"I'm home!!" Bridget returned home at seven o'clock in the morning clad in her winter clothes. "Skiing was like so much fun! It was like so incredible! Daddy, can we move to Canada?"
"Oh, dad, can we?!" Rory mimicked his sister and was swatted by the dishtowel again.
"No!" Paul raised his voice then remembered his heart. "We're not moving to Canada!" He paused thinking it over. "Snow, moose and round bacon?"
"Kerry, you should have come with me…" Bridget dropped her suitcases on the sofa and came up to the kitchen counter where her siblings ate their morning breakfast. "There were cute guys, deer, snow, cute guys, hot chocolate by fire… did I mention the cute guys?"
"Yes, you did." Kerry mumbled under breath and stirred her scrambled eggs. Standing by the back door, her mother sipped her morning coffee and checked the time. Paul mused at this family moment tiredly ready for the day. Bridget had obviously had a fun time away from home, but now it was time to return to reality, work and school whatever the situation may be.
"So…" Bridget sat beside her sister. "Anything happen while I was gone?"
"Your alter ego appeared at my school." Rory spoke up chewing bacon. "Cody Martin set fire to the science lab, and Mrs.Savage lost her breath screaming… It was like so cool!"
"Wait," Bridget looked at her brother and leaned across to his level with her hands on his shoulders. "How much does she look like me?"
The kitchen drew quiet. Cate stopped stirring her coffee and Paul turned round from choosing cereal. Kerry froze at what she was doing.
"I didn't get to see her." Rory confessed. "Mrs. DeWitt herded us out after the fire alarm, but Patrick Tisdale said she had really big boobs."
Bridget swatted him just for being disgusting and Kerry rolled her eyes at the distasteful comment. Any notion that Bridget was this girl was sort of diminishing. The Detroit blonde had appeared seven times in Bridget's absence; and yet, Kerry was not ready to let it go. Anyone who could get from Chicago to Detroit to New York and back certainly could be two places at once.
"Oh, kids…" Paul turned to his family. "The newspaper is having a party next month for a new investor." He poured milk to his cereal. "I want you all on your best behavior when we all meet Linda Kent."
Bridget started choking on her glass of orange juice. Her mother started patting her back to relieve her.
"Do we have to meet her?" Rory stirred around his fruit loops.
"Yes…" Paul insisted. "She's a part of the Detroit Tribune family like all of us. We all want her to feel welcome."
"Excuse me," Bridget looked up with alarm. "What's her name again?"
"Linda Kent." Cate said it. Bridget made a face. Her jaw dropped a bit and her eyes widened.
"I got to change for school." She downed the last of her juice and bolted from the table with her cell phone heading up the back stairs for her bedroom. She knew that name. Linda Kent was the alias under which she did her secret stock trading. Linda was the first name of Supergirl; Kent was the last name of the Man of Steel. What were the odds of another person in Detroit having that name? In the privacy of her bedroom, she pulled off her sweater and juggled her cell phone calling the woman who handled her stocks.
In the third floor of the Ritter Building, Jennifer Walters was one of seventeen brokers for the Bank of America in Detroit. Like most of her peers, the majority of her clients were private individuals and retirees who placed their retirement in companies to provide for their futures. Among these people, the person she knew as Linda Kent had to be psychic or something. Every stock she had denoted had gone up in worth or had lead to another prosperous shift in the market. Jennifer's colleagues figured she was the one making the decisions. A mere hundred-dollar stock had resulted in a sizable portfolio that was continuing to swell. Even with a mere percentage going into her bank account, Bridget found her psychic gifts with her new powers were giving her a new edge in the abstract financial world of big business as they did in the real world.
"Mrs. Walters…" Bridget checked the door of her bedroom to see if it was locked then struggled around with her arm to clean and freshen herself and change her clothes. "What's this news with me owning stock in the Detroit Tribune?"
"You are a very busy woman to track down." Walters snapped her fingers at her assistant for the Kent portfolio and sipped her coffee. "I've been trying to call you for weeks. Anyway, the owner of the paper, Harry Winkler, is buying up shares of Pontiac Pharmaceuticals and wanted your shares in it." She paused eating a bagel at her desk. "The amount he was offering was so crazy I went ahead and grabbed it up. I even tossed in those shares of Bluth Realty to unload them. Thanks to my business acumen and timing, Mrs. Kent, you are now worth a clear one million dollars. That's certainly okay, isn't it? I did okay, right?"
The cute and petite stockbroker did not know she was dealing with a teenage psychic with godly gifts. Her hand to her chest, Bridget started swaying a bit then slowly sat down to the foot of her bed. Did she say… one million dollars? This whole thing was escalating in ways she was not prepared for. This whole investing thing was started as a lark… it was an experiment to see if her visions were true. She only expected to make a few thousand dollars for spending money. Not only had she come to peace with her godly gifts, but also now they had made her set for life! One leg in her jeans and her toothbrush hanging from her lips, Bridget wanted to scream her shocked joy to the world, but whom could she tell? She had succeeded in shedding all notions of her dual identity by racing back and forth between skiing and Detroit, but now she was almost wealthy beyond her means and had a third identity as well! How was she going to attend this party at the paper for her father and be Linda Kent at the same time! Not even she was that fast!
"Mrs. Kent? Mrs. Kent, are you there?" Jennifer asked for her.
"I'm here…" Bridget replied in a tiny shocked squeak. "Yeah… you did okay." She heard the door of her room creak a bit as if someone was against it. There was a shape of someone against it on the other side. Standing up again, Bridget strided over and swatted it with the side of her foot as a lesson against eavesdropping. From the other side, Kerry shrieked from the impact.
"I get back in touch with you." She whispered into her phone and pressed the button to sign off, then held the phone to her ear to continue talking normally. "Jenna, please stop telling boys to call me up…" She was making up the same sort of narcissistic phone calls she used to make. "I don't care if he was cute, the last guy you fixed me up with was a jerk…" Bridget shifted back into her normal persona and unlocked her door to her eavesdropping sister. "Do you mind? Can I have some privacy?"
Kerry could barely say a thing. Bridget just slammed the door again on her. Standing in the hallway, Kerry just stood where she was for the moment, trying to think of what to do next. Her hand conditionally reached for the doorknob to see if it was still locked. When it turned, she pushed it open and strolled forward into the empty bedroom. Wondering where her sister had gone to, she gazed toward the window and saw Bridget in their adjacent bathroom out the corner of her eye. Spitting toothpaste in her mouth into the sink and rambling on about boys and shopping, Bridget came out of the bathroom pulling on her dark blue shirt and reaching for a brush with her one free hand. She finally clicked off her cell phone and sat brushing her long blonde hair in the mirror.
"So, Bridget…" Kerry slipped into a sarcastic type of mind. "Did some bald megalomaniac steal green meteorite rocks from the museum or something?" Bridget looked back at her.
"I have no idea what that means." Bridget looked back at her. Kerry started gritting and grinding her teeth with her fingers curling up into fists.
"You're killing me, Bridget!" Her voice was shaking. "I'm having nightmares because of you! I'm waking up screaming because I think you're sucking my life out or something." She confessed unfurling her fists. "Please… please… You've got to tell me. That girl with the powers… with the stupid costume… Is there anything you have to say to me?!"
Bridget just looked at her sister with the same confused face she'd been having since these sightings had started. Her jaw dropped slightly as she tried thinking. Kerry did not want to hear the same thing again. Her anxiety and stress was going off the scale. From downstairs, their mother called them to hurry up to leave for school.
"That skirt makes you fat…" Bridget said the one thing she thought her sister wanted to hear.
Her eyes glazed with hatred, her mind going into the sea of insanity, Kerry hissed through her teeth and stiffly reached to her sister, grabbing her by the shoulders and wanting to smack some common sense into her. Unaware of what was happening to her younger sister, Bridget resisted her restrained choking attempt with minimum effort and turned away from her. Turning on her right foot, she tossed her jacket over her purse and library book to head to school. Alone in her bedroom, Kerry grumbled and growled under her breath before screaming out at the top of her lungs.
"Where are you hiding that costume?!!!"
"Hey!!!" Cate stopped Bridget at the back door. "What did you do to your sister?"
"What am I doing to her?" The blonde one scoffed at that notion as if Kerry was doing it to herself. She rolled her eyes and headed out to her brother waiting in the minivan to go to school. Cate glanced from the secretive first-born daughter to her husband.
"Don't want to hear it…" Paul preferred to be blissfully ignorant in this debate. He just continued scraping the frying pan for his breakfast.