Maria Summers Must Die

Prologue

I found out about it when I was twelve years old. I'm sixteen now, but the pain still hasn't ebbed away. I still remember it like yesterday. I was out passed my curfew, and when I got my got home my parents were, understandably, pissed. I had a lot of friends, and we'd been out passed nine on a school night, which didn't make them happy.

"Late again?" Said my mother, in a tone that I knew meant at least a month of grounding. I opened my mouth to try to argue, but my dad was having none of it. "Go to your room." He said. And I wish I had. I wish I'd been an obedient little twelve year old and followed mom and dads wishes. I wish that I'd just gone to my room and cried or something equally little girl worthy.

But I didn't.

Instead I argued, and it was the worst decision of my life. "It's only nine thirty!" I said, "it's not even that late, my curfew is ridiculous!"
"Not for a twelve year old." My mom said.
"I'm not just some stupid little kid! You should know that, you raised me!" I yelled. The anger mounted inside me, at that point I could feel it welling up. I wish it hadn't. I wish I had been more obedient.
"Room. Now." My mom said, "and no going out with friends for a month. Your schedule is school, home, bed." My eyes widened, and my mouth opened, I said the stupidest thing I could possibly have said.

At the peak of my anger, in the heat of the moment I screamed out the five most awful words I would ever utter. Within the next thirty seconds, my entire life would fall apart. But I wasn't thinking about that then. I was thinking about how my parents were ruining my life, and how my face was red and hot, and how I was sure that in another second I'd be crying. I wasn't thinking about the right things.

"I wish you were both dead!" I screamed. I channeled all my anger into that ferocious yell, and as I turned to go to my room, I noticed something. They were both gone. Disappeared. There was no flash of light, or fade out, or beam up, they were just gone. I thought it was bad. Then I thought it was a joke, then I heard the crying.

"Jamie?" I said softly, walking around the corner where my little brother had been hiding.
"Are they really gone?" He whispered. I smiled at him, we had our fights, but he was still my little brother.
"No, they're just playing a joke on us, I'm sure they'll be back when you wake up." And I brought him off to bed. But as I settled into my own I knew that I didn't believe my own words. There was a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, and somehow I knew it was all my fault.

Even now I replay the scene over and over in my head, thinking of the million other ways it could have gone. I'd explored every possibility a hundred times at least, but I still had to look for new ones. Like I had to prove how truly awful I was to myself. I couldn't count the times I'd tried to bring them back, I'd certainly been angry enough to do it, but anger wasn't the only thing that made people go away.

Jamie was all I'd had after that... Accident, so I clung to him like a life raft. I loved him, I never got mad at him, frustrated, sure, but I was too terrified of losing him to go off like that again. That's what made him wink out of existence in the end. One day I hugged him before he went to bed, and I thought about what we'd been through the past year. The foster houses, the kids homes, and I thought about how we'd endured it all together, and how I loved him. Having someone there, even if it was someone I had to care of, was wonderful. And then, just like that, he was gone too.

My name is Maria Summers, and I can kill people with my feelings.