I’m a normal kid. Or at least I used to be. Well, I could still be ‘normal’ if ‘normal’ means being an orphan, living with a seventy-year-old man called Rob, and not being normal. Believe me, I’ve tried to be normal, but it just never works. Children at school always distanced themselves from me for no apparent reason. Even certain teachers couldn’t help but look at me in disgust the moment I entered their classroom. And all I could ever think was ‘Why?’.

However, it’s time for another day. It will be the same as yesterday, and the same as the day before, and every day before that. I pull my backpack onto my back as Rob hugs me and I say goodbye to Maxie, the white Yorkshire Terrier that we bought last week. I step outside into the cool November air. The pavement beneath me is damp and the air smells like fresh rain. The sky is a deep grey and a light breeze brushes through my medium-length blond hair and I take a deep breath.

Rob waves goodbye and I make my way up the drive. Once I hit the pavement, I hear the front door shut behind me and cannot help but sneak a glance at the house on the corner of the road to my left. Half of it is caved in; destroyed. I don’t know how it got like that, nor why it hasn’t been rebuilt, but part of me doesn’t want to. Whenever I am around that house, it is as if something is stirring inside of me; a cold, dark feeling that I cannot shake. Sometimes, when in the house, a brief flash of bright green light will fill my vision, and then disappear within a second.

Birds are sitting perched in their trees and I wonder why my life can’t be like that. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to eat live worms and live in a house made of twigs, but I wish I could be sat happily wrapped in the arms of my parents and with my siblings perched next to me. I wished I could be happy. I wished I could be a full bird.

After a short fifteen-minute walk I arrive at school. Jay waves at me from across the grass. I jog over to him and notice that he is standing with Ethan. Jay is a small kid, smaller than me, and I’m not exactly known for my height. His curly light-brown hair adds an inch or two to his height. Ethan, on the other hand, is the same height as me, average, with close-cut dark brown hair. His square-framed jawline has made him a heartthrob with the girls at school, and even his glasses can’t help him see the sheer mass of ladies storming his way to earn his heart.

‘What did you do over the weekend?’ Jay asks me.

I hadn’t really done anything. I’d done my homework, I’d cried, I’d stressed about things worthless to stress about.

‘Nothing much,’ I reply nonchalantly. ‘I did homework and played a few games with Rob, didn’t really get up to much.’

‘Same,’ Ethan and Jay say at the same time.

We keep up casual banter until the first bell rings and we have to go inside. Ethan and I split away from Jay and head to our form. Natasha and I wave at each other when I enter the room and she quickly jogs over to me and Ethan. She’s a pretty girl with long brown hair and dark brown eyes. She’s well known in our classes as ‘The Girl with Many Eyes’ as she stacked other people’s glasses on top of her own.

The room is buzzing with chatter as children litter every table around the room. Mrs Khatri enters the room and casually sits on her chair at her desk. She’s a plump woman with olive skin and flowing dark brown hair. She pulls a laptop out of her handbag and begins to take the register soon after quieting down the classroom. Each child says ‘here’ the moment their name is called until Mrs Khatri has reached the end of the register. The classroom begins to buzz with chatter again, but Mrs Khatri quiets us all down and tells us about the speciality of today.

It’s November 11th. Armistice Day. 101 years ago on this day, World War I ended, leaving the world with peace for another 21 years. It was cruel. It was as if Fate had waited until the next generation had been born and ready to fight to create a whole new conflict. Those born at the end of the Great War had been expected to live a life of peace, yet as soon as they were old enough, they were shipped off to France to fight against the wrath of Adolf Hitler.

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‘As you all should know,’ Mrs Khatri says, ‘World War-’

My vision blurred and I was hit with a wave of nausea. War. War. War. I was stabbing somebody in the stomach. There was a giant throwing rocks. War. War. War. What was I seeing? Visions? The future? Whatever it was, it hurt. I was enveloped in flames. There was another giant, and he was-

‘Albert! Wake up! No falling asleep while I’m talking!’

I jolted awake, my head skyrocketed upward and slammed into my table, forcing me to crumble to the floor weakly. I clutched tightly at my stomach, willing my nausea down.

‘Back on your chair please, Albert,’ Mrs Khatri says, her voice sharp.

It’s now that I notice every single pair of eyes in the room is trained on me. I weakly rise, still clutching my stomach. Ethan raises an eyebrow at me and I sit down, my vision swimming.

Mrs Khatri continued with the presentation whilst I was trying as hard as I could to not throw up. When the teacher turned her head, a note flew over my shoulder. It read:

Hey, you alright?

* Natasha

I smiled when I read it. People actually cared about me. I turned around in my seat and nodded to Natasha to let her know that I was indeed okay.

The bell rang and I followed Natasha to Maths, where I met up with Asbel. Annoyingly, he was an inch taller than me, with a mop of curly black hair and spots that decorated his face. A small moustache sporting the same colour as his hair sat comfortably above his upper lip. He supported the school uniform in a somewhat untidy way. The navy blue blazer without the buttons done up. The dark-blue-and-purple striped tie done loosely around his neck, and the grey trousers he wore were nothing short of dirty.

Mr Willow droned on for an hour about algebra and substitution, but I was still thinking about the events of Form. War. War. War. It seems as though the word ‘war’ had triggered something inside of me. I fought the tears out of my eyes. After over three years, I thought it was over. I thought I was normal. I thought I had escaped. But there was no escape. I had been damaged beyond repair. I was too deep in the bottomless pit. Why couldn’t I be normal? Why couldn’t I live a happy life?

Once Break rolled around, I went outside with Ethan, Jay, and Asbel. A light breeze wafted through my hair and I noticed that there were some children playing football, some playing basketball. Others were littered casually around the playground and others were found playing cricket. All of them, however, had one thing in common. They were happy.

***

Once I returned home, Rob welcomed me with a warm hug. His long arms entwined around my body and I felt the sheer happiness radiating off of him. He smiled down at me, his warm green eyes twinkling even more than his bald head. Maxie was yapping up at me, begging me to go outside with him.

Whilst playing with Maxie in the garden I begin to think. I begin to worry. Everyone at school was in their own world; the normal one. Meanwhile, I was sat in class trying my hardest not to cry. I was weak, pathetic, and useless. I mean, who has goddamn ‘visions’ in the middle of class? Who else was a freak? Who else had suffered through seven years of torture alongside thousands of others, only to have three of you survive? I’ll tell you who. Me. Unfortunately. I looked into Maxie’s excited brown eyes. Even as a dog, he was miles happier than I ever will be.

I scratch my back, feeling my strong feathers. A shiver travels up my spine. I haven’t exercised them in months, coming up close to a year now. They ached to be set free, to feel the rush of the wind hit them. I longed for it. But I couldn’t. Not here, not now. Not anywhere, not any time. But maybe…just maybe…I could pull it off without anybody noticing. Just maybe.

I head back inside to ask Rob if I can head over to Ethan’s house for an hour or so. He gives me a warm smile, that familiar twinkle back in his green eyes. He accepts my request. I give him a huge hug to show him my thanks and then I head outside. I pelt down the street and take a quick left up Sterndale Road and up the hill. Excitement and adrenaline pumping through my body, I reach the top of the hill, take a few quick turns and head down the alleyway.

I stand on the bridge overlooking the canal. It’s a short drop, but it’s just large enough. I slowly climb up onto the wall of the bridge, taking deep breaths. I unfurl my pitch-black wings ever so slightly, before diving towards the water. When I am three inches away from the water’s surface, I snap out my wings, letting them fill with air. I angle the tips every so slightly upward so that they are perpendicular to the sky. With absolutely no effort, this allows me to glide parallel to the water for a few seconds. Then I push my wings down, hard. The tips brush the water slightly, but that matters not. I beat my wings powerfully, stretching them out to my full wingspan of 12 feet. I soar higher and higher into the air, oxygen filling my lungs, a smile spreading across my face.

I am finally flying again.