1968

Chapter One: May 1st 1968

About 23 years after World War II:

New York City, 9:22 AM:

"Come on! Run! Run!" My father commanded from a few feet in front of us. I was at the point where I had to drag one foot in front of the other in a strained motion. He worked me and my brother hard to get us ready for the trip ahead of us. He'd been doing it for nearly three years now.

"We're trying!" My brother shouted back. Dad stopped ahead of us and we concluded with him when we reached the same checkpoint. I held my hands to my waist, catching my breathe as I breathed in the warm spring air.

"If you two are going to fight, then you have to have the fitness for it. How else are you going to run from enemies?" He asked. I crossed my arms along my chest and waited for my brother to argue or make a smart point.

"If they run as fast as you, then what's the point?" He asked. I fought off a laugh and looked at the cobblestoned ground of our house. Despite the runs and the other exercises, I loved my home. With the money we had from my parents being generals, our house was one of the nicest in the New York area.

"You won't get by with that attitude, either," my father replied with a laugh. Jacob, my brother, chuckled and shook his head as he panted heavily.

My father, Jack Horowitz, who was one of the top ranks of the American army, was always like this. He had been with the army since the start of the Second World War, which was the same time as he met my mother, Hilda. They had been through everything in that war, and their stories lived on with them. I knew it all, had heard it all, and not just from my family. Everyone knew who I was as an extension of my mother and father. I had question after question on them, but I was told never to indulge it on anyone. I listened, and in return I had a chance to live on the heroics of my parents. Now that my brother and I were both eighteen, we had the chance to join my father and mother in Vietnam. They went there for small times since the start of the war twelve years ago. It seemed like this was never going to end.

"Can we be done?" I asked finally, after my brother finished fooling around with his smart-ass attitude. My father nodded and ran a hand through his salt and pepper hair. Even though he was fifty-three, he looked relatively the same and still had the physical fitness of a man twenty years younger than him.

"Yes, go get your mother so we start our run," he demanded. Jacob nodded and we began to walk into our house. My mother and father jogged on their own. They always said it gave them time to relax and talk about things. So after we finished our training, father and mother went for an hour or so.

"I swear this fitness better pay off when we get outta here in a few weeks," Jacob said as we walked inside the house. Jacob was the living embodiment of my father, only about two inches shorter. His hair was still jet black and thick around his head, his jaw was defined nearly the same as my father's, the same dark eyes. His physical fitness was just as peaked as well. My brother was the talk of the town among the girls in our class at school. I hoped it would all end once high school was finished, those girls simply wouldn't leave them alone. One more month and we would be totally away from them.

"It will, trust me," I replied. We walked inside the house and shut the glass back door behind us. Jacob told me to go change while he would get mom. I listened and walked up the mahogany staircase to my room.

I shut the door and went to the record player on my nightstand. I put on Perry Como, and listened on as I ran myself a bath. I took off my sweat clothes and threw them into the laundry basket for our housekeeper to get. I sat down at my vanity and looked at myself. While Jacob looked like our father, I took the looks of my mother. Long, wavy blonde hair. I was just as short as my mother, but a little curvier than her. My skin was just as pale as hers and my lips were just the same heart-shape at the top and slope at the bottom. The one difference I had from her were my eyes, or halfway at least. One was the same green as hers, and the other was a dark, dark blue. Two different eyes were what set me aside from my mother.