Élphame

Chapter One

          It's getting worse. Not now. Why now? It's been dormant for weeks! Naomi thought, squeezing her hand repeatedly into a fist to try to suppress the faint tingling in the tips of her fingers. It was in vain, just as she knew it would be. Once the tingling started it wouldn't stop until the Shift was complete. Please stop, she thought helplessly. Not now, not today!

          It had been nearly two months since the last one, and Naomi had just started to hope that maybe the Shifting was done for good-- that she could finally be normal. But she wasn't normal. Naomi knew that. Normal fourteen-year-old girls worried about how their hair looked, or if the boy who sat two rows over liked them or not. What normal fourteen-year-old girls did not do was turn down every invitation to hang out from their best friend because they were scared the night would end with needles poked into their arm while they laid in a hospital bed surrounded by scientists try to figure out how such a freak of nature came to be.

          "... Wouldn't you agree, Miss Walker?"

          Mr. Yi's voice jarred Naomi out of her terrified thoughts and reminded her she should be paying attention. Freak of nature or not, she still had grades to keep up, and she inwardly kicked herself for allowing her attention to stray.

          "I-I don't know," Naomi said, trying to bluff her way out of trouble. "I don't really think my opinion matters."

          "It does when I ask you for it," Mr. Yi insisted, giving her a hard look.

          Naomi was struggling to come up with a response when the bell rang, indicating the end of the period. Saved by the bell, Naomi thought with relief. Her moment of peace was tarnished, though, when she felt the tingling slowly start to spread down her finger tips to her first knuckle. Determined to ignore it, she started to gather her things. She was halfway to the door when Mr. Yi said,

          "Miss Walker. I'd like you to stay behind just a moment."

          Naomi held back a dejected sigh and waited until the last student had left the classroom before turning around to face her teacher, trying to push the increased intensity of the feeling in her fingers from her mind. "Yes, sir?"

          "I'm disappointed in you, Naomi," Mr. Yi said softly. He was a tall, Vietnamese man with small, dark eyes and neatly trimmed hair of the same color and he seemed to loom over Naomi like a skyscraper. "You've had troubles in the past with paying attention, but you've been doing much better recently. I hope you're not falling back into old habits."

          "No, of course not, sir," Naomi said quickly. Secretly, she thought it was because the Shift hadn't happened recently, but she couldn't tell him that. "I'm just not... feeling myself today."

          Mr. Yi raised an eyebrow. "The midterm for this course is on Friday. That's in just two days. I hope you are well prepared."

          "I think I will be," Naomi lied. No way was she prepared for the midterm. She found biology boring, aggravating, tedious, and just about every other negative adjective she could think of. The only thing she could remember from the study guide was that Photosystem II came before Photosystem I. At least, that's how she thought it went.

          "Good, but I think you can do better than 'I think I will be.' Luckily, you'll have plenty of time to study in detention this afternoon."

          "What?!" Naomi nearly shouted, her heart racing. She couldn't stay after school. Not when the Shift was happening! If she Shifted completely before she got home, before she got to the privacy of her bedroom... Naomi banished the thought from her mind. It was too unnerving to process.