Starlight

Chapter 2 - Ok, Maybe Just a Little...

So I saw things. Not scary hands or disembodied heads. I definitely didn't see dead people. And as I said before the medicine didn't really make them go away. It was almost like a film was over that part of my eye that gave me the ability to see them. I can't even really explain all the things I saw or even remember them all. Some were actually beautiful colored globes of light, that changed colors as the light shuddered through them. They were everywhere it seemed though sparse. It's not like I would walk into a cloud of them but I'd see them everywhere. And they moved, or well wafted through the air. Once one had come right at me, and instead of pulling away scared of such "hallucinations", I remember reaching up to it and feeling something cool brush my fingers. I wiggled my fingers, deep inside the ball before it shimmered away. I saw them often in the forest, along with little animals that I could never find pictures of in any animal encyclopedia, and in certain areas, no matter what time of day it was, or who I was with, or when it was, there would be areas that never changed. Just shimmered lightly. They called to me. I wanted to touch them, move into them, travel them. I know.. How stupid does that sound. They didn't even look like roads. More like the shimmers of heat you see on the pavement on a scorching day, but in mid air, under a bridge, or in water.

My mother though hated my "overactive" imagination. Every day when she'd pick me up from daycare, she'd listen to the staff talk about how happy, beautiful, and creative I was. They'd tell her how I had enraptured the entire class with magnificent stories.

"She'll be a writer one day," Amelia had told her. She was my reading tutor. "I just know it. She's so smart, Alexandria. Today she told the class about this Princess and a great war. So detailed. She could tell you exactly what they were wearing, the feel, the smells of the dream. Everything. I looked it up to see if it was something she might have seen before. Like TV or a movie? Does she tell the same story often?"

My mother had just growled and gripped my arm so tight it left bruises the next morning. I had cried out as she had dragged me out of the Daycare, leaving behind my coat in the wicker cubby hole.

"Are you stupid?" She asked me as we had walked out to her BMW.

I had shaken my head, my red curls covering my face as I stared at the shiny blue paint and watched as something that had camouflaged itself to the glittery blue paint. It wiggled up the trunk and twirled around the silver BMW logo. I reached out to touch it, but my mother slapped my hand away.

"What are you doing now?"

"Nothing Mummy..."

"Little liar."

It was only a few weeks later when I had made the biggest mistake of my life. My mother was having a dinner party, a widowed wives get together. I remember her cooking for hours before hand and shuffling me off into my night gown before six. She had shooed me up the stairs, her hands on either side of the polished oak railing, her feet scuffling up the wooden steps, chasing me, forcing me up into my bedroom. She opened my door, her finger pointed out at the light blue carpet in my room like I was a scolded puppy. I scooted under her arm and sat down, my white night dress clinging to me. I sat down cross legged and watched her as she closed the door.

I stared at the door and sighed, pushing my fingers through the carpet fibers, listening to the sound of my mother's friendly happy voice inviting her guests over, all elite friends of hers. I pushed myself up off the floor, getting a slight carpet burn on my right elbow and looked around. Most of my toys had been confiscated the night before because of my imaginative story telling. I don't really remember much about them now. I guess it was probably just stories about the creatures I had seen or the lights in the forest. Whatever they were, they upset my mother to the point of exhaustion. I did have a telescope though. It sat next to the dark blue paneled window, pointed up at a seventy-five degree angle so I could investigate the stars. I was never much for star gazing but the entire room had been designed as a star room. The walls were painted that dusk black and blue night sky color, while the tops of the walls that met the ceiling were covered in white starts with a moon hanging low behind my canopied bed. The higher you got the darker the colors and the lowest was the carpet, that light blue. For someone who didn't want me to dream, wish, and imagine, the room was perfect for just that.