22
DECEMBER ONE & A HALF YEARS EARLIER
The next morning was the gloomiest of any Lexi had witnessed since moving to New York. Snow had fallen the night before, and in typical city fashion, the streets had been cleared of the white flurries by daybreak. Brown slush had hazardously taken its place on the sidewalks and gutters. Dreary, charcoal clouds covered the sky, casting a depressing aura across the metropolitan area. A heavy fog mixed with the ever increasing quantities of pollution hung thick in the morning air.
Under these conditions, most normal people would have avoided leaving their apartment at all costs on a Saturday morning. Lexi was not one of those people. She thought she had switched off the alarm set for finals, but it still managed to go off at eight in the morning. Her
