Virals Pack: Reborn

Chapter 2: Up in Flames

According to the fire department, the lights on our tree were cheaply made, believable enough, and the plastic wrapping must have worn out enough to catch the needles of our sappy tree on fire. All I remember was waking up late at night choking on the dark smoke that filled my room, quickly dropping and crawling on the floor where the clearer air was supposed to be (from what I've read anyways). I had reached my door, where flames licked hungrily at the bottom of it and was calling out to my family, hoping someone would hear or respond, but then I was choking on smoke and struggling to breathe the burning air. The last thing I remember was when I somehow broke through my window, hence the wonderful scabs now added to my already scarred arms (a tale for another day) and leaping from my second story window into the igloo we made that mere hours ago in the backyard. 

I suppose that someone called the fire department and they came, I suppose they doused the house with water and put out the flames. I suppose they went through the house, searching for survivors, and wound up finding only me, probably half frozen by then buried the snow. I don't recall any of it, but it must have happened to some extent. After my daring escape, all I remember after was waking up in the hospital. The doctors told me I had a mix of minor burns and frostbite, which I decided to creatively dub "freezer burn". Lucky for me, I was able to be discharged from the hospital later that day, after stitching up a couple of the nastier cuts, and bandaging my arms, as well as treating the "freezer burn" I received from my escape. 

But while the doctors and kind nurses helped fix me on the outside, nothing could have prepared me for the agony raging inside. As I sat surrounded by blinky lights, beeping monitors, and the like, it slowly sank in that I no longer had my family anymore. My caring mother, my kind step-dad, my wonderful sisters, they were gone.

I didn't have much of a reception crew waiting, just my mother's childhood friend, who would take care of me until legal things were all sorted out and I would go to whoever was deemed worthiest. There weren't many choices really, my grandparents were too old, my mother's younger brother not really up to taking care of a teenager, given his bad rep with the law and all. And since my step-dad wasn't blood related to me, his family was placed further back on the consideration list. 

Had I no other blood relatives I probably would have gone with them. But turns out I have an aunt, shunned by my family years ago that I didn't really hear about much until now. So that's how I came to be on this plane which is on its way to Charleston, SC where I will meet my aunt, Darcy T. Dennings.