Normals (Prologue, and beginning)

Prologue

I am Zaylee Alice Lucas. I have never been “normal.” I have never had normal friends, or read normal books. I don’t listen to normal music or watch normal movies. I prefer to be alone and I enjoy life to be well, not normal. I do everything in the most complicated of ways and I like it that way. Though, about three weeks ago my life has gotten even weirder and I’m afraid people are going to think I’m crazy.

Nightmares have been plaguing me. I’ve always had nightmares. as a little girl. Though, they’ve gotten weirder...now I can smell things when I wake up. Feel things that I shouldn’t be able to do. I just turned seventeen. Eighteen days ago to be exact, that was back in June. It’s July now. My senior year of high school starts soon and I’m so excited, but these nightmares are terrifying in all the wrong ways. Not the type of, zombies ripping your brains out and eating them type of way, but a vivid sense that they’re not really just nightmares, but a reality that is yet to come type of way. A reality that I’m not quite sure I want to come.

When my birthday came, I developed abilities as well. I haven’t asked my parents about them. I feel like they would probably know, but at the same time I’m not really sure. I question whether or not they would’ve just said something to me if I were supposed to have abilities. Or maybe the fact that I’m not normal is because I’m crazy and these abilities are just my imagination. I think about that a lot.

I think about a lot of things though, sometimes it gives me headaches. Though my boyfriend says pretty girls shouldn’t get headaches like I do. I don’t think I’m that pretty though. I mean, I’m not ugly, but I’m not pretty. I have dark brown eyes like my dad and wild curly brown hair. I’m not exactly the thinnest girl in the world, but i’m athletic and healthy and rather curvy. I have freckles and olive skin, and I’m really short. which is a perk and a curse to me. I can’t reach anything but I don’t hit my head on anything either. I’m not a girly girl, but I dress nice and I don’t wear a lot of make up. My mom says only clowns are meant to wear as much makeup as some of the high school girls do. She said that when she was in high school she tried really hard not to wear makeup because all she could think of was the clowns with the painted faces.

That’s my life though, how it works. I have the perfect not so normal life. Considering how not normal how, you can guess how popular I am, but again, I don’t really mind that much considering the drama that high school comes with. I feel like everyone that is normal is an army of zombies and I even refer to them as the “normals”. My friend Alexandria, (the most perfect i’ve ever met aside from the fact that she doesn’t fit in with the normals and never will) thinks it’s hilarious, my boyfriend, Duncan, on the other hand, doesn’t. He is probably, king of the normals. Which, makes me really unsure of why I date him sometimes. I guess to retain the normal aspect of my life? He’s a lot taller than me, blue eyes, black hair, quarterback of the football team. He once told me that he’d dump me for the captain of the cheerleading team if she could, which of course was quite refreshing for me. I guess it was a push to make me try out for cheerleading. I am now captain of the cheerleading team and the ex captain just quit. I had nothing to do with it, though she swears I did. I’m probably the first unpopular cheerleader.

As for Alexandria, I call her Aye, everyone else calls her Alex, she’s absolutely perfect and is constantly begging me to break up with Duncan. Though I don’t know what I’d do. I’ve been with him since I started highschool here. He’s two years older than me, though only grade above me and is really smart, he wants to go to college at Harvard and is leaving at the end of July. Alexandria tells me that's a good thing. She’s always been really boy savvy. I haven’t. Though Alexandria is again, perfect. She has long thick straight blonde hair that matches her crystal blue eyes that are so deep you could probably fall into them and never find a way out. She is an average with long tan legs that go with the rest of her tan curved body. Not a single bit of acne anywhere and a beautiful smile that would melt the darkest of souls.

She and I met when I first came to this school. She’s a barista at the coffee shop in town and I love coffee and it also so happens to be a book shop. Which is also my favorite thing. I tend to be really clumsy and I was carrying a large stack of books and fell over a rug, Aye came to my aid and after that we were the best of the friends. Though, there are even things you can’t tell your closest friends. Aye knows I have nightmares. I haven’t mentioned anything about what’s happening to me now though, and I’m scared to. She’s smart and I’m afraid she might think I’m crazy. I guess I’ll just have to see.

____________________________________________________________________

My breath catches as I open my eyes. There is fog absolutely everywhere and it’s freezing. Is it snowing? I blink and look around trying to see past the fog, it’s too dark to see anything. I walk slowly, running my hands on trees trying to figure out where I am. It’s definitely snowing, why don’t I have a jacket on?

“Zaylee.” A voice comes from behind me almost like a hiss. I whip around to figure out where the voice is coming from. It sounds sinister and makes my stomach churn, I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out where it came from. I hear a crack behind me and I start to run, trying to see as far ahead of me as possible.

I fall and stumble, catching my ankle on a tree root as I fall. A scream catches in my throat, I can feel that it’s broken. I look at my hands, they’re covered in scratches and blood. I shiver and try to understand what’s going on. Suddenly a pair of chocolate brown eyes are next to me, and my eyes adjust to the dark. A man a little older than me is in the dark looking at me concerned.

“Run!” He whispers as he reaches to pull me up, his hand touches me and I jerk awake. I sit up and run my hands through my hair. I’m shaking and I breathe slowly. I look at my hands and none of me is actually cut up or bruised like in the dream. I sigh with relief, like I do every night. I look at the clock, it blinks back at me, 3:33am. I suck in another shaky breath. Every night it’s the same thing, but I can’t seem to shake away the terror of the dream.

I lay back down and close my eyes. A smell of ivy and cedar trees swirls around my room as it does every night. The smell of the stranger that tells me to run. What am I running from? I ask myself for probably the eighteenth time this summer. Suddenly I hear something fall over and I sit back up and strain my eyes in the dark. A shadow moves by my window and I tense. God. I’m going to be murdered. I think and choke back a scream. The shadow moves again and suddenly wind fills my room, blowing things over and moving the curtains around the shadow. The shadow chuckles.

“Way to go.” It chuckles again. I stare and get up deciding if I’m going to die, I’m going to die fighting. “Would you stop that, I’m not going to kill you.” The shadow says almost sounding annoyed. I gasp and nearly fall over, but the shadow is suddenly next to me, holding me from fainting. I jerk away and sit on my bed.

“Don’t touch me.” I hiss. A pair of brown eyes look back at me almost bemused. Every bit of confidence I had shrinks away and I gasp, my voice just barely a whisper I look at him.

“Who are you?” I say, my hand reaching toward him shakily. He takes it carefully and kisses it, his lips sending chills up my arms and I look at him. I pull my hand away holding it to my chest.  “Answer me.” I say trying to sound angry. He chuckles and stands in front me, blocking the light away from the window. Slowly he lets his hand slide to my face and gets very close to me, I smell it, ivy and cedar. I breathe in and close my eyes and suddenly I feel lips on mine and hands around me. A warmth spreads through my body and a thought goes through my mind, the voice isn’t mine.

“The important question, my love, is who are you?” Suddenly, I couldn’t think anymore and everything was going fuzzy. “No, wait.” I tried to say but it wouldn’t come out right and everything seemed to be dissipating as if it were, itself, a dream.

I opened my eyes and the light shined in on my room. “Damn it!” I almost screamed. I could still smell the ivy and cedar swirling around my bed and clothes. The feeling of his lips on mine was still there. His face so close to mine and I still had not seen anything but his eyes. Those beautiful chocolate brown eyes. I popped out of my bed and ran to the window to see if there was a sign of him. A sinking feeling that I really was crazy was developing in the pit of my stomach. I have to tell someone. I thought to myself miserably.

I called Aye and pleaded with her to come over. She agreed and said she’d be over within the next twenty minutes. I tied my hair in bun, slipped on a tank top and fraying shorts and some old sneakers and quickly got ready for her. I ran downstairs to talk to my parents about what I was going to go do with Aye. Though when I got down there, I was met with a surprise.

“Zaylee, where are you going?” Mom stared at me surprised that I was up so early. I looked at the clock and winced. It was barely seven in the morning. That’s why Aye sounded so hesitant. I looked at her and grinned.

“Momma darling, you’re just who I was looking for.” She raised an eyebrow as she sat at her stool in the kitchen still in her nightgown, she held a cup of coffee in her hands, her hair in a messy slept in brown bun and her glasses rested on her nose. I definitely did not get my hair from her. My mom had straight thin hair and her eyes constantly changed colors with her mood. Normally they rested at an almost yellow color with barely visible green flecks in them. I had my dad's eyes and my mom’s figure. She was beautiful in a nerdy old style type of way. She was heavier than me due to three children and the inability to have time to workout because of a very busy job. I was her youngest, she had twin sons older than me that had already graduated and moved out. She always said that it was backwards and that she had wanted younger twin daughters.

“Zaylee Alice. What are you up to?” She asked pulling me away from thoughts. I grinned again and walked to the kitchen.

“I just wanted to go hang out with Aye. I didn’t realize how early it was though. I’m sorry momma.” I frowned slightly, but watched her grin. She had also had a friend in which she had nicknamed Aye when she was younger. They were still close now, though they lead very separate lives and were very far away from each other. She nodded and sipped her coffee.

“Do you need your keys or is Alexandria coming to get you? I’m surprised she’d come this early considering how anti-morning she is.” She sipped her coffee again and smiled at me goofily. I giggled and shook my head, one of my hairs falling out of my bun and into my face.

“She’s gonna come get me mom.” I sat down next to her after making my own cup of coffee and leaned my head on her shoulder. I listened as dad clomped around upstairs. Mom huffed.

“If you weren’t already awake you would be soon the way that man walks in the mornings. Gosh golly, I love him but he drives me insane with that stomping! We’ve been married twenty three years, and it’s like he gets louder every year.” She sighed annoyed, her eyes changing to a darker brown as she stared up at the ceiling. “Oh, you old punk! I’m gonna beat you to death if you don’t quit that stomping!” She yelled up at the ceiling. There was one especially loud stomp and then silence. She glared at the ceiling, her eyes getting darker and then she giggled. “He really never has grown up.” Her eyes got lighter nearly going completely green as she giggled into her coffee as if she were remembering old memories. As if on cue, a honk came from the front door. “She not coming in?” Mom asked sadly. I shook my head and headed toward the door.

“Bye mom! I love you.” And with that I skipped out the door to talk to Aye about the mysterious goings on in my life.