Secrets

The first signs of dawn sneaked in through Veronica’s venetion blinds, causing specks of light to dance through her room. She glanced over at her alarm clock. The time was 5:58 a.m. She knew that soon her day would start.
She had mixed feelings about this day. It was the 1st day of her senior year of high school. Summer had past and fall was coming. The days would get cold and gloomy soon, as they did every year in her town in Maine. But it wasn’t the weather she was thinking about. Her mind was on other things.
It wasn’t that she felt she didn’t belong with the people at her school. She just felt different from them. They had parents, families. Families who cared about them. Not that the headmaster at the orphanage, Maud, didn’t care about her or all the 40 something girls at Capetown Orphanage. She had it good her compared to other places, all the girls did. But it wasn’t exactly a family. Not a real one.
At the same time though, she couldn’t say she wasn’t a little excited about starting today. After all, this was the beginning of her senior year, though she had absolutely no idea what to expect.
She got up and walked across the room to the window, careful not wake her roommate, Maddie. Maddie had lived in Capetown Orphanage almost as long as Veronica, and since they had seniority, they had a room to themselves on the third floor. She was a year younger than Veronica, with straight, jet black hair and brown, almond eyes. Her parents immigrated from North Korea before she was born and had her here. They were killed in a drive-by shooting when she was five. Her mother, who was shot in the back, protected her daughter until the very end.
Bzzzzzzzzzzz......................
Their alarm went off.
Eventually, Maddie turned it off, got up, and went to go stand next to Veronica, her hair slightly disheveled.
“What’cha thinkin’ about?” Maddie asked sleepily as she leaned her head on her shoulder.
She was thinking about what she usually thought about before the first day of school: her parents, the crash, what they’d be doing right now. Maddie knew that and it worried her sometimes. But Veronica didn’t want to worry her right now, so she just shrugged and shook her head.
“Just wakin’ up,” Veronica said. “Ready for today?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Maddie replied.