Chapter One

Muse: The Misfits

I stared at the walls, feeling tiny and insignificant. The giant crack in the ceiling kind of looked like Jesus to me, I told my mother this and she beckoned me to continue my lesson.

But that's just the thing maybe learning in the traditional way just isn't for me. Maybe studying all of this ancient history just isn't for me. I need to be out there living life, instead of learning it. Home schooling was such a waste of time.

My mother was such a firm believer in learning every aspect of the world from a book. I think she believes that everything can be learned from a book. "The written word is our path to knowledge, now continue your lesson and stop asking silly questions." She had spat those words at me after I asked her why learning things this way was so important. I asked that when I was ten and I still feel as if a dagger has sliced through my heart every time I think those words.

I think my mother loved me but also despised me all at the same time. I looked so very much like my father and seeing me must be like a constant reminder of all the hurt and the pain he'd ever dealt her with, but at the same time I'm the only reminder she has of him.

My father left her alone with a new born when she was only twenty years old and since then I think she's forgotten how to love. Perhaps that's why she puts so much strength in these facts and how important learning is. She doesn't have a spark anymore.

Not that I know what she used to look like with her "spark" she lost it just after I was born, when my dad left her. My grandmother told me how she used to smile and how she used to dream of becoming a singer. My grandmother would tell me how amazing her voice was and how she used to participate in all of the talent shows and musicals in her high school. I think those were the only days she was truly happy.

But a mysterious boy shot into her life like a comet and she's never been the same.

"Katherine, are you finished yet?" Katherine... oh how I despised the name. Now, don't get me wrong I think it's very pretty just not me. I asked everyone to call me by my middle name, Elaine, and they all did besides my mother. My other grandmother's name was Elaine and my father demanded my middle name be Elaine. My mother agreed only because she was madly in love and so completely happy.

"Yes, mother." I always said mother; not 'mom' or 'mommy' just 'mother'. I gave her my perfectly written poem that fit all of her criteria. She wouldn't like it though it was too unrealistic.

"Katherine, what is this garbage? Stop dreaming of these alternate worlds. You live too much in your head, not enough in the real world." What was so great about the real world anyway? What was so wrong with imagining things?

"Mother, what is the difference with this and one of the Austen novels you demand I read? It's all make believe after all," I told her solemnly.

"That's different though, Katherine. All of those stories could happen while you write of these talking animals and oddities." I swear my mother speaks as if she's from the eight-teen hundreds. I think that her usage of large words make her even more emotionally disconnected. I may be slightly hypocritical though seeing as I just used the phrase "emotionally disconnected" but how could one's inner monologue not be tainted after nearly fifteen years with my mother?

"So, what I want you to do," she droned, "is rewrite your story and make it believable. Okay?"

"Yes, mother."

Every little rejection she gave me killed me inside more and more every day. "Work, work, work Katherine," She'd say or, "Stop wasting your time on impossible things."

She thrust the poem back into my hands and went back to work on whatever the hell she was working on.

I sulked internally, wishing that someone would help me find the happiness I so desperately craved. I wanted something wonderful to happen so that I could see the world is more than just books.