"It's just so... UGGGGH! YOU KNOW?!" Lydia urged. She sighed. "Of course you don't. You're human..."

"You say that like you're not," I responded, raising an eyebrow.

Lydia Martin and I had be one recent friends since Allison had... ((Clears throat)) Anyway, Lydia had come to me for a shoulder to cry on. It was sudden and unexpected but she saw me in the hall and raced over, hugging me because she just needed a hug that badly. Not gonna lie. I loved it. And it started this whole friendship. So it wasn't really bad at all.

The thing was, she had this group of friends she was glued to. We didn't hang out as much as we would like, having to cancel and work around each other's sporadic schedules. I wondered if I should even be friends with Lydia. She was normal. Had a life. I was a freaking...

"Y/n?"

"Hm?"

"You asked- never mind. Do you remember?"

"Not really," I falsely admitted. I'd asked her why she'd spoken like she wasn't human. I remembered. I didn't bother asking again. I don't know why but I just felt like I shouldn't ask... Maybe it was those instincts of mine. Anyway, I knew I should just go along with it just in case.

"So do you have plans later?" She asked me.

"None planned," I answered vaguely. Sometimes things happened and I had to leave suddenly, kind of like she did. Or I'd find myself driving to places that I hadn't planned on going to or taking a nap and waking up somewhere weird and having to walk all the way home and take a shower before I met up with her, showing up late.

She chuckled, getting my underlying joke. "Wanna hit the movies? Or get something to eat? Something?"

"Sounds like fun!" I agreed, nodding and smiling.

"Drive me home, will you? I got a last second ride from Stiles this morning and left my car at home." She made a face.

I nodded. "Of course!" I got in the driver's seat and she slipped into the passenger side, and I drove off. "Don't worry about telling me where to drive," I told her. "I know where you live," I joked. Every time she gave subconscious directions and Lydia laughed, nodding.

As I drove, I kind of zoned out, going on autopilot. After a while I felt a hand on my arm. I looked over at Lydia as I came to a stop at -

At a building I was not used to. My eyes glued to the seemingly normal building, my knuckles white as my grip held tightly, getting even tighter as seconds passed. Oh no. I'd done it again. But with Lydia in the car this time. My wide eyes, terrified, looked at the building. This is when I'd get in trouble. I'd get into a fight or... or find a body. Something not normal. Something weird.

"Why... are we here?" Lydia asked. I looked over at her to see her eyes as wide as mine, reflecting the fear I felt.

"I -" I cut off. "I don't know." I cleared my throat. "I'm sorry. I was on autopilot, I guess. Just driving without thinking. Not even thinking. Come on, I'll take you home." Lydia's hand tightened on my arm, keeping me from moving my hand. Her head turned slowly and she got out of the car. "Lyd-" I began, but was cut off as the door closed in my face behind her. I scrambled out of the car after her.

To my astonishment, as I walked around the car to follow her, she was no where to be seen. My feet moved slowly as I walked farther forward, away from the building that made my skin crawl and into the woods just to the side. Walking for a while, I sighed, looking around.

Of course I was lost. That's so me.

Putting one foot in front of the other, I resigned myself to going to whatever I was going to. My powers were like that.

Now I say powers, but I really don't know what it is. I don't know what I am. I feel human and I act human... usually. I look human and smell human. I believe. But I don't think human. I don't live human. I find dead bodies and hear the voices of the undead and accidentally tap into the memories of people I didn't know when I got into a really bad car accident and slipped into a coma for a month when I was way younger.

Don't even get me started on the scream.

Easily marked as the weirdest thing about me, it attracted weird people and made things flash through my head. If I really tried and focused it, I could push people away from me with just my voice. I could shatter glass with just my scream. The sound released a weird thing that gave me... flashes. It made the voices louder and the weird things come more often. But I screamed anyway. I couldn't help it. When one is scared, they scream.

And there was always something to be afraid of.

I was getting better, though. More used to all the freaky, horrifying things that happened to me every once in a while.

My forward progression stopped as something in the corner of my eye caught my attention. I turned my focus to the side. A huge stump, wide and long, stood in front of me. It looked both daunting and welcoming, luring me to it in such a way that made me shiver in fear. So of course I walked towards it.

Nothing extraordinary seemed to be happening. I walked forward and touched the stump, running my hand along the smooth surface. It was weirdly smooth for a stump. Like it was sculpted more than it was a long-ago cut down tree. And it was so big. What tree could be cut down so smoothly that was this bug? How big was the axe? Or the man swinging it?

Suddenly I jerked my hand back, hissing, as a splinter caught into my finger. My eyes looked at the splinter, just under my skin. I pulled it out and blood beaded on the tip of my finger. Intrigier by the red color, I shoved the splinter back it, moving it around and wincing at the pain.

Why was I doing this? I have absolutely no idea. It was like I was out of control, my mind shifting to a different me. To the weird me. The... Other Me.

I did it again and again, until my finger was covered in blood and splinter holes. The hand holding the splinter dropped to my side and the splinter dropped from my grip, my eyes trained on the finger still only inches from my face. Slowly the red oozed down my finger.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, it fell down, like molasses crawling down a tree.

Slowly, slowly, slowly. Down, down, down. As red as... blood.

"Y/n? Y/N!" My eyes jerked to the side and I saw Lydia next to me. We were in the car and my hands were shaking violently, clutching the wheel. We were in the middle of an empty street, completely stopped. Lydia looked disgruntled, as if I'd stopped suddenly and she had been bucked forward. I looked at her, my eyes wide and terrified, and she looked back, just as scared. My mouth opened and closed and then opened and then closed again.

"S-sorry," I barely made out. Starting the car again, I moved forward, silently taking Lydia home. What had that been? I guess I'd never driven to the building. We'd never gotten out. I never wandered in the woods and found a weirdly large stump and made my fingers bleed.

As we neared her house, the car was still silent, so I reached over and turned on the radio. My second my mistake - the first being drive Lydia home in the first place, it seemed. My grip tightened on the wheel again as I pulled up to her house and stopped in front. Lydia was frozen in the passenger seat next to me.

Y/n... Y/n...? Y/n dear I need you to come here. Oh don't hide from me. That's ridiculous. Laughter.

I knew that voice. A memory filled my head as I heard the voice. Little, itty bitty me, running through a house. Maybe two years old. I was watching a home video. My grandma was chasing me around with a diaper in her hand, trying to get me to put it on.

You little stinker! Come here child...

A pause and an eery silence filled the car.

Lydia... I gasped. I'd heard my name from that radio so many times. Memories that I projected somehow into the system, to hear voices run through and out. I'd never heard anyone else's name, though.

You're my new best friend.

That was Lydia's voice. I saw a memory, suddenly, of me rifling through my locker when suddenly there was Lydia Martin across from me, talking to the new girl. Or she'd been new then. Allison Argent. Dark haired beauty she was, I'd been interested in her, but when Scott McCall goggled over her then Lydia claimed her as her new best friend, I'd lost interest immediately. I wasn't part of "that crowd".

Why did you do that?

Scott, I recognized his face. But it wasn't his face. This was a new memory. It was dark and they were in the middle of... the woods? Allison smiled at the boy in front of her that wasn't quite a boy, her eyes a little teary.

Because I love you.

My eyes weren't my own. His wasn't my memory. I knew that Scott and Allison were together before she died, but I also knew they were more on and off then together. I knew they were into each other but there always seemed to be a distance. I knew this because I could read people, and I saw them change over time. They became sadder and heavier as time passed. Especially once Allison died.

ALLISON!

Hands to my ears, I cringed away from the radio, gasping. That scream...

That was Lydia's voice. But her scream. That was my scream. The same thing that escaped my lips when my mother died before me and a bone-shaking shriek escaped my mouth, blowing the murderer into oblivion.

"What... was that?" I whispered after reaching over and slamming the radio off. I looked over at Lydia and she looked back, stunned.

"You heard it?" She demanded of me.

"Yes...?" I answered cautiously, feeling as if I shouldn't have at all.

"You're a banshee too?" Lydia demanded, even more quietly. Even more urgently.

"I... don't know...." I offered honestly.

"The scream. The banshee scream." I could feel it building inside of me and I shot out of the car and away from her. I heard that same scream I'd heard over the radio ring out and I took off, trying to run away. Anywhere but here. Anywhere but with her.

Arms wrapped around me and I was pulled into a chest, being knocked off my feet. Whoever caught me set me back on my feet. Their mistake. I looked over and parted my lips. That ever-so-familiar scream erupted from me and the person - SCOTT MCCALL?!?! - blew backward, through the air. I stumbled backwards, suddenly exhausted. My eyes looked through the thick haze weighing on my eyelids as I met Lydia's gaze. She looked... happy.

"I found another one!" She squealed, exhilarated. "I found another sane banshee!"

I was out of it too fast to ask her what she meant. So I fell, down, down, down, into darkness.

--

I woke up on an only partly familiar bed. It was Lydia's room and people stood all around me. My body locked as my gaze flitted from person to person.

Scott. Lydia. I knew they'd be here. Stiles Stilinski being here made sense, because Scott was here. Malia Tate, Liam Dunbar. Malia was Stiles' ex. Liam was on the team with Scott. But it still didn't make sense. There was a connection between them but not one that made sense of why they were all around me, gathered, looking at me like I was going to explode.

Lydia placed a hand on my arm and my head snapped to look at her. "What's going on?"

"Don't worry, sweetheart," Lydia soothed. "These are my friends, and we're all going to help you." I looked a little panicked and she sighed. "Hey, seriously. Don't worry. We'll talk and explain everything. Everything we know."

A sort of dread filled me, but accompanied with a sick kind of comfort too.

No matter what happened from here on out, nothing would be the same.

But now I had friends. Friends, answers, and a whole new world of possibilities.