Before I fall

Chapter 1 : Dear bad luck let's break up

Ivanna

The harsh reality is that life will not always be what you want it to be. Some events happen that change the world around you. Some will make you joyful, while others will make you cry. Some will hurt for the many years to come. And it's completely natural. Things are out of our hands. We may feel powerless, yet there is still hope somewhere in the darkness waiting for us to find it.

Many teenagers look forward to the midsummer holidays because we get to spend days relaxing and making memories with our loved ones. However, I wish I could take this moment out of my life forever. My dreams had been destroyed, become nothing with words and decisions. It was the day that my father's business was taken by the authorities. It had gone bankrupt due to production failure. To repay the debt, we had to sell our multimillion-dollar villa. We sold whatever we could to make money, just to get by. We should have been able to live in peace as a result of this. But, were we really at peace?

"I HATE IT! I HATE THIS, I HATE IT SO MUCH!" I screamed and slammed the door behind me. Who wants to downsize from a villa to a house the size of a pumpkin? My wrath had not subsided yet. Why did this have to happen to us? Things weren't looking good on our end. That is something of which I was completely aware. But why now, when everything was going perfect? When I was in the same class as my best friend Belle ? Now, it was going to be terrible because I would have to switch schools, make new friends, and adjust to my new life. Everything looked out of place and useless.

Tears welled up in my eyes. A picture frame of my wild, and yet so wonderful in every way, family humiliating ourselves, having all the fun in the world, during a little gathering drew my attention. This house had a lot of memories attached to it. Leaving it felt like suffering from dementia. A mess of memories and thoughts being lost to time, gone as I tried to hold on. I grabbed it and held it tight in my fists, as though letting go would make me forget about it too. I stared around, eyes wide and overflowing, trying to conjure up a mental image of it.

In the area I would never call home again, it was a mess of strangers. They were helping load our belongings into a truck. To get to our destination, we had to travel for an entire day. We finally stopped at a little town. The road had no street lights, and everyone was carrying flashlights. The whole neighbourhood looked more like a horror movie set than a place where real people slept and ate. From what I could find, the area was known for gangs and delinquent children running around. Before the truck came, we stood at the house. The house wasn't even a fraction of the size of our former home. There were no rooms crammed with opulent and costly furnishings, artwork, or equipment. It was not a luxurious villa, but rather a run-down property that appeared to be on the verge of collapsing at any moment. I tried not to cringe away from the house and run into the woods.

I took my first glance around the house. The wall reeked of acid rain, and dust was strewn about. I hated it with everything in my heart. But ultimately, I hated how close our house was to our neighbors'. Our house was cleaned and renovated over the course of a week. My room was somewhat unique. The newly painted wall had a foul odor, the kind that came from a mix of dry rot and wet wood. My faded closet barely held clothes since we had to sell half of them. The authorities had seized the furniture, so there were rooms and rooms of wall and floor, nothing to cover the space. The only thing I liked about my room was that it wasn't next to my sister's, Ivy's. My younger sister was five years younger than I was. I found her to be a little brat at times, always whining and wanting attention.

I stalked down the stairs to check up on my family. Glancing at the framed pictures lining the wall, already set up, I could see my mom and dad laughing and grinning with friends, all of them in suits. Taken back when the company was just started, back when my parents had just started planning marriage. Everything was better back then. Now, they were losing themselves to the grief of losing everything they'd built from the ground up. I rushed past those frozen bits of memory and down to the living room. I spared a glare to Ivy, sitting there with excitement in her eyes, like this was all a little adventure in her simple mind. Walking down the worn-down halls that were filled with marks that weren't ours felt wrong, like I wasn't meant to be there. In the kitchen, Mom was looking grimly at a piece of paper.