The Extraordinaries

Chapter One: Elise

The air is brisk; fire-colored leaves scatter the dirt ground. The cold presses against my neck: weighty, hateful, begging to make its way into my bones. It's nothing like summer, with its shouts ringing over the valley. The winter brings more the just a stillness; it's as if sound doesn't carry once the brilliant green of the trees has made way for a cool, slick darkness. Annie doesn't speak, and I don't either. We listen to the grey trilling of the crows overhead: Caw, caw, caw. There's an emptiness to their calls: they're begging to be heard, begging for someone to answer their call.

No one ever does.

I don't want to, but I glance over at Annie. I have to know what she's thinking. Her hands are shoved in her pockets, eyes fixed on the ground. Her feet, clad in her ever-present black boots, drag through the dirt, creating a line in the ground.

She's cross with me. This morning, she wouldn't even look at me. Her hair was all over her face, covering her eyes so she didn't have to, and she didn't cry out my name the way she always does when I rise and come meet her in the front room. She's done that every day since we moved into our flat, as if she's trying to make it seem like things are all right when really they aren't.

Maybe she's more than cross. Her energy is different too today: bright red, radiating through her skin. It's coarse, burning into me. That's Annie's way of pushing me away, keeping me a good ten feet to her left.

We pause when we pass the spot of land where the studio was. I used to cry when I saw it, choking sobs bubbling up from deep inside me, wherever the memories are kept. Annie would have to comfort me, calm me down. I would blubber to her, saying it didn't make sense that everything could disappear like that. All those girls who just aren't' anymore, who've been turned to dust. They're still there, really, mixed in with the dirt, but their energy is gone. Marielle and Delaney, Keaton and Priss. All of them, gone.

I glance at Annie to see if she feels it too, the overwhelming cold that surrounds the place. Her shoulders are bent so that her face points at the ground and I can't see her expression. She's trying to hide it from me, but I know that if I peek, her eyes will be watery, mouth quivering.

All of those girls. Gone. Nothing.

"Hey," I whisper. Her head pops up, shock in her eyes. Shock at the sound of my voice, the one everyone used to pride me on, saying it had an effect to it that sent them into a lull. "You don't have to cry," I say. "It's okay."

Her mouths twists into a snarl. "I can if I want to." She doesn't sound like Annie anymore; she's become some kind of demon. Her words spiral themselves around me, tying around my eyes like ribbon, like a dark smog that fills my mouth, diving deep into my stomach. I feel queasy. Annie used to love me. I was her best friend in the world. We were all best friends. We used to form a circle at the end of each day, arms around each other's shoulders, one girl to another to another.

And now, two. Two who can't even speak to each other. It's just like they always said: if we weren't all together, we'd surely break apart.

"You shouldn't have told me," Annie hisses, her words as chilling as the wind. "You should have left it be."

I want to cry now. I want her to pity me, to take me into her arms and tell me it's going to be okay. But then, I don't know what she would do now. Maybe she would leave me hear, drowning in my own suffering.

She doesn't understand what I went through: the pain, the twisting, churning pain that curled through my stomach like a parasite, taking me over until I had nothing left of myself. And the deliberation. The what-if. It makes me think of one of the songs we used to sing: What if I do, and what if I don't, drowning, sinking, or staying afloat. I told myself this could happen. That getting it off my chest could mean losing her, forever.