Prologue
Twelve years ago, life decided to hit my family, take my father away from me and leave my mother to deal with my health issues. I never knew what really happened that time, how I got rid of my disease so easily and it took almost 10 years and a close fatal accident until my mom finally told me the truth and that was that I am not normal. That I have not been normal since that moment, the moment that my brain started working as normal. The moment that I've got the powers that today make me run from a city to another.
People may think it's my fault, but it isn't. I didn't choose this. I didn't have a word on it and now I pay the price. She says it's a mistake. Not having me, but saving my life using that ancient weapon. The one she never tells me to much about. The weapon that has been a mystery since I've learnt about it.
I'm trying my best to keep my cool. To act normal. To go to school and blend in but I usually fail to act as she's asking me to. I usually end up in a fight that gets me so angry, that I do mistakes and those mistakes cost me. They always did.
And here I am again, in our blue and full of scratches car that gets us to our destination one more time for the last time if I would quote my mother.
We have entered the small town when I look around me and even if I am inside the car, the strange weather gives me chills. The lack of people on the streets and the angry wind that blows the leaves from the trees and whooshes them in front of our car, makes everything even more unusual.
It looks like one of those small and haunted towns and honestly, I don't know if I should feel happy about it or not. I don't know if I should look at this as an advantage or disadvantage. I can't decide yet.
I swallow hardly and look at the yellow clouds above us with fear and then I silently wander if this town is really my mom's best choice. I don't usually watch TV, but when I do it, I only find horror movies and now I can swear I am in one.
We moved a lot in the past few years, from big cities to the smallest ones, now she most probably choosing the smallest town in America, Safe Harbour, which ironical, is the one feeling the least safe. I could say it's a village seeing how small it is. The tiny houses and spread across the land, far one from another give you the impression of an empty place, when google says that there are approximately one thousand souls in here. I know it's not much, but even so, we should have seen at least one pair of eyes since we crossed its border.
I sigh, I run my right hand through my greasy hair, I make myself small in the uncomfortable chair and I try not to fear a tiny town. After all, I am the one who has powers and something this strange should be like my natural habitat.
"Are you okay, honey?" mom asks from my left, throwing short looks at me.
I turn my eyes to look for a few seconds and then I turn my head looking back through the window, because the tiredness and extenuation that I see on her face make me feel guilty. It's my fault. It always has been. I am putting her through so much pain that I should be grateful that she still is by my side after all these years. Since I was 5 she kept fighting for my life.
"Rae?" Mom drags me out of my own thoughts which were just taking me way too deep into the hardest period of my young life.
"Mhm?" I whisper confused and then, a second later I remember her last question.
"I'm fine, mom. It's just the weather... It's so strange and the landscape is even weirder." I murmur without turning my gaze from the side window.
"It looks like the storm is more serious that I was thinking. We're almost there."
She turns to face me and smiles lovingly. I smile back and when I turn my gaze to the windscreen, terror passes my body.
"Watch out!" I scream and cover my eyes with both palms. I don't want to see a deer crushed on my windscreen.
In the next second, she turns the steering wheel harshly to avoid the animal and we stop on top of the fence that surrounds the bridge.
"Oh, my Goodness. What was that?" she hardly speaks a few moments later and wipes the inexistent sweat off her forehead. I want to laugh, but I realize now it's not the time.
"I don't know, mom, you tell me. It appears to me that you chose the smallest and emptiest town on the map." I snap angrily and turn in my chair, waiting for her to figure a way out of this situation.
"Hey. It's not fair!" she whispers in pain and without any other words, she safely re-joins the road.
After only a couple of minutes we arrive in front of a house that will be ours for a few months. I take the suitcase from the trunk of the car and wait far behind her for the door to be opened. In the meantime, I look around us and I am shocked to find only one house across the road. A huge house compared to our box.
"You chose the emptiest town to protect them." I whisper and drop the suitcase that I hold, once I realize the hurting truth.
She does the same and the in next second, she holds my cheeks, looking into my eyes with pain.
"Hey, hey. I did it for you. Raelynn, I did it for you, not for them. I will always protect you no matter what you may think. Honey, when people are scared or feel threatened, they tend to do bad things to people like you or lock them up. Control them. I love you sweetheart and I wouldn't want you to go through that. Never, do you understand?"
The love that I see in my mother's eyes reminds me one more time that sometimes I am a simple moron. I know she's right, but sometimes I really can't help the anger that I feel inside of me. I can't stop it.
Sometimes I'm just an idiot.
