Everton Lakes High Vol #1: Fifteen

The Everton Lakes Series

Everton Lakes High Vol #1

Fifteen

Important Information About This Series

This series is designed as a modernisation of "pulp fiction": Shorter, frequently-released novellas portraying teen life.

As Everton Lakes deals with many, serious issues, the author would like to issue a trigger and content warning:

The Taylor family deal with the loss of their baby brother, dealing with aspects of loss, grief, anxiety, depression and SIDS.

Throughout the series, there will be sections discussing rape, rape culture, mental health issues, politics, drugs, violence and physical disabilities.

As the Taylor family is bi-racial and Muslim, Islamic and racial prejudices will be frequently discussed.

While these books are meant to be reasonably easy and light-hearted, they will be delving into difficult, and for some, potentially triggering in situations.

The author of this series will endeavour to ensure appropriate content-warnings are provided for each novel.

Dedication

For you

Chapter One

Harper woke suddenly, her muscles tightly constricted, as if she'd been running, and, despite being drenched in sweat that was keeping her cool thanks to the ducted aircon, her heart was racing, and she was boiling hot.

It was Harper's – and her twin brother, Hunter's, and older sister, Zara's – first day back at school in over three months – longer, really, Harper thought, if you factored in school holidays.

In October last year, Harper's mother, Asha, had awoken to find her youngest son, Zach, dead. Harper could recall everything about that day as if it were yesterday; however, if you asked her what Zach's funeral looked like, she couldn't even remember attending.

Zach was nearly nine months old when he died from SIDS.

The autopsy revealed that there were no known cause for what claimed Zachery Sebastian Taylor's life on October 25 of last year.

Harper's stomach wrestled with anxious knots as she reached for her anti-anxiety tablet. Ever since Zach's death, Harper and her mother were both on medicine for anxiety and depression. Harper only seemed to suffer from crippling anxiety, dreading social events and seizing upon any excuse to stay at home. Fortunately, Harper was blessed by empathetic and understanding friends – particularly her best friend, Lexi, who actually really did prefer to stay at home and watch Netflix or Stan than go out – who made sure she hadn't gone more than three days alone, even when they had school and exams.

Harper's mother, however, was in therapy three times a week, and had anxiety, depression and sleeping medication.

Harper sighed; while her morning tablet helped her focus, and a monthly therapist visit was helping keep her anxiety in check, her mother was no longer the strong woman who'd been championing freedom and independence her whole life.

While Asha had improved since the loss of her son's death – although her husband, Harry, had persuaded her to seek help at The Banyans Health and Wellness retreat on the Sunshine Coast, and while Asha had stayed there for two months, she had become much more of her old self – she still didn't always get out of bed, and if she did get out of bed, she didn't always change out of her pyjamas. Still, Harper couldn't deny that, despite her mother's frequent reluctance to leave her bedroom, she'd come leaps and bounds from her original catatonic state.