Chapter One

it was the middle of June, and it was the perfect weather outside, sunny not even humid, which was unheard of for a typical summer day in Minnesota, where I had lived for exactly a year today. I had moved here from las Vegas last year, in the middle of winter, which I swear almost killed me since I was a desert girl, but here I was in the small town of cokato, with a population of less than five thousand people, laying on our grass covered front lawn, enjoying a nice glass of lemonade in the eighty degree weather. It was 108 degrees in vegas right now, well, that's at least what my friends told me, the ones that still bothered to text me. I guess that's one of the reasons it still didn't feel like summer to me at that point, it wasn't hot at all in my mind, these Minnesota people though had a very different opinion of heat obviously.

It had been exactly ten days since my older brother nic, short for nĂ­cholas has shipped off to the military, the marines to be exact, and I was bored out of my mind without him here. Of course, I still had my little brother Joey, but he seemed to be even more annoying than usual as the summer days without nic droned on. So I decided to keep my distance. My parents were both inside the house, arguing with one another about something I couldn't hear. They had been doing a lot of that lately, and I had always tried to sneak around to hear any part of the conversation I could, but my dad would see me and yell at me to get out, he could get really angry sometimes, he was also what I like to call "moody". He had been extra moody lately.

"Alex." My little brothers face loomed above me, he kicked me with his foot, I pretended I was asleep, he started kicking me harder. "Gosh! Joey what?" I finally said. He looked taken aback by my sudden outburst, "do you want to do something? I'm so boooored." I thought about it. "No." I responded. "Whyy." JoeY complained, I stood up, my peace time was obviously over. "You know joey." I said, walking towards the house, with him following on my tail, "even though you're twelve, you still act like you're four." I threw threw the front door of our house open and was immediately blasted with a gust of hot air, my dad almost never used the a/c, he was cheap. So our house was always at least ten degrees hotter than outside. I walked towards the kitchen, and heard my parents arguing. All I heard was "work call, moving, and washington." But that was enough for me to understand what they had been arguing about all along. I quickly rushed to my room. While my thoughts were running wild. Could we really be moving again? I mean, we just got here, but still, and Washington? I flopped down on my bed, now wishing I hadn't heard the conversation at all.