Father is going to have to buy me a new bed.

Again.

If only I could be good. If only I could be like the Prefect’s daughter Annika, with her shiny curls and sunny smile, or the Inquisitor’s daughter Sophie, with her winning manners. But I’m not. I’m weird, and I’m awkward, and all the Annikas and Sophies of the world hate me, though they’d never say it out loud.

They’re afraid of me, too.

But we’re careful, Father and I. We never give any indication that I might be different. Or at least different in that way, the way that could get both of us killed. So far we’ve been successful in explaining away my gloves and my silence and all the tics of my strange personality as Asperger’s and OCD. Hence the need for homeschooling. Hence my obvious lack of social skills. Or friends.

I don’t need any friends in those silent, wonderful dreams, though. I don’t need anything.

I only need him.

Unlike me, the stranger in my dreams is beautiful, more so than anyone I’ve seen in real life. He’s patient, and he’s kind, though reeking of danger, and my dreaming self—somehow years older than my actual age of fifteen—is always so glad to see him she goes a little mad. Magnus, she greets him silently. With the same resounding silence he answers, Hope.

That’s a little awkward because Hope isn’t my name. But my dream self doesn’t care. She throws her arms around this Magnus and kisses him.

He seems to really like it.

I’ve not been kissed. Though inside I burn brighter than the sun emblem of the Imperial Federation, outside I may as well be Quasimodo for all the attention boys pay me.

But Magnus pays attention. He has eyes as dark as a swan’s, and a voice as rich as brown butter, and he looks at me as if I’m something he’s been hunting for a long, long time. Something for which he’s been waiting.

Magnus. What a name. To be fair, it’s not much weirder than my own, but Magnus? Sounds like a twentieth-century porn star. Well, whoever this dream stranger is, I know one thing for sure.

He’s Aberrant. Like me.

And he’s out there. Somewhere, he’s out there.

24 January, 2028

3:22am IFST

Diary Entry #154

Today I burned the credit market to the ground.

I didn’t mean to do it, but that wretch Annika and her clique of First Form shrews were staring at me and giggling over the BioVite display, and the rage I felt took me completely by surprise. I mean, I should be used to the sneers by now. I am used to them. Growing up not only Third Form but also a weird Third Form guaranteed that.

But today . . . today I snapped. Big-time.

It wouldn’t have happened if I’d kept my glove on to stroke the grocer’s cat, as I always do. But today for some reason I was gripped by a violent urge to feel something. For once. I needed to touch something other than my own skin when I bathed.

Cinder is a black cat, glossy and plump, with fur like mink. I can’t tell you what possessed me to do it, but possess is the right choice of verb because I was as helpless against it as if a demon had slipped inside my body and started pulling strings.

I saw Cinder sitting there between the stacked wooden crates of oranges and the cart of flowers. Inscrutable as the Sphinx, she blinked up at me with her bright-yellow eyes, and, as it always does, a strange recognition crackled between us. She prowled forward. I knelt down. I furtively removed my glove, and stretched out my hand.

And oh, what bliss. I closed my eyes and simply luxuriated in the feeling of cool, silken fur as Cinder arched beneath my fingertips, gliding against my hand with a satisfied purr.

Dogs whine and cower when I draw near. Birds shriek, horses whinny and stomp, even crickets fall silent when I pass. But cats are drawn to me and I to them, and Cinder is one of dozens of neighborhood cats I know by name. I love her the way one loves children, or a favorite song. Just her presence makes me happy.

Then I heard the laughter.

I turned and saw the cluster of girls across the way. The heads bent together, the smirks hidden behind hands, the contempt as blinding as sunlight on snow. The effect was that of a struck match tossed on a giant pile of dry kindling. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d shot to my feet, flexed open my gloveless hand, and pushed.

That’s what I call it. The “push.” It’s an outward-bound sensation, no more effortful than an exhalation of breath, but vastly more deadly.

The whole place was in flames in the space of a few seconds. I grabbed Cinder and ran.

I’m still not sure if Annika and her little coven made it out.

I’m not sure if I care.

12 September, 2030

2:19am IFST

Diary Entry #1069

It’s my birthday today. At least, the day Father and I celebrate it. I sometimes feel like the baby in that banned book, what was his name? Oh, right: Moses. Found in a basket, just like me. Father would probably be found in a basket chopped into little pieces if the Prefect ever found out we had banned books, but Father is as good at keeping secrets as I am. Better, maybe.

Eighteen years old (near as we can tell), and still never been kissed. Which is probably for the best. God only knows what would happen to the poor boy. Strike that, Thorne only knows. God is one of those words on the Suppression List that keeps making its way into my diary. Not that anyone will ever read this. I hope. If you are, it means something bad has happened. That thing I’ve lived in terror of since I was little:

Discovery.

I’ve been careful since that day I snapped in the market, though. I’ve been almost perfect. I’ve learned how to control all my tics. I don’t even vanish when I sneeze anymore.

Still having those dreams of Magnus, though. I won’t detail how explicit they’ve gotten, but my older dream self sure is . . . fierce. Just thinking about it makes my face hot.

He’s still calling me Hope. I wish he wouldn’t do that.

Oh—wait ’til you hear this! At Assignations today, I got Hospice Aid. How hilarious is that? I purposely ganked the aptitude tests so I’d be allowed to work with Father in the grow light fields, but the Administrator thought I showed “advanced intuitive capacity,” “highly honed observational skills,” and a “great propensity for compassion.”

Compassion. Ha! If only they knew about the market fire. Even though no one was killed, I was ecstatic about Annika’s hair burning off.

The joke’s on me, though, because now I’ll be spending the rest of my days tending to the condemned elderly.

I hate my life.

15 October, 2036

11:37pm IFST

Diary Entry #2553

For the first time in many, many years, I heard the Girl.

I was in Mr. Kirchmann’s room, reading to him from Essays on Enlightenment—the IF’s quarterly propaganda treatise about the glory and necessity of the global unified government—and trying not to grit my teeth too hard as the crusty old goat nodded in agreement to every word I spoke as he lay feebly wheezing in his bed, when suddenly I felt as if a door kicked open inside my head, and someone barged in.