The Last Breath

Chapter 2

The two days left until my mom's funeral dragged for what felt like forever. I was staying at my aunt's house with my cousins trying to comfort me, but I was miserable.

Aunt Alexandra was really nice and all. She looked a lot like my mother - they both had deep chocolate eyes, freckles, dark brown hair and they were about the same height. Alexandra always smelled like some kind of roses while my mom smelled like lemons.

Her kids were really sweet too. She had a son as old as me and a daughter four years older. Eric and I went to kindergarten together and we used to get along really well but as we grew older, we grew apart like everyone does. Jenna and I were never really close, but I always looked up to her. She always had good grades and she was beautiful. She had dirty blonde hair and hazel eyes. Her figure was enviably. She even had a perfect boyfriend she met in college.

I spent a lot of time locked in Alexandra's guest room, thinking. Was 15 the right age to lose your mother?

Then, the time of the funeral came. Aunt Alexandra helped me get ready. She lended me her fancy black dress and wore one similar. Jenna had a black dress as well, while Eric and their father wore a dark suit and a black tie.

The rest of the day was depressing. Everybody was crying and we put my mother's dead body under a heap of soil. There were flowers and candles everywhere and there was a lot of black.

It wasn't the first funeral I ever attended, but it was the most painful one.

Because it was my mother's.

Two days after, I had to leave. I was instructed to live with my father, although Alexandra asked me to stay.

Jenna drove me to the airport. The ride was pretty silent, but she spoke as she pulled up on the airport parking lot.

"Look, Alyssa, I know we aren't close or anything but know that you can always count on me. Call me if you need anything, I'll always pick up."

I thanked her and we hugged. And that was it. I walked inside the airport, rolling two suitcases behind me.

After I did the check in and went through two security check-ups, I was told to sit in the waiting area and wait for my flight's boarding to be announced.

The waiting room was huge. It had a lot of white chairs with cushions in a darker shade of grey. Most of them were already taken as I walked in, so I sat down in a row of four empty chairs and placed my luggage on the seat on my left and on the one on my right.

I sighed as I checked the time on my phone. I still had 20 minutes left before our boarding began.

I was happy to learn that the airport's wifi worked well, meaning I could scroll through my Instagram feed while I waited for the first step of my new life.

From what I've heard, my dad now lives in a house in Santa Maria, Florida. The social worker that got assigned to my case only told me that my father is notified of the tragedy that had happened and that he was expecting me.

I spent my whole life here in Phoenix, Arizona, and now, I was forced to move far away, to the other side of the United States.

I never heard of Santa Maria before. After I learned that I'm going to live there, I did some googling and I learned it was a fairly small city in comparison to Phoenix, that it was about 45 minutes away from Miami and that there was a huge beach and yes, there was sea! And the thing I was most excited about was the fact it's never cold there. I was used to high temperatures and I wouldn't want to move to the North Pole.

Ew cold.

I was lucky I got a non-stop flight because we landed in about four and a half hours. I spent most of my flight either sleeping, watching Friends or admiring the sky through my window.