A Stone Turned Soft

Chapter 1

As the priest read passages from scripture in an effort to comfort her, Chloe suppressed a sob. Her twin brother, Benny, had just passed away from cancer. She was devastated. No one knew him like she did. No one loved him like she did. They did everything together and now he was gone. It wasn't fair that he left so fast. No one, let alone a kid, should have to go through what he went through. It wasn't fair.

Now it was just her and her painfully perfect brother Anthony. Everyone loved him. He was popular in school, he always had a gang of groupies gushing over his every move, and everything was always easy for him. Chloe? She had only a handful of friends, she had to study really hard just to get a C on a paper, and she hardly ever got what she wanted at school. She felt nothing but contempt and envy towards her brother. She knew she should be happy, but how could she when she had to live in the same house him? She would constantly see him leaving the house with his fellow football jocks and not come back till nighttime. She had never ever had that. The few friends that she had were all younger than her by a year or more and none of them knew how to drive and neither did she so she was always stuck in her house on the weekends. The only person that would keep her sane in the house was Benny. They had this special connection - a twin telepathy - where they could feel what the other person was feeling without saying a word. Everytime Chloe saw Anthony leave, Benny would sense the hurt or the annoyance that she was feeling and he would give her one of his genuine "I'm sorry" looks. She never told anyone except Benny about such things. She definitely was not going to tell Anthony, and her mom would never understand. So now that the only key to unlocking her emotions was gone, all the feelings, all the hurt, all the frustration, it was all locked up and caged inside her mind.

Chloe tried not to feel resentment towards him for leaving her, but at the same time, it was hard for her to feel anything but resentment. He left her right as she was transitioning into so many things. Benny started getting sick at the beginning of her Freshman year at Oakland School for the Arts. They went there for the acting program. That's where they both truly shined. Chloe came out of her shell and Benny showed a different side of himself whenever he performed a monologue or acted in a scene. They were thriving in that school. But then he started getting sick. He started having migraines that wouldn't go away, fits of nausea, and random spells of drowsiness. At first the family thought he had a cold, but when the symptoms wouldn't go away, Zoe called the doctor. That's where they found the tumor. A 5 centimeter mass growing in the back of his cerebellum, which monitors muscle behavior. By the time they caught it, it was already Stage 3. The family had to leave Oakland and move to Sacramento because they couldn't afford the medical bills. They transferred him to Shriner's Hospital for Children, but by that time, he only had 3 months left of his life. The entire process, from his first symptoms to his death, took 7 months. At 14, his time on Earth was done. How is that fair? Benny miraculously still had a positive outlook on his situation. He felt ready to die. He lead a good life, met some good people, had good relationships. As long as he knew these things, he felt like there was nothing else that could have been done. If it was his time, it was his time. Chloe, however, did not take this as well as her brother. From leaving her friends in Oakland to moving to a new school with no one to cling to, she was mad at him. How could he just abandon her? How could he just leave her to fend for herself? When Benny left her, she felt truly and utterly alone. How could he do that to her?

As Layla climbed down the ladder from her bunk bed, she could taste the sweetness of freedom. It was so close. She grabbed her backpack and her mom's leather jacket from below her bed, tiptoed across the floor without a sound, and slipped out the window. At last! Freedom was in her grasp. Goodbye to that hellhole. She hated the place. Of course, she hated all places she stayed in. Layla had a drunkard for a father who was emotionally and physically abusive to her and her mom left when she was 8, so she had been in the foster care system for 3 years. At first she stayed in houses with families, but they never kept her and she never liked them. After a year of trying to stay in homes, she was transferred to group home after group home. She always escaped, but then she always got caught too. This cycle of transfer, escape, caught went on for 2 years. This time was different. She could feel it in her bones. Something was going to happen during this escape that would allow her the freedom she had always wanted. As Layla got further down the street, she stopped dead in her tracks as she came face to face with one of the workers from the group home. Justin Roache; a drunk, pirate looking man with a Scottish accent. He gave one of his toothy grins to say, "Aha! Going somewhere Miss Watson?"