ℍ𝕌ℝ𝕋𝕊 𝕊𝕆 𝔾𝕆𝕆𝔻 - ᴛʜᴇ ᴍɪᴋᴀᴇʟꜱᴏɴꜱ

⁰ 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞

July 12th, 2002

Do you ever feel like your life isn't really your life? Like someone else is holding the pen, writing your story while you're just trying to figure out what the hell chapter you're in? Because that's exactly how I feel. Constantly.

Mom calls it "adventure." That's what she says every time we pack up our lives and leave another city behind. Adventure, my ass. Portland to San Francisco. San Francisco to Houston. Houston to New Orleans. Then Maine. Then Minnesota. (Side note: Fuck Minnesota. If I never feel frozen winds biting through my bones again, I've accomplished something.) When I was nine, I had already lived in so many places but none of them ever felt like mine. We were always just passing through.

And then we landed in Chicago.

God, Chicago. It actually felt like something might stick for once. The city had this rhythm, you know? Like music, you could feel it in your chest. It was the first place that felt more than a pit stop. It felt alive, and for once, so did I.

May 25th, 2003

So, here's something wild: magic is a lot harder than it looks in the movies. Shocking, I know.

Mom started teaching me and Kaiah the basics a couple of months after we moved to Chicago. Apparently, this witchy shit runs deep in our family, like some kind of ancient heirloom you didn't ask for but have to deal with anyway. Mom says Dad was my first teacher when I was a baby—too bad he bailed before I could actually learn anything from him. Whatever. His loss.

Kaiah's magic is like a damn wildfire. It surges through her like it's been waiting to escape her whole life. Mine? Not so much. Mine's quieter. It's like water. Slow, steady, shaping things over time. Together, we make a pretty decent team—Kaiah burns through whatever's in her way, and I clean up the ashes.

Mom says we balance each other out. But she also says magic is like baking cookies. (I don't know what cookies she's been making, but the ones I bake have never exploded in my face.) So I don't know how trustworthy her word really is.

December 1st, 2005

This is the first time I've written anything since Mom died. I've tried hundreds of times, but every time I pick up a pen, the words feel wrong. How do you write about something that rips your life apart?

One day, Mom was there. The next, she wasn't. Just...gone. No warning, no explanation. Just an emptiness so big it swallowed me whole.

Kaiah cried for days. I couldn't. I just sat there, trying to make sense of it. How do you lose the person who was your whole world and still keep breathing? I didn't know it was possible.

And then Zach showed up. Apparently, he was Mom's best friend from college. He swooped in like some kind of knight in slightly wrinkled armor, packed us up, and dragged us all the way to Mystic Falls, Virginia.

I miss Chicago. I miss Mom.

March 15th, 2006

Mystic Falls is the kind of town where everyone's smiling on the outside but hiding some seriously dark shit on the inside. It's like a Hallmark card dipped in black ink.