Luke reached over and shut off the alarm clock, then collapsed back onto the mattress. His wife Julie reached over him and gave a yawning moan. They had stayed up quite late the night before. As the two of them shook off their fatigue, Julie rubbed her husband’s shoulders and back.

It was an ordinary morning, the kind they had shared many of. They had no way of knowing that it was a morning that would change the course of their lives.

“Ugh, it’s too early,” Julie said.

“Yeah, but I gotta get up. Can’t be late to work,” Luke said, despite making no effort to rise as Julie continued her massaging.

“Honey? What’s this?” she asked

“What’s what?”

“You’ve got something here on your back. It’s a big lump. Hang on, there’s another one. Turn on the light.”

The sun was out, but a heavy mist limited vision to shapes and forms. Luke reached for the lamp, which was touch-sensitive. After a few random slaps, the room brightened.

“Oh, honey, you’ve got to get these looked at!,” said Julie. “You’ve got two big bumps on your back here, and there’s like hair growing on them.”

“I can’t feel anything.”

“Well, get a mirror or something, but I’m telling you, make a doctor’s appointment today.”

“All right, I’ll call when I get to the job site,” said Luke.

“And be careful driving too. There’s a very thick fog out there.”

“You know, if I weren’t such a wonderful man and loving husband, I’d interpret this as nagging.”

“But you are so wonderful, and you know it. Now kiss me and go get dressed.”

Luke gave Julie a peck on the lips and headed off, trying without success to reach around his back and feel what she was talking about. Throwing on a flannel shirt and steel-toed boots, he made his way to his comfortable old truck. The truck was rusty and loud, but it was paid-for.

He drove slowly as visibility was very short. Concentrating mostly on the road, he kept the radio off, but he still had his mind on Julie. The early fights of their relationship had long since gone ever since they had found something in common that led them to love each other.

To love and tolerate.

Was that silly? To rekindle his relationship over a cartoon? Maybe so, brother, maybe so. All he knew was that he was happy at home and happy at work, and happy is good.

Luke was a roofer. At one time, he would join the other guys in staying out late and getting drunk, then show up at the job sites in the morning ready to pick a fight with the boss. No way he’d get in trouble, as he was union. But that was then. He hadn’t touched liquor for many years. He had a good reputation. The foreman would understand if he was ten or fifteen minutes late, especially considering the weather.

Rolling up to the house, he finished his coffee and set to work. He climbed the extension ladder and found the first pile of shingles. Ca-lack, ca-lack went the nail gun, over and over. Repetitive work, but it gave him time to think, paid the bills, and kept the rain out of people’s homes.

Slapping down a shingle, the morning fog made it slick, and it started to slide down. Luke made a rookie mistake, turning to grab it instead of just letting it go. He lost his balance and slid down the roof. Panic gripped him as he tried to hang on. It was no good, the roof was too slippery. His feet hit the rain gutter and knocked it loose. Out of pure instinct he spread his legs wide. Some twelve feet down, broken bones and months of lost work time awaited him.

But he fell no farther. He had found something solid to brace himself on, though the fog prevented him from seeing what it was. Flailing his arms, he regained his balance. The leg still stuck in the gutter had worse footing than the other leg, and he leaned his weight onto whatever it was that was supporting him. Then he kicked off and collapsed face-first back on the roof.

The sum total of the damage was a scrape burn to his side and the kicked-in gutter. He’d have to report it, but right then he was more curious about what had braced him. He hadn’t remembered a tree or anything behind him, and it felt more like stepping onto a mattress than something solid. Climbing back down the ladder, he peered into the mist. He could see nothing. When the morning sun started burning off the fog a few minutes later, he had a clear view, and there was nothing that could have stopped him. Luke was forced to conclude that he had been the beneficiary of a genuine miracle.

Either that, he thought, or he had somehow learned to walk on clouds.

“Come on, Alex, you need to spend some time outdoors, and there’s no reason you can’t help me with this gardening.”

“I have nothing against the outdoors, Mom, and I’d love to help you. I just don’t see why it can’t wait an hour.”

“Because I know you. One hour will turn into two, then four, and before you know, it’ll be dark.”

Alex resolved himself to losing the argument. He had been in his room ten minutes ago, preparing for what he considered the most important half-hour of his week, when his mother called him to come outside. She met him dressed in gardening clothes.

His body was outside, but his mind was still in front of his TV set. It wasn’t a major issue; the DVR would record the show and he’d see it later, even watch the chatroom record on Youtube after that. But he wouldn’t be in the chat, or giving real-time comments on the blog. Oh, well, he thought. There was always next week.

“So how does this thing work?” he asked his mother, who was carrying a long-handled garden tool.

“This is a claw cultivator. You put it up against the ground, step on it and dig it in like a shovel. Then twist the handle back and forth to break up the dirt.” She demonstrated, struggling to loosen the tightly packed earth. A couple of square feet were churned up.

“Go up and down and make rows for the vegetables,” she said before heading into the house. Alex looked at the expanse of the yard. This would take forever.

Before he began, he checked the time on his cell phone. 11:45. Fifteen minutes until he would miss it. Fifteen minutes until everyone else got to watch My Little Pony. He stuck the claw in the ground.

He found it easy to cut through the soil. The claw twisted easily and he looked at the tilled earth. It looked like a crumbled up chocolate cake.

“Just the kind Pinkie Pie would probably make,” he muttered to nobody. Dig and twist, dig and twist, up and down. At least the sun was out and it was a nice day. Alex really did like being outdoors. He just didn’t like missing his ponies.

At last the field was tilled. His mom could plant her vegetable garden. He went in through the kitchen and left his shoes at the door. His objectives at that point were, in order, a glass of water, a hand wash, and the recording of Friendship is Magic.

His mother came back in the kitchen. “Taking a break already? You’d better get to work.” Annoyance crept into her voice.

“What break? I’m finished.”

“Don’t give me that. You’ve only been out there five minutes!”

Alex looked at the clock on the oven. It read 11:50. Confusion came onto his face.

“But the field’s done.”

The two of them went to the back door and looked out. Sure enough the results of Alex’s labor lay before them. “Well, I’ll be. How did you do that?” asked Alex’s mother.

“I. . . I don’t know. I thought it took much longer.”

“Well, now you’ve got time to seed it too.”

“Aw, come on! You said you wanted it turned over and I did it! Give me an hour to relax.”

“All right, go ahead, you can do it later.”

“Thanks, Mom!” He raced upstairs to his room and turned on the TV to see the last few minutes of Strawberry Shortcake. He was still confused as to how he had done the job in time, but he chalked it up to reading the time wrong when he first checked.

It wasn’t like he had some special connection to the Earth.

Lisa Chang loved basketball. She plastered her walls with posters of stars from the NBA, WNBA, and college. In the place of honor at the foot of her bed was the poster of her countryman, Jeremy Lin. When she went to play for her high school team, she knew that she wanted to play the same position as him: point guard.

Lisa went to Centerville High, which was a small district that would have only a few hundred in its graduating class. There was enough money for the basketball program, but not a whole lot of students to choose from, so essentially everyone who joined got playing time. And that worked out for her, since she had absolutely no talent for the game.

Basketball, the coach had told the team, is all about shooting. All the skills of passing, footwork, positioning, and defense were secondary to getting the ball through the hoop. That was something that each player either had or didn’t. The rest could be taught and coached, but shooting was innate. Lisa had discovered quickly that she didn’t have the ability.

But she could and did bust her tail learning all those other skills, and fortunately for her, the position she chose was the one where she could best cover up her deficiency. She knew the playbook backwards and forwards. She became a superb dribbler. She had, on occasion, committed turnovers by having passes tipped and picked off, but never had an opposing player simply stolen the ball as she was dribbling down court or setting up a play. On defense, though, she caused many such turnovers, and a dozen steals in a game was a good average for her. The ball just seemed to come to her when she wanted it.

When she would look back on the game where she first experienced it, she wished, for dramatic purposes, that it had been a championship game. It wasn’t, but it was a rivalry game. North Centerville had a much larger student body and all their players had height and talent advantages over Lisa’s team.

Packed into the Centerville gym, a crowd of parents and friends watched Lisa and her teammates play their hearts out to keep pace with their rivals. Despite their best efforts, they still found themselves down a point in the final period with the shot clock turned off and only a few seconds remaining. Lisa drew up the play in her head and directed her squad for an open look, but before she could pass the ball, the opposing point guard fouled her. She had two free throws to make. Hit both for a win and get carried off the court. Hit one for a tie and play overtime. Miss both and have to face the team in the locker room in shame.

Lisa had tried every way she read of to improve her free throws. Taking them underhand. Taking them from the back of the semicircle. She was still, at best, fifty-fifty on any given shot. Stepping to the line, she decided to take the first quickly to avoid over-thinking it. Clang went the ball as it hit the back of the rim, the “brick,” and bounced out. One more chance left.

She stood, dribbling the ball, trying to focus. This time she would pace herself. An idle thought came into her head. Wasn’t pacing herself how Twilight Sparkle won fifth place in the Running of the Leaves? Focus, she told herself. This is no time to be thinking about ponies!

She stopped dribbling, set herself, and released. She had the right distance this time, but was off-target to the right. The ball hit the rim and started rolling around. One rotation, two rotations, three. Its momentum was keeping it balanced perfectly on the rim, but it was slowing down and soon would pick a side to land on. Lisa hadn’t moved, her left hand still bent backwards as it had cradled the ball, her right still bent forwards in the follow-through.

The ball came to an almost dead stop on the rim, then eased its way toward the outside. “Oh, come on!” Lisa shouted, audible over the murmurs of the crowd. And then the ball reversed its course and slipped through the rim, so gingerly that it came to rest in the net below and didn’t fall through.

The crowd roared. Her teammates laughed at the shot and hugged her. She stood stunned, wondering if she should tell anyone about what she had seen while everyone else was mesmerized by the spinning ball.

Instead she joined her friends and concentrated on the overtime. It was no contest. The foul from the opposing guard had been enough to take her out of the game, and, facing a backup, Lisa was able to force turnovers and set up plays at will. Centerville won by twelve points, and the team was all smiles in the locker room. They laughed and joked about the tying shot, and Lisa laughed with them, never mentioning how, as she kept her hands pointed toward the basket and put all her might into willing the ball through the hoop, she had seen a faint sparkly glow come from her hands just before the shot went in. After all, it was probably just her eyes playing tricks on her.

Not as though she could do magic.