Chapter 1 - Growing Pains

Seven's eyes snapped open as she abrubtly awoke. The feeling she had was one of anxious disquiet, as though something terrible had just happened. Her foster father would have said it was the type of feeling that a person got when someone "stepped on their grave."

Of course, Seven knew that her feelings of distress could be attributed to the fact that she'd stopped taking her pills three days ago. She couldn't explain the sudden impulse that had prompted her to stop taking her medication. At the time, she had wondered if she'd feel any different, and if the odd symbols and characters that she'd often seen in her head when she was a little kid would return full-force, dropping in continuous vertical streams like rain in an odd double-image overlapping whatever she happened to be looking at. It still happened sometimes, but with the pills it was easier to tune it out.

Sighing, Seven pulled herself up from her bed, groggily moved over to her computer desk, and switched on the machine.

"FWI: I know I should have told you guys before, but I've stopped taking my pills," she told her friends in a mass email. "If I snap or something and go on a homicidal rampage, they're in my locker. See you in class."

So saying, Seven logged off and dropped back into her bed, hoping to grab just a few more hours of uninterrupted sleep before she had to go to school.

But the feeling of unease remained.

"Wha-"
Seven awoke for the second time that morning to the harsh claxon of her alarm. She silenced it with a grimace and dressed quickly, and appraised her looks with a quick glance in the mirror. Nothing was any different from the day before; normal dark hair, dark eyes in a sharp-featured face that was just a trifle too pale, on a body that was just a little too thin. Sighing in frustration, Seven grabbed her bookbag and headed down the hall to the kitchen.

"Morning, Janie," her forster mother greeted, without really turning to look at her as she rifled through the fridge for the orange juice. Amelia Blair was a delicate woman with dark blonde hair who worked as an Insurance claims adjuster. Seven always felt that she was disappointing her foster mother somehow. It seemed to her that what Amelia had really wanted was a little copy of herself, pretty and popular, instead of the misfit girl that been assigned to them.

Nevertheless, Seven knew how lucky she was. She'd heard stories of kids like her who'd been abused and neglected in foster homes, kids who turned against the system and became criminals as a result of their feelings of frustration and rage. She'd always felt that this was an ever-present danger; that if she stepped out of line even once, she'd wind up like them no matter what the conditions of her foster home were like.

Therefore, Seven's overriding goal until the day of her emancipation was keep her head down and her nose clean, to keep from attracting notice until the day she was declared an adult by the State. Her teachers saw her as a shy and reticent outsider, reluctant to speak up in class, teased and ridiculed by many of the students and virtually ignored by the rest. However, she did have a few friends; Jim Weir, Simon Clary, and Andrea Roosevelt, who were better known in the online community as Loki, Magus, and Circe. None of them were considered to be real troublemakers (though Jim and Simon were widely thought of as irritating class clowns by the faculty) but only because they kept their extracurricular activties a closely-guarded secret; for the past two years, Seven and her circle of friends had dabbled in the rudiments of hacking.

So far, most of their crimes were minor at the very worst; Magus had once hacked the school attendance database to bump his attendance record up from Poor to Needs Improvement. Loki hacked the websites and computers of people he didn't like at school, had written a few trojan horses, and was generally a practical joker. Circe's hacking activities were mostly confined to hacking online games and the liberal use of gaming "cheats."

Seven's reasons for learning to hack were much more serious, and much closer to her heart. For as long as she could remember, she'd been curious about her parents. She was getting to the age in which she would soon be able to legally request any documents regarding her parents from the state; the problem was that she simply refused to wait until the state felt that she was ready to know who she actually was and where she came from. In the course of her search, Seven had developed hacking skills that far outstripped those of her friends.

But once she'd scratched the surface, it seemed that there were no other records or documents regarding her parents to be had. "Normal" people left a "paper trail" of official records and transactions behind them as they travelled through life. The lack of any information at all about her parents at all was more than a little disturbing in what it implied, and it frustrated Seven to no end.

It's like they've been deleted, Seven thought, discouraged. Like in the movie Brazil. They've been removed from the system entirely, and it's like they never existed at all...except that I'm here.

The feelings of unease that had gripped Seven in the night persisted throughout the day. Seven fumbled through her classes, unable to focus on anything else but her nameless worry that something had gone horribly wrong, and was about to get much, much worse.
Until third period Algebra, when they did.

Magus and Loki, who sat behind Seven and one row back (Mr. Jameson liked to keep groups of friends seperated in his classes) passed her a note with a little scribbled caracature of herself wielding an uzi and a machete, with big bloodshot eyes and a caption that read,

"Y00r H0m1cidal R4mPag3!11" ("T4ke y00r m3d5, y0!")

The two jokers behind her were struggling to keep their mirth contained, drawing looks of suspicion from their surrounding classmates. Turning to look at them, Seven cracked her first wry smile of the day. She had to admit, it was pretty funny...

That was, until Mr. Jameson stormed over to her desk and demanded to know what was so amusing.

"You know the policy on passing notes in my class, Miss Anderson," Mr. Jameson snapped. "Give it to me," Quaking inwardly with fear, Seven had no choice but to comply. Her fear became abject terror as Mr. Jameson's face turned red...and then abrubtly pale.

"Come with me, all three of you," Mr. Jameson demanded. "This school has a no-tolerence policy for threats like this one!"

"Threats? What in the hell? It was just a joke!" Loki exclaimed, startled.

"That'll be enough out of you, Mr, Clary. Do I need to call campus security to escort us to the office?" Mr. Jameson snarled.

To Seven, it felt as though the eyes of her classmates were burning holes in her back as she followed Mr. Jameson. She could have died, right then and there. She wanted to die. Silently, she prayed for a chasm in the Earth to open and swallow her up as Jameson frog-marched them down to Principal Tyler's office.

"I'm sorry..." Seven stammered automatically, as Principal Tyler stared at the note. He was a thin, middle-aged balding man, but he was much-liked by the students of Clearview High School for his ability to see things from their point of view. As frightened and embarrassed as she was, Seven felt sure he'd see reason.

"It was just a joke, Mr. Tyler," Magus began. "We passed her the note. Whatever you do to us, please leave her out of it."

"Yeah, we passed her the note. It isn't her fault," Loki concurred.

Her eyes brimming with gratitude, Seven looked from her friends back to Principal Tyler, who had yet to voice his verdict on the matter. For Mr. Jameson, however, the matter was already decided.

"We cannot tolerate threats of violence like this from the student body!" He thundered. "I'm sure you remember what happened in Colorado. That wasn't so long ago. These three should be expelled!" Officer Rudy, the Campus Cop (who had been summoned by Mr. Jameson to witness the proceedings) nodded emphatically.

"Now hold on a minute, Gary," Principal Tyler said to the overreacting Jameson. "Jane here has never had anything more serious than an occassional detention for tardiness. And Jim and Simon..." he glanced up at the two boys and continued, "well, they may not be angels, but I doubt we're dealing with the Trenchcoat Mafia here."

"It doesn't matter! School policy demands they be expelled!" Mr. Jameson reiterated, with another supporting nod from Officer Rudy.

"Would you three mind waiting outside for a minute?" Principal Tyler asked them. "There are some things that Mr. Jameson and I need to discuss in private." It sounded as though Mr. Jameson was the one in trouble in Principakl Tyler's eyes, and not them; Seven allowed herself a ray of hope as Officer Rudy escorted them out into the small waiting area in front of the Principal's office. She could hear the argument raging inside;

"I know that you're inclined to look favorably upon every kid who darkens your door, but the fact remains that this offense was perpetrated by two known delinquents, and a foster kid with a troubled past who is under their influence!" At the words "foster kid," Seven gasped as though she'd been slapped in the face.

"That bastard," Magus snarled, patting Seven's shoulder in an awkward gesture as she struggled to contain her tears.

"Thank you, Mr. Jameson, that will be all," they heard Principal Tyler retort. "I don't appreciate you telling me how to do my job, and I'm not going to let you disparage or intimidate three perfectly good kids because you're scared to death of what happened at Columbine!" So saying, he strode out into the waiting room.

"Jane, Jim, Simon? This little joke was in very bad taste," Principal Tyler told them. "I trust that I won't see anything like it from the three of you ever again, am I clear? You are free to go."

Grinning triumphantly, Magus and Loki practically lept up from their seats. Seven got up a bit more unsteadily, still shaking from the "foster kid" comment.

All of that work, trying to fit in...or to at least keep from being a nuisance. None of it means anything, She thought, swallowing around the lump in her throat as she followed her friends back out into the hallway.

Although she and her friends hadn't been expelled by Principal Tyler, Seven soon came to wish that they had been as the day wore on. Seven was used to being tormented by a specific section of the student body...the "preps" and "jocks" who took exception to her somewhat androgynous looks and mode of dress, (namely a sweatshirt, jeans, and tennis shoes, day in and day out) and the fact that she was a "computer nerd" through and through. They'd always been nasty to her, but now it seemed as though students who had never payed any attention to her at all were going out of their way to make up for lost time.

"Freak," one girl hissed at her in the bathroom in between classes. A boy in the hall knocked her books out of her arms in the hall in between fourth and fifth period; he and his friends laughed trollishly as she dropped to her knees and gathered them back up, giving in to the tears that she had withheld outside of the Principal's office.

Almost worse than that was Larry, a kid who was publically known to be bipolar, and had taken it upon himself to stage a one-boy Intervention during lunch. In full view and hearing range of everyone at the lunch table, he regaled Seven about The Time He Stopped Taking His Lithium, and impored Seven to Keep Taking Her Medication, or Something Really Bad would happen.

Following his advice, Seven rushed down to her locker after lunch, grabbed the bottle of pills, and swallowed the recommended dosage without water, feeling the pills stick in her throat with the sour aftertaste of the geletin capsules. She felt sickened, personally betrayed by her own personal weakness.

Seven was a basket case by the time school let out. Her friend Andrea, (better known to their circle of friends as Circe) walked her home, which was some consolation. But even Circe's company could not quell the pain completely, especially when she touched on a subject that Seven was heartily sick of by now:

"Why did you stop taking your meds?" she asked.

"I dunno. I just felt like it. It was time," Seven answered. "But it doesn't matter. I took some after lunch."

Circe nodded. "It'll be ok. they're just a bunch of vultures - but with short attention spans. They'll all be picking on someone else by the time Monday rolls around. You'll see."

"No, they won't. But thanks all the same," Seven said as they neared the house she shared with the Blairs, and the two girls parted ways.

Seven stepped through the door to see James and Amelia Blair waiting for her on the sofa, and sighed, feeling yet another Intervention was in the works.

"Rough day, Pumpkin?" James asked her as she took a seat on the ottoman across from them.

"Principal Tyler called us today. He said that you had some trouble with your math teacher," Amelia said. "Janie, did you skip your meds today?"

"I took some this afternoon," Seven said, thouroughly exhausted from all of the prodding on the subject.

"The psychiatrist proscribed that medicine for a reason," Amelia told her firmly. "Why would you skip it?"

"Did you just forget?" James asked her. "That's understandable. I know you've been under a lot of stress."

"It's ok, really. I just forgot, is all," Seven assured them.

"You ok? You look pretty rattled," James asked her.

"It's just...Mr. Jameson..." she stopped, unable to give voice to the horrible slur that Mr. Jameson had uttered earlier. "Foster kid." Just thinking about it almost brought tears to her eyes. It hadn't been what he'd said, so much as the way he'd said it.

"The other kids at school..." she began again, but that topic was just as painful. As she sat there, struggling to come up with the words to describe her anguish, Amelia said,

"I know you're trying, but things would be a lot easier if you just made more of an attempt to fit in."

"You're not a bad girl, Janie, but things like this happen to people who go too much against the norm," James told her. Amelia nodded, and picked up the thread of where her husband left off.

"It wouldn't be so hard if you just made a little bit more of an effort to conform, Janie," Amelia said. "The problem is, you just don't blend. Your hair, for example...it would be so pretty if you'd just let it grow out! And you so rarely wear feminine things. I know you like comfortable clothes, but you really do dress like a boy! You know what? Why don't I just take you to the mall this weekend?"

Oh sure. Is that her "fix" for everything? Shopping is going to make everything allllll better, Seven thought sarcastically, then chided herself; truly, they were just trying to help. She had no right to feel ungrateful, none at all.

"Thanks," she muttered with a forced smile. "I'd like that, I really would."

Seven tuned out the conversation over dinner, and retired to bed early, hoping that sleep would provide some sort of release from the day's traumatic events. But if anything, her dreams were even more distressing.

The rain beat down on them relentlessly as they fought, colliding in the air like lighting bolts, before her opponent finally slammed her down to the unforgiving Earth. As she lay, wounded and bleeding in the muddy crater, her enemy soared above her with the maelstrom around them reflected in the shattered, mad depths of his stormy blue eyes.

"THIS IS MY WORLD! MY WORLD!" he shouted as he hovered above her...

And for the second night in a row, Seven awoke from her nightmares with a feeling of unshakeable dread.

END CHAPTER 1
TO BE CONTINUED...