Chapter 1-Hazel
Falling.
She was falling into darkness.
Hazel looked around for something to grab onto but her surroundings flew past. She could vaguely make out a humanoid figure falling beside her before the were both engulfed by darkness.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Hazel started at her alarm-06:40.
Her peculiar dream forgotten as she rushed to get ready for the first day of grade 8.
Breakfast was awkwardly quiet. Her parents had been fighting again and were blatantly ignoring each other, Hazel knew it.
She had heard their hushed argument last night when they thought she was asleep.
She arrived at school as the bell rang and was 5 minutes late for the first class- Technology.
Hazel sucked at Tech.
She peered around the class looking for her Best friend, but Jakkie was nowhere to be seen.
"We have a new student." Ms. Martin said nonchalantly.
It was a male student with chestnut brown hair and deep grey eyes, almost twice Hazel's height.
Keep away from him
Her brain yelled at her.
He was walking towards her, she then realized that the only free seat was the one next to her, the seat she was saving for Jakkie. Jakkie was still absent.
He flopped onto the chair next to her,"Hi I'm Leo." He said with a unreadable expression on his face.
"Hazel." She whispered to the intimidating male on her right.
"Open to page 3 of your textbooks and compete activity 5."
Leo just started at the blank white board.
Ok ,question 1- what is a refugee.
Firstly ,what did that have to do with technology and secondly what was a refugee?
"A person forced to move away from their homeland."
Hazel turned to the guy on her right ,"what?"
Leo sighed "A refugee is a person who is forced to move away from their homeland because of the living conditions."
She wrote down the answer.
The rest of the day went by fine and coincidentally Leo was in all of Hazels classes.
Her last lesson was art, her favorite subject.
They had to do a project in pairs and she was paired with Leo. Jakkie had not shown up all day.
The had to sketch each other from the head up.
Hazel started to draw him as he stared out of the window, as still as a statue .
She drew his eyes deep and mysterious, his long pointy nose shadowing below his right eye. She drew his lips small and soft. She spent some time on his face and curly hair. That's when she noticed a faint scar travelling from below his right ear along his set jawline.
" What happened there?" She asked him innocently, pointing at the scar.
He scowled and stormed out of the classroom.
5 minutes later the dismissal bell rang and she started walking home. She was lost in her thoughts , wandering if her parents would still be fighting when she got home, where Jakkie was and what was the deal with Leo, when a car came swerving onto the curb and Hazel rolled out of the way at the last moment but felt a searing pain shoot through her arm as she was dragged into unconsciousness.
