My Name Is Jasmine

Prologue

Ordinary: with no special or distinct features.

That pretty much sums up Grey Creek. It's mid-western, average sized, and has exactly one high school. It is about as bland of a city as they come. No tourist attractions or famous former citizens. No extremely rich and powerful families that control the economy. No major catastrophes or disasters. Just plain old mid-western living. Just regular people who go to work or school who travel back home at the end of their day just in time for dinner. Just nothing of real interest happens in Grey Creek...ever. It's just an ordinary town, in an ordinary state, with ordinary people. Then one day it stopped being ordinary. One day something of real interest happened.

Her name was Stella Branning. Gorgeous, outgoing, and confident. She was fearless. Never afraid to tell anyone what was on her mind or do what her heart desired. It was no surprise that she was popular among all the teenagers in Grey Creek. In a town so ordinary and bland, it was hard not to be drawn to the vivacious Stella Branning. She was practically as close to flawless as you could get. There wasn't anything about her that you couldn't like. She was just admirable. The kind of girl other girls wanted to be. The life of Stella Branning is not what made Grey Creek something of interest. Simply living wasn't what made Stella Branning and the entire town of Grey Creek extraordinary. What made Stella Branning interesting is how she left Grey Creek; without a trace.

On an ordinary autumn day, Stella Branning caught the bus, went to school, and never came home. She wasn't staying late after school or hanging out with friends. No one had even heard from her nor could they find her. Stella Branning had simply vanished and no one knew what happened to her. For months the police and FBI searched high and low for any sign of Stella and found nothing. The beloved Stella Branning was officially missing and the mystery around her disappearance made the town of Grey Creek not so ordinary anymore.

On yet another ordinary autumn day a girl was running the woods of Grey Creek. Barefoot and dressed in a dirty oversized t-shirt the girl was running as fast as she could with no particular destination. All she knew was that she had to run. She just had to keep running until she could not run anymore and hope that when she finally did stop that she would have ran far and fast enough. Far and fast enough away from where she hoped she never returned to again. As she ran she ignored each and every bit of pain she felt as her bare feet pounded their way through the wooded area. It was early morning and the sky was in the beginning stages of transitioning between the dark black skies of the night and the bright blue skies of the daytime. The grass beneath her feet was wet with early morning dew making her careful not to lose her balance. She ran between the trees with the changing leaves and through the bushes with branches that stung her legs as they boomeranged back against them. She ran until she felt out of breath and just when she thought she would lose all the air out of her lungs her body crashed hard against something solid.

Her body went down with a sounding thump as she landed on top of the hard surface she crashed into. Her long dark brown hair covering both herself and the object, she slowly lifted her head and removed the hair from her face to discover the hard object she crashed into was no object at all. It was a person, more specifically a boy. A shirtless boy! As she looked up she stared into the bluest eyes she had ever seen and promptly jumped back as if she had been shocked.

"Hey? Hey! Are you okay?" the boy asked pulling himself up off the ground. He was eying the girl curiously taking in her appearance. He was perplexed by the frazzled girl who had appeared out of nowhere who now was staring up at him wide-eyed and fearful. He couldn't help but notice how pretty the girl was even in her current state. Her long dark brown hair that she kept sweeping back to keep out of her honey colored eyes. Forget pretty, this girl was beautiful and he couldn't help but feel like he had seen her before. He observed her a little longer trying to figure out why she looked so familiar but he couldn't figure it out. He notice that she was flinching away from him. "Hey, I'm not gonna hurt you okay," He said to the girl taking a step closer to her. She promptly scooted herself farther away from him. She didn't know whether or not to trust him just yet. "I'm really not gonna hurt you. I promise," he told her again "Just let me help you up. Okay?" He reached his hand out to her to take it. The girl accepted his hand and let the boy with the blue eyes help her up. Her legs were heavy and gave out from beneath. The boy pull her into his arms before she could even fall. "Don't worry. I've got you," he told reassuringly "What's your name?" The girl took a second to think over the question she was just asked. Her name. What was her name? She told him the only name that she could remember. "Jasmine. My name is Jasmine".