chapter 2 new feelings

Chapter 2

New feelings

Dawn had finished all her homework at Study Hall. Bored as she was, she figured she would enjoy the small load of studying. She would adapt to it. Yes, that's what she would do.

She loved how the teachers didn't have squinty, cold, staring eyes that drilled through your mind like those of her private school. No more school uniforms or damp, chilliness of everything around her. At Daymon Private Catholic School, Dawn had felt like a trapped bird but now she felt like a soaring hawk, looking down at the city below and all it's people, and loving the world and her life- every second that ticked by.

As the brisk winds of early September whipped Dawn's bare arms, she quickened her pace to get to her warm cozy apartment in which she could snuggle and bury herself into a soft fleece throw and doze or read a book.

The lights were probably off in the room. That would mean Mom and Dad weren't home yet. They were both busy with the new jobs that grabbed them and dragged them into the busy city of New York. "New oppurtunities," Mom had said, "Our new life means taking risks and believing in what's right."

And surely, that was right. You would always know you were standing alone when you're in a crowd. You'd be an individual because no one took sides or bothered to think.

Up the spiral of steps Dawn treaded. The stairs were like snakes that coiled up a tree. 14th floor. Not to impressive for the looong hike up and the busy elevators that hardly worked anymore. But who knew? Maybe her damp life would change, as if a wish on a star would magically grant her desires that nagged at her heart with a deep pain that drove her delirious. Maybe, she just had to decipher the code of her life like she would do at the Chinese Buffet when she read the message on her fortune cookie. New ideas and thoughts wedged their ways into Dawn's head and left her like a leaf falling from a tree of good sense and onto the cold pavement of negatives and faults. Dawn liked it by herself sometimes, to really think about what caused her pain and happiness. The loong hike up the stairs in the ill-illuminated apartment gave her great oppurtunies to have a chat with herself. Better chats than she would ever have with anybody else.

Yup, no one was home. No one but Dawn who stood in the doorway horrified and miserable at the sight of the mountains of boxes. There was probably an avalanche of stacked trunks and packages because a lot of stuff was scattered like a handful of jacks. Hopefully there was a hand to grab all of them up. Hopefully that wouldn't be Dawn.

The walls were bare. The rooms were bare. No posters or pictures. No fire in the fireplace. Just cold hearthstones that bordered the empty space. No much was unloaded and that made Dawn delirious too. She was suddenly angry. The sight of room 107, the plainness and dullness, made Dawn fustrated! the apartment was messy as if a glutton lived there!

Dawn threw her backpack onto a box, pulled her shoes back onto her tired pinched toes, swung the door open, and left it to slam suddenly behind her and cause the old walls and pillars to shake and rattle. Her sudden new emotions drove her back outside. she didn't want to walk back down the steps though, so she slid down the stairwell like a young daring kid would do. She stomped back onto the street, and jingling keys in hand, and strutted off to the city park.

Dawn couldn't feel a change in her bones but there surely was something, knawing at her heart and tingling her flesh...