Chapter 1
What Phillip had never known for all these times, was the fact that I knew his first love. Emma, a sixteen year old girl who worked at Big Brownie as a part-timer. At that time, Phillip was two years younger than her, I had already told him that it was disgusting to date an older girl but then he said it was hot; what I found more disgusting was that he then spent most of his time reading in the romance section. I remembered Mac was only three years old, so that would made me eleven and that romance-crazed-teenager were sixteen at that time when he came home from Big Brownie, excited just knew that Emma's middle name was Aurora. Aurora and Phillip, remember Sleeping Beauty? It was like meant to be he said (yeah, if you lived in Disney!). "Do not worry, my dear sleeping princess. For I, Phillip Leonard Collins shall rise thee up from the thorns of the dead roses!" I bet he would win the cheesiest line award of the year. What he didn't know was that according to Pentamerone's Sleeping Beauty, the princess wasn't awaken by the kiss from the prince, but because the damn prince raped her! And from the Grimm Brothers, sleeping beauty was actually more than a hundred years old when the prince married her. So, it was either he chose to be a rapist or became a Gerontophile (Seriously, dad had to be more careful about the books that I read). That was why I could never understand Phillip's (stupid) thoughts at all. I love my mother so much, maybe that was the main reason why I chose to be keen with my little sister. When she still couldn't read, I used to read to her bedtime stories. We both loved the same author, Lewis Caroll which brought us much closer. While she loved 'Alice in Wonderland', I myself prefer 'Through the Looking Glass'. Caroll's works had inspired me to make my own crazy world as well; if I could, I wanted to make it crazy as hell that no one could ever imagine. That was why I decided to become a fantasy author so I could make a madder Mad Hatter!
Anyway, back to the story. So, the small unknown town where I lived which called Middlefort, which is located somewhere between Wisconsin and Illinois, was a pretty nice town in my childhood years. That was also my father's hometown and my mother was from Milwaukee (See? He was so pathetic, he even never moved out from his father's ancient house!). Like Homer Simpson, Bruno loved to fish which at least made him had a manly figure just a little bit (it was so little, I could barely see it). Every two months he would drive outside the town with his only best friend in the world, Dean Clifford who he had been best friends with since college. Dean had always been like our very own relative, he always treated me like his own son maybe because he didn't have any, although he had two daughters: Rosetta and Gladys. I always thought that it would be really awesome to have a father like Dean, he was so fatherly-like, fun, caring, wise-looking, and he was wealthy! Even though she never said it to me, I knew Mac was always jealous of both Rosetta and Gladys, especially Gladys who was a year younger than her. Because Bruno had no female sibling, our mother had died when she was born, AND she was the only girl in the family, Mac had grown like a boy; besides because of Bruno didn't know exactly how to raise a girl, her attitude problem also came from me and Phillip. I mean, the way she dressed (she wore Phillip's and my old clothes), the way she talked and so on. But, every little girl wanted Barbie for toys, not wheel less monster trucks, she was five years old when she begged-cried to us to buy her one.
And I did it again! Back to story then. So, Middlefort has this big thing that I called trimmed grassland, or what most of people referred to soccer field. The only member of my family who stepped on that place for the real game wasn't Phillip or me or Bruno (Duh!), it was Mac. Yeah, she joined Middlefort Girls Soccer Team, that's my sis! But of course all of us had stepped on that grassy place because of something else besides the game. You see, Middlefort wasn't only a small town, but it was also deprived. So, as we had no other place to gather the whole city around that soccer field became multi-functional. We held festivals and fairs also in that open-air place, especially my favorite fair of all, The Book Fair. I remembered exactly when it was, the 21st annual Middlefort Book Fair, on July 2nd to be precise. As usual, I was sitting behind the counter of Big Brownie stand, reading new books I got from many other stands (now you could imagine how nerdy I was), and there she was. Thin little white fingers browsed through the wooden racks, her marble green eyes widened as her hand took out a book, and then she smiled showing her pearl white teeth. At the moment I saw my angel for the first time, Ernest Hemmingway's precious work fell from my hand.
