We are the Enhanced

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Hello. Thank you so much if you are reading this now. The book. Not my rants at the beginning. So I found out astronomers might've found a new planet. WOW! I read something where it was like 'A ninth planet for the solar system?' And I was like TENTH! TENTH PLANET! I WILL FOREVER LOVE YOU PLUTO! I know I know. It's a rock. I have pet rocks and I collect gemstones. Conclusion: that tiny adorable rock that is Pluto deserves the respect it originally received. Anyhow, you see the little shape in the bottom corner of your screen? It's a magic button called a 'vote' and it would help me so dang much if you would press it. That's how writers get discovered. And most of you aspiring writers probably remember a time when no one knew you. So please, help me out. If you like a book, chapter, picture drawn for a chapter, please vote. Thank y'all so much.

Ariya reminded Charlotte of her mom and dad the way they were before the experiments. It was Charlotte they experimented on, but her parents got the worst blow. Charlotte wasn't as scared by the change in her eye color, but it drove her parents into shock.

They didn't remember what had happened, Mom's cancer, Charlotte's immunity to it. Charlotte probably should've gone to a foster home, her parents being unable to take care of her, but she couldn't leave them. No matter how far past saving they were, they were her parents. The best people Charlotte knew, her confidants.

She would never tell herself those people were dead. But she knew. She couldn't save them. All that was left was a shell. An abusive, brain dead shell, but Charlotte couldn't admit it.

They barely remembered Charlotte was their daughter. She was sort of like Cinderella, she mused, at least in the way that she was a badly treated slave to her parents, but there was no ball, no prince, and Charlotte bore the pain alone, no siblings to mourn with her.

Ariya reminded Charlotte of the carefree people from before the experimenting. The spontaneous ones who were loving to all. The ones who'd gone with Charlotte to Brazil once on a vacation. That's why she'd returned. Hoping it would spark memories. She had set up the flight to Rio from their home in Atlanta. They'd stay here until her parents remembered. That was that. Charlotte didn't want to think of the ifs, or the buts. Those thoughts, they'd kill her.

Her parents could pass for normal, sometimes, after fighting with Charlotte. So she took the blows, and then reigned her dad into buying an apartment for them to stay in. She thought she saw a spark of something, not recognition, but... understanding, maybe. He still could be empathetic, like he was before. Then it was gone.

Charlotte's mother, Claire Myers, went around the new apartment, asking her husband where the broom was. She didn't seem to realize this wasn't her home.

Charlotte got them jobs. They could work, and were actually good at it. They just never remembered Charlotte, at least not in conventional ways. They were passable as regular, at least when Charlotte wasn't near.

Charlotte tried so hard over the rest of the summer. She tried to make them remember. She remembered restaurants they'd eaten at, and took them there. Sunrise was visible from their apartment, she showed it to them.

They watched it. Every morning, they'd wake up and watch it out on the porch. Her mom would lean on her dad's shoulder, arms wrapped around his neck. They breathed in and out in sync. Charlotte could imagine herself, years younger, curled between her parents as they sat like that.

It hurt her, remembering, and recalling moments like those that she took for granted.

Maybe they do remember, Charlotte hoped. Maybe they're just afraid to. Like me.