I tried to stop imagining Charlotte Katherine after that. Those boys recovered with no lasting damage--physical, that is. They always gave me a wide berth after that. They never told anyone what happened that day, but I have always wondered what I did to them.
Try as I might, however, Charlotte Katherine refused to disappear. Whenever I found myself frustrated or lonely, she would come up in my mind. I would blackout occasionally, and when I awoke afterwards, something bad had happened. In sixth grade, some girls were teasing me because I wore a tutu to school, and upon waking up after a 'nap' at lunch, someone had mysteriously poured ink all over their back packs, their desks, and their clothes and hair. Apparently, someone had walked up behind them, poured the ink on all of them at the same time, and then disappeared when they screamed and turned to look. I don't even know where I got the ink from. Maybe my imagination was stronger than I thought.
In junior high, a teacher gave me a bad score on a test. As in an F. I wouldn't have minded, but it ruined my 4.0 average, and I know for a fact that I did not fail the test. My father had let her husband go from his job at the factory, so I think she was taking it out on me. I went in after school to talk with her about it, and she pretty much said that she'd change the grade if my father would give her husband back his job. I was so upset when I left the classroom that I hid in a bathroom stall to cry. At least, that's the plan. When I came to in the stall, they were evacuating the school; someone had lit that teacher's car on fire.
She changed my grade after that.
There were other such incidents,some of them big and dangerous, some of them merely unfortunate mishaps, but no one was ever permanently injured or killed. I did blow up a gas station-- no one could ever prove that anything was me, but I knew--but aside from a few minor burns, no one was terribly hurt. I came to realize that it wasn't just the bad things I imagined that came true. Good things happened too, if I dreamed hard enough.
I was accepted into the most wonderful college ever, where I was majoring in costume design. I had always had a passion for fancy clothing, so it was a dream come true. Did I use my powers to get into this college? Maybe. But I felt justified.
My father, however, wasn't happy with my decision. He wanted me to major in business management, so that I could take over the company someday. I had known that this was his plan for me all my life, but I had always secretly hope he would find someone else. Maybe I wasn't wishing hard enough. Anyway, I was visiting home from college over Thanksgiving one year, and we had a big argument. I was so frustrated, that I screamed at him, "I wish that this stupid town, and everyone in it would just, disappear!!!"
I woke up the next day in my dorm at college. I turned on the news, and the only thing on every station was about how the small town of Cloverfield had disappeared. I have no idea where it went, or what happened to everyone there, but I haven't seen them since, and I can't get Charlotte Katherine to tell me.
Be careful what you wish for...
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