Kestrel

I knew I had to leave my parent’s house when I realized I had super powers. I thought I was an average girl. Many boys called me pretty. In my little pretty town after high school, and right before your family runs out of money for college, you find yourself a boy. Most preferably this boy should be one that you dated in high school. He’ll impregnate you on what you are told is the best night of your life but is actually the beginning of a long downward slope into a gray night. You land hard 15 years later looking at your body that has been destroyed by self-sacrifice, male chauvinism, misogyny, and husband neglect. You live the rest of your life crying, miserable, and clinging desperately to the next positive quote that comes up in your time line. I saw the beginning of that slope and stopped it.

I told myself, I convinced myself to believe, that the only reason I was leaving was because I could brush away objects with my mind. If I could, shouldn’t there be others? So, I packed a small backpack, walked down to the store to get a pack of gum, then got on the bus for Capital City. Fooled you.

On the bus, I texted my fiends letting them know I was going just for the weekend and that I wasn’t staying long. They didn’t believe me. What they did believe was that I was going to Capital City to have an affair with some mysterious man I met online. Why wouldn’t I be? Why else would a girl in her early 20s from Wauchuckit be going to Capital City if it wasn’t for that? Why wouldn’t any girl from the town not fantasize about getting away?

The bus left empty from the grocery store where I was supposed to pick up my gum. As I was doing the math to understand how the bus made any money starting from a town that no one left, I saw the driver cram basket after basket of peaches into the baggage area. Maybe that was how he was getting his money’s worth for driving the long trip to Capital City.

I had gotten up early and got into my best ‘city clothes;’ cut off denim shorts that rode up my big butt probably a little more than I expected, my favorite yellow and brown plaid flannel shirt and my favorite high tops. Had I walked around my town, I would have caused a scene. But I was going to city, where I hoped I blended. My breasts had only gotten bigger starting when I was sixteen and now they rounded up my figure into a perfect number 8. I hated my wide hips. But it was my freckled face and big brown cow eyes that “kept me from being a ten” as my last boyfriend, Tag, always said to me. I got all of it from my mother along with my bronze red hair that I always Dutch-braided into a messy pony tail. My mother had cut her beautiful fiery red hair into a bob because my father always complained that she took too long when they went on their Saturday night movie date. Instead, mine fell across my neck and back let a wild crest of fire. Thinking about my momma and her never telling me to change, the pit of my stomach pinched. I wish she could’ve come.

By the time I got to into Capital City, it was right before lunch and I was ready to put a flag in the ground somewhere nice. This big beautiful city hummed and bustled around me. I walked through a few streets trying hard not to look up at the tall buildings, but I was giddy and my body vibrated with electricity. I consciously had to make sure my feet were touching the ground! As I can move things around with my mind, I can also move myself. I could fly. It took all of my concentration not to float off the ground now.

I began to notice that people walking past me were staring. My worn short shorts, weird sneakers, and tight top stuck out in a city of dark colors, covered skin, and minimal patterns. Many of the faces that stared were hard to figure as either man or woman; all the hair was brown cut with a simple, subtle style.

Unisex glasses.

Pants.

Eye rolls.

Raised eye brows.

Ear buds.