Broken Runaways

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Jeffrey

School has been completely and utterly intolerable hell. The classes are boring, listening to teachers drag on with tired and aggravatingly dry voices give me migraines on a daily basis. School to me is the equivalent of sitting in a jail cell for eight hours straight, in complete silence. Even now people still give me strange looks while I pass by in the halls, teachers don’t even call my name out in classes while taking attendance anymore. It’s as if I gained a superpower of invisibility. Jessica and I haven’t talked since the first day of school. Today is Friday the fourteenth. Three days befroe Jessica's birthday. Constantly I catch her gaze from the front row in Mr. Carver’s room. Apparently, there were not enough seats in the class, and because I didn’t get there on time the day of seating arrangements, I get to sit at the single desk in the way back left corner, next to a large trash can that reeked of rotting fruit and other foods that I had no interest in learning about.

All I wanted was to hear a single voice, say my name. There is nothing that I have ever so desperately wanted in my life. Counting the days of silence soon became too difficult, so I simply gave up. My parents and Dallas have all been acting strangely towards me too. It was as if I was inside a backwards time warp. I was the only person that sat alone at lunch, where as I used to be surrounded by people I knew and cared about, and I thought the feeling was mutual, but clearly they couldn’t care less about my potential well being. I used to believe that everything got better and easier. Growing up wasn’t ever a problem for me because I felt so strongly that things would get better and easier, that I let things slide and never took anything seriously.  Now, all I had was me, music, books and my laptop which I aimlessly watched television from whilst staring at the ceiling, trying to contemplate what possibly could make people dislike me.

Crying was also something that had become foreign to me. That last time I cried was when my little sister died. Most people never even knew that Xandria Vivian Cameron was an actual human being. When I was six years old, my mother announced that she was to have another child. Because my mother was older to be pregnant, they had to give her certain treatments in order to insure the child's well being. That summer in early July, my sister was born. Xandria had an abnormal weight, and a soft and small bone structure, so they had to keep her under testing at the hospital until late that October. I remember my mother would cry and cry. Being six I didn’t really understand the purpose of her crying. The doctors and nurse wouldn’t let my mother stay over a nights, and they used to argue. Everyday until Xandria was six years old, she had to go to a doctor’s office every other day, to get special treatment because she was so sick. When I was twelve, I finally asked my father what was actually wrong, which I had done several times to no avail, and he told me. Dallas came in with my mother and they sat us down, telling us to listen carefully. At the time, Dallas was sixteen, a very arrogant, stubborn typical douchebag boy.

Clearly while Dallas was sat next to me, in front of my parents he was totally uninterested in whatever they had to say. “Xandria has been getting treatment as you know,” my father started in. “But the problem is it isn’t working properly.”

“What does that mean? What’s going to happen to Ria?” I sat up closer against the table, scared.

“We’re not really sure Jeff. She might not... make it.” My father had said, then grabbing my mothers hand on top of the table.

“Well what are they going to do about it? They can’t just watch her die!” I had screamed, jumping up from the cold and uncomfortable wooden kitchen chairs.

“Jeffrey. Sit down and control yourself. None of us want this to happen, but there is nothing that the doctors can do. Ria was lucky to make it this far. And that was simply of pure luck that the astrocytoma medication even touched her brain. We are so lucky just to have had her for this long. No one ever thought she would make it as far as she has.” My mother said with a blank expression on her face. “They are to take her off of the xaliphor tomorrow. We are going to see her tomorrow and be there when they release her.” I saw the small flicker of movement from my fathers hand of squeezing my mothers hand.