Immortal Awakening

Chapter One

Chapter One

"You are not listening to me, Nina!" Aunt Leanne shouted from behind the kitchen counter. I looked up. Eyebrows furrowed and lips pursed, she gave me a disapproving look. I had my earphones in so how did she expect me to hear her?

"Huh?" I said as I took my earphones out.

She shook her head and I watched as her newly dyed ginger bangs swept across her forehead. "I said that I'm pulling an all-nighter. Are you going to be okay here with Cristóbal tonight, because I might not even be home until noon tomorrow?"

"Yeah. Cris is asleep anyways and with the way he was feeling, he won't wake up until tomorrow." Cristóbal, my little brother was a very easily sick fourteen years old. One day out in the snow and he'd be half dead by the time we tried to warm him up.

"Hey, Nina?" Leanne turned around, her hair whipping across her face. "Don't go anywhere."

"I never do," I replied instantly. Despite my social status, I wasn't much of a social butterfly.

"Love you," she said, hugging me. She smelled faintly of cinnamon and it reminded me of my mother.

"Love you more."

"Love you most," she said and went out the door.

"Bye, Aunt Leanne." I waved and went back to my music.

Leanne was my mother's little sister. She was just twenty-five years old and was more like a sister to me than a guardian. She didn't have any children, so she had no clue how to raise a child much less eighteen and fourteen-year-old teenagers. To be honest, she was doing a good job, even though she was less of an authority figure and more like a best friend.

It was five o'clock and I knew I wasn't going to be falling asleep any time soon. Every time I tried sleeping, the same nightmare would always come back to haunt me. My near-death experience, the boy that saved my life, the promise he made to check up on me but didn't fulfill made me nervous.

I took a bath and went downstairs to find something to eat. I switched the TV in the den to YouTube and played songs from my favorite playlist while dancing and using my spoon as a microphone to belt out the lyrics. Let me just add that I wasn't gifted vocally and was probably going to wake Cris sometime soon.

At about eleven o'clock, I brushed my teeth and headed to bed, taking off my locket that I wore everywhere. I'd had it for as long as I could remember. I might have gotten it for a birthday, Christmas, or just some spontaneous gift from my parents, but I wore it everywhere and wouldn't imagine parting with it. There were two pictures in it. One with me, my dad, my mom, and my two brothers, and the other which was a vintage photo with a girl that looked like me, and two men I don't think I've ever seen before.

I liked to think the vintage picture was one of me in a different life with a different family; a twin sister and two brothers. I didn't remember ever seeing them though. For as long as I could remember, there had only been my mom, dad and two brothers. My father kept telling me that everyone in the puzzling photo would be a big part of my life one day but I was yet to meet them in person.

I couldn't sleep. Tire and weariness were obviously there but the noise next door was not helpful. The neighbors were arguing again, and it was giving me a headache. Listening closely, I heard them yell through the house about why the light in the kitchen was left on, and whose turn it was to wash the dishes after dinner. It was almost the middle of the night for crying out loud!