Chapter One
The last bell of the school day rings. All the students rush to get out. Kitatia sighs. Thank goodness it’s friday. She walks to her locker and puts the combination in. Inside it, the walls are a spacey purple color with stars, galaxies, and planets painted on top of it. Two black shelves separated the room inside the locker. The one closer to the ceiling holds books nicely organized by class period and alphabetically by the author of each textbook for each subject, and three extra books neatly stacked upon one another on the far right side of the shelf. One of the three books is a library book, the second is her sketchbook, and the third is for the stories she writes. The second shelf, which is underneath the first, has all Kitatia’s folders and binders in the same order as her books. And there are two hooks under the shelves with a navy blue school bag that has one strap and black jacket on them.
Kitatia places two school books, one notebook and one textbook in front of her three extra, grabs her school bag and carefully places her math binder and sketchbook inside. Why does the queen have school be nine hours long? She complains. I mean, yeah it’s good education, but it’s a bit much. Especially when she hardly cares for the hard working lives of her people. Kitatia rolls her eyes, puts the bag over her right shoulder, and closes her locker. She turns right and bumps into someone with white hair and a prince-like stature. Oh no. Not this i***t. Kitatia thinks. Her black wolf ears twitch, annoyed.
“Where do you think you’re going,” The person she bumped into asks.
“Away from you,” She glares. “Where else?” Kitatia tries to walk around him, but is stopped by his arm that is holding his weight as he leans against the wall. “Ugh, what is wrong with you,” she yells as her black tail lashes back and forth angrily.
The boy puts his hand on her shoulder and leans in to whisper in her ear. “8pm, tomorrow night. Meet me at the fountain in the cherry tree grove.”
Kitatia struggles to get out of his hold on her shoulder. “Let go of me you freak!”
He lets go and Kitatia begins to run past him. “Don’t forget! 8pm tomorrow! Don’t be late,” he yells after Kitatia as she runs down the hall and around a corner.
What is with him lately?! Ugh. Gross. I swear. He is getting out of control. She checks her phone and sees that it’s nearly four o’clock. Ack! She runs out of the school’s doors and down the street towards home.
After Kitatia closes the front door to her house, a little squeal is made from around the corner. Two seconds later, a little girl slides around the corner in her socks and leaps from the ledge between the door and the hall, and gives Kitatia a great big hug, nearly knocking Kitatia over. “I missed you Kit,” the girl says, snuggling into Kitatia’s neck, holding tight.
“I missed you too,” Kitatia says, struggling to breathe.
“Let your sister go, Briana,” a mother-like figure says to the little girl that's still hanging onto her sister.
Kitatia moves closer to the ledge and carefully places Bri’s feet on it. The little girl squeals and runs to the living room and jumps back onto the couch, from which she came. Kitatia and her mother laugh.
“You’re running late. Something happen?” Kitatia’s mom says as Kit takes her shoes off and places them neatly with the others by the door before walking up the ledge to her mom.
“Sort of,” Kitatia grumbles. “Just someone stupid.”
Her mom smiles and looks over at Briana. “Bri! Don’t jump on the couch! You know better. If you want to jump, do it on the floor,” she says as she walks toward her youngest daughter.
Kitatia lets out a soft chuckle and goes up the stairs, to the right and heads into her room. After closing the door and placing her bag on a hook near the closet, Kitatia carefully throws her sketchbook and a mechanical pencil onto her white and cherry blossom flowered bed and walks over to the small speaker on the end table and starts some music just before laying onto the bed, feet up, and begins to continue drawing an unfinished picture of herself.
Moments later, Kitatia looks out the window to her left and turns a page in her sketchbook to draw herself sitting in the cushioned windowsill, looking out to the valley, mountains, and city beyond with a bird chirping from the cherry tree outside. There’s a knock at her door and it opens a few seconds later, showing Kitatia’s grandmother.
“Hello deary,” her grandma says, walking into the room “Your mom says dinner’s ready.”
“Okay, can you tell her I’ll be down in a second?”
“Will do. You should open the side windows of that giant window though. So your room’s not boiling tonight,” Kitatia’s grandmother tells her.
“Thanks grandma,” she says just before her bedroom door closes. Kitatia closes her book, stops the music and places the sketchbook and the pencil in the only drawer of the end table. She jumps off the bed and opens the two side windows of the large window with the cushioned seat and takes a deep breath. She then turns around and heads downstairs.
At the dinner table sits Kitatia’s father, mother, grandmother, and sister, kneeling on their cushions by the low table. She takes her seat at the end of the table across from her dad and her father begins to dish her some rice and pork into a bowl.
“How was school Kitatia,” Her father asks, handing her her full bowl.
She kneels back down after getting her bowl from her dad before saying, school was alright, without making any eye contact. “Just a normal day at school.”
Her father then asks the rest of the family how their day went, dropping the question, knowing not to ask.
Kitatia only ever sees her dad when he leaves in the morning to go to work, just before she goes to school during the week, and at dinner. He’s always so busy that he hardly spends any time at home. And even when he is home, he’s always so grumpy and tired.
Kitatia doesn’t say anything for the rest of dinner. She finishes as much of the rice as she can using her chopsticks but there are still a few small pieces left by the time she heads over to the sink to rinse her bowl out. Kit then heads up to her room, while the rest of her family finish eating, and starts her math homework on her desk with only the light of a lamp and dimming sky in the room. Her tail sways slowly side to side as she works and moments later her ears twitch. Something’s happening. She thinks in much worry, stopping her homework to listen carefully just in case. She first hears a CRASH and a THUD, then a scream.
