For Our Future #ONC2020

04. Laura

The hard frame of a home constructed of brick that once housed Laura when she was an infant was now nothing more than rubble. Pile upon pile of soot, dust, brick, wood and memories. She had taken her first steps in this house, she sang her first song in this house at the age of seven when she was ten her family moved into the city instead of living on the outskirts.

Her older brother, Douglas had started middle school in this house and her younger sister, Julie had begun elementary in this house.

It was a home full of memories now reduced to nothing but rubble.

Laura stood there on a Saturday morning watching a constructing tear down her old home that housed her and her family for the beginning of her life. Laura was wearing old worn boots, jeans and Red Hot Chili Peppers tee that she had found at a thrift store and a winter jacket that didn't do much to keep her small frame warm. A warm cup of coffee rested in Laura's hands as she watched people going about like this home was nothing, it wasn't nothing it was something.

The day her family moved Laura had cried she didn't understand why they were moving to a place so crowded. She had sobbed to her father, "Why do we have to leave Papa?" A man she used to care deeply about was someone she had to move on from, he didn't believe she could make it as a singer, a musician. That day he had looked down at the girl he would grow to resent and he said, "Because Lee the world is a cruel. . . cruel place love." He had wiped her tears and helped her finish packing. It want until two years after that, that she found out that they could no longer afford a home.

Laura stood there for over three hours before she felt someone come stand by her. He didn't say anything, he knew what this place meant to her. How much it meant to their dream. "I cant believe its gone." Laura let out a sad whisper to the place she adored so much as a young child. 

Joel carefully and quietly took off his jacket and draped it over Laura shoulders. Laura leaned herself against Joel and she listened to his breathing. She didn't remember walking with him to the bus stop or getting on and off the bus and she didn't remember getting into bed. All she knew is that when she woke up Joel was beside her. There were only two people who supported her Joel and her grandmother, Sandra named after her great great grandma.

Her father had convinced her mother that her dream was foolish and that it would be a terrible choice to pursue it, his mom on the other hand told her she was foolish if she let her dreams go to waste, Laura took that to heart. Her father had refused to give her the twenty thousand she had as a collage fund and she accepted that she wasn't going to collage. That money is now being used to send her fifteen year old sister to private school in California. Her older brother wasn't aware what was happening between his sister and their father until it was too late. He was at Brown collage.

When Laura was a little girl she watched her grandfather die he was seventy six, far too old to be considered young and too young to be considered old. It was at his funeral that her grandmother gripped her on the shoulders and said, "Dreams are meant to be fulfilled, don't let them die. . . he always resented letting his die." She was six. She had still lived her ideal life back then. Before Joel.

Joel was the biggest change in her life his parents didn't support him but they never stated why, he didn't have siblings or grandparents. He didn't have anyone or anything. Then he had Laura and together they developed their ideal life based off each others childhoods.

They had a dream and even if it was all for nought they were going to achieve it even if it meant proving their family's wrong.