KATHERINE

Foggy dreams and Hothouse foreboding fog.  All I saw was fog. But then, that's how it always began.  With fog.  The heavy fog made the air thick and harder to breathe. It's surrounded me in a suffocating cocoon.  This was my idea of hell. A blinding white light flashed through the fog. Panic overwhelming my senses, I turned around, frantically searching for a way out, the feeling of gritty sand beneath my feet. And then another blinding flash. Something was moving through the fog; I could feel the change in the air surrounding me. "Kathy…" a m

I pushed in a quarter and then another after it before dialing the number to my brother's college dorm. I knew that his classes were later than mine, so it was perfect time for me to have a heart to heart talk with my brother. I just hope he's up till now, I don't want to disturb his sleep, but I know that he's a morning person.The phone rang and rang, its annoying trill grinding on my already raw nerves. My palms were getting sticky and wet from the sweat, making the receiver slip around through my hands. I was nervous about my first day, but I would never accept this fact out loud.Why else would I be bothering my brother at what would very likely to be called an inconvenient tim

AUTHOR'S POVWhen the woman's eyes met Kathrine's she smiled warmly and walked towards her."My dear you must be Katherine," the woman said with an almost affectionate look in her eyes," I have been so looking forward to meeting you since Mrs Scott and I spoke on the phone last week. I hope you are settling into your new house well."The woman took Katherine's hand in her own and led her to the chair in front of the antique desk. Kathryn sat in it, while the women perched elegantly on the edge of the desk."I assume that you are Principal Kingsley?" Kathryn asked with a slight raise of her eyebrows."Oh yes, do forgive me," the Principal said lo

KATHERINE'S POVI was still sitting in the library thinking about my life since I moved to this town. The nightmares with that pitiful, frightening man who was so familiar, the way my mother and father looked at me - almost as if they were afraid of me - how they treated me differently from my brother and my sister. It all seemed to add up to something going on. Maybe my parents were hiding something, maybe…No! I thought. It's my imagination, that's all. No dark shadows are lurking in corners for me, no boogeyman under my bed. There are no conspiracies, no secrets and lies, no hidden truth waiting to be revealed. The Scott's are my family and no amount of wishing things were different will change anything. I am nothing but 'plane Kathrine Scott' and I always will be.With that settled in my mind, I sunk lower in my seat, determined to flush out the rest of my feelings and understand them before I made one step towards a classroom door

Katherine grabbed her books and ran out of the algebra 2 classroom door, only barely waiting until the bell rang to make her escape. She couldn't take another minute of it. It was worse than it was at her other school. They hadn't been so hatefully cruel, so utterly malicious back in Chicago.Yes, they had teased her, but there was no real ill will with it. She hadn't ever thought she would miss that teasing, those words she had seen as so harsh then. But now she did. She would trade places with any one of the kids she went to school within Chicago and would be grateful for it.She headed for the bathroom, feeling sick. She pushed past some of the girls who had been cruel to her- Deirdre Kirkpatrick, Alyssa Addison and Christy MacDonald, she remembered briefly.She ignored their laughs at her agitated state, yanking