Night of the Alphas

Chapter 1

I sat in my science classroom, watching the clock. Only five minutes left, I thought excitedly. Five minutes until summer vacation. I looked around at my classmates, who were beginning to misbehave. One kid was throwing paper airplanes to the front of the classroom, another was seeing how many pieces of gum she could chew at once, and yet another was belting out the lyrics to I want it that way.

Poor Mr. Ragsdill, I thought, looking at my desperate teacher trying to squeeze in a few extra minutes of teaching. Mr. Ragsdill was nearly eighty years old and had been teaching at Charlotte Secondary School since my parents were my age. All of the seventh graders in my school kind of saw his class as a free pass, since he could hardly control all of us. I usually tried to be as good as possible for his class, but probably not for the right reasons. I had a reputation to uphold, so I couldn't just go misbehaving.

After what seemed like an eternity, the bell rang. I grabbed my backpack and rushed out of the classroom with everyone else. The hallway was crowded with kids from eleven to eighteen trying to get home. Groups of friends reunited with each other and began trying to get to their after-school clubs. The whole hallway was a chaotic mess, as it usually was on the final day of the year. I received a few friendly goodbyes from girls I knew from cheerleading, but other than that, no one acknowledged me. Usually people did, but everybody had their own things to do.

After nearly being trampled several times, I finally made it out of the school. I took my bag off my shoulders and dug through it until I found my final report card. I looked over it proudly. I usually struggled a bit with math and science, but I had managed to bring my final grades in those subjects up to B's. My parents were going to be so proud of me when I got home.

I walked through the city, clutching my report card in one hand. It was a pretty hot day for Charlotte, North Carolina, but I didn't particularly mind. I decided to take the long way home and enjoy the day.

While on my way home, I passed the house of my former best friends, Miranda and Zaria. It was a large, colonial style house with a well-manicured lawn and a pool in the backyard. I knew that house like the back of my hand. For a few years, the Chapelles had been like family to me. At least, they were until that news report came on. Four years of friendship thrown in the garbage. I stopped in front of the house and took it all in. Memories of playing in that house with the twins flooded back to me. I just stood there for almost five minutes, letting feelings of nostalgia flood over me. I would have stayed there longer, but my thoughts were interrupted when I saw Miranda and Zaria's mother walk into the kitchen. She scowled when she saw me. "Get! Go away!"

I looked down and trudged away with an expression of disdain on my face. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Miranda giving me a look of sadness from the window, her brown eyes filled with pity. I ignored her and continued walking. I didn't need her sympathy.

I continued towards home, trying to hold back my tears. My good mood had dissolved after my encounter with Mrs. Chapelle. Now, all I wanted to do was collapse on my bed and let all my feelings out. My mom wouldn't be home from work for another few hours, and my dad had to pick up another shift at the police station, so I would be all alone.

As I approached our apartment building, I checked to make sure no one from my school was in the vicinity. Once I knew I wasn't being watched, I climbed the stairs up to the sixth floor of the complex. It was a relatively shabby building in a not-so-great part of town, but it was all my parents could afford. Housing had gotten pretty expensive, and it didn't help that our previous house had been wrecked.

A month or so after that news report came on, a drunken, arrogant man with nothing better to do with his time ran his car into our front room in the middle of the night. He'd also knocked down a few beams on our porch, which made our upstairs guest room collapse to the ground. My bedroom was right next to the guest room, so I was, unfortunately, the first to be woken up by this. My parents and I escaped the house before the rest of the second floor crumbled, but the guy who caused everything wasn't so lucky. Hours later, after a team of firemen dug him out of the rubble, he died. With his dying breath, he proclaimed that everything he ever did was 'for the cause'.