Zia

Zia lifted the music box lid. She'd never realized there were lyrics to accompany its tune. "Some have a lifetime, some just a day. Love isn't something you measure that way.Nothing's ever forever, forever's a lie. All we have is between hello and goodbye." Will having just a day - one fleeting moment with Kiel - be worth it, knowing it will most likely be the only day the two can ever share? A seventeen year-old girl just doesn't have access to a Parallax Portal that often, but if Kiel's simulacrum can travel across the galaxy, they can finally experience being together. Sure, it's not the same as being with a Breather, but at least they can exist in a shared time and space - even if it is only for a brief moment. That's all a girl can really hope for when she's in love with someone from a different world. Not that her friends believe Kiel is from another planet, or for that matter that he even exists. They're convinced he's only a storybook love Zia has created as a substitute for the guy she really wants - popular, painfully handsome Kim. But despite what her friends think, they are not one in the same. She doesn't need a fantasy substitute for Kim, because after years of clandestinely watching and wanting him, he's suddenly noticed Zia as well - now that she's in love with Kiel. Not that Kim's advances have come too late, but they have created another problem - whom to choose. The boy she wants or the boy she's wanted. But who can she confide in? Her brother is too busy trying to repay the Carbon Copy Pet Cloning Center after running over the family dog. There's always ADAM, her car's decidedly British Auto Drive Action Mechanism, but he's only woth talking to when he maintains the Queen's English and doesn't slip into his annoying Cockney rhyming slang. That leaves Oma, Zia's one hundred twenty-year-old great-grandmother. And even though her weekly rejuvenation at the New U Medical Resurrection Clinic creates the illusion that she isn't much older than Zia, she is in fact, much wiser. She'll have the answers hiding somewhere among her memories, a lifetime of experiences scattered across her room in diaries and photos...and music boxes.