Prologue
Sure, I had a normal life. I got up and survived the boredom school dumped on me. I went home, did my homework, found something on TV, read, and went to bed. It was the same old grind every single day. The weekends weren’t much better. I hung out with my best friend and that was about it seeing as I didn’t have a boyfriend. On Sunday, I went to church and then started the whole thing over again on Monday.
Pretty boring, right? It was like I was stuck walking aimlessly through this sort of rut. There were many times when I wished I could get some variety. I wanted something, anything, to happen. Of course, that stupid cliché came to bite me in the butt.You know, the ‘be careful what you wish for’ saying. I mean who knew clichés actually came true? But, come to think of it, my form of ‘variety’ is a little different than you may think. It wasn’t just an extra shopping spree here or a road trip there. It wasn’t even a brutal car crash. What happened to me was completely life altering. My entire existence was never the same again. And it still isn’t.
I never saw my friends again, never got the chance to chase the guy I liked, and never saw or talked to my parents again. Everything was gone just because I became one of the Unseen and had some stupid ancient random prophecy thing written about me.
But I guess I should start from the beginning when I first started changing and had to leave everything and everyone behind without even saying goodbye…
Chapter 1
~Jodi~
I rolled over to look at the alarm clock. 10:17. Crap! It was Monday and I was extremely late. “Why didn’t anyone wake me up?” I mumbled to myself. “I mean really Andy has been at school for two hours now. I should be there now. Hell, I should be in second bell by now! But no, no one wants to get Jodi up. We’ll just make her late. Ugh…” My voice steadily got louder, but it didn’t matter, no one was home anyway. I hurriedly got ready and grabbed my car keys on the way out the door, only to find that my car wasn’t there.
“What the hell!” I yelled to no one.
I jammed my hand in my purse trying to find my cell phone. I called my mom in a rage to try and figure out what was going on.
“Hello.”
“Mom! What’s going on? I wake up to find I’m still in the bed and my car is-”
“Hello, hello…” she called into the phone as if no one was there.
“Mom, it’s me. You know, your daughter, Jodi. The one you left at home this morning.” I was screaming into the phone. She had to be able to hear me.
“Hello…” then she hung up. It was as if she couldn’t hear me at all. I tried again to see if it was just a bad connection or something.
“Hello.” She sounded perturbed.
“Mom, this isn’t funny. Are you there? Can you hear me?”
“Okay, look I don’t know who this is or what you want, but if you call me one more time without saying anything, I’ll have the police on your tail so fast you won’t even hear the sirens.” She hung up.
I slowly closed the phone. A million possibilities filled my mind, but I pushed them all away.
I ran inside and tried calling everyone else I could think of on my home phone, but I got the same exact reaction from everyone. No one could hear me.
“What is going on?” I mumbled to myself. I had to find out.
I decided to get away from my house and go into town. I probably should have gone to school, but I didn’t know what was going on. And I didn’t want to end up looking like an idiot in front of everyone at school. Of course, seeing as my car was gone, I had to walk, which gave me plenty of unwanted time to think. Maybe it’s just a prank. Will people in town be able to hear me? Is something wrong with me? Did Mom actually get me up this morning, and I just don’t remember it? Maybe it’s a dream. Am I dreaming? Is something wrong with my voice? Nothing made sense.
When I got to town, things only got worse. When I saw people I knew, they acted like I wasn’t there. I waved and smiled at people, but they just kept walking with no expression. They didn’t even acknowledge that I existed. What is going on? I kept asking myself about every five seconds. Even the storeowners acted like I didn’t exist. I thought they would at least want me to buy something
I went into (add bookstore name, suggestions?) a little bookstore I had been in about a million times since we moved here (where? town name suggestions?) about five years ago. It was like my sanctuary, as is any bookstore. The storeowner, Haley, knew me by name and we had had some pretty deep conversations. She had been one of my first friends here. I walked in that day looking for more than just a book.
“Hey, Haley, you got anything new?” I tried to sound fairly calm, but then she didn’t answer me either. I found her sorting through piles of books between the tall wooden shelves. “Haley?” She didn’t even look up at me. I started yelling at her, trying everything I could think of to get her attention.
She finally looked at me, and I was given a glimmer of hope, only to realize she wasn’t really looking at me. Instead, it was as if she was looking through me. No, she was looking through me. I danced around and shouted and screamed. I even started picking up random books and throwing them across the room at her. None of them seemed to hit her. I found an exceptionally tall stack of books and started chucking all of them across the room. I made a complete mess of her usually tidy store. I looked back to Haley to see if she noticed. She didn’t.
I turned around in frustration and almost fell over a stack of books. However, this wasn’t just a regular stack; these were the same books that I had just thrown all over the store. Every last book was back in the stack in the exact same place as they were before I threw them. It was as if I hadn’t touched them at all. Now I was terrified. I slowly got up and backed away from the possessed books. I was standing right in front of the shop door when I heard the tinkling of the bell above the door. Someone was coming in. They’ll have to go around me. Before I even got that thought out, the new customer walked through me! I gasped and ran out.
Fear powered my legs. They eventually carried me all the way to a horse trail in the woods near my house. I was walking between the thick trees when a snake crossed my path. It slithered right beside my shoe. My efforts to prevent the scream from escaping my throat were useless. I braced myself for pain that would surely come from its fearsome fangs, but none came. When I looked down to find it, it had already made its way five feet down the trail. Normally people would think there was something wrong with the snake, but I knew better considering what had already happened to me that day.
I walked in a daze to a fallen tree and sat down. I started crying. I don’t know why, I just did. Maybe it was frustration, devastation, loss? I just cried. I still wasn’t absolutely sure as to what was going on, but I was sure of one thing. No one could see, hear, feel, or touch me. As far as I was concerned, I was invisible.
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