Together

Chapter 1~Grace

           

I like to live my life as though I were in a movie, and everything was perfect, but it wasn't. Nothing was perfect; I wasn't perfect, my life wasn't perfect and my family, they weren't perfect.

But I liked to think they were.

From my point of view, life was a mess, but it was a gift we only got once. I made myself happy by living in my own world, and ignoring anything that didn't please me.

It wasn't that easy. I tried. Oh, God, did I try. Nothing ever turned out right, none of it. Not even the friends I attempted to make, the movies I thought I would love and the boys I assumed were exactly as I saw them. But no, none of it was like that.

Will it ever be?

Probably not, but I still thought my life was pretty good for what it was worth. I made my days the way I wanted them to be, that satisfied me for a while.

A long while, to be precise. Every emotion I felt, I drained out of myself and changed them. I did what I had to do to make myself content.

Even if that meant dumping the perfect guy or ignoring my family at dinner. I did what I had to, and sometimes that hurt just the wrong person. My name? You'll find out later. But first, my story.

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I'm a normal teenager, doing normal teenagerary things. Having dinner with my parents, going to the mall with friends and hanging out with family. It's all fun and games, until me or one of my friends gets hurt. I have to say, I am known for 'hurting' people. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was sitting in my living room, fidgeting with a pencil.

"What's so special about that pencil?" my mom asked me from the door way of the living room.

"Nothing," I replied and set it on the coffee table. I glanced to my side as my phone buzzed, I picked it up in my hand. The metal was cold.

I've been bounced around the foster system for a while. Something always happened in the homes I was placed in. My said to be 'birth parents' both died when I was five. My dad was a firefighter and died heroically in a tragic fire, my mom died painfully from pneumonia. At my first foster home in Chicago, the house burnt down the second day I arrived. The third was in New York city, the foster parents got sick of me and threw me out in a month. Needless to say, no one wants me. I've been in my current foster home for two years. I was eighteen and I'd be able to live on my own in a month or so. I stood before I pressed my phone to my ear.

"Hi, Ollie," I said as I made my way down to my room in the basement. My foster parents had given me the guest bedroom. They didn't expect me to stay long, I guessed.

"Hey, Grace!" Ollie cheered. Ollie was my best, and only, friend. We both attended the same high school and were the same age. Ollie and I could be siblings.

"What's up?" I asked as I flung my closet door open.

"Wanna hang out later?" he asked. I could hear his parents arguing. His parents didn't get along well.

"Sure?" I said.

"Cool. Meet me on the corner of Fifth," Ollie said quickly before the line went dead.

"Ok?" I looked down at my phone as I pulled it away. I clicked it off and tossed it to my bed a few feet away. I slid open my closet door. I pulled out a pair of jeans and a cute top.

"Grace?" I heard my name. I turned around to see my mom standing there, her face grim.

"Ya?" I asked as I folded the jeans over my arm.