“Ok, go ahead and tell us what you see Sarah.” The man behind the glass said.

    “I don’t see anything you idiot, you blindfolded me.”

    “You know what we want. Just tell us what you see.”

    “I’m telling you I’m not seeing anything, I need inspiration, spark, the visions they… they don’t just happen. They take time.” I said to the video camera in the corner I knew they were watching me through. The viewing room, as they called it, was all white, not a speck of dust. Even I was scrubbed down and dressed in all white. All they could see of me was the white chair much like the one at the dentist’s office, and my long fawn colored hair falling over the side.

    “Sarah you listen to me, and you listen well, President Trump is coming and he needs to know what will happen if he attacks England again.” The man said.

    “You want to know what will happen? I can tell you what will happen, with or without a vision. People will die, for a cause that only one man knows about!”

    “One man, and you.” The scientist said brusquely. “Now tell us what it is and what will happen if we attack England or you will be taken to 0400!”

    My chest sank, and my eyes wandered the blindfold. “If we attack England the other European countries will come together and destroy the United States, making a hole of ocean in the middle of the map.” I reported on my vision. “I am not sure what the reason President Trump even thought of this was, but that will be the outcome.”

    “Thank you very much Sarah, you may go to dinner now.”

    “Wait who are you? I normally work with Dr. Warbrust, and I am sure that you are not her.”

    “I am the director of the program. I will put your rudene- reluctance on your transcript.” He paused. “You must never tell your classmates, but you have been chosen by Mr. Trump to be his personal seer. You will work with me from now on.”

    The director? I always thought he was just a myth, an authority figure they dangle over the other scientists, and the incomps like myself. Incomps, that is what they call us who have ‘abilities.’ The two wall panels slid apart and a nurse came in to undo my restraints, and take off my blindfold.

After I put on my blue tank-top and black leggings I was escorted down the long blank hallway and through the double doors back into the school section of the facility. My escort let me go on alone and I walked towards the dining hall. Under the sign that says, ‘Sherwood Learning and Research Facility. The place where you belong.’  That is what they wanted our parents to think when they gave us up, that we would be protected and well educated. Although I know that is not the reason I was given up. My mom was always thinking of ways to get rid of me, that is the downside to my gift. I can read minds and predict the future, so whenever someone is thinking something terrible about me I have to know what it is and how it plays out in the future. It sucks.

    I looked up at the clock and realised that my seat at dinner might have been taken, I ran through the halls, up the stairs and into the buzzing dining hall. I went straight to the back between the long marble tables with matching benches and searched for Esme and Kyle. I saw them, two tables down with a big empty seat just for me. I went over and sat down next to Esme. Her wavy dark brown long bob floating over her purple blouse, her gold cross dangling from her wrist.

    “How was your viewing session? It took a long time.” Esme asked.

    “It was crazy they blindfolded me and kept asking me the same question over and over again. Oh! and then they told me that… Nevermind.” I said remembering what the director said about never telling anyone.

Kyle looked at my wrist and saw that the restraints had rubbed it almost raw, “Do your wrists hurt?”

“What?” I had been so dazed by being named the President’s Seer that I forgot how much I struggled before my vision came. After I looked at my wrists they hurt like hell. “Yeah they hurt.” I said looking at Kyle.

“Put ‘em here.” He said raising his palms.

I laid my wrists in his hands, and I felt an instant of relief as they closed. Kyle opened his hands and it was like my wrists were brand new. That is Kyle’s gift, healing and immunity to all pain and disease.

“There ya’ go.” He said releasing my hands and letting them fall.

“Thanks.”

Kyle looked at Esme and blushed. I heard him think, “Is she impressed?”  a giggle slipped out of my mouth. Kyle bit the inside of his lower lip and thought “Damn you Sarah, why do ya’ have to be reading my mind all of the time? Wait are you reading my mind now?”

I nodded and put my index finger and thumb together dragging them across my lips showing his secret was safe with me.

“Kyle, is she reading your mind?!” Esme exclaimed, “We made a pact to speak our feelings so none of us would be left out!”

“Student’s and faculty, here is your dinner.” The head chef announced. We passed around large platters of rotisserie chicken, green  beans, and mashed potatoes. Once we were done eating the loudspeaker came on, but it was not the chef, “Will incomp 4577 please come to the viewing wing doors to meet your escort. I repeat will incomp 4-5-7-7 please come to the viewing wing.”

“4577, Sarah isn’t that you?” Esme asked.

“Yeah.” I said with a confused look on my face. “I’d better go.” I walked to the viewing wing and met my escort. We went past the viewing rooms and up an elevator made entirely of mirrors, even the floor and buttons were mirrors. I went down a hallway with wooden doors every ten feet and I heard the buzzing of thoughts everywhere, but mostly from my escort.

“That poor girl has no idea what she is walking in to. Should I let her run? No.They might kill me, or maybe she will, they say there is no one else like her.”  The nurse thought.

“I’m not going to kill you, but if they are putting me in danger please tell me.” I said bluntly.

“They are not going to hurt you, but they are not very nice people. So just do what they ask and you will be fine.” The nurse said.

I walked into an office at the end of the hallway and sat in a leather chair, across the desk from me was a very large empty chair. I was all alone. My knee went up and down at a steady pace and I waited for someone to come.

“Are you 4577?” A masculine voice behind me asks.

“Yes, my name is Sarah.”

“Ah, okay Sarah.” The man said, “My name is David Konway and I will be your supervisor in the real world.”

“The real world? I’m confused.” I said.

“You will be moving to Washington D.C. to better assist Mr. Donald Trump.”

“I will do nothing of the sort! That bastard excuse of a president should be able to control his country without predictions of the future just like every other president!” I yelled.

“You see Sarah that is where you are wrong. Almost every other president had a personal seer, but you my dear are the most powerful, most accurate, and most reliable visionary of your time.” He praised.

“That is very… kind of you to say, but I knew what was going to happen once Donald Trump got elected and I do not want to have anything to do with it. So no.”

“Excuse me?”

“No. I will not leave this facility to go work for someone out to destroy entire nations. Now may I please go back to dinner?”

“I did not want to have to do this but you leave me no choice.” He grabbed the bust statue on his desk and pulled it toward him. Everything went dark and silent for a long time. I had a vision of myself locked in a room fit for a princess, alone for a very long time. I was sick, short on sleep, and very hungry. They were going to starve me if I did not give them what they wanted, what anyone wanted, answers.

I came to my senses in what felt like a van, I was sitting on the floor with my hands tied to a rod under the seat and a thin cotton bag over my head. “Punk kid thought she had a choice in the matter.” I heard one man think.

“I hope she satisfies the president, she is so young and I bet a nice little girl. It’ll be sad to see her go to waste.” Another thought. That is another weird part of my gift, people have no idea when I am reading them, so two people can feel like they are on the same page but I am the only one who knows otherwise.

I saw one of the men thinking about making out with his girlfriend and it made me want to puke. “Hey you up there dreaming about your girlfriend can you please think of something else, reading your thoughts is the only form of entertainment I have right now so, please…” The car swerved and crashed. The handcuffs ripped at my wrists as my body was flung forward. I try to read each of the men’s thoughts one at a time but they were all blank. A mind is rarely blank and when it is the state only lasts for a second or two, with each I counted to 30 with no brain response, they were dead. I sat there wishing I had Esme’s telekinesis and levitation abilities to get myself out of this mess, but all I could do was wait.

Finally I heard sirens coming closer and closer to the car. I heard the doors flung open and a young woman called out, “Are you alright?”

“I’m alive. I was taken and they thought I was going to be knocked out until they got to the drop location and when I said something they drove off of the road.” I yammered surprisingly short of breath. “Please get me out of the hand cuffs.”

She pulled the cloth off of my head and light fled my eyes as my hair fell to my waist. I looked at my bleeding wrists and remembered Kyle healing them to perfection what felt like an eternity ago. The woman cut my hands loose with massive bolt cutters, and carried me out to the ambulance. There were emergency vehicles everywhere flashing red-blue-red-red-blue. I turn my face into the chest of the woman carrying me, “It’s gonna be alright.” she said to me as I cried. I laid down on a gurney and was whisked away.

“Did the other men survive?” I asked the woman.

“I don’t think so sweetie. Can we call your parents?”

“I don’t have any, my guardianship belongs to Sherwood Learning and Research Facility.” I twisted my head away from the pain in my wrists, and listened to the woman’s thoughts.

“Sherwood Facility, is it an orphanage? Is it a boarding school? Poor girl will have to get both of her wrists sewn back together. I need to clean it out but I don’t want to put her through any more pain. Crap she has extreme internal bleeding, I won’t be able to treat it in the truck” She thought.

“I can handle the sting of cleaning it out, I have had it done before.” I said.

“What was that?” She asked confused.

“You were thinking about how you need to clean my wrists but you know it is going to hurt. I am used to the pain go ahead I might scream but that is okay.” The woman was astonished, I had completely forgotten that normal people do not know that people like me exist.

“Okay...” she said and skeptically poured liquid over my cuts causing me to scream at the top of my lungs.

“Sherwood is like a boarding school but they convince our parents to give us up for good because we are different.” I said once the stinging had stopped, “Most of us are never allowed out of the facility but I-” The phone in the ambulance rang.

“Hold on sweetie.” She said,and went to answer the phone. “Hello? -Yes I have a young girl - found in a black Cadillac Escalade - she is in critical condition she has to go to the hospital - oh - okay I’ll do what I can in the truck but you better have a surgical station setup when we get there - Okay be there in ten.”  She turned to me, “Change of plans, my boss said that her boss wants us to go to the White House Medical Unit not the Children’s National Medical Center.”

“This is getting really weird really fast.” She thought.

“I know what is going on, but I cannot tell you. Just do as they say and everything will be alright.” I said. I noticed the IV in my left arm for the first time and realised that I had not felt anything for quite a while. The woman finished bandaging my wrists and the ambulance stopped, they flung the doors open. It was like everyone around me was being fast-forwarded through the universe and I was the one with the remote. Like all I had to do was yell STOP as loud as I could and everyone would freeze. I was pushed inside and hooked up to more machines, I tried to block out the doctor’s thoughts by flushing my brain with my own but it did not work. The air was stale and crowded, I watched the lights go over my head as I was wheeled helplessly down into what they call an operating room. It was similar to a viewing room just with more machines lining the walls. The woman from the ambulance put a mask over my mouth and I drifted away into what felt like the state of a vision, but no vision ever came.

When I woke I was in a room with blue and white striped walls, and a big bed. I was alone. I was scared. I wanted to be home, but not with the mother the I barely knew, but with my friends at the facility. I did not care that my mother gave me up because that was where I belonged.

A man walked in, followed by another man, followed by another man, followed by yet another man, and finally in walked a man with crusty pale circles around his eyes and hair dyed the color of lemon pudding. “Hello Sarah.” He said.

“Hi there Mr. President.” I responded.

“I am so sorry for the trauma I put you through today. It was selfish and cruel. I really do want to make America great again, but I cannot do it alone.” He pleaded.

“Oh, cut the crap. I am not going to fall for your 4 billion dollar sympathy.” I said.

“What I was going to propose is that you go back to Sherwood, we give you a new room, annual salary, increased freedom, and in return you give me the answers I am looking for because I believe in your talents and I want you on my team.”

“You mean I get to go back to Sherwood, and live there until I graduate?” I said with a hopeful ring in my voice.

“Exactly.” He said, “It is not my first choice but it is the right thing to do.”

I sat there and cried tears of joy, at least now I know that under our tyrant president there are some very kind hearted advisors, and now I am one of them.