Limelight

Chapter One

~~Discovery~~

San Diego, California

"The Great Depression of 1929 was a trying time for America as a country and it didn't take long for the Superpower Country to drag the rest of the world into its decline." Lauryn Williams read aloud.

Seventeen-year-old Aaliyah Victors let out a greatly resigned groan and fell back on her small single bed, her head being cushioned by her small plush pillow. She stared up at the ceiling with narrowed eyes. Staring up at the same wooden beams making up the roof of the three-story townhouse in the middle of Grant Hill. Aaliyah hadn't seen more than her boring San Diego neighborhood in all her life, even though her foster father, Quincy Victors, was the Commissioner of Education in the state of California, but that was a whole other story in itself. Her limits were all she knew, she never had to learn to adjust, but that never meant she was okay with it.

She blew out an annoyed sigh, forcing herself back into a sitting position meeting her private tutor's gaze with a pout. "Come on Lauryn, we've been doing History for the past two and a half hours, can we move on? Or just stop?"

"We still have three more topics to cover and we've barely even gone into depth yet and not to mention the five thousand word essay I want on The Great Depression. You didn't forget, did you?" Lauryn said with a sly smirk on her lips as she sat back on her desk chair, the textbook balanced carefully on her lap.

Aaliyah rolled her eyes and raked a hand through her thick raven hair. "How could I? Not when my tutor incessantly rants about how important it is that I get good grades in my courses even when I turn out with an A grade every single time," She droned in a bored voice. She glanced at Lauryn with a mock tired expression, "You know what that's like, right?"

Lauryn shrugged before shutting the textbook and setting it on her small wooden desk. "Actually, I was a B-average student," She replied in a dry voice, "And I went to public school when I was your age, so I'm going to have to say no." She said with the small tilt of a smile.

Aaliyah raised a dubious brow. "Yet somehow you're responsible for a student belonging on the honor roll." Despite her joking, Aaliyah felt a pang of envy in her chest at that, "Public school does seem interesting though, I've always wanted to go," She mused in a low voice, letting her mind wander away to a life that was not her own; high school. 

All Aaliyah had to go on about what high school as a normal teenager was like was the few movies, Lauryn took her to watch when she told her foster parents that they were going on their non-educational "field trip", and maybe a snatch of conversations from kids her age she met briefly, here and there, when they passed her by on the street. She wished she could experience it herself, but she wouldn't dare bring up the idea to her guardians, especially her foster mother, Danica Victors.

Lauryn snorted and let out a dry chuckle, drawing Aaliyah out of her thoughts. She raised her gaze from her palms to see her shaking her head amused. "It's the same boring stuff, but with more moving and more annoying teachers such as myself," she said gesturing to herself, "Trust me, it's not worth the thought."

Aaliyah cocked her head to the side in curiosity unable to help herself. Lauryn was usually on her ass about dwelling on these types of things for too long, especially when there wasn't much she could do to change it, but she couldn't help it. She was curious, she wanted to know more about it, wanted to imagine herself in someone else's experiences. Anything would be better than her own. "Why didn't you become a public school teacher?"