Chapter 1: Families

Tara: Best birthday.

Willow: I still can't believe you didn't tell me about your family and all that.

Tara: I was just afraid if you saw the kind of people I came from, you wouldn't want to be anywhere near me.

Willow: See ... that's where you're a dummy. I think about what you grew up with and then I look at what you are. It makes me proud. It makes me love you more.

-- Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV series, Episode 5.06)

Monday, July 18 2011
Neustadt, Germany

Daniel Keller woke at exactly 6:29 am. He didn't own an alarm clock and had never yet slept later than 6:30. Being fully awake at once, he slipped on his running gear. The people he called his parents weren't yet awake, so he silently moved through the house to start his daily run.

For him running was the thirty minutes of peace and quiet every day that he could use to think. Usually that thinking featured girls quite prominently; he was a healthy seventeen year old boy after all. The one girl he usually thought about was Jennifer, who he liked and thought he probably could fall in love with. He believed she actually liked him as well. Too bad nothing could ever come of it, he wouldn't put her into danger.

Returning home he brushed his teeth, shaved and slipped under his shower to get ready for school. Ready to face the world, he moved to the kitchen where Bettina Keller prepared his breakfast.

"Morning, Mom" he said.

"Good morning yourself. Did you sleep well?"

"Yep." He started eating his corn flakes. When he finished, he went back to his room, fetched his school bag and moved in the direction of the front door.

"Do you have something to eat for break?" she called after him.

"Of course, I'm not ten anymore you know?" he shot back.

"It's the mother's job to worry about her children, even when they get old and grey. Especially in your case."

"Yeah, right" he muttered under his breath as he left the house and started the fifteen minute walk to school.

Bettina sighed, thinking he should be at an age where he actually developed some manners. She went up to the master bedroom, woke her husband and got ready to go to work. She hated working at the supermarket, but it was necessary and at least she got to keep the money.

In the Maier household, things were similarly routine but still completely different.

Gerhard Maier sat at the dining table where breakfast for his daughter was prepared. It should start any moment now, he thought as he glanced at his wrist watch.

"Fuck!"

Gerhard grinned as he heard the shout and the following litany of curses from Jennifer's mouth. He knew exactly what had happened. She had disabled and ignored all four alarm clocks that were distributed about her room, going back to sleep only to wake up fifteen minutes later finding out she had overslept. Again.

He remembered the one time he had tried to go up and wake his princess up. While he retreated, he swore to himself that he would write any excuse slips in the world before bringing his daughter's wrath over him again. His wife had known how to wake her daughter up with a smile, but unfortunately it was now too late to ask her.

He heard her run to the bathroom, coming out ten minutes later completely showered and made up. Once again he wondered if he should install a camera in the bathroom to find out how she did that. He couldn't even shower in that much time.

The good thing was, it was completely safe to talk to her once she left the bathroom.

"Hello Princess, did you have good dreams?"

"Good morning daddy, oh yes I dreamed of ten naked bodybuilders all making love to me at the same time. How was your night?"

"Same as always. Your mom says she loves you" he smiled.

Already having her mouth full, she smiled back and nodded. She knew he dreamed of her mother every night, talking to her and discussing his and Jennifer's lives. She wasn't sure if that was healthy, shouldn't he just get on with his life after two years? But as long as he was happy she wouldn't say anything.

"Gotta go" she said still chewing.

"I know. Have a good day. I love you." He kissed her on the forehead.

"Love you too" she replied, running out of the house. She would arrive at school with two minutes to spare, which was pretty good for her.

Freiberg, Germany

Sabrina Vogel was getting ready to leave the house, too. But she wouldn't go to school this day. Her parents being away as always, she had no problems forging the documents to get her out of school for the two weeks left until summer break. The school probably wouldn't recognize her parent's real signatures, having seen only hers for years. Her parents knew that, but it didn't interest them any more than anything else in her life.

And so, the school thought she was going on a study travel to Italy that unfortunately had to start two weeks early. Sabrina thought the chances were pretty slim that the lie would be discovered, and if so it wouldn't be before she was well under way.

As she did almost every day, she pulled out the short letter she received over a year ago.

Dear Sabrina,

I'm safe now so please don't worry about me. Thank you so much for your help over the last two years, I will never forget it. I miss the three of you and hope we will see each other again sometime soon.

Love, Maria

She had gotten the letter about three months after Maria fled from their city. It was the last sign of life she had from her friend, and she deeply hoped she was okay.

When lunch break came, Patrick and Mathias Schulze left the school. While that was actually forbidden, it wasn't a rule that was enforced and this day they would have ignored it anyway. They went to Sabrina's house to bid her goodbye.

While they didn't like it, they knew that she had to go. After Maria vanished, they watched her hold it together until all the police questioning was over and then break down. She didn't eat, didn't sleep and stopped functioning completely. They actually had to go over there regularly to cook and clean and make sure she ate something. They couldn't stop her from getting thinner and slipping in school. The brunette had always been a bit on the round side but it had looked good with her C cup tits, the Twins were in agreement about that point. But over the weeks she got almost as thin as Maria always was.

This went on until the letter from Maria arrived in her post box. It lifted a big rock from her heart and she had started living again. The twins were very relieved to see some hope back in her eyes.

However, over time when no new message from Maria came, she slowly started getting worse again. A year later it wasn't as bad as in the beginning, but it definitely wasn't healthy and they knew something had to happen to stop her from losing it.

That's why they wouldn't have thought to stop her or even suggest waiting the two weeks until the holidays started when their search finally led to Maria's possible location.

Neustadt, Germany

Prom would be at the end of next week, and that posed two immediate problems for Jennifer Maier. First was that the one who she wanted to go with hadn't asked her, and she didn't think that would change any time soon. The second was that by now only the desperate were without a date and they all seemed to have decided to ask her as a last resort.

She was actually wrong about the last part, but while half the school would have loved to date her nobody seemed to get up the nerve to actually ask her. They were imitated not only by her looks, with her red hair, D cups and muscular build. What was the most daunting were the rumors.

One day at the beginning of the year some idiot bully decided to grab her by the tits. She didn't know why, probably he just wanted to show he could get away with it. He was wrong, it didn't take three seconds for Daniel Keller to stand behind him and nicely remove his hands from her. For her it was the end of the scene, but some people who were there noticed that the next day the bully came to school with his right hand in a cast, having a number of broken bones. A few days later he transferred to a different school.

The end result was that everybody but her knew that it might be hazardous to one's health when pissing her off.

Over the last few days however, people learned that nothing happened to someone friendly asking her to the prom, even though she told everyone no, which resulted in the increased numbers of people trying.

Seeing no danger, during the break Bernd Mayer decided to ask her.

"Do you want to go to the prom with me?"

"No, sorry" she replied.

"Why not?"