Red and Blue

Prologue

All of my life I've been known as Elijah Kamski's twin sister. He was always better than me at everything... he had so many friends growing up. I had... none. Talking to people is a challenge for me.. I don't know why.. It comes so easy to my mom and my brother. They can always make a friend with a random stranger just by leaving the house, if anyone I didn't know tried talking to me I'd probably go for a crotch kick and get the hell out of there. Yes, I guess it's fair to say I was lonely.. And it was completely my own fault.

But I guess there was one thing I had that was better than my brother... and that was my brain. I carried a 4.0 all throughout school so far, and won state science fair every year... and that's why for my Junior year, I had something even more extreme than my self driving electric car invention last year. That one made my family a lot of money, and still is... No, this year... this year is going to be even bigger.. Finally I'll have my moment to shine.. My moment to be in the spotlight and be more than Elijah Kamski's twin sister. I was going to build myself the perfect friend.

My mom sort of pitied me in a weird way, she didn't like me of course ...no one does, but because she knew, I knew she loved my brother more. I am the definition of a Black Sheep, I don't fit in anywhere, not even my own family. And my mother knows that, but it makes it easier to ask for things, so when I walked into the kitchen to see if I can turn the second garage into my Lab, my mom just nodded and shooed me away so she could continue to listen to Kamski talk about his school day in great detail... and by great detail I mean exaggerate almost everything... seriously a bathroom trip turns into a gang bang in the boy's locker room. Wow... looks like I have an exaggerating problem as well. The one thing I have in common with my brother is being an untrustworthy narrator. Everything I am saying right now could all be one big lie... guess it's up to you to believe me or not.

It took me almost a year to finish this project. My entire Junior year down the drain as I spent every day, any spare moment I got in my lab.

The first couple of months were spent on coding and getting all of the really sciency stuff figured out. The sound of a keyboard rang through my ears even when I wasn't typing. I hardly ever slept and when I did I usually woke up with my face stuck to the spacebar. I hardly ate, I lived off of poptarts and coffee. I got discouraged a lot during this process... sometimes I just wanted to give up and say "Fuck it all" But every time I feel that way, I pictured once I'm finished and everything is complete, having someone to talk to when I've had a bad day. Someone who cared about me, and wanted me for me.. Not because who my brother is... so that's why I took the challenge of trying to make my new friend to feel emotions.. And that was the hardest part to figure out. I spent weeks trying to override almost every machine coding ever, python definitely wasn't going to work for this. Finally I got it, probably one of my biggest accomplishments... I was so proud of myself.. I wanted to tell my mom, but when I tried, she told me to shut up because she was planning Elijah's sixteenth birthday... well she called it "our" sixteenth, but in reality she was focused on what Elijah wanted and I would probably lock myself away as always. I walk out of the kitchen... wishing, not for the first time, that people loved me as much as they loved my brother.

The next couple months were spent on designing her. First I started out with the rough sketches... which took me over ten hours straight. The next day at school was hell, the bags under my eyes were almost black, my face was so pale, there was no color in my cheeks, my forehead had so many wrinkles from thinking, and I constantly had a headache. I haven't brushed through my hair fully for almost three months, and I shower once a week. I feel like I could pass out from sleep deprivation at any moment. My grades dropped from A pluses to A minuses in a matter of weeks. Teachers actually worried about me for once and asked if I was okay. I told them I was just having family problems... even though that was only half of it, it was still the truth.

I soon realized that only made things worse. The teacher was friends with my mom and talked to her after their daily talk about how amazing of a student Kamski is.

"So...Lana...I heard your grades are dropping. I did not let you turn our garage into a stupid lab for you to abandon your schooling and let your grades drop! Seriously! Stop being such a disappointment and try acting like your brother for once."

The words sank into me and didn't leave as I created bio components and a chemical mixture called Thirium 310 to work them. It was blue but had a blood like consistency. I smiled as everything finally started coming along. I was no longer doing this for myself, I was doing this to everyone who called me Kamski's twin sister, for everyone who said I would never be like him, or be as successful as him. For people who call what I am passionate about stupid and worthless. This was my chance to show everyone... show I am not some outsider, that I'm not some waste of space, that I am not a disappointment. I will become the next big name in science... Everyone will know Lana Kamski from Detroit.