Look Away

Chapter 1

I was seated quietly in my room, a boring room with white walls, and other than the bed pressed against the wall in the corner, there was a nightstand with a plain white lamp shining its bland white light. People say your surroundings say a lot about who you are as a person. Most would take one look at my room and say I'm a boring person with no life; I'd say I have potential. I laid back against the pillow and stared vacantly at the ceiling. Why did I just leave my room the way it was? If it has so much potential, why didn't I use that to make it less boring? It's not like the supervisor will care. All the other Hunters have more entertaining rooms with weapon racks and bookshelves. Oh, what I would give for a solitary, decent book in this confined space! Who cares what the supervisor thinks? And suddenly, the wall opposite me was no longer white but pink. Without even bothering to look at it, I groaned.

"Ugh! Not pink! Anything but pink! Let's try, gray for the moment." The wall immediately switched to a less obnoxious color. I tapped on the wall to my right. "Your turn. I want you to be violet." My favorite color appeared in place of the white. I pointed to the wall that faced the violet. "Blue, please." It became a royal blue, another one of my favorite colors. I stood and faced the wall that was currently gray. "How about we let some of that color seep in. An ombre wall would be cool. You," I turned around, "do the same." I now had a room with a blue wall that faded into a purple wall. The rest of my room was still that blinding white. I stretched my mind out and used my room as a brief exercise of my powers. I turned my bedspread the same color as the wall it connected with but I gave it a flowery pattern to prevent it from blending in too much with the wall. I was startled by the flowers; I wasn't really one for flowers or anything too girly, but there was an elegance about the bedspread that I admired. I sighed as I realized that the one thing about that room that I couldn't fix was the flooring. The cold tile flooring had always bothered me every morning after I would awaken but never enough to make me change it. I stood in the center of my quarters, admiring my handiwork when I sensed a presence at the door. The Hunters were trained to be silent, but no one escapes my detection; many have tried and failed. That's a perk of sensing peoples' Psychic Shadows; I know where everyone is within a certain distance.

"Come in, Destry." The door slid open, and a young girl, my age, walked in. She had a surprised look in her hazel eyes.

"Gets me every time. I still don't see how you can do that." I smirked, not even bothering to face her. I was too fascinated by the walls. "Did you do that?" She followed my eyes and joined me in admiration of my walls. I nodded. I felt her presence as she moved to stand beside me, casually brushing her pixie-cut strawberry blonde hair out of her face.

"I'll admit that I find you Hunters thoroughly entertaining in that you keep underestimating everyone around you. At least you aren't as arrogant as the others. They keep thinking I'm some sort of wimp, but then we get to combat practice." She smiled. "Don't you just love the people that decide that they can't fight us because they're afraid they'll break us?" I knew she would understand my point of view. We, both being rather small in comparison to most of the others, are often underestimated but always end out the champions. She smiled a smile that lit up her whole face, brightening her eyes in the process.

"Mhm. Speaking of training and combat practice, care to join me? I was heading there, and I knew you'd be awake, otherwise you wouldn't have let me in." I froze.

"You say that like no one else is awake. Sure! I'd love to!" I turned around and headed towards the door, but Destry's hand caught my arm.

"Have you checked the clock? Of course no one else is awake! It's three AM. Are you okay?" I scoffed and backed up, stealing a glance at my broken digital clock on my night stand.

"Just a dream. Nothing to worry about."

"Dahlia," she scolded, "you're concerned about it; I can feel it. Your parents were precogs, weren't they? That's why you're concerned." She was one of very few that could successfully read my mind, and hearing my thoughts repeated back to me annoyed me, so I snapped.