My Missing Piece

My Missing Piece

by Cleopatra Salam

Warmth is what I feel every day I wake up in what I now call home. The shades of purple in the sky come into my room. I look outside and I see myself in everyone else. We were all abandoned once, put in a portal by our parents. Well, for me, I only had one parent. She is the only thing that’s missing in my life. I worry if she is still alive some nights. I wonder if she ever thinks about me. Will she ever come and see me? On April 17th, 3021, I wrote my Mother a letter, describing my world in many ways, listing things about me, and emphasizing how much I miss her. Though, I don’t know if the letter was actually delivered to her location. Since the postal service here is judgmental to those who fight to remember their parents. Speaking of the postal service, I need to go check my own portal. Just in case someone on planet Earth sent something.

“I doubt it,” Brianna said blatantly.

“How did you—”

“Remember, I’m the Girl Who Can Read Minds.”

If she wanted to be nicknamed something else, she shouldn’t have exposed herself. Moving along, I follow the glowing green path I made to my portal. Just in case you didn’t know, my name is Crystal, my power is witchcraft. I have a book with a prolonged amount of spells, but I don’t use it. I have them all memorized, and still come up with my own spells. People like to call me a mythic. Basically I’m something those on Earth would write about as a myth. My color is green, you’ll need that for later. Finally, I mean I could have summoned myself to my portal but I don’t need to be lazy. “Let’s see, let’s see.” An envelope? It smells like Earth.

“How do you know what Earth smells like?” Brianna said, puzzled.

“Can you stop doing that! And you’re the mind reader, so you tell me,” I demanded.

“I mean, I was born here, and you’re not thinking about why that envelope smells like Earth.”

“Bye Brianna!” She can be so annoying sometimes. Now, should

I go back to my dorm to read this?

“Probably,” Brianna said while laughing.

You know what, I’m not going to give her that satisfaction. I continue to walk back to my dorm; the view of the water fountain from here is mesmerizing. “Metallic is beautiful,” my observer once said.

Now, sitting at my desk, I use a pen to open up the envelope. It’s a letter, but from who? Starting to scan the letter with my eyes, there is no name besides mine. “I need your help!” the letter reads. “They have trapped me!” Then how was this letter delivered with perfect packaging? Powers, I suppose. But I’m not sure. Can one of my spells help me find who wrote this letter? I’ll have to ask my observer. “Dezerae!” I cry.

“Yes, Crystal?”

“I need your help.”

“I see.” She smirks, looking at my frizzy hair.

“Not with that!”

“I know, I know. I observe you after all. Do you not remember her handwriting?”

“Her?” I look back at the letter. Who from Earth goes by this handwriting? I strut out the door to the study hall. Dezerae follows. I can feel her presence; it’s always there, grazing my spine. We sit down at a table way back into the study hall. I slam the letter on the table. It starts floating. But the green sparkles that came off of it drew my attention. Mom, it spelled.

“OMG, my Mom needs help!” I scream.

“Took you long enough…”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Because you hate having all the attention on you,” Dezerae laughed.

I look around, and I don’t like what I see. All eyes are on me. I poof, back into my dorm. Now a green mist is all they see. I need to find a way to sneak into Earth, since I can teleport to somewhere I have never been before. Well, I have, but I was never able to unleash my powers on Earth. Don’t tell me I have to ask Brianna for help. I know Dezerae can’t help me, that’s beyond the observer’s rules. And I bet she’s around here somewhere.

“Brianna!”

“How did you know I was here?”

“Well—”

“Don’t waste your time telling me. You know that I know, since you’re thinking about it. Tomorrow morning, meet me in the forest by the portal. And not your portal.”

Where is she? Probably in the hall. Uhhhhhh; Crystal, stay focused! I need to prepare for tomorrow.

A satchel is what I need. Who knows what new spells I can discover or make on Earth. I can’t just carry a huge spellbook by itself. It would look weird. I would know, I lived on Earth for exactly 7 years. That’s all I think I need. Maybe I should sleep till tomorrow.

“You’ll need it,” Dezerae says. She appears right in front of me. I feel a pinch on my forehead as I drift away in Zs.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

I jolt up into consciousness. It is 8:20 a.m. It’s time. I need to meet up with Brianna to get into Earth. I think she wants me to meet her at the pink tree in the forest. It’s closer to the portal and pink is her favorite color. But I don’t think I’ll have to worry about being seen on my way there. Teleportation is key here. I can use the map of my world on my bear-pad for the location. I turn back to look at my alarm clock. It’s 8:30 a.m. already. I must get moving. I pull up the location of the pink tree on my bear-pad, and place my finger on it. It starts to glow green.

“Take me there.”

Woosh.

“It’s 8:32, what took you so long?” Brianna said, startled.

“Sorry, I was thinking.”

“I can tell.”

We take a look at the portal. “Look at all those colors marbling,” Brianna says while admiring the view we had.

“It’s only green and blue, symbolizing Earth. Duh…”

Suddenly, guards wearing all white appear at their post in front of us. Brianna grabs me and we start bolting down the hill towards the portal. I feel the presence of a guard’s arm motion towards us. I turn around and see a cream orb blasting towards us. I put my arm up, creating my own orb in my head, then a green orb appears. It’s able to counter the guard’s orb and hold them off. Brianna and I both know once we go through the portal my powers here disappear until

I come back.

“C’mon, Crystal!” I hear echoing in my head. I turn around and see Brianna in front of the portal. I reach my hands out to her and green steel chains shoot from me to her. She tugs me, then I tug her into the portal.

“Oh no!” The portal turns black. I guess that is what happens when powers are used within the portal.

“What color is the portal supposed to be from this side?” Brianna asks.

“Shades of purple marbling, kinda like our sky.” We turn away from the portal, only to see people, buildings, and animals. Pretty normal to me. Brianna hands me the letter.

“Thanks.”

“I thought it would be better to hold onto it, knowing you.”

“Mhm.” So where is somewhere you can trap people? Brianna looks at me twisted.

“Did you not read the letter?”

“I did!” Brianna reassured. “I just thought that it would be more clear. You’re looking at the wrong part.”

Another thing that stood out to me in that letter was, “I need you to use your powers.” I mean, there are so many acronyms that can be used here. But with Brianna’s powers, she probably knows where it is. I look at her and smile. People Opening With Energy Research Support.

“So, any place here that has to do with electricity?”

There must be a map somewhere. I start walking down a grass path to what looks like a grown woman.

“Crystal, what are you doing?”

“I’m from Earth, don’t worry about it, just stay there.” I stop the woman in her tracks. She looks up from her phone, confused. She stands up straight and dusts off her jacket.

“Hello, my name is Crystal, do you happen to have a map on your phone?” I say with a smile.

“Yes.”

“May I use your phone for a minute?”

“Sure!” the woman says with a smile. She hands me her phone, and I call Brianna down with a small gesture. She already has Google up, so I search maps. Google Maps pops up and I click it. It takes me straight to the app. Brianna looks amazed. I search for electricity.

Electric Lady Studios pops up. It’s 58 minutes from here. I am about to use one of my spells when Brianna says:

“Are you sure.”

“You should be,” I hear Dezerae say in my head. So I nod.

“Take me here in one minute.” I have the phone tilted towards Brianna and I so no one will see the green sparkles that appear. I hand the woman back her phone.

“Thank you!”

“No problem. You two run along,” she says kindly. I look at Brianna and we bolt back to the portal, waiting to be teleported. I don’t know if I’m ready for this. There’s only two of us, and we don’t know how many of them. I’m mainly the muscle and Brianna has most of the brain. I take a deep breath and look up. Brianna looks determined while I am worried. This is my mother on the line, after all; this is where I used to call home. I shouldn’t doubt myself.

Bloop.

Is that her? It’s been a while, so I’m not completely sure what my Mom exactly looks like. She’s handcuffed, sitting in a steel chair.

“Melt it,” Brianna whispers.

I lock my eye on the chair and reach my hand out. The chair glows green. What I believe is my Mom turns her head and sees Brianna and me. The steel chair dissolves; my mother looks shocked. When the chair fully dissolves, Brianna mouths to my mother to come to us. She starts crawling to us.

“My baby, and who is this?” my mother says, tearing up.

“This is my friend Brianna; so what is going on here?”

“The government came to my house one day and cooped me up. They have stuck me here for about three days. They feed me, give me water, and put a blanket on me to sleep. I overheard them talking about how I might have powers.”

“Can you get us out of here?” Brianna asks me.

“If we can get into that dark room over there, then I can take us back near the portal.”

“They’re distracted… ” Brianna whispers.

We all start to crawl diagonally to the door. I sense that it’s locked. My Mom puts her hand on the knob and starts twisting the knob. Rust starts to drizzle on the cold hard floor. The knob breaks into my Mom’s hand. She places it on the floor slowly. We stand, and walk into

the room. There are three shiny diamonds on the wall. One pink, one blue, and one green. I immediately snatch the green while Brianna takes the pink one. My Mom stands there in doubt.

“Go ahead, take it,” Brianna says to my Mom. She grabs it and starts to float. Brianna smiles at me.

“OMG. I—”

“No time for reactions, Crystal,” Brianna says while pinching me.

“There are people near the portal,” my Mom says, concerned.

“There are three,” Brianna says, since they can hear or see what I’m thinking. There are three of them and three of us. And it’s Earth, they don’t have powers. There’s no need for violence, but they need to be stopped. I put my hands on my head.

“Hold my shoulders down,” I tell them both. We need to all go together. “Take us back,” I say.

“Pretty basic spells… ” my mother says, sarcastically. I laugh, still while holding my head.

Splash.

We’re back near the portal, facing three tall guys with suits straight ahead. “They have guns!” Brianna yells, alarming all other citizens. They pull them out. I reach my hand out, creating three orbs this time, and shoot them to obtain those three guns before they fire. I woosh the guns mid-air to the trash, breaking the orbs. They start charging at us. My Mom starts moving her hands in a circular motion. A cloud starts to form. It gets bigger and bigger, not even by the second! Only about three feet away from us, the three men are still charging towards us. My Mom gets in between Brianna and I and drops the cloud on top of us. Suddenly, those three men run straight through us.

“Now!” My Mom yells while bolting to the portal. Brianna and I follow. “Crystal, charge up the portal quick!”

I grab onto the portal while electric currents run through my veins faster and faster to fix what I’ve done. I can hear a propeller. I look up and there’s a helicopter right above us. My Mom notices and drops the blue diamond that she took. It shatters and creates this seethrough forcefield. These people are trying to shoot us, but now can’t.

“Hurry! It won’t last long!” Brianna says in a panic.

“I’m giving it all that I got, okay!”

The shades of purple that are supposed to be on this side of the portal start to appear. Brianna also puts her hands on the portal and

they start to appear faster. Then my Mom, and it’s finally done.

“When I count to three, the forcefield will break, and we need to jump straight through the portal together.”

“Got it!” Brianna and I say while looking into my mother’s eyes.

“1! . . . 2! . . .3!”

We all jump in, but three bullets also go straight through the portal with us. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but there was some wave that went through my body.

“It was from the three bullets being extracted from our world, sweetheart,” I hear in Dezerae’s voice. We all made it!

We turn around and see Dezerae up ahead.

“Hello old friend!”

“Old friend?” Dezerae appears in front of my Mom, and hugs her.

“Oh…” I say, shocked.

“Let’s go home, and I promise I’ll explain everything,” my Mom says. I nod my head in agreement, and Dezerae, Brianna, my Mom, and I all walk back.

While so I could only think . . . I knew I had to get my powers from someone, they don’t just appear from nowhere. How did my Mom keep it a secret for so long ? I don’t know, but that doesn’t matter. Our broken puzzles were put back together. We may not be completely safe, but at least we have each other. Earth, a place so many used to call home, is dangerous. No one can trust each other. They still see those with powers as a threat to their way of living. That will not stop us, though. Our ancestors have wished for this day, when our people will not be falsely killed. Killed out of anger, fear, and power. No longer can they deafen us. They made us immortal, something that those back in the 2000s frequently dreamed of.

“Are you done?” Brianna, Dezerae, and my Mom ask synchronously, while laughing.

“Yeah, I guess,” I say, smiling. I just had to be the only one who can’t read minds, huh.