No title for now

Chapter 1

Okay, so I don't really know where to start this, so I'll just start with introducing myself. Sorry if this doesn't really make any sense, my mind is rambling on and on and on and I can't stop it, it's like... something that doesn't stop moving I wanted to say something deep and meaningful but I just can't think of anything right now so bear with me please. My name is Aliza and I'm sixteen years old. Or seventeen. It's kind of a blur right now, I'll come back on that one later. If my mind was not a complete chaos before, it is right now. But I have a pretty good excuse for this, because I just witnessed my life being burned down to the ground. Literally. The boarding school I have lived at for the past ten years is being swallowed by roaring flames. I sit here watching, protected by the safety of a soft blanket, sipping on the milkshake which was the only thing I took with me when I fled out of the building.

I guess it all started when I woke up, as most days do. I got up at seven o'clock to look over the chapter of my book we had to study for history today. At 36 minutes past seven I stepped into the shower, which I remember because I was cursing at myself for being late. At precisely eight o'clock I stepped into the dining room, which was filled with grumpy and half-awake students fighting over a few bagels and cereal. I sat next to my best frenemy Amy (I don't have any real friends, my dark sense of humor and lack of empathy has left me with a group of friends who only hang out with me because of my last name) and ate a bagel I had managed to pull out of the claws of a ninth grader. Amy was talking about some hot but unapproachable guy from her chemistry class and I pretended to listen as usual. After that I had my first class, a history exam. It wasn't really hard. Then I had chemistry and lunch break. The rest of the school day went by in a blur of boring classes and people and then we had dinner, pork chops. I went to my room. I was one of the lucky few without a roommate, because my parents were dumb enough to pay ten grand a year extra for a bigger room. Nobody ever told them that throwing money at me is not the same as being a loving parent. It's all for show anyway, it would be a disaster if the perfect ideal Bradley family turned out to be nothing more than a collection of rich, failed individuals. Ironically enough, that's the way it is for most kids here. I have the stereotypical rich family: an alcoholic mom depressed because my father cheats on her with just about every hot woman crossing his path, a workaholic father who only comes home for our annual Christmas picture to send to family, friends and coworkers and an over-achieving older brother who enrolled into Harvard this year and is currently in therapy for a self-inflicted burn-out. That's what you get for joining every club on campus.

So anyway, I went to my room to watch TV and avoid other people. All went according to plan until the smell of smoke overshadowed the smell of the red nail polish I was using to do my toenails and the smoke alarm went off. At first I didn't bother even looking in the hall way to see what was going on because I thought it was a fire drill. But then I heard people screaming so loud that I couldn't hear the TV anymore, so I went outside. It was the most chaotic and pathetic sight I've ever seen and probably will ever see in my life. The people that hadn't gone outside yet were either screaming and yelling names of people they were looking for or attempting to drag their enormous TV's outside. I went back inside to grab the milkshake I was drinking (it was our dessert) and left everything behind. By now you probably think I am crazy, or at least have some seriously fucked-up priorities, but I can explain. Everything important to me, photos, music, all that stuff, I kept in a dropbox online. And the expensive stuff like my phone, laptop and TV were quite old to be honest. And I refused to ask my parents for new stuff, because that meant acknowledging their existence and admitting to myself that I needed to get a job if I wanted to be independent. The way I saw it, this could go down two ways:

1 None of my stuff is touched by the fire. I can go back inside without having to worry about getting my crap back inside.

2 All my stuff is destroyed. My parents hear the news and immediately pick me up and take me home. The next day my father takes me to the Apple store to replace everything important.

So now I sit here. It seems like it's definitely going to be option 2. What if there are still people trapped inside? That would be awful. I guess. A fireman tells me to go out of the way. I feel slightly offended because it was the same guy who gave me a blanket and told me to sit here. I walk to one of the picnic tables. Luckily the emergency exit leads to the gardens of our previously luxurious private school. This all feels surreal, like all my emotions are numbed by  everything that is happening. I sit down next to Bella, one of my frenemies. She is calling her mom, crying about a cute dress she left inside. Jesus, I thought I had fucked-up priorities. I now see a flaw in my genius master plan. I can't call my parents without my phone.