We Are Home

chapter 1

I knew that she was drunk the moment that I heard her snores. I heard those loud breaths after my feet took that last step down the stairs from the second floor. My aunt, I knew, would be laying on the worn red couch, in the worn makeshift family room. I had heard her come home last night, around two or three o'clock in the morning. I knew that my twenty-eight year old aunt loved to party, but was it so foolish to want my one and only parental figure home at a decent hour? I supposed that, apparently, it was. I didn't often want for these things in the case that I might get my hopes up.

I passed Aunt May's sleeping figure on my way to the front door. She had apparently not seen it fit to go up to her bedroom. That, or she was just to out of it to do so. Either way, I wouldn't be getting a ride to school. I would be walking the three miles to Laketon High. I opened the front door and stepped out into the cool air.

The other houses on my block were a lot like my own; nice in a run-down sort of way, like the school that I attended, and the shops that dotted the small downtown area. Not that I had the money or the time for shopping. My job and schoolwork kept me busy. Well, that, and my friends. My walk to school was uneventful. Nothing jumped out at me, and I didn't encounter anyone, probably because no one was awake at five thirty in the morning. I just passed two story house after two story house.

I was in desperate need of both a coffee and a cigarette by the time that I finally arrived at the school. Sometimes, when I jogged, I could make the trip in a little over a half hour. That was not the case today, because I had a calculus test today, and was much too tired for running as a result of my staying up late last night to study. That was why I had heard my aunt get home early in the morning; I had been awake in the much-too-early hours of the morning. I was desperate to keep my A in that class, despite the fact that the teacher, Ms. Greensteiner, hated me. At least, that was how I interpreted the glares that she was constantly shooting my way. I could picture her muttering angrily as she wrote an A+ on my last test, which I had been proud of. Most people, when they looked at me, took me for the type of person to fail every single one of my classes, but those classes were what I was depending on to get out of this place.

Laketon High School had to have been in good condition at one point in its existence. That seemed impossible as I looked up at its dilapidated appearance, made worse by the fact that it had rained earlier this morning. The roof looked drippy and leaky. I felt sorry for anyone who had classes on that top fourth floor. The school had been built a century ago, when this town had probably been, well, almost the same as it was now... just newer.

I walked past blue lockers on my way to courtyard/parking lot in the back, where my friends usually were this early in the morning. The courtyard-slash-parking-lot was never used as either of the things in its title, leaving it open for students to meet up and hang out in. There was usually at least one cigarette in the lot, lit, at any given school hour and the times directly framing those seven hours of (sometimes painful) education.

Four walls enclosed the space: the wall of the school building, which I had just exited, two wire fences, and the red brick wall of the abandoned science building. The main school building's wall was also made of red bricks, but the old science building had been covered in layers of graffiti. Purples, blues, yellows, greens, pinks, and black and white formed different designs and words along the wall. The fences led to the baseball field, which was rarely used, and only by a few people.

Three of my friends were leaning against the fence, next to the rickety bench (rickety, just like most things in this school, including the school itself). Charles was smoking a cigarette, which it looked like he was sharing with Angelina.

"Hey, Lee!" Charles greeted me with a wave. Angelina smiled at me and took a drag from the cigarette.

Let me make something clear. I am not a burnout or junkie or loser (well, scratch the loser part. I might be one of those). I mean, half of the school smokes. It's no surprise that my friends do too. I keep straight A's and a perfct attendance record. People (ahem, Ms. Greensteiner) thought that just because I'd dyed my hair orange-red, I was some sort of freak.