The trick always worked-unless her mother checked to see if her toothbrush was wet. It was just a tiny rebellion, but Keely felt that her teeth were her own and if she wanted them to turn black and fall out of her mouth when she was twenty, it was certainly her choice.

She leaned over the edge of the bed and reached beneath her mattress to pull out her journal. Sister Therese, her fifth grade teacher, had urged her students to start keeping a journal, hoping to perfect their penmanship and their grammar skills. And since that very first little clothbound book two years ago, Keely had written in her journal every night.

At first it had been a diary of sorts, but now that Keely had something truly interesting to write, she couldn't possibly write it, for fear that her mother might read it. So instead, she filled the book with drawings and stories, each one another tiny little rebellion. She drew wedding cakes, wild, crazy designs, decorated with colored pencils and markers. And designs for sleek, sexy dresses with high hemlines and daring necklines. And she wrote passionate, romantic stories and poems. And though she gave her heroines a different name, when Keely read them, they became stories of her own future.

And sometimes she wrote stories about her father. Her mother had always been tight-lipped about Seamus McClain, and Keely suspected that his death was still too much for her to bear. So Keely had been left to create a past for them both, a wonderful, romantic past. Fiona McClain became the most tragic of heroines, grieving so deeply that she couldn't keep a photo of Seamus around the apartment.

"Seamus," Keely murmured, scribbling his name on the corner of a page. It was an odd, but exotic name to her ears. In her imagination, he had dark hair, nearly black like her own. And pale eyes that were a mix of green and gold, the same eyes she saw in the mirror every morning. A vision of her father flitted through her mind. He was dressed in a fine uniform with shiny buttons and gold braid on the shoulders. And his fishing boat was really a huge sailing ship that crossed the ocean.