The Next Life

Chapter 1 - Prologue, Just A Normal Day

I saw Kennedy and Valeria by the bus stop, smoking, of course. I think it's just stupid and frankly, uncool. It makes you reek, it supposed to make your hair and nails gross, make your skin wrinkly, and of course kill, but not or free. If you are smoking, you are literally paying to kill yourself. Anyways, enough about that, I just want to get home, it's bitter cold, and I can't feel my toes.

At home, mom is standing by the stove, sloshing chopped veg into the saucepan, causing the warming homy sent to waft through the entire house. Not home, we never live in a place long enough to call it home, we never bring memories or love, which is what makes a hose a home. All of the places we live are from it, just temporary. We, my mom, little brother and my brothers dad, Stephen, who I also call Dad, which he is to me. My mom married Stephen 9 years ago, when I was 6, 2 years later, they had Nathan, my little brother who means the world to me, but can really be a little annoyance.

You see, all I really have left of my biological  dad, is a patch from his uniform which his rank and service number o it. He was in the army, he died in the line of duty on his 2nd tour in Afghanistan, I personally think war is stupid, but I mean he died a war hero, so I honour him. His commanding officer got his dog tags when he could and brought them home to us, my mom and I, I don't remember any of this though, I was a baby. My mom also gave me a key of his, and she old me to always wear it and to never lose his memories, I don't know what it's for, anomy mom has never told me, she has moved on now, and doesn't love talking about him, I guess it's too painful her.

Dad was in his office, shuffling through a wad of documents, I asked him what he was doing. He told me "Nuttin, go help your mom with dinner, I'll be there in a minute to do the garlic bread,"

As annoying my parents can be, I love them more than they know, probably a little too for a teenager my age, but I do.

Before I could do what he said, Mom called Dad, Nathan I to the table. She said everything was ready and Dad leant over her shoulder to give her a kiss. He said it smelled great as he put the garlic toasties in the broiler. Usually, when my mom makes dinner, no one is really too excited, she isn't the greatest cook, and Dad normally does the cooking, but today she stepped in to do it for him because he is really busy with work lately, his firm is going through re-org, whatever that is,  which is what he talks about at the table. But in fairness, tonight  it really did look and smell great. I do the cooking on the weekends with a little helper, I usually make the fun weekend meals like burgers and casserole-kind-comfort food.

After dinner,  I asked to be excused from the table so I could hop in the shower and get some extra homework done, but mom asked why I had extra homework, so I had to explain to her how I zoned out in school and that Ms. Dorofté snapped at me, telling me to concentrate before she gave me extra homework followed by the back-row kids. After she assigned my essay, I spoke back to her and earned myself a lunch time detention, that part, I did not tell my mom.

So, I was excused and I went uo to my room and turned the heater on to get some warm water. Once I was finally done that tedious homework, I got a text from Taylor, my kind-of-boyfriend, we weren't official, but we weren't just friends. Anyways, he asked if I was taking the bust to school the next morning and I said "Yeah, why x" He told me he wanted to meet me at the stop near his house, so I told him I'd be on the early bus. 

After that, mom and dad came in on me, they told me to get off my phone, so I did.