All It Takes

2

I'm Sam, Tristen's 15-year-old brother. We got along really well and we used to hang all the time until she got shot three times in the stomach. She came home a week after it happened and now she doesn't really talk to anyone but Tabby and Matt. Tabby's her best friend and, well, I'm pretty sure you already met Matt. If not then he's her boyfriend. For the past week, she's been able to skip school, eat crap (not actual crap I mean junk food that I want but I'm not aloud to have), watch T.V./Netflix, and have her friends over as soon as they get out of school. So, she's living the dream while I'm stuck doing the same thing over and over, school, study, yard work, and Tristen's and my own chores. Sounds fun, right? Not! The only thing I enjoy about my day is after school soccer. I've been on varsity since eighth grade. I was on modified in seventh but before the end of the year they felt it wasn't challenge enough (a.k.a. they needed another person for JV and thought I was best for it) and moved me up. Let's start things off with my average day. I crawl/fall out of bed after being scared awake by my new alarm. Now instead of it making beach noises it blares out the Beep! Beep! Beep! Of a security system malfunctioning. I walk into the hallway, remember that I only have underwear on after my mom yells at me, and I go back into my room to put sweatpants on. Then I go to the bathroom and take my morning dump. Go downstairs, eat Frosted Flakes, then I go back upstairs and get dressed. Now, you have to understand, my Mom thinks that I should dress to impress so I put on a pair of jeans, an undershirt, and a nice plaid church shirt and shove soccer shorts and a muscle shirt into my bag. Then I pack bot my soccer bag and school bag and then go to brush my teeth. I go back into my room, reach under my pillow and pull out my necklace that has to thick black strings for a chain and a disk charm connected to the thread by more thread. Now you may think that necklaces are for girls but this one is not (I don't think anyway.) I wait at the end of our driveway for about 5 minutes before the bus come while I eat a cinnamon bun that is my second breakfast. And don't worry, I'm not fat I am actually the skinnies guy in my grade, I just like to eat a lot. The bus comes, I go to school, and barely make my way through the classes because they're so long and boring. Lately my sister has started to stop hanging with her friend and boyfriend. It's all I ever think about and I know that that is kind of a bad thing but what can I say she's my sister. The last bell finally rings and hall floods with kids. I sit at my locker getting my bag ready, then reach into the top of my locker and grab my soccer bag. I go to sports study hall for about an hour and a half than I go to get changed in the locker room. I walk out and head down the hallway to the forum where I wait for fifteen minutes and then get on the bus heading to Kendall where we have our away game. You have to understand I play everywhere on the field, not in the way where I don't play my position and I just run around, I just can play every position. I even play goal but I hate it. When we get there we practice a little and then our game starts. Coach starts me off in offense and within the first five minutes I have scored our goal and kept it on their side. I'm our best player, and I'm not the only one who thinks so. Coach says so and so do people on the side lines and my parents, don't even get me started. It's annoying because I play to have fun. The rest of the game goes well, we end up winning 3-0. I scored two of the goals and the other offensive player scored the third. Coach never takes me out and I get pooped during the last five to ten minutes so he puts me back in defense. Now I get it, I sound cocky but I mean, what guy doesn't like talking about himself? Anyway, we ride the bus back to our small school in the country town of Scottsville, NY. I called my mom half an hour before but she's still not there and when I pull out my phone to call her again I see a missed call from her. When I call she tells she's at the hospital with Tristen and that I should run home, grab my bike, and get there as fast as possible. When I arrive I ask the girl at the desk which room Tristen Garcia Rojas is in but before she points me to the room my mom rushes out of the first room on the right with two doctors behind her pushing Tristen down the hallway with a breathing mask on her face. I walk up to mom and she stops and tells me in a rushed voice, "Tristen is going into immediate surgery, they had only taken two bullets out of her stomach and hadn't seen the third one in there. She had been complaining for weeks but I had thought it was just pains from the stitches or something like that but it wasn't. The bullet grazed her liver and the doctors didn't see it before." That's the moment where I felt like the world was spinning around me. I fall forwards into my mom and broke down. She tried reassuring me that she was going to be fine but I knew that face, the same one she put on before dad's surgery, one that told me that Tristen could die. We rushed to the waiting room outside the surgery room where we sat, and tears streamed down my face but my expression flat. I had no frown, just flat lips and dull eyes, well tears fell off my chin. I had no hope. The surgeon came out, grim expression pulled my mom aside, and they talked. She walks back over, face twisted in agony as tears stream down her face she leans in and I understand. Tristen is gone, completely, and utterly gone. I pull mom into my arms, knowing she needs it more than me. My face changes, mirroring my moms and I cry hard. People across the aisle from us realize why and their faces become solemn. They know. We know. The doctor knows. In the moment, the world around doesn't matter, cause now it's just me and my mom. That day was the last day I showed emotion. No more tears, no more smiles, just a flat face with dull eyes. It was May 25th that I started to feel inhuman, not in the good way, the way that made me feel alone. Now all I had was mom, and I dealt with it by being inhuman, beyond saving, and in other words, completely dead inside. The only thing that kept me going was my mom, and the pain.

The End!