Once upon a time, in the 21st century, a boy named Adam with a perfect life with his parents vanished from beneath his feet at age 9 when his parents were killed in one of the World Trade Centers on 9/11 when they went on an important business trip. He was sent to live with his Aunt Brianna, his godmother and mother's sister in suburban New York a little north of the Big Apple. Adam turned rotten, stubborn and easily angered after the tragedy. His aunt tried all the methods she could think of to teach him a lesson and change his behavior, but with no avail.

One weekend, she took him camping near the Canadian border, thinking he needed to get away from society itself. But, to her disappointment, it only aggravated Adam. As they sat around a campfire one night, Adam complained about their surroundings, the cold; the odd, annoying noises, the bugs, anything he could think of. Tired of his constant, unending flow of bitterness and negativity, Brianna went to sleep in the tent, reminding Adam to put out the fire out before going to sleep. As the silence crept around and he heard his aunt snore, clearly unconscious, Adam only stared at the fire and prayed for this "vacation" to be over.

Suddenly, out of the gloom of the trees, a woman with dirty, tattered clothes, a shabby hat and a scarf wrapped around her nose and mouth stepped towards the fire. Adam stood up with narrowed eyes as she approached. She asked if she can sit by the fire for a little while to warm her chilled limbs. Adam forbade her to go near and to make her own "hobo" fire in an oil drum. She tried to convince him but he still refused to allow her to sit on a log across from him, for he didn't want to look at some bedraggled old hag.

She then stripped all the dirty clothes, hat and scarf to show her beautiful, bright white dress, her long flaxen, curly and lustrous hair, perfectly shaped lips and defined chin from beneath. Adam was so surprised that all he could do was stare, but after he regained his senses he apologized to what appeared to be a model standing before him and invited her to sit down if she wanted to.

She denied the offer and said, "I've been watching from afar ever since your parents' tragic end. Believe it or not, but I'm an angel sent to check on you and see if you really are as rotten as they say. Turns out that they were right. Unfortunately for you, I'm an angel of karma. Can you see where this is going?"

Adam made a movement to alert his aunt in her tent but she held up a hand and he froze on the spot, unable to move a muscle. "Not so fast. You need to face your punishment first. What I'm about to do will cause you inexplicable pain and will scar you in the process. But I'll give you a chance to redeem yourself: If you can make someone fall in love with you in your high school years, despite your horrible appearance and nasty temper, I will erase the scar from you as if it never was. But you must have someone fall in love with you in high school. I don't care if you have to fail to stay there, but you have to feel love from another before you're 21. You got that?"

Adam couldn't nod, much less move, so he just stood there.

"Good," she said satisfactorily. "Now for your punishment. Brace yourself."

She closed her fist and he fell forward into the campfire. As soon as he hit the fire, the spell was lifted and he could move; he thrashed instantly as he felt the intense heat go from his face to his chest to his legs as it spread through his clothes. He screamed and rolled out of the fire, running to the river past the tent and diving in right into the thankfully nearby water, feeling the relief spread through his limbs as the water doused the fires and cooled his skin. He was able to crawl onto the shore before he passed out on the spot.

He woke up to florescent lighting and the beeping of a heart monitor. As he gradually woke up he realized he suffered third degree burns on half of his body and will be scarred for the rest of his life.

Devastated and eager for someone to take the blame, he tried to tell his aunt that a woman pushed him into the flames, but with no gain—from anyone. Everyone he tried to convince wouldn't believe him if he spoke of how he got the burns unless he said it was "a campfire accident."

Finally, one day he was able to convince not one, but three others that an angel of karma forced him into the campfire and that he must find someone to fall in love with him before the end of high school: his father's sister's daughter, his cousin, Annie along with her friends Jean-Luc and Cameron. Despite how Adam has ignored Annie and disrespected her ever since his parents' death simply because of an age difference, Annie somehow felt obligated to help him in his seemingly desperate time of need, convincing her friends to help too.

And so they agreed to help him, putting up with his rash decisions and temper for four years, but found out that he only had a tough exterior and was extremely self-conscious and easily offended because of his burns. He would get into fights with many who criticized his looks, getting suspended for a week each time. Adam ended up failing three times because of his suspensions.

So it comes to his last year to find someone to love him. His cousin and her friends became desperate and started setting him up on blind dates, all ending with the girl running out in hysteria or Adam stomping out of the room, red-faced and destroying everything in his path.

Then a new girl came to town…


Karisa stepped into her new house in suburbia with her luggage, looking around excitedly at her new surroundings.

"So?" her dad asked with a giddy grin on his face. "What do you think?"

"It's much better than our apartment in New York!" Karisa cried, returning the smile.

"And take a listen," he said. "What do you hear?"

Karisa listened and smiled even wider. "Nothing."

"Exactly! No car horns, no ambulance sirens—"

"No shouting of angry walkers when a cab almost runs them over," she added.

"Oh it's pure bliss! I'm loving this life already! Now let's get settled quickly," he said, taking a box of his things upstairs. "We have many boxes to unpack and I need to be well-rested for my first day on the job at your new school."

"Yes Father," she only said, still in wonder at how roomy it felt to have ceilings taller than seven and a half feet.

All the furniture in the house had already been placed, but the rooms lacked decoration, which Karisa would be happy to attend to in her time spent without her nose in a novel, book of poetry or encyclopedia (though she preferred fiction).

Karisa grabbed the piece of luggage she was lugging and carried it to her new room.

Just looking at the bedroom made her mind go blank it was so bland; everything in the room—even the furniture—was white except for the carpet, which was cream. She only imagined with a sigh of how much she'll have to do in this room, let alone the rest of the house, and she knows her father won't be attending to it. Being the only woman in her small family, she had to take some responsibilities such as that along with a good majority of the cleaning.

Oh the cleaning, Karisa thought with dread. This will take much longer to clean than their two bedroom apartment.

She shrugged it off though and began the extensive process of unpacking all of her possessions and putting them in their correct place in the many drawers and closet space.

By eight o' clock in the evening, all the boxes of essentials had been emptied out and put in its proper place, and Karisa fell on her bed in exhaustion, glad that the whole moving procedure was almost complete. Now she just needed to get used to the house, neighborhood and school. The most sensitive part of the process, she thought.

She was going into the school year in its second semester. It seems an awkward time to enter a different school, but she has only a year and a half of high school to go, being a junior this year. So far though, it hasn't been as eventful as she had hoped for, but her junior year was bewitched with extremely difficult college courses that she decided to take early so that her senior year would be more fun and filled with less stress. At this point, Karisa just has to bear through it. She was halfway done after all.

Unnaturally though, as most teenagers are, she wasn't nervous about others not liking her or not making any friends. Sure it would be nice to make a few along the way, but she would never have time to hang out with them if she did obtain a few.

Before in New York City, she only had a few acquaintances to greet in class and in the hallway. She sat by herself at lunch, absorbed in whatever book or volume she was currently reading, nibbling on a sandwich made by herself and brought from home. In classes, she would be one of those students that raised their hand whenever the teacher asked a question, only Karisa raised it because she simply knew the answer and was eager to learn, and it confused her when fellow classmates would glance back with a disapproving look on their faces when she answered correctly. She never stopped in the hallways to talk to anyone, having had perfect attendance since seventh grade, and that includes having no tardies, a rare feat indeed.

Being as it may, she was perfectly happy with the way things were. She enjoyed the company of her books and her father, and that was all she needed at this point.

Ready for her first day at a new high school with her clothes laid out on her desk chair and backpack packed with everything she'll need, Karisa went under the freshly laundered covers of her bed after a nice hot shower and read under the lamplight before falling asleep.