Abby Carnelia's One and Only Magical Power by David Pogue

He was sitting right by the window, and I look over, and he’s drawing on the window. You know how you can fog up the glass on a window? Like if you lean right up to it and breathe on it? There was a fogged-up place on the window, and he was writing his initials in it.”
    Ricky stopped, and looked around for effect.
    â€œSee?”
    Abby didn’t. “What do you mean?”
    â€œHe didn’t fog up the window! He was writing in the fogged-up place with his finger, but he didn’t breathe on it. He didn’t fog up the window!”
    Ben couldn’t help thinking that Ricky had somehow left out a piece of the story; he didn’t get it at all.
    â€œWell,
someone
must have fogged it up, right?” he said.
    â€œI know! That’s what I’m telling you!” said Ricky, getting frustrated. “
I
did it! I fogged that window. By counting in Spanish by twos breathing in!”
    Abby looked at Ben with a face that said,
Is this kid for real?
    Eliza was looking at him with one cocked eyebrow. “So let me get this straight. Your power is that you can fog up a window? By counting in Spanish with that weird voice?”
    Ricky nodded. “By twos. I have to count by twos.”
    Eliza rolled her eyes and turned to face the front of the van, as though to say,
I’m done with this conversation.
    â€œHow did you know?” asked Abby. “How did you know it was you?”
    â€œBecause,” Ricky said. “I was watching Thornton writing with his finger, and I did it again. I started over at
dos
. And I saw another foggy place fog up on the window right next to the first one. And the thing is, I wasn’t even close to the window! I was sitting with Tad, like across the whole room from it. And so I did it again, and a couple more times. I was totally freaking out? So I told Tad to watch the window, too? And he did, and I did the trick, and told him how I was making the window fog up, but he didn’t believe me. He told me that Thornton was just breathing on the window, since he was sitting next to it. So I was mad. So you know what I did?”
    Abby shook her head no.
    â€œI fogged up his glasses! It was almost by accident. I just looked right at them, and counted again by twos—
dos! cuatro! seis!
—and they fogged right up, like the bathroom mirror. It was so great! And he’s like, ‘HEY!’ And he had to take them off to wipe them on his shirt. And he’s like, ‘Don’t breathe on my glasses. That’s disgusting,’ and I’m like, ‘Okay, sorry.’ But then he puts them back on again and I pushed my chair wayyyy back so I was reallyfar from him. And I’m like, ‘I’ll just sit over here so I won’t accidentally breathe on your glasses, okay?’ And he’s like, ‘That’s better!’ So then he goes, ‘Okay, my turn. Who am I being?’ And he was gonna start counting again in another funny voice. Except I interrupted him and said, ‘No, it’s still my turn. I didn’t get to a hundred.’ And so I looked right at his glasses and did it again! He was so mad! It was so funny!”
    Ricky was stomping his feet on the floor of the van with excitement.
    There was a pause, and then Eliza spoke. “So do it.”
    â€œWhat?” said Ricky.
    â€œLet’s see it. Fog up my window.” Eliza tapped the van window beside her.
    Abby thought that Eliza was being rude, but Ricky was perfectly cheerful about it. “Okay, sure,” he said.
    There wasn’t much to it. Using that weird inhaling-voice thing, he said,
“Dos, cuatro, seis, ocho, diez.”
It sounded a little like a seal barking.
    A round patch of Eliza’s window, about the size of a cookie, fogged up as though someone had breathed on it. Ricky was a few feet away, way too far for him to have done it with his breath.
    Eliza cocked an eyebrow. “Not bad,” she said. She couldn’t