Valerie, I'll be home soon

chapter 2

 alright, guys, i know this is short, sorry, but just read it. if i had included two parts in this one it would be like half the story so far!

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“I need to go meet Abby to walk to school, mom.”

“Wait! You need to eat breakfast first.”

“I’m not hungry. Here, I’ll take a piece of toast for the road.”

“Alright, but you better eat it, young lady.”

I walk out the door and notice that the news was right about the snow, but its more ice, and everything is slippery. I walk several houses down to Abby’s house. I throw a pebble at her window, and she looks out. She holds up one finger and disappears. Several minutes later she comes out of the house. She looks at my toast and raises her eyebrows.

“Why do you have toast? I managed to escape the house before my mom force-fed me her homemade omelets. ”Abby shudders exaggeratedly, which makes me laugh, before continuing, “So, can I have a piece? I’m starving.”

“Sure.” I say, because I’m really not hungry. But she says, “C’mon, Val, you need to eat! You hardly touched your food at lunch the other day! Eat the other piece. I know you miss your dad, but starving to death is not going to help him!”

I want to smack her. What does she care about my dad? Instead I just shrug nonchalantly and am about to bite into my toast when Ty comes up from behind and plucks It from my hand.

“Thanks! I'm still hungry after breakfast,” he says, and I automatically laugh. No one can be mad at Ty, and I definitely wasn’t going to let Abby ruin my day. Then it dawned on me that she was just trying to help, in her own aggravating way.

“So what did you have for breakfast today?” I say, because Ty eats like a pig.

“Let me think…3 pieces of toast, 2 waffles, a plateful of scrambled eggs, and…oh, and an orange to top everything off.” He says.

“And your still hungry?! How on earth do you eat it all?” Abby says. Obviously she isn’t angry with him anymore. See, you can’t stay mad at him.

“I am actually an android, and completely use all of my food for energy. It burns up in my body,” Ty says, and starts moving in stiff jerky movements. I laugh with Abby and shove him playfully, like I always would. But a split second after I have already pushed him, I remember the ice. He slides, trips, and sprawls out in the middle of the road. For a second he smiles, and then looks at his legs. His grin immediately disappears.

“I can’t feel anything below my waist,” he says, sounding terrified. But Abby and I both just look at each other and roll our eyes. Ty tricks us with things like this about once a week.

“Sure,” I say, walking over to him. “Then I suppose this won’t hurt.” I kick him hard enough in the shin that it would hurt, but he just stares at me, and says, “No. I didn’t feel anything.”

Abby walks up and kicks him again, harder than I did. He just looks at us blankly, and says, “I’m serious.” I look at him suspiciously, then down at Abby, who’s already rolling up his pant leg to where we kicked him. There’s a small bruise were I kicked him, and a larger one where Abby did. She looks up at me. I nod. “I know. There’s no way he could fake that he didn’t feel it.”

“Then…” she gasps. “omigodhesparalyzed!!!” she whips out her cell phone, but I grab her wrist.

“What? What happened, Abby?” I say, while Ty tries to talk over me, saying over and over, “what happened? Why can’t I feel my legs? What happened?”