Strange Thoughts

Part One-Chapter One-Aleya

Ever since I was eight years old, I have been able to read minds. It all started with a traumatic accident. Falling off a bridge into a mysterious void of darkness. I heard a voice that night. A voice that haunts me every night before I fall asleep, even after the whole five years that have passed since the accident.

It has never said another word to me, but it's in every one of my dreams. Or well, my nightmares. We rarely speak of it in my family.

My mind is always swirling with my thoughts, most which aren't my own. I know everybody's secrets, everybody's hopes and fears. I can either use them for good, or use them for bad.

At least, that's what the voice told me. The voice wasn't female or male, it didn't sound like an alien, or any other extraterrestrial being. It sounded ghostly, the kind of distorted voice you would hear in a horror movie, except way creepier.

I walk along the edge of the small canyon. The stakes that held the bridge are still there, but are beginning to be devoured by termites. The sky is grey and gloomy, storm clouds seem to be hovering above my head. The grass has grown tall, as no one has come to cut it.

It's been five years since anyone's come back here, except for me. I always come back. It helps me think only my own thoughts.

I sit down, my legs hanging off the edge of the daunting cliff. I tilt my head to the side, so my ear with my best hearing, my right ear, is facing the cliff. I listen for the voice, but nothing comes. Of course it doesn't come. It never comes.

I rest my head on a rock covered with smooth grass, and stare up at the sky. I practice some strategies of blocking out people's thoughts. I concentrate on sounds, the wind rustling through the trees, the birds chirping. I know that if I am around people, all thoughts of theirs would fade away. I learned to only listen to the people's thoughts who I really wanted to listen to, like my sister's.

My sister, Aubrey, is insanely jealous of my gift. She thinks she hides it well, but she can't hide anything from me. She hates how I can just snoop into her mind, and hear about the new crush she's been keeping from my parents, and the fight she got in with her best friend a week ago.

Aubrey also thinks she's better than me. She takes pride in anything she does well. If she gets an A on a test, and I happen to get an A- on whatever test or assignment I had, she comes home with a huge smirk on her face.

I understand her though, it's hard to be in a family where the parents treat the younger daughter like glass, and the older daughter like she's a soccer ball, able to be kicked around but assumed to still be fine in the end.

I stand up, grab a rock, and throw it into the small canyon. I don't hear it hit the bottom, but I know it has to. I was down there, and I remember every minute of it.

I hear footsteps, and turn around to see a boy around my age walking towards me. He has brown hair and pretty ocean blue eyes. I watch him curiously, wondering what he is doing down here. Not many people want to come to a place where a little girl almost died, even if it was five years ago.

He walks over to a tree stump, and sits down. He looks thoughtfully at a small notebook in his hand. He takes a blue mechanical pencil out of his pocket and begins to write. All of a sudden, a flurry of thoughts come into my head.

This is going to be the best one yet! Oh wow, there's a girl over there. I didn't think anybody ever came here. Wait! That's the girl who fell off the bridge! Maybe I should talk to her. Maybe I shouldn't. C'mon, focus back on your writing. Just get what you need to here, first.

I block the thoughts out of my head, looking intently at the boy. He obviously recognizes me, and is curious about what happened. I decide to go over and talk to him. I walk forward slowly, and he doesn't look up. He's immersed into whatever he is writing.