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PROLOGUE
So
you think you’re a mutant?
If you had ever met Dylan O'Leary, you wouldn’t have noticed anything
unusual about her. She didn’t have clubbed feet, webbed hands, a tail, or any
other odd mutations. She was of average
height, average weight, average intelligence, and, to be perfectly honest, she
was normal…well, normal with
regards to the loosest definition of the word.
Because, as we all know, appearances can be deceiving.
And what’s normal for some may not be for others.
Take Dylan, for instance.
Dylan had sensed that there was something that made her a whole lot less
typical than other kids her age – something on the inside. Call it an
intuition, but she’d had a theory that whatever “it” was had to do with her
dad, and that because of him, whatever amazing trait she possessed would
someday be turned on like a light switch.
Which of course she couldn’t prove considering she’d never actually met
the man.
Dylan’s father was some kind of a secret agent off on a mission
saving the world. At least that was what her mother had told her. And although
this may sound pretty cool on paper, it was very tough on Dylan. Shortly after
she was born, he’d left on his assignment, and besides his name, that was all
Dylan really knew about Bill O’Leary.
But she could always imagine him.
And that was exactly what she was doing when “it” happened…
CHAPTER ONE
The dreamer and the brainiac
It was an unusually humid day in Chicago three weeks prior to the start
of seventh grade and Dylan O’Leary was doing the thing she did best. She was
lounged out in Lincoln Park where she and her dad were on one of their
fantastic adventures…in her head. This time they were in India tracking down an
evil crime syndicate that had stolen some mad scientist’s powerful laser that
could destroy the world (a pretty standard fantasy when your dad was supposed
to be an important secret agent). So they were riding on the backs of
elephants, and they had just discovered the criminal’s secret lair, when all of
a sudden something came swirling down from the sky like a falling meteor, hitting
Dylan smack dab in the middle of her forehead.
Th-whack.
Whatever it was that struck her definitely wasn’t part of her daydream.
Stunned, Dylan opened her eyes and angrily scanned her surroundings, ready to
bawl out the person responsible for knocking her into reality.
But nobody was around.
Thoroughly confused, she surveyed the ground, figuring a branch or a nut
had fallen from a tree, but what she found next to her was more than
unexpected…because a plump cardinal was splayed out on his back! His little red
chest was heaving up and down, feathers ruffling in the breeze. She eyed the
bird hesitantly, and was just about to nudge him with one of her flip-flopped
feet, to see if he was okay, when his intense gaze met hers, almost daring her
to do it.
She nudged him anyway.
“Gimme a minute,” panted the cardinal, kicking his little black legs in
the air. “It’s not like I do this every day.”
Dylan sucked in her breath and blinked her green eyes open in
astonishment.
There had to be a logical explanation for what she was seeing and
hearing.
Like that she was dreaming.
Or that she was going crazy.
She closed her eyes tightly, thinking that maybe, when she opened them,
she would be in her own bed, covered in her leopard spotted sheets, see her
clothes strewn all over her room, or smell the freshly brewed coffee her mother
always made before she left for work. But no, when she opened her eyes, she was
still in the park, and that red bird was standing in front of her, watching her
every move.
In slower than slow motion, heart pumping, stomach flipping, Dylan got
onto her hands and knees and hovered over her strange, feathered visitor. The
cardinal was definitely winning what was now an intense stare down, and she
knew it. She could tell by the way his tiny beak twisted sideways – like he was
sneering at her. A bead of sweat trickled slowly off her forehead, falling
down, down, down, splattering on the bird’s red head. A nervous giggle crept out of her throat and she finally
managed to stutter, “Are...you...um…okay, little guy?”
The cardinal was not amused. He glared at her with one beady black eye
and fluffed up his feathers. Then, spreading his wings triumphantly, he ran a
few feet away, almost smashed into a tree, and soared into the hot summer sky
hissing, “Dreaming like a little child when you have real work to do? No wonder
your classmates call you ditzy Dylan.”
“Huh?” she gasped, her heart racing like a motorcycle engine traveling at
least ninety miles per hour. Did a crazy cardinal hit me on the head? … Diss
me? … And then fly away? She wondered if somebody was playing some kind of
creepy trick on her. That would have explained everything. But where was the
culprit? And how in the world could they have made this everyday, backyard bird
talk?
©2007 S.L. Hastings. All rights reserved.