Chapter 1

Lowell's Plantation

Prologue: My name is Jennifer. I was named after my master's late sister. I looked at myself in the mirror. I was beautiful. I had long straight dark brown black hair, and my features were uncanny. But when I looked in the mirror, I didn't see a prideful girl, I saw a broken girl who had lost everything….. Mama said there would be days like this, but I never imagined I would be alone. What year was it now? I looked at the calendar. That's right, 2013. I was now 291 years old. No friends and no family. The girl in the mirror looked torn. What was the point of being immortal if you had nobody to share your life with? I know you are wondering how I got to this point. It started when I was a slave in the 1720s. Let me start at the beginning.

I woke up to the sound of another slave being whipped. Really, when was Charles gonna learn that you can't just up and run away from the plantation.

This is our curse. We have dark skin, therefore we have no choice but to be submissive and do what is expected of us. I have made my peace a long time ago, and besides, being a slave wasn't all that bad…. Well for me it wasn't anyways. I was born on this plantation.

My parents came right from the mother land and had thick accents when they spoke. They always spoke to my siblings and I about the freedom they once knew before they were captured, and brought on huge boat to a foreign land where they were beat into submission. I wrenched my mind from the past they told me and to the task at hand. I was a house girl. Mama said it was because I was fair-skinned and pretty. She always kept my hair in cornrows on my head, saying, "One day, master will have you become something else, and your hair must be beautiful when that time comes."

I always thought that she meant take me to a party like some of the other pretty female slaves, but boy was I wrong. I got dressed in the beautiful black dress that the house hands wore, and mother made sure my hair braids looked neat, before I went to the main house. As I stepped outside, I saw the other slaves looking at Charles in pity. Not me though! "He brought it upon himself," I thought.

You run, you get whipped, or worse! I thought that being a good slave meant that my family never would be sold away from me and that, I would live a long life, well as long as a slave could live anyways. The rest of my family went to the fields to pick the harvest. When I got to the main house, I bowed reverently at Master William. He favored me, and talk was that I was his daughter. Nonsense! Just because I am fair-skinned does not mean he is my father.

Slave gossip, the thing that keeps these people going. I went to prepare brunch for the master's friends were coming over and he wanted to make a good impression. "Jennifer," He called, "Go and put on your finest dress, I want to show my friends how a proper female slave should look like." I was flattered, but the looks the other female slaves were giving me was that of pity, and I wondered if I should be afraid. Mama asked why I was home early and I told her, "Master William says to go put on my finest dress and.." she cut me off with a snort. "I guess the time has come."

I didn't understand what she meant, but her posture meant it wasn't anything good. I have heard of female slaves being raped by white men, but I was 22, and if it hasn't happened to me yet it wasn't going to happen to me now. I was laced in my pretty pink dress when the master knocked and barged in saying, "Is she ready?" That's when mama started to weep.

A/N: Please read and review! My first fanfiction!