World's Peace

Chapter One: Snow Boy

Chapter One:  Snow Boy

          While I was walking home, snow was falling.  When you looked up, all you saw was gray.  Then suddenly you were sprinkled with soft wet pictures made from the ice from above.  If you twirled, you could see a white patterns circling from above.  It was beautiful. 

          I giggled and the guy behind my looked at me weird.  I'd never seen him before, but he was oddly really calm.  Usually people with a big black hoodies, black ear buds plugged into a scratched up dark green and black iPod, and skinny jeans with a slight rip in the right knee were angry people... especially boys.  From him, though, I got nothing of that sort.  No anger stained his face.  He actually smiled at me and stuck out his tongue to catch a few flakes.

          I skipped a few times and kept walking.  This was strange, but cool.  I've never been much of a person to be outgoing or extremely nice.   I was the odd calm one.   So, when we were both smiling at a stranger we had never met before, I found it cool.  This was one of those moments that just made me want to smile. 

          I swung open my door to my house and strutted in.  My Bernese Mountain Dog, Qui, and my Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, Pepe, greeted me at the door.  I laughed as they jumped on me and licked my face.  Dad hates it when I let them do that. 

          I granted them access to the backyard and left the back door open for them to come back in.  Dad hates that too, but I don't mind the cold.  We sure do have the money to allow it, though.  Dad owns this company that has to do with sleep or something.  I think he produces mattresses...but also sleeping medicines to help people in the hospital and everyday insomnias. 

          "I'm home daddy!" I called to the large house.  My voice echoed and I shrugged.  Some days he was home, some days he wasn't.  I've always been pretty calm about these kinds of things.  Heck, I've always been calm about everything. 

          I went to work immediately.  I took the clothes from my room and threw them in the washer up the stairs.  I then went to the living room and began to inspect the room, looking for trash and stray dishes from the night before.  I took what I found and threw them in the kitchen sink.  I started the dishwasher, which I had filled this morning, as always.  I began to pick up each room, one at a time, all 20 of them.  What my father was thinking when he decided to keep this house when mother left him, I'll never know.   Vacuuming the beast of a house was a big pain in the right calf.

          I don't know the whole story, and I wouldn't know what I do if it wasn't for his visitors. 

          When I was little and too young to be trusted at home, alone, Dad would appoint these people to watch me.  They were usually boys in their late teens.  They would always watch me, only a few ever talked to me, and when they did they sure did talk.  This is how I learned that I had an actual mother who was actually married to my father (which was very important to me) and that she left him because she was greedy and didn't love him.  (This was also very important to my young mind.  If I was going to dislike the woman responsible for my birth, I was going to need a reason.  So, I had one.)  However, they would normally just sit there, or float, or stand there.  My imagination was crazy so I think I remember one of them floating.  They wouldn't play with me, they would just watch me.  Either that or they would hesitantly ramble about what I knew.  They were always weird like that.  They would claim they had already said too much...and then give in when they saw my cute, little, angelic face pout at them.  It was as if they adored me. 

          As I finally finished with my chores, I remembered the dogs.  I looked at the time, and it read 7:30pm.  Crap, they've been out there since 4:00!  I slid down the spiral staircase (which is really hard when it's as tight as ours).