Control

Chapter One

The sky is blue. The grass is green. No matter what happens in life, these two things will always be true. The sky gets covered with clouds from time to time, but the clouds will always move to reveal a blue sky. The grass dies sometimes, but it always grows back green, sometimes even greener than before. The good is good just as the bad is bad. In the end there will always be a balance. Some things die to be alive again; some things get lost in order to be found.

I've always been good at separating the good from the bad. There is a balance. I could see when a stranger was having a hard time paying their taxes. I could see when my cousin was in love. I used to think that this was normal, that I was normal. I thought everyone could see the world the way I could. It wasn't until I was nine that I realized I was different.

It was my Aunt Kelly's birthday. My mother and grandmother had decided to throw her a surprise party. When Aunt Kel walked through the door, she had been smiling. Everybody could see that, including me. Her smile only grew bigger as everyone yelled "Surprise!" That was visibly obvious to everyone in the room, and what a beautiful smile she had. Her perfectly white and straight teeth go along with her round cheeks that are always stained pink. Her whitish blonde hair is poker straight, just like mine.

Aunt Kel made her rounds and chatted with everyone for a bit. She stood in front of me and I gave her a huge hug.

She smiled down at me, "I missed you too Annabelle!" She said as a response to my tight grip.

My eyes began to tear up. I stayed silent.

"Anna?" Aunt Kel pushed me away from her so she could see my face. "Anna, what's upsetting you?" she asked me.

"W-w-why..." I tried to speak but no words come out. I opened my mouth to start talking again, but my tears began sprinting down my face. It felt like they were racing from my eyeballs, down my cheeks, past my mouth, jumping off my chin, and down to the floor.

"Hey, hey, hey," Aunt Kelly coaxed me. "C'mon Annabelle, lets go in here."

Nobody noticed we were gone. Everybody was too engaged in conversation, which was a good thing.

I looked out the office door through the assorted glass panes to see my Aunt Margie. She's plump, and has supper pretty curly brown hair that frames her freckled face and brown eyes nicely. She was extremely happy that she just got a job offer in Boston. Uncle Bill, Aunt Margie's husband, is a tall man with broad shoulders that would scare you if you ever had to fight him. I looked at him and read him. I see that he was upset to leave the town he grew up in, because his best friend from high school got in a car accident. He wouldn't dare tell this to Aunt Margie, because what he really wants is for her to be happy, he loves her to the moon and back.

I turned to my aunt. "Aunt Kel, why are you and Uncle Dave getting a divorce?" I managed to slow down the race of my tears; I managed to pull myself together.

She began interrogating me, "Who told you? Did he tell you? We weren't supposed to tell anyone yet and-"

I stopped her. "No, I see it."

She looked confused.

I told her again, " I see it."

"See what?" she asks, confusedly.

"I see it when I look at you. I see you're upset, I see what you've been through." I explained. "Don't you see what I've been through? Don't you see my emotions?" I asked.

"Honey... are you sure someone didn't tell you?" Aunt Kelly inquired. She thought I was being silly, and I thought she was being silly.

I went through explaining to Aunt Kel what I see. I told her about Aunt Margie and Uncle Bill. I told her how my mom was internally killing my dad with her words.

Aunt Kelly didn't know how to respond. She explained to me what a normal person's mind could do, and that my mind, my brain was not normal.

It was then that I found out that I, Annabelle Martin, was not normal.

Aunt Kelly and I kept my secret for quite some time; I was always spending time with her. My family thought it was great that I was so close with my aunt; they found it funny because of how much I resemble her. We have the same color blonde hair and almost the same eyes. One of her eyes is darker than the other, and one of mine has brown in it where the other does not. We have the same pale skin tone; both of us burn easily in the sun. My family found it ironic that of out of all of my family members I chose to be close to the one who looks just like me. They never knew about my secret. And they never would. Aunt Kelly and I agreed on that.

Three years later, an artery burst in her brain, flooding the tissue with blood. She died of a brain hemorrhage.