Emily's House: Book 1 of the Akasha Chronicles

Chapter 1: A Run-In with Muriel the Mean

Chapter 1: A Run–In with Muriel the Mean

 It sucks to see your mom die twice.

That’s what I was thinking while I walked home that day. The second day in my life that everything changed.

The day started out normal enough. Getting a D on my math test. Trying not to trip over my own too-big-for-my-body flipper feet on my way to lunch. And getting handed a report card that felt like a bomb that was about to explode in my backpack.

“Muriel the Mean is going to kill me,” I said to my best friends, Fanny and Jake. We ambled ever closer to my house of doom. My stomach knotted itself up, and the all-too-familiar feeling of dread took over as we got closer to my house.

My house. Once it was filled with my mom’s laughter and singing. Her colorful paintings once decorated the walls.

My house.

It wasn’t really mine anymore. It was Muriel’s. And Aunt Muriel had filled the place with dove-grey walls and meanness and fear.

My mom died when I was seven, and she took her laughter and her singing and her colorful paintings with her.

She took something else too. Something that I’d kept secret, even from Fanny and Jake.

For as long as I can remember, I could read her thoughts. It was like a radio station playing in my head. All I had to do was tune in my receiver, and there she was. The ‘Mom Station’. She could read my thoughts too. It seemed like the most normal thing ever. Mom let me know that it wasn’t normal and that it was best to keep it between us, so I did.

The day she died, I held her hand as that horrible tar-sucking machine whooshed away. Then her station went off the air. I never heard it again.

Inside my head, it was so quiet and lonely. I was seven years old, and it was the first time in my life that the only thoughts rolling around in there were my own.

To make it all worse, my dad turned into a zombie and my Aunt Muriel came to live with us. Dad’s work at the university takes most of his time, so he thought my old widowed aunt (fourteen years older than my dad) could come live with us. “It’s a win-win,” he had said.

Only it wasn’t a win for me. Muriel is meaner than a dog chained in the hot sun with a choke collar on. I’m not sure why she’s such a heinous person, but she is, so I call her ‘Muriel the Mean’.

Seven years living with a zombie who used to be my father. Seven years of Muriel treating me like the bastard fourth cousin of a retarded rhino. I felt as if I was slipping away. I felt like if something didn’t change, I was going to disappear completely.

“Maybe I should just keep walking,” I said. We were a couple of houses away from the sidewalk leading up to my front door. “You know, run away.”

“You can’t do that,” said Jake. His voice sounded panicked. “I’d miss you too much. Besides, where would you go?”

“Then tell me how I can deliver this to Muriel the Mean and not end up dead.”

“Let me come in with you,” offered Fanny. “If she lays a hand on you, I’ll go banshee on her.”

“Fanny, we’ve been over this before. I’d love to let you go gorilla on my Aunt Muriel, but I can’t let you do that. You have too much to lose.”

She shut up about it. She knew I was right. Even though we were only freshmen, Fanny was a shoe-in for at least one sport scholarship, and we all knew it. Spending time in juvenile detention for beating up my aunt would waste that dream for her.