Chapter 01

                                    

                                          
chapter one
emma montoya 
                          
I can see Guild City from my dusty window. Lights still glow brightly over there while parties blast music and young teens stay up all night long, breaking curfew and thriving in that criminal adrenaline. I sit alone, watching this, as I am stuck in the gloomy darkness with a dozen other girls my age and the only lights we have are the stars.
                          
"Can't sleep?" I hear my best friend Jenna whisper in my ear. It's so soft and I'm so lost in thought that I flinch at her touch.
                          
Of course I couldn't sleep. And she knew that. Tomorrow I would get to choose a Guild to live with forever and win the chance to meet my birth parents. Tomorrow my life would change forever and I wasn't just about to sleep on it, and neither was Jenna. 
                          
"Nope," I whisper back. 
                          
I see her shadow nod at my feet. "Let's go," she murmurs, gripping me by the wrist. "We need to talk."
                          
I crawl over my thick, hand-made pillow and lift up the window. Jenna climbs out head first and pulls herself onto the flat roof littered with various shoes and pillows that we've lost over the years. 
                          
There isn't much of a climb since we slept on the third floor of this 3 story building. I follow in her footsteps, gripping the gutter lining the roof while my feet dangle in the air. She pulls me up and I somehow end up somersaulting next to her. 
                          
"Let's pretend this is like old times, OK?" I ask.
                          
"You mean like when we would discuss the moment we meet our birth parents and choose the same Guild?" I laugh at her reply, how idiotic and detailed it is. 
                          
"Exactly."
                          
But there is nothing to discuss, for we have already figured it all out. We will both join the Lion Guild where our birth parents most likely lived without us for sixteen long years.  The only clue I have to finding them is a small tattoo of a lion on the back of my ankle. Jenna's birth parents left her a necklace with the inscription, an awkward star roars louder than any other. 
                          
"An awkward star roars louder than any other," I hear Jenna whisper to no one in particular.
                          
"We'll find them Jenna," I try. "I promise." I can see her heart yearn for someone to call family. 
                          
"That's not what I'm worried about," she whispers so softly I wouldn't be able to hear her if I was not sitting next to her. "We get our hopes up for such big things, but what if they don't come true. What if I don't find my parents? What if I don't recognize them?"
                          
"And what if they don't recognize me?" I finish for her. These questions linger in our minds like that thread of guilt that you never seek forgiveness for. You try to cover it up with other happier thoughts, but pain is stronger. 
                          
And with that we fall asleep.

                          
ooo

                          
"Oh my-- shoot." I wake up with a jolt to Jenna's exclamation. 
                          
"What's, what's wrong?" I yawn, longing to go back to sleep, forgetting what the day will bring. 
                          
"We're on the roof Emma!"
                          
Roof. Rules. Morning. Discovered. 
                          
"Are we?" I moan and sit up to find Jenna already climbing back into the dwelling. I hope Mrs. Rivet has decided to sleep in, or we may not graduate into Guild City today. Jenna and I have broken far to many rules about sleeping on the roof.
                          
As she slips into the house, I don't hear any yelling or snide remarks as usual, so I follow and drop onto my bed, quick to pretend that my body is still drugged with sleep. As if on cue, Mrs. Rivet barges in with her morning bell. I keep my eyes shut.