It's My Birthday, I'll Time Travel if I Want To by Caroline

It's My Birthday, I'll Time Travel if I Want To by Caroline - June 2014 Scholarship Essay

If I were to write a book today, it would be about an ordinary 15 year old girl that finds out she’s not so ordinary on her 16th birthday. I’ve considered writing books in the past, and this is usually the common theme to all my ideas. Maybe it was because I was a pretty unexceptional teenager and I always hoped one day I would wake up with time traveling superpowers, or the ability to read minds, or that I would be discovered and become a famous singer/actress/songwriter. I’m now 22, and none of those things ever happened, but there’s something about reading a book about strong, powerful females that makes me hope it might still happen someday.

My favorite book idea, one that has stayed in the back of my mind for many years, is about a girl that discovers she has the ability to go back in time. The title would be Timewalker. The idea is that there were 2,000 “Originals”, people that have been on Earth since the dawn of time and every time they die, they are reincarnated, but with no memory of their past lives. At the age of sixteen they are told the history of the Timewalkers and find out that they can travel back in time to their previous lives and alter history to keep the Earth safe. The other billions of people on Earth today are the effects of their alterations, but the Timewalkers strive to make their alterations as unnoticed as possible. The problem is that the Originals didn’t all get along. There was a faction of Originals that felt they should be acknowledged by the human race and that they should rule over them rather than stay in the shadows of time. This faction does all they can to kill current Timewalkers and find their newly born reincarnates in order raise them as their own and mold them to their faction’s ideas.

The main character Mille, was born to normal, unexceptional parents and she lived a normal, unexceptional life for five years. Coming home from her first day of Kindergarten, the school bus pulled up to her home, but her home was destroyed with her parents nowhere to be found. The police said it was a gas leak that caused and explosion that burned so hot and fast her parents were assumed dead although there were no remains to be identified. Millie was taken in by one foster family after another, never staying in the same home long. She learned to depend on only herself, but other than that one unordinary event, her life remained pretty unremarkable. On her 16th birthday a strange, graying man shows up to the group home Millie had been staying between foster homes and claims to be her uncle. He has all the right paperwork to prove he’s her uncle, but Millie doesn’t believe him. After bringing her home, her “Uncle” tells her the story of the Timewalkers.

She learns that her parents, who were Timewalkers as well, aren’t actually dead. That they were found by the faction of evil Originals and traveled to one of their many past lives just as their house exploded. They knew the only way to protect Millie was to hide in the past but Millie couldn’t Timewalk yet. They knew she would be put into foster care and hoped the temporary nature of foster homes and the constant moving would keep her hidden from the evil Originals.
The remainder of the story goes on as Millie discovers she is one of the most powerful Timewalkers. Her task is to find her parents and use their help, along with the other Timewalkers she meets, to defeat the evil Originals and restore the Timewalkers to their original purpose.

But are the Timewalkers still needed?