Chapter one
He was beautiful in an exotic, inhuman way. His face was impassive, his skin a light gray, with a sort of pearly sheen that brought out the sparkle in his coal black eyes. His hair, a rich dark shade of brown, hung in thin dreadlocks down his back. He wore only a dark pair of jeans. Standing, lean and muscled, at well over six feet, he was imposing, terrifying. I woke in a sweat, just as he began to extend a large hand toward me.
Groggy, caught between nightmare and reality, I sat up from underneath my blankets and shook my head to rid my mind of the tendrils of the dream. This wasn't the first oddly realistic dream I had had since I came to England, but it was easily the most vivid. And the most frighteningly alien. A glance at the Mickey Mouse clock near my bed revealed that the time was 5 15. It was some sort of irony that now, removed from New York stress and transplanted into idyllic England, I couldn't sleep through the night. Well, there was little point in trying to sleep now only to rise at 6 00 for breakfast. It wouldn't surprise me if these dreams permanently altered my internal clock.
Now fully awake, I removed myself from the bed to flick on my desk lamp and pull out my Chemistry Practice Questions packet. Over the past two weeks I've found that working with the rational is the best way to combat the vivid, irrational dreams that plague me here. School is also my way out of this mess. I'm a ward of the Hollow Hill Orphanage for 2 years, until I turn 18, so by that time I will have had to have studied hard and won major scholarships to attend college outside of this tiny community. Most kids living here wind up attending the Shyroe Community College, which is around 5 miles away, and then they happily work in the same little local town, Shyroe, that they lived and learned in. But not me. I want out.
Chemistry Packet: Molecular Geometry. Name: Julia Rose Miller, I scrawled across the top of my packet. Date: 12/5/08. First problem: sketch the three resonance structures for SO3. Damn. Maybe I'm not so awake after all. I keep imagining my old Advanced Chemistry class back in New York. I had attended Orange Valley High School up to two weeks ago, and I can still remember each of my 14 chemistry classmates. Sometimes I run through their names, just to make sure I hadn't forgotten any of them. I fear the day I won't remember them well enough to do even that. It's weird to realize that I probably will never see any of them again. Their lives and mine, separated by a car crash that killed my mother, father, sister, brother. Oh damn. Now I really can't concentrate.
I rested my cheek on the desk and let time crawl by in seconds, minutes. I stared at the Mickey Mouse clock, an anonymous gift unwittingly left by some previous occupant. 15 minutes until the alarm will ring to wake up Megan, my roommate. 14 minutes. I guess the roommate situation will train me for college. I try to think of everything in terms of college. It's the only thing I have to look forward to. 12 minutes. I imagine my day. I will dress in this little awkward room with my back to Megan, as I have for the past two weeks. I will eat with the 30 other orphans, aged 4 to 18. I will go to school. I will return to chores and homework. 9 minutes. The weekends are the worst. They drag on like the stories my little brother used to tell. 8 minutes. I started to get ready, gather my clothes, and strip down while my roommate was still unconscious. I still have a lot of my old clothes. Actually, most of them are still in my suitcases. I hadn't unpacked yet because this place doesn't feel like home. 4 minutes. Dressed in jeans and my favorite Stanford sweatshirt, which once belonged to my sister, I lay on top of the blankets on my bed to wait the shrill noise that begins another morning.