Opposites: The Staff of Light [Book One]

8. A Not-So-Good First Time

Alice

That was it. Just like that, I barely knew my twin sister anymore. She changed. At least she still noticed me, but what was exactly the point if she kept acting like a jerk all the time? Soon enough, I had to get tired of her values somehow. She better be lucky I’m not as violent as she thinks. Hey, what can I say? Ice is gentle.

“Hey, Alice,” Alex called me as I looked down at him. He wasn’t much for a first expression, or was it just I overdressed? His hair was perfectly messy, like he’d just woke up, and he wore jeans, red sneakers, a yellow button up and a blue jacket. “I don’t think Annabeth’s in a good mood.”

“Eesh, you can say that again,” I said. “I wonder what happened.”

“I prefer not talking about it.”

After a few more seconds of talking, Annabeth finally made it to lead us to the right cabin. It was in fact the size of a barn if you ask me. Inside was all covered with carpets. No one was around. “It’s a big school,” I said. “They make us sleep on carpets?”

The three of us felt miserable. Alex leaned against a wall and something made a clicking sound. He ended up scampering away in fear. At the wall where he laid his back against, there appeared a hand scan. “That is so cool,” Annabeth marveled, cracking a smile. Ah, nothing makes Annabeth smile brighter than any flame would than science and books. She placed her hand on the glowing green surface.

“Scan complete,” the voice said. “Annabeth Candum, fire elemental.” Annabeth shuddered at the word ‘fire’. A green line of light scanned me and Alex. “Alice Candum, ice elemental. Alex Candum, lightning elemental. You may proceed.”  A ladder appeared by us.

With an awkward look, the three of us climbed up. When we got there, we couldn’t dare to believe what I saw. Then I started to wonder what kind of school it was. Haven Academy for the Gifted. The Gifted. To be mentioned, they had different synonyms for the gifted children. We didn’t expect that there were more than three people who were like us.

We found a guy with a vine wrapping around his bed’s pole. A girl was arranging her things in air, telepathically moving things with her mind. Another sat at the darkest corner of the room and she seemed to mold the shadows into horses. I couldn’t help but be amazed.

We lurked ourselves to vacant beds that had notes taped on the sheets with ours names. I took this ice blue-sheet bed with white pillows. If I ever lay down on those clothes, I could have camouflaged like a chameleon. Once I put my things into place (simply put my bag at the foot of my bed over my chest the school provided), I sat down, not much sure if I could make friends around us. They didn’t seem to pay me attention.

Annabeth

I set my things into place. My traveling bag sat right under my bed and I placed my books arranged in my chest. It wasn’t much. The chest was a rectangular prism kind of type, like one of those things you can see on princess-in-training movies, but mine had fire designs, those cool types of flames.

My journal was the last book on my bed. I took out a pen from my leather jacket’s pocket and placed it in between the first unwritten page. I took out my satchel and placed it inside. It isn’t that kind of thing you’d see me around with but I took off my leather jacket and left it folded on my pillows.

Of course, I felt bad about not paying my sister any attention for three months. I just got a little afraid. I mean, what if that urge of happiness overtakes my body and I end up near death again? Back in December, I was indeed overwhelmed that I could be with Alice after that neat comeback I planned for her. But now, it haunted me. I feel so immensely guilty.

Without another word, I went down the ladder and went out of the cabin. I needed fresh air. I needed to go out. I found a spot under the shade of a slowly withering maple tree. The leaves were just on the first stage of fall seasonal development. I sat down under its shade and thought everything I could.

I took out my journal and wrote off everything I thought of. I couldn’t wait until fall. I wanted to see the leaves turn orange and fall off their branches. Some part of me told me I was home, but the other part of me protested that it simply wasn’t. Sure, I was a freak like the others in the cabin, but somehow, I felt like I didn’t belong. I felt like I was still different. I wasn’t compatible with my surroundings.

And if I let my rush of adrenaline go and go…

I sighed glumly. “Life is hard,” I wrote down. “It’s like a kite. You may be free, but you’re forgetting that there’s a piece of thread pulling you down, keeping you away from your true happiness and heaven. You’re never home.”

My back laid itself against the trunk as I put the journal back into my bag. I didn’t need to be there. Sometimes I wished I could go out, I just didn’t realize that life on the outside was such a greater change. I was being challenged. And if I couldn’t act right away, there might be consequences waiting at the end. Like Newton always said, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Maybe I just didn’t belong. Maybe…maybe I needed to get lost. Maybe people didn’t need me.

I always knew that I’d been a mistake to breathe and be given life. I just didn’t know it would end up like that.

A little fire glowed an inch above my palm in thin air. One drop of that and it could start a forest fire. “Maybe I just don’t belong,” I said to myself. “Maybe I won’t be needed for a better future.”

My eyes met the sun about to reach the horizon. It slowly turned the sky pink, blue and orange. Clouds spread like messed up pieces of cotton. A brown leaf fell off the tree and the wind blew it into the water. The scene rippled under the object’s touch. That common cycle represented something. Everything does.

But I just didn’t know that it concerned me too bad.