Gifted

Chapter 2

Rita sat on a bench, she was rubbing her left shoulder because her normally fair skin was puffy and red from pain. Her shoulder had been bandaged, not because she had been cut, but because her skin felt raw after being poked with needles for so long. Rita grimaced as she tried to rub the pain away, in her other hand she held an envelope. It was thick and heavy and it was filled with her in depth results and, if she passed, her instructions. Rita was allowed to look in the envelope to see what kind of future she would have, but she wanted to wait until she was with her parents.

 They had raised her until she was fourteen, they had moved away from their friends and never stayed in the same place too long for her. For the past fourteen years they had given up their life for their job, Rita thought that they deserved to find out at the same time she did. She stifled her curiosity of the envelope by playing with a chain around her neck. She twirled it around her finger gently and watched it snake around her wrist. Rita looked up when she heard a knock at the door, it slowly opened and a head popped out.

“Your parents are here to pick you up.”

The head pulled away from the door which opened all the way to show her parents walking in. They were both wearing formal business clothes but they didn’t look formal at all; her father’s blond hair was sticking in all directions and her mother’s blond hair was put into a frizzy braid. Rita looked nothing like her parents, they got sunburn and she got tan, they were blond and she was a brunette, they were normal height and she was tall, they had green and blue eyes and Rita had dull brown, they were complete opposites. Rita had nothing in common with them but they were her parents, not by blood though, Rita was adopted as an infant. The only reason she had been adopted by them is because it was their job, not because they actually wanted too. But nonetheless, they were family, and they all loved each other.

“Hey sweetie, how did it go?” Her father asked.

“I think I did well, but I don’t know for sure yet; I haven’t opened the envelope yet. I wanted to wait for you to be here.”

Her parents smiled and sat on either side of her, they leaned in eagerly as Rita opened the letter. She pulled out a heave stack of paper and unfolded it, it was several pages full of statistics, numbers and boring looking paragraphs, and while her parents looked at those she continued to flip through the packet. The last page had “Summary” written in bold letters at the top, below it there was all of her results, and Rita detached this page from the rest and read it.

Rita Young has made it past the first phase, she will be advancing to the second stage in three days at Yankton, Nebraska. In phase two she will take a part in the DNA alteration branch, she will be given the DNA of an animal that suits her best. To learn of the DNA that will be injected in her look at the marking on her left collarbone.

Below it there were three plane tickets, one for everyone in her small family, Rita looked at her parents and told her that she had made it to the second stage. They looked up and grinned, her father snatched the paper from her and read it over while her mother hugged her.

“Let’s go dear, we have packing to do.”

“Never mind packing”, her father said “We have to celebrate, do something special.”

“Mom, before we leave can we check to see what kind of DNA they’ll put in me?”