Authors: B.L. Teschner
Divine
Divine
By
B.L.
Teschner
This
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and
incidents are either the product of the author's
imagination
or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance
to any persons, living or dead, business
establishments,
or events is entirely coincidental.
Divine
All
rights reserved.
Copyright
© 2014 by B.L. Teschner
This
book is protected under the copyright laws of the
United
States of America. No part of this material
or
artwork may be reproduced or utilized in any form
or
by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including
but not limited to photocopying, recording, or by
any
information storage and retrieval system
without
the prior written permission of the author.
I
would like to thank my husband for listening to my constant rambling
when it came to this story. Thank you for indulging me . . .
To
my daughter, thank you for taking naps. I did most of my writing
while you slept, so you helped me out big time in that department . .
.
A
big thanks is owed to one of my close friends for taking the time to
carefully edit the book. You probably saved me a lot of embarrassment
. . .
Erick
Maxwell, thank you for posing for the cover. You did an awesome job
at portraying the main male character . . .
And
last but not least, I would like to thank myself for finally buckling
down and getting this story out of my head. Maybe now my mind can
relax, for once . . .
Table
Of Contents
The Divines
Once, when I was really
young, I tried to teleport to the zoo. I huddled in the corner of my
room with my little dog Daisy on my lap and shut my eyes as tight as
I could while thoughts of lions and monkeys danced around in my head.
The images were so real that I reached out to touch them; I wanted to
feel the whiskers of the wild cat. But my wonderment was quickly
interrupted by a loud noise that pierced my eardrums and sent my head
into a dizzy confusion. When I opened my eyes I was still reaching
out in front of me, but instead of seeing giraffes and elephants, I
saw total darkness.
My screams shook the
air around me while I frantically cried out for my mom and waved my
hands around in the blackness in search of something familiar to
touch. A faint whine found my ear: it was Daisy. I bent down blindly
and scooped her up, tucking her tightly in the crook of my arm.
Eventually my fingers stumbled upon what felt like a cold cemented
wall and I clung desperately to it while tears of trepidation rolled
down my young face.
It wasn't long before a
door above me opened and sent a bright light piercing through the
darkness. I looked up to see the slender form of a man step into view
and slowly walk down a rickety flight of stairs toward me, making me
huddle even closer to the musty wall in fear.
“
Summer, is that
you?” His tone was familiar as it flowed toward me through the
damp air. “How did you get in here?”
I knew that voice; I
was in my neighbor's basement.
All I could do was
whimper in reply while I walked toward him and reached out for his
calloused hand. As he moved me up the stairs I glanced back down at
the blackened room and told myself that it was the last time I would
do anything like that again.
Once he shut the
basement door he took me into his kitchen where he dialed my parent's
number from a bright yellow corded phone. I pulled out a cheap
vinyl-covered chair from the table and sat down with Daisy, hugging
her tightly in my arms, and listened while he wildly explained the
situation to my mom. Seconds later, she burst into his house and ran
over to me.
“
Oh sweetie, are
you okay?” she asked in a panic as she knelt down in front of
me with worried eyes.
“
Yes,” I
squeaked back; that was all I could manage to say.
“
I know what this
is all about,” our neighbor accused while shaking his wrinkly
finger at us. “She's a Divine!”
My mom stood up with a
sigh and took my hand in hers, pulling me away from the chair and
dragging me back to the front door. “Thank you for calling me,”
she calmly replied back to him over her shoulder. “Have a nice
day.”
“
I knew it,”
he yelled after us. “I knew you people were Divines!”
That was the last time
I ever tried to teleport anywhere; and our neighbor was the last
person to know that we are Divines.
* * *
By now you're probably
wondering what a Divine is. Well, Divines are people who were born
with special abilities and strengths. Their traits have been passed
down through their family bloodlines for hundreds of generations.
Society used to refer to the Divines as “Superheroes”,
based on the fact that some of them used their abilities to help out
with certain circumstances in their cities, such as street crime.
After noting that some of their abilities weren’t as
“extraordinary” as others, and that some of them didn't
even want to help people at
all
, society felt that the name
began to seem less fitting. Quite some years back the President of
the United States delivered a public address stating that those with
super-human abilities would from then on be known as “Divines”,
divine being another word for supreme excellence.
Aside from the Divines,
there are the “normal” people in the world: people who
have no super-human abilities in particular. They are known as
“Typics”, typic being a play on the word typical. It's a
fitting name, really . . . typical human beings.
Many of the Divines in
the world prefer to conceal who they are from society. Take myself,
for example: I am a Divine who can teleport to different places at
will. Well, I'm supposed to be able to, anyway. When I was really
young I tried many times to do it either by myself or with my mom,
but I wasn't very successful. After my last attempt when I had tried
to go to the zoo, which was actually the first time it had really
worked, I decided to give up for awhile. That's why I choose to
conceal that I am a Divine, mostly out of embarrassment for my lack
of skill. My family knows who I am, but to the world, I am just a
Typic.
The Divines who choose
to conceal who they are usually do so because they don’t want
people to bother them. Often, once someone finds out who you are,
they want to know what your ability is so they can try to use it to
their advantage.
Those who
do
choose to reveal who they are try to live their lives as normally as
possible. They don't go by any individual names based on their
strengths; they are simply known as Divines.
There is a vast mixture
of Divines and Typics here in San Francisco, where I live. San
Francisco is one of California's biggest cities, laying midway up the
Pacific coast. If I had to describe it in one word, I think “foggy”
would fit it best. It seems like every morning I wake up to a thick
blanket of gray fog. When I go outside I am consumed not only by the
gloom of this place, but by the misty air that clings to my hair and
sends it into a frizzy mess. I hate San Francisco.
My parents moved us
here a little over a year ago after my dad was offered a higher
paying job. I was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and had lived there my
whole life. I loved Arizona; I didn't want to leave. But being a
sixteen-going-on-seventeen-year-old, I had no say in where we lived.
I had no choice but to pack up my room and make the twelve hour drive
to our new miserable place of existence.
When we first moved
here I fell into a state of depression; I couldn't get over the
darkness that this city emitted. My parents worried about me for a
while because I stayed inside for the first two weeks. I was home
schooled, so I didn't have that extra association with kids my own
age. My mom quickly suggested that I get out of the house and find a
side job to help take my mind off of things.
That was when my life
undeniably began.
* * *
“
You
need to get out and explore this wonderful city,” my mom told
me. “I think
getting
a side job will really help you take your mind off of the move.”
I
sighed at the prospect of job hunting in the misty weather; I didn't
even have
the right kind
of clothes to wear, for warmth
or
for interviews. The only warm thing I owned was a hooded sweatshirt
that I usually only lounged around in at home.
I pulled out a chair
from our kitchen table and plopped down lazily. “Mom, did you
really want to move here?” I asked, hoping for a subject
change.
“
Well,”
she began slowly, choosing her words carefully as she tucked her
auburn hair behind her ears, “I was ready for a change. Too
much sun can be a bad thing, you know . . .” She paused for a
moment and grabbed the last banana off of a light blue plate that sat
on the tiled kitchen counter. “I miss Arizona, but it's okay.
We'll adjust.”
I couldn't help but
notice that her tone was a bit melancholy.
“
You’re
the one who named me Summer, Mom. And now you're saying that too much
sun can be a bad thing? You should have named me Winter . . .”
I
was hoping to make her smile. After all, she worked hard to make
me
smile; she was always trying to stay positive about things.
A pleasant grin lit up
her face as she thought about what I had said. “Yes, I did name
you Summer. I thought it was fitting because you were born in July,
and also because it's my favorite season.”
“
Yeah, it's my
favorite season, too.”
She took a moment and
scratched her nose in thought. “You know, I think we should
plan to take a trip back to Arizona in a couple of months and visit
everyone. How does that sound?”