Prologue
The thoughts of being a romance writer, being a shrink, or being a librarian had never come to my mind even once when I was a little boy. I once thought that being an astronaut would be a good thing. My brother, Phillip and I used to sneak out at night to our secret hideout-well I wouldn't call that a secret anymore since our parents actually had been known for all these times (damn those old neighbors couldn't keep their mouths shut, eh?). We did lots of things at that tree house; most of them were eating snacks (our mother had never allowed us eating salty, sweet, and unhealthy snacks). Once in a while when my hand wished to grab another piece of potato chip on the plastic bag, it touched something that definitely hard to smash into pieces. It was long and smooth; definitely not something that could be eaten, I thought. I picked it out and guess what? It was a 3 and a half inches telescope. Whoa was the word that came from my mouth the first I saw it. It could be lengthened (double whoa)! I peeked from the smaller hole to found out how to see the world from these (plastic) glasses. It was so unusually... usual... Yeah, it was a strangely ordinary view. It was like you make an 'o' with your fingers and looked from it. Nothing special really; but still when Phillip asked me what I had got I said nothing. I then looked up to the sky, when Phillip stacked his nose to his magazine again I pulled that telescope from my pocket again and tried to see the stars with it. One word: Useless. I sighed, and at that very moment I decided to become an astronaut someday; I couldn't make the star closer, so I guessed I should go to the stars myself. What made that useless plastic so unusual and strange was the thought that came to my head as soon as I looked from that thing, that I could be anything that I want. While I was daydreaming, Phillip snatched that little telescope away from my hand.
"My... Look what you've got." I jumped, tried to grab my stuff back, but it was useless, Phillip was eight inches taller than me at that time. I told him that I found it first (humph, kids...), but that he insisted that it belonged to him since he was the one who paid for the snacks. Damn I hated it when he was right (and still now), so I pushed him. He fell into the floor, making a large "BUMP" noise. Not accepting his lost, he pushed me back. Unfortunately, the "BUMP" noise that came as I landed to the grass wasn't as big as the "CRACK" sound that followed by my painful yelling and cries. The only thing I remembered clearly was when the doctor x-rayed me, and when dad told some people to cut the tree down.
Lessons that I had learn: First, never push a hormonal and emotionally unstable pre-teen. Second, never build a high tree house for your kids. Third, boys may cry sometimes, especially when your arm was broken. Fourth, erase Astronaut from "My Dream Jobs" list.
Exactly three weeks after the accident, I went to the hospital once more. No, I didn't broke my other arm, nor did I broke Phillip's (no matter how much I wanted to), but to welcome the arrival of the newest member of our family. I was eight at that time and Phillip was almost thirteen when mom gave birth to the only daughter in the family, dad named her Mackenzie Alicia, we used to call her Mac. (For the record, our last name is Collins. Mackenzie Alicia Collins, MAC. MACkenzie. Hehe, get it? I'm sure you do.) You see, Mac was the closest person to me in my family. She looked really like our mom, who died when she gave birth to her. We were sad, yes; but, we still love our little Mackie who always reminded us to our late mother.
Our father, Bruno was a librarian. He used to work for the small library in our town called 'Big Brownie'. He wasn't a kind of man that you could ever put your hopes on. He was a passive, inactive and humorless unattractive man; unlike our mother who used to be a nurse, she was a very cheerful, talkative and outgoing beautiful lady. Three of us, especially Mac who always heard about how great our mother was, always wondered how could such a pitiful man ended up with such a graceful lady? I really mean it, seriously. Abigail, our mom had pretty blonde curls which was Phillip and Mac got those from, brown freckles which was me and Mac inherited those from and big brown eyes with long lashes that she gave to three of her children. While Bruno, thank God he was a tall guy- only if you found it a good thing. Since our mother's death, three of us spent most of our time at Big Brownie and that was what had made us into a real geek (gee, thanks dad!). Dad always added new books biweekly and sometimes he brought some books that had a couple of copies to our house so it wouldn't pile up in the library. Or sometimes, when he got too many he would sell it at the annual book fair in our town. Yes, the book fair; you had seen the title of this story right? Well, I guess we should go into the real story then. After all, we hate long prologues.
