Chapter 1: Masks in the darknessBeing a mute used to be simple before all the craziness started. I just can’t talk and that’s who I am. Everyone at school and my parents knew the deal. Yes, I had my fourth assistant teacher, struggling her way next to me, trying to assist me with every thing, every step of the way. I had my Mum, constantly checking on me at home, encouraging me to do homework. I had a pretty good support in Shanghai, considering how people that are different are usually treated like dirt here. Mum was pretty much the best she could be. She had given up on me ever speaking long ago and we had figured every out, so things were normal. I had finally made it to year twelve, or to the American students, senior year, so being a mute in a Shanghai international school, wasn’t really that bad. Things were definitely not perfect but I would give anything to go back to that, like it was before. I heard my first voice that year, right at the be

 Chapter 3 I’ll never eat apples againAfter hearing that deep voice I switched off for a while. I took a few days off and focused on keeping all of them out of my head. I didn’t know at the time, who belonged to the voice that answered me and despite feeling excited that I could actually communicate with people directly for the first time in my life, I was too freaked out to try it again for a while. I listened to my favourite old Wu-tang albums. The strong confidence of Method-Man and the rest of them distracted me for a while and after a few days I plucked up the courage to go back to school. I had to go anyway because I had a math exam. I was given special permission to do my math test alone. I guess everyone could tell something was up. I decided to take my test to the junior area for a change of scenery. I liked the plants that hung from outside the classroom windows in the primary area of the school. It felt easy seeing all the kids paintings o

How To Destroy a New TeacherBeing at an international school I used to think that there was such a variety of perspectives because of all the students from around the world. We had many students who were Japanese, Taiwanese and American. When I listened to their thoughts, however, I found that they were mostly the same. They were all jealous, ambitious and driven to satisfy their own needs. The teachers, I found were struggling to contain this but the next voice I heard made their lives even more difficult. You see, some of these kids were basically trying to get them fired or worse. One kid had basically written a guidebook on how to do it all. He called it: How to destroy a new teacher and I hooked onto his thoughts while he was finishing his sick manifesto. These are his thoughts:Now some kids might think it’s easy to make a new teacher burst into tears on their first week. Most of them come in quite nervous, a

 I had been into hip-hop music for a while. Nobody knew it, but I noticed other students talking about rappers and sometimes they would try to rap too. I heard there was this rapper at school and I quickly found his voice, drifting into mine. At first I was entertained by his efforts to prove everyone that he was a real MC, but when I heard what he did, I was terrified.Our teachers always told us we could be anything we wanted to be. We could fulfil whatever desire we wanted, so I guess they were right about that. They had no idea about anything else but at least they realised one thing. We could be anything we wanted and I showed everyone that you could go from nothing to the most popular kid in the school.Before I changed, my school was really lame. I mean everyone was moping around listening to depressing grunge rock. The boys had long unshampooed hair and the girls didn't even bother to brush theirs. It was like stepping into t

Another text from Mum: Don't forget to take your medication.Medication? What medication was she talking about. At the time, I didn't realise or had completely forgotten that I was on medication. I had been too obsorbed in the voices of the students to remember. This only made things worse of course, because I should have really been taking my medication, as Mum advised. I forgot completely again when another voice came to me. This boy, who ran some sought of anti-bullying business at school was absolutely crazy. I instantly heard his voice inside my head say:   Do you hate bullies? Are you tired of being scared? If you have a bully problem call me, I’m your man! If you call 138-767-3923 your bully will soon be gone! Don’t worry, no one will find out!It was like an advertisement and it drew me closer to him. Then his voice overtook my mind and I couldn't stop it. I heard: I wrote this on as many toilet doors