My life was over; nothing else could possibly go wrong. I had been sent all the way to France by my mother and her new boyfriend, Trent. I had a secret that I had kept from my mother, but when I tried to tell her, I choked up, and asked if I could go on a road trip, with some girls from my school. Some girls from my school were actually planning to go on a road trip, but I wasn't invited.

I was a total social outcast, but usually I didn't mind. I looked and sounded different than the other girls in my class. My hair was long and dark red, with some lighter red streaks, and some blondish ones, paired with green eyes and extremely pale skin, I had been considered beautiful by the girls from my school in Ireland, I had even had a boyfriend, but then my mom met Trent, and we moved out to the US, and everything changed. My mother became blind to everything that she didn't want to see, and I was forced to live in a house with a horrible man as a father figure. My own father was somewhere in France, a place so small that you probably wouldn't find it on a map. It was an old fashioned, rustic town, but it had its advantages, according to my father. One of them being an Old fashioned boarding school, quite near to the town.

My mother, although oblivious to the things that happened right in front of her, decided that it 'would be good for my health' if I went to Ced boarding school, and I might meet some nice girls from all around the globe. I would go for grade 10, come home for summer vacation, and decide if I wanted to stay until I graduated. After not a very long period of time, I decided it would be best if I went for the whole of my high school time, because then I would no longer wake up in the middle of the night, thinking I heard something, to find Trent staring at me from the end of my bed.

Besides, this school had a uniform, so the girls couldn't possibly make fun of my taste in clothes. The current style at my school was really, really low riding jeans and really tight, small Roxy tank tops with Doc Martens. It was quite contrary to my own personal style, a combination of vintage tops and costume clothes. Today I was setting my own 'fashion statement' as my friends from Ireland had called it, they would have seen this outfit for what it truly was (fab) rather than snickering at it behind my back.

They always did this until I looked them in the eye and raised an eyebrow, at which point they usually looked away and began to discuss someone else's clothes from school, like the teachers. It wasn't that I couldn't afford to wear the same things they wore, it was just that I simply wouldn't use much of Trent's money when he told me to buy something nice for myself. Like yesterday, he gave me 2 $100 bills and told me to buy some nice clothes for my trip. knowing full well that he meant the stuff that the other girls were wearing, I took the money to the bank, got it put into $50's and gave $150 of it to the charity next door, only taking a $50 for myself, counting it as my allowance for the next year. I went to my favorite shop, even though it was all the way across town, and bought several outfits and a dress for my grade 9 grade tomorrow, after all, I would be leaving in a little less then a week for my new life, I might as well make one more big fashion statement before I left. Most of the other girls in grade 9 were wearing pink or black dresses and spending all of tomorrow morning at the hairdressers, like it was their wedding or something, but my dress was more renaissance style. It was a Gweneveyr style dress, with a dark green bodice, elbow length sleeves and a forest green skirt. I didn't have anymore money to spend, so I went out to the garden and made a daisy chain for my hair. At last, I was ready, and there was another 5 hours till the dance.

When I arrived at the dance, I wasn't the least bit surprised to find it a sea of black and pink dresses, the girls at my school were so predictable, that it wasn't even funny... most of the time.

When the dance was finally over, I was pooped. After a whole evening of dancing (mostly by myself) and glaring at the other girls, I was ready to fall asleep right were I was standing, but I didn't have time. I still had to pack my dress and the rest of my stuff into my suitcases before I left, in the morning.

Even though I was barely awake, I could feel him sitting on my bed, so I kicked my leg out, and hearing the satisfying crack of bone, the constant line of swears, the door close and the footsteps retreat down the hall, I went back to a peaceful sleep; I would see what damage I had done in the morning.

As it turns out, I gave him a large bruise under his chin and he bit his tongue so bad that he could barely talk, so I would have an excuse not to say a long goodbye.

I went upstairs to grab my stuff, and ran out to the taxi that awaited me, to take me to the air port, and my new home. When the plane landed in a large airport, and I got off, I began to think that coming was a mistake that leaving home was a mistake, but I had made many mistakes in my life, and this certainly wasn't even in the top 1000. I grabbed my luggage and looked around for my father, but I was startled to find, that my dad hadn't bothered to come and pick me up, he had paid someone to come get me, because there was a large man holding an even larger sign with my name on it. The man had black hair pulled into a low ponytail at the nape of his neck, and was wearing a black tee-shirt with black jeans. As I drew closer I found that he wasn't really a man, but a teenage boy, who looked like he was about 15 or 16 up close.

'Hello. Are you Kara O'Kally?' He asked, he was smiling, but his blue eyes looked unhappy, like they were holding a secret that no one else could ever know.

'Yup, that's me!' I said, than mentally began kicking myself in the head. I sounded like a cheerleader from my old school, perky enough for a whole classroom of people. The last thing I wanted to do was creep this guy out. I mean, who in their right mind would WANT to humiliate themselves in front of a hot guy?!