Hope

Destia Jayden January 20th,20XX

I pushed my hands against my mouth and staggered my breathing. It was dark and stuffy inside the closet but I couldn't put on my phone for some light. My knees were pressed tightly against my chest and the paper in my left hand dried out my skin. I held it as carefully as possible but could feel the crease deepen with each passing second.

“Destia! Destia! Baby girl come out! Let's talk about this!”

My mother’s voice echoed through the house and wheedled for me to reveal myself. I could only double-check my arm to make sure I was still invisible.

My breathing, shallow as it was, got heavier as her steps approached me. The doors were ripped open and she looked right at me with red eyes.

Whose fault was it that this was happening?

It wasn’t mine. But it also wasn’t hers.

She’d gotten a job halfway across the world and she wanted me to come with her. I couldn’t exactly say that she shouldn’t go since she had already lost her past job, but I also didn’t see why I had to go with her.

I was eighteen not Eight, she didn’t have the right to ask me to uproot my life and move to a new country right before I graduated high school.

Still, I knew she would try to convince me to go along quietly and when that failed, she would threaten to give up the job and become jobless. My aunt, who was a freelance graphic designer had already promised to go with her.

I’d been just about ready to give in when she had appeared like a sign from god.

She being, Joyce Knightly.

She was beautiful, she was confident and most importantly, she had come laden with opportunity.

Since I had been seated in the aisle while she had walked by, I’d been lucky enough to receive a pamphlet directly from her. Our eyes had connected and her hands, slightly lighter-toned than mine had closed warmly over mine. I closed my eyes and relived the memory, over and over again.

I wasn’t attracted to her in that way and knew for a fact that she wouldn’t be attracted to me in any way. But I admired her, a lot.

Because I'd been distracted during the presentation I'd had to do independent research afterwards.

It seemed like her company, Squire, was expanding into the entertainment industry and was looking for a few students to take in and train up into these starts, or ‘influencers’ as she called them. She had titled them Pages, following the site’s name of Squire

While I wasn’t ugly, I also wasn’t beautiful. If I were to rank myself on a scale of ten I’d put myself solidly at a six and a half.

While it wasn’t bad, the tens and elevens that walked around my school had pushed me to find value in myself in other avenues from my looks.

I, who forever loved beautiful things had struggled with accepting that I wasn't one, a beautiful thing I meant. It was through this process of acceptance that I'd found design.

I didn’t really like clothing or fashion, and I was hopeless with technology, but I had a strong passion and a decent talent for set design. I threw myself into creating frames for the beautiful things in the world.

While I loved what I did and didn’t regret choosing to specialize I still resented the fact that I would forever be a background character.

That was when she had appeared and had all but singled me out while talking about the program. I wasn’t sure what it was about me that had encouraged her to notice me, but I was so glad she had.

I brought up the flyer and application form I held in my hand and read it over once more to make sure there were no typos.

Originally, I hadn’t particularly been planning to apply as a ‘Page’ and had wanted to apply for one of the internships she had proposed. I had applied for the internship but with my mother’s news, I decided to take the plunge and apply to become a page as well.

They provided an allowance, dorms, and more depending on how well you did on the site. I’d wanted to go for a more traditional higher education and learn set design in-depth but I couldn’t do that in the fishing village my mother had relocated to.

Not to say that they were uncivilized, but they couldn’t compare to all the conveniences we had over here. It was an island surrounded by another larger island that fed into the ocean. The only way to get anywhere was either by sea or air.

I was sure it would be a beautiful place to visit, but not to great to live in.

If I could just manage to get into the company, I’d have a reason to stay here without hurting my mom.

I’d initially hidden some of the terms from the application in case I hadn’t been accepted but it turned out to be a useful decision. She wouldn’t force me to go with her if I had already been accepted to such a good company, right?

My mother planned to move in about four months, Ms. Knightly had mentioned that I would hear the news within the next two months. I just needed to last till then.

The only issue now was the superpowers.

I wasn’t sure how I’d gotten them but the when was about a year ago. I’d been running away from a stray dog that had decided it didn’t like the look of my face and had discovered I was running much faster than the rabid beast could. I’d ended up crashing face-first into a corner and broke my nose, but that was the most serious injury I’d netted so far.

The invisibility had been discovered when a group of thugs had walked past me on my way from home. They’d looked to be in a bad mood and picked a fight with every second person they came across. I’d hidden under an abandoned wooden structure and waited for them to pass, but an angrier one had kicked the structure off my body.

I could still remember the heart-stopping fear I'd felt as he'd looked me dead in the eyes, and the corresponding relief as I read a disappointed expression on their face and watched them walk away.

Since then I’d worked hard on training both of them to usability but there weren’t a lot of large enclosed spaces I could use for free and without garnering suspicion from others.

My mother finally left the house to wrap things up at her job and I was able to crawl out of my hiding place.

I felt bad about antagonizing her like this, but I also couldn’t ruin my life when I had the option to become someone great.

My coat, a ratted brown mass of fabric that usually hung by the front entrance was gone and I realized my aunt had probably taken my mom’s coat, which meant she had taken mine. Without a choice, I could only grab my aunt’s bright green and yellow monstrosity of a jacket. I immediately went invisible and took off running toward the post office to send my application in.

I didn’t use my speed since I didn’t have any shoes I considered disposable but my endurance had increased drastically with these new powers and running at a normal speed felt easier than walking had in the past.

The paper dried out my finger pads as I held it close to my chest and muttered a prayer under my breath.

While my grades weren’t that great and my visuals were far from fantastic, I had confidence in my ideas and my capacity to bring them to reality.

I could only hope Ms. Knightly would see that in my application.