“Here we are now with the falling sky and the rain
We’re awakening.
Here we are now with the desperate youth and pain
We’re awakening”
From Awakening by Switchfoot.
An awakening. I guess that’s the best way to describe it. A rude and violent awakening that shook my world and changed it forever. Sometimes, when I look back, I feel dwarfed by the chain of events that I had started. But first things first. Hello, my name is Allison Dagger. Enchanted to meet you. I’m your average girl, whatever that means. I have very fair skin, to the point where people sometimes mistake me for a Caucasian. I’m actually a mix of Syrian and East Indian. I have straight black hair that tends to fall into my eyes at the most inopportune of times. I’m kinda a neat freak and not much of a people person. I know what you’re thinking by now, that all this stuff is not important, but I want to give you a starting point, a foundation if you will. I write this in the hope that one day my story will be known to the world, and that the human race would learn that we can achieve far more than we believe we can.
I guess it started when I was really little. I was always very perceptive. I would always be able guess where mom hid my Christmas presents, no matter how inventive she got. I could also tell how people felt just by looking at them. This made me really emotional when I was a kid. As a result, when I grew up, I sort of grew a shell around my emotions and became really taciturn and sarcastic. I isolated myself from my friends, because I felt things that I could not understand. My parents sent me to a prestige high school where most of the kids were snobs anyway, so I didn’t really need to interact with anyone. Even so, I still felt emotional on the inside, unable to rid myself of my cursed perceptiveness. That’s why, on that fateful day, so long ago, I sensed that everything was going to change. I was right, but I had no idea how big that change was going to be.
I was about 16 at the time. I had woken up with a massive migraine. Growing up, I always suffered from headaches. My mom used to take me to the optometrist a lot, but I had perfect 20/20 vision. I popped two aspirins into my mouth and got ready for school. As mom drove me to school in the hot Trinidadian sun, I had this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was the feeling you got on your first day of a new school. I was scared about something, but I had become so adept at ignoring my feelings that I just shrugged it off. I grabbed my stuff and made it to the Physics lab just as the bell rang. I sat down and got ready for another grueling day of schoolwork.
Soon, other kids began to file into the lab. One of the last students to enter was my lab partner Alex. I sighed. Alex was generally a good person and a nice guy, but he was so klutzy and zoned out that he couldn’t even get out of his own way sometimes. Not your ideal lab partner. Alex sat down just as Miss Havelock, the Physics teacher began talking. I gave him a quick annoyed look for his tardy arrival and turned back to the teacher. “Today,” Mrs. Havelock was saying, “We are going to look at latent heat of vaporization. How long something takes to reach 0° solid to 0° liquid. You’ll be using the Bunsen…” A sharp pain stabbed me in the brain. I winced suddenly causing me to nudge Alex. “Everything okay?” he asked. I rubbed my temples.
“Just a headache.” I replied, somewhat harshly. “Now pay attention!” As I turned away, I could sense that he felt slightly offended. My headache made me somewhat irritant. Deep down inside, I felt sort of sorry for what I said. He was just trying to be nice, after all. But like I said, I learned not to let my emotions run me. “Let’s start.” I heard Mrs. Havelock say. I felt another stab of pain in my head. I heard Alex mumble something to me. I moaned softly. “My head hurts so bad!” I said. I unscrewed the bottle of aspirin and popped two more pills into my mouth. I probably was overdosing myself but I didn’t care. I sensed that something was wrong with Alex. I turned around and looked at our experiment apparatus. “Hey, how long is this ice supposed to take before it melts?” I asked.
“It’s already melting.” He replied
“No, it’s not.” I pointed at the beaker. The ice was frozen solid along with the thermometer. “Wha..” Alex said in confusion.
“What did you do?” I asked, partially out of my own confusion and partially out of my anger for his bumbling. “What’d you do?” He turned, and tried to answer, but all he did was open and close his mouth like a fish. “Great,” I said sarcastically, “A splitting headache and a lab partner form hell. Can you do anything right?” I shouted, now to the end of my wits. Alex didn’t answer.
The rest of the day flew by unremarkably. Alex looked zoned out for the entire afternoon. I sensed he was scared and confused about something, but I ignored it. That was normally Alex after all. When the last bell rang, I was so happy to leave. This headache was driving me crazy and I was eager to go home and sleep off the worthlessness of the day. I was standing under a group of trees at the back of the school, waiting for my parents to call me and tell me they were at the gate. I should have been waiting in front, but the shade of the trees helped to ease my headache. The rain began without warning, sprinkling down through the trees. “Ouch!” I said suddenly, as something struck me on the arm. I looked up. Small pieces of something were falling from the trees and striking me. As suddenly as they began they stopped. “What was that?” I wondered. All of a sudden I was scared. Not like normally scared. I mean like really, really scared. I stood up and looked around. Wait… wasn’t I already standing? What was going on? Abruptly, I slipped, and fell into a pool. A pool? I struggled to swim, but I couldn’t. My arms and legs weren’t mine. I screamed for help as loud as I could, but my voice seemed to be drown out by another voice screaming in my head. I flailed my arms in a desperate attempt to save myself. The water was getting colder and colder. My arms wouldn’t move anymore. I felt sleepy. So very, very sleepy. I just wanted to stop struggling and go to sleep. Everything went black. I opened my eyes. I was lying under the trees, my arms and uniform covered in dust. Some of the other students were standing over me. Some were pointing and laughing, while other just looked plain freaked. One of the security guards was looking at me in concern. “Are you ok Miss?” he asked.
“What happened?” I asked perplexed.
“You were screaming and trashing on the ground.” The guard said slowly, as if he was talking to a two year old.
I got to my feet shakily. “I’m ok,” I said. He looked at me. “No, really.” I said. “I’m completely fine. Just getting rid of some excess energy.” My phone rang, making me jump. I took it out and showed the guard. “See, my parents are here to pick me up.” The guard looked at me oddly. “Ok,” he said unsure. “You can go.”
“Thanks.” I breathed out quickly. I pushed my way through the crowd of onlookers and went to meet my parents. As I ran, my mind raced faster than my legs. What was that? What just happened? I didn’t know it back then, but that day started the wheels of fate turning in a direction they had never and will never turn again.
