I had always been on the track team. Ever since middle school, I took no greater pleasure than reveling in the only talent "it" would let me have. I didn't know what "it" was, or how "it" worked, or what "it" was made of, but at least "it" let me have that one victory.

"It" was my bad luck.

I had resorted to craving security and the sanctity of being hidden. My bad luck was the trip in my step on the way to school that morning, and I guess it's the result of every failure before and everything that happened after.

I rushed out the door, less than confident, but more than determined to meet my match (the bus) on that first day back after fall break. The sky was an ugly magenta, but I didn't take too much notice...my courage, or what was left of it, faded as I saw the yellow vehicle drive away onto the main road, leaves on the pavement swirling in its wake.

I could almost hear the blaring megaphone the coach used in track practice. But there wasn't a need for the word "go" when I was racing against the world, against the bus, and really, whatever was inside me that always caused things like this to happen.

It must have been a curse. Something placed on me because there was nothing I could have done to deserve everything that had happened.

*Flashback*

"Mama, I missed the bus," she rushed over to my first-grade self standing in the doorway, looking like a kicked puppy.

"Honey, how? You went early!" She said as she checked her watch. "Oh, I guess the time got away."

But that wasn't the only instance. It continued all the way into third grade.

"Please, I couldn't have failed! I knew all the answers! I studied!" I begged her to look it over just one more time, but my performance had disappointed the teacher. "This happens every time, and every time you never take the liberty of changing your excuse." She crossed her arms, and I couldn't look her in the eye anymore. "Now, if you would please sit down, I have to call your parents."

When it first happened, they tried to fight back because my parents had studied alongside me, watching me grasp the concepts. Then it turned into almost grasping. Eventually, they believed the test scores over me, too.

It never got better...in fact, it strengthened into a monster with no name. So, I gave it one. Bad luck. To me, it only made sense. As much as I wanted to believe I had done something wrong, even if it was my fault, I couldn't find the answer.

Things only got worse in seventh grade. So much worse. So much worse than what the average person would describe as the result of walking in cracks in asphalt or coming across a black cat.

"What do you think of me? I just want to know!" I said before gasping for air, as if to keep me from drowning to the bottom of the ocean. "I've liked you forever now, but I didn't know how to talk to you."

I knew the answer, but there was something in me that couldn't look away. The adrenaline of something so trivial, and yet so fatal to a young child.

The boy I always idolized with his dark red curls falling in his face and a gleam in his eye that he must have never noticed, for he was always encouraging everyone else.

"Oh, you do? That's so kind. I don't get told that often," he smiled, but then he changed, and I knew it wasn't going to be the response that I dreamed about. "I'm sorry, but I've never seen you before. I don't think I can return your feelings."

At least he let me drown in a calm ocean. At least he was nice.

But the ocean never stays calm for long. A storm was stirring, and I didn't even know it. It was after school when I saw him leaving with his friends. So many friends. SO many real friends that were interested in what he had to say.

When they parted, I decided to do something I never had done before, for I was scared whatever "it" was, it would hurt him too. Despite my bad luck, I followed him. I followed the red-haired boy down to his neighborhood, which surprised me to discover, wasn't far from mine.

But I wasn't there to stalk. I was there to apologize. "Hey!"

He turned, and the street that separated us seemed thinner than before. I could have sworn his eyes lit up, maybe in genuine joy. "Oh! It's you!"

"I just wanted to say sorry about earlier!" I started stepping onto the road. The wind was in my hair, blowing against me as if to say 'keep away from what you cannot have'. There was no way, when I was this close to actually meeting him, that I would listen to the wind. "I didn't mean to embarrass or confuse you! Can we start over?"

My question sounded more like a cry for help, but I wasn't aware I needed rescue.

I didn't see it. I only heard him. "NO STOP!"

The medics found me passed out on the sidewalk, with nothing to show from the accident but a mild concussion. That, and a small splotch of blood on my shirt. It was his blood. They didn't have to tell me that. My crush was dead, and I didn't know what I could blame at first. But for the first time, it was my fault. There were hundreds of decisions I could have made to change the course of my life, and change the span of his.

*End Flashback*

After that, it was surprising to receive such sympathy, or any attention, from my peers at all. It turns out, people are really nice to murderers.

Through that, I made two friends. My best friends, but I didn't know how much they liked me.

Kari walked to school, so I ran to her stop, where I usually met her on days like this. Days when time had me feeling just as helpless as ever. She, strangely, wasn't there. Was she sick? Was she hurt? What happened to my best friend and why didn't she tell me? Or worse, why couldn't she tell me?

I raced into her neighborhood at speeds most people couldn't dream of. That's when I saw it.

The ugly pink skies above were much deeper than when I had looked up before. And in the center of the brown, smog filled clouds emerged something much worse.

The end of the world.

In the distance I heard people screaming for their lives, for above them, a meteor was descending. And it was coming for me too. In panic and horror, I rushed up to Kari's doorstep. Time was blurring together as I banged on the door and screamed for her to let me in. For anyone to let me in.

That's when it hit me. A week ago, she had talked about how she was so excited to go to her grandma's and that she wouldn't be back until the Wednesday after fall break.

She wasn't home.

I turned, knowing that my running, the only gift the gods gave me couldn't save me if I tried. Everyone I knew was going to be wiped out, and it was all my fault. First, he died and now everyone else was going to follow in his footsteps.

I sat on the edge of the porch and looked into the sky. What an obscurely fitting way for my bad luck to end my short existence, of which I did nothing good with.

Maybe if he had survived, it could have been different.

That's when everything went out like a light.

The sky was still that ugly magenta when light reflected into my irises. Little did I know, the world had never been so different, and it would never be the same.

The sky then was blocked by a vain-covered eyeball staring into my own, but I was too disoriented to realize what it was or how it could be. My squinted eyes widened as I started to hear sound again. It was like the soundtrack of the apocalypse.

As my vision came into complete focus, it occurred to me that that's exactly what I was hearing.

The eyeball was a floating, not attached to a face and its small tentacles wiggled about. It appeared to be scanning me, looking at my limp body up and down.

Oh gods! I screamed in my head. I'm alive and so are these things!

I was on my feet in a matter of seconds, and I was using the gift of track meets to dash for my life. I couldn't find the ability to talk, and I couldn't tell if it was because of fear, or the thing that fell from the sky mutilated my vocal cords. Either way, I was terrified out of my mind.

Then I slowed in the middle of a random intersection when I saw what had happened to my town. It covered everything; buildings and stop signs and billboards and lamp posts in a horrid, gross form of nature. I wasn't even sure what I was looking at was natural. It certainly wasn't to me.

"What is this?"

Then I heard things behind me and was terrified to see that the floating eyeball had brought friends. They were all swarming around me and there was nowhere to run. They were shooting beams of light at me (because that was possible somehow), and resulted in burning sensations all over my body with fresh injuries every second.

Falling to the ground, I couldn't do anything but cover my head with my arms and wait for death a second time. I couldn't look up, not even when I heard a voice, and for a moment I thought it was him.

"WAIT! I GOT YOU!"

That was my only comfort, that maybe he had lived that whole time. But when I opened my eyes for just a second, I saw sky-blue eyes staring back. And they didn't belong to him.