“Do you think she meant that?” Flynn asked the girls once they’d found an empty picnic bench in the Winsbury garden. “I mean, do you think her family really believes that parapsychs should be treated differently?”

“Maybe,” said Maggie, putting down the apple slice she was just about to bite into. “My mum’s a primary school teacher in Hammersmith, and she told me a story about these parents who pulled their kid out of school and said they’d homeschool him until he was Registered and could go to a psych school. Apparently he was kind of a late bloomer, so at first, it didn’t seem like he was a parapsych at all, even though both his parents were. Then once they found out he was, they took him out of school so he couldn’t mix with the other kids.”

“That seems excessive,” said Flynn. “There still would have been other parapsych kids in that school for him to play with, right?”

“Yeah,” Jessa joined in. “And if they wanted him to spend more time around parapsychs, what about like a Sunday school like PsychPlay? I went to one of those, and it was great.”

“Me too,” said Flynn.

“So did I,” Maggie replied. “But I don’t know. That’s just what my mum said. They wanted him to spend less time around laterals because they thought that’s what stunted his parapsychism. I suppose some people are just sensitive about that kind of thing.”

“Wow, I can’t imagine having that sort of reaction,” Jessa pondered. “I’m the only psych in my family. I can’t imagine someone feeling that way about them.”

“Same,” said Flynn. “Maggie, you have other parapsychs in your family, right?”

“Both of my brothers are, and so’s my Mum, but Dad’s a lateral, and so are most of my cousins. I agree with you. For someone to have that kind of thought is just so… I don’t know…”

“Heartless,” said Jessa.