Chatterbox: Blab About Books

Okay, so, I've been writing a book based off of Claaws' Spirit Animals. I post it on a writing website every day, and the Admins have informed me that I can't link it in, which makes sense.

Icy's mind: My mission has failed ;~;

About ten weeks later, I remembered that I know how to copy and paste.

SPOILER ALERT: Dessa is mentioned most in the first 1-6 chapters. The attention will gradually shift from her to other people until it doesn't mention her very much at all. I'm going to be posting my concerns and thoughts in the comments below once this posts. I'm very concerned over the family relationships, etc, and I might get a few characters wrong, so please send me input over that. I'm planning to bring a lot of light onto SJ (she deserves it, Claaws put a lot of work into her), but I'm still trying to edit descriptions of their personalities in, and ;~; it's hard.

Without further ado--

Chapter one: Where you meet me.

Have you ever thought that something is missing? Have you ever thought you want something different, but then realize you are something different--something unique and original, that has never been repeated before. But your life has always been missing a puzzle piece.

Or have you found yourself, in the moments when you doze off, changing? Changing yourself, changing your personality, almost as if there's another side taking over?

Or have you found yourself always falling into a pattern of instinct and predictability, almost as if your own personality was torn away and replaced with an animal's instincts?

We have.

My name isn't important to this story. You'll find it out soon enough. My life wasn't even important--it was boring and vague, a lie in the midst of magic.

This is the turning point of my life. Where it all changed. 

* * *

"Wood Park High School. You made it, freshman," was what Dessa Summers (Known on her birth certificate as Iridescent Beauty Summers, as her mother was slightly insane, known to her mother and teachers as Iridessa, and known to all students as, simply, Dessa.) found on a sticky note on her locker on her first day of high school.

That was a month ago.

Now Dessa had a scrapbook of encouraging things people had said or done--so far she only had a page.

She stuck to the back of the class and hid among the crowd. Her classmates constantly reminded her of a pack of wolves--you had to run with them or you would be devoured. Dessa took to the back, tried not to be noticed, and it worked out just fine.

The Alpha Female of the pack was Madi Starling, the prettiest, but also the most of a bully of the freshmen. Those she had downtrodden either meekly followed her, or became shy, humiliated, and weak--or they knew her for who she really was and were mutinous.

Their figurative pack had no Alpha Male quite yet--but everyone knew that Madi had her eyes out on a good looking jock or two. Some kid named Jay was her target.

Dessa loathed the power system.

And she supposed the middle of math class was NOT the time to be thinking of such things.

"Iridessa Summers!" The math teacher scolded again.

Dessa jumped, and, in her quietest voice she could muster-- "Yes, ma'am?" She asked.

"You haven't even picked up a pencil yet--and in the middle of this, too?!" The teacher scolded, laying her hands on her hips. "What would your mother say!?"    

Dessa picked up a pencil without responding.

The teacher huffed and stormed away to someone else's desk, muttering things to herself.

Dessa stared down at her desk. The problem with tests was that on the side of every desk sat a mirror, screwed into the desk itself. And Dessa couldn't even glance at that mirror. 

Dessa looked fine--she had long navy blue hair with bangs (with two strands of her hair held in a cute loop on both sides), pale skin, and bright cyan eyes--but that wasn't the issue. The issue was that when she looked into mirrors, she saw things. It was strange--like illusions, like she was insane--but she kept her eyes away from reflective surfaces after that.

The problem was that every desk in every classroom had a mirror in some shape screwed to it, and every locker had a small square mirror the size of a paperback book on it. The tables in the cafeteria had no mirrors, but several in various shapes and sizes hung on walls. Embarrassing, yet she could never tell the one in charge about it (you'll hear her reasons later) without being shunned.

With a purple penned F on the top of a practice sheet of paper, she walked back through the halls. Time to get to her locker and pack things up before the school's strange free period they always had, lasting one hour at one PM. Strange--but again, she could never ask the one in charge about this.

Every locker was a deep, dark blue against the white walls and contained a gold number in the middle of it, a mirror on the left (As I told you earlier, the size of a paperback book.)

Dessa marched to her's--103, the locker before the last, to be precise--and was about to swing the door open while skillfully ignoring the locker adorned and decorated with pink on the left of her's, the evil locker 102, when she noticed something. An obstruction on the mirror.

Dessa carefully trained her eyes on it, ignoring the white shape in the mirror as best as she could. 

Someone had put a white sticky note on the locker, and wrote on it in the fanciest cursive, in red looping letters that stood out like blood on snow.

It read, abrupt and short, with no fancy or flowery words--

Meet me in room 69 or everyone

    knows your secret. 

Dessa stared. Secret. She didn't have any...maybe this was for Madi's locker? Madi, in locker 102, was always  involved in everything.

In smaller words beneath--

    This is meant for locker 103.

Dessa stared again, and rapidly reconsidered. Secret? Maybe they screwed up the locker number and wrote three instead of...eight? She had no real secrets, other than her last name. And her defect. And this seemed amazing--but she was afraid, so afraid she would be noticed in the pack--but maybe it wasn't all freshmen.

Madi's arrival at locker 102 helped make up Dessa's mind.

Her usual group surrounded her and chattered, even throwing things into the wastebasket at the end of the locker hall for her. "Hey, Iridessa!" Madi called sweetly. "Sitting in the hallways again?"

Dessa pulled off her backpack and placed it in her neatly organized locker. 

"Not much for talk, are we?" Madi asked. Dessa ignored her. 

Madi suddenly viciously yanked the wastebasket over and dumped it in front of Dessa's feet. "That." She hissed, "Is a mistake."

Dessa's face heated up. Not here, not while her gang is with her... Weakness would draw insults and bullying from her gang like sharks towards fresh blood.

"You can clean it up later, hun." Madi said sweetly. "For now, I have things to do in front of my locker. With these girls!" She chirped, the ferocious heat from earlier still in her eyes.

Dessa snatched the note off her locker and walked at a brisk pace through the corridor. 

Being quiet was her way of fighting back, her silent war in which the artillery made no sound.        

And as of now...she had to head to room 69. She couldn't just dawdle--she sounded like her mom when she thought that... And she wasn't hungry.

She had always liked mysteries... and she was less quiet about those...

And maybe it would be good to open her mouth for once.

If she could bring herself to do it...  

She walked through the crowded halls until there was no crowd; just rows of doors proclaiming classroom numbers and titles.

And there was sevent--

Wait, seventy...what about sixty-nine?

Dessa turned on her heel and opened the door to the room described on the note she held in her sweaty hand.

A group of people were already gathered there--some holding notes, some not. The ones who didn't left quickly.

The science room was filled with strange, unfamiliar things--bubbling flasks, rows of cabinets, bookshelves filled with textbooks and great novels of the famed scientists of the past.

The walls themselves were mirrors--everywhere Dessa looked, she couldn't find a place to stare but the floor. Many other's gazes were in that direction as well.

"So," One of them, a girl with wild, thick, dark hair with tints of red in it (natural, deep red, not dyed) finally spoke. "Which one of you sent the note?"

Nobody spoke until one called-- "Which one of you wanted to throw our secrets everywhere?" 

They laughed. Dessa did too, quietly, but not for the reasons the others thought. For the reason of relief.

"Nice crowd here." One joked. "Any names here? I know some of you, but..."

"Piper." One girl called. "SJ." The girl who had spoke first called in her turn. Dessa recognized that name--it belonged to one of the 'queens' of the school. She always wore makeup, but she never seemed to require it on her pack members like Madi did. "Tash." "Jay." "It would be Shadow."

Names were called. Dessa tried her hardest to ignore them.

"You're all looking at the floor." A cheeky voice observed.

Dessa's head shot up and stared at the mirror. She ignored the animals that stood about in the reflection, instead focusing on a few science experiments on the varied desk, and the faces of those around her.

They either had the same reaction or stared at the mirrors.

Almost like a connection... 

"Is there something that you're seeing?" Someone--Dessa looked around but was unable to find the source of the voice--called out sweetly.

"Maybe." The one called Shadow said. "I see them all the time." Dessa blurted.

Every pair of eyes turned towards her. Dessa blushed.

"In the mirror. I see creatures." Dessa said softly, turning her eyes to it. She instantly regretted speaking out and attracting attention, but she said it softly...maybe nobody noticed her saying it...

A swan was staring back at her, it's eyes the same as her's.

She saw so many other animals turning and looking--wild cats, a hamster, birds, even a snake.

"I see them...every day, every mirror..." SJ said, reaching out to touch the paw of a jaguar.

"It's some sort of sight defect--I don't see everyone like it." A boy wearing a dark gray trench coat over his school uniform says.

Everyone begins talking at once. How strange that nobody confessed to writing the note and gathering these people with this defect here.

Almost like someone had ripped their memories of the truth from their heads and locked it away.