Metanoia Read Free

had some sort of
fantasy element to them), all from second-hand stores. She had told
her friends that she lived on her own, but they had no idea as to
the condition of living. Gina had made it into a big deal that she
was independent, without anyone else’s guidance. Really, dependence
on a true family was all she really wanted. Gina had been an orphan
for as long as she could remember. She traveled from one foster
family to the next and had hated every minute of it. So, when she
turned eighteen, she was more than happy to move away from her fake
families for good. That’s not to say that Gina had never searched
for some relatives, no matter how distant, but it just seemed like
life had denied her a family.
    With a sigh, Gina pulled out her books and
plopped down on the couch. She pulled her syllabus out of her
Chemistry book, unfolded it, and read.
    DUE FRIDAY: Read Chapter 5 and complete the review questions
at the end of the chapter.
    Gina sighed, flipped to chapter 5, and began
to read.
    An hour later, she had
just barely completed the reading and was starting on the
questions. She would have finished sooner if it hadn’t been for the
increased screaming coming from right next door to her. From what
she could clearly hear, a mother was yelling at her child for not
taking out the garbage while he was yelling back that it had been
his sister’s turn to do so. Directly downstairs from Gina, Ms.
Stern had moved to another tenant who was late on rent and was now
screaming at them. Gina released a great sigh of relief that she
had turned her own rent in on time. She had been left a good deal
of money by whoever her parents were and had definitely needed it
these past few months.
    Gina directed her
attention back to the task at hand: her boring Chemistry
homework. Fill out this Vapor Pressure of
Water chart with its appropriate temperature (˚C) or pressure
(kPa). Refer to the table on page 528 .
Gina repeated this in her head for the hundredth time.
    “ I always have to do
everything around here!” wailed the boy next door. “Sarah never has
any chores! It was her turn! I have to cook, I have to clean, I
have to do everything!”
    “ Yeah,
well try being a mother someday!” screamed his mother. Concentrate , Gina
thought to herself. At 10˚C, the pressure
will be 1.2 kPa…
    “ Rent
time is now! Not next month, not next week, not tomorrow – NOW! Pay
up or get out!” Ms. Stern was screaming. How she could scream that
loud on a daily basis without losing her voice, Gina did not know.
It seemed impossible. Yet, she was always screaming. If it wasn’t
about the rent then it was about that pesky cat or somebody leaving
roller-skates out for someone to trip over. At 20˚C, the pressure will be 2.5… no… 2.3kPa…what is a kPa
anyway? Gina tried to glance back to
figure it out, but couldn’t even concentrate long enough to do
that. Finally, she resulted to simply grabbing a snack and hoping
that the screaming would end by the time her break was over. She
knew not to count on it though.
    When Gina finally finished her homework, it
was 1:00am. The screaming had stopped, but the tenants below her
were watching a loud action movie that kept her awake long enough
to finish her homework. Finally, she threw her books into her bag,
put on her pajamas, brushed her teeth, and crashed onto her
bed.

    The next day was like all the ones before it:
boring and far too drawn out. As much as Gina hoped and prayed that
Mrs. Spencer would have caught a mysterious tropical disease and
not shown up that day, she was inevitably disappointed. There her
teacher stood at the front, facing her victims with an evil grin
that put the Grinch’s to shame. “With this chart,” Mrs. Spencer
began, pointing at a chart she had drawn on the board to match the
one in the book, “you can determine the critical temperature for a
substance as well as the critical pressure. You can also find the
triple point where the substance will have liquid, solid,