Knocking On Death's Door

Chapter 6

The next few days of summer whizz by like magic, my brain is fuzzy and my heart hurts, I can't even count the amount of people who have come to our house with gifts, some brought food, others brought flowers, my next door neighbor brought an entire platter of sushi from her restaurant, which I ate.

"Mark! Hurry, you're going to be late!" Mom calls from downstairs, I sigh and throw on a shirt, grabbing my backpack and running down the stairs, nearly crashing into Dad. He curses at me and heads to his room, he came back a few days ago with our car reeking of alcohol and a wisp of cigarettes, he and Mom had a screaming match for over four hours after he came home and Mom filled him in on what happened with Lachlan. I speed into the main hall and bump into Mom, she's holding a bagel and my lunch, I smile at her, grabbing my lunch and shoving it into my bag, I know I won't eat any of it, but she doesn't need to know that.

"Have a great first day, honey" she says, her smile stretching from ear to ear, I can still see the sadness and grief in her eyes, this was the day she was going to send her son off to the eleventh grade, and the day she was meant to send her other son to the twelfth grade.

"Thanks Mom" I say and reach for the door handle, before I do I spin around and give her a quick kiss on the cheek, she smiles warmly and wished me a good day again. I run down the driveway and start walking down the sidewalk, my heart heavy and wishing Lachlan was beside me. I sigh and try not to think about my dead brother, even though I know that's all I'll be thinking about today. I see kids come out of their houses, backpacks slung over their shoulders and their older and younger siblings by their sides, I sigh and continue walking down the sidewalk, I see kids glance over at me and start whispering behind their hands to the kids beside them, it's not hard to guess what they're whispering about, and it's no longer a big secret that Lachlan died recently. But, it does piss me off that a bunch of kids are looking at me with pitying expressions and saying how sorry they are, its sweet but very irritating. I focus my eyes on the sidewalk and find my way to school through memory of walking these paths multiple times, I don't look up until I reach Bronson Hall Secondary School, the only high school in my area. Kids are swarming the pavement, people go off to join their friends and the courtyard divides into specific friend groups, I don't really belong to one specific group, I usually mingle with most of the kids in my grade.

"Mark, hi" Eli says, rushing up beside me and nearly tripping over his untied shoelaces.

"You should really tie those" I say, Eli's face turns red and he bends down to tie his shoelaces.

"Yeah, yeah" Eli says, jumping back up after he's finished with his shoelaces. We walk past a crowd of kids, trying desperately to cover up the fact they're smoking on school property, and a group of freshmen, who nervously look around the school courtyard, trying to identify more of their friends. I push the doors of the school open and wiggle my way through the crowd surrounding the wall opposite the cafeteria, Eli's on my heels as I try and find my name in the large sheets of paper pinned to the walls, finding out your first course of the semester is always the hardest part, the names of every student in the school are listed alphabetically on huge sheets of paper, my name is normally closer to the end. I scan the section of the page marked 'S' and run my finger down the list until I land on my name.

"Mark Spier, first period English in room 289, with Mrs. Fields" I sighed as I read Mrs. Fields' name aloud, I'd heard plenty about her from Lachlan, who also had her as an English teacher last year.

"Oh no, that's going to be. . . Interesting" Eli adds, popping up behind me and smiling. I raise an eyebrow at him.

"Why are you so excited?" I ask, he's beaming, like really beaming.

"A) because I have Mrs. Fields in the mornings too, and B) well because we're in the same class" I smiled at him, getting excited about classes having classes with your bestfriend was something I haven't done since freshmen year, it shows how Eli and I are different, because he's always excited and peppy when we have classes together.