Strange Gifts

Chapter One

Chapter One

I sat on our front porch and watched the fluid traffic passing me by, never looking to meet my gaze. I was waiting- waiting for Miss. Emmi to return. She had left hours before... days even. I didn't remember. My head was pounding from all of the thoughts being poured into it. The funny thing was those thoughts weren't my own. They belonged to the people who passed in their cars and others in the surrounding vicinity.

Miss. Emmi had been training me to control that, but she had first focused on the more... immediate problem- being that everything around me somehow floated into the air. I was a very powerful Mover without any control. Secondly, I was an even more powerful Editor, but that was less obvious and less harmful. I was naive at that point and was only eight (and a half). My dark golden locks ended far below my shoulders and were as straight as boards. My eyes were a distant blue and were as deep as the ocean and wide like the sky. I was a fairly normal height for my age, but I leaned toward the short end of the scale. My hands were small and dainty; my fingers were long and lean. My outlook was far too serious for a child of my age, but I was troubled. I had no friends, no family, just Miss. Emmi.

My name? Devisaty Lock. As strange as it sounded... it fit. I was a very different kind of kid with different experiences and interests. I was the child in the corner of the classroom, the child in silence, the child in emotional turmoil. No other kids wanted to claim me as their friend or even acquaintance. My parents... were horrid people with reputations of being drunks and the like. They hated me and openly called me a mistake. Everything that I did somehow deserved punishment. Their condemnation rained down constantly upon me without letting up or holding back. I was quiet and (needless to say) forever frightened. My skin was always tattered with dark bruises and stained with cuts. In the end, my mother killed herself with an accidental over dose, and my father died while he was driving and drinking.

My old life was appalling, I know, but it was now over like a bad dream. Miss. Emmi was the one to wake me from it. She came into my life and pulled me into hers; I will love her for that for the rest of eternity... Speaking of which, where was she? How long had she been gone? Is she O.K.?!?