Chapter 1: The Train Station

Darla cried as she thought about all that pain that she had been through, and to her, as a shooting star went across the sky she whispered to herself, "even the stars are passing judgment on me."

In the cemetery, near Eddie's grave, and hours before the train to Montreal was scheduled to leave and take her away forever, young Darla lay in the chill darkness of the Great White North, staring despondently at the all-seeing firmament above her. How could she have made such an utter mess of her life in only 19 short years? Where was the childhood she'd longed to live ... the budding promise of womanhood soon to come? What was her future?

She scanned the earth below. The Northern Lights seemed a million miles from where she thought she'd be tonight, a million miles from Jean Paul, and even further from the cemetery where dear, vulnerable Eddie lay cold in an early grave, and Bobby, who somehow never forgave her for never coming back. She felt empty, hollowed out, alone. As she looked at the barren tundra desert stretching outward toward infinity, she couldn't help but wonder ... where did it all go wrong? When had her world become such an unbearable place in which to live? When had it all turned to dust?

As she gazed toward the infinity, her mind began to wander to more pleasant thoughts, like the day so many years ago, when she left the doctor's office flushed with excitement of her own sexual awakening. As she lay there, she pulled down her jeans and pulled up her sweatshirt and dreamt about that day she learned what pleasure was all about...

She dreamt of it like it was yesterday...