The Waiting Game

Chapter 1

When I woke, my mother was gone. Everyone sleeps in the same room in my house. Every house is a replica of the next, just with a different paint color. Everything is controlled by Mr. Banks. Nobody knows his first name, only that he is the genius scientist who found out how to make people immortal. He was also the only one who knows what happens to the deleted. I heard someone cooking in the kitchen. As I walked in the kitchen, I saw my father, sister, and brother, all dressed in black. My eyes filled with tears, but I turned away so that they wouldn't see. I gathered my self and turned back to see my six year old brother, Greyson, crying a river. He looked up at me with hopelessness in his big, blue eyes. My father stood over the eggs. Putting on his brave face, his jaw clenched, brown eyes staring hard out the window. He was running his hand through his curly black hair the way he does when he is stressed, his tanned skin turning pale. I glanced over at the table. Alexandrea, my seventeen year old sister stared at the table with her intense brown eyes, her bone straight red hair falling around her plate of eggs, her pale, freckled face turning a ghastly shade of white. Her breathing was slow and controlled, like it always was when she was sad or scared. I strode to my brother and wrapped my arms around him. He began to stop crying and just shake, shell-shocked, his pale skin on his face red from crying, his black curly hair damp from the bath he had just taken. As I sat down at the table, Alex began to tell me the story.
"Our mother was helping Grey out of the bath, when she was deleted." No one knows when or who will be deleted, or what happens to the deleted. The only thing we know is that no one ever sees the deleted again. Most people believe the deleted are dead. Just because we are immortal doesn't mean we are invincible. We can die, just not of old age or natural causes. Once, a long time ago, there were horrible diseases that we learn about in history class, like cancer, Ebola, or the bubonic plague. There are some people who say that the deleted are imprisoned, or cast out from the state into the wilderness. One thing that we know is that you never get any contact with the deleted again. The only way to know if someone has been deleted is if you realize they are missing, you hear it by word of mouth, or you saw them get deleted.
"I'm going to go for a run," I said. Nobody acknowledged me, they were too engulfed in their sorrow. I jogged out the door and sprinted as fast as I could, climbing over a fence, and some bushes, before collapsing on the sidewalk into a heap. My chest heaved, and all the tears of grief and sorrow I had been holding back were coming, now, in giant, heaving, sobs. Please, please, if there is anytime, or anywhere I could possibly be deleted, let it be now. I thought.
I don't know how long I sat there, arms curled around my legs, tucked into a tight little ball, my waist length, wavy black hair falling around me like a curtain to block out the weak light that was barely coming out from behind the grey, cloudy, sky. Suddenly, someone said
"Hey."
I stared at my knees, sure I looked like a wild raccoon, because eyeliner and crying do not mix, until I remembered my eyeliner was waterproof. I wiped the tears away from my pale cheeks and frowned.
"Who are you and what do you want?" I snarled. I looked up with my emerald green eyes to see a very startled guy.
"I just wanted to see if I could help," he said, his hands up defensively.
"I don't need help," I shot back venomously. As I began to walk away, I heard him mutter
"Jeez, didn't have to be such a jerk."
I turned back around, marched up to him, and slapped him across the face. Hard.
"For your information, my mother just got DELETED!" I said, my voice rising with every word, until I realized I was yelling. Then, I recognized him. He was in my year, since we were both fifteen, at school, though I had never talked to him. I spun back around and sprinted down the road.
"Wait!" I heard him yell, "I'm Sorry!" I didn't care. Sprinting back the way I had come, I hopped the fence and disappeared from his sight.