The Secrets Of Dragons: Book One

Chapter 27

Elsie Jackson

Thinking about fall being just around the corner used to be my favorite thing in the entire world. The change in the wind was beautiful, the leaves as they turned. Albeit the cool winter chill was pretty terrible at night. Winter was not my favorite season. It was too jolly. The holidays in my house weren't always the greatest. Our parents did not ever seem concerned to make memories revolving around them, and I thought that was normal until early in my preteen years, I was finally allowed to go to a friend's house to have a sleepover.

The atmosphere was completely different around normal families. Where my own home was a constant mess, besides my room and my brothers.' I had taken care of them the best I could until the day it finally came for me to leave home. It was sad. Just at the end of summer, never knowing if I would be able to make it home to see them for the holidays.

Since that pivotal moment in my childhood, I had always done my best to decorate their rooms. I even had delivered newspapers in my neighborhood in the early mornings to scrape just enough pennies to buy them one of those small Christmas trees from the dollar store with the extremely tiny and sad looking ornaments.

The first time I had ever taken it upon myself to try to do something for them, my mother had ripped apart all the little dancing pumpkins and bats garland I hung on the stairwell. She had yelled and screamed at me for trying to take over her house with needless things, but I had been the most needless of them all. It was the first year I took my brother's trick-or-treating. I had cut intricate holes in their sheets and they both went as ghosts, using my pillowcase to holster their loot. I had to hide every bit of it from my parents and paid dearly later for ruining my mother's 'priceless' linens.

Money always seemed to be their main concern, even though we never had much of it. I was the only girl in my class that couldn't attend field trips or do anything after school that revolved around money. It made me an easy target to ridicule, tearing apart the little self-esteem my parents allowed me to have.

Only then did I turn to my schoolwork. If money and time weren't on my side, then my ability to retain information would be. I studied entirely too hard and ended up being at the top of my graduating class, with fifteen different scholarships that would ride me all the way to my Doctorates Degree in Psychology and Mental Health. I wanted more than anything to be able to help children that were stuck in situations exactly like mine, to hold their hand when they have no one else to turn to. I had already accomplished several successful charities events, and I would not slow down.

But even in the success I had given myself, somewhere it still did not feel right that somehow, I was always left on my own. The loneliness followed me no matter how hard I tried to push it away and my mind always wants to regress back to the way I was versus who I am.

I smiled wryly into the glass I had tilted in my hands as the music blared through Tony's open mic night. I always felt myself drift back to here when I was feeling my loneliness the most. Tony was like a real father should be. He had accepted me since the first time I walked in his bar and only sat at the counter asking for a sprite with cherries. He had always been there for every one of my victories, cheering me on in the best conceivable way.

I nearly dropped my glass as I hurried to clap my hands at the completely drunk man who had just finished a sloppy rendition of some new country song I hadn't heard before. It was all in genuine fun tonight and seemed like a generally good crowd as far as people drinking goes. The loneliness I had felt in the past couple of days had finally caught up to me with everyone out doing their own thing. I hadn't heard from Jay much with her spending increased time with Ryker and Abraham. I had promised to keep a close eye on Giovanni while she was away and had convinced him and Sarah to join me tonight so that I could at least get out of the dorms for a while.