As Cold As the Deep Blue

Guardian

Chapter One 

Guardian 

My name is Arielle Blue Maybe. I had a rough past and I will probably have a rough future. But the most important thing that you need to know about me is that I am a secret agent. Not only do I attend the very prestigious Grayson Academy for training future undercover agents, I am also the best. But that's getting ahead. Why don't I start from the beginning? 

I grew up in Houston, Texas with my mother Isle and my father Nolan. My drunken father constantly beat me and my mother would come home from work only to yell at me for doing something wrong and then continue to tell me how hideous I was. And she was right, I always believed her, from my dull blonde hair that went to my mid-waist, to my eyes, which were the ice cold shade of blue. I lived with them until I was 14 years old; my father continued to beat me and my mother continued punishing me, telling me that she regretted having me and that I was a spoiled brat that was lucky to have someone as nice as her as a mother. 

Going to school wasn't much better; I was constantly ridiculed for how ugly I was. I came to only wearing sweatpants and t-shirts to school. Girls would accidentally "trip" during lunch and spill the contents of their trays all over me; they would call me a nerd and a geek and occasionally even hit me. Because of that I spent most of my time in the library. My friends were my books because they were the only ones that never judged or yelled at me. I used to have a friend. Her name was Brie. We went to the same middle school and she was nice to me. Everything changed when we first stepped foot in high school. Apparently the popular girls thought that she was popular material and worthy of following them around like a helpless puppy. They gave her a choice, either she could join them and humiliate me every day, or get humiliated with me. Although with my luck I should have expected it, it still hurt when the one person I thought was my friend stabbed me in the back and joined the very people who made it their job to make my life a living hell. However, all that changed on my fourteenth birthday. 

It had been raining that day, which was unusual in Houston. The fact that it was my birthday either didn't matter to my parents or they completely forgot. It was a Saturday night and my parents were going out to dinner, leaving me to fend for myself for the night. This was nothing new to me, thus making me a very good cook at a very young age. My parents were going out to a very fancy restaurant, celebrating the promotion that my father had recently received. I was heating up some leftover mushroom ravioli when the lights went out. "Wow, I didn't know the storm was this bad," I thought to myself. With that, I went to the closet that I get to call my bedroom and went to sleep on the piles of pillows and blankets that were on the ground. Soon after laying down I was in a deep sleep. 

The real surprise was the next morning when I actually woke up on my own instead of the usual screaming of Isle at 5:30 in the morning. I thought that maybe that was my birthday present, instead of pushing my luck and staying in bed for a few more hours like my body longed for, I got up to start making breakfast for my parents like they make me do every morning. 

However, to my utter surprise and joy, the kitchen was empty. "Maybe they're still sleeping?" My thoughts were interrupted by a loud knocking on the front door, thinking that maybe it was my parents coming home extremely late; I was surprised instead to see a police officer standing on my doorstep with a grim expression on his face. This made me frantic, thinking that somehow word had gotten out about Nolan abusing me. He would kill me if I told anyone, so the sight of a policeman was not very welcoming to me. What he said next though, stopped my mind in its tracks. 

"Are you Arielle Maybe?" He asked. I simply nodded my head, too afraid to say anything. "I am very sorry to say that last night your parents were in a terrible car accident...they didn't make it."