying goodbye.

“Thank you so much!” Mark shakes Saif’s hand at the door.

“Glad that we could help, Mr. Parker,” Saif begins to leave.

“Ahktar, you will never fire Padma. And more than that, you will offer her the highest paying position that you have.” Rebecca looks directly to his eyes, making him swear on this.

Later that week, Ánh sits comfortably in her room, commenting on the deviant’s forum, interacting with other users. Despite not knowing who they are, some she considers close friends who are unconditionally there for her.

A knock on her room interrupts her thoughts and she immediately shuts down the forum.

“How was South America?” Ánh asks Abigail when she opens the door, she refuses to look at her.

“Can I come in?” Abigail looks down and Ánh opens the door wider and shuts it after she comes in.

“... I wouldn’t know. That’s just some lie my parents made up,” Abigail sits on Ánh’s bed.

“Emily said she spoke with you.”

“What? She lied.”

Why would she lie?

“I’m sorry if I worried you and... I’m so sorry.” She goes near Ánh, falls in her arms and cries.

In this moment, Ánh ’s resentment disappears. She tells Abigail that it will be okay, whenever she feels ready to talk about it, she is there for her.

When Abigail returns to the Institute, everyone keeps praising her for being much thinner. No one wonders why she isn’t tanned after almost four months on the south’s summer. Not even Emily. Not much of a surprise, considering Jade Harris, the world’s second most powerful deviant, and Emily’s on and off girlfriend, is back in the picture.

Later that day, she walks with Ánh when they see Aminu by himself, listening to his favorite American bands. They sit next to him. Aminu welcomes back Abigail, who compliments his hoodie and asks about it. The boy’s eyes light up.

They became inseparable on that day.

Years went comfortably by, and they remained tight. Celebrating each other’s victories and helping in the moments of pain. Emily would, from time to time, join them, whenever her love life fell apart.

Despite it all, Ánh isn’t happy with her life. She can’t be, after everything that she reads on the forums. All the suffering that her group of friends can ignore in the comfort of the Institute. For a year now, she would message every day a user. He was a member of the terrorist group. She didn’t know his real name, but she’d never felt so understood. Loved even.

June 2025

It’s their last day of classes. Even though they are 22, they still feel too young to start working for the Institute in the following school year. They hired Ánh as an analyst in the lab and a brainstormer for the marketing department, and Abigail will be an instructor.

On the first day of their adult life, Abigail arrives on the lobby, and there isn’t any sign of Ánh. This is strange, she’s the one who’s always late, Ánh would never fail her. She calls her and nothing.

Abigail runs to the dormitory, goes all the way to Ánh ’s bedroom, knocks on the door, and eventually asks the manager to open it. There’s blood everywhere, the bedroom is tarnished, and Ánh isn’t there.

Rebecca spends the next week at home with her daughter, never leaving her side. Afraid of what Abigail might do to herself.

The police calls and confirms their worst fears: Ánh was murdered.