The Academy

Ava

I sat in the window watching the kids get out of their cars. They were all laughing and running up to each other while their parents were standing there having conversations about work probably. Or maybe they were talking about where they went this summer or what they did. Who knows? I was never part of that group. and I didn't want to be either. I noticed Emelie Hart getting out of her blacked out range rover, cellphone to her ear, purse on her arm. Her perfectly highlighted hair glinted in the afternoon sunlight. Her driver was busy getting her bags while she jabbered on the phone. I hear the high-pitched screams that I was waiting for as her two best friends, the Dieter twins ambushed her with a flurry of hugs and kisses. Ugh, they literally made me sick. They were the three most popular girls in school and they all hated me, therefore, making my life a living hell. The only thing that gave me solace was that I was the number one in my class but that just separated me even more from everyone else. It was my senior year this year and I was more determined than ever to be the top of my class.

It sometimes made me sad that I didn't fit in with anyone else in the academy but then I remember that friends are distractions, boys even more so and that the only thing that I could count on was me. I hear my phone bing from inside my room and glancing one more time over at the square full of people I open it up. It was a text from my Uncle.

'Come to my office.' I text him a quick reply, grab my key card from my dresser and head downstairs. Reg was the headmaster of the Academy and was the reason that I was here. He wasn't really my Uncle, at least not by blood anyway. He adopted me when I was 8 after my parents died and I've been here ever since. He was the only family I had or knew. Both of my parents had no siblings and their parents were deceased as well. My parents knew what they were getting into when they became agents and they knew it was even more dangerous to have a child in this line of business but they always did everything together so when my mom found out she was pregnant with me they both took leave to raise me 'properly' as 'normal' people raised their kids. They never had any intention of me even going to the Academy but of course they never had any say in the matter when they both bit the dust. In their last Will and Testament they asked Reg to look after me but by under NO MEANS did they want me to go to the Academy or ever even know about it.

Reg tried to do what they asked but I made it very hard on him. I was in Foster Care with the family the Carters in West Virginia when I ran away. I made it all the way back to my old house where my parents lived in Oregon and that's where Reg found me. They had called him as my next of kin and said that I ran away and that I was too difficult to deal with and that they were taking me back to child services when they found me. He found me curled up in my parents bed, crying and when I asked him if he was taking me back to the Carters he asked me "what did I want to do?" No one had ever asked me what I wanted to do or where I wanted to be since my parents had died.

"I just want my parents." I told him seriously. He looked down at me with a sad look and put his hand on my arm.

"I don't think that will be possible sweetheart." I looked at him long and hard before I nodded and told him to take me back to the Carters and that from now on I would be a good girl like mom and dad would want me to be and make them proud. But he didn't take me back to the Carters. I guess he realized in spending time with me on the trip back to Child Services that the best place for me would be at the Academy with him. So when we arrived there he talked to my agent and said that he'd like to adopt me. That was the first happy moment I had since my parents died.

Long since then he told me the truth and I found, in coming to the Academy that I truly belonged here. Finding out what my parents did and how they really died only fueled my desire to be as good as them or better so that one day I could avenge them. That is perhaps what set me apart from the rest of the children there. Everyone else had friends and other things that they liked to do but becoming an agent was the only thing that interested me. 10 years later here I was.