My mother tells me that there is a point and time when I will understand what she is teaching me, that I will come to learn and embrace what power lies within me. I don't quite understand what she means by power, but I nod and smile like the weird fourteen-year old I am.

Our world is different from what it used to be. I can't say I know that for sure, being only fourteen, but my gut tells me it's so. The ground is green. If the ground is not green, it is black rock. The air is barely breathable, and there are no longer such things as seasons. Mom says mother nature will do what she wishes with the world she created.

My bedroom door slams open, "Tarehan! Are you wasting your time again writing things down in that dumb journal? I thought I told you to make your time useful." My mother stares at me, waiting for an answer. I close my book ashamed, and I shrug. I usually don't know what to say to my mother, she gets mad at everything.

I push my journal under my matress and put the quilt back down over it. Getting up off the ground, I wipe off the dust from my shirt. Somehow it got there, I'm not sure how. "It's time to go to school Tarehan! Come get your breakfast!" I get up smoothing my hair back behind my ear, and grab my backpack walking into the kitchen. I smell toast, like I did every morning for the last five years. Mom always makes toast before school.

I grab a peice of toast and say thank you, promptly making my way out the front door. I have one sibling. Ramshee. He's my little brother, and he's only about a year old, so he doesn't go to school, he stays home with mom. My dad died when I was seven. He was hit by a car. Mom always changes the subject when I ask about him. I stop at my bus stop at the end of the street, and I look both ways seeing a dark red bus clunking up the road to my left.

I back up, sighing, and wait till it creekily opens it's doors. I hop up the steps to see no one on the bus. I'm always the first stop. I nod at our bus driver Wilton, he's almost ninety-five I think. I clamber to the back of bus, to my usual seat and sit down, dreading the day ahead of me.

~To be continued in part 2. Ch. 1.~