Haunted (Harry Styles)

1. Alana

1. Alana

Moving sucks; end of story. Moving because your twelve year old brother has developed severe depression after your parent’s divorce and your mother needs to be closer to the mental hospital is eons worse. Mostly because your brother is so depressed he refuses to eat, but also because mental hospitals tend to be located in little towns in the middle of nowhere. A.K.A, Holmes Chapel, England. This was precisely why I found myself staring out the window of my mom’s sedan at the sleepy town’s streets, trying to block out the repeated “Alec, please just eat the sandwich” from my mother and “I’m not hungry, for the last time” from my brother.

Even I, who was starting to feel depressed by the constant depressing environment, had to admit that the town was pretty in an old-English kind of way. Little shops in brick buildings lined one side of the sidewalk and little cottage-sized homes the other, all dripping in water from the ever-present drizzle. Holmes Chapel, it turned out, was basically one continuous road with several little ones intersecting it. The old sedan had nearly reached the end of the road-called-a-town when it veered onto a small road that immediately rose up into a hill. There was nothing but trees on the hilly, twisting road for what felt like kilometers before houses emerged from the forest fog. They weren’t cottages anymore, but huge, old manors.

“Are you sure we turned the right way?” Alec asked in a dull tone.  Part of his depression, which I thought, and really hoped, he was faking, was that he tended to think everything in his life was predestined to suck. This encompassed living in big houses, apparently.

“Positive, Alec.” Mom said gently. Everyone said everything in that tone when they were within a 25 meter range of Alec. It makes me sound like a terrible person, but it was starting to drive me crazy.

“How’d you manage that? Did someone die in the house?” Alec brooded.

“That’d be cool if they did, maybe there’s a mystery.” I chimed in. Glancing over my shoulder  at Alec in the back seat, he mouthed ‘idiot’ and gave me the middle finger. In his mind, I was apparently also predestined to be the most annoying person alive.

“Alana, people dying isn’t cool.” Mom scolded. Wait, why am I getting in trouble for trying to be positive? In case she wasn’t aware, her method of dealing with the situation isn’t exactly working either.

“I hope you get possessed by a demon, Lana.” Alec sneered. Brat.

“What, like you?” I shot back. Call me a jerk if you want, but I’m pretty sure he hates the gentle-tone voice more than me.

“Enough, Alana!” Mom burst out, slamming the brakes as we stopped in the driveway of an old pale yellow house, huge like the rest of them. “Stop making your brother worse!” She turned in the drivers seat to glare into my brown eyes with her wrinkled grey ones. I could see the tears starting to break loose in her eyes. Man, can I ever do anything right?

“I’m sorry, I was kidding?” I said in a small voice that made it come out like a question. I remember when my dad still lived with us and she didn’t hate me, I wanted to cry thinking about the difference.