Lampposts, Demonic Siblings and a Broken Toaster. Can It Get Any Worse?

My name is Magenta Hartley. I'm pretty normal apart from the unusual name and the family tragedies, but i guess that could happen to anyone.

(My brother, Ray, died of a brain tumour when I was little. That's all I'm saying; I don't want to talk about it. I just want you to remember him, he was really important to me.)

I lead a normal life as a normal seventeen year old in a normal high school but I don't have many friends, not because people dislike me but because I'm very selective with who I talk to. If they're unusual, they're in.

Well, except for this one girl who I don't know the name of, but she arrived last week just after half-term and already she seems to think we're buddies. Like, best of friends type buddies. She doesn't stop talking, she doesn't stop following me and she doesn't stop fidgeting with her blasted pom-pom pencil.

Especially now. She's chewing the end of that blasted pom-pom pencil and gibbering until my patience turns blue with mental strangulation.

Fortunately instead of hanging her off a lampost with her thong, all I did was sigh in exasperation, and then get on with my day like any normal person would.

Normal – what I absolutely hate most.

The annoying girl (I still don't know her name) followed me almost anywhere, and talked so damn much and listened to almost everything and anything I said – which wasn't often. I didn't like to talk to her. She was just too darn annoying to converse with, simply speaking.

However on that day, I was in a particularly perky mood, God knows why (maybe the peaches for breakfast (I like peaches)), and I ended up blabbering to her for almost the entire day!

Unfortunately, I accidentally revealed that part of myself, the part that was usually secluded in the back of my mind.

“You hate normality?”

I recoiled in shock; I thought she wasn't listening!

She didn't wait for a reply. “That's great! I thought someone like you would never come along!”

My left eye twitched. “Excuse me?”

“I mean,” She sighed wistfully, “I mean I've always wanted something abnormal too; an adventure!” Her eyes sparkled with glee. “Would you like me to do that?”

“Do... what, exactly?”

“Abort normality!” She grinned, like it was possibly the simplest thing to do in the whole world.

I shook my head from side to side in disbelief. “You're unbelievable!” I managed to mutter.

However, she only smiled as if it was a compliment.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I learned from reading the register, that her name was Crystal Blue. It didn't sound familiar, so I comforted myself with the idea that perhaps I just didn't notice her before.

Over the next few days, she was possibly even more annoying than when I first met her, and it struck me that I was the only person she hung around with.

“Why are you following me?” I asked her one day. “Don't you have another pack of friends?”

Her crystal blue eyes – no pun intended – bored into mine for a moment, almost like she was trying to tell me something really important, but the moment passed and soon she was skipping ahead of me in the corridor. “It's your turn to follow me now!” She laughed, and I merely shook my head and headed for in the other direction.

The next few days were weird.

It started off when everyone kept forgetting stuff. Like, big things. People didn't just forget things like their car keys or their partner's anniversaries, but at the same moment it seemed like the whole school just forgot why they were there, and who they were, and everything! Then as soon as it came over, everyone forgot that moment too and went on with normal life.

When I explained this to Crystal, she dragged me by my hand to an isolated area in the canteen, saying that "It's one of the side effects of abnormal energies."
I suppose I didn't know what to do with that, but who would? At least it wasn't, like, a normal theory of summer heat getting to people's heads.

Then, get this, she flicked that blasted pom-pom pencil like a wand and asked me to make a wish! (Her request was strange, but I did it anyway.)

So I closed my eyes.

I wish that everything in my life is not normal.

I felt the wish revebrating in my head, getting bigger and bigger like a really out-of-control bouncy ball until a big whoosh of wind swirled around me, but didn't move anything physically. It was a mental wind.

And from that moment on I knew my life had changed forever.