Life is Precious (The Watsons Book 1)

Chapter 1

The Watsons lived two doors down from us. Between us lived an old couple in their early seventies, both retired and living comfortably. We, my father, mother and I, lived in a detached house in the suburbs of Texas. We were the Cho family.

My parents were made for each other, I knew that because they'd faced the odds. My father was Chinese and my mother African American; they'd gone through a lot to be together, and then they'd had me. I ended up looking more like my mother's side than my father's, but that was cool because it's obvious that I'm mixed.

But this story is about the Watson family, not mine, mainly because my parents died when I was eighteen and three months old, and also because I'd known the Watsons since I was born and I loved them as if they were my own.

So, like I said, the Watsons lived two doors down. Harry and Betty Watson had eight children and, like you can imagine, Betty was a stay at home mom and Harry was an oil rig engineer. It meant that he was abroad a lot in the early days, but he'd slowed down as we got older and been around a lot more. Harry and Betty were my second parents, they looked after me a lot. Both my parents worked late and hard, sometimes in other states, but since Betty was always home, aside from when she went food shopping or had days out with her friends, I always had a place to go when my parents weren't at home.

So, eight kids. It's a lot.

Harry and Betty's oldest was born three years before me; John was loud and outgoing as a child, and nothing had changed since then. I came into the world, then five months after that Clarissa was born. Then came the twins, Frank and Finley, Lara, Megan and another set of twins, Vincent and Vanessa when we all falsely assumed it was too late for Betty to have any more kids.

Trust me, we all belched when she told us she was pregnant again.

I grew up with the Watsons, and I loved it. Clarissa and I were in the same year group at school and so it was almost inevitable that we were going to be best friends. She was quieter than me, somewhat bookish and slightly shy, whereas I was relatively loud and confident, something that came from my mom, but opposites attract they say. She was blonde and pretty, though she didn't know it, with large green eyes and red lips. But she wore glasses and in our day and age, it automatically set off the teasing.

John was only three years older than us, so we played with him until he got too old for dollies and watching TV and became more interested in game consoles and such. Moving into high school, while Clarissa and I remained in the general level of the social circle, not popular but not unpopular, John, now with his sun tanned skin, blonde hair that he'd inherited from his mother, blue eyes and broad shoulders, became the most popular in school. Clarissa and I were lucky, lucky because John would acknowledge us in school, stand up for us when we so needed it and so no-one was really ready to challenge that judgement. I'm pretty sure otherwise, there was something we'd be bullied for; that was the way high school worked.

John graduated first, he'd gone and studied engineering at the local college, but a year in, he'd decided that it wasn't for him, and even more heart breaking, he joined the army and two years after that, months after my parents had died, he left for Afghanistan, and this is where the story starts.

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"Vincent!" Betty yelled across the garden. "Vanessa! Stop playing with the hose!"

The twins immediately stopped and looked up at their mother who was glowering at them in frustration. The eight-year-olds looked at each other and then shrugged, dropping the water hose and walking across to where their game consoles sat in the grass and resumed playing. Naturally they were trouble makers, but since they'd gotten in trouble at school this week, and Betty had grounded them, bar this barbecue, they had sobered up these last few days.