Chapter 1: Night Sky
The stars are very bright tonight. I know this because there is a hole in the roof right over my bed. I sit up carefully so I don't wake the others. Everyone is cozily asleep in their beds. Tonight I will get no sleep because it is my 11th birthday and it's hard to believe that 10 years ago I spent my first birthday with my parents. So much has changed since then. I got kicked out after Law 1 was passed when I was 7, kicked to the outskirts after Law 2 and then I found CPO. Law 1 was no children in households so I lived on the streets for 7 months until Law 2 was passed and then all children were exiled to the outskirts. I found CPO a month later. Children's Protection Organization run by children. It's where I am now. In an old 2 story barn with 120 hay beds for all the other kids there. One of them is mine. It's on the second story of the rickety barn. The first floor has a kitchen,1 bathroom(a hole in the ground) and a huge lobby space mostly filled with a couple broken couches. The "lobby area" also has 20 small dinning tables with 4 chairs at each so half of the kids can eat dinner there. Food is delivered to us monthly but it's barely enough for all of us. Obviously not all the children from New York came to CPO but instead started smaller groups on the east side. I joined CPO because I was a helpless 8 year old. Lot's of younger kids went to CPO but lots of the older kids went elsewhere. CPO was started 6 months before we were exiled. They saw it coming. I quickly go downstairs to the first floor and sit at one of the tables, staring at the wall in silence. Suddenly I hear footsteps. I look around to find nothing but darkness. Then a figure appears in the distance. A girl comes and sits next to me. Her name is Aylin. She is only 5 and CPO found her left by the entrance of the city when she was 9 months old. She has always been a good friend to me. Quiet, calm, she almost fades into the background. May never complains about anything. We sit in silence for a moment until she says "I can't sleep tonight." She says it so quietly I can barely hear her. I pick her up and bring her to one of the rusty couches. She rests her head on my lap and I brush her hair softly with my fingers. It's dark brown and down to her shoulders. I am pretty much a mother to her .I rest my head against the wall and drift of into the world of dreams. I wake up at the crack of dawn. The day has started. The stars are gone.
