• Preface


    She took a leap forward, farther into the murky surroundings. Birds took fight above her, casting shadows against the bright moon and sending chills down her spine.
    "Keep going, keep going. Don't look back," she repeated to herself inside her head. She could feel the weight upon her shoulders lifting which each stride. The noise of the town was fading away, as was the hatred she caused. She was free.

    So it begins..



    Michelle once led a fairly normal life. She grew up the middle child of a family of men.Her older brother, Josh, was perfect in every way. Athlete, but always put his studies before him. Popular, but never fell under peer pressure. Ladies loved him, yet he went by personality, not looks. He always felt he had a responsibility to everyone, and everyone held him in high regard.
    Devyn, the child of the family, was spoiled in every possible way. No doubt he was the favorite of the family, and he didn't even try. He was a good kid, athletic like his brother before him, but extremely smart too. He knew his way around the track, so he could get anything he wanted. Not to say he didn't, but he never used his guile for anything deceptive. Devyn tried to play the good guy role most of the time, but once in a while, he would exchange for the devious, fun side.
    Their mother loved all of them equally, but when push came to shove, he 'little' boy always took the spotlight. Seeing as he was the only planned child, she always made sure nothing was wrong with him before Josh or Michelle.
    Michelle was the outcast in a variety of ways. For one, she was the only girl. Two, she wasn't athletic at all. Three, she was special. Both her mother and her father had dark hair and light eyes, while she was auburn with dark eyes. She was a silent baby, barely made a sound, and her mother and father easily forgot her in the crib. Michelle was fairly thin, but nevertheless, gorgeous. She examined everything around her, and her sleeping habits were an anomaly. As she grew older, she grew more in tune with the people around her and developed a horrible habit of doing rash things, just to gauge peoples reactions.
    Her talent grew over time, and once she reached her teen years, she grew into a full-fledged antagonist, not only everyone around her, but to herself. Michelle could read people like a book and foresee they're actions, when even they didn't know what they'd do. She ran with the wrong crowd and got in trouble often, although she never got blamed for the act that got them in trouble. Her clique considered her the 'Papa Smurf', so to speak. She made the decisions, and they obeyed. They smoked. They drank. They lied. They stole. Although Michelle did not smoke nor drink. Her mother grew tired of her decisions and gave up completely. The constant worry of her health, her erratic mood swings, everything. It drove her over the edge, and she took her own life on medication.
    No one knew for sure it was the constant worry that drove her to overdosing, but Michelle. Having seen this coming, did not cry at her funeral. It filled her heart with grief, but she didn't see why her father didn't step in and comfort her poor mother before her doom. She comforted her brothers, but felt no pity for her father's loss. She took hatred in him, and casted him out of her world.
    As she reached her sixteenth birthday, she began to take advantage of her talents. She lied to her friends, she stole from the powerful figureheads of her school, and pulled horrible pranks on innocent people. No one knew it was her; not even her goons. Michelle had reached a new level in her life. She wanted to take control of the people around her, and started manipulating them with an iron fist. Her pawns grew in number, and yet, she was not satisfied. She let it fall before her and stepped down, letting chaos take the reins. Fights broke out in her school on conflicting leadership roles, inmates of the hospital grew in large numbers with her classmates, and yet, no one knew it was her that provoked it.


    She walked down the hall as people passed her by, shooting her looks and glares as if she was an evince of God. She walked into her next class and sat down, as always, in the back row; taking out her notebook and doing the opening journal assignment. People sunk back in their chairs as she walked by. As she sat down, a brunette boy in front of her turned around to face her.






    She felt her classmates' focus on her, as if they were boreing down into her very soul.
    "Take a picture, it'll last longer, guy," she said blankly, not looking up from her writing.
    "Chelle, whats up with your--"
    "First of all, my name is Michelle. If your going to smut my name with your filthy tongue, you might as well use it correctly," she said sternly as she looked up under her bangs to see him wince at her glare.
    "Sorry. Michelle... What happened to your face? Did someone whale on you, or what," he said quickly to avoid another lecture on rudeness.
    "I fell on the way home yesterday,"she said going back to her notebook as if she hadn't missed a beat.
    "Oh... because those cuts look like someone took a kn--"
    "No one took a knife to me, Charles. Now I suggest you get your backside back to your assigned seat, or I'll show you why no one would ever dare pull a knife on me."
    He gulped and clumsily walked back to his seat. Everyone else who had been staring at her quickly looked away from the scene and took to they're work. Michelle smirked and hid the left side of her face with a veil of her auburn hair.
    As the bell rang, the room went completely silent, only letting the sounds of pencils make noise. At the end of the period, she walked swiftly out and to the second-floor library.
    As she walked, people would give her glares and looks of terrors. Michelle kept walking and looking straight ahead. As she reached the end of the hall, she turned to the right and looked out of the corner of her eye. All the students in the hall were looking her way as if she had three heads. She rolled her eyes and walked up the stairs to the library.


    There, she ran into her friend Olvia.
    "Michelle! Sup?" she said getting up out of her chair.
    "Hey, nothing. What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at the Lecture Hall," she said with a smirk.
    "Nah, I ditched Health to "read". Besides, I know everything about it. Don't smoke, don't drink, be above the influence, yada yada," she said with a hand motion and a wink.
    "Well, maybe you should take that advice. It might come in handy one day," Michelle said with a grin, seeing as she was one of her pawns.
    Olvia scoffed. "It's Raynham. No one here has the balls to do anything out of the ordinary, or else we'll hear about it," she said with a bell-like laugh.
    She rolled her eyes. "Suit yourself. I need to get to work though. I'll call you later, okay?"
    "Mhmm, sure sure, just like last night, and the night before, and the night before th--"
    "I promise."
    Before she could come up with another cocky remark, she spun on her heels and walked towards the front desk. The librarian looked up at her with ancient eyes that could have told a thousand stories alone.
    "Hello deary. How may I help you?" she said with a pearl white smile.
    "I was wondering where I could find some books on the Renaissance," she said in a sweet tone.
    "All the way in the back near the encyclopedias." the lady said with a smile. Michelle nodded a thank you and gracefully walked to the far east wall.
    She passed by a table with a fair haired, lanky boy sitting. He was silently writing from a text book seeming to be at least thirty years old. She took a double glance back at him, and he didn't acknowledge her existence. Brushing it off, she kept walking to find her book.
    Michelle knelt down and looked over the dust covered bindings.
    "Italian Renaissance, Catholic Revival, Grecian Gods. Great, nothing," she thought to herself. She looked back at the boy one last time and caught him staring back. He quickly looked away, and she narrowed her eyes.
    "He has it."
    She got up and walked over to the table the boy was sitting at. She cleared her throat softly and sat in front of him. He slowly looked up and made eye contact.
    "Hello there," he said with a smirk.






    "Hey, I'm sorry to be a bother, but what book are you so edaciously reading?" Michelle said with a lifting an eyebrow.
    "Proper Edicate for Ladies. You should try reading it sometime." he said wryly.
    She pursed her lips and replied. "I'm sorry. That was rather rude of me, wasn't it. I'm trying to find a book with certain.. information. I was wondering if you had that book."
    He tilted his head, "Information, hm? Depending on what your looking for, I might have said book." Michelle glowered and looked at the book. He pulled it back quickly seeing her eyes shift attention.
    "What is your name? I don't believe I've seen you around here before," she said leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms. Debating, the boy replied.
    "Randolph. What's yours," he said as he took out his notebook.
    "Jessica."
    He continued reading and a huge grin crossed his face.
    "Cute name; but really."
    She lifted her eyebrows to his response. "How the hell do you know it's not my real name," she said stiffly.
    He looked up and put his finger tips together.
    "You definatly don't look like the type to have such an overused name," he said with another huge smirk.
    She leaned foreward and looked at his eyes through his messy hair. They were blood red. Her eyes widened, astounded by how frighteningly beautiful they were. He continued to look at her, expecting a witful answer.
    "My name's Michelle," she said, still looking at his eyes.
    He furrowed his eyebrows and looked back down at the book.
    "That sounds believable."
    Her cheeks flushed with anger, and she huffed. The boy looked up again.
    "What," he asked in a flat tone.
    "What's your real name then," she said.
    He looked back down and sighed. She tapped her foot waiting for the answer.
    "I told you mine," she said in an annoyed tone. He laughed.
    "Yea, but you lied first."
    She gritted her teeth.
    "This kids pissing me off," she thought.
    He looked back up at her to find her staring him down. He laughed loudly and said, "Are you angry with me?"
    Michelle nodded and pinched the bridge of her nose. The boy made a goofy smile and reached in his bag. Then, he handed her a folder.
    "Look in there. Maye you'll find it," he said with the goofy smile. She took it with her other hand and opened it up. In one pocket it had papers filled with tiny text too neat to be handwriting, and the other had worksheets full of calculations to confusing to behold. She lifted an eyebrow and looked at the name at the top.
    "Aiden Malloy," she smirked. He looked up.
    "Yes?" he smiled normally. She smiled too, but it quickly faded and she looked at the book.
    "Anyway. The book," she said looking at it. The boy looked down at it and closed it.
    "It's not the book your looking for anyway," he said grabbing his folder mistakenly and shoving it into his bag. Before she could stop him, he stood up and zipped his bag.
    "See you around, Michelle," he smiled and walked away. She stared at his lean figure and extremely pale skin and nodded.
    She watched him leave and blinked a couple times. Then, she looked at the book he left. She looked back to him, but he was walking out the door.
    "Wow. What an odd boy," she said reaching for the book. As she read the title, she made a funny face.
    "Woah, I didn't even know a High School library would carry this kind of material," she giggled.