IDENTITY

The Turning Point

The Turning Point

I cannot escape the memories of the past, for they will haunt me till I face my death.

 After the event, Jack wasn't present inside the class. During that period, I cared too much while everyone was oblivious about the whole incident. Teachers used to talk to us and say, "Jack's in juvenile detention because he committed a terrible crime. He's a bad boy, kids."

But Jack never committed that crime. He was just there at the wrong place and wrong time. It was that man that murdered the boy, and the woman who jumped on the tracks leading to her dreadful death.

But soon, for me, it got better, and I figured that Jack was the one stopping me from being a normal girl since the girls actually liked me. I began hanging out with cliques that accepted me.

Soon, after a year or so, although I never felt any resentment, and I never cried about what happened in the past, I managed to forget.

At the age of eleven, I began walking home from school with my friend, Pauline, instead of by myself. She lived close by enough to walk back home with me. We both weren't rich enough to afford the houses in the other neighbourhoods, so where our houses were located was an awful place to grow up in. At home, I'd usually hear sirens from outside my house. When I was tall enough to look out of the window, I used to stare widely at the police cars and ambulance vans in front of a nearby alleyway which I could see from my window. Little pity did I feel for the people who got murdered or injured at that alley. But pity never struck me until the death of my mother, which was the turning point of my life.

After school, I entered the house and went downstairs, to the kitchen. I remember that I'd walked home alone that day because Pauline was sick. I was so fatigued and hungry, so I decided to make ham and cheese sandwich as well as some salad. As I opened the refrigerator and prepared the sandwich I could hear my parents yelling. They'd been like that for ages.  "How can you just take money out of my bank account?" My mother screamed.

"I told you ages ago that it's a joint bank account!" My father shouted back.

"But who said I wasn't saving it for Jason's or Roxanne's future university?"

Jason was my older brother who was thirteen at the time. I could hear him trying to calm them down. But my father wouldn't.

"You stay out of it you piece of shi-"

"GARY!" My mother roared. She hated swearing around the house. I heard a slap, and then heavy footsteps down the stairs. I thought it might have been my father coming to slap me as well, but it was Jason.

He was crying and he was touching his red face from the slap.

"Jason, do you want a sandwich?"

I could have comforted him much better than that, but I was a sociopath.

He shook his head slightly and sobbed, "They keep fighting…not stopping…can't take it…" He was hyperventilating and his voice was weird so I couldn't figure out if it was because of puberty or if he was just choked up. He rubbed his eyes and he looked at me.

"What's that?" he asked, pointing at the bowl of salad that I'd prepared. I put lots of sauce on it, so it didn't quite look like salad.

I couldn't really hear him well because of the noise from above.

"What?"

"Wh-what's that?" he said more loudly, but with a stammer. He was afraid.

"Salad!" I smiled gleefully to make him feel better.

He shook his head continuously and then fell to the ground. I walked towards him and looked at him. He was crouched down swaying back and forth like a rocking chair.

"Jason," I began.

Shoot!

The noise had stopped.

Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!

Quickly, I looked up at the ceiling. Jason was beside me staring at the same thing. My salad was no longer a salad…but a bowl of blood. Blood trickled down onto my bowl from the cracks of the ceiling.

Drip!

My eyes were welling up with tears, my nose was runny and my heart felt funny. My vision became blurry and soon, I was the one hyperventilating. Jason, on the other hand, was standing in front of the bin, vomiting from his nose and crying, like this was his end.

Father had really done it this time.

I had witnessed a frightful death for the second time. I had then known what it's like to feel.