Starting Over Anderson || ✔

Prologue

Despite everything, life goes on.

It doesn't matter if you had so much as sprained your ankle, got a good grade, won the lottery, or lost the only family you have left. That's the way it is with life. It goes on. Even for me, when it feels as if every lulling drag of the clock is like a knife to my body. Honestly, I don't know what I've done to deserve this amount of bad luck. But perhaps that is just how it is, with life.

There is, I suppose, a moment in everyone's life that marks the ultimate table turner, an event that will stick in your head like sewing pins to the heart. For me, it's a series of numbers: 101312.

It's a date, carved onto every fiber in my being, dominating my thoughts even more so than my birth date. I lost my sister on the thirteenth of October, 2012.

That Saturday night started out like every other Saturday night. There was only Isa and I in the double-story terrace house. I was in my room, finishing up a project due the next day when she knocked on my door.

"Hey little Jenna" Isa pulled out my headphones and grimaced when she heard Linkin Park blasting through them. "I swear, you'll find yourself deaf one day at this level of intensity you play this noise, in which you call music," she teased me.

"Yeah, whatever," I rolled my eyes at her comment on my song choice. "I'm hungry."

She glanced at the clock that was balanced near the edge of my bedside table. 9pm. "I know. Get changed, I'm taking you out."

Since our father's death, Isa had been more of a parent to me than our mother had ever been. Isa was the one who fed and took care of me. She took me to school, assisted me with school work, gave me advice and helped me find where I stood in life. Everything a mother should have done.

Instead, our mother was never home.

She never cared if her kids were well or starving, or even alive, for that matter. I remember the first time she had gone away for a few months. I was only seven then. No calls, no messages, just disappeared - only leaving behind a small envelope of cash on the coffee table in the living room, labeled "for Isa". We used the measly bit of money she left us sparingly, but it barely lasted both of us a month. We ended up surviving on Isa's 10k that she had recently won from a volleyball championship. Four months later mother returned, apologizing to Isa and asking about her well-being. She didn't even look at me. It was like I never existed. She swore to Isa that she would never abandon her again, only to disappear once more after a few weeks, leaving behind yet another small amount of cash, which would run out quicker than we could hold it, and left us desperately surviving on whatever prize money Isa had left.

It was a vicious cycle, and to put it simply, Isa and I were like orphans.

Well, on the bright side, the house (which father had bought just before Isa was born) had already been paid in full. At least we had a roof over our heads.

"Where are we going?" I asked my sister, putting away the things for my project.

"I was thinking of taking you to Papa Lincoln," she grinned, expecting me to be delighted. And I was - Papa Lincoln had the most amazing pasta - but I also knew of our financial status. We didn't have that much money to spend. Mother always only gave Isa enough money for one daughter.

"That sounds great and all, but we really shouldn't be spending unnecessarily. There are cheaper places," I trailed off.

Isa looked at me sadly and twirled a few strands of my hair around her fingers. I knew her well enough to know what she was thinking. She was blaming herself for the life I was having. She thought that maybe if she wasn't such a perfect child - she was the student body president, captain of the volleyball team, the best debater, had the highest GPA in her year, was the record-breaking long runner and had her art sold in auctions - mother would love, or probably hate, both of us just the same. But the truth is, mother would always hate me, because I was a constant reminder of the man she had loved and lost. I had all of father's features - dark brown, (almost black) hair, gray eyes, high forehead, and dimples on both cheeks. Isabella, on the other hand, was a spitting image of mother. They were both honey-blonds with emerald eyes and a curvy figure. Barbies in the flesh.