The Other Side of Me

Chapter One: The Other Side of Me

"Wait up, Bella! I can't find my backpack!" Katelynn screams behind me as I walk out the door of our house and through the yard, swinging the white washed fence gate shut behind me. I look at the horizon and see the grey sky becoming lighter as the minutes go by. I see the metallic dark grey work towers down in Daila City, coming up from the ground like stalks of grain. I see the Feryben Mountains line the sky, separating it from the ground. But right in front of my sight is the what I look forward to seeing every morning. Where I live has the perfect view of the Palace. Even though it is far away, it still looks enormous to the rest of the scenery. Its dark walls stand out from its rocky surroundings. Windows of all sized decorate the outside, making me question what's on the inside. I look away and start down the hill, hearing the dry grass crunch under my feet.

"Maybe if you didn't give it to Moon as a new playpen, you could find it!" I yell back to the house. Katelynn runs out of the front door and slams it shut behind her, the crystal wind chimes attached to it bouncing noisily off the dark brown wood. As she runs through the yard and towards me, I can see the bus coming down the road towards the house, gravel crunching under its weight.

The one that comes to our neighborhood is small and a dark grey that is basically the shade of black, with the words "Chamber Lake Secondary School" stenciled on the side in bright white letters. No one really lives on our side of Daila City because of the steep price of housing, but the houses are gorgeous. They are all surrounded by acres of untouched land with marble fountains and large columns outside of each of the modern white houses. The houses are spread out and everything just looks clean cut. You can say my family is rich, with my dad working for the Royals. But all we do is manage our money. No Dark Angel is homeless or hungry. Everyone has their place here, but it is the families with higher up jobs, like working for the Queen, that have the money to live here in the hills. Most of the workers for the Queen and the government live here not just for the castle like houses, but to stay away from the never ending hustle down in the city, something that we will never be used to.

With Katelynn now right behind me, I hop onto the bus as it stops in front of me to see the other students that ride my bus. Every day I analyze them and what they are doing, just out of curiosity and boredom. Hannah, who sits in seat two, is new to the school since she went from a Minor to a Major last year and got accepted into the school for her academic excellence. My older sister, Madison, usually sits next to her, but she already left for school an hour ago because she has to help at the nursery this month. Every time I see Hannah, she is reading a different book. This time, her book has grey snowflakes printed onto a black cover. In seat seven, the Marrol twins, Tyler and Jordan, are messing up each other's hair like they normally do. They are both in Level Four and they look like the mirror image of each other. The only way to tell them apart is to see that Tyler has freckles and Jordan doesn't. But it's hard to tell sometimes. I always wonder what their parents do to keep them in their collar shirts and dress pants required for school. Nadia sits in seat twelve, across from Katelynn and I. She sits with my other older sister, Sara. I could see her smooth out the creases of her school dress as I walked down the aisle to my seat, seat eleven. I let Katelynn get in front of me so she can slide towards the bus window before I sit down beside her. Nadia leans across the aisle as I glimpse down at my own black, upper knee length Mid-Falling uniform dress.

"Where's Sara?" Nadia asks as her neck lengthen black hair gets into her face. She brushes it aside with her black, pedicured nails. "I brought the book I borrowed from her the other day." she says as she takes out a blue covered book from her backpack. I stare at it for a second.

What's Sara doing with Dad's book? I ask myself. Our parents were always strict about the book being out of the shelf. I was never told what the book was about. Now that I think about it, no one knows except my father. I don't even know if my mother knows what's inside. I know that I have seen my father read it since I was a child. He probably has had it longer than he has been with mom. Father told my sisters and I that he got it from a friend at work and we were never allowed to touch it. Not wanting to anger him, we listened to him. So why did Sara give the book to Nadia?