ALFRA | Book 1 | Identity Crisis

Prologue - The Girl In The Field

Miss Gertrude Berger had always wanted a daughter, but when she finally got one, it wasn't in the way she had expected. The 50-year-old spinster had resigned herself to the fact that she would never have a child, due to lack of a husband as well as infertility. Being the positive person she was, she embraced her simple life as a small farmer in rural Idaho, dedicating herself to her animals and crop. However, everything changed on one strange September morning.
It was an unusually cloudy day when Miss Berger went on her usual Sunday morning visit to the the edge of her land. She enjoyed the peaceful quiet of the grassy fields, but on this fateful day, she found excitement. As she wandered through the land, admiring the serene landscape around her, she spotted a strange figure through the tall grass. Concerned that one of her calves had somehow escaped the nearby pasture and gotten lost, she hurried over to the mysterious form, only to discover that it was not a young cow at all, but a teenage girl.
She was lying on her back, her arms and legs spread out like DaVinci's Vitruvian Man. She was wearing a crisp white blouse, blue skinny jeans, and brown oxfords. Her long brown hair was spread out behind her. She reminded Miss Berger of the Sleeping Beauty, with her dainty button nose, plump rosy cheeks, and delicately arched eyebrows. Her eyes large eyes were closed, and her pink doll-like lips were slightly parted. She appeared to be a completely ordinary - but beautiful - teenage girl of about fifteen, except for the strange symbol in the middle of her forehead. It looked as though it had been branded onto her. Miss Berger winced at the thought.
She knelt beside the girl and gently took her wrist to check for signs of life. To her relief, she felt a pulse beneath her tan skin. Miss Berger could hear her heart pounding as she observed the unconscious teenager. What had happened to her?
"Hello?" she asked tentatively.
No response.
She raised her voice. "Hello!"
Nothing.
She shook the girl gently.
Silence.
She placed a her hand on the girl's forehead and suddenly, her eyes snapped open and she gasped. Miss Berger fell back, startled. She gazed in awe at the girl's odd gray eyes, whose irises appeared to have been drained of color. The girl's eyes were unfocused and she seemed dazed. "Who am I?" she whispered.

  Unfortunately, her question was never answered. It was soon discovered that the girl was an amnesiac. She knew about the world, but not her place in it. Miss Berger did her best to help her find out who she was, but the results were inconclusive. Doctors said she had no head trauma and that she was perfectly healthy. Psychologists could find nothing wrong with mind; her brain functioned normally. Police could not find a missing child report of her, and most startlingly of all, no records of her at all. Neither her fingerprints nor DNA yielded any evidence of who she was. It was as though she had never existed.
  A year passed, but the mystery remained unsolved. During this time, Miss Berger cared to her as though she was her own daughter. Since the girl could not remember her own name, Miss Berger named her Dorothy. At first, Dorothy lived in a constant state of fear and confusion, and she cried every night. At one point, Dorothy's anguish turned to anger. She was angry that her memory had been taken from her and that she would never be normal. She wore blunt bangs to cover the symbol on her forehead, which she hated so much. Dorothy hated being a mystery.
  After a year, however, Dorothy's anger dissipated. She knew that she might not ever regain her memory, and she had resigned to that idea. Dorothy mostly focused on present and the future, leaving the past behind. She had given up on education, since no college would accept her. Dorothy had dedicated herself to helping Miss Berger on the farm, avoiding the outside world as much as possible. However, with Miss Berger's encouragement, Dorothy would do other jobs on the side, and in addition to a farmer, she became a babysitter, maid, waitress, and more. Dorothy, now about seventeen or eighteen, managed to live a semi-normal life. However, things would soon change.