Core

Hey guys, I'm sorta new to this wattpad thing so help in navigating through the sight would be greatly appreciated! Um, this is my first long story that I'm committing to writing and finishing so hopefully I'm doing this right with the whole posting and whatnot. I don't know how people get fancy with their chapters being separated and what not but hopefully I'll figure it out. Hope you enjoy!

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Perhaps the best thing about living in a home above the family convenience store is the fact that we rarely have to go out to buy groceries. And since we buy things in bulk everything comes cheap which means more money for us in the long run. Perhaps the worst thing about living in a home above the family convenience store is the fact that we never really get a break. Our little corner store is sits between a middle school and a high school, each only five blocks away at one of the more popular districts of Clinton, our nation's capital. Capital of the "hero country" or this world's guardian nation, as the media called it.

So yeah, we don't get  a break. Every weekday my parents work from six in the morning to ten in the evening and every weekend I usually run the shop from eight AM to eight PM and on Thursdays and Fridays I help run the store from three, when I get out of school, to seven right before dinner.

This was one of those typical March Thursdays. The weather is starting to warm up and kids coming from their little sports clubs are starting to trickle in to buy their ice cream or whatever they feel like snacking on and I'm outside, on a ladder, polishing the blue and white "Mikel's Convenience Store" sign that hung over the awning above our brick home. It was a simple home, really. Strip it of its sign, its blue and white awning, and the rack of old video tapes sitting at the front of the store and you got yourself a two story square complex with one really big window and a glass swing door that won't stay shut unless it's locked into place. You can see three windows on the second floor only partially blocked out by the store's sign, each with an ugly tint of yellow from that annoying barrier that covers the entire district like some kind of green house that protects us from all the sun's colors except all the shades of gold.

"Don! Corn's done!" I hear my dad say from the first floor.

"Gimme a sec, almost done with this..." I replied, polishing the silver trimming on the letter E until I can see the face of a young man with dark brown, almost black, eyes with lengthy black hair held down under a dirty white rag for a bandana. I swear it makes me look like a maid but my dad says it keeps my hair out of the food.

"Last one, Don. Hurry before I eat it. Told you to do it yesterday kiddo," he said. I could hear the bastard scarfing down on something and I half-ass the last section of the E and slid down the ladder legs quickly to get my share.

I almost ran into my dad at the doorway who had an ear of corn on each hand. One, completely annihilated, and the other with a few bites already taken on the tip. I reached for it and he held it high above his head with a smile on his face and bits of corn on his teeth. If I jumped I could get it but my dad was a tall man. Gray trimmings on his head, six-foot-two to my five-foot-nine, and a face and body built like a recently retired football player, one wouldn't guess that he was the store's baker. Or the family's cook, rather. He wore an apron for it, though it's an old one: it was a faded white apron with multiple holes ripped on it with the words "Kiss The Cook" cheaply and unevenly ironed on his chest and the name "GREG" stitched on the chest.

"Ah, ah!" he said, pointing the chewed ear at the ladder, "Put it away first then you can have your snack."

"I swear you treat me like a dog," I grumble back. As I turn around I can feel his urge to chuckle at me. I took the aluminum ladder down, threw the bucket and rag over my shoulder and hurried towards the alleyway that lead to the backlot of our home. From here you could see some cars, from the clunky to the middle-income, lined up along the wire fence that marked the border of the city's empty rain ditch. Our garage was already open and I could see an old red sedan parked inside so I carried the ladder in and laid it against the wall next to the tire pump and work table.