Evelyn, Isabella, and Seraphina had never left their hometown of Hillsdale, Michigan.

• Continued from Prologue

Six Hours Earlier

They never even interacted much with anyone from their own town, until finding each other in the seventh grade. Now on a bus of mostly strangers to the nation’s capital, they would be totally overwhelmed, if not for the strength they always felt together.

Somehow, once together, being branded freaks never bothered them anymore. Together they felt impervious to any attack. The bullies were still there. The judgemental looks and whispers amplified since their union. One loner in the corner was something for jeers. Three marching around like they own the joint, while ignoring everything and anyone they walked by, was just weird.

Everyone – teachers, guidence counselors, some really bad anti-bully videos, their adoptive parents, each with their own set of part time parental annoyances – said “It gets better!” Now, as juniors, they just didn’t care. They had each other. While the world was stuck in petty garbage, they grew out of their victim faze.

There were two hundred students, all branded gifted and talented, packed onto five Washington, DC bound buses to get a personal tour from Dr. Margaret Chase, the Congresswoman from Michigan on a crusade for education, especially providing specialized course study to a wide range of learning challenges, nuerodiversity, and more.

There were enough seats for all, but Evelyn, Isabella and Sarafina crammed into two, as not one wanted to sit away from the others. As the caravan crossed the 14th street bridge, Evelyn sat up.

“Woah, I just had a deja vu”

Evelyn always seemed to have a sense of things to come. She had more deja vu moments daily than most have original thoughts in a lifetime.

“Really!?!” Isabella was beyond curious about everything. She just had to know how things work – WHY they work. She was now staring into Evelyn’s eyes, which were staring at monuments of Washington, DC. “Be more specific.”

“They need to turn on the air conditioning. How is it this much hotter here than back home?” Saraphina was sweating. She always had a deep sense of things. Empathy seems to miss the point. It’s like she could reach in and just grab you with her stare.

“Ooooh, feeling hot? You know what that means?” Isabella was split in focus now.

“No, what?” Sarafina almost wanted to know.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Isabella was somewhere between cute and annoying, which is why the other two loved her.

“I’m probably just excited. It’s not every day you get to meet your Congresswoman.” Sarafina tried to deflect focus from herself. Even from Isabella, she hated being the center of attention, and Isabella is always intense.

As the buses turned onto Jefferson Drive, most students opened windows to clearly catch for their feed and followers, every inch, every angle, every unnecessary extreme close up of the Washington Monument, The Mall, The Smithsonian, the hot dog and other food carts, and the thousands of tourists walking to their next trap. But as they started to see the Capital Building through the trees, and the three girls froze.

The buses circled the building, providing a three hundred sixty degree view for videos, before stopping to drop the students off at the reflecting pool. As the students stood to debark, a chorus of screams burst from the back of the bus.

• To be continued… Chapter 2: Five Hours Earlier