Chapter 1: the New City
It all began when the family mansion burned down. The maid had been called away for a family emergency and accidentally left the stove on, somehow one of the dishtowels caught fire and just like that, Frank's childhood home went up in smoke.
Luckily, no one had been home except the cat, who wasn't even singed but still refused to come back when Frank tried to catch him. Frank had been at school finishing an assignment and Grandmother was in the hospital after a heart attack. Martin Zhang, Frank's father, was somewhere in the Middle East and Frank's mother, Emily Zhang, was in the same place she'd been for over a year, the local cemetery.
Because of the fire Frank was being sent to a new school in New York. His dad had wanted to send him to San Francisco, but Grandmother, stuck in the hospital for the next few weeks as she was (and rehabilitation for months after that), had refused to let him go there. She had insisted that it was New York or nothing. Something about the Statue of Liberty being French. Frank wasn't really sure why that mattered since he was Chinese- Canadian, not French, but Grandmother had been adamant and she usually got her way.
So here he was, on a plane to JFK airport, to go to a school in a city he'd never been in before. Still it could have been worse. They could have sent him to a really strict boarding school in France like Grandmother wanted in third grade. Fortunately, that had been one of the rare times she didn't get her way.
The school he was transferring to was called Goode high and supposedly it was really good for developing young minds and encouraging hidden talents to come out into the open. Personally, Frank wasn't so sure about that. He'd read up up on the school, and as far as he could tell it was where the troubled kids who only had minor problems got sent when their parents didn't want to admit that they actually did have problems. Of course, he could just be being really negative about the whole thing because of that overly sunny slogan on the school website saying 'Goode is Good', which seemed like it was trying way to hard to reassure him and was failing.
Frank wasn't even sure why he had to transfer schools in the first place. He'd been doing well in his old school, even winning a few spelling competitions. It felt like his dad was just wanted him out of his hair, which would be strange since he wasn't even in the country right now and wouldn't be for a few more months. Maybe he just wanted Frank to learn how to live on his own and experience the real world. After all, he had gotten him his own apartment for while he lived in New York.
Frank hadn't noticed, but while he had been contemplating all this, the plane had begun its decent . When he finally realized this and looked out the window, the had reached the ground.
Well, he thought, I guess I'm in New York now.
For those of you who bother to read author's notes, this is my first story so constructive criticism is appreciated.