Innocent People

Prologue

The aim here is to see what you guys think of the prologue. Please comment or message me or whatever to tell me whether you think I should keep the prologue in the story or if I should just skip it. I can't decide and thought I'd leave it up to you. :)
So here goes :D

I want to dedicate this story to Isi because she's always believed in me and encouraged my writing, so this story is all thanks to her in a way :)

And thank you so much to @Beautiful-Fire for the banner :)

There’s always a reason people tell their stories.

Sometimes it’s to get other people's attention but other times it’s because there’s a story (or a lot of stories for that matter) that has been developing in our daydreams and keeps getting bigger and bigger and more exciting with more unpredictable twists and turns in our minds and we just need to tell someone about it or write it down before we explode because that story has been eating away at us for so long.

But the fact is, that we all have stories that influence us. Whether we wrote or thought of them ourselves or we were read them by our parents when we were growing up, they make us think and even effect our choices in life and, even if we don’t all believe it or don’t want to believe it, we all need to escape into those made-up and sometimes magical worlds that we’ve read and dreamed about every now and then, only to get away from what we all call…

“Reality”.

At least that had always been Katelyn Stone’s opinion.

She was always the girl that kept to herself and that was one of the reasons not too many people really knew her very well. Katelyn was never considered shy by the people that were close to her but instead they saw her as more concealed and that made her very appealing to some. You could sit and talk with her for hours or the two of you could just walk around Cliffden and not even say a word but she'd still make you feel better. A quality not many people have.

Katelyn Stone was always nice enough to be around. A rude comment never passed her lips around other people and she took any kind of criticism very well.
These traits helped Katelyn a lot throughout her time at school being as she was never considered one of the popular girls. She wasn’t seen as a loser either but if your not being seen, then you may as well not be there at all, as many said and still say but Katelyn didn't understand why those particular people were the ones being seen...She saw it as a lot of hypocrisy. 

Anyway. Katelyn didn’t really fit into any of those social groups at school but she’d never really cared about any of that anyway.

Well, no one ever thought she did.

Of course she would have preferred to sit with the prettiest girls in school with the nicest clothes that set the trend and were looked at by people who wished they were in their shoes. Those girls that were always sat next to some of the hottest guys in Cliffden and acted like it was one of the most normal things in the world. The kind of girls who always get their way. But who wouldn’t have wanted that? Concerning groups and cliques Cliffden High was just like every other typical American high school. There were clear separations between the different people, that were barely ever crossed, and the rankings couldn’t be any more obvious and that was one of the reasons that Katelyn never found her place.

The “fences” set between the groups had certain unchangeable attribute-requirements but Katelyn was one of the few with, what her best friend Adrian called, “a pick-and-mix”. "Something from here, something from there. You're hard to figure out", he'd told her the second time they'd met.

Between classes and in the breaks anyone could tell the groups apart and give them each their ranking on the imaginary popularity scale, even if they’d never even met the people before. Just by looking at the way they dress, the way they talk, the way they walk, the way they look at the people walking past them and of course where they sit in the cafeteria. An unspoken rule that was very rarely broken.
The closer to the windows, the higher the ranking.

Katelyn tried not to bother herself with things like that most of the time because she didn't see why she should change because of it like so many others had done. Although she did notice somethings that had slipped other people's minds. If someone you barely talked to came over to you during lunch, she'd be able to tell you what their inner motives were the moment they were out of range. She'd remember who had had what on the day before and then tell you who was now copying the other person's sense of style. And she'd always been able to see who was interested in whom. At least with most people.

Being pretty neutral when it came to most conversations about things like who had done what at the weekend, who had been seen where with whom, and who had stayed out past their curfew last nigh to visit some guy from out of town, came in handy sometimes too because this meant that she could give anyone her advice and still never be in the center of anything. Nor did she have to be the reason for anyone’s newest problems with their friends or family, being as she could only be the solution. This came so naturally to her that she didn't even know how many people she was helping and cheering up.

Maybe things would have been different if she had known.

That's one of the things that Adrian had  liked about Katelyn from the very beginning and, even though he was in a clique and was sorted into the group with all the other good-looking popular guys who were basically obliged to sit next to the girl versions of their own clique, he and Katelyn got along. That was all there had ever been between them and that was something they had both appreciated for such a long time that, when the time came for things to change, neither of them were happy about it. Change meant chance and chance meant possible failure and failure meant loss. They weren't prepared to loose each other. Not yet.

No one wo knew her was afraid to go up to Katelyn and ask her for advise or just talk to her about whatever was on their mind at that point in time or to get some help with the homework they didn't understand. She came across as very open and honest but you’d have to get to know her before you could make your own opinion and “verdict” on Katelyn without being completely wrong.

Katelyn was a very hard person to read, unlike most fifteen-year-olds where you can tell just by looking at their face, what kind of mood they’re in and if it's safe to talk to them or if you'll end up with an ear full off “all the things that are wrong in his or her life” and "how the world is just so darn unfair". No no. None of that. She could hide her emotions so well that sometimes it worried her friends that they hardly ever knew what was going on in Katelyn's life.

That was one of Katelyn’s many, many talents.

Well, that and the fact that she could say anything and it would calm you down and make you feel much better in an instant.
Katelyn had such a way with words that was so remarkable and so rare for girls her age.
Every time she read one of her essays or any of her works aloud in class the whole room would go silent and even those two best friends in the back of the room that never seemed to stop talking would stop whatever they were doing and listen to what Katelyn had to say.

Adrian and so many others admired her for all this and most days wished they could be like Katelyn and exchange their lives and personalities for hers.

I guess that was a big part of why they were so surprised to find her hanging limply by her neck in her own room that day.