Chapter 1

1

The Difference Between Me And Them

From the day she was born they brought her to it.

It had opaque walls and lid locked tight.

She spent all of her life picturing what was inside.

This perfect world that its walls did hide.

Abney Park

The Box

There is quite a difference between feeling like you are somehow...special, different, and having all the kids at your school thinking that about you. This was the thought that was circling through Gigi’s mind as she sat by herself for lunch today. Because today was like any other day.

When you think that you are different and special, you think that someday someone will make the connection that you are really from a different place, one where, of course, magick exists and you are not from humble beginnings. You are actually quite wealthy and happy. Your new life begins immediately, and you never again have to think about the petty, snarky people that you’ve left behind.

When everybody else realizes that you are somehow special or different, it can be a very lonely walk through the lunch room of your high school.

Not that you actually have much interest in their small lives, but it might be nice to pretend for a minute. Pretend that prom dresses and senior pictures matter to you...

But of course they don’t.

So when the ordinary world won’t have you, what else is left to you but to make up your own world? The world that you should’ve been born into, everything is different yet somehow still familiar: existing in the same place as your world, only slightly off. Like if you were to catch the light at just the right angle, you’d be rewarded with a secret glimpse of it.

So once you know, and they know, and you know that they know that you are special and different, everybody realizes that this might not be the best thing. You just give up on the illusion of fitting in. You find interest in things that don’t matter to others, embracing who you could be without the influence of what other people might think or say. Free to just be yourself, unfettered by the constraints of other people’s opinions.

You begin to embrace your differences in small ways. Dressing a little differently to begin with, evolving your own look, as if your clothes had been designed by a clockmaker or an air ship pilot. Not caring that you look like you might be a courier from another world when you get ready for school in the morning. Or that you spend your time dreaming of this other world.

Sometimes if she squinted just right, she could almost see the haze that separated her from her once destined home. A shimmer that glinted when the sun caught it just right.