Chapter One

Before Everything Else

Nirall, Katelin, and Jasmin were waiting for me behind the wall at school as they had been doing for the past three years. We had finally

gotten to our junior year and everyone said that it was the best. At Sharland High your junior year is the best that life gets to. When you

get to be 17 then you finally receive all the perks that come with it such as not having to have the same lunch period as the freshman. All

the drama trauma of the 9th graders starts to get old. Now we got a whole new lunch period as well as the new teachers. It was so stupid

having to have Mr. Ledony, Mrs. Krensha, and Ms. Renado over and over again.

It was a little comforting some of the time but otherwise it was just annoying. Other than that there was the impossibly huge secret

fieldtrip to look forward to at the end of the year. Nirall was the first one to come off the wall and greet me. We all got a little teary at the

end of our big group hug, but you can't really blame us because we hadn't seen each other over the entire summer. I was near sobbing by

the time that it was over and Katelin, the most emotional of us, actually was sobbing. Lela handed her a tissue from her purse. As I

watched these tears of joy, I couldn't help but think about how college was only two years away. How was I going to survive college

without my three wacky friends?

Even as I watched them laughing at the weirdness of the moment I could feel m insides start to twist. I was known for jumping the gun

and I knew that I was just overreacting and I should probably calm down before I started to get a full-blown panic attack. Already I could

see my friends' smiles starting to fade as they took in my expression. I had to get control of my freakish emotions. I always knew that I

was really different. I could never pinpoint exactly why I was different, but it was always painfully noticeable even if you hadn't known

me for very long. I was lucky to have a group of such understanding friends. I quickly rearranged my facial expression into a

semi-authentic smile but I couldn't fool them. They knew me too well.

They were staring at me with their usual expressions for when my thoughts got too complicated for them to deal with. Usually they just

shrugged it off, but this time they surprised me by trying to figure me out. "Lela, what's wrong?" Nirall was usually the first person to try

to understand me, the only problem was that he was usually the one who failed. Nobody could understand me, not even Jasmin and she

was my closest friend.

I always acted weird when I got one of those "feelings". And it wasn't just some "feeling" it was like a gut-punch. I never knew if the

feeling meant that something good or bad was coming. It was like a subtle extra sense. Somehow my friends seemed to know when it

was one of those feelings. As if that wasn't weird enough, they knew when to leave me alone if I was feeling weird about it too. They

knew me just as well as I knew myself and probably even better. That may sound tacky but it was very true.

I couldn't really answer Nirall's question truthfully because I really didn't know the answer. I couldn't yet, there was no possible way. I

never knew what the feelings meant, but I wish I had known. I would have been able to do something. I just shook my head at Nirall. We

all knew that sometimes I just couldn't explain the complexity of it to them. Again I was thankful that they were so understanding. Jasmin

came up and hugged me again. Like a sixth sense she knew exactly when I needed to be comforted.

"So, anything new with you guys?" asked Katelin. She was the first to break the tension of our bubble. All of their actions just fit their

personalities.

"Not much," Nirall said.

"How 'bout you Jasmin," Katelin tried again. Yeah they tried and all of the sudden I had a feeling that I was going to lose them soon. It

was NOT a great feeling and I wanted to cry at just the thought of losing them.

"All I can say is that a summer in New York is not as fantastic as you would think- at least not without your friends at your side." Said

Jasmin.

I didn't say anything. At least not yet, the weird feeling still hadn't past yet and I could feel the tears about to brim over my eyes and they

certainly would do just that if I dared to utter one word.

We just walked through the hallways, catching up on everything we had missed of each other's summer vacations. They continued to

question me. I was strong enough to talk but only gave them one worded answers for fear that my voice would crack. I knew that it

sounds really weird but this was normal behavior for me. I was started to get a huge headache from thinking about it too much.

I walked up to my locker with them by my sides. By chance we had all gotten lockers all right next to each other and we knew that it was

going to change this year no matter what. That was the one thing that wasn't so great about going into our junior year. We all had

different teachers and new schedules so we weren't going to be in the same classes everyday anyway. It was a sad thought to have, and

while all of the freshman and sophmores began to trickle into the auditorium I almost saw the ghost of our past two years.

That was weird- even for me.