I know I'm not crazy.

At least…..that's what the voices tell me. And there are a lot of voices. So maybe, I'm not any more crazy than I already am. Does that even make sense? Are there different levels of being sane? It is a one to ten kind of thing or do I get 7.5 when I start seeing things that aren't there? I didn't ask for this gift, I'm still not sure if I even want it. It's one of those things you can't understand. It's not supposed to exist, and yet it does.

When I was younger I couldn't hear anything; I was born deaf. But I still remember the first day when I heard it. It all just happened at once. I had just turned five when one day I could hear people speaking. Hundreds of voices swarmed into my head. People were shouting and yelling, whispering and crying.

Small children hate loud noises. Try to imagine how I felt. Everything just kept getting louder and louder until I felt everything just pop. There was so much pressure that I felt everything around me explode. I started crying and then when the voices started to fade away I could hear the one sound I had longed to hear, my mother's. Instantly, being held in her arms, I knew that everything was going to be better. I thought it would be alright from then, and stay that way forever.

Never had I been more wrong in my entire life.

My parents divorced two years later and my dad took my younger brother Emmett with him. He was only 18 months then. We haven't heard a word from them since. Even though I love my mother as much as I do, it has always seemed that no one else shared those same feelings for her. She's always had a hard time finding work, even now, and when she finally manages to land a job, it never lasts for too long.

My elementary school is just four blocks down the road from our house so I never had too many problems getting there. As I moved onto high school, I had the pleasure of traveling the extra half mile to get to the slightly campus that I had only imagined that the inside looked like each time I biked to the store for groceries.

At first I didn't tell my mother about my gift, but as time went on, I got older, the voices intensified. I can hear people when they talk to me directly, but not very well. It is really as if someone has taken a TV remote and turned the volume down to 2 on everyone. The sound is there, but not unless you really focus on it. My other hearing abilities are the complete opposite. Everything in my head is crystal clear. At one point it just got so overwhelming that I finally manned up and told my mother. She thought I was crazy and that the depression of my father and brother leaving us had made me crack. I still don't think she really believes me today. She smiles at me and does the whole 'nod your head and the appropriate time' thing when I bring it up, but I know she hates that I talk about it. I bring it up, and she changes the subject while thinking she could send me to a therapist if she only had the money…

Everyone thinks I'm actually deaf, which really isn't a complete lie, so I had to learn sign language to pretend to interact with people. I don't want anyone to know what I can do, I don't want to be known as a freak. I can talk fine, but I've never had anything to say to someone. My inner voice tells me everything I need to know. It helps me distinguish between real people and others who hide behind masks. It's nice to know when you hear a compliment that there's sincerity behind it. I used to think that the popular kids were so happy, but it turns out that some of them feel just as bad as I do sometimes.

No one is really as they appear to be. To understand someone, you have to work your way in and spend time peeling away all of their layers before you really can know them. My gift just helps me skip that step and saves me time. Why spend the effort on someone if they're not genuine at all?

There are times that I cheat and use my abilities for more recreational purposes. Sometimes it is hard to ignore the answer that comes out of the whiz kid's mind during a pop quiz. I also have a knack for bringing my own lunch when the cafeteria serves 'surprise lunch meat'. Gym class is also a breeze. I seem to keep forgetting my running shoes and coach just punishes me by making my sit and write. Frankly, that's more of a reward than anything; I'm not exactly the most coordinated person.

Mom hates it though when I do any of that stuff. I think it's because she's upset that I don't suffer through the things normal kids have to go through. She wants me to stress about being unprepared or embarrassed if I forget something. It is times like those that I wonder what would have happened if I had told her about everything before the divorce. Maybe she would have fought harder to keep my brother, and I would be living with my father, god knows where.

It's because of all this that I knew I couldn't tell her.

Not this time. But that's what worried me most. If I couldn't tell her, then who could I tell? I didn't exactly have many close friends. Who in their right mind wanted to make the effort to interact with the deaf girl? It's not like I wanted to talk to anyone anyway. Their thoughts were about as shallow as kiddy pools and I had yet to find a single girl at my school that cared about something else besides how they looked.

The only decent person around here was a girl in my grade named Alice Brandon. We were more acquaintances than friends, but she was the only other student whose opinion I cared about. She was smart and had great fashion sense without trying. She had a natural beauty with her short cropped hair and dark blue eyes that were framed by thick rimmed glasses. She was a little shorter than most girls, but she had a warm smile that only came after suffering through most of elementary school with braces.

There was only one other person that I pretended to talk to besides Alice, my mother, and sometimes the teachers. He was new last year and I got to know him really well when we lab partners. He's probably the closest thing I've ever had to a friend. When we met, he had never seen, yet alone practiced anything that had to do sign language. But as the year went on he practiced and worked on it until we could communicate easily. It's the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me. There's only one things though, that made him different from any of the other students.

No matter how hard I tried and focused, I couldn't hear any of Edward Cullen's thoughts.

At first I thought I was sick or there was something wrong with me. I ended up being fine, but I couldn't figure it out. It excited and infuriated me at the same time. He was completely silent to me.

There was no doubt in my mind that I loved him. He was genuinely kind and the only person to ever come up and talk to me voluntarily without the topic of the conversation being about school work or the weather. He has this way of smiling that only looked perfect when matched with his amazingly deep emerald eyes.

I don't know how long it'll take, but no matter how much it takes, I'm determined to get Edward to fall in love with me too.

Fortunately, he has remained single since he arrived. Plenty of girls have come up to ask him out; some even had the nerve to do so while we were in the middle of a conversation. He's always been very polite with them, kindly telling them each time that he wasn't interested. They kept on coming after him, some even trying twice, until finally the message was received and the countless number of suitors began to lessen and shrink until they died down all together.

Considering all the past we have together he does seem to be the most reasonable person to tell about all this. The only problem is, is that if I tell him, he will probably finally see me for the freak I really am. He means too much to me to risk that. It's hard though to just keep this to myself. It's actually quite ironic though; I'm practically silent my entire life, and now I'm desperately looking for someone to talk and listen to me.

Maybe I just thought I saw it. That is a possibility, this isn't the first time my mind has screwed with me. And with my talents, who knows what I'm actually capable of doing? That's it, I saw nothing, and it wasn't there. That fixes all my problems; nothing to worry or ponder about. Just put it behind me.

I was set with my plan until my mind decided otherwise.

I saw it again - the same scene, just in my dreams. Everything was the same: the clothes I was wearing, the sun beating onto my back, the fear shooting through my body. It wasn't just once though. I keep having the same dream over and over again and always waking up at the same point.

No matter how many times I try to close my eyes and forget about it, it won't go away. I'm wrong, completely wrong. It was real, it had happened.

So there you have it! I wrote this a while ago, not meaning for it to be any sort of fanfic, but I thought, what the hey, why not?

So I really don't know if I should continue this at all, so let me know what you think!

Keep going? Or is it not worth the effort?

Review!

Until Next Time,

~Ketzchexmex