Your End in Mine

《 prologue 》

《prologue》

My fifth grade teacher taught us that we needed to start each story with a hook, so here is mine.

I have a super power.

Or, well, it's not really that super. To be honest, it kind of feels more like a curse. To maintain an unbiased opinion over the subject at hand, let's call it an... ability. Neutral, right?

This ability is a little... strange, I suppose, and a bit unhelpful (does that make it a disability? It... is a little debilitating from time to time...). Every time I look at someone I like or form a relationship with, I can see exactly how everything is going to just fall apart.

Except for him. I don't see anything with him.

(Ms. Kristin also said to create suspense, therefore I'm using the ambiguous term "him". But, also, his name is Zachariah).

And I've tried, hard, staring at the back of his head during classes, eyes narrowed as if that would help me (it doesn't), purposefully knocking into him and causing my books to spill and what not. But I could never seem to find an end with him.

And a stupid part of me thought that, you know, maybe he was the one. Maybe he would be forever.

But forever is stupid. Either we die, or the Armageddon happens (also in which we die)—everything comes to an end.

Or maybe, I realized, when he never seemed to look back at me though I was almost always staring at him, maybe that was just because there was no beginning to us anyway.

---

I suppose I'm not really a superhero, but I guess I'm close to being a mutant, so this is my origin story. At least, I think it is. It's a little hard seeing your life in a third-person all-knowing perspective when you're you, you know?

So, when I was six, my mother told me one thing that I remember until today.

"Begin with the end in mind," She used to always say. My mother was a strong and calculative woman, sharp edges and soul-searching eyes. Her heels clacked authoritatively on the marbled floors of the offices she visited, with her guileless child—me—following behind her. Even her floral perfume smelt intimidating, her voice always cold, harsh and no-nonsense.

She had to be, she told me, because she had no husband, and in this cruel world, being a woman instantly meant being a lamb in a world where wolves conquered the food chain. So she had to be tough, had to be conniving and cunning, and instead of a wolf being in sheepskin, she had to be the opposite.

Yeah, mom was a tough cookie.

"Begin with the end in mind." She told me the one time she hadn't kept that in her mind, she had done a horrible mistake that she knew would haunt her life for the rest of her days.

At that time, I hadn't known what she had meant.

I do now. Her mistake was me. Yeah, ouch.

"You're special," She one day told me begrudgingly. "Your father, he was... your father was trouble," She concluded and then after a short pause, "And you look exactly like him."

She never showed me a picture of him though, but she said it enough that I believed her anyway.

I should have believed her when she told me to begin with the end in mine.

I should have known when she had brought me to that suburban neighborhood, there was something off. My mother visited high-rises and cold, monochrome offices with central air-conditioning (bless them), not homes with perfectly trimmed hedges and gnomes decorating the pathway leading up to a porch with a homely garden table.

But I was a child, and my mother's eyes were made of stone, so I questioned nothing. I just sat, quiet as ever, in the air-conditioned Kia as my mother parked in front of a double-story terrace. It felt like an alien world, those lush green gardens and houses. All my life I had lived inside an apartment, surrounded by other grey-colored apartments. What's a neighborhood?

When she told me to go up to the door and press on the doorbell first, I should have felt it in the air. When I heard the trunk slam shut behind me, I should have turned around.

When the door opened, revealing a smiling woman calling herself Christie and asking me where my bag was, I should have screamed.

But I just stared at her, not making a sound. When I could finally wrap my head around it, I turned around.

My mother's silver Kia wasn't there anymore. Taking its place was my black and white polka-dotted suitcase with my stuffed elephant Kiwi sitting on top of it.

As you can tell, I seem to think I'm part of this big superhero story, so for a while (5 years) I thought maybe she was a secret agent, and she had to leave me to protect my wellbeing, and that she left me clues. I went from checking every single one of my clothes to pulling out the stuffing from my elephant (poor Kiwi, the stitches must have hurt. If he was sentient, that is. Which, look, isn't entirely impossible especially when I have telepathy... to a certain extent).

Christie just gasped. "Oh, did your previous guardian already leave? I needed them to sign some papers..."

I never saw or heard from my mother again.

I wondered if she had planned it. After all, begin with the end in mind and all that jazz. When she gave birth to me, did she intend this? Did she intend to cast me aside with a suburban mother who hangs out with other similar creatures at the country club?

It didn't matter much anymore though. It was what happened and I knew from then on I couldn't trust anyone. How could I, when I had trusted my own mother, my only family, only to have her just leave?

Maybe it was irony, maybe it was a curse, but after she left, I started developing my ability to see how every relationship formed between me and others ended. It was kind of awful when it first started. It was my first year into grade school and I totally freaked and thought that this was what the rest of the world went through whilst me and my mother stayed in our tall concrete tower, protected from the rest of the world.

Then I realized with Janice, my first best friend, what I saw in my head that no one else seem to see was how our friendship would end—and did end. (Janice left because Warren liked me and not her—although Warren would then leave me because I had cooties).

It happened with all of the people I met , so I just decided that it was better if I was alone if everyone was just going to leave me.

Until on the first day of senior year when he came into my life.

My name is Elizabeth, you can call me Ellie, and this is my (non-superhero) story arc.

《author's note》

Hope you guys enjoyed this one. Leave a vote and a comment if you did. Remember, this story is being published on penpee.com, where you can check it story out for free. Thanks!

Here is the link to the story: http://penpee.com/story/your-end-in-mine-2/ 

Love, 
kky_claud

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