Girls and Boys

Chapter One

Characters:

Charlotte Grace Knight

Rowan Dean Knight

Edward Oliver Knight

TWO YEARS AGO:

No matter where I am in my life I never forget December 20th, I can be in the middle of an important test, watching a movie with friends, or blowing out the candles on a birthday cake, even in my dreams – it is a day I cannot escape. And I really wish I could. On that (really quite horrible) Saturday night in the middle of winter, my brothers and I were on break, and our parents had been invited to their friends Christmas party in the Upper West Side. I was stuck looking after both of my brothers, despite the fact that one of them was four years older than me and in his first year of college. Edward couldn't be trusted to be left alone and not burn our apartment down trying to make a grilled cheese, he was always more of a microwave type of guy - definitely not safe around an open flame. My younger brother, Rowan, was in the sixth grade, he's the goofier, shorter, lighter haired version of my older brother, Edward. Rowan might have looked just like Eddy but their personalities were the exact opposite, where Rowan liked watching sports, Edward liked reading, If Rowan got a coca cola you could bet that Edward would get a Pepsi. Maybe it was just age, but Rowan was always the goofy one.  When Edward was in the sixth grade, and I was in the second I vaguely remember him being called mature for his age by other kids parents. The only thing that you could never guess about Edward was that he surfed. His college of choice was in Southern California, a place known for its beach bum types, and of course the abundance of stoners.

That night I was making popcorn in the microwave, my brothers were lazily sprawled out on the couch watching tv, and occasionally shooting each other with the nerf guns. As soon as they smelled the popcorn they dropped the nerf guns, muted the tv and raced to the kitchen.

After being forced to share my popcorn with my brothers, they convinced me to watch a movie with them. I made them watch Chasing Liberty, a rom com that was playing.  They fought with me, but I knew, I convinced them they secretly wanted to watch it to. The final scene came on where the ex secret service agent and the presidents daughter finally got together, and then the credits clicked on. The movie wasn't that good, but it was still pretty good in terms of trashy rom coms. Rowan had fallen asleep before the movie ended, and I remembered Edward picking him up, making the ten year old look light in his arms, he carried him to his room as I watched the credits roll to a close. When Edward came back he grabbed the remote and flipped it to New York 1, the local news station. The only reason we ever watched it was for the weather. It was ten o'clock, the news reporters sat around a curved table, the man wore a yellow tie, which matched the woman's brightly colored dress everything about the news always seemed far too fake with their white teeth and their colorful clothing, never a hair out of place. They seemed much to chipper for a Saturday night. Then all of a sudden it was like a switch was flipped, and the fake laughter disappeared and bleached white teeth were gone.

"On a very sad note, three people were killed in a car crash earlier this evening just past the Brooklyn bridge. The accident is still being investigated but it appears that a driver of one of the cars lost control veered into the wrong lane, and ran into another car, killing the two passengers of the other car, that were declared dead on arrival." There was a brief pause and then the other Newscaster began speaking, "The police are contacting the family members of the deceased but it has been rumored that the two that were killed were none other than the owners of the Knights architecture and real estate firms. The two were parents of three young children, this is a very sad night for all of them..." The guy with the out of place bright colored tie kept talking but everything else stopped, everything got blurry and surreal, I couldn't really understand what was happening, I felt tears run down my cheeks, I felt my mind go blank, I was still incredibly confused.