The drawing above is, obviously, of Lilia! The amazing artist, Maren, helps run my side account, @authorsinarms . (The arm tattoos and Adidas shirt were drawn when Maren still didn't know who the girl would be. The art just ended up looking like Lilia and she let me use it in this story!

Yawning, Lilia Well burrowed further under her blankets and prayed to God that it was early enough in the morning to get some more sleep. Balefully, she eyed her alarm clock from across the room.

6:00. Crap.

Lila rolled out of her bed and onto the floor. There, she stared at the glow-in-the-dark stars that had been stuck to her ceiling since second grade and wondered what would happen if she just lay there and refused to move. She supposed her mother might attempt to drag her down the stairs. Or maybe, since it was the day before her birthday, her mother would take mercy on her and leave her be.

These thoughts passed through Lilia's head like flies in honey. She had never been a morning person. Or a night person, for that matter. She was certainly an afternoon person.

But school did not start in the afternoon, it started way too early in the morning. 7:00 to be exact.

Lilia sighed and stood, clutching her head as dizziness at her sudden movement washed over her. She yanked a white sweater and blue skinny jeans out of her closet, pulled them on, and headed into the bathroom.

After she yanked a brush through her snarled hair, Lilia washed her face. The cold water running in rivulets over her cheekbones and off of her slim nose was refreshing. She gripped the edge of the sink and met her own gaze in the mirror. Her eyes were her only feature that she truly liked. They were bright green with little flecks of a lovely hazel color. She got complimented on her eyes more than anything. Which was understandable, really, when one looked at the rest of her features.

Lilia had dark brown hair that was either very straight, very wavy, or an odd mixture of both. Today seemed to be the latter, as it usually was. She pulled it into its usual high ponytail and wiped off her face, stemming the miniature rivers running over her high and strangely prominent cheekbones and slightly freckled cheeks. A small scar rested under her left eye from an unfortunate biking accident when she was younger - really the only remarkable thing about herself besides her eyes.

She poked her nose, which was just a little too upturned, disdainfully and swept out of the bathroom. Feeling much more awake, she hopped down the stairs two at a time and slid into the kitchen.

Her mother was already up and clattering pots and pans around for no apparent reason. Cooking was Mrs. Well's personal form of therapy, and ever since her oldest child, Ryan, had dropped out of college, she seemed to need to do it quite often.

"Your last day of being fifteen!" she trilled when Lilia entered the kitchen. "Cherish the day!"

Lilia thought of the day ahead of her. A positively boring day in school, the highlight of which was a math test, and then an afternoon of homework and an evening of reading while her little sister watched loud television or listened to equally loud music in the background.

"I will," she told her mother, who was just a little too optimistic for Lilia this early in the morning, and crossed the kitchen to the walk-in cabinet.

When Lilia was little and her mother and brother would fight, Lilia took to hiding in the warm walk-in cabinet and even taking her toys and books in there to pass the time. Her mother and Ryan had never gotten along well and had often gotten in fights before they sent him to a boarding school, so Lilia had been a rather tubby child.

She quickly located the Cheerios and grabbed the box hopefully. Seeing that the cereal was, in fact, of the multi-grain variety, she wrinkled her nose with distaste, put it back, and grabbed the toaster waffles instead.

"Am I driving you to school today?" her mother asked, pausing in her pot-banging to blink worriedly at her middle child from behind thick glasses. Lilia knew she was worried at the thought of having to stop her cooking to drive her to school, so she shook her head.

"I'm fine, but Kasey has a poster to take to school and it might get battered on the bus. Could you drive her?"

Mrs. Well nodded, looking much more happy. Kasey's elementary school started an hour after Lilia's, obviously giving their mother enough time to finish her current cooking project.

Lilia knew her sister would be awake, so after she had toasted the waffles and drizzled a sufficient amount of syrup over them, she bounded up the stairs and rapped on the door to her sister's room.

"Enter," Kasey called.

Lilia did so and crossed her arms as she looked down at her little sister. "What are you doing?"

Kasey was a skinny girl. Eleven years old, she shared her brown hair with Lilia and her mother, except that Kasey's hair was perpetually wavy and frizzy. She tended to dress in light-colored, flowery-designed clothing that could either be quite cute or look like she had been plucked straight out of the sixties. She also was quite nearsighted and had large glasses (which she hated) that made her eyes look like a cartoon owl's. Since she preferred to sit inside and draw or play with makeup, she was very pale. Her eyes were the opposite of Lilia's - brown with green flecks. Right now, she was lying on her back amidst a mess of crumpled papers, her arms flung out and her knees bent. She was watching the ceiling intently, just as Lilia had done earlier that morning.

"I am contemplating the meaninglessness of life," Kasey said seriously, never even glancing at her older sister. While usually Kasey was outgoing, preppy, and bubbly, she tended to handle her hatred of mornings in a similar way to Lilia - with utter defeat.

"It's too early in the morning for that," Lilia told her little sister, bending to pick up one of the pieces of paper. "If Mom sees your room, she's gonna have an aneurysm." The sisters' mother was a bit of a neat freak.

She unfolded the paper and regarded the drawing sketched upon it. It was a girl kneeling on the ground, her fists pressed against the ground in front of her, her long hair obscuring her face. Out of her back, the faint outlines of two wings showed.

Lilia knew what it was immediately. Her sister had a strange obsession with fallen angels and the lore surrounding them. Quietly, she refolded the paper and slid it into the pocket of her jeans. She had been secretly collecting Kasey's work for years, keeping them in a binder in her closet. It was all too amazing to be recycled, in Lilia's opinion.

"Mom's driving you to school," she told her sister.

"Okay."

"You'd better snap out of this mood before then. Don't weird her out, okay?"

"Okay."
Lilia rolled her eyes and bounded downstairs to eat her waffles.

*

The school day passed uneventfully, just as Lilia had predicted. One boring class after another until the last bell had finally released her and the rest of her classmates for the weekend. She was making mental lists of the pros and cons of being a high school dropout (solely for entertainment purposes...sort of) as she entered her house and was hit by an enticing aroma.

A small groan escaped her throat as she drank in the sweet smell. "What is that?" she called to her mom, who had most likely baked the thing from which the smell was emanating.

"Brownies with white chocolate chips!" her mother replied. "They're hot right now, but you can eat them after dinner."

Lilia sighed, ignoring her suddenly growling stomach, and headed upstairs and into her room to do her homework.

A half hour later, Kasey returned home. As she pounded up the stairs, hopefully to do her homework and not just waste the time with art or makeup, Lilia called, "How did your presentation go?"

"Great! Maggie was sitting in the front row and she kept making me laugh!"

She totally failed that project, Lilia thought, smiling to herself and pulling up Google on her phone to search for a math problem she didn't feel like solving.

"Is Dad going to be home early tonight?" Kasey asked

"No clue," Lilia replied. She secretly hoped he wasn't. While she loved her father (she had to, seeing as she was his child), they weren't very close due to the excessive amounts of time he spent doing his job. How time-consuming his work was made sense, Lilia supposed, because he was the head of the entire finances department of a rather popular chain restaurant, but it didn't do much in the way of his relationships with his family. She never knew what to talk to him about, and more often than not, when she did try to share what was going on in her life with him, he would "multitask," or ignore her as he did work-related things on his phone and usually would interrupt her at the most important part of her story to call out to her mother. This infuriated Mrs. Well even more than it belittled Lilia, and she often got in fights with her husband over it, making Lilia regret trying to talk to him at all. All around, the atmosphere of the Well family was much more positive when Mr. Well wasn't home.

"Mom made him promise not to do work-related things tomorrow," Kasey informed Lilia after a few more seconds of silence.

"Great."

Both of the sisters knew that this promise meant nothing. On Christmas, their father had interrupted present-opening to take a business call, which had resulted in him being reprimanded incredibly strictly by Mrs. Well. All in all, Christmas had been nowhere near the joyous, relaxing holiday it was intended to be.

Lilia heard Kasey turn on some music and knew her sister was now either searching the internet for things more amusing than homework or trying on junky, hand-me-down makeup that she had gotten from Lilia herself or her friends. Sighing, Lilia likewise gave up on homework, Googled the rest of the answers for her assignments, and spent a solid minute convincing herself that she wouldn't fail the history test that she had (as of yet) failed to study for.

Her afternoon freed, she retreated to the mass of blankets that was her bed, grabbed a well-worn paperback novel off of her nightstand, and started to read the familiar, intoxicating words.

Lilia had discovered this particular book about three months ago, and since then, had become obsessed with it. She could recite, word for word, the first and last page of it. She also knew all of the characters and whatever backstories were given for them by heart and, unbeknownst to her family, ran an online blog about the book.

The book's name was Star of Winter, and Lilia loved it more than any other book she had ever read. Its only flaw was that it was the first book in a series that was currently being written - the second book wasn't to be released for another couple of months.

It wasn't until her mother called for her and Kasey, saying dinner was ready, that Lilia realized she had been reading Star of Winter for a solid hour. Closing it and admiring the cover lovingly, she placed the book back in its position on the nightstand and bounded down the stairs.

She sucked in a breath when she saw her father sitting at the dinner table, ignoring the steaming, uncut steak in front of him and fixating on his phone instead. He adjusted his glasses and ran a hand through his disappearing brown hair.

"Hey, Dad," Lilia said, hoping that, in his peripheral vision, he would recognize her as Lilia and not Kasey, which happened more and more lately as Kasey matured and started to take on Lilia's form and facial features.

Her father mumbled a reply that sounded more like, "Mm," than "Hey," but Lilia accepted it. She grabbed a plate, helped herself to the steak, and sat across from him.

Kasey soon followed, her face red from having washed off makeup. She sat diagonal from Lilia and pressed a finger to her lips: Don't tell Mom.

Lilia rolled her eyes, but nodded in agreement. Her mother strongly disliked the idea of either of her daughters wearing makeup, and while it wasn't forbidden in the Well household, if Mrs. Well caught even fifteen-year-old Lilia with so much as a bit of mascara on, she was sure to give a lecture about "true beauty" and self-confidence that neither of the girls could stomach for more than thirty seconds.

When Mrs. Well sat down at the table, they commenced their meal. "So your brother's driving down for your birthday, Lilia," Mrs. Well said brightly, smiling at her eldest daughter.

Lilia fought the urge to ask how he could afford a car (it was probably his girlfriend's; why she put up with him, Lilia had no clue) and quickly stuffed her mouth with meat, nodding.

"No phones at the table, Dad," Mrs. Well said after a moment, having watched her husband intently to see if she would have to prompt him to join a family discussion and deciding that she did.

Sighing defeatedly, Lilia's father slid the cell phone back into his pocket and adjusted his glasses. It was a habit of his that seemed only to further annoy Lilia's mother tonight. She pressed her lips together and then smiled, this one much faker than the one she had given Lilia.

"So Kasey," she said brightly, "you had a presentation in school today?"

As Kasey launched into a dramatic play-by-play of her school presentation, Lilia zoned out, thinking of nothing in particular. But then, nothing in particular was better than this awkward family dinner.

*

That night, Lilia couldn't sleep. She stared at the dimly glowing plastic stars adhered to her ceiling and tried to focus on her breathing, as her friend had recommended. Then she tried imagining herself relaxing at the beach, as Kasey had recommended. Finally, she gave up and just burrowed under her covers to think.

As per usual, the next morning, she would be opening her gifts. Most families opened birthday gifts in the evening, or so she had heard, but Mrs. Well disagreed with that idea, saying that it gave the birthday person more time to enjoy their gifts if they received them in the morning. Since it was a logical argument, no member of the Well family had ever fought for a change in the birthday-present-opening department.

After that, she would enjoy a birthday brunch at the small diner down the street where, since the head cook was Mrs. Well's long-time friend, Lilia would be given a free slice of cake and an off-tune chorus of "Happy Birthday" from the waiters, who sang the song faster than usual because they were eager to get back to their busy morning shifts.

Then, she would have the afternoon to herself, with her mother frequently poking her head into her bedroom and asking if she was having a good time. Since her parents (and by parents she meant her mother, who just put "Dad" on all of the cards to make him seem invested in the lives of his children) were uncannily good at buying gifts that she would never have thought of but truly loved, the answer would invariably be yes.

Finally, there would be a large birthday dinner, complete with ice cream and a store-bought cake, and then Lilia's birthday would be over.

Lilia discovered that, through this play-by-play of the next day, she had become rather sleepy. Rather than fight it, she merely closed her eyes, and succumbed to her dreams.