Hidden In the Knight

Chapter 1

Sitting around in McDonald's after school with your best friend isn't all that much fun, but it's better than going home. Home is where my parents pretend everything is fine and dandy when really we all know that the night before was some sort of horrible time, whether it was Dad hitting Mom or someone passing out drunk. It's not a place I'm not all that fond of.

My only friend Blaire is what you'd call odd. She doesn't really fit in anywhere, even with me and I don't fit in with any of the groups either. All the levels are carefully placed into those groups by tests, if not by birth. There are those very few of us that even after taking the test cannot be placed into a group. They oh so affectionately call us the freaks. Well, Blaire doesn't fit in at all. Some have pegged her as crazy. I know she isn't, her parents had her tested. Most of the time she is in her own little world. Sometimes I don't even know if she's listening to what I'm saying at all. She does know things though. I admit they're not things you would learn in class, but nevertheless she knows things. Things about the future and about things, well things I'm not so sure are there.

The top-level group hangs out here after school, too. What their reasoning is for hanging out here, I don't know. I mean they share an after school hangout with people that they call the freaks. Maybe they just haven't seen us in the three years that we have all hung out here. Who knows? I'm pretty good at making myself invisible to others and making myself feel that way too. More than likely they just know they have us in our place and ignore us. I've watched them and tried to figure out how I'm different. I can't come up with anything, but the tests don't lie. Maybe mine got switched or something. I wish I knew how it worked.

This world that we live in is strange and I know I will never understand it. I won't understand Blaire or how I am any different from the people across the restaurant, but that is the way it has to be. Ignorance isn't always bliss, but necessary. That's what everyone says anyway. Blaire doesn't understand herself either and that makes me feel better even though she hates it. I just wish I knew a little more about my world and what really happens. There has to be more than what we know if Blaire can know some things, so what about the rest of it?