"My future is like an empty frame, waiting for a beautiful picture. All I want to do is move away with my camera in hand and start snapping away."
As the fluttering graduation caps touched the gym floor of SHS, Leila Avery was ready to hit the road. A road that would take her anywhere but here. Raised by a single mother, Leila's childhood was filled with heartache after heartache. She viewed the world through her zoom lens of her Canon camera, taking amazing pictures and wishing with all her might, that someday she would be on the other side of that camera. With her near perfect SAT score and an incredible picture portfolio, Leila choses the perfect college to attend. Although it's over the Pacific Ocean, she jumps at the offer of a scholarship to the University of Hawaii.
At the age of twelve, Leila had a fateful night involving a lightning storm and awoke the next day in the hospital with a weird scar and an even weirder power. She now had the power to read minds. Coping with the abnormal gift, Leila became withdrawn and viewed as a 'freak' in middle school. Her high school gifted class was her savior. She gradually opened up to the other three girls and was relieved to find out there were others out there just like her.
After a huge argument with her mother, Leila reads her mind and discovers a huge secret. Her father was alive, not deceased as her mother had always told her. And to top it off, he lives thousands of miles away, in Hawaii. Waving distantly to her mother, Leila leaves for Hawaii determined to uncover secrets of her family's past. But is she ready to be shocked?
Island of Kauai
Picture at coseti.org
