Alaska

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

Five weeks...

"Oh, Bianca you must get this one," Patricia Whitmore chirped as she scrutinized her daughter with proud grey eyes.  "What do you think, Lex?"

Alexia Whitmore stared in boredom, watching as her twenty-three year old sister twirled around in her possible mermaid styled Wedding dress.  She modelled in the three mirrors before her, smoothing the delicate material over her bony hips.

"It's nice," Lexi said placidly and she flinched when her mother and sister pierced her with disappointed eyes.  She couldn't help but give vague answers at a time like this.  An excruciating thought had infiltrated her mind, these past few days.  A thought that nipped at the very core of her.  A thought that she couldn't even formulate into words without feeling like she was going to be shunned upon by people around her.

Just four weeks previously, it had been her so-called 'fortune' to lose her virginity to the school's most handsome guy, Ryan Lee.  He was the star quarterback on the football team, and was also a senior in high school.  Thanks to Lexi's popular best friend, Katya, they were the only two sophomore girls that ever got invited to senior parties, and it was at one of those very senior parties that Lexi and Ryan were paired up to go through the infamous closet that was titled; Seven Minutes in Heaven.

Now, as she sat in one of the most conservative Bridal shops in all of Riverblossom, PA, she chewed at her soft pink lips in anxiety.  A missed period a few weeks after sex was never a good sign.  She had learned this from her twenty-seven year old sister, Angel, when she had fallen pregnant with her daughter, Meagen, who was now two years old.

"Lexi...  Lexi!"

Lexi jumped and looked around, coming into eye contact with her frazzled mother, Pat, who had her hands on her plump hips. 

"Go fetch an assistant, will you?  Bianca wants to try on a different style!" She said.

Lexi nodded her head understandingly and stood up, glad that she had an excuse to leave the sickening room that was plastered in all things romantic.  Her sister Bianca had been proposed to on a summer night in Paris on top of the Eiffel Tower by her five year boyfriend Wesley, who was a typical rich prep guy that was very popular at the PA country club.  They had set their wedding a week after the proposal.

"August fifteenth!" Bianca announced at a family gathering just a few days after they had arrived back from Paris.

Now, eight months prior to the Wedding, the family of Whitmore was in uproar over the upcoming event.  Bianca needed the Wedding of her dreams!

Lexi found a curvy assistant just outside Bianca's fitting room.  It seemed like she had been eavesdropping.

"Can I help you?" She beamed, cheesily.

"My sister wants to try on another style," Lexi muttered and the assistant's face lit up.

"Excellent!" She chirped, and she disappeared behind the door.

Just as Lexi was about to follow the Bridal assistant, there was a lurch in her stomach and she keeled over, ready to throw up all over the mahogany parquet flooring of the Bridal shop.  An elderly passer-by stopped and laid a hand on Lexi's bony shoulder.

"Are you alright, dear?" She asked in a concerned voice.

Lexi sniffled and gulped, a sweet taste accumulating in her mouth.  She was sure that she was going to throw up any minute due to the gathering of excess saliva in her mouth.  She nodded quickly then bounded towards a pearly white door with the word Ladies on it.  As she crashed into a single stall she bent over the pristine toilet and threw up, her stomach feeling like she had just been on the craziest roller coaster ride ever.