Always Someone Marches Brave Here Beneath My Skin

Chapter 1

Kara had always dreamed of being a writer. Growing up, she'd filled journal after journal with stories of heroes and villains from worlds far away. During her senior year of High School, she heard about a creative writing contest sponsored by the local community college. To enter, she'd need to come up with a Novella of at least 25,000 words, which would be a stretch to come up with given that there were only 2 weeks left until the deadline, but the winner would receive a $10,000 Scholarship and a chance to have their story published in the local library and featured in the schools Literary Studies Magazine.

Knowing how much a scholarship would help her family, she entered the contest and worked every day until the deadline to perfect her story. Drawing from her own personal experiences as an orphan, she was able to come up with just under 40,000 words about a young girl sent to earth from a dying planet by her parents and was taken in by a family who helped her become a hero who protected her city from threats both alien and human.

The day she got the call saying that she won the contest was one of the best days of her life. The college had her sent a photography student to her home to photograph her for the magazine and for the back of the book cover. That was the day she met James Olsen, a 2nd year photography student at Midvale Community College. He helped her get settled in her family's living room for the pictures, and then suggested that it would be better if they got some outdoor shots as well. Once the pictures were taken and he was satisfied that he'd gotten at least a few good shots, he shook her hand and told her that he looked forward to seeing her again.

Three weeks later, as Kara was walking out of the Financial Aid office at MCC, she quite literally ran into James again, nearly causing him to drop his camera and spilling her coffee all over his white collared shirt. After apologizing profusely and offering to pay for the dry cleaning, he told her she'd rather make it up to him by letting him take her to dinner.

Kara reluctantly agreed, and the following evening, they'd met at a local burger place for their date. One date was all it took, and Kara found herself falling uncharacteristically hard and fast for James. Every evening they'd have dinner together or go see a movie or just go for walks through town. There wasn't a day that went by that they didn't see each other, and when they weren't together, they were texting each other or talking on the phone.

Four months later, James picked her up at her home and blind folded her. He wanted to take her somewhere special and wanted it to be a surprise. It was a short drive, and then he helped her out of the car and walked her into a building. When she was finally told she could remove her blindfold, the first thing she saw was James down on one knee, holding up a beautiful – albeit modest – engagement ring. He'd brought her back to the place where she'd spilled coffee on his shirt to ask her if she'd marry him, and she of course said yes! They were married on the beach 3 months later with just their families present.

The first year of their marriage hadn't been the easiest. Most couples went through a "honeymoon phase" where they were completely in love and infatuated with each other, but this wasn't the case for Mr. and Mrs. James Olsen. Instead, the couple started having problems almost immediately after they said I do. James started to become more and more controlling, refusing to agree to letting Kara hyphenate her name or even drop her middle name to become Kara Danvers Olsen. He took it as a "personal attack" that she didn't want to fully take his name.

Three months into their marriage, James graduated with his photography degree and accepted a job 3 hours away from Midvale without so much as discussing it with Kara. She'd barely finished her first year of school and now her husband wanted her to drop out of school to support his career. Transferring wasn't even an option because no school within an hour of where they'd be moving had any sort of writing program whatsoever. After 2 weeks of constant fights and arguments, the newlyweds packed up and left the only place Kara had ever really felt like home.