The Curiosity of The Enigmatic

I had been dropped off a few blocks from my home, and when I finally managed to rip my blindfold off the black van was speeding down the road and my backpack was lying on the pavement next to me. It was almost completely dark and I thanked all that was good that I wasn’t attacked. But it was a very safe neighbourhood and...flip, I take that back, there are maniacs, kidnappers, and path blockers everywhere in this town.

Eric grinned in the little light cast by the moon and he moved forwards to help me with my bag. I growled and brushed past him and he shrugged and followed behind me.

“Out late?” he said after a few tense but boring minutes.

“None of your business!” I snapped and huffed my way on further. I was almost home, almost...

“Oh? So I have no reason to be concerned that my precious childhood friend has just been dropped off on a street corner by a mysterious black van, blindfolded and looking like she’s seen a ghost.”

I stopped in my tracks and spun to face him, my anger gone, replaced by a kind of desperate hysteria. “So it was real! It was, it was! I thought I was losing my mind but if you saw it‒”

“Whoa!” Eric said holding up his hands looking worried. “I was joking! If I knew you’d play along this easily I wouldn’t have said it. I just saw your friend what’s-her-face, drop you off in that beat up beetle of hers and you fixed your hair and started to walk and here we are. You okay? I wasn’t joking about the ghost part though. What’s wrong?”

And dear readers, I am extremely mortified, and deeply ashamed to say that I burst out crying and clung pathetically to Eric’s shirt. I was sure I was in a horrible disgusting state after I stopped, red nosed, puffy eyed and sniffing like a toddler but still Eric held me tightly to his shirt front and he didn’t say a word.

“C’mon,” he said after a while of pathetic sniffing. “I’ll take you home. Your mother asked me to check for you in Megan’s house down the road and I was really tempted to tell her that you haven’t been playing with Megan since seventh grade.”

“She...” sniff sniff “Never notices anything about me. No one” sniff accompanied by a shuddering breath “no one EVER notices me.”

“I notice you,” Eric said almost too softly for me to hear and later I thought I had just imagined it. Maybe it’s just what I wished he had said and fooled myself into believing it for suddenly without warning Eric shook me and said harshly, “Pull yourself together woman!”

“Ah!” I yelled and smacked him on the shoulder. “And here I thought you were being nice!”

“See, don’t you feel better already?” His toothy grin widened and he stood back when I tried to elbow him.

“No!” He had just made me angry and I hate feeling angry. At least I wasn’t crying like a baby any more...I blushed deeply thinking of how I must have looked. He would tease me for the next two or three years about that.

“I’m going home!” I stormed off onto my front lawn.

Eric shouted after me, “It was my pleasure!”

And when I entered my house chaos erupted. Or I wished it had. I walked into a house that was quiet except for the sounds of the television blaring away in the living room. I followed the sound and found my father half dozing on the couch watching a tennis tournament.

“Yello,” I said and plonked down next to him. I heard my mother on the phone down the hallway chatting with one of her friends. Considering I had just been kidnapped you would've expected a different reaction. But that's my family for you.

“There’s nothing on,” my father said depressingly and loosened his already loosened tie. He didn’t even bother to ask me where I had been. I knew my father loved me but he was vague about everything except television, his work, and his sons. I’ve always had the feeling he liked them better. Sometimes I couldn’t blame him. I wasn't that interesting.

“I can see that,” I muttered and dug around in my bag that sat atop my lap. My fingers met the touch of paper leaflets but I didn’t withdraw them from the bag. What if my father thought I was insane? I had stubbornly set my heart on joining this academy but what if it was impossible to win my parents over to this idea out of the blue? If I can’t convince him the Academy will...right? But what if they can’t convince him either? Or my obstinate mother for that reason?

If they do not cooperate we will employ other safe methods that we cannot disclose at this point.
If becoming a member of this institution is your dream, we will make sure nothing stands in your way to join us.

Yikes. They wouldn’t do something drastic, like wipe their minds clean would they? Could they do that? I thought back to the children I had seen strapped to their chairs like dangerous animals. Were there people like me but with life threatening powers? Did I want to be in a school where I could be potentially burnt to a cinder, get attacked by a mutant frog kid, or die by falling to my death from one of those obstacle things? Was there such a thing as mutant frog kids?

I’m driving myself insane! I won’t be able to even convince my father that I can become invisible thanks to my...gift’s unwillingness to cooperate with my wishes. Wait...What if I just keep quiet about the whole powers thing? What if...

“Look,” I said clearly with a commanding tone. My father immediately looked down at the papers I held in my hand. “The Academy has contacted me. They accepted my application.”

“Who did?” My father has switched the television off his expression puzzled.
I rolled my eyes and pretended to be mildly exasperated which wasn’t hard for me. “Remember? I was approached with a scholarship offer from the Prestige Academy?” I decided to use the real name after all; if my father searched for it on the internet hopefully they would have some kind of cover story going on, make it sound like a perfectly harmless normal little school.

“Scholarship? Did you apply for this?”

I could sense the, “Are you even intelligent?” remark on the edge of his voice but he wisely snapped his jaw shut.

“A year ago. Really, you and mom are the same; you never know or care what I’m doing. I told you hundreds of times.” I mentally crossed my fingers hoping he’d fall for the whole disappointed, you don’t listen to me, teenager stunt.

And he did. He pretended to think for a minute and said finally, with a forced smile, “Oh! Now I remember! That’s great, you got in! Ha ha, why did you apply again? I completely forgot the reason.”

“They offer an extra year where you can complete your first year of University already! And if they judge you to be compatible with their standards you can immediately get accepted into any University in the world on scholarship!” This was fairly true except that it only applied to a few select Universities.

My father was hooked on the University idea. I knew my family didn’t have enough to send me to University, what with my brothers already in one. And a scholarship meant no school fees.

“That’s excellent! When are you starting? Where is it again?”

“Here,” I handed my father the one sheet. “I’m not really sure where it is but they pay for everything, especially the boarding.” And to further stroke my father’s family pride I added slyly, “They only choose about fifty people from around the world yearly.”

My father grinned and I suspected that his nightly glass or two of whiskey had dulled his usually sharpish senses.

“But what’s this?” My father put on his glasses and squinted in the bad light. “You must apply before the 26th of January...”

“Oh!” I laughed too brightly. “This sheet is for applicants and those already accepted alike. I just have to verify the application along with my parent’s permission. But,” I added in a whisper, “Don’t tell mom; I want to surprise her a day before the time I have to leave.”

“Are you sure about this?” my father asked. “I know you’d hate a boarding school...”
He actually knew something about me? I flapped my hand dismissively. “One has to make sacrifices.” I watched, excited as my father read through the document and signed his name at the bottom of the sheet.

“I don’t even know what my own daughter wants to study. We scarcely talk anymore and in two week’s time you’re leaving me to go who knows where for two years, alone.”
I gently took the sheet and gave my father an awkward hug. “Thanks for caring. Seriously I’ll be fine. Remember, don’t tell mom.” I stood up, smiled and left for my room.

I can’t believe it was that easy, I thought. Something’s up. He didn’t even ask anything about where I’d heard of the school, set up any kind of fuss. Did he really think I had told him beforehand and he had merely forgotten? He must feel really bad then.

I ignored these nagging thoughts, logged onto the internet and started to fill out the much quicker application forms on there. The next day I had my ID scanned and drew the last of my money from the bank account my father had set up for my tertiary learning costs that I would never have to pay now.

I still can’t believe I’m doing this. It’s surreal. I’m about to send in the money to buy school clothes for a school I’ve never seen. If this is a scam, it’s a huge and elaborate scam on a scale too big for even my devious mind.

I received my admission certificate in my inbox the next night and I silently congratulated myself.

Naturally my mother set up a fuss and I won’t go into any detail. Let’s just say she won’t ever speak to me again.

To give you an idea of what happened the day I had to leave:

“WHAT?! You’re leaving?! Where? I never gave permission for any of this! Charlie! (my father) Did you know about this?”

It’s perfectly understandable. Her reaction I mean. I would react like that as well if my only daughter was leaving for a school I hadn’t ever heard of before.

But when I told her to phone the school she did. But something totally strange happened. I’m almost too upset to fill in the details...My mother, the woman who had raised me, who was so straightlaced and practical it hurt at times calmed down. Almost immediately. She nodded at a few more things the person at the other end said and then her eyes went all goofy like and she looked at me without seeing me and said, "When's the bus coming?" It was so freaky that I rushed out of the house without saying goodbye. Did I really want to affiliate myself with a school that did that to concerned mothers?

Too late now...I can't return, they might forcefully take me to the academy, promises or not.

And so I find myself on a small bus heading for who knows where. I had been advised to take my ID and passport along so I have the feeling I’ll be flying there.

What have I gotten myself into? For all I know I might be digging my own grave, about to be pulled into an international syndicate that fooled others like me and set us up as slaves for life or as freaks in a private collection somewhere in Siberia.

If so then the kid sitting behind me, trying to hide his face from view was going there as well. I decided to find out how he had been fooled as well.

I turned around in my seat and addressed him. “Hello, I’m Tania Davids and...crikey, it’s YOU!”

“Hey,” Eric said sheepishly. “What are the odds?”