Janette Lennox

Chapter 1

Ten years after the theft of the Book of Magic and the disappearances of Linus and Helen Lennox

Janette Lennox frowned as she (once again) stumbled and fell to the ground in the gardens. She sat up, glaring at the shoes that she had chosen to wear today. The shoes were an unbearable brown color, with a hard exterior. Janette wondered if she had made a mistake in choosing the hard brown shoes that would last her almost an entire year and not wearing the soft pink shoes with the sequins that the other girls who attended the boarding school were wearing, the shoes that would last only a few weeks before they would fall apart.

Janette quickly stood up and brushed herself off. She went into the bathroom in Bethsaida Chapel and glanced at herself in a mirror. She was short for her 13 years, had pale skin, blond hair, and brown eyes. She had been wearing her school uniform (which consisted of a blue sweater and a beige skirt), both of which were dirty from the fall and needed to be washed.

“You really need to watch where you’re going and not have your nose in a book,” Janette scolded herself as she attempted to brush the dirt off her skirt. “You could get hit by a car or zapped by someone if you keep forgetting that the world exists.”

“Yet, you hardly venture out into the world as it is,” said Mother Jocelind McColl as she came into the bathroom. The older woman had pale skin that was beginning to wrinkle, dull blue eyes, and graying brown hair that was covered with a black scarf. She was wearing the gray robes of an abbess. She shook her head at the young girl’s appearance, saying, “You do need to leave your room sometimes. You’re too pale and thin.”

“I do leave my room,” said Janette. “I leave my room whenever I have classes or for mealtime or whenever I’m helping Brother Methuselah in the library. The old man says that he’d be lost if I’m not there to help him.”

“What I mean is that you don’t talk to anyone at all,” said Mother Jocelind. “You don’t have any friends.”

“I do talk to people,” said Janette. “I talk to Malinda and Silas.”

“Think of what the other students are saying about you,” said Mother Jocelind. “Just yesterday, I overheard Emely Maddock saying that you are very stubborn and uncaring about others.”

“Emely is a liar and a bully,” said Janette, “and do you know why? She thinks that the world owes her a favor just because she’s rich.”

“The other day, I overheard Dianna Dickinson saying that you were greedy and selfish just because you refused an invitation to her birthday party,” said Mother Jocelind, hoping to draw Janette’s attention to the situation.

“Dianna is so stupid,” said Janette as she glanced in the mirror. “She thinks that just because she’s popular that means everyone has to bow down before her. As for her party, I can’t go; not when I have so much work to do. I don’t have time to be getting involved in the frivolities of youth, not when we must become adults.”

“Walk with me, dear,” said Mother Jocelind as she stepped out the bathroom. Janette followed her and they walked down the long halls of Bethsaida Chapel.

For as long as she could remember, the church had been Janette’s home. It had been her home since her parents, Linus and Helen Lennox, had sent her there during their flight from the village nearly ten years before. There were many other children who were sent to Bethsaida as Janette was, but most of them were abandoned as babies. Janette lived in her own room above the sanctuary while the other children stayed in the dorms.

Janette loved living in Bethsaida. She loved hearing the organ playing, the choir singing, and the hymns that the people sang in worship. She enjoyed hiding in a huge building, looking down upon the children who attended church, but had to go to smaller and less attractive homes that were located outside the village.