Disclaimer: This actually an attempt at a common person/people story. The characters are all mine. Don't worry, I haven't given up on Kitty or Pete, it's still in the works and blossoming beautifully. My muse knocked me over the head tonight, and threatened to tie me down and not let me get up or ever finish Miracles, or Dancing in the Flames, or Time's Crucible Lost if I didn't write this. I was a little surprised with the over all turn out I think.

PLEASE send feedback.

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I'm not someone's dream of the perfect child. Not someone you'd

think of when your giving birth, or even patting your enlarge stomach before you go to sleep thinking about the miracle you about to bring into the world. No, that would be Angela, my big sister.

Short for Angel.

You think I'm kidding?

She never drinks, never swears, never says it's someone else's fault. She wears sweater sets with skirts and hangs out with the smart popular people. She'd never think of getting a tattoo, or skipping school to win a dare. She'd never disappoint our parents for even a nano of a microsecond.

She's too 'good' for that.

She's never late. Never making excuses, or dating the wrong people. She wouldn't be seen with the wrong people or come in without her homework done weather it was fifteen math problems or a seventeen page research project. She'd never go a day without washing her hair or brushing her teeth. Never forget to feed the meter or the cat, or call our parents if she wanted to stay at friends another hour or even the whole night.

And would they ever tell her no?

Of course not. She's their "Angel".

She's a straight A student. She's Honor Roll. Vice president of Students for a brighter tomorrow. Keeper of the minutes in Student Council because of her adorable hand writing. Captain of the Varsity Cheerleaders. Second in state for her ice skating because the last competition was beat out only by the girl who broke her ankle during her routine.

Jealous? You think I'm jealous?

Absolutely.

How can you not be jealous of perfection when your me?

My name is Cassidy Chance.

My sister calls me pest, but everyone calls me Cass, except for my best friend. He calls me Lucky, but it's a long story.

He's the only one who knows me for me. My parents- Well, my mother gave birth to me, but she wouldn't know one of my thoughts if they slapped her in the face and -my father?- well, my father isn't the man I loved as a little girl. He'd sit my on his lap and tell me I could be anything in the world. He meant like a congresswoman, or an astronaut, or someone with power to change the world.

I want to be dreamer.

Do you remember that large block of wood on the legs your parents got? The one with the shaped holes and blocks that you were supposed to hammer into their places? You know the triangle in the triangle hole. The star in the star shaped one. Of course you do. We all had it bought for us. We all played with it. Well, I'm that square you tried hammering into the circle hole.

The one that just didn't fit right.

I wasn't perfect.

I wasn't like Angel.

I wanted to grow my hair long and thick, and let it fall in a middle part making me look like some Hippie born 30 years to late. I wanted to wear bell-bottoms, flip flops, and tanks tops with a flannel and daze out and see the world from an outsider's point of view.

So I saw it and I see it. I'm not made for the system they've set.

This cruelty and hatred of people not like me. I would rather hold someone, who's crying that I don't know, or hand a beggar woman on the street twenty dollars, before I began to break the innocent sanctuaries of other tender hearts that didn't belong like me.

My best friend didn't even understand this one even.

I was alone.

Again.

I want to save the world from the over looked.

Noble Fool.

That was what the last person who understood this part of me called me. I think his name was Ben. He loved me, said he understood my soul. He carried the same ideals and ideas as me, but he saw it from the point of a cynic.

I see it from the point of a lover.

My parents ignored or over looked this, as they saw my grades always slipping. I could slip up at any turn, and that expression of gratitude and pride they had for Angel was replaced by one of shock and surprised close to annoyed disappointment for me. They don't understand that I'm a square in a world of circle slots.

I'm want to be a writer.

My passion for writing, and imagination are extensive. I test to above college in grammar, vocabulary and in writing. That’s probably why they don't understand how I can get a 25 in my English III of this Junior year of high school.

I act older than I am, and looking it doesn't do to bad to add to that. But then hell if you had my chest I doubt you'd would think I was this young either on sight. The way I talk, I don't seem like a child of sixteen going on seventeen either. No only watching me lay on the floor in the middle of where I work, stare off in oblivion, or laughing at nothing give you my age. I can be and do all that because I don't have to worry about being perfect.

Angel's already perfect enough.

As long as my parent's had Angel to dote on and be proud of they had a saving grace from me. I would fail and she would soar in the clouds above me. I would stand on the ground and dream of flying and she would be up there doing it.

But in my own way I left the ground, I surpassed her clouds and caught the stars in my hands. I wrote my stories, and prayed to my goddess while my parents had their one god. I loved my folk music and hung out with people no one would be seen even looking over at. I cut class and got detention just to skip it and only have my parents frown at dinner and forget it when she mentioned her up coming race.

Did I mention she rode, too?

She IS perfect after all. She can do anything that comes into her pretty little head. I let my hair blow in the breeze, and I dance in the rain and sing to the moon. OH! And I loved the guy no one would even give the time of day because he had a misunderstood soul, too. I laugh at my darling best friend, the person I'd give up this world and my life for if he had but to ask even I love him so much, and so unconditionally. Saying I'll touch the stars for real one day, and that I'll never conform to the world of these circles. I relished my freedom from the normal days.

The freedom Angel's shadow gave me.

But tonight everything changed.

I was moving my mashed potatoes around making it look like I'd even attempted to eat those and the vegetables on my plate. I failed another three tests. My parents wouldn't know that till tomorrow though, so I resign turning off the sounds of them talking about my fathers new promotion and my mother up coming blue cross meeting.

Suddenly, Angel, my beloved shadow causer, drops her fork against the china plates we're eating on. My parents look at her with worry and I look at her through heavy lidded annoyed eyes. Tears start falling down her face like small perfect crystalines and even I start to get a little confused as my mother comes to her side. Angela pushes her away. My mother looks hurt.

I'm thinking 'Wow', she had the guts to actually do something like that. She shoves the table, causing plates to bump and glasses to fall, staining the white poly-silk table cloth our mother got in Sicily as she gets up from the table. By this time, hot and heavy tears are rolling down her beginning to look red and blotchy cheeks.

My father demands she apologize to my mother, and she does something

I'd never in a million years thought she could do.

Angel sneered at him. I can tell she reaching a line inside I felt so long ago it makes me feel like she my little sister now. She's started to shake, and all I can think is I'm dreaming it. I'll wake up from it to find my heads fallen in the mashed potatoes and Angel will make a joke about me staying up to late on my computer and my parents will laugh.

She laughs suddenly, but the tears are falling harder and she's thrusting her perfectly blonde hair back from her porcelain face, looking at him with cold, frantic, hurting, angry blue eyes.

'I'm a mutant,' she says in a whisper to us all like it's a joke.

The whole room goes quiet. I think my mother even stopped breathing hard. All I could hear now was the classical music tape set to the back drop of our fancy dinner. We're celebrating that she's a contestant for Prom Queen.

'Did you HEAR me?' she starts again getting louder when no one says anything. 'I'm a MUTANT!!!'

This time her eyes look like their flaring, this white color in the center then gone and suddenly all the lights in the room start flickering and shut off, the music stopping. Then suddenly they come on again and she laughing, her tears cascading, her hand over them hover odd balls of white energy that look like balls of lighting bolts of electricity.

'I'M A MUTANT!!!!'

The balls go at the floor and fall with loud boom noises. I gasp, my mother is about to faint and all Angela does is turn and run for her room, sobbing. It’s like a speaker in my ears. She's breaking down, and all can hear is the static ringing in me ears. I turn to look at my father and he's contemplating a mushroom on his plate. He's contemplating a mushroom, and I look to my mother.

The look in her eyes as she turns to me, is telling me she doesn't know what to do. For the first time in her 40 years old life she has no idea what to do. It's almost like she'd ask me what to do now, like I would know. I'm not part of the rich family. Not one of their collective of the trio of perfectness. I excused my self in a whisper, not sure why I even said it. Neither of them would have stopped me.

Neither looked like they could even articulate anything.

They looked like shards of broken mirrors.

So here I am staring at the stars and the moon, from where I'm sitting on the roof.

We've all heard about mutants and the destruction they can do. Angel blasted are carpet and floor. We've heard they can hurt, and worse. We've heard they carry a deadly disease. We've all known that anyone associating with one is suddenly an outcast and anyone who was one dropped out of sight as fast as stars fall from the sky. Of how peoples fear and hatred leads to their deaths, but I'm not thinking about that right now.

I can hear my big sister, my prefect Angel, who I hated and loved all at once, sobbing and cater walling into a pillow below me. Her window must be open I'm thinking detachedly almost, but I'm too numb to be detached now, and my mind is million miles a minute on auto pilot.

I'm thinking that tomorrow my report card will show up with eight failing grades, and eight requests to meet with my parents and discuss my academic studies, again. And I'm thinking that not all the blonde hair, Prom crowns, the straight A's, and all the kings horses and all the kings men, can change what just happened tonight.

I'm thinking perfection just cracked.

I'm thinking for the first time since I came out of the womb, the child no one would dream of, ten months, three days, 4 hours and 27 minutes after Angel did, that I won't have a shadow I was standing in anymore.

And I'm terrified of tomorrow.