The Secret of the Stars

Chapter One

My name is Taryn River Song. I have bright silver eyes and brown hair with a turquoise strip near the front that had randomly appeared on my birthday. It was at the length an inch or two below my shoulders. I'm 16 and an only child. My mom died when I was five, so now I live with my dad, Charlie Song.

Being me is pretty easy. Taking care of me, on the other hand, was more challenging. I guess I was...what you would call...impatient. That very well may have been the reason I only had one friend, but I didn't think so. I may have been treated like a celebrity when I was in front of people's faces, but behind my back, I was the source of many rumors and the main topic for all the gossips. I actually thought the rumors were really dumb. There were some that said I was a time freak, an alien, abnormal, or even an Infinite. I didn't care about them, really, but sometimes they found a way to get to me. Maybe this is a form of bullying, but I'd never really thought of it that way, because they never said anything to my face.

My life was the typical 16 year old life. I went to school, I got homework, I woke up early, blah, blah, blah. Nothing as far as I was concerned made me different from any other teen, but it seemed that I was.

My best friend's name is Sailor. She is totally amazing. She stands up for me, loves me for who I really am, and sticks by my side. She is always happy and jumpy, and very bubbly. Sailor was also my only friend. No one else wanted to be around me for long, no one else really knew me. Even my teachers were like this. It didn't make a lot of sense to me, and I didn't know if it ever would.

My nightmares were the same every day-that is, until I had a different one. I was drifting, floating in a different dimension. I could hear distant screams crying out from afar. I drifted closer to them, worried about what I might find-horrified about what I might see. My vision was hazy and misty, but I could still make out the figure of a girl. She was laying on a table with her head hanging off the top. Her eyes were closed, and she was breathing heavily. Her wrists and ankles were bound with metal cuffs. She was scraped, cut, and bruised everywhere. Her hair was dripping wet, possibly with sweat. I noticed a familiar strip of color in her hair, except hers was red. Her face was covered in dirt and her brow was beaded with sweat. A hooded man approached the girl on the table. "I am going to ask you one more time." He said. "Show me..." he stepped forward displaying a knife. "...your gift." She fought against her cuffs, which were holding her against the metal bed. The girl screamed as the hooded man slit her forearm. "Never!" Even that one word sounded like a struggle to let out. I reached out, trying to stop the man from hurting her, but my hands went straight through the man. He raised the knife again, cutting her cheek. She screamed loudly.

I sat up in my bed and panted, no longer wanting to remember what I had seen while asleep. The girl's screaming voice still echoed through my head as I glanced over to see what time it was. It was three in the morning, and I was not wanting to get up. I also didn't want to go to back to sleep. I decided to just try, but as soon as I blinked my eyes, I could smell bacon. Eight? I thought. There was definitely something weird going on. I must have just lightly slept. I kept thinking for a possible solution to what had been happening when it finally occurred to me that I hadn't had very normal things happen to me lately.

I got out of bed and went downstairs to find my dad cooking pancakes and bacon on the griddle. I could hear the sizzle noises and my mouth grew watery. My dad made the best pancakes.

"Ah. Sleeping Beauty finally wakes." He said. "It's only 8, dad." I replied sleepily. He tilted his head to the side. "But you're normally up before 7:30." He stated, curious. "Dad?" I sat down and my dad placed a plate of pancakes and bacon in front of me. I drowned the two buttermilk pancakes on my plate in syrup and shoved a piece bacon in my mouth. "Yes?" He answered. "I keep having weird dreams, but last night I had an even weirder dream. Last night I had a dream about a girl. She was being tortured. Her hair had a strip of color-like mine. She was screaming. Who was she? Why did I feel such a connection to her?" "Taryn." My dad sat in the wooden chair beside me. "There are things that are supposed to remain secret. There are also things that remain a riddle to us all for as long as they want to stay that way. This is one of those things that I do not know the full answer to." His expression darkened. The bus honked signaling that it was time to go. "Go now, you don't want to be late. I'll explain when you get back." I rushed out the door and onto the bus. "Bye..." I said, even though I knew he couldn't hear me.