Chicago. It’s an alright city to live in, if you don’t mind living in a place that has the nickname ‘The Windy City’. Whoever came up with THAT name really didn’t know how to properly nickname a place. Oh yeah, I’m Adisa, by the way. Adisa Mary Dunham. Strange first name, right? It was my mom’s idea. Something about not wanting to give us ‘normal’ or ‘boring’ first names or something. I dunno.
So, you’re probably just dying to know more about me, right? Well, I guess I’ll start from the very beginning. I was born on August 1st, 1992. I’m the third, and final, of three kids. That makes me the youngest. I know, awesome right? My parents, Christopher and Jane Dunham, have always been pretty cool parents. I mean… as cool as parents can be. Let’s be honest, how cool are parents ever? Seriously…always trying to tell you to do this, that or the other. What do they think they are? Our bosses? Yeah right!
Back to my life story, though. As I grew up, I discovered that I had absolutely amazing fashion sense. Even as a little kid. It was obvious that my brother and sister were jealous. After all, they didn’t quite have my innate sense of good fashion. Of course, the clothes were always mostly just to make me look super good. I mean, what’s a girl without looking a little good, right?
After about age ten, my parents decided that I like totally needed another hobby other than hanging out with friends at malls and shopping and stuff like that. What did they choose to sign me up for? Guitar lessons. I started with you know, like classical and stuff, and then moved to Spanish and jazz and modern. I even got to learn electric guitar and bass eventually, so I could play rock songs totally more wickedly. Now, of course it takes a while to really learn super awesomely, but I’m sure I’ll get there some day.
When I was fourteen, something huge happened. There was a bomb explosion in New York City. The fashion capital of the United States. If that wasn’t bad enough, my sister Samara was living there. My whole family was like, totally devastated. Even me. I mean, I loved my sister, even if she didn’t quite have the fashion sense that I had. We all sorta grieved in our own ways, you know? My brother grieved by dropping out of college and joining the army. As for me, I went on a shopping spree in honour of Samara. It was the least I could do. And like, every time I wore one of those pieces of clothing, I totally thought about Samara.
After a while, life got back into a normal groove again, though we never really ever totally forgot about Samara. I started singing in my school choir. Turns out I’ve got a bit of a knack for it. Do people still use the word ‘knack’? Maybe talent would be a better word. Or flair. Yeah…flair. Well, my flair for singing definitely got me coolness points around the school. After a while, I was getting solos. Well, partly I was demanding them. But is it my fault that my flair for singing had a thirst that needed to be quenched? And that, mixed with my guitar playing? Talk about awesome. I decided to start taking the music composition class in high school as well. I mean, if I was singing and I was playing guitar, I might as well learn how to write my own songs and put them down on paper, right?
Shortly after my sixteenth birthday, something totally freaky but super awesome happened. It was late one night, like around like near midnight and I was reading some music for the choir. We had a majorly huge practice in the morning. Well, I was using a flashlight as a light ‘cause it was way past bedtime, and the flashlight totally ran out of battery power. Bummer, right? As I was blundering through my super eerily dark room to find new batteries or the light or something, I tripped and fell. As my face hit the ground, WHAM! My room was totally lit up. You know what was super British lady strange? I didn’t know where the light was coming from. And then I was like ‘Oh…em…gee…the light is totally coming from me!’ If it hadn’t been for my parents sleeping nearby, I would’ve totally freaked out and like…screamed. That’s how freaked out I was.
For a while, I was in total break up style denial. Full with ice cream and everything. I seriously did not want to admit that I was like a totally, like freak or something. I knew how some people talked about those ‘Evolved’ people. It wasn’t until I had a revelation (revelation is the right word, right?) that made me realize that this totally wicked awesome ability could be used to my advantage. I mean, seriously, in total and utter seriousness, I realized that I’d be able to save the money I put towards batteries toward clothing. I mean, duh! That should’ve been a no brainer, right? I started to test my ability, see how much I could do. It was super hard at first, I mean, to make your skin glow? How do you get your skin to glow? It was like totally tiresome. I so had to concentrate super hard. I just sit on my bed in my dark room and thought about glowage, making my hands glow or my fingers even. Something, anything! Usually I only got a faint glow, you know? But the harder I tried, the more I could do. I could even change the colour I emitted. Like, I could glow orange light or pink light or purple light or blue light or anything! I’d even tried more than one colour at once. That’s harder. Lots harder. That’ll take some super duper Oprah style practice. Sigh. How can a girl be expected to concentrate on that when there’s an awesome fashion sale going on?
Anyway, life kinda went back to normal. Only not. Except for most people it was like nothing had changed. I wasn’t about to tell people that I was ‘evolved’. I’m not crazy! One day though, I was like…totally accidentally caught in the middle of a protest by these people for ‘Evolved Rights’ and stuff like that. I didn’t have ANY choice but to be swept up in it, even though it was getting dark and I totally wanted to get home and watch Jersey Shore. No luck though. So, this one group called ‘Humanis First’ crashed the party. It was totally super scary. I was ready to piss my pants, I was so scared. I mean, they were hurting people! They’d’ve hurt me. There was one of those super big garbage bins in a nearby alley, so I totally ran as fast as a chapter skip on a DVD to get to that hiding place. As I was hiding behind that huge garbage bin, all super scared, my ability started to go all wonky and shine. Of course, I didn’t notice it right away. I’d pulled my knees up to my head and had my eyes closed. It was only when I heard a voice that I knew something was wrong. It was a Humanis First dude. He had a huge bat and I KNEW he was gonna use it on me. He has this mean looking face and everything! Just as he as lifting it up and about to bring it down on me (I was totes screaming by this point), a person tackled the dude. One punch from my saviour, and the guy was out cold…or at least totally confused.
So, this awesome guy who saved me totally grabbed me by the hand and led me far, far away from what was happened, all the while trying to calm me down so that my ability stopped working for a while. It worked. Turned out? This guy was a part of a group called the ‘Ferrymen’. He took me to a safehouse of theirs. He told me I’d be safe there until things calmed down, or until I wanted to leave. I totally stayed for a while, met a couple interesting people. After a few hours, even though I was super grateful, I knew that my parents would totally be freaking. I did ask, though, if I could return. They said were a bit iffy, and said they’d think about it. I left my number, just in case. After about a month or two, I got a call from them, asking if I wouldn’t wanna help out just a little bit. You know, with one or two chores every now and then, cooking and stuff like that. I totally said yes! Turns out they were a bit short staffed, so they needed all the help they could get. Well, I wasn’t gonna say no!
Well, it eventually came time for me to graduate. At my high school graduation, I got an award for ‘artistic achievement’, for all my musical achievements, including a song I’d written specifically for graduation and for my graduating class. Well, obviously they knew real talent when they saw it. After graduation, I got myself a job at a clothing store. Someone has to tell people how to dress to impress, right? And not too long after getting my job, I decided it would be like, a totally good idea to register myself as evolved. I mean, I still wasn’t gonna tell no one outside of the people who registered me and like, the government I guess, as well as the Ferrymen, of course, but otherwise, I didn’t really want any of my friends or family to know.
I eventually lost my job at the store because they were downsizing and I had like, low seniority or something, which Sesame Street sucks. So, to compensate for my totally huge loss, I went on a shopping spree at the rival store to the store I had worked at. There was like, totally one little snag though. I used daddy’s credit card. When he saw the HUGE bill that I’d charged to his card, he got pissed. And I mean like Jason Bourne pissed. He was sooooo unhappy. My parents ended up sending me to my grandparents, up near New York City. That’s how I KNEW they were super unhappy. They usually only send me there when I’m in trouble and they want me out of the house for a while. So I packed up my car that my daddy gave me for graduation and headed up there with tonnes of my stuff. Now, not too long ago, they called all excited like and told us that Samara was totally alive and not dead and stuff. You know what I think? I think they were completely mental, since Samara was in the city when the bomb went and her body never found. That was when I decided I didn’t wanna go home. I wanted to move into the city. So, I’m getting ready. I’ll probably crash with my bro, Tahir, or something. And I suppose it’d be good to get in touch with the Ferrymen in NYC. We’ll see.
