Prologue

Ever since I can remember, I have been a freak. Not one of those good kinds of freaks, the one with friends who laugh a little too loud, or act a little too crazy at school, but one of the freaks that no one can figure out. Over the years I've noticed that my mind doesn't work quite the same way as everyone else's, like it isn't riding on the same frequency as the people's around me are. I once tried to explain this to my mother after one of our many talks about my nonexistent friendships, that perhaps I couldn't make friends because I couldn't relate to any of my peers, but this only started a new argument on the fact that there was absolutely nothing wrong with me and I was perfectly normal. To that, I laugh.



If you tried to tell anyone that knew me in my life before Amelia that I was perfectly normal they would have made fun of you. It wasn't just the way I acted or the way I did things that was strange, it was just the way I [i]was[/i]. Even my mother's many house guests knew that I was different, you could tell in the way they watched me when they were over. Something about me didn't match up with their ideas of a normal child.



Now, don't take my words as derogatory, I don't feel sad about my situation or anything of that sort. In fact, now that I understand why it was that I never fit in, it all makes perfect sense to me. I can see why the kids in my classes at school never wanted to be partnered with me, why they didn't talk to me if they could help it. When I was really young, elementary school maybe, I cried everyday when I came home. I couldn't understand what it was that I had done wrong, what I had done to make them hate me. Then later, as I got older, I learned to ignore it, to block those who blocked me.



But of course, as everything got easier for me, my mother felt the need to step in. She was [i]worried[/i], she told me. It was weird that I had never had any friends over, never been invited to a sleepover like regular girls my age. But by then I had accepted my life as an outcast, it didn't seem strange to me that while my classmates were out at a movie on Friday nights I was at home reading or taking care of my dog, Mischa. So it made sense that I fought with my mother on my last normal day on Earth when she started another of her countless arguments with me about my friends, or lack thereof.