In the Apple

Chapter 1

VOTE. COMMENT. ENJOY ;)

I was always a good girl. In fact, I was particularly keen to be a good girl. The surgery I'd had at the age of eleven may have cured the illness that caused me to look and act differently than my peers, but growing up in a small town means that whatever you once were, you always will be. In my case, once a freak, always a freak - even in the eyes of my nearest and dearest. So when, in the winter of my sixteenth year, my father announced to the family that we were going to move to New York in the summer, I sprang out of my chair and danced around the dining room in joy, shutting out the wailing and weeping of my mother and sister. The fights and accusations began. My sister begged my father to tell her it wasn't true. My mother ranted at him for making such an announcement, without warning, over dinner. My father shouted that it wasn't dinner, it was dessert, and damn near the only time everyone was in the same room. My mother shrieked at him for saying 'damn'. I put on my winter over-clothes, grabbed my ice skates, and tore out the door, heading for the pond in the woods. It was night, but in my life as a loner life I lived nearly all my waking hours in those woods, I knew every tiny indentation in the banks of the pond, I knew where all the little brooks and streams joined it, and where the thin ice was.

It was a crisp, cold, bright night and the pond shone white in the moonlight. I sat on a flat, bench-like boulder, pulled my skates on, stood up, and launched onto the ice in spinning joy. Freedom! Freedom was ahead. The life-long burden of my freakhood was soon to be discarded. I could reinvent myself! People could like me openly, without shame. Or maybe they'd dislike me, but if they did, it would be something I'd brought upon myself, not some accident of nature. My parents might learn to be proud of me. I would no longer walk into a room and cause a whispered conversation to end abruptly in a trail of raised eyebrows and significant glances. Oh joy, oh joy! I skated and whirled and danced and dreamed of my new life. In Pinocchio fashion, I'd always longed to be a Real Girl. Now I was going to get my wish. Summer couldn't come too soon for me.