Chapter 1: Meet Amy

Freak. Outcast. Weirdo. Monster. They were words the girl heard every day, as she walked to school or went from class to class, and she tried her best to ignore it. But it was difficult, especially when the others threw pencils at her or tugged at her long white hair, laughing as the sharp pain caused tears to blur her red eyes. It didn't happen often – typically only the middle-school kids went for her hair –but it still did enough times for her to know which routes she could walk without ending up with a stinging sensation on her scalp along with a small bald spot. It was hard, being the weird girl in school, but Amy was used to it.

Life had become a sad but comfortable routine for Amy – wake up in an empty house, her mother out shopping while her father was working at the lab; put on her uniform, pull her hair up into two long pigtails that were knotted into heart-shaped buns at the top of her head, and put on her glasses before heading downstairs; make breakfast for herself and add anything the house needed to the grocery list; make sure that she had all her books before leaving the house; and walk to school by herself.

After that, she spent the hours listening to the teacher, taking notes, and trying to ignore the jeers of the kids behind her every time she raised her hand to ask a question. Lunch was about an hour of sitting by herself and slowly nibbling on the peanut-butter-on-white sandwich she made for herself the night before and had stored in the fridge. After lunch was science, her specialty, and study hall, which she always wore a hat to in order to avoid getting spit balls that were shot at her stuck in her hair. She always made a point of getting home as quickly as possible, to avoid any of the boys from her class catching up to and harassing her about her looks or the fact that she didn't have any friends.

When she got home, Amy would get straight to doing her homework, and she was always done before her father came home from work, just in time for her to start preparing dinner for herself – her father ate at work, and goodness knew what her mother was up to. She would study while she ate, and do her own dishes before putting her books away and going upstairs.

That was where she was safe. Amy would sit cross-legged on her bed, pull out the small notebook that she kept behind her pillow, and she would write. Amy would spend almost three whole hours writing poetry, coming up with recipes, making up little tunes that made no sense, or just writing letters on the page to form nonsense stories. This was when she was happiest – alone, free to write anything, without the judgmental eyes of her peers boring into the back of her head. This was freedom for the seventeen-year-old, the only time she was truly happy.

Then everything changed.