Chapter 1

            “Monica!” my mother yelled.

            “I’m coming,” I groaned as I wrestled my hair brush out of a knot half the size of my nine-year-old head.

            “Monica, you’re going to make me late!” she shouted.

            “Fine,” I sighed.  Who was I going to impress anyway?

            No one, looking like that…

            “I’m coming,” I said again as I trotted down the stairs and grabbed the brown paper bag my mom held out to me.  “Bye,” I mumbled as I walked out the door.

            “Come on, Monica!” Dan yelled.

            Dan was my second-cousin or something �" my dad’s brother’s grandson.  But he was a brother to me and the only one I had.

            “I’m coming!” I yelled.

            Dan had ridden his bicycle up to the stop sign and was waiting for me there, impatiently.

            I grabbed my own bicycle and rode down to meet Dan.

            “You’re late…” he said as we rounded the corner.

            I glanced at Dan briefly but said nothing.

            “Well, I thought you should know, your hair looks awful,” said Dan, a teasing grin spread across his face.  “You should’ve just left it when you got out of bed.”

            “Thanks,” I muttered as Wormwood Park came slowly into view.

            We reached the park in minutes, but a couple of guys were already there, waiting.

            “What up, Boss?” asked the one with wavy black hair.

            Dan nodded to each of them.

            “Sorry we’re late,” said Dan. “The Girl had some hair issues this morning.  Any orders of business?  …Then we ride.”

            Dan rode his bicycle in front of the group, leading the way, while Chad and Brad rode on either side of me.  When a car would come toward us, the three of them would escort me safely to the curb.

            As we arrived at my elementary school, Dan bade me goodbye with a firm handshake and didn’t look back.  I, however, watched him until his bicycle vanished from sight.

            I sat down at a classroom table.  Throughout our math lesson, my eyes made their daily rotations: Miss Kayla, book, paper, book, paper, book, repeat.  And when I had finished my work �" and as my classmates struggled through the first equation �" I was bored.  Dan swore I could have skipped two or three grades, but the school board decided I wasn’t “emotionally mature” enough.

            Whatever that means…

            After our math lesson was science, which I found just as easy as math, and after that was social studies.  Then we walked down to the cafeteria for the worst part of every day.

            At the center of the room was The Juliets’ table, full of the girls whose bodies “blossomed” before their brains, loved by the boys who knew better, both hated and revered by everyone else.  Dan said they would evolve into cheerleaders in the years to come.

The surrounding tables were filled by those deemed worthy by the Juliets’.  Speckled just outside the borders of their Fair Verona were those less worthy but hardly criminals, close enough to see what they were missing, far enough that they would never touch it.

 And last, in the dark back corner of the cafeteria, was the Table of Exile.  It only took one offense to earn a life sentence, and my offenses were numerous: scoring higher than a Juliet on a project, refusing to let a Juliet cheat off my test paper, wearing the same color as a Juliet, and more, I’m sure.

I walked the perimeter of the cafeteria, for the Exiled were not permitted to cut through Verona.  I ate my lunch quietly and pulled out my planner.  I rarely found the need to check it for fear of forgetting something, but The Boss required me to log everything and turn the planner in to him at the end of each day.

Meet Dan at 3pm, I wrote.

This was followed by snickering from the other side of the Table of Exile.

“Ginger’s got a boyfriend!  Ginger’s got a boyfriend!” a girl sang.

That was what got me “officially” Exiled in the first place, supposedly dating a family member �" because The Juliets’ brains hadn’t quite blossomed yet, and they would believe anything.  And people were willing to tell them anything too.  Being responsible for another’s Exile was a one-way ticket to Worthiness.  And those among the Exiled were rewarded for reminding the rest of the school of the reason we were each Exiled �" not that it could ever repeal their own exile, but I had heard the benefits were tempting.  So when one of the Exiled found an opportunity to bring up Dan again, they were eager to seize their reward.

“Ginger and Danny sittin’ in a tree…” the girl sang.

I used to slouch in my seat in embarrassment as such moments, but I’d grown accustomed to the stares of the more fortunate students, who only turned their head to our corner when someone was being sold out.  But it wasn’t anything personal; it was just a method of survival.

When the school day was over and I was released to ride my bike home, I instead rode over to Dan’s school, as was recorded in my planner.

I entered of Dan’s middle school, ducking as to not be seen by the ladies in the front office.  I snuck through the vacant hallways until reaching the empty auditorium.  I sat in D10 and waited.

Beep!  Beep!  Beep!  Beep!

The alarm on my watch marked that it was three o’clock.  It also marked that I was on time and that Dan was late.  And I waited three very long minutes before he arrived.

“Sorry I’m late.”

The doors to the auditorium swung open, and Dan stepped inside.  “Come on, Monica, let’s go.”

Author's Note

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