Who is Mona Lisa

Dedicated:

To Steve, with love To Mom, because you encouraged me "People think I am lying when I tell them my story of Mona Lisa and the others, but I swear, it is really true. I suppose maybe it does seem like a dream, or maybe something out of a movie, but believe what you want. I still say - it was some sort of magic…" wrote Kate in her journal.

She set down her fuzzy, pink pen and smiled as she thought of the earlier events and how they had changed her life…

It had been a strange day. The last trace of snow had melted. Kate thought that the left over snow looked like the white Styrofoam they used to make coffee cups. It had melted and froze so many times that it was stiff and dirty. The last snow of the season seemed that way, Kate thought.

Now that the snow had gone, there was mud everywhere. The 12-year-old family car kicked up so much mud, it now had brown freckles on its white paint. Kate loved the old car. It was big, comfortable, and always dependable.

One of the school buses broke down right in front of the school, creating a traffic jam of orange buses trying to unload kids, all while the transportation crew tried to bring the old bus back to life. What followed was a trail of tired parents, unsure of where to drop their kids off, so they were stopping everywhere. Horns were honking, kids were shouting as they dodged the traffic, and - well, it wasn't a pretty scene.

School was not much better, Kate decided, even though the day had barely started. Ever since she moved here, she felt like she didn't belong, and she dreaded going to school. Kate didn't feel like she fit in. She was average academically at school, her only favorite sport was volleyball, the rest she didn't enjoy, and while she was pretty, she felt she didn't stand out in the crowd. There were little groups in this school, and Kate didn't fit into any of them. In school, she was pretty much invisible. And being invisible wasn't much fun.

It didn't help that the morning started out bad. Kate had left her homework in the back of the Cadillac. She thought of this as she was walking into the school. It was a cold morning. She wished she wore a hat. Her long, blonde hair was flying loose. She tucked it under the collar of her coat. Kate squeezed her brown suede jacket around her, thinking that the Cadillac was probably still stuck behind the school bus. One look back at the parking lot made her realize it wasn't worth it to try and chase after her parents' car to get her schoolwork.