It's No Secret

Chapter One

Chapter 1

“Sometimes the slightest things change the directions of our lives, the merest breath of a circumstance, a random moment that connects like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swiveled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark.”

-Bryce Courtenay

    When I woke up that morning, I would’ve never guessed that the day ahead of me was about to change my life as I knew it. It started out just like any other day, well, for me at least. In all truth, I was rather negative about the day before me, simply because of the occasion.

     It was exactly 403 days, 14 hours, and 52 minutes since the death of my sister, Scarlet. Yes, I was slow to move on, but eventually I always did. This time, however, was different.

     Scarlet had been only ten months younger than me. She was the only sibling of mine that was within four years of age and the only sibling I could ever rely on. With her gone a part of me was gone as well. Every morning I had to drag myself out of bed and force myself to start another day. It had been hard on the entire family, but even I knew that I was the one who’d taken the hardest hit. All of my other siblings were already married, or at least almost married. Some even had families of their own. I was truly the only one who was really alone.

     Though there were many horrible things about everything that had happened, in my opinion the most horrible of all was the fact that I was lonely by choice.

     Suddenly, a bell went off and I looked up from my blank paper and remembered where I was. Eleventh-grade history class, my final class of the day. I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and index finger, recalling the dread I was feeling towards what I’d have to go home to tonight. This was the day I’d been dreading since the second I’d heard the news.

     Tonight was the night that my sister Valeria was losing her famous last name in exchange for a new one.

     I slammed my backpack onto my desk and began loading it with my belongings. The wire of my notebook got caught on the navy-colored material and poked through. It was just one of those things that felt like a bad omen, telling you that your bad day can still get worse. Taking a deep breath, I untangled the wire from my backpack and zipped it, leaving the room hurriedly.

     I knew that as much as I didn’t want to go to my sister’s wedding ceremony, I had to. She was my sister, and yes, we fought, but at the end of the day we were still family. I loved her and I knew that when she seemed overprotective of me she was really just trying to look out for me. She’d been through a lot and she didn’t want me to make the same mistakes as she had.

     It wasn’t that I didn’t like Alex, her fiancé, either. He was a great guy. He had respect, he was well-off, a successful entrepreneur, and he had served our country for seven years in the military. He also had a doctoral degree in law and spent much of his time reviewing trial after trial. That’s how he’d met my sister. We hired him to sort through the murder case for Scarlet. I honestly owed it to Alex to be happy for him, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t be happy because Scarlet wasn’t here to be happy right beside me.

     All these things raced through my head as I glided towards the large glass doors at the exit of Clarence High. Once I was outside I took notice of the weather for the first time all day; it was sunny and warm. A comfortable 68 degrees. It was the kind of weather that made me regret no taking my convertible to school.

     With that I hopped into my black Bentley and proceeded to get onto the highway and head towards home. To me, my home wasn’t really a home at all. It was merely a building in which I was required to spend the majority of my time. It wasn’t a choice; it just came right along with the last name. After all, I was a Diaz and it was my job to act like one.