Mountain Butterfly

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

       It's very early Monday morning. I hear my alarm clock going off. It's been going off for a while now, and I know I should get up. I can feel the sun coming in from behind the curtains in my room, but all I want to do is stay asleep in my nice warm bed. I don't want to face the cold room around me I know I will encounter when I pull the covers off. Then I hear my sister, Sam, yell from the bottom of the stairs, "Violet Gorden, get out of bed, NOW! We're going to be late for school. You need to get ready and eat something."

Now I know I have no other choice but to comply. I slowly pull back the covers and immediately the cold room surrounds me. I swing my legs over the edge of my bed and slip my feet into my well worn slippers. I walk into the bathroom that joins mine and my sister's bedrooms together, and take a really hot shower. I hear Sam yell for me again, so I hurry up and finish getting ready. I decide to wear a pair of skinny jeans and my black low-top converse with a long sleeved gray sweater top, with my pop-tab bracelet that I don't ever take off. I brush the tangles out of my long straight black hair.

Before I go down stairs I look quickly in the mirror and evaluate myself. I see my hair neatly brushed and my eyes as bright and purple as ever. My eyes are naturally purple. It's very rare but, its 100% me. Then I rush down stairs and put a toaster pastry in the toaster. As I'm pouring myself some milk, with a shake mix in it, to go with my toaster pastry, my dad, Jim Gorden, comes into the kitchen and kisses the top of my head like he does every morning and says, "Morning Butterfly." just like every other morning.

Just then my toaster pastry pops up, so I grab it and rush out the door to my sister's red truck, where she is already impatiently waiting with Connor. So I hop in the back and roll down the window to say goodbye to my dad who was waiting on the front porch.

As we drove the 15 miles to school, Sam continued to tell me how I need to be a lot faster in the morning and I quickly tune her out and looke out the window to see the mountains that surround Rocky Heights, Utah they never cease to amaze me by their beauty. Where in just two months the Mountain Games would be taking place. This was my first year being able to compete in the Mountain Games and I could hardly wait. Sam, Connor, and I have been practicing every weekend.

We pull into the school parking lot promptly at 7:45. We have 15 minutes to get to class despite Sam's protests we are never late to school. As I start to walk to my first period English class, Sam yells, "Make sure you're at the truck right after school, I don't want to have to wait for you"

"OK, OK."

Before class I stop off at my locker to drop some books off that I wouldn't need for English and I have to almost run to get to class on time. I slide into my seat in the third row, right as the final bell rings. Mrs. Puitt stands and begins the day's lecture about famous classic literature. I pay attention at the beginning but soon lose interest as my eyes and my mind wander to the mountains outside the classroom window.

The rest of the morning was the same routine. I pass Sam and Connor as they’re leaving the cafeteria and I was entering for my lunch period. Sam was wearing a pair of jeans with light green fitted cotton t-shirt and a blue zip-up hoodie and a pair of athletic sneakers. Connor was wearing a blue plaid shirt over top of light washed jeans that would make anyone else look like a lumberjack but, on him, it works.

I ate my lunch at my normal table towards the back of the room, by myself. It's not that I’m unfriendly, actually it kills me not to be. When I’m allowed to be myself at the Mountain Games I’ll talk to any and everyone and I know almost everybody by name. It's just my family and I, we're not like everybody else. We are decedents of the Balmty mountain people. We have special abilities and it just would be too dangerous for us to involve normal human people in our lives. At least that’s what the enforcers tell us. Enforcers is like our kind of government, every couple of years new enforcers are appointed and it’s their job to enforce the laws. We don’t really have all that many its mainly just one law that the think needs enforcing, the law of secrecy.