Meeting Sebastian (OH HOLD)

Good News (Prologue)

PROLOGUE

“We’re moving.” Mom said.

After hearing those two words come out of her mouth I did an internal happy dance. I was no longer stuck in this horrible city, a city where you are defined by what you own and have. You see we don’t have much, but we have enough to live day by day. I attend a private school near our apartment, a school where the richest of the rich go to. So you can say that I am surrounded by snotty girls who probably had at least once went under the knife and boys whose heads are bigger than their bodies, their egos higher that the Empire State Building.

Going back to what I said, we don’t have much, so I was a social outcast. I didn’t have any friends, I never attended parties, I never skipped classes, I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs like most of the people around me… I was a ‘good girl’ in definition. I went in that school because I was on scholarship, something that I should be proud of because it shows that I worked hard to get there, but it was something that the others hold against me. You could say that it was never fun. I hid under books; my favourite places in the campus being the library and the music room. Since it’s the school for rich people, you can just imagine that the library was filled with thousands of books, and the music room filled with very good and very expensive instruments. These were my places of escape. People tend to ignore me, and I was okay with that; it was better than being harassed everyday by the cheerleaders.

I was invisible, a good student with straight A’s. I never actually wanted to go to that school. Once I told my mom to just transfer me to a public school, seeing that there were some fees that were the same price as the tuition of public schools- you could just imagine how much the tuition there is- and the food there was unexplainably ridiculous. My mom just dismissed it and said “I want you to have the best. And if I have to sell my kidney just to keep you there, I would. Your father would have wanted this for you, Zia.”

Ah, my father. Julian Carter-born on the 25th of July 1976, died at the age of 37- was a touchy subject for my mom. She was head over heels in love with him, and when he died he took a piece of her with him. My mom was never the same again after that. I was only seven when my dad died, and after ten years of him not being here, I forgot how he looked. I only remember him from pictures and times when my mother and I talk about him, which was scarce. Every day I see families at Central park- the kids would be running around, their father chasing after them, and their mother preparing the food for their picnic- all the time and I wonder, what if my dad were still alive? Would I’ve had a baby brother, or sister? Would we be a happy family? I remember the families I’ve seen, feeling a bit of jealousy and sadness.

And I ask myself “Why can’t I have that?”

“When and where exactly are we gonna move?” I asked my mom.

“Me and your father’s hometown.” She said. All my life I’ve lived in the city, and now I wonder if it was different up there than down here.

“Where’s that exactly?” I asked my mom, my curiosity getting the best of me.

“Woodberry Heights.”