Hi! This is my first story. I learned English in high school, so sorry for the mistakes. I don't own anything except the plot.

Chapter 1: 5 A.M.

For the hundredth time that night, Aria turned in her bed and checked the time on her alarm clock: 5 A.M. She still had one hour left before she had to get up. She sighed. She couldn't sleep. She was thinking too much. She was so stressed! That day was her first day of work as an English teacher at Rosewood High, the local high school from a quiet suburb near Philadelphia. She had dreamed about starting teaching ever since she had obtained her diploma from NYU the year before. At that time she was so excited. She had been offered a job at St-Judes, a private Manhattan high school with one of the best English program in New-Jersey. But sometimes life's plans aren't the same than the ones with make for ourselves. And soon, just before the school year started, Aria's life collapsed. She found herself alone to raise a 4 year-old girl.

Aria's plans of renting a loft in Brooklyn were out of the question. She looked, but all she could afford since she had to take care of a child was too small, or too far from work, or too dirty… She thought a lot and then she decided to quit everything. Aria couldn't afford taking care of a child on her own along with renting a cozy loft in New-York.

So she decided that maybe New-York with its polluted air and noisy streets wasn't the perfect place to raise a kid. The playgrounds were rare and there wasn't enough room for a little girl to discover the world.

So Aria called the principal of St-Judes and explained him why she couldn't take his job offer anymore, why she needed to take the year off to adapt to her new situation and why she needed to move away to a quiet place.

She spent a lot of time trying to decide where she should move to until she found it; the perfect home; a modest two story yellow house with a large backyard, a big oak tree and a large front porch with two white rocking chairs sitting on it. There was a garden in the back and the house was circled by a white fence; the perfect place to raise a child. And it was affordable considering the amount of money Aria had inherited in the past weeks.

So she packed her things and moved away with Lily-Ann, to her new house in Rosewood.

That was 12 months ago. After taking time to adjust to her new life, Aria was finally ready to start living again. After months of being all alone at home with Lily, Aria was ready for a change. She was tired of the solitude. Her father didn't talk to her ever since she had revealed to her mom that he was cheating on her with one of his students, while her mom, after hearing the news, divorced, met a guy, and moved with him in Austria. Sure she called often, but it wasn't like having her there to help her. And her friends? Well, she had a few in New-York, but they all stopped calling the minute she found herself alone with Lily.

So yeah, Aria was ready to build a new life in Rosewood. Yes, there were still night when she cried herself to sleep, still not understanding why it happened to her, but they were getting less frequent. And, somehow, the idea of teaching gave her hope. Hope that finally she would be able to live her life.