Chapter One
The girl walked quickly down a pillared corridor. She stopped at the end, and clamped her hands over her ears. She felt like screaming, but she didn't want to be found. She had, after all, excused herself to 'go to the toilet'. Instead, she leant against the wall, scrunched up her eyes and sank to the floor. They'd been getting worse and worse, these headaches...whenever the music started and the dancing began, her mind protested and her limbs felt heavy and weak.
It wasn't exactly fear; she was a terrible Ga Ga dancer, yes, but...it was more of a loathing. She hated the precisely choreographed sequences, hated having to move in time with everybody else, hated the dull, monotonous music they had to dance to.
The girl tentatively uncovered her ears...Good. They've stopped for a break. The music's gone. At least for a little while. She picked herself up and swung her arms. Now that she was away from the dance room, her body felt normal again. She pushed her way through heavy glass doors and descended the stairs. She would go and have something to eat. And then go to bed.
She made her way quickly down an identical pillared corridor to the one above; a quick glance through the large windows in the walls told her that the boys from the Boy Zone were still dancing. She brought her head quickly down again. The fair-skinned, blonde-haired boys held no attraction for her. Yet strangely...something made her look again. She didn't know what...she scanned the grinning yet disturbingly blank faces of the boys, wonderingly.
But then she saw him. A troubled frown was etched into his face as he struggled to follow the dance moves with the precision he certainly didn't possess. He looked out of place, too; dark-skinned, not fair...his black hair had been braided into short dreadlocks...and he seemed to have a strength about him that was nothing at all like the skinny, malnourished builds of the others boys.
Before she had realised what she was doing, the girl found herself transfixed, her nose only centimetres away from the window, thoughtfully watching the individual who had caught her attention. The more she observed his pitiful attempts at Ga Ga dancing, the more she thought he reminded her of somebody she knew well...the only person she knew well...herself.
