Point and Time

Chapter 1: Chase: Dawn to Dusk

The obnoxious noise that was my alarm blared before I decided to hit snooze and scroll whatever I could find on my phone. Old pictures, social media posts, replies to texts, anything. I gave myself ten minutes in the morning before the snoozed alarm blared again. I woke up twenty minutes before my brother Seth because I always had to wake him up, and I made breakfast for both of us. Turning off my alarm I knew it was time to crawl out of bed and get dressed for the day.

As I started to scramble up the eggs, I turned the TV on to listen to the news where once again they were going on and on about the earthquake set to hit California in the next 10 days. I never understood how they found this stuff out but I'm glad they did since it was California and natural disasters tend to happen a lot.

Our mom was never really in the picture so I just had to struggle for scraps to feed me and my younger brother for now. She always had business meetings to attend. If she didn't have one, she was flying to the next one, and so on. She never made it out to see our events because 'I work and put food on the table that's why I do this son." It made me mad that she never really made the effort to take care of Seth and I's needs but hey, she was making money we didn't need her here if she was out making the world a better place.

I checked my phone to see how long I had and there were about six minutes before I had to go back up to wake my brother from his slumber, and that kid slept like a rock let me tell you. You had to physically shake him to get him to wake up. One time we were late because I shouted "Seth time to get up!" His response? "Ughhhh." I thought that meant okay, I will be down in a second dearest brother of mine. I was wrong. Time kept ticking until my alarm went off and I walked back upstairs with breakfast and knocked on his door, no response, I know, shocking. I opened it and put the plate on his table because if I put it in his bed he would eat it, and then go back to bed, and proceeded to shake him vigorously awake.

"Seth c'mon you gotta get ready buddy."

"Ughhphum."

"You act like I know what that means dude."

"Why do I have to go?"

"Because it's the school day closest to our gameday and we definitely need you to win the championship game."

"Did you just admit to needing me?"

"Don't get used to it," I said tapping his head. "Breakfast is on your table, be downstairs in ten."

I went back to my room so I could grab my bag and basketball bag so that I could just stay after school until the game tipped off which was like three hours or so afterward. I grabbed my phone charger, wallet, keys, my raincoat and went back downstairs to watch the news because for all I knew the world could end knowing how California was. A warm day with a chance of rain so, raincoat it was.

"Seth grab a raincoat before you come down just in case."

I waited a second and to my surprise, no response whatsoever. This kid went back to sleep, didn't he? I went back upstairs and he was just eating while scrolling on his phone.

"D'you hear me?" I asked

"Did you see an earthquake happened thirty miles north of us?"

"Magnitude?"

"Five websites say five different things. 4.8, 1.2, 3.4, 7.3, 2.0"

"They all come from the same area?"

"All are within like six miles of where the actual thing happened. That's so weird. Anywhere between 1.2 and 7.3? That's unheard of."

"A 6-magnitude jump is insane, never been anything like that before," I said looking over his shoulder at his phone.