One
I'm fifteen years old, sixteen tomorrow, but I feel as though I was five only a week ago. I remember it perfectly - my mom dropping me and my twin brother off on our first day of school, our kindergarten teacher smiling down at us, her lips painted a bright red, her lids coated with shimmery blue shadow. Her green eyes gleamed at us beneath thin red glasses and her teeth were white, and a little crooked.
She was beautiful, and I trusted her.
But that trust was misplaced.
And now my mom was dead and my brother was missing, and there was nothing I could do to get him back.
Well, there was one thing, but I didn't know if I was willing to break the law for a boy who never treated me as an equal, even when we were little and didn't think about things like that.
I can't imagine what he'd look like now, nearly eleven years since I'd seen him last. He was tall and thin then, I wondered if he'd grown into his body.
Probably not.
My dad was the same way, at least, that's what our mom always used to say. I'd never met my dad.
But I can't complain. He joined the War and fought to the death for our country. I should be proud. I'm sure my brother was. Is.
If he's still alive.
Because, see, I don't actually know. I hope so ... but there is a possibility he's not ... but, no. I can't think that way. Not when I'm about to turn sixteen. Tomorrow I'm going to become an adult, get Marked as an adult, and learn my skill as an adult.
Sixteen is a big year.
But I don't want to be sixteen. I wish I could remain young forever, like how some people when they turn sixteen find out that their Skill is Youth or Agility.
I can wish all I want, but even at almost sixteen, I look older than I am. My brown eyes are deep and full of what mom used to call "young wisdom," my brown hair has an almost gray hue at the roots, and my face is freckled and pale. Worry lines creased my forehead and crinkled around my eyes when I smiled, which wasn't too often.
I didn't want to grow up, but it was as if I already had.
I wondered if my brother was perhaps the same way. I doubted it. He'd always been happy, hyper, and full of energy, the complete opposite of calm, collected me. His Skill tomorrow would most likely be something that had to do with his Athletic abilities or his looks and charm.
Whereas mine would most likely have to do with my smarts, both book- and streetwise.
Or perhaps something totally unexpected, though that happened rarely, and only to those who had Fate on their side. I, of course, did not, with two dead parents and a missing brother.
But no time to dwell on the past. Of course, I didn't know it then, but after I learned my Skill, the past would be all I was dwelling on - that and the future, and memories. Both forgotten and remembered, by me and others.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Maybe we should back up a bit ...
... Once upon a time, there was a young man named Albert Evensworth. On his sixteenth birthday, he learned that his skill was Charm, and he met and married a young lady named Louise Abernathy two years later.
She didn't love him; or at least she didn't before he worked his Charm on her and made her love him.
Two years after they were married, when Albert and Louise were twenty years old, they had two children - twins, a boy and a girl.
A month later, Albert went to War and died, leaving Louise as a single mother of two at twenty years old.
She took care of the children and loved them, and tried to teach them to be good, nice, human beings. Even so, the boy turned out just like his father, and the girl turned out just like her mother.
He was ruthless and uncompassionate.
She was too trusting.
And together, the two of them caused their mother's death, by manipulating, and trusting, their kindergarten teacher.
After their mother passed away, the boy ran away, and the girl was left alone.
She never forgave herself for what had happened.
That girl, of course, was me.
And I still hadn't forgiven myself on the day before my sixteenth birthday.
Have you ever had that feeling where something's changed, you've changed, but you can't exactly put your finger on why or how? That's what I felt like on the morning of my sixteenth birthday. I picked up my phone off my bedside table and turned off the alarm, looking at the time. 6:00 a.m. Too early. I rolled over and closed my eyes, hoping to get a little more sleep, when my cell phone dinged with a text.
I sighed, picked it up, and looked at the screen.
It was from my twin brother. I blinked to make sure I'd read the name right. I had. It was from my twin brother and read: Hey. don't gEt marked. skip ceremony. meet me at pond where mom took us at 8. expLain then. Please come.
I stared at the message, confused. He loved to read, like me, and was a bit of a grammer Nazi, so I didn't know why he'd capitalised the message so weirdly. I went back and reread it, looking at the four letters that were in the upper case.
H, E, L, and P.
My brother wanted my help. My brother wanted my help?
I stared at the message for a long time, then typed two letters back: Ok. That was the first thing I'd said to him in almost eleven years.
I hoped he really needed help, and wasn't just trying to trick me or get me to do something he'd wanted.
What he did to our kindergarten teacher had taught me to be careful who I trust.
Especially when it came to him.
I got dressed, putting on a black T-shirt, black skinny jeans, and black boots. Then I went out into the mist and the fog, toward the pond our mom used to take us to. It was our favorite place to go and when I got to the pond, I could remember her vividly.
Her bright blue eyes. Her musical laugh. Her arms around me.
Everything every child has, except me, on the day they become an adult.
Then I saw my brother.
He had the same long, lanky arms and legs, wavy blonde hair flopping over his bright blue eyes, and lopsided smile that made you want to like him even though he'd abandoned you after your parents died.
And I found that I did still love him.
He was my brother.
Even if I couldn't trust him.
