Dark Before Dawn

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Authors: Stacy Juba
Tags: Juvenile Fiction, Fantasy & Magic
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you to believe, that someone likes me for who I am." Dawn stalked to the door.
    "No, honey, that’s wonderful," her mother said. "I’d love to hear more about them."
    Yeah, right. No matter what her mother claimed, she wanted Dawn to have the right kind of friends. Somehow, Dawn doubted Jamie and Candace would live up to that hope.
    Dawn paused at the door and glared over her shoulder. "By the way, I acted on a premonition once and you’re lucky I did. Remember how you almost chickened out of your blind date with Jeff? You were all set to say you were sick until I talked you into going. I knew you’d fall in love with him, and that even though it would be tough on me, it was the right thing for you."
    "Come on, Dawn, I didn’t even know I loved Jeff till we’d been dating a month," her mother said shakily.
    "I had a vision of him proposing in an Italian restaurant as you were eating dessert. He pulled the ring out of a blue velvet box and you got teary-eyed. There was an older couple at the next table. They overheard and congratulated you."
    "I’m sure I told you all those details afterwards."
    "Will you stop kidding yourself and acting like my abilities don’t apply to you? If I hadn’t acted on my vision, neither one of us would be in this room right now." Dawn turned on her heel and slammed the door.
    That decided it. She was visiting Serina again. There, she’d be with people who appreciated her talents and didn’t view her as a time bomb that could throw their lives into rubble at any second.
    Dawn trudged upstairs and passed Ken’s open doorway. Ken was lying on his bed, listening to his iPod. Something drew her toward his room. She tapped lightly on the door. "Hey," she said.
    He nodded, as if giving permission to enter. Dawn had never been in Ken’s room before. She stayed near the door, afraid to intrude. A pile of rumpled laundry towered on his desk chair. Posters of athletes, music groups and actresses plastered the walls.
    "How’d it go with your mom?" Ken asked, turning off the music.
    Dawn shrugged. "Not too good. You know mothers. They can be a pain."
    He didn’t answer and Dawn wished she could snatch back her words. Of course he didn’t know. His mother had died when he was a child. She looked around for something, anything, to help her change the subject.
    "Those are nice paintings." Dawn gestured toward two canvases propped against the wall in the corner. One depicted a fire truck with a Dalmatian sticking his skinny head out the window, and the other a firehouse. Dawn stepped further into the room to see them better. Funny, these paintings seemed more fitting for a little boy.
    Then it clicked why Ken had held onto them, why he wanted them in sight. "Your mom painted those, didn’t she? I heard she was an artist."
    He raised his eyes toward the pictures. "Yeah. At our old house in Maryland, she had murals all over the place. Clouds on the ceiling, animals, a train, the fire station. Mom knew we’d move after she died and copied a couple of them for me."
    A photograph of a slim woman sat on his dresser. Blonde curls cascaded all the way down to her wraparound skirt. Oversized hoop earrings glinted in her ears and bangle bracelets shone on her wrist. Dawn thought of her own mother, who used her artistic skills on the computer rather than with paints. Jeff had married two artists, but Ken’s mom looked more free-spirited. She had a vibrancy that came through even in a picture.
    Maybe Dawn would have been happier with a mother like her. She pushed aside the thought and said, "That was wonderful of your mom. It was hard moving away from my apartment and leaving behind things that reminded me of my dad."
    Like the den where he used to do bills and her bedroom where he tucked her in at night. She would never see the inside of that apartment again. Worse, her mother had a furniture sale and got rid of the puffy recliner chair where her dad would read books. Dawn winced as a sharp pain jabbed her

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