On May 13, 1952 Kristen Grace Willows turned sixteen.
She didn't expect much, to be honest. She had school, since it was a Wednesday and after school ended at one thirty in the afternoon she found her father waiting outside the convent building. He sat the passenger seat of their family's Gorge Orwell, the newest trend of the era made by the British Car Association. It was quite a beauty to watch, and the girls of the convent stared at awe at the vehicle that waited outside their school gates. It was shiny deep blue, with a long hood that made it look like a serious hound. On the passenger seat sat a man in a military uniform, staring ahead. Even if he wore his military hat that covered much of his face, his frown was unmistakable.
Kristen sighed and walked towards the car. She dumped her bag on the back seat and got in, careful not to mess with the pleats of her school uniform as she did so. She hated the uniform. It had a very ugly sage green color and they had to wear an overcoat over their cotton long sleeved blouses in addition to their easily wrinkling long skirts. The overcoat didn't help when the weather turned hot, something that always happened in a tropical island country like Ceylon in the middle of the year. Yet, it seemed that no one in the school administration really cared.
Major General William Hardy Willows quickly started the car without a word and drove off. No one spoke inside the car. Kristen would have been surprised if they they did. The passed the bustling streets of Colombo, there cars and ox driven carts darted to and fro without much conflict. There was even a rickshaw, pulled by an overly bony and tall islander while a young British couple sat on the cart, waving around and musing at the scenery around. Posters were pasted on most corners of the street, encouraging hot blooded youths to join the Western Alliance. A bus or two roamed here and there while a crowd of people darted in between the vehicles in a hurry.
The train station was as busy as usual and once the car passed the clock-tower, Kristen knew where they were headed.
They were definitely not headed home.
It didn't take long for the car to pass all the hustle and bustle of the country's capital and to enter private land that spaned for miles. Over the distance, Kristen could make out the red walled building of the Royal Academy of the Gifted, nestled at the front of school buildings and boarding houses the dotted the landscape behind it. Kristen almost wanted to speak out loud, tell her father that it was useless.
They had made the trip to the Royal Academy every year on her birthday and the result was always the same.
There were IQ tests, Acute Concentration Exams, brain wave monitoring, physical examinations and the last but not least the Pain Stimulation.
All for the purpose of triggering a phychic response. Only five percent of the world's population has physhic abilities and those who have are considered very valuable assets in the world, especially in the military. They usually developed from an age of three to four years old upto an age of about nineteen. There had been no one with a manifestation past their adolescents. Kristen had three more years to go, but so far, the results have been fruitless.
Also, she felt mad.
Every birthday, her father would take her for the yearly examinations and every year, the two would return home disappointed. It was the only day her father took any sort of a notice of her. Every other day of the year, she would just be ignored as he went off working for the military.
When the car halted to a stop, Kristen didn't feel like getting out of the car. She loathed the red building of the Royal Academy Research Institution. It was always a course of bad memories for her.
'Can't we do this tomorrow,' Kristen found herself say in a raspy voice.
'No,' Major General Willows replied.
'I don't feel like going,' Kristen whispered.
The Major General sharply turned his head towards his daughter, who sat on the back seat, cuddling her school bag.
'Get out of the car.'
Kristen had no choice but to obey.
She didn't understand why her father was so insistent on her having her gift. It was somewhat understandable, their whole family where psychics. Her mother could perform psychometry and she was the best in her field, even if she was a local. But her mother was educated and was a descendant of the island's nobility at a time when kings and queens rules the lands. Yet, it puzzled a lot of people as to why a gifted British pyrokinetic like William Willows would marry Seetha. She was beautiful, bronze skinned and had deep obsidian eyes. Kristen would have been happy if her parents married out of love, but it was never the case.
Her three brothers, two elder and one younger, were psychic as well. The eldest, Jonathan, was a pyrokinetic like their father. Charles was a telepath while the youngest and a prodigy, Henry was a psychokinetic.
Out all the family of five, only Kristen didn't have an ability.
In truth, Kristen was not good at anything. She wasn't clever in school and she wasn't pretty like the other girls. She didn't have a refined look to her at all and always managed to look like the dark skinned and dark wispy haired skinny teenager that doesn't seem to fit anywhere she went. She didn't have her mother's grace, not her face. She does seem to have inherited the sharp angles on her face and the gold flecked jade eyes from his father. But her father's look made his handsome, not a girl pretty to look at.
All in all, she was a disappointment.
So much that her brothers followed their father's example and ignored her as well.
As expected, Kristen spent the day of her sixteenth birthday facing white coated grumpy men and women while writing tests and trying her best to lift weights and try to lift objects with her mind. She did alot of tests, each to determine any affinity to any of the psychic abilities known to the world so far. Then she spent about an out plugged up a computer and another fifteen minutes, strapped onto a table while someone sent out pain signals to every inch of her body to trigger a reaction out of the ordinary.
Nothing worked.
By the time it was six in the evening, both father and daughter were in a bad mood.
Kristen felt as if she could not wait till she turned nineteen so that the yearly assessment would finally end. Major General Willows took off his military hat and got back into the car.
'Get in.'
The Major General dropped off his daughter in front of their mansion before driving off to work again. On their varandah, waited Seetha Willows, smiling as she stitched a new blouse for Kristen to wear. She did it every year of course. Upon arriving home, Kristen was met with the smiling face of their cook who carried what seemed like a little pot and a spoon.
'Ah! Little miss is finally home. Come, come. Food is ready. You must be tired. Here, eat this while I prepare your meal. Does madam want a snack as well?' the cook said, chattering in the native tongue of the island that only Kristen among the three children knew how to hear and speak.
Seetha shook her head with a smile.
Kristen realized that it was one of those days where the only people at home where the servants and her mother and her. Jonathan and Charles were boarding at the Royal Academy for the Gifted and left home for school the day prior. Henry was in England with their grandparents to practice control over his psychokinesis.
Maybe, Kristen thought, this might not be a bad day after all. She ate a pot full of curd and honey as she kicked off her shoes on the leaning chair in front of her house. After that, she ate her dinner of curry and rice, a rare delicacy the cook was allowed to cook rarely. It was then followed by Kristen finishing off her homework.
Before she slept, her mother combed her hair while telling stories about when she was young. Her mother always talked in the indigenous tongue when they both were alone. Kristen fell asleep peacefully.
Somewhat, it was not a bad day after all.