Chapter Two
Until the age of twelve I lived what most people would consider to be an unexceptional life. My activities on a normal day could be boiled down to a flavourless mush; I got up, went to school, came home, had a bath and went to bed. Although I probably didn't realise it at the time, I must have been extremely bored.
In what seemed to be simultaneous events, my mother died and my twin sister, Lila, acquired her powers. It was also in the year of my twelfth birthday that my sister told me with utmost certainty that there was nothing worse than being ordinary. This, I speculated bitterly, was all well and good for someone with telekinesis. I lived in jeans and a T-shirt and my hair was a dull, dirty blonde. I was nothing if not ordinary.
Those words rang in my mind constantly, and if you add that onto the pressure being put onto me by Lila to not be ordinary, then we have a huge mess.
In an attempt to become different I became a radical vegan, eating nothing that came from an animal. This was very hard for me seeing as prior to this change I had lived on red meat and eggs. It was a good thing that I liked Chinese food.
When the Paper Lantern opened just down the road from my house I was ecstatic. This, although I'm probably sure you believed otherwise, was not where I met Warren. It was where I met my best friend, Oona Wong. Oona was, and still is, a genius.
On a rainy November evening Oona and her family were eating dinner at the Paper Lantern. She was half Chinese and had this gorgeous silk dress that immediately caught my eye. We bumped into each other in the bathroom and talked, missing our entire dinner. We have been best friends ever since.
When Oona turned fourteen she inherited a ridiculously large sum of money from a distant relative. Needless to say, instead of spending all this money on clothes, gum and books like I would have, she opened a store that gave manicures, pedicures, facials and the like. Although Oona owned this store she insisted on doing the work for herself, and hired a blonde woman with outrageously huge boobs to act as the owner.
The first time I stepped into the store this woman came up to me, and because I was not that tall at the age of fourteen, I was eye-to-breast with her mounds.
"Can I help you?" she asked me, petting her little dog as she did.
"I'm here to see Oona," I replied, backing away slightly. This woman walked up to one of the girls giving pedicures and gave her a brisk nod. I realised that this girl was Oona. She bowed to the woman she was giving the pedicure to and walked over to me.
"You come," Oona told me in a thick Chinese accent, directing me to the back room.
Once we were in the back room Oona asked me, "Aren't I a genius?" I could only nod before asking, "What was with the accent?"
She ignored my question and asked one of her own, "What can you tell me about all my employees?"
I told her that they were all Asian, between the ages of fourteen and twenty and were not unlike many people I had seen. There was nothing special about them. Then it hit me.
"The customers don't know they speak English?"
Oona nodded and explained that these women will talk about anything in front of her and her employees. Funny stories, personal secrets, but most importantly, stock tips.
"I even have some of my girls wired," Oona told me.
"Anything interesting?" I asked her.
"Well, according to this woman's husband, Porcelain Cosmetics is huge right now, and I should invest while I can. And judging by my Savings Account Balance, he is never wrong."
Oona got the rest of the day off and we went to Burger Shack, as I had long since given up vegetarianism. I could never get over how glamorous Oona was. Her shiny black hair was done up into a loose bun behind her head and her long silk gown suited her the way anything could.
As the year rolled by, Oona suggested various things for me to do to become extraordinary. She was the only person I had told about Lila's powers and Oona was excellent at keeping secrets, so no one even suspected.
"You could get dreds," she suggested one day when we were fifteen.
"No."
"Tatoos?"
"We've already been through these ones," I let out a frustrated sigh.
I had already begun my transformation as I traded in my plain blue, boy-cut jeans for ripped, stylish ones of various shades and colours. I even wore skirts and fancy-looking shoes. High heels were out of the question as I was four inches taller than my sister. Lila insisted that I was never allowed to wear high heels ever again, as it made her feel shorter than necessary.
Oona and I travelled through the streets of downtown Maxville when she clicked her fingers and suggested, "Streaks."
I raised a blonde eyebrow over my pale blue eyes, "huh?"
"Streaks, of different colours. It'll be crazy, Kerri," Oona said, stepping in front of me and playing with my hair. 'Crazy' was one of Oona's favourite words and it sometimes meant 'cool' and sometimes meant 'what the fuck?'
I nodded my head briskly. It was just what I needed. I went into a hairdresser that did Oona's hair when she thought it wasn't perfect enough. We ordered blue streaks, and my new life began.
When I was sixteen my sister had tried to set the school on fire. There is no back-story, she just did it. The fire alarms went off and students, thinking it was another drill, walked slowly down to the safety area. My sister was expelled. You'd think they would give her the benefit of the doubt, but after they found a switchblade, cigarettes and a lighter in her bag they decided to kick her out for good.
Lila went to an Art school that costed less than my crappy private school, had better teachers, better subjects and better hours. To me it seemed like she was getting rewarded for getting expelled.
On my seventeenth birthday Oona took me out for Mexican food. We ate nachos on the sidewalk and laughed about nothing in particular. Suddenly Oona's large brown eyes went wide and her mouth broke into a smile. It took me a while to notice that she was looking over my shoulder. A tall boy walked into the paper lantern, a leather jacket draped over his shoulder. He made Oona swear in Chinese and I sighed. This was my first glimpse of the infamous Warren Peace.
