“Tayna! Tayna, get down here, you’re going to be late for school!” I heard Martha yell up the staircase to the door that lay directly across the narrow hallway from it, which held my shoebox of a room. Granted, it’s not like I needed much space, and it’s not like I was used to tons of it, but my room could only really hold the double sized bed and the wooden clothes cabinet at the foot of it, with not much room for anything else.

“Tayna!” She yelled again. “I’m warning you!”

I sighed as I slipped on my sandals that were sitting at one side of the bed, wishing that she had listened to me when I had told her that everyone called me Mist.

I shook my head as I tied my snow white hair back with a rubber band, not bothering to look in a mirror to see if my hair, which normally hit the middle of my back, was laying right, and looked myself over to make sure I had everything before descending into my doom.

My mostly wrinkle-free baggy t-shirt and jeans were in place, the ones I wore mostly to cover up all the stupid curves my genes had graced me with. My six year old, raw leather jacket was too, as was my old, light brown shoulder bag holding all the necessary materials for school.

And, of course, my very worn out generic Birkenstocks complete with the new socks Martha had gotten me were firmly in place, even if I only wore the socks to make Martha feel better. And I didn’t even have to look to know that my silver snowflake pendant was still on its chain around my neck. Granted, I wasn’t entirely sure that it was silver, but seeing as I never took it off, even in the shower, and no coating had come off, I figured it had to be the real thing.

The snowflake was the only thing I wouldn’t have picked out myself, but I kept it simply because it was the only thing I had of my mother’s.

I felt myself make a dejected look then as I realized that I did indeed have everything but my staff with me, which Ms. Martha Stonewald, husband to Mr. Frank Stonewald, insisted I kept safely locked in the garage where she wouldn’t have to look at it every day.

I’d really have to come up with some excuse to get it up into my room before she decided to burn it or something, but of course, she knew if she ever did that I would never forgive her for it, and she would probably never see me again, which would be detrimental to her cause of trying to ‘civilize’ me.

I sighed and walked out my room, closing the door and descending the staircase just as she was coming up to the base again.

“Tayna, there you are! Now hurry up, I’m not going to drive you in if you miss the bus!” The overly plump woman yelled, not quite so loudly now that I was standing next to her, but much louder than was really necessary.

I nodded, and tried to ignore the use of my real name, and grabbed a piece of toast that was sitting on a plate on the counter with some other things as I walked out the door.

“That wasn’t yours!” She yelled after me as I went into the now unlocked garage, quickly eating the toast as I grabbed the shoulder height, wooden staff that once belonged to my father, and walked up to the top of the pretty short driveway.

I heard the door slam behind me. “That was uncalled for!” She was still yelling, but I didn’t say anything, wondering exactly what had gotten into her this time. Surely one didn’t react this bad to a piece of toast being taken?! “I think you need to apologize for that!”

I blinked my bright blue eyes at her short and squat frame. “What for?”

“What for?!” She looked absolutely flabbergasted. “You took food off of someone else’s plate without warning or even asking!”

I looked at her in surprise. “I didn’t realize, I’m sorry.”

She glared at me. “Not to me, my guest, now come inside and apologize.”

I blinked again. “I didn’t see anyone-”

“Cause you’re never looking! I swear, that brother of mine could have at least taught you some manners in the seventeen years you stayed with him!”

I didn’t say anything, trying to bury my temper deeply underneath a stoic face. How dare she insult her dead brother?! Jeff and Marry Smythe had raised me just fine! Just because their parenting wasn’t orthodox didn’t meant that-

“Now come inside and apologize to Mrs. Johnson before your bus comes and you’re late again.”

I sighed, knowing that Mrs. Johnson would drag my apology out of me for as long as possible, seeing as she shared her friend’s view that I needed more discipline in my life.

She thought it was the noblest thing that Martha had decided to take me in when Martha’s brother and his wife had died in that car crash a couple months ago, even though she could have just let social services take me away. I mean, what with the fact that Jeff had only ended up with the job of raising me because my parents had asked him to babysit me overnight, and had never returned.

Granted, when the police determined that my parents had probably been victims of a killer that had been in the area for quite some time, and their bodies were either unidentifiable or missing, he could have given me to social services.

He could have, but he also knew my parents, and knew that no one would ever understand me and the bizarre things that happened to me like he could. That’s why he had adopted me at the age of four and a half months old, and that’s why his parenting wasn’t orthodox, ‘cause, to be honest, orthodox parenting probably wouldn’t have worked on me.

I had genuinely loved and cared for Jeff and his wife, Marry, who he had actually met when I was one, and had married when I was two. She thought it was really great of him for taking me in, and because she was unable to have children herself, had always viewed me as her own, even despite my curiosities.

It was too bad Jeff’s sister was exactly the opposite of him.

“Come on! We don’t have all day!” Martha insisted.

I nodded, trying to come up with an excuse, fast, as I heard the bus pull up. “Sorry, but I have to catch the bus.” I told her, sprinting just past her grasp, over to the long yellow school bus, and in before she could catch me.

The driver gave me a funny look as I got on and took a seat at the front, even though there was only one or two other people sitting inside. “I don’t understand her, either.” I looked outside just in time to see Martha’s purple face sputtering in indignation as the driver closed the doors and started moving the vehicle again.

He looked back at me. “I still don’t think they’ll let you into the school with that thing.”

I nodded, tightening my grip on the staff. “I know.” I told him as I turned my head to the window. At least if they took it from me for the day, I knew they weren’t going to burn it when I wasn’t looking, and if they did, at least here I could do something about it.

I looked up and scanned the gray clouds above me that covered the whole sky and sighed once more. It looked like it was going to be another couple days before the sun came out again.

“Weatherman says the sun’s going to be out tomorrow.” The driver said, trying to make polite conversation with me.

When would people ever get that I wasn’t alone all the time because I was antisocial, I was alone all the time because I didn’t want friends. “It won’t be out until Friday.” I told him, mostly because I knew I was supposed to reply to statements like that, that, and because there was no point in getting grumpy at someone who was trying to be nice. “It’s going to rain on Friday until noon, though, then the wind will pick up and drive them away, bringing sun.”

The driver nodded, already used to me rambling on about specific weather patterns. “And tomorrow?”

I scanned the sky again. “Much like this, but if you can avoid being outside from about four until seven or so today, you should miss most of today’s rain.”

“So there isn’t going to be any more hail like they say?”

I shook my head and looked over to where he was sitting. “No, Monday was a fluke, it won’t be happening again anytime soon.”

He nodded, having learned first hand that my weather predictions were always true. Luckily he had decided to humor me on Monday when I told him to wait a half hour before driving home, and that had saved his life. Heavy hail does some very interesting things to your range of vision, not to mention what it does to the roads. This meant that he had avoided a ten car pileup on the freeway that he probably would have been involved in had he been out in that mess.

I sighed and looked out the window again. Maybe if I had been able to give Jeff a clearer description of the weather that day they wouldn’t be dead now, but there are weather patterns that even I can’t read sometimes, unfortunately.

I started running one of my hands up and down the smooth wood of my staff then, desperately trying to keep my mind off of it as we made another stop.

This one was one of the biggest stops on the route, so within a matter of moments there was about ten chattering teenagers who, while having all picked spots in the back, were loud enough that the driver couldn’t really ask any more questions of me and really be heard. It was something I was rather grateful for, really, for while I didn’t mind sharing my gift, I didn’t like having anyone dependant upon it, especially since that’s what killed Jeff and Marry.

I shook my head then, trying to desperately think of something else as I gripped my staff even tighter. Today was not going to be a very good day, I could feel it.