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© 2013 HRH Princess Sophie Audouin-Mamikonian   Monologue: My name is Indiana I’m seventeen years old, and I’m a monster. Not the kind with tentacles and purple blotches that rushes at people screaming, “Arrrrghhh!” No, I’m the ordinary kind, the kind you don’t notice. The kind that looks human. The most dangerous kind. Not that I’m dangerous. I wouldn’t hurt a fly, even if I could catch one. You wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at me. There’s no scar on my forehead, no golden eyes or icy beauty, no long teeth or thirst for blood. My belly button looks like anybody else’s. If you put my blood into someone, it wouldn’t do anything special, unlike Superman’s. My eyes are blue—dark blue pupils, blue irises. When I’m tired they make me look like a surprised owl. Oh yeah: my hair is weird, dark blond, but the ends are jet black. I’ve tried trimming it to make the black tips disappear, but nothing works. My hair grows so fast that they’re back three days later. I’m cute, apparently. Or that’s what Nanny, the woman who has looked after me since I was really little, says. My mother was crazy about Indiana Jones, so she named me Indiana Teller. Pathetic. Still, I can see better than most people, and I can smell better, though that’s something I often regret when I’m in a crowd. I hear better, too. I’ve got a big family, lots of cousins, my grandfather, grandmother, Karl, and Amber Teller. And my mother, Jessica. Who is insane. She’s locked up in a very special institution reserved for our unnatural race. Her mind wanders, and she’s unable to tell between the present, the past, or the future. She never knows where she is, sometimes she doesn’t even know who she is. Seeing her breaks my heart, so I almost never visit her although most times she doesn’t even know I’m there. Maybe she resents me. After all, she killed my father because of me.   Chapter One: He Who Wasn’t a Wolf I was born into a respectable family of werewolves. Respectable, because Grandpa is the leader of one of the most powerful clans in North America. Werewolves, because that’s what he and Grandma are. We raise cattle on the largest and wealthiest ranch in Montana. We’re rich because we have to be rich; we can’t allow anyone to know we exist, and only money can protect us. I was six years old when I realized I wasn’t like the other members of my family. Once they were able to change, I began to hate them for turning into little werewolves at the drop of a hat. They often did it just to taunt me. My father had been a werewolf, so I waited to change, too, but I never turned into anything, nor did I display the slightest power or the tiniest scrap of strangeness. At eight years old, however, I discovered I might be something better than a werewolf, something stronger. “A time-tracker,” Nanny told me. “The most marvelous, strangest, and most precious thing alive. If your power manifests itself, everybody will bow down to you.” It seems the doctor at our hospital cut the umbilical cord, and my mother smiled and vanished, leaving behind an empty hospital gown. My father was so startled he almost dropped me. Just as suddenly, my mother reappeared. For weeks after that, my father was hailed as a messiah for bringing a time-tracker into the family. Although she’d disappear, just her mind traveled, which is why time-trackers can go wherever they like; they’re only limited by the speed of thought. No secret, code, or bank is safe from their power. Before my mother lost her mind, she’d told my grandparents that her body hung in limbo, someplace where it stayed warm and safe until her mind returned. I think he hated it. He had fallen in love with a beautiful young woman, and now he was stuck with an alien who spent her time vanishing, fascinated by what she discovered on her travels. As time passed, between her powers and my needs, Mom neglected Dad, which worsened once my grandparents started to use her. Thanks to her, we got very rich because by going into the past, Mom learned all the skeletons in the family closets. And, to my father’s and grandparents’ great disappointment, I was not a werewolf. I wasn’t the first human child born to wolves, but I was the first allowed to live. A tiny endangered species like ours can’t risk diluting the purity of its blood, so the wolves called an Assembly to discuss what to do. The leaders of our pack weren’t compassionate in their decision; they thought of the advantage of having not one, but potentially two time-trackers. A few weeks after the Assembly, my father seemed to decide I was the cause of all his problems, that my birth had set everything in motion. He started to hate me. It seems my mother returned from one of her trips while my father was drunk. Nobody knows what happened next, aside from the two screams that came from my bedroom. Jolted awake, those in the manor changed into wolf shape and raced to my parents’ room to find me crying in my cradle and Mom rocking Dad in her arms. There was blood everywhere. Along with a silver dagger that had pierced his heart. They got nothing more out of Mom. She became catatonic, then started vanishing more and more often, coming back with increasingly confused and incoherent stories, information, and data. When she returned, she’d reappear in exactly the same place. Why didn’t they kill her for murdering my father? Grandpa would’ve been glad to rip her throat with his own fangs, but he needed the time-tracker to preserve his clan. So Mom got a reprieve, because in her madness, my mother did the impossible. One day when she rematerialized, she didn’t return from the past, she returned from the future. She simply came back and recited with perfect clarity the price changes of major stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Index…for the week ahead. After that, there was no more talk of killing her. Someone was by her side twenty-four hours a day to record everything she said. Our clan became even more powerful and wealthy enough to have gotten out of the cattle business. But we didn’t. I wanted to brag to all the bullies that I might someday be more powerful, but I had to keep my potential a secret. My life depended on it. Basically, I have two possibilities: I won’t be either a wolf or a time-tracker, and not having any power will drive me nuts. Or I’ll get my time-tracker power and wind up insane like my mother. Awesome. I love my life.