Airel - Aaron Patterson [41]
I kept looking at my hand. I touched the place where just moments ago a bloody gash had been. It didn’t even hurt and there was no trace of a cut anywhere in sight. Maybe most people would be happy with that news, but it terrified me. I didn’t remember being bit by any radioactive spiders lately, or even hit over the head by a meteorite out in a corn field.
Okay, so I heal quick... I mean really quick. It didn’t seem to keep me from getting sick though. Maybe I have a tumor in my brain or something. I’d read about that sort of thing happening. People got weird gifts like being able to read people’s minds or something, and it turned out they had a baseball sized tumor in their brain. A month later they were dead.
I remembered the note the killer left in my mailbox that said, "I know what you are!" Not who you are but what. As if I was some sort of thing or animal.
The cut itched so badly when it was closing together that I had struggled to keep from ripping open a new wound just to get it to stop. What in the world—or beyond this world–was going on? Somehow, death seemed better than this. Not that I couldn’t find use for a…a gift, talent, or whatever this was. But would happen when people found out? I’d be on Oprah in no time. Everyone would be looking to interview me and dissect my brain on national television. A freak. No, thank you.
I know what you are!
Maybe someone else already knew? Maybe someone else did this to me. Maybe when I was an infant they injected me with some sort of drug. Some secret government project, trying to create super-humans. Seriously, Airel? I felt a shiver run up and down my spine and I got that same feeling I had at the doctor’s office. It was as if I had this thing, this other voice, that wanted to help me or watch me.
I listened as I stopped to look in the mirror. All was quiet, and in the back of my mind I heard the sound of someone sighing, as if it was impatient and wanted me to figure things out a little faster.
I felt as if I stood on the edge of something big. “Look, if you’ve got something to say, say it!” I said into the mirror. I was on the edge of something, all right. I wanted to scream and kick my legs and throw a tantrum, but what good would that do? I was still alone.
I recalled having read Frankenstein last year for English Lit. That’s exactly how I felt just then. A freak, totally alone. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling, deep down where it counted, that I was not alone at all.
I looked at the clock. Six a.m. The sun was going to be up soon, bringing on the morning. I groaned at the thought of it. Sometimes my moods were just not in sync with the sunny weather. I prayed for rain.
I was not very excited to go to school in this state. My world was completely upside down. Outside of faking a cold, I had to go. I thought about this, but decided not to. Mom usually didn’t buy it, anyway. Besides, it would give me more time to think this mess through without Mom checking my temperature every five minutes. Maybe I could even get Kim’s advice.
School didn’t require a large part of my brain anyway. Seriously. If you learned to nod and grunt in the right places, you could skate by without breaking a sweat. The rest could be found on Google.
I turned on the shower, cranked it to scalding, then opened my closet to decide what to wear this fine screwed-up morning. I picked out a blue button-up top and then got in the shower. It felt so good that I almost felt normal again. I decided to scrap the button-up top and wear my hot pink tank top with a white lace-lined shirt under it. Pink was my "feeling good" color and if I put it together with my worn-out jeans, I was unstoppable.
The morning proved to be better than I thought it would be, with large cartoonish clouds filling the sky like daisies and the sun blazing through them. I made it out of the house just in time to retrieve my coconut latte on the way, this time without incident. I had half an hour until the school parking lot would start to