Fates Collide

Chapter 1 - 13 Days Before

"Come on, Summer, why are you ignoring my calls?" Okay, I'm talking to myself. I've officially gone crazy. 

Cassie O'Brien shook her head and pressed the binoculars tighter against her eye sockets. She was spying on her best friend since kindergarten, Summer Clark, who was doing nothing except pacing back and forth in her second story bedroom.

Look out your freaking window, Summer! Cassie screamed mentally, hoping it would get Summer to stop pacing and move to the window. She'd been told she and Summer have a psychic connection, that they could send each other mental signals. 

Cassie thought such theory was preposterous but Summer did not. She believed in that kind of weird stuff. Come on, Summer. Cassie thought again but still, Summer kept pacing. 

Okay, perhaps this isn't a good day to send mental signal to your friend.  

Slowly, she reached down with her right hand for her phone, resting askew in the cup holder next to the ice-cold strawberry Frappucino she had purchased at Starbucks nearly two hours ago. 

After speed dialing Summer's number, she placed the phone between the crook of her shoulder and waited patiently. It rang twice before going to voice mail." You've reached Summer, leave a message after the beep."  Summer did not pick up. Her phone had been confiscated, Cassie concluded.

Cassie hung up and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat beside her. She was confused, she didn't know what she had done wrong or if she had done something wrong at all. After her last visit, Summer's entire family have begun acting weird and aloof. They even stopped allowing Cassie to see Summer, her best and only friend since kindergarten, ever since Cassie saved Summer from her brother, Logan, and his posse of bullies. What the hell is wrong with them?

Cassie put down her binoculars and leaned her head against the head rest of her slightly used Toyota Camry while continued to focus on Summer's bedroom window. 

That day began like any other. That morning, as Cassie's mom drove her to Twin Peaks Elementary. In the back, Cassie leaned her head against the seat, dreading another day in kindergarten. It had been almost four months since the school year began and yet, Cassie did not have a single friend. 

It wasn't that nobody liked Cassie. It's just all her classmates thought she was too intelligent for them. They'd feared Cassie was nothing but a know-it-all. Of the twenty students, she was always the first to grasp the content, first to answer a question, and first to ask a question, before the teacher even asked if there were any questions. 

Cassie watched the light turn green and sighed as her mother gently eased the gas. They were less than a block from Twin Peaks elementary and already, there was a line of cars full of parents trying enter the parking lot to drop their kids off. From the rear view mirror, Cassie could tell how much this daily traffic frustrated her mom. 

A few minutes later, as her mom's car eased into the parking lot, Cassie grabbed her backpack on the floor and undid her seat belt. As she prepared to open the door, her mom turned and smiled at her, "All right sweetie, have a great day at school." Cassie opened and slammed the car door, "Make some friends." Her mother shouted behind her through the scrolled down window. 

Cassie took her usual route - bypass the playground and skip over the patch of grass to her classroom. That morning, as she was about to enter Mrs. Kimberly's classroom however, she noticed a small girl sitting alone on the log across the courtyard, a thin book resting comfortably on her lap. 

Cassie - highly observant - had never seen the girl before. She must be in Dr. James's class, she assumed. There were only two kindergarten teachers in the entire school, Mrs. Kimberly and Dr. James. Each year, Twin Peaks would only accept so many kindergartners before sending the rest to the other elementary schools in the area.