Anomalies ✔

Prologue

PROLOGUE: TIC

Despair, self-doubt, and desire cripple human beings. 
-Kilroy J. Oldster

Ever since I was little, I've felt out of control.

From the age of five my body moved when I didn't tell it to, I'd say things I wouldn't want to and sometimes, I even hurt myself or insulted people. It was uncontrollable and nobody knew what was wrong with me.

I felt broken.

Because nobody else did these things.

At school kids started to call me Spaz and they'd do things to see how much they can make me go off and a few times, they betted on what I'd shout.

That made me the outcast.

Then when I was ten I finally got a diagnosis -Tourette's.

It explained why I freaked out, it explained that it's manageable.

But being explainable didn't make me feel less broken.

It didn't get me friends.

My twin was always my anchor to reality and kept me grounded during my worst fits, it's one of the reasons I'm so scared to go to college -she won't be there with me.

Circe and her girlfriend Noelle are still back at home, attending the same college my older sister did because she wants to be a social worker.

My entire family is normally there for me and since there's eight kids in total and even more outside of us, it's safe to say we're not a small family by any means. An army of children, Papa would say.

But now that I'm a freshman at college, that all changes.

Just yesterday my parents dropped me off at my dorm and I had to say goodbye to them and my twin.

That was harder than I ever expected.

And I've had to see Adonis, Atlas and Nemesis off to college as well as watch Selene go back to the military every other year.

None of them warned me how alone it would feel leaving a house of ten to a dorm of two.

My own body failed to warn me that I'd be so nervous my normal tics- -which were now mostly physical than my other few verbal ones- -would turn into violent ones.

Which would send my arm jerking when I was holding a box of books.

Making the box slam up into my nose and forehead.

Causing me to stumble to the ground, spill the books and clutch at my bleeding nose. The sight of blood, in turn, making me tic again and bang my head back into the ground.

As if that wasn't enough, my glasses fall off so everything is a mess of red and white as my vision gets blurry.

My body, that never much listens to me anyway, ignores my inner pleas for consciousness.

And I pass out.

Only to wake up to a loud shriek, the sound of arguing- -flirtatious bickering?- -and hands gently shaking my shoulder and holding one hand to my cheek.

I jerk without control until the blurry but clearly male person above me holds me still until I stop moving.

Groaning, I cup my hand to my nose. "Not again."

"Not again?" He questions, sounding both confused and concerned. "Did someone attack you? Again. What the fuck."

"No I," A growl leaves my mouth as my shoulders tense, his hands never leaving me despite my weird behavior. "I have Tourette's and my tic-" I squeak. "-made me knock that box into my head."