The doorbell rang. "Caite! Get the door!" my sister yelled from her room upstairs.
"Why cant you just get off your ass for once?" I tutted.
"Im on the phone sis!"
"Yeah yeah!" I said while the doorbell rang again. "im coming! Sheesh."
I threw open the door. There was a lady dressed in formal wear standing on the doorstep.
"Is this the Roy residence?" the woman asked before I could say anything.
"Um, yeah?" I raised an eyebrow.
"Hello. Is there a guardian or someone I can speak to? You seem a little young," the woman said patronisingly.
"If you don't want to speak to me then leave. " I said coldly.
"Ok. Your parents are dead." The woman told me bluntly.
"As if. Is this a prank?" I raised the eyebrow again. Who would even kid about such stuff?
"Really. They drove off a cliff." The woman said with such a serious face she couldn't be kidding. Oh my god. That means im an...orphan. The news hit me really hard as if it wasn't real.
The woman told me a bunch of stuff and passed me a huge amount of papers and left in a hurry. I hadn't taken anything in. I could only think about, well, my parents dying.
"Who was that? Why did he come?" my sister Leslie came down with her hair wrapped in a towel dripping with water. She came over to the table and flipped through the papers.
"Mom and Dad are dead." Saying out loud somehow made it final, like it actually happened.
"No shit?" Leslie asked, her jaw dropping.
"They drove off a cliff. On purpose. There was a witness there." I must have somehow had absorbed some information from when the woman was talking.
"Oh damn. What happens now?"
"Why are you asking me? Youre supposed to go to university a year ago." Leslie looked away sheepishly.
"im gonna go, um, dry my hair..." Leslie walked out of the room. This was awkward
I ran a hand down my face. After a while, since I was the only responsible one in the family left, I decided to clear the huge amount of paper work left behind. I was still a minor, Im not supposed to do these kinds of stuffs.
I flipped through a few papers on top and stopped at an official looking one. It was a photocopied copy of my parents' will. Cool, maybe they left me everything. I knew we werent rich but we had a reasonable amount of money in the bank accounts.
I scanned it. And felt a chill run down my back. My parents had left everything to their siblings. And nothing to us. Or me. Oh friggin' fudgesticks.
Chapter 2
I awoke to the sound of the bell ringing. I hauled myself out of the sofa where I had fallen asleep last night.
"yeah?" I rubbed my eyes, opening the door.
"Hello, we're from Estates Agent. We're here to view the house." There was a guy standing on the doorstep.
"See what house? The house belongs to me." My aunt technically. They didn't need to know that though.
"Really?" my aunt Lorriene, stepped out from behind the guy, surprising me. "Your parents left me the house. Get out. Now." Wow they had processed my parents will really fast.
But this was nonsense. Why does my dad's annoying sister get to have the house? I am of his blood! Ok, so was his sister. And the rest of the family disliked my aunt and vice versa.
Now she could kick me out she was doing it gladly. I scowled at Lorriene. "I have no where to go."
"Your sister. Im selling this house. Get out. You have one day to move everything you want out." The guy from Estates Agent looked embarrassed at our conversation. This was what happened every family gathering, so it was nothing new to us.
Lorrriene turned to the Estate Agent guy. "We'll come back tomorrow. I ran into some difficulties. I'll get her evicted tomorrow don't worry."
I slammed the door and walked into the kitchen. I had grown up in this house and it held all my memories, the good and the bad. I felt sad that now I had to leave. And it was so sudden, it felt like it was happening to someone else instead of me.
I grabbed an energy bar and started towards the stairs. I went pass Leslie's room and wondered how she was coping with all this. Oh well im not that upset yet; I was still in shock.
The next day me and Leslie left the house to go our parents funeral. Leslie had arranged it today. There was an awkward silence between us. We didn't feel like talking.
A lot of my parents' friends and family attended. Some of them got up to make speeches for the deaths of my parents, saying how great they were, and that they were going to be missed greatly. None of them knew that it was a suicide pact between my parents.
Most of the attendees came up to me and Leslie and said they were sorry for our loss. After the first lines it got awkward too since most of them were more familiar with my parents than us.
The coffins were lowered into the ground and the soil was slowly heaped on top of the coffins lying in a hole side by side. Many people were crying, Leslie and Lorriene included. I stood by the side watching the coffins slowly disappear under the earth with a stony face.
With a final thud the coffins were buried. I couldn't help thinking that this funeral, as short as it was, was going to cost us a lot of money. Then I turned my back on the scene and walked away, my pain and sorrow buried with my parents' corpse. The future held everything now, it was out there for me to find.
[998 words]
This is an essay i wrote for a competition. i might put up the original unedited copy but it will be different, with a diff. name too...
