• Faith read the note a thousand times over. She carefully and slowly turned to a beautiful, clean page. She lifted up her ballpoint pen and slowly started to ease the pen towards the paper. Right before the paper and the pen met she flung the pen across the room. What if she messed up? That would mean one of the beautiful pages would be soiled. She picked up her brand new mechanical pencil and made sure she was equipped with an eraser for whatever mistakes she made. She put the tip of the led above the first line and began writing the date. She sighed. Her handwriting looked horrible compared to her teacher’s elegant calligraphy. Her pencil approached the first line and began to write in her neatest and most sophisticated handwriting she could manage.
    4-23-09
    My name is Faith Lynn Taylor. I am thirteen years old. I have just been given three stepbrothers, two stepsisters, and a disgusting plumber for a stepfather. I didn’t ask for them. I don’t even want them. Mother told me to think of them as a birthday present. This is more like a punishment. My beautiful cottage themed bedroom has been given to my stepsisters. My stuff has been moved to the basement. I don’t like the basement. It’s dark and dreary. The floor is freezing cold and the walls…well, there aren’t any! It’s the most depressing place in our house. I wish I could run away. I wish I could run away all the way to Manhattan where my father is. He would understand. He wouldn’t make me sleep in the basement. Well, enough of that. I should never think of such things. This journal was given to me by Mrs. Priest. She is my history teacher. She is like family. I love her so much. She makes me feel confident, like I can do whatever I set my mind to. On the very first page of this journal, she wrote that writing in here is the key to a whole different world…my world. I would give just about anything for a different world. I want to be in a place where everything is unheard of. I want to be in a place where I can get away from everything happening in reality. That would be my world.