I've always been different. Ever since I was a baby. When I was born, I had purple eyes. My parents called the doctor, but when he got there, my eyes had transformed to a grayish-blue.

When I was two years old, my dad found me in the bathroom sink holding a pink scallop shell. No one knew where I got it, and I've kept it in a box in my room ever since.

Then, when I was five, my parents enrolled me in school. On my first day, I got expelled. They found the teacher in the corner of the room muttering "Demon girl... She's a little demon..." The last I heard, she was still in solitary confinement.

From then on, I didn't go to school. I only had private tutors that came to my house. One way or another, they always quit. They were scared of me.

When I was eight years old, my parents enrolled me in an online school. That way, I didn't have to interact with anyone face-to-face.

Nothing strange happened for a few years. Then, when I was eleven years old, my mom found me in the bathroom in the dead of night. I was holding a pair of scissors to my hair and saying something in another language. My eyes were all misty and they were glowing purple.

My mom tried to wrench the scissors out of my hand, but as she reached out for my wrist, the scissors sliced off my hair. I snapped out of the trance and screamed. I had been growing my hair out for years and I was disappointed and scared at what had just happened.

My hair was now just above shoulder length. Over the next few months, strange things began to happen to it. First, my hair grew out blue from the roots. It slowly turned purple, then magenta, so my hair had layers of color. I was still going to online school, so I didn't have to interact with anyone outside my house.

My parents didn't really say much about my hair changing colors. I think they were just afraid. We didn't really talk much until a few weeks before my twelfth birthday.

My mom walked into my bedroom on a Saturday morning.

"Serenity...?"

I put my pillow over my head.

"Are you awake?"

"Well, now I am. Why did you have to wake me up?"

She walked over to my bed but didn't answer.

"Uh, mom?" I said. I was getting irritated. "Hello?"

"Your hair..." she sighed. She picked up a strand of my hair and brushed it with her hand. "Why is it like this?"

"I don't know." I said. "Was that the reason why you woke me up?"

"No," she said. "I wanted to ask what you want to do for your twelfth birthday."

"I don't want to do anything. I don't have to, so I'm not going to."

I heard her leave the room. I turned over and went back to sleep.

Now it's been a year. I'm going to be turning thirteen tomorrow. I don't know what to expect. I've gotten a lot of the usual signs of puberty. My period, breasts, and more hair (which is also strangely colored). I've also gotten some other weird things. My eyes turn purple sometimes, and sometimes my fingers are webbed when I'm near water or when it's raining outside. I know I'm not an ordinary girl.

As I pull the covers up over my body, I feel a tingling sensation going down my legs. I push the covers off my legs and think I see something very startling: a tail where my legs used to be!

"Ah!" I scream, reaching over to turn on the lamp. The tail is gone. I guess it was just my imagination. I'm going to go to sleep now...