The Bad and Me

A New Past

It was the morning of my sixteenth birthday and the beginning of a new school year along with a new school, once again.  Have to get up, have to…have to… I was already trying to fall back asleep when my mom burst in with a joyous expression on her pale face, with a big, bright smile and lively eyes.

        “Come on, Lisa,”  she pestered, “new school, new people, and new futures to conquer and change, for both you and me.  Even though you’re the one going off to high school, while I have to slave away with more complicated things.”

        “Mom,” I whined, “please, I need more sleep as a growing teenager.” I went to bed way too late last night after reading the fifth Harry Potter book for the millionth time.  I wasn’t in the mood for another shift to a new school; I had already lost count of how many I’d been to this year.

        “Lisa, honey, my freckly sixteen-year-old daughter,” she insisted, “I can’t believe you’re already sixteen.  I remember when you had first manipulated the future of somebody’s path, and now you’re off to your first day of sophomore year at Norwich High School.  Of course we will have to get used to this area of England.  I hear there are a lot of bad people in these parts.”

        She meant I would have to change a lot of their minds; urge them toward the right path, for better or for worse, since that’s the purpose of choosing a rough high school.

        “Mom, you don’t have to deal with hormonal know-it-alls all day long.  Do you even know how smelly and rude most high school kids are?”

        “Yes, because I was one of them and you are one, too.  Speaking of smelly, can you please get up and take a shower, you need to freshen up and look presentable today or it will be harder to do your job,” my mom advised.

        I lazily took my exhausted body out of bed and walked into the bathroom to take a look at my droopy face.  I was convinced today would make me look older and less like a cute toddler.  But instead, my boring, straight red hair hung above my shoulders with defeat, and my freckles, dappled among my pale face, hadn’t shifted an inch.  I didn’t seem to look any taller or more muscular.  But these were the only things that hadn’t changed.

        After I found that book in the secret room, my life seemed to fall into pieces that became thrown into different directions as I grew up.  My parents both grew up with the same situation when they were teenagers, and when they met, their powers seemed to work mostly for the better.  Then I was born and their powers seemed to weaken, so I do most of the work nowadays.  When I first got my powers on the day I turned a teen (thirteen), my whole childhood was flushed away, and I was thrown into training to control my power of mind manipulation.  You see, it was very difficult for me to master the art of it all because I was, and still am, very stubborn.  I tried to resist the urge, but the more I did, the less I could control my thoughts.

        Immediately after I finished my training, my parents moved our family to the east side of England where they enrolled me in school after school.  I was never able to make friends because I was constantly changing peoples’ thoughts towards the good or bad decisions they would make.

        My job was always and will always be to get into peoples’ heads and find out whether or not I must change their decisions to put them on the correct path.  Sometimes the correct path isn’t always for the better.  I still remember the first person’s mind I had to manipulate.  Her name was Madeline Blue, and she was a straight A student at my school in Chelmsford.  She never failed at anything and always showed off her best skills.  But one day I remember listening to her thoughts of suicide from pushing herself too far, and I knew her path was clear.  I saved her life because I changed her decision to kill herself by manipulating her thoughts.  I find it unfair that I have to do things the way I do because I have to change peoples’ decisions without their approval, plus they don’t even know that I do it.

            The book I found in the secret room has been the key to my success over the years.  The X’s on the pages actually mark the people in need of help or the people I need to work on, regarding a bad situation, or the people who are mostly in the clear but need to make the right decisions or else they will wind up on the wrong path.  The O’s on the paper mark innocent people or just bystanders, nothing to worry about.  I call the book my “moment journal” because I thought it sounded crafty and it marks the moments on the page that have to be changed.

        I glanced at the book across the room and wondered what kind of people the book would tell me to help at this school.  Since we chose one of the tougher areas of England, I already knew my work was cut out for me.