When I got to school monday I was early as always. I usually have to go straight home after school so the morning is the best time for me to hang out with and talk to my friends. John and Hannah have been friends with me since our first year of middle school. I wouldn’t say we have too much in common but we all get along well and after we learned we all were trying to get into Laureldale.

“Morning Eric, hawwww… How was your weekend?”

“Hey Hannah. It went fairly well. I’m kinda glad to learn all the angels are good friends.”

“They are. Still it kinda sucks what you did to them, intentional or not.

John walked up and sat down with us, “Yeah, I don’t get why most guys get all stupid over girls.”

and the Plus

There are a number of small moments that define who you are. For me one of these moments is the time when my mother told me why I was named Elaine.

“If you had been a boy I would have named you after your father, Ilun. You were a girl so I had to name you after my mother.” I loved these names and I loved my father so I, in my childish way, resolved to live up to my names.

I later learned that my grandmother was a terrible person, and that my mother hated her, despised her really. Looking back I knew my mother never wanted me… a girl. Grandmother was the same way, she hadn’t wanted a girl and it hurt them I think. In many ways grandmother lived her name, shining one, grandmother Elaine was brilliant and to outsiders everything about her seemed perfect.

I think it was when I was ten a full year after I realised my mother hated me. I ran away from home. I don’t even remember how it happened but I ended up at my grandmother’s where I met her for the first time. If I hadn’t met her I think I might have turned out…

Grandmother took me in for a year. She was strict. I tried to keep up with the pace she set for me. Looking back I didn’t realise how much she was asking for. Good was never enough with her. For mother, good was too much. I… I can’t blame mother, not for that anyway.

During that year grandmother kept pushing me and pushing me. I was being tutored at a college level and just barely keeping up. Eventually I broke. When I did, I realised grandmother never loved me, she only wanted to prove mother wrong. The first person to genuinely take an interest in my future hated me.

After I broke I was returned to my mother as defective goods. Where before my mother had tried to keep up appearances before, after I was returned she treated me like tainted waste. I locked myself away after that.

As time went by I began to resemble my grandmother more and more. Eventually I entered junior high just to escape my mother’s loathing. That's when it happened. Father, Ilun, named after a basque word. The dark one. I don’t know what happened and I refuse to find out. He killed her, mother that is. Then I was alone save the label of murderer’s daughter. None of my classmates knew what to do with me. I was just a strange girl who joined them in their last year, I had weird grades, and Father. I… I couldn’t forget my other name… the name I wasn’t given. Father’s name.

Somehow, I guess I still remembered my tutoring from my time with grandmother, I got a scholarship to Laureldale. I did the minimum to keep up. I didn’t have any ambition left at that point.

If the story had ended there… I don’t know what route my life would have taken but it would have been short and miserable I think. Some days I still have to tell myself that, even if it's just a pleasant lie, to remind me how amazingly lucky I was… Lucky I am…

In my senior year right before graduation I was referred to an older couple.