A short story by Difan Li

 I turned and bolted for the door. My heart was beating out of my chest as I silently prayed that no one had followed me. Legs pumping and sweat dripping down my brow, I didn’t dare to pause in my desperate run or glance back.

Why me? Why? I screamed in my thoughts. How it did turn out like this? I didn’t want this to happen again!

My muscles ached, begging me to stop, but I ran on. I didn’t know how long or how far I carried on with mere adrenaline, but I knew that I had to keep going. 

After what seemed like hours, I skidded to a stop, ready to collapse onto the ground. My chest heaved, and every part of me hurt like I had just run ten marathons back to back. I took some time to process what had just happened. 

It had started like any normal day, and yet it had gone so horribly wrong. Of course, this was to be expected when you’re not just any normal kid. 

I had always been different than everyone else. And I don’t mean different as in “everyone is different and that makes us special” with sunshine and rainbows type of way. Being different can be bad, and in my case, very very bad. Around the age of seven, strange things started to happen around me. In most cases, I was the one who caused the strange things. 

Once, when we were doing a lockdown in school, all squished and cramped together in the dark, my skin began glowing. Actually glowing. My teacher tried to take off my “costume” and freaked out when she realized it was my actual skin. I’ll spare you the rest of the details. 

Another time I was complaining about how our classroom was too small, and the room began growing. The itty bitty classroom morphed into the size of a mansion, and my teacher ran out screaming about how “the walls are alive!” 

I think you get the picture by now. I have no idea why these things happen, but I sure knew what would come next if I stayed there. The police would come flocking and I’d be taken in for testing and all kinds of wacky stuff. Nope, definitely not what I wanted to deal with. 

However, if my luck didn’t change, and it hadn’t exactly been on my side, I would be facing a lot worse. 

I closed my eyes, sighing. Life would have been so much easier if I had just been a normal kid. Unfortunately, Life doesn’t care what you think or what you wish could happen. Still, I wondered if I had done something horrible in my past lives to deserve this. Maybe I’d burned down a building or tripped the president. 

I struggle to my feet, groaning. I had to get out of here before someone found out what had happened in my school. About how I had just made my teacher disappear into nothingness. I hadn’t meant to do that at all but I’m pretty sure that no one would buy that excuse. 

I shook my head, clearing my thoughts. It was time to get out of here. To where? I had absolutely no idea.