Chapter One Fuzzy and Foreboding.

Dad rubbed reassuring circles on my back as my headache worsened, I could make almost nothing out, it was all blurry, and dark. I took a deep breath and pressed my fingers to my forehead, squeezed, then let my breath out. It didn't help.

'How surprising,' I thought, 'it had always worked before.' Yeah right, ugh.

I felt like my brain was trying to burst out of my skull.

"Ali, you're trying too hard, relax, let it come to you, it always does." Dad's voice was almost always soothing to me, but not, now it only reminded me that this was hurting him too, hurting him to see me in pain.

I gritted my teeth in concentration and Dad sighed.

"Come on, your mother will be coming home with Cynthia soon, and do you want them to see you like this?"

'God, no.' I thought to myself, of course I didn't want Cynthia to know about this, it would only give her more ammunition to torture me with.

But Dad didn't know about her. I probably should have told him, but I certainly wasn't going to, Cynthia would only make it worse for me and no one could have kept her away from me at school, or kept me away from school.

I hated school, the subjects were too predictable, literally, and I had no friends. So basically, I zoned out for the classes, aced all the tests and was named 'nerd' and 'teacher's pet'-even though I didn't even like any of the teachers-by the entire student body.

Hallelujah! As if.

Back to the subject.

Mum didn't know anything; she barely even knew my name.

Yeah, about that, my name's Mary-Alice, and literally only Dad knows that I like being called Alice. Mum and all the teachers call me Mary because they're clueless; Mum even called me Marie sometimes. Cynthia called me Mary-Alice because she wanted to be mean, in spite of me, as well as all of her friends, which meant nearly all of the students, she was the Queen B of the school, as in Queen Bitch!

'Oh, God,' I must sound just like her, oh well I'll survive.

I heard the front door opening, so I dashed to the bathroom, locking the door behind me and gazed at my reflection, inspecting the damage. Nothing serious, only some bags under my eyes and some fading red marks where my fingers had dug in before.

There was a pounding on the bathroom door.

"Hurry up freak, I need to use the bathroom!" came my sister's voice. Geez, what did I ever do to her, had I ever been anything other than nice to her? Not anymore.

"Wait your turn, bitch." I called back to her.

I could practically hear her growling at me.

I heard her stomp away and quietly and quickly exited the room and moved to my own.

I made it in, finding my sketchpad and pencils; Dad must have left them there.

I did all sorts of things in that book; I drew, wrote, designed and composed. In short, that book, and the ones before it, was my life, my whole bookcase was full of them. Each one had a year written on it, and below that the months of use.

I opened it up to a fresh page and picked up a grey-lead pencil.

I drew my vision, it had been fuzzy, but I still understood it. I definitely didn't want this one to come to pass, but it would have to or every one would have been in danger.

I mean, I may not have liked anyone in that godforsaken place, but that didn't mean I wanted them dead, my sister however, I probably would not miss.

One choice could have changed that, but no.

I finished the drawing and opened my trigonometry book.

I heard Cynthia stomp down to the bathroom and got up to lock my door before she got to it.