Free Looking For Trouble by Trice Hickman

“Tell me what’s wrong.”
    Alexandria didn’t know any other way to begin the conversation, so she blurted out a truth that was long overdue. “I’ve been hearing voices again.” She eyed her mother carefully, waiting for a reaction.
    It had been more than sixteen years since Alexandria had uttered a word about the voices she often heard, and now—she wasn’t just ready to talk about it—Alexandria was ready to take action. When she saw relief wash over her mother’s face, she instantly knew she was going to get answers to her questions.
    Her parents had discovered long ago that she had the gift of prophesy. They’d known she was a special child from the day she was born. She had been a small preemie who’d suffered health challenges at birth and had survived despite being very ill. After she recovered as a newborn, she’d never been sick another day in her life. Not even a sniffle or the slightest hint of a cold. But that wasn’t the reason why Victoria and Ted Thornton knew their baby girl was special. They knew because of the things she said and did, and because of the voices she often heard.
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    The first time Alexandria told her parents that she’d heard voices speaking to her, they thought she had dreamed up imaginary friends, as lots of playful children did. But when she recited their conversations, which involved people, places, things, and, most upsetting of all, strange happenings and world events that a five-year-old couldn’t have possibly understood, her parents took notice that something wasn’t right.
    But it wasn’t until Alexandria’s paternal grandmother died, and then a few months later her father suffered a heart attack—a condition Alexandria had actually predicted one Saturday morning before watching cartoons—did they realize their daughter had abilities that were beyond ordinary clairvoyance. And what they discovered next made them both look upon her with awe and protective carefulness.
    After the drama of her grandmother’s death and her father’s health scare, Alexandria told her parents very matter-of-factly that her late grandmother had spoken to her. She told her to always take pride in the fact that she was born a beautiful little black girl and would grow into a strong woman. The irony of it all was that her father’s mother had hidden the fact that she was half-black and had passed for white until the day she was buried six feet under. “Granny Carolyn told me that I’m a pretty little black girl just like she was, only I’m caramel and she was vanilla,” Alexandria had giggled to her parents’ shock and disbelief. At the time, no one but Ted, Victoria, and one of Carolyn’s lifelong best friends knew about that secret.
    As the years went on, Alexandria’s gift became stronger, and it allowed her to protect herself and her family. She began to take precautions that others might not have, because she could see what was coming.
    During an end-of-term celebration at the private day school she’d attended, she didn’t pile onto the large merry-go-round at recess with the other second-grade children in her class. She hadn’t wanted to end up with a busted lip, gashed chin, or, worse, a broken rib, as several of her classmates experienced when a spoke dislodged in the play equipment’s axle, sending all the children spiraling to the ground. Although she was a natural performer, she didn’t participate in her fifth-grade class’s production of Cinderella because one week into rehearsals, the entire cast came down with a terrible case of meningitis. And she was adamant one Friday evening that her mother should not attend a party that her event-planning and catering company, Divine Occasions, had organized. Alexandria even went to the great lengths of hiding Victoria’s car keys, making her more than an hour late for the event. When Victoria