I felt it. It scared me. I didn't know what it was, but I didn't like it. It was strong, but felt like it didn't want to help me. It wanted to take over me.
Why can't Mom come back?
The kids were looking at me weird. I was the same age as them, but taller. They often made fun of me even though I never did anything to them. I never even talked to them. But they hated me. Then suddenly, I realized that they weren't looking at me, but behind me. I slowly turned around to the direction they were facing and saw something. No, someone. They were hovering in the air. I screamed when I saw who it was. It was Natalie, my best friend. The only person at this school who was nice to me.
But right as I started to scream, she fell. All of the other kids screamed too, and some of them ran inside to get a teacher. I ran over to Natalie, asking her if she was okay and what had happened.
"I don't know!" she exclaimed to me. She sounded terrified and she was shaking. Some other kids ran over and asked her the same thing as I did.
"Get out of the way, Kira! You're such an idiot! Why would you do this to your best friend?" Cal, the one boy that came over asked me.
"Me? You think this is my fault?" I asked him in shock.
"Of course it's your fault! I felt it! You were using the force to do that to Natalie!" the way he looked at me with his cold blue eyes made me even more mad. I was about to say something back to him, opposing what he was saying, but I stopped. Was he right? Was I using the force?
My voice was quieter this time. "Well, I wasn't trying to."
He took Natalie's hand and stared into my eyes one last time. "You're such a Sith." He took her inside.
As soon as they left, I felt it again. The force. I couldn't let it happen again. I ran home as fast as I could. My long, brown hair was in my face as I ran, my dark brown eyes filled with determination. And fear.
I ran into my house and started screaming. "Dad! Dad where are you?" My dad was sitting in a chair by the front window, reading the newspaper. "What is it, Kira? Why aren't you at school?"
I stopped panting and went over to him. "Something bad happened."
"Tell me," he said to me with wonder in his voice.
It took me a second to bring up my courage. I looked directly into his eyes. "I used the force."
He looked away from me, then met my gaze again. "How?" his voice was quiet.
"I-I don't know. But those kids, they were looking at me. Then they were looking at Natalie. She was floating! Floating, Dad! When I saw it, I screamed. Then she fell. And one kid called me a Sith."
My dad looked away from me again. His face turned very pale. He had an expression I'd never seen him have before.
It was fear.
The next day, my dad wouldn't let me go to school. Instead, he said we were going to have to talk about something.
He sat on the couch next to me and spoke. "I really thought I wasn't going to have to give you this conversation until your mother came back. But it turns out, now is the time." He looked very fearful again, and the room became very tense. He felt it too, I could tell. It was the force.
He looked at me, and spoke again. "Kira, I know you are going to get very mad at me when I tell you this, but it's the truth. You probably won't even believe me."
"Come on, Dad. You can tell me anything," I said to him. "No matter what has happened, nothing can keep me from loving you."
He took in my words very clearly, and the tenseness in the room went away. He was relieved, I could feel it.
Did he really think I didn't love him? He was my dad.
He took a deep breath. "Kira, a long time ago I was training to become a Jedi."
"I know. You told me"
"Yes. But I didn't tell you what went wrong."
"What went wrong?"
He took another deep breath and met my gaze. "I turned evil."